Why cloning sucks

First and foremost, I am against cloning. I do it because I am told to.e

We ordered a batch of HP DC5750's. We made a clone doing sysprep et al. Life was good. But then after the PC's were installed 1000 miles away we discovered that we built the clone from a dual core system and most of the PC's are single core.

Now every time we lauch notepad, control panel, my computer - the system freezes for up to 2 or 3 minutes. The PC's are also reporting hard drive errors.

The fix is to go in and hardware manager and swap the dual processor APIC driver for a single processor.

Windows Active Directory issues with Binding

These are the errors;

Windows cannot bind to domain. (Local Error). Group Policy processing aborted.

Windows cannot query for the list of Group Policy objects. A message that describes the reason for this was previously logged by the policy engine.

Ends up that one of our network guys installed a new server and it was running Computer Browser, and causing constant elections. So the Computer Browser service was down as much as it was up.

We run 3 Computer Browser servers on our LAN to prevent these elections and the guy forgot to disable the service on the new server. Once he disabled the service, I was able to run gpupdate without errors.

This was causing slow logins / logons as well.

Making a Ghost 8.2 clone of my Dell R300 server.

I have historically used Compaq/HP Proliant servers with Intel NICs and chipsets that I have boot disks for. I typically use an older version of the Ultimate Boot Disk which contains Bart's Network Boot Disk, the Microsoft DOS version. I boot to the network in DOS, map a drive, and run ghost.exe to back up the SCSI drives to the LAN.

This doesn't work on my Dell R300. It has too much memory so I run into that issue. Plus there are nasty problems with B57.sys in this environment.

The solution was to download from NU2.com Bart's PE Builder. I installed that and pointed it to my XP SP3 CD (or the parent of the i386 Directory on a network.) Then I took the B57 drivers from Broadcom's site. The drivers are the small K ones, unsigned. The Zip has win_xp_2k3_32 and in that it has b57win32.inf 03/19/2008,10.78.0.0 for the 5700 series. This Dell has 5722 NIC's.

Then I went to LSI's site and did a search for the XP drivers for the SAS controller. The ZIP file has symmpi_xp_x86 and in that lsipseud.inf driver version 06/03/2008,6.5.0. The link is http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/standard_product_ics/sas_ics/lsisas1068/index.html and click on downloads. The driver is the XP one which is 1.28.03.00. I did not use the WHQL one. I tried the Windows 2003 one from Dell, but that doesn't work in a WINXP OS.

So those are downloaded and put in the C:\pebuilder3110a\drivers\ directories.

I then went into addons and added the Ghost 8.2 files.

Then I created a bootable DVD using the PE builder interface.

I booted up off the DVD and started up the NIC's. Once started, I mapped a drive and ghosted to the network. I was able to see speeds over 1GB/min writing and over 2GB/min on verify. Much quicker than I ever got in DOS.

Anyway, this is how you can GHOST 8.2 a Dell R300 server for disaster recovery. I'm sure you could use this for DD or any other disk cloaning software. I have yet to try restoring the GHOST yet. Hopefully I never will have to try that.

How to grab still images off AXIS cameras and generate time lapse movies from them.

This depends on several free programs. mencoder which comes with mplayer2, sleep from Microsoft resource kit, and Irfanview 4.10 or better.

The first batch file grabs the images and looks like this;

e:
cd \
md xvid
cd\xvid
md 8080
md 8081

:top
wget -O8081.jpg --tries=1 --timeout=5 "http://user:pwd@domain.dyndns.org:8081/jpg/1/image.jpg"
wget -O8080.jpg --tries=1 --timeout=5 "http://user:pwd@domain.dyndns.org:8080/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi?camera=1&resolution=1024x800&compression=50"

rem If you want an e-mail of the image, use this;
rem E:\Blat250\Blat250\full\blat.exe - -body "8081" -serversmtp gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com -f fromuser@domain.com -subject "8081" -to user@gmail.com -attach 8081.jpg -noh2 -alttext Camera


setlocal

call :GETDATEPARTS "%date%"
call :GETTIMEPARTS


ren 8081.jpg "8081-%yy%%mm%%dd%_%h%%m%%RANDOM%.jpg"
ren 8080.jpg "8080-%yy%%mm%%dd%_%h%%m%%RANDOM%.jpg"

move 8081*.jpg 8081\.
move 8080*.jpg 8080\.
sleep 10
goto top

:GETTIMEPARTS

for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=:." %%a in ('echo %time%') do call :SETTIMEPART h %%a&call :SETTIMEPART m %%b&call :SETTIMEPART s %%c

goto :EOF

:SETTIMEPART

set %1=%2

if 1%2 LSS 100 set %1=0%2

goto :EOF

REM ***************************************************

:GETDATEPARTS

set dt=%~1
set tok=1-3

if "%dt:~0,1%" GTR "9" set tok=2-4

set yyyy=

for /f "tokens=%tok% delims=.:/-, " %%a in ('echo %~1') do (
 for /f "skip=1 tokens=2-4 delims=/-,()." %%x in ('echo.^|date') do set %%x=%%a&set %%y=%%b&set %%z=%%c
)

if not "%yyyy%"=="" set yy=%yyyy%

if 1%yy% LSS 1000 (if %yy% LSS 70 (set yy=20%yy%) else (set yy=19%yy%))
if 1%mm% LSS 100 set mm=0%mm%
if 1%dd% LSS 100 set dd=0%dd%

goto :EOF

==== That is the end of the first batch file. It will grab an image from two cameras and save them with a date and time stamp in separate directories. Obviously you must change this as is appropriate for your hard drive and LAN.

The next batch file is below;

md e:\xvid\8080\old2
md e:\xvid\8080\old3
md e:\xvid\8081\old2
md e:\xvid\8081\old3
del e:\xvid\8081\old3\*.jpg /q/s
del e:\xvid\8080\old3\*.jpg /q/s

e:
cd\xvid
cd 8080
move *.jpg old2\.
cd old2

rem cd "C:\Program Files\IrfanView"
rem c:
rem fails
rem start /wait i_view32.exe "e:\xvid\8080\old2\*.jpg" /resize=(600,480) /resample /bpp=24 /aspectratio /jpgq=99 /convert="e:\xvid\8080\old3\*.jpg" /silent

dir /b *.jpg > proc.txt
@for /f "delims=| tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10" %%i in (proc.txt) do (
@echo %%i
@echo %%j
@C:\zentemp\unsecure\screenc\i_view32 "e:\xvid\8080\old2\%%i" /resample /bpp=24 /aspectratio /jpgq=99 /convert="e:\xvid\8080\old3\%%i" /silent
)
cd "C:\Program Files\IrfanView"
c:
@start /wait i_view32.exe "e:\xvid\8080\old3\*.jpg" /resize=(600,480) /resample /aspectratio /convert="e:\xvid\8080\old3\*.jpg" /silent

@e:

@e:
@cd e:\xvid\8080\old3

@mencoder mf://*.jpg  -mf fps=5:type=jpg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=1800:vbitrate=500:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=64:aspect=4/3 -ofps 25 -o "c:\temp\8080-%DATE:/=%%TIME::=%.mpg"
rem remove ,harddup from the line above to make this remove
rem duplicate frames.  Resulting file is MUCH smaller, however quality does suffer.


:try2
@rem o now cam 8081

e:
cd\xvid
cd 8081
move *.jpg old2\.
cd old2

dir /b *.jpg > proc.txt
@for /f "delims=| tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10" %%i in (proc.txt) do (
@echo %%i
@echo %%j

@C:\zentemp\unsecure\screenc\i_view32 "e:\xvid\8081\old2\%%i" /resample /bpp=24 /aspectratio /jpgq=99 /convert="e:\xvid\8081\old3\%%i" /silent
)
@cd "C:\Program Files\IrfanView"
@c:
@start /wait i_view32.exe "e:\xvid\8081\old3\*.jpg" /resize=(600,480) /resample /aspectratio /convert="e:\xvid\8081\old3\*.jpg" /silent



@e:
@cd e:\xvid\8081\old3

@mencoder mf://*.jpg  -mf fps=5:type=jpg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=1800:vbitrate=500:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=64:aspect=4/3 -ofps 25 -o "c:\temp\8081-%DATE:/=%%TIME::=%.mpg"

That's a pretty big batch file. What it does is take all of the JPG's and normalizes them using Irfan view. Irfan view has some bugs, so we can't batch convert except for the resize. AXIS sometimes returns back color images, sometimes black and white. The encoding changes. If we don't specify the size on the wget, then sometimes the size can change. mencoder doesn't like any of this. To make a movie, the images must all be the same. Irfanview fills this role.

The mencoder settings are set for high quality, not much compression. You can adjust as needed. This file plays very well in VideoLan (VLC player) if you have problems with codec's in your default media player.

Surfcontrol EUM issue

There is a post "Surfcontrol EUM issue" in another site, which I have the answer to but can't reply - so here it is in case you do a Google search on this;

--- The question on that site ---
The problem is this:
1. Windows user logs onto our domain.
2. The EUM logon agent sends their domain\username and IP information to WebFilter.
3. User shuts down and leaves office.
4. MAC user boots up some time later and is DHCP'd the same IP (as the lease has since expired) 5. WebFilter incorrectly tracks/reports the browsing activities of the MAC user against the cached domain\username of the Windows user!!!

Right now, we don't have a solution for the MAC situation however, for the momentI'd be more than happy if MAC activity was simply tracked by IP - but certainly not in the name of the previous Windows holder of the IP addresses.

It seems to me that we need a way to regularly flush the EUM information that Webfilter stores.

Please advise, as this problem completely voids the integrity of the data reported.

-- The solution ---

There is a EUM agent that runs through logon scripts. It it ScEumLoginAgent.exe. What you do is launch that on your clients with the /intlogoff option which will remove that user's mapping to the IP address.

You can also run a logout script ScEumLoginAgent.exe /logout which will do the same thing, though Windows logout scripts are flaky at best.

I'm using the first method.

Plotting uptime MRTG in Windows the easy way

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How to grab images off an Axis camera and save them in a time lapse format

I have two Axis Cameras which I want to grab an image from every 10 seconds and store offsite.
My Firewall is configured to pass traffic on ports 1081 and 1080 to the two Axis cameras.

Below is a batch file to accomplish this. It relies upon WGET and SLEEP which is free to download if you search.

:top
wget -O1081.jpg http://user:password@yourdnsname:1081/jpg/1/image.jpg
wget -O1080.jpg http://user:password@yourdnsname:1080/jpg/1/image.jpg
ren 1081.jpg 1081-%DATE:/=%%TIME::=%.jpg
ren 1080.jpg 1080-%DATE:/=%%TIME::=%.jpg
move 1081*.jpg 1081\.
move 1080*.jpg 1080\.
sleep 10
goto top

Store that in a batch file in an empty directory along with WGET. Create two directories named 1080 and 1081.

Launch the batch file -- it will loop forever, storing your images in these directories.

Now, turn them into a time lapse film using mplayer..

Download mplayer (Search Google) and extract mencoder from the zip file. Place that in this directory..

Create another batch file with these contents;
c:
cd \yourdir\1080
mencoder mf://*.jpg -mf fps=5:type=jpg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=1800:vbitrate=500:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=64:aspect=4/3 -ofps 25 -o c:\yourdir\1080.mpg

cd \yourdir\1081
mencoder mf://*.jpg -mf fps=5:type=jpg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=1800:vbitrate=500:keyint=15:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=64:aspect=4/3 -ofps 25 -o c:\yourdir\1081.mpg


Of course replace c:\yourdir with the proper location. This will generate an mpg video of all these JPG's, and it will remove any duplicate images. Change fps from 25 to 5 for a slower view. Change maxrate and bitrate higher to get better quality.

If you have problems playing the mpg, you can use mplayer to play it or download VLC Videolan and play it through that. I use VLC because it can also stream directly from the AXIS camera and has it's own recording options.. But that's a different post.