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Windows and GPT FAQ
It’s a matter of time when Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning schema will be replaced by more scalable, flexible and robust GUI Partition Table (GPT) partitioning schema. I found very good Microsoft FAQ article about GPT on Windows OS. I’m sure I’ll need to refer to this article from time to time, so I think it deserves this short note here.
Simple script for sftp automation on Windows
The main goal for this script was to automate file transfer from Linux box to Windows Server via sftp. Files saved on Linux server are first transfered to Windows server and after that immediately deleted (purged) from the Linux server.
The script will run once per hour and must satisfy some restrictions that I put in place:
- it must run on any Windows Server 2003 with minimal dependency on third party tools
- it should not depend on WSH or Powershell – a plain old DOS script is a preferred solution in this case
- I was tempted to write script with python but that would cause the script to end under my “support jurisdiction” and I don’t want that to happen ;(. It must be as simple as possible, so that others will not have an excuse not to take over the script for further enhancement – you know who you’re! ;-)
- file transfer must be encrypted using ssh protocol
- no dependency on commercial tools
At first, I considered using Windows port of rsync, cwRsync, but decided not to, mainly because of the cygwin1.dll conflict with existing CopSSH installation and possible with other open source tools that rely on cygwin.
My final decision was to write simple DOS script that’ll depend only on OpenSSH (ssh, sftp). For now, I didn’t put any error notification ability in the script. I’ll probably make a few changes for production version of the script (at least logging, error notification and public key authentication) but for now it is what it is – a draft version .
echo off
:: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: AlesK
:: Simple script for transfering/purging files with SFTP
:: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::
:: Global variables
::
set sshuser=oracle
set sshhost=192.168.1.10
set remotedir=/home/oracle/work
set batchcopy=batchcopy.sftp
set batchdelete=batchdelete.sftp
::
::
:: Generate two batch files, one to copy files (get...) from remote host
:: and second one to delete files on remote host (rm...), that'll be
:: used for sftp with option -b <batchfile>
::
::
:: Initialize batch files that are needed by sftp
::
echo # Generated by test.cmd > %Batchcopy%
echo # Generated by test.cmd > %Batchdelete%
::
::
:: After initializing batch files we generate get and rm statements
:: with simple FOR statement.
::
for /F %%i IN ('ssh %sshuser%@%sshhost% 'ls -1 %remotedir%'') DO (
echo get %remotedir%/%%i >> %batchcopy%
echo rm %remotedir%/%%i >> %batchdelete%
)
::
:: So far so good. While writing and testing the script I didn't use public key authentication,
:: instead I chose to enter password each time I run the script.
::
:: At workplace I have an older version of OpenSSH (3.7.p1) that worked flawlesly as such:
::
:: cmd> sftp -b batchcopy.sftp sshuser@sshhost ...and sftp asked me for a password
::
:: At home I'm using newer version of OpenSSH (4.7p1) and the same line of code failed with the error
::
:: Permission denied (publickey,password)
::
:: After some RTFM and Googling (what else?:), I "discovered" that this is a perfectly
:: normal behavior, since sftp is not reading from stdin at all (obviously this was not
:: the case in OpenSSH 3.7).
:: The workaround that I found on the Net is not intuitive at all; with option -o we turn batchmode
:: off immediately before we call batch file with -b. Hmm...what a logic!
::
::
:: Get files with sftp in batch mode (for testing purposes only I prefer password authentication,
:: in production it's better to use public key authentication)
sftp -o "batchmode no" -b %batchcopy% %sshuser%@%sshhost%
::
:: check the errorlevel, if 0 then sftp completed successfully and we can delete files on remote host
if %errorlevel% EQU 0 goto delete
goto end
::
:delete
sftp -o "batchmode no" -b %batchdelete% %sshuser%@%sshhost%
goto end
::
::
:end
echo on
Destroying data on Windows – for free :)
I’m in the middle of a process to prepare our venerable SAN disk subsystem for retirement. It served us well for the last six years. Due to confidentiality of data once stored on this system I opted to erase data by first formatting all logical volumes at OS level, followed by erasing data with specialized tool that writes random data with the choice of several runs and finally formatting all volumes low-level with SAN management tool. Step two and three are time consuming parts of the process, that will take approx. 3 full days. And I’m wiping out a mere 1.6TB system!
If you’re looking for specialized tool for destroying data I suggest that you start here. Depending of the platform choose the most appropriate tool. I tried Eraser for Windows and it performed well. I think this is another tool to add to my list of the free open source software that I use.
EventCombMT – free Windows event log search tool
I was looking for a tool that can help me search Event Log’s on the number of servers for particular event. My first thought was to do an “exercise” by writing python script, when a colleague of mine sent me a link to Microsoft article How to use the EventCombMT utility to search event logs for account lockouts. EventCombMT is part of the “Account Lockout and Management Tools” but it can be used for generic log event searches. After downloading the pack and starting the EventCombMT, my first impression was that this will not suite my need as it’s a GUI and I would prefer a command line version of the tool. Hopefully, I checked the Help before dumping the tool, where I found out that we can easily use the tool from the command line as well.
Let’s see EventCombMT in action:
We want to search Oracle server (ORASERVER1) Event log for critical error that indicates that Fibre Channel path connected to our SAN is down. I’m searching for Event 5 with the text similar to this one: “Path1 removed from multipath device nn by MPIO”.
cmd> EventCombMT /s:oraserver1 /evt:"5" /et:we /log:sys /outdir:"C:\temp" /t:1 /after:01152008120000 /before:02122008120000 /start
The entire line must be executed as a single cmd line!
Short explanation of the switches:
- server /s (we can specify file with the server names instead)
- we’re searching for event #5 (/evt:”5″) that is associated with the error, such as:
sdddsm “Path1 removed from multipath device nn by MPIO” - we’re interesting in two event types; Warning or Error (/et:we)
- we want to limit the search to System part of the event log (/log:sys)
- how many threads should EventCombMT use for the search (/t:1)
- time interval for the search (/after, /before) in the format MMDDYYYYHHMMSS (this format is mandatory)
- we want to execute the search from the command line (/start)
The command will produce two files, the first one is called EventCombMT.txt and it’ll look something like this:
Find Events After: Tue Jan 15 12:00:00 2008 Find Events Before: Tue Feb 12 12:00:00 2008 Searching System Logs Event IDs: 5 No Event Text specified. No Event Source specified. No Between Event IDs specified. Will Search the following servers: oraserver1 To find these events we'll need a search running. It has already begun.... Spawning Thread for: oraserver1 Thread Running for: oraserver1 Opening: C:\temp\oraserver1-System_LOG.txt Number Of Records for the System log on oraserver1 is 1248 Total Bytes Read ending with the System log on oraserver1: 189124 C:\temp\oraserver1-System_LOG.txt contains 22 parsed events. Exiting thread for: oraserver1 All threads Scheduled to run are running. Total events searched: 1248 Total matches found: 22 Servers/Logs Searched: 1 DLL Cache Contained: 0 SID Cache Contained: 0 Start time: Tue Feb 12 16:12:51 2008 Finish time: Tue Feb 12 16:12:51 2008 True records per second: 1248.00
and the second file oraserver1-System_LOG.txt that will contain events that were found in the system log:
5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 13 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 12 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 11 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 10 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 9 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 8 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 7 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 6 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 5 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 4 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 3 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 2 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 1 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Sat Jan 19 18:57:41 2008,No User, 1 0 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Fri Jan 18 16:25:52 2008,No User, 1 13 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Fri Jan 18 16:25:52 2008,No User, 1 12 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Fri Jan 18 16:25:51 2008,No User, 1 11 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Fri Jan 18 16:25:51 2008,No User, 1 10 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Fri Jan 18 16:25:51 2008,No User, 0 13 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Fri Jan 18 16:25:51 2008,No User, 0 12 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Fri Jan 18 16:25:50 2008,No User, 0 11 5,WARNING,sdddsm,Fri Jan 18 16:25:50 2008,No User, 0 10 C:\temp\oraserver1-System_LOG.txt contains 22 parsed events.
At this point I can write a simple script (with python, of course;-) that’ll check for a presence of certain event in the logfile and send SMS alert to my friendly Motorola Tamagotchi.
Windows 2008 – what’s new in TCP/IP stack?
I think Mark Minasi explanation of the changes in TCP/IP in Vista and Windows Server 2008 in his Newsletter #67 deserves a bookmarking in this thread. I’m sure I’ll need to re-read this newsletter during Windows Server 2008 evaluation.
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