Can't open Discovery Search Mailbox

While I was playing about with Discovery Search, I had the issue that I couldn't open up the Discovery Search Mailbox with either OWA or Outlook.

I suspected it was a permissions issue, but I was already a member of the Discovery Management group and when I looked at the Full Access Permissions in Exchange Management Console I could see that group listed.

After much scratching of my head, I decided to dive into ADSIedit and have a look at that Mailbox.

I found the Mailbox under Default Naming Context > DC=Domain,DC=Name > CN=Users, CN=DiscoverySearchMailbox{blahblahblah}

and when I took a look, I saw that the Discovery Management group wasn't listed. I just added it back in and gave it full control and the problem was solved!

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Exchange 2010 Litigation Hold - Now What Do I Do?

It's easy to put a mailbox on Exchange Litigation Hold... but how do you get the information back out?

To view what's in the mailbox, you need to do a Discovery Search.

First you need to ensure you have the Discovery Management role assigned to your mailbox.

Add-RoleGroupMember -Identity "Discovery Management" -Member jsmith

Now you have this, you can perform a Discovery Search through the ECP webpage https://mailserver/ecp

Click on Mail Control - Discovery

Then create a new Mailbox Search, you can choose what type of items, which mailboxes and what dates. You can do an Estimate Search which is handy for showing what the results will be, and then choose a "Discovery Search Mailbox" to output the results to.

Once the search completes, you can open the "Discovery Search Mailbox" using Outlook or OWA (Click on your name and type Discovery Search Mailbox).

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Adding .NET 3.5 to Windows 2008 R2

Windows 2008R2 doesn;t install .NET Framework 3.5 automatically, yet when you download it from the MS website, it won't install (you get the error You must use the Role Management Tool to install or configure Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1).

What you need to do is install it using PowerShell in a command prompt (running as an Administrator):

powershell.exe -noexit -ImportSystemModules  Add-WindowsFeature net-framework 

Easy!

Finding who's using your bandwidth on Cisco ASA

Until recently the Cisco ASA had a Top Talkers facility which shows you who is using up your bandwidth.

Now that's no longer available, one quick(ish) and easy(ish) way is to:

Connect to the ASA with Putty and capture the output of "show conn" to a CSV file.

Then edit the file with a text editor (I suggest Notepad++) and replace " bytes " with ""

Save the file, then open it up in Excel and you can sort by size and work out who's using what...

Find email addresses in Exchange 2010

The quickest and easiest way to work out who (or what) is using an email address is to open up a PowerShell command window and run: 


get-recipient -results unlimited | where {$_.emailaddresses -match "address@company.com"} | select name,emailaddresses,recipienttype


for full details on the result, try 


get-recipient -results unlimited | where {$_.emailaddresses -match " address@company.com "} | fl

thumbs.db can't be deleted because it's in use

If you are like me, you keep all your media on a network drive.

In what it thinks is an aid to productivity, Windows 7 (and Vista) will go to these network drives and automatically create a hidden file called thumbs.db which contains a thumbnail image of every media (video or photo) file. Naturally this takes time if you have hundreds of images or some large videos, and I often try to delete the directory before the thumbs.db have finished being created... and get an annoying error message saying that the file can't be deleted as it's still opened by another application.

You can turn off the generation of this file by going:

Start > Run > Gpedit.msc

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer > Turn off caching of thumbnail pictures in hidden thumbs.db> Enabled

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Expanding a LVM linux partition

Linux is something of a black art to me, so when I was required to resize a Centos (RedHat) virtual machine's hard disk, it took quite a bit of effort to do. As a Windows person I was very disappointed that I had to jump through so many hoops.

First I though I'd just boot up off a GParted ISO and resize it like I would do with any other machine.. only to find out that it didn't support LVM... and just refused to go any further.
So.. here's how to do it...

Assuming you have already expanded the Virtual HDD in VMware.

1 Log on to the VM as root

Let's not mess around with SU and all that business, we're doing some pretty dangerous stuff here, and we should know what the risks are!

2 Open a command prompt


df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                      26377276   3810884  21204884  16% /
/dev/sda1               101086     19650     76217  21% /boot
tmpfs                  1544956         0   1544956   0% /dev/shm

The 26377276 references the old size of the HDD. It's 30GB actually but after formatting etc it comes to 26Gb

Make a note of the Volume Group name /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00, you're going to need it later.

3 Create a new partition that will contain a new physical volume

Run the print command to view the partitions


parted /dev/sda print

Model: VMware Virtual disk (scsi)

Disk /dev/sda: 64.4GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags

 1      32.3kB  107MB   107MB   primary  ext3         boot 

 2      107MB   32.2GB  32.1GB  primary               lvm  

You can see that I have a 64.4GB HDD but the partitions only extend to 32.2GB... so I have loads spare.

I need to create a new primary partition to use this space:

parted /dev/sda "mkpart primary 32.2GB 64.4GB"

Do another print to check you now have a new partition

parted /dev/sda print

Model: VMware Virtual disk (scsi)

Disk /dev/sda: 64.4GB

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B

Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags

 1      32.3kB  107MB   107MB   primary  ext3         boot 

 2      107MB   32.2GB  32.1GB  primary               lvm  

 3      32.2GB  64.4GB  32.2GB  primary                    

OK, that looks good!

4 Create a new physical volume

We need to create a new physical volume. Let's look at what we already have:

lvm pvs

  /dev/hda: open failed: No medium found

  PV         VG         Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree

  /dev/sda2  VolGroup00 lvm2 a-   29.88G    0 

OK, so I already have /dev/sda2, so let's call the new one /dev/sda3 

lvm pvcreate /dev/sda3

  Physical volume "/dev/sda3" successfully created

and let's check that it was created properly

lvm pvs

  /dev/hda: open failed: No medium found

  PV         VG         Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree 

  /dev/sda2  VolGroup00 lvm2 a-   29.88G     0 

  /dev/sda3             lvm2 a-   30.00G 30.00G

Hey.. that looks good..it even shows that I have 30GB free!

5 Add this new physical volume to the volume group

lvm vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sda3

  Volume group "VolGroup00" successfully extended

   

6 Extend the logical volume in the volume group

Running the lvm vgdisplay command allows us to see the Free PE statistics. I want to use all this space, so make a note of it.

lvm vgdisplay VolGroup00

  --- Volume group ---

  VG Name               VolGroup00

  System ID             

  Format                lvm2

  Metadata Areas        2

  Metadata Sequence No  4

  VG Access             read/write

  VG Status             resizable

  MAX LV                0

  Cur LV                2

  Open LV               2

  Max PV                0

  Cur PV                2

  Act PV                2

  VG Size               59.84 GB

  PE Size               32.00 MB

  Total PE              1915

  Alloc PE / Size       956 / 29.88 GB

  Free  PE / Size       959 / 29.97 GB

  VG UUID               doO2t7-BlLf-1rW5-mbNU-zvUq-pzUb-ZAsBD4

The lvm lvextend command expands the logical volume. The /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 comes from step 2... I told you to remember it!

lvm lvextend -l+959 /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00

  Extending logical volume LogVol00 to 55.94 GB

  Logical volume LogVol00 successfully resized

7 Resize the file system

After extending the volume group and the logical volume, it is now possible to resize the file system. This is done using ext2online. First I verify the file system size, perform the resize, and then verify the size again.

df -h 

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00

                       26G  3.7G   21G  16% /

/dev/sda1              99M   20M   75M  21% /boot

tmpfs                 1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /dev/shm

resize2fs /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00

df -h 

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00

                       55G  3.7G   48G   8% /

/dev/sda1              99M   20M   75M  21% /boot

tmpfs                 1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /dev/shm

Congratulations, you have resized your hard disk!

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