Unduly Noted

Let me start out with the download link and the main site. If you manage a ton of computers then these tools can really help you out. Search for Rootkits?  Remotely Restart all windows machines? Remotely Shutdown? Send a file to hundreds of machines at once and initiate that install? Just the tip of the iceberg. Another tool that I have had limited success with on windows XP is Logon.exe. Careful, antivirus will probably think this is a virus especially if you put it in system32. If i use this in conjunction with the psexec tool i can logon to the machines ONLY after the logon process has been initiated at least once after reboot. So its a good thing to run at the end of the week after you are sure all the computer have been logged into at least once. I am not sure why you need to initiate a manual login/logoff before but it blue screens if you don’t (XPsp3, don’t even try it on vista). Anyway, this tool allows you to login a ton of machines at once so you don’t have to do it manually.

example:
psexec //ipofmachine or @filnameOFip’s -u domain/username -p password -i -s -c -d Logon.exe -u domain/username -p password

this puts Logon.exe in the client’s system32 folder and passes the logon that follows it to the logon screen.
you can of course specify a different folder to copy it to.

example:
psexec //ipofmachine or @filnameOFip’s -u domain/username -p password -i -s -c -d ”c:\temp\Logon.exe” -u domain/username -p password

This will copy it to a temp folder on the root of the c:

Of course with all these tools if you need help just type into the command line:  toolname /?

And it goes without saying that you need to be cd\’ed into the directory of the tool to actually run it. Simple tip, just copy cmd.exe to the sysinternals folder that you download and run it from there. That will automatically start you in the correct directory.

I noticed this problem soon after one of the 10.5 upgrades. Running deepfreze on the macs that were bound to a 2003 AD server. These macs were also dual boot with XP but it doesn’t matter if you have a single boot setup the problem still occurs. After a few days the mac would unbind its self from Active Directory (or Open Directory if you are running 10.5 server). Apparently the mac needs to update the trust account password with the server. So every few days it changes it, but after a reboot deepfreeze of course reverts to the old file making it a bad trust and forcing you to rebind.

Without further ado….

on the UNTHAWED macs….

1. login locally

2. unbind from the directory (you have to unbind or it won’t work)

open terminal and type the following (hit return at the end of each line)

sudo rm -R /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService

sudo dsconfigad -passinterval 0

3. rebind to the directory

4. in the terminal again  (hit return at the end of each line):

sudo cp /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/ActiveDirectory.plist ~/Desktop

sudo chmod 777 ~/Desktop/ActiveDirectory.plist

4. now open the new file on your desktop in textedit called ActiveDirectory.plist

look for this…

<key>Password Change Interval</key>

<integer>0</integer>

Make sure it reads 0  <—yes that is a zero

if it does……

5. freeze and reboot

this essentially is telling the mac never to change the trust account password.

remember…when you run some of the commands you might not get a confirmation

This was a bear with my macs and an 10.5 open directory server with deep freeze on the clients. I finally removed DF and just used proper group policy restrictions (which I recommend over deep freeze for a lab setting any day). But i revisited the problem when a colleague had the same problem.

UPDATE: This app is very flakey for iphone os 3.0. Check out an alternative method here.

UPDATE:
The commenter from below brought it to my attention that the new Supreme prefs no longer has this option for weather icon. Give this a try and leave a comment to let me know if it works for your phone.
SSH into your iphone (cyberduck for mac os x is an easy way) and go to /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/
look for the file: com.ashman.WeatherIcon.plist
Delete it and replace with the attached from my working phone here.
Reboot and try pdanet.
If it works let me know. If you don’t even have the com.ashman.WeatherIcon.plist file let me know as well

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OLD METHOD BELOW
So you have jailbroken your iphone and installed/purchased pdanet. You have also installed a ton of other apps off of Cydia and can’t even remember anymore what you did. For some reason your darn connection keeps dropping every 5 - 10 - 15 minutes. Solution, download Supreme Preferences from Cydia (This will replace your current preferences/settings icons). Open it up and go to the Supreme Preferences at the bottom. Next go to Applications, next Weather Icon, next Refresh Every, and touch the Off. Apparently this goes out and syncs the weather icon with the appropriate one. Mine was set to 15 mins and sure enough every 15 pdanet would kick me. When I was having this problem the pdanet people wrote me and told me that something must be making a connection (and apparently that kills the pdanet connection). Anyway, shutting the weather icon refresh off fixes it.

EDIT: I’ve just started getting a bad connection again after doing nothing. Doing some serious testing to figure it out. It seems my AIM will work but webbrowsing won’t. Completely random as well, not like the above problem. If I close my browser it will sometimes work a little bit and then stop. At first I thoght it was DNS. It’s prob just my machine though and I need to iron it out and test with another machine. Will keep you posted. This just started last friday(4-17-09), let me know if it just started for you as well.

EDIT2: (4-22-09)
iTunes restore/jailbreak and only installing pdanet still does not work. It crashes after 5 min of use. Writing the developers to see whats up. Keep you posted.

EDIT3: (4-22-09)
Seems to be working now (not crashing). No idea what it was or why it was crashing. Running little snitch and I don’t see anything unusual. Let me know if it is crashing on you. I will keep you posted if it keeps working.

EDIT4:(4-23-09)
Worked great last night although I did not open too many tabs or try skype etc. Still crashing for anyone?

EDIT5: (5-5-09)
Forgot to mention that the developer emailed me back (rather quickly) and pretty much hinted that the crashing was an isolated problem on my phone. I’m guessing the dang thing was overheating. Anyway. He gave me a link to the beta version which I have been running and seems to work great.

So Windows 2000 does it fine, Windows xp does it great but Vista just would not connect to our .local domain. Don’t ask me why it is .local I know that opens a pain in the butt can of worms but thats the way it was when I got here. Any way…simple fix, just add the Windows 2003/2008 server IP address into the first DNS server on the client computer and then a real DNS address in the second entry. If this still doesn’t work pull the cord on the internet and try binding again. This, in a way, will force the client to look only to the first DNS (the only place it is still connected to) and you will successfully bind. Don’t forget. When you are binding DO NOT include the .local after the domain name.

You can also just add the ip and local name to the hosts file of each client machine:
Right click on Notepad.exe and choose run as administrator
File ->Open:
c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
now at the bottom of this open file box change the file type to “All Files” and you should now see ” hosts”
Open it and add in the information of the local domain:
ie:
192.168.0.1 domainname
separate the ip and the domain name by at least 1 space or tab.

So i was being naughty this weekend and getting pcsx2svn (mac) and pcsx2 (windows) running. How to do it will be another post. I needed to convert my FFXII.dmg to a .iso. Although there is an easy way to do this in Leopard with disk utility nothing beats the ease of dragging and dropping the .dmg on an icon….and its done. The program is called ISOlator. Remember, if your .dmg was compressed this is going to make it a little bit bigger. Took about 5 minutes on a 2.4ghz dual core macbook pro 3.7gb image.