I had that list of address representing some place of interests - all of the aikido dojos. And course I knew my home address. While google doc offered me an easy way to map all of those addresses on a map, I wanted to get some extra information such as the duration or distance for directions between my place and the listed address.

With the following formula one can easily find plenty of information:

For a duration

=INDEX(importXML("http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/xml?origin="&SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE( D2 ;CHAR(13);" ");CHAR(10);" ")); " "; "+")&"&destination="&SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE( $D$9 ;CHAR(13);" ");CHAR(10);" ")); " "; "+")&"&sensor=false" ; "//leg/duration/text[last()]" ) ; 1)

For a distance

=INDEX(importXML("http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/directions/xml?origin="&SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE( D2 ;CHAR(13);" ");CHAR(10);" ")); " "; "+")&"&destination="&SUBSTITUTE(TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE( $D$9 ;CHAR(13);" ");CHAR(10);" ")); " "; "+")&"&sensor=false" ; "//leg/distance/text[last()]" ) ; 1)

You will understand that my home address would be in the cell D9 and that each address are in a D# cell.

Of course using the XPath Syntax, you can refer to any of the xml tag and get the value you need in a cell as you notice that the only difference between those are the parsing I am doing with //leg/distance.

importXML is pretty neat for parsing into xml data but use it with moderation as you can only use it 50 times in a spreadsheet.

Installation Steps
Create user bb on the server to be monitored.Assign 1984 uid to the Big Brother user.

useradd -u 1984 -c "Big Brother monitoring" bb

Copy the latest BB client tar file from your repository to bb home directory of the monitored server.

su - bb
scp root@yourrepo:/home/bb/software/BBCLT-aix6.1-bbc4.30-bbpe.tar .

Decompress the tar file in the bb home directory

In the bb home directory
tar -xvf BBCLT-aix6.1-bbc4.30-bbpe.tar

Exit from bb home directory as the BB client should be installed using root account.
From root user go to /home/bb/bbc4.30-bbpe/install and execute bbconfig file.After executing bbconfig file, it will ask to accept the License agreement.
After accepting the License agreement, the installation process will ask to enter a few details.

OS [aix] is the default so you can hit enter directly
It will ask for the userid for Big Brother which will be "bb".

The installation process will add a service in /etc/init.d which will start at boot.

At this point the BB client is not started as bb-hosts file is missing or empty.

Information about bb-hosts file
The bb-hosts file in present in /home/bb/bbc4.30-bbpe/etc.This file holds the information about the host and the BBDisplay,BBPAGER and BBNET.
BBDISPLAY is the server which will display all the monitored servers.
BBPAGER is the server which sends email alerts.
BBNET is the server which performa all Network tests.

Sample bb-hosts file.If the first line or name of the monitored host does not match the entry in the bb-hosts file then the bb client will not start.

0.0.0.0         monitoredsrv #must name uname -n
0.0.0.0         displaysrv # BBNET BBDISPLAY BBPAGER

Once all the changes are done then we are good to start the BB client.
The entry of the monitored server in bb-hosts file should also match with the entry in BB server's bb-hosts file.

I forgot to mention that to start and stop BB you can use the following:

su - bb -c "cd /home/bb/bbc4.30-bbpe;./runbb.sh start"

su - bb -c "cd /home/bb/bbc4.30-bbpe;./runbb.sh stop"

I came across a command line switch for Robocopy: /FFT : Assume FAT File Times (2-second date/time granularity).  The NTFS date and time stamp is a 64-bit variable, which DART doesn’t deal with.  So what this does is force Robocopy to use FAT style time stamps which are 2-second granularity. It allows enough flexibility to account for the way the time is recorded when doing a file copy from NTFS to another file system. This is needed when going between and NTFS and Linux/Unix/FAT or emulated file system.

update 20110601: I now use fastcopy instead of robocopy. It is a great fast(er) and friendly tool! And it doesn't have any of the security or date issues I have seem with the msft tool.

In looking at the similarities and differences among the computers I realized that the two computers on which the application crashed had one thing in common - they were 64-bit machines whereas the machine on which the power toy worked was a 32-bit machine. I ran into a problem like this years ago. I had a .Net application that P/Invoked some 32-bit APIs. The computer would automatically load the .Net code in a 64-bit process, but 64-bit and 32-bit code cannot coexists in the same process which is why the program would crash. When I ran into this problem years ago I just changed the settings on my project so that the code would NGEN to 32-bit code (that means it was converted to x86 code at compile time). But I don't have the source code for the Windows Mobile Security Power Toy. So what could I do?

There's a command line utility that would help me here. It allows one to start a .Net executable and load it into a 32-bit process. the utility is named CORFLAGS.EXE. I went back to the 64-bit machines, opened the command prompt, and typed the following:

COREFLAGS.EXE SecurityManager.exe /32BIT+

Success!

Go read Networking for people who hate networking

So instead of adding a rule to disable telnet, you will prefer to clone the rule set and modify it.

#ipfilter --clone CurrentSec -from default_ipv4
#ipfilter --show (write down the rule number for Telnet 23)
#ipfilter --delrule CurrentSec -rule 2
#ipfilter --addrule CurrentSec -rule 2 -sip any -dp 23 -proto tcp -act deny
#ipfilter --save CurrentSec
#ipfilter --activate CurrentSec

First off, there a few commands and output that will give you a good starting point.

C:\Windows\system32>cscript slmgr.vbs /dlv
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Software licensing service version: 6.1.7600.16385

Name: Windows Server(R), ServerStandard edition
Description: Windows Operating System - Windows Server(R), RETAIL channel
Activation ID: 039998e3-3ef5-4adf-b758-mnbvczxlkjjhh
Application ID: 55c92734-d682-4d71-983e-lkdaskdjaskl
Extended PID: 00477-4444-444-000000-00-1033-7600.0000-3482009
Installation ID: 006386735361234567898785803475982043689521915735258065
Processor Certificate URL: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88342
Machine Certificate URL: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88343
Use License URL: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88345
Product Key Certificate URL: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88344
Partial Product Key: 2YYCD
License Status: Initial grace period
Time remaining: 43200 minute(s) (30 day(s))
Remaining Windows rearm count: 2
Trusted time: 4/27/2010 11:09:12 AM

Or its equivalent with less information slmgr /dli.

In that case, it seems that KMS client is not even set here.

First off, you may want to tell the server where to look to get Keys using the following commands.

To know which server should be register you may want to check the DNS record that

C:\Windows\system32>nslookup -type=srv _vlmcs._tcp.xxxx.net
Server:  rrrpdcad02.xxxx.net
Address:  10.9999.15

_vlmcs._tcp.xxxx.net   SRV service location:
priority       = 0
weight         = 0
port           = 8081
svr hostname   = rrrmskms01.xxxx.net
rrrpmskms01.xxxx.net   internet address = 10.99.98.97

With this information you can now register for this server.

C:\Windows\system32>cscript slmgr.vbs /skms rrrpmskms01:1688
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Key Management Service machine name set to rrrmskms01:1688 successfully.

You will then need to enter a valid key if not already done with you unattended install. Please check the below table with MS provided keys for activation using KMS.

C:\Windows\system32>cscript slmgr.vbs -ipk YC6KT-GKW9T-YTKYR-T4X34-R7VHC
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Installed product key YC6KT-GKW9T-YTKYR-T4X34-R7VHC successfully.

then trying the activation using the command below I would get another error.

C:\Windows\system32>cscript slmgr.vbs /ato
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Activating Windows Server(R), ServerStandard edition (039998e3-3ef5-ddasdasdass8-d25fa0128ff4) ...
On a computer running Microsoft Windows non-core edition, run 'slui.exe 0x2a 0x80072EE2' to display the error text.
Error: 0x80072EE2

Using the mentioned command I would find that 0x80072EE2 means that the operation timed out. Very well, then I may facing some communication errors.

Indeed, as you may have noticed I made a mistake above not using the right port. I used 1688 which the default port instead.

You can also check on your KMS for a status using the slmgr /dlv command:

Key Management Service is enabled on this machine
Current count: 50
Listening on Port: 8081
DNS publishing enabled
KMS priority: Normal

Be sure to use the port that is given by the volume license DNS entry and make sure it communicates. As you may have guessed there are 2 ways a new server where a KMS is install will register. Of course after changing to the right port and can try -ato (activation) again.

1. by using the DNS to automatically locate the KMS
2. or just register it manually using the commands above

When rightfully registered the /dli or /dlv will give you something like that:

C:\Windows\system32>cscript slmgr.vbs -dli
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Name: Windows Server(R), ServerStandard edition
Description: Windows Operating System - Windows Server(R), VOLUME_KMSCLIENT channel
Partial Product Key: R99HC
License Status: Licensed
Volume activation expiration: 259200 minute(s) (180 day(s))

Key Management Service client information
Client Machine ID (CMID): 70e4de42-rewa-4c93-gf45-a6d372bc0a19
Registered KMS machine name: rrrpmskms01.xxxx.net:8081
KMS machine extended PID: 55041-009999-313-09999-03-1033-6002.0000-3442009
Activation interval: 120 minutes
Renewal interval: 10080 minutes
KMS host caching is enabled

Activation Keys table (taken from here)

The sysadmin who gets to:

Wear the beeper 24 x 7? The sysadmin.

Have almost every thought interrupted? The sysadmin.

Mind the gap between hype and reality? The sysadmin.

Watch over the "minor details"? The sysadmin

Listen to hold music while a blowtorch singes the body part that gets copied? The sysadmin

Have purchase recommendations be ignored political decree? The sysadmin.

Face the wrath when somebody else's bad idea breaks? The sysadmin.

Stay at work while the bosses go out for a round of mucky muck? The sysadmin.

Have everybody else tell them what they really ought to be doing? The sysadmin.

First I could not get into that VM remotely as it appeared as offline. This said, VI showed the VM as healthy and online.

Trying to get to it using the Console from VI showed the following error:

As you can see I was afraid that some of the SAN path were down or some kind of painful problem with the SAN. No, no a quick ssh in showed that the mentioned volumes were online, accessible and all SAN paths were up.

So I do power off and restart the VM: no success. Restart the ESX (after vmotioning all VMs): no success.

Eventually I find that in the settings of the VM, there was  a reference of some floppy image pointing to a volume (not even on the same volume). I changed that option to Client Device and voila everything was back to normal.

Looking that information up on the VMware KB or community forum  doesn't provide any solution.

Enabling HA gave the error:
"Cannot complete the configuration of HA agent on the host. See the task for details for addional information. "

Without much details I was almost ready to blame it on ESX4i. However after checking everything I found out that my DNS servers settings were wrong.

Changing my DNS to the right IPs and HA configuration worked like a charm.

Obviously my sticky keys did not help but of course stressed out the reminder that HA relies on DNS heavily.