WinSCP – Free sftp and ftp client

WinSCP is an open source sftp/ftp client for windows.  An absolute necessity for any administrator needing to transfer files from Windows to Linux hosts securely.

Download it at http://winscp.net/

My Favorite Firefox Add-ons

Since I posted the StockTicker add-on for Firefox a few days ago I figured I would post a few of my other favorite and useful (I think anyway) Firefox add-ons.

• TwitKit – Twitter in the sidebar
• Weatherbug – Live local weather.
• Feed Sidebar – Sidebar feed reader
• Tab Scope – Preview tab contents
• Tab Catalog – Thumbnail list of all open tabs
• All-in-One Sidebar – Sidebar Control
• Download Statusbar – Manage downloads
• Sun Cult – Sun and Moon Info
• StockTicker – Customizable stock ticker.
• Wikipedia Lookup Extension – Looks up the selected word in the Wikipedia

There are tons of very useful add-ons out there, these are just a few that I use day to day.  Find your favorites at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Multilink PPP on a Cisco Router

We recently increased our Internet bandwidth from a single 1.54Mbps T1 to what Verizon calls 3Mbps Bonded Service.  This takes two 1.54Mbps T1s and puts them in a ppp multilink group to double your bandwidth.

Here is the quick and dirty configuration for bonding two Serial (T1) PPP links on a Cisco 1841 router.

interface Mulitlink1
ip address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
ppp multilink
ppp multilink group 1

interface Serial 0/0
no ip address
encapsulation ppp
ppp multilink
ppp multilink group 1

interface Serial 0/1
no ip address
encapsulation ppp
ppp multilink
ppp multilink group 1

The two serial interfaces then look like one – the Multilink1 interface.  The PPP ip address for this end will be the ip address of the Multilink1 interface. You can still check the status of each serial interface using “show interface serial 0/x” .  This will also show you what Multilink group the serial interface is a member of

Link is a member of Multilink bundle Multilink1

You can also check the status of the Multilink interface by using “show interface Multilink1″.  The command “show ppp multilink interface multilink1″ will display what interfaces belong to the multilink group (useful if you are on a larger router with multiple multilink ppp groups).

I have set up these multilink interfaces in the past, but I can say I am not sure what happens if just one of the T1s fail.  I would guess that the PPP would not like this and bring the whole interface down.

Does losing one T1 bring the whole Multilink interface down or will it the protocol stay up? Is there a better way to do this that will keep the interface up if one of the T1s fail?

Going to have to test this when I get a chance.

Sexy Unix Commands

Got this as a re-tweet on Twitter from https://twitter.com/cinnamongirl13 and got a kick out of it.

“Sexy Unix Commands: date; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime;”

Another good one from her;

“The web is a dominatrix. Every where I turn, I see little buttons ordering me to Submit”

Install and Configure Cisco Click to Call

Received a request from our CEO the other day, he wanted to be able to just click on a contact in his Outlook Contacts and have it dial their number on his Cisco IP Phone.

Cisco has a plugin called Click to Call that let’s you do just that.

Follow these instructions from Cisco to set it up.

Pretty painless.  Make sure the device you are dialing from is associated with your Call Manager End User. Also remember that Application Dial Rules are applied in order – this table gives you a good example of the dial rules.

It is more than just a click in Outlook, you have to select Additional Actions from the right click menu, but it does allow you to select which number for the contact you want to call (Business, Work, Cell).

I think the coolest thing about this little app is being able to dial directly from FireFox or IE.  Just highlight the number on a webpage, right click, Call.

StockTicker FireFox Add-on

Great FireFox Add-on to add a stock ticker to your browser.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/183

I set my details site to use Google instead of Yahoo.

Just add http://www.google.com/finance?q=$ to the Details Site in StockTicker Edit.  Google is just quicker to load – IMO.

SMTP with Telnet

Nothing spectacular here, but at times you may need to manually test an SMTP connection, so here is how (the mail server responses are italic):

telnet mailhost.domain.com 25

220 mailhost.domain.com ESMTP MAILHOST

helo yourhost.yourdomain.com

250 mailhost.domain.com Hello yourhost.yourdomain.com [yourip], pleased to meet you

mail from: youremail@yourdomain.com

250 2.1.0 Sender ok

rcpt to: recipientemail@recipientdomain.com

250 2.1.5 Recipient ok

data

354 Enter mail, end with “.” on a line by itself

Subject: Test Message

Test Message
.

250 2.0.0 Message accepted for delivery

quit

The responses may vary a bit depending on the SMTP server but that is basically it.

Details on the SMTP server response codes can be found in rfc2821 check sections 4.2.2 and 4.2.3

Adjust Call Wrap Up Time – Cisco CRS

Got an email earlier today about how to adjust (shorten) the call wrap up time on one of our queues in Cisco CRS.  I thought this could be done using Desktop Administrator but I guess I was wrong, or at least I could not find  where to do it there.

As far as I can tell it has to be done through the CRS Appadmin site.  Log into the CRS  Web Administration select  SubSystems -> RmCm from the top menu.  Select Contact Services Queue and then select the queue you want to modify and there it is.  Set the Wrap Up Time to the number of seconds the agent is given to do any “wrap up” once the call disconnects.

AVAMAR Pre-backup Script to Mount Remote Shares on Celerra NAS

When backuping shares on my Celerra using AVAMAR without a ndmp backup accelerator node I have to create a backup policy that connects to an avamar client on one of my servers and then runs a pre backup script to map a network drive to the remote share.

The script is just a .bat file that uses the NET USE command to map a network drive to the share on the Celerra.  This worked fine, except I noticed that only files with read access for everyone were being backed up.  All of my user profile or home directories were returning access denied errors.  I did not want to grant everyone access to all files and directories.

To fix this I had to add a username and password to the NET USE command to map the drive as a user that has read access on all directories on the shares.

I created a backup admin user for this and set all files and directories to allow this user read access.

The pre backup script mount_x.bat now looks like this:

net use /delete X:
net use X: \\NAS\Share /USER:Domain\backupadmin password

Once the backup is complete I then run a post backup script to to remove the mapping with another script umount_x.bat:

net use /delete X:

The scripts have to be in C:\Program Files\avs\etc\scripts\ on the avamar client.

Welcome to MyGeekFinds.com

Welcome to MyGeeksFinds.com.

I currently run several a couple other blogs dedicated to my hobbies and things that interest me – SuffolkSky.com and VABiker.NET. I also run an e-Commerce site that sells biker helmet stickers called ChopperStickers.com.

My get up and go to work everyday job is as the Network Operations Manager for a Credit Union located on the Southside in Tidewater Virginia.  It is a great job with plenty great challenges.  I manage a department of three hard working techs.

This will be a place where I keep some notes on different technology challenges we may run into and how we solve them.  Virtualization, network management, backup and recovery, Windows, Linux – these are just a few of the topics you will probably be able to read about here.

I also run across interesting and useful utilities/gadgets/solutions that I may not use from day to day but may be worth writing a note about.

I don’t expect I will have time to update this blog everyday, but there is always something going on I will update it as often as I can.