I've used some information from the System Center Dudes site in the past for Configuration Manager; however, looking through their current deployment guide, some stuff about storage seems suspect.

One of the things that's mentioned is

Neither the SCCM site nor the SQL database should share their disks with other applications

If you have a VM whose virtual disk files are all being stored on the same block device on your hypervisor, does present multiple virtual disks to your VM really make a positive impact on performance? This question isn't just for Configuration Manager but also for other apps where I've seen guides and documentation talk about using multiple disks.

The example given in the article was a disk for Windows, a disk for the Configuration Manager installation, and three disks for SQL server (one for SQL server and the main database, one for tempDB , and one for logs.

On a system where you had different physical disks, I could see this making sense, and I suspect this guide was written assuming just that -- different physical disks. However, if you're in a virtualized environment, where your VM storage is all on the same device, I don't see where the benefit would be.

Now, if you follow their advice of using 64K cluster sizes for the disks storing SQL data, then maybe it makes sense because the guest OS would be writing to its virtual disks differently (but the data is still being written to the same physical disks as everything else). But it still doesn't seem to make sense to put the Configuration Manager install on a separate virtual disk than Windows.

@dashrender said in MS Services stops: Auto Restart Suggestions:

@eddiejennings said in MS Services stops: Auto Restart Suggestions:

The correct answer is from @Danp. Some troubleshooting of the service is in order. Otherwise, I suggest doing what I said either in chat or some other thread. Use a scheduled task to run a PowerShell script to restart the service.

or a batch file since Powershell is disabled.

True. I know a bit of context for this that wasn't mentioned in the OP. I'm fairly sure "powershell disabled" means "PowerShell remoting is not allowed."

The correct answer is from @Danp. Some troubleshooting of the service is in order. Otherwise, I suggest doing what I said either in chat or some other thread. Use a scheduled task to run a PowerShell script to restart the service.

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Disabled Powershell

Lol why?

Lol ,.. Uhm Yea,.. (insert what's his face from Office Space) If you can include a cover page with your report,..MhhhhKay..

.... I have been asking that same question to which I only get.

"Security"

I'm still curious as to their specific worry.

RHCE practice time going over handling errors. Alas, this evening saw me drawing a blank on some syntax.

@dustinb3403 said in Checking multiple Directories to confirm all files are identical:

@eddiejennings said in Checking multiple Directories to confirm all files are identical:

To make sure I'm understanding what you want to do:

Let's say you have dir1 with files a,b, and c and dir2 with files d,e, and f. You're wanting to do the following check for duplicates.
Is a a duplicate of b,c,d,e, and f?
Is b a duplicate of c, d, e, and f?
and so on, correct?

Yes and no, I want to make sure that dir2 is an exact copy of dir1 (and lastly compare dir3 to dir1 and dir2).

The doing part can be eaily done with robocopy /MIR. Of course, it'll take a while given the number of files. The reporting part is the challenge. You might want to look into using Get-FileHash. That's how I typically compare files, but I've never done a comparison at that scale before.

To make sure I'm understanding what you want to do:

Let's say you have dir1 with files a,b, and c and dir2 with files d,e, and f. You're wanting to do the following check for duplicates.
Is a a duplicate of b,c,d,e, and f?
Is b a duplicate of c, d, e, and f?
and so on, correct?

Getting through the work day so I can get back to RHCE prep this evening

RHCE practice exam time.

@jaredbusch Yay band!

Tinkering with Hugo.

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Wondering how I am going to improve my response and function when certain tools are turned off across the board.

Have to GUI remote to a computer to restart a service that randomly stops when I could have used PS to remotely kick it... It's what's scripting is for, even as obtuse as I am, I know that.

There are a couple of ways of handling this with a scheduled task.

1. When the service crashes, is there an Event Log entry? If so, you can make a task to restart the service, if said log happens.

2. Write a PowerShell script that does something like

if ( (Get-Service -Name foo).Status -ne "Running" ) {
     Start-Service -Name foo
}

and have a scheduled task that runs that script at whatever your desired interval is.

Closing ancient tickets.

@dashrender said in WinRM: Security Question:

@gjacobse said in WinRM: Security Question:

@dashrender said in WinRM: Security Question:

@gjacobse said in WinRM: Security Question:

Here, it's turned off by design as a security risk, which to some degree I can see and agree with, but now I'll have to annoy users and in some cases drive across town to perform a minor task I could have done with PS.

Do they not have any other remote management system in place of any kind?
Almost anything would be better than driving across town.

We are using Manage Engine for remote -

Does ME not have the ability to run commands on the machines? I know SC and MC both do.

I wonder the same.

@dashrender said in WinRM: Security Question:

The same ones for SSH, only those that affect remote powershell

Yeah, that's the point that I'm getting at. While, yes, making WinRM available and using remote PowerShell is a potential vector for attack, preventing management automation seems like a greater risk.

@gjacobse said in WinRM: Security Question:

Here, it's turned off by design as a security risk, which to some degree I can see and agree with, but now I'll have to annoy users and in some cases drive across town to perform a minor task I could have done with PS.

What's the specific risk?

Using Powershell remoting, which uses WinRM, would be a requirement for managing windows endpoints, in my opinion.

@scottalanmiller said in sudo problems:

@eddiejennings said in sudo problems:

@scottalanmiller said in sudo problems:

I can prove the degree to which sudo exposes that it is allowing a privileged account to take an action compared to allowing access to a privileged account (which can be argued is the same thing, both are privileges, but sudo is more extreme of the original account being the privileged one.) Older tools, like su allow the user to move from using their own unprivileged account to using root (or something else) that is privileged. Sudo does not, sudo still acts as the original account which has been given admin level rights.

Here is how you can see it in action...

scott@ntg-scott-lnx-desk:/tmp$ sudo touch test1
scott@ntg-scott-lnx-desk:/tmp$ ll | grep test
-rw-rw-r--  1 scott scott     0 Jul 19 15:34 test0
-rw-rw-r--  1 scott scott     0 Jul 19 15:34 test1

Notice that when I made a file using sudo, it didn't make the file as root or any other account, the action was taken by the same account. Just in one case access to privileges was allowed and in the other case it was protected. But the account itself has the privileges in this case, just administered by the sudo mechanism.

A little test on my Fedora 34

That's weird. Why is it one way on Ubuntu and one way on Fedora?

I did a test on a fresh Ubuntu Server 21.04 install. For me it behaves the same as Fedora. Top example was before I set NOPASSWD:ALL on the sudo group.

@jaredbusch said in sudo problems:

@eddiejennings said in sudo problems:

A little test on my Fedora 34

Did you disable the password requirement for sudo? Because by default that is required.

I did for the wheel group. Below are the results. This thread interests me because I've always seen processes ran using sudo or files made using sudo are run as / owned by root. I was looking through /etc/sudo.conf and no setting seemed like it would change this behavior.

@scottalanmiller said in sudo problems:

I can prove the degree to which sudo exposes that it is allowing a privileged account to take an action compared to allowing access to a privileged account (which can be argued is the same thing, both are privileges, but sudo is more extreme of the original account being the privileged one.) Older tools, like su allow the user to move from using their own unprivileged account to using root (or something else) that is privileged. Sudo does not, sudo still acts as the original account which has been given admin level rights.

Here is how you can see it in action...

scott@ntg-scott-lnx-desk:/tmp$ sudo touch test1
scott@ntg-scott-lnx-desk:/tmp$ ll | grep test
-rw-rw-r--  1 scott scott     0 Jul 19 15:34 test0
-rw-rw-r--  1 scott scott     0 Jul 19 15:34 test1

Notice that when I made a file using sudo, it didn't make the file as root or any other account, the action was taken by the same account. Just in one case access to privileges was allowed and in the other case it was protected. But the account itself has the privileges in this case, just administered by the sudo mechanism.

A little test on my Fedora 34