Best posts made by srsmith

Nothing like a good power outage to start out a Monday morning :unamused_face:

I have this setup on a $5 Vultr instance running Fedora 30, complete with a subdomain, Let's Encrypt and 2FA. I've also got it running as a systemd service running under a limited user account.

I'm only testing with a handful of personal computers right now, but everything just seems to work, and does so quickly. Having secure, easy access to a computer's desktop, files and terminal through a web browser is fantastic! I'm still learning all the features and capabilities, but I'm very impressed with what I have seen so far. Awesome stuff @Ylian!

@scottalanmiller Thanks - I've been a lurker for a while and figured it was about time to actually register and say hi from NY!

Installing and configuring Fedora 30 Cinnamon on an older Win 7 laptop that was heading for the scrap pile. I haven't touched Fedora in a while, but I like what I see so far. Battery life is even estimated to be better than what Windows was reporting!

Doing some testing for potentially moving some Apache / PHP / MariaDB apps from CentOS 7 to Fedora 30. I keep reading good things about Fedora 30 around these parts, and since there are no specific requirements for an ancient OS, I figured it would be worth a look. They also require PHP 7, which comes OOB with Fedora 30, so I don't have to setup / rely upon 3rd party repositories. Simpler setup and more recent everything for the win!

Off to a great start on this fine Monday:

• QuickBooks server won't let anyone sign in and last night's backup failed
• Ceiling tile above me completely discolored from the rain we had over the weekend, leaked all over my desk and ruined my keyboard (thankfully, not the monitors)
• Went to move into another office for the day, found the carpet soaked, with no visible sign of a leak

We'll see how the rest of the day goes, but so far, I am not amused...

Making rookie mistakes even though I know better - I ended up removing a user's Exchange mailbox

I was reviewing and updating our MS 365 licensing yesterday so that I could make any necessary adjustments before the pricing increases that went into effect today. I noticed that one user had both MS 365 Business Premium and Standard assigned, so I removed the Standard license. However, I was either trying to do too many things at once or was interrupted by a drive-by request, and Exchange Online ended up getting unchecked under Apps for them. Obviously, this is going to remove the mailbox. I didn't realize this at the time, and the user called me up today saying that they couldn't send or receive emails. At first, I thought it somehow got irrevocably deleted when the Run Tests: Deleted Mailbox tool told me that the original wasn't recoverable. That's when it dawned on me and I said to myself, "Idiot! You didn't make sure Exchange Online was still selected under Apps when modifying their licensing yesterday".

Just another example of one of those "wow, that was stupid - I'll only ever do that once" moments...

Good backups are just wasted money and not actually important, right?

Veeam is being used for backup - awesome! Veeam is good stuff. Slight issue is that it is running on a VM, to backup VMs on the same host, itself included. Not ideal, but with a good configuration backup, it will work. If something happens to the VM, install Veeam on the replacement, restore from the latest config backup, make adjustments if necessary, and move on.

Except...

• This same VM also runs other services that aren't related to backup functions
• The backups are stored on the same physical host
• ...on the same internal host datastore
• ...on a secondary virtual disk
• ...attached to the same VM

At least there is a backup copy job to another storage target, right?

• Target is a cheap Synology DS620slim at another site
• Storage pool is 6 x 2TB RAID 5 with spinning rust
• Frequently takes 2+ days for job to succeed, but fails more frequently than it succeeds
• Job omits the largest VM (file server), probably because someone said "the other file servers at the other locations are enough for the backup because of the DFS configuration"

What was the point in spending the money on Veeam, only to configure things in a way that ensures that you don't have a solid backup if something happens to the host or the virtual disk storing the backups?!

@scottalanmiller said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

Probably can from the web page, but I bet it is awful to do.

Hmmm... looking at the GitHub repo, I see that @Ylian has been working on a mobile site. I'll have to experiment this weekend. I have a spare Raspberry Pi 3 I can use as a local test server.

On today's episode of "Another day, another data breach"... :crying_face:

Mind boggling how someone could have 4 years of unauthorized access and not get caught. Doesn't their "IT" staff check security logs periodically?!

Except our subscription is valid and active.

Really wish we could drop this steaming pile of garbage...

@Ylian said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

@srsmith MeshCentral developer here. There is no Android application for MeshCentral, it just going to be the mobile web site. It's not a feature full as the desktop site, but should get the basics (and supports NFC/Bluetooth two-factor authentication on Android Chrome). Let me know if you try it and what you think of it.

Nice - I was only looking for the basics on mobile for those "OMG I NEED HELP RIGHT NOW" instances when I am away from my desktop. Will hopefully be experimenting with it sometime later today, so I'll let you know how it works out.

@DustinB3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

Snipe-IT 4.7.6 has been out for 18 days now but at least on the DEMO and in my production environment there appears to be a bug where no results are displayed for anything (at least in my environment) and partially on the DEMO (assets only as far as I can tell).

I've posted an issue to GH which can be reviewed here. I reverted to 4.7.5 and things are operational again.

I'm also seeing the same thing with 4.7.6. If I click the Refresh button next to the search box, without entering a search term or doing anything else, it will bring up the results as expected.

Running the following seems to have potentially fixed the issue, as results are now showing for me without having to click the Refresh button:

sudo -u snipeitapp /usr/bin/php /var/www/snipeit/artisan cache:clear

@LilAng I hate those calls as well. This time, I figured I'd try chatting with support to avoid the lengthy phone call. They told me they couldn't help and to submit a ticket on the Intuit Developer site since this was an "SDK issue" :unamused_face: .

This should be a fun one to resolve...

@travisdh1 said in Comparing MeshCentral 2 to ScreenConnect:

That should be all that's needed. Bothering with dedicated mobile apps seems like a waste of your time.

Agreed. If the basics are available on mobile, that should be good enough for the few "OMG PLEASE HELP RIGHT NOW" instances where I'm not around my desktop / laptop.

@EddieJennings I feel your pain this morning. Our primary 11x17 printer is down for service, so we have to temporarily print to our copier for that size. First thing this morning, our shop supervisor tries to print a drawing and it comes out blank. I print the same drawing using the same app and print settings, it comes out fine. Way too early in the morning for this nonsense...

Nice timing for this - we currently have around 2 dozen machines still on Windows 7 for various reasons. We were planning on buying new Windows 10 machines to replace all of them by the end of the year. I admit, I didn't look into it further than seeing the free upgrade offer was no longer officially on the table. If I can upgrade these Windows 7 machines for free, other than my time and an SSD for those that don't already have one, management will be very pleased.

QuickBooks this morning:
Oh, you want to have a report emailed to certain users on a schedule? No problem! I just need you to turn off UAC and leave QuickBooks running, logged in to your company file and running in single user mode.

What idiot at Intuit (or whoever Intuit bought QuickBooks from) thought that this was an acceptable solution? I can understand the need for things like a verify and rebuild, but for running and emailing a simple query report? Anyone with the correct permissions can manually achieve the same thing in multi-user mode...

Once again, due to Intuit's extraordinary ability to screw up basic functionality, I need to create a custom app, using their own SDK, that I can automate with the Windows task scheduler.

Just updated to 0.4.2-i. As always, quick and painless!

I really need to get in the habit of checking every day...

I've been keeping an eye on Proton - it sounds like some seriously impressive work on the Linux gaming front. With how many games are listed as Platinum, or only have minor issues, it looks like Proton is making gaming on Linux a serious possibility instead of wishful thinking.

I am very happy to see this - I plan to move to something like Solus w/ Budgie as my primary OS at home instead of "upgrading" to Windows 10.