Using cached domain (active directory) credentials or not?

If you are ever in a situation where you want to find out if you logged into using cached domain credentials (AD) or authenticated against the domain controller then the easiest way is to open Event Viewer and look for the entry where the source is NETLOGON and Event ID 5719.

The description would be something like:

Log Name:      System
Source:        NETLOGON
Date:          27/05/2011 08:53:17
Event ID:      5719
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      YOUR-Full-Qualified-Computer-Name
Description:

This computer was not able to set up a secure session with a domain controller in domain YOUR-DOMAIN-NAME due to the following:
There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request.
This may lead to authentication problems. Make sure that this computer is connected to the network. If the problem persists, please contact your domain administrator. 

ADDITIONAL INFO
If this computer is a domain controller for the specified domain, it sets up the secure session to the primary domain controller emulator in the specified domain. Otherwise, this computer sets up the secure session to any domain controller in the specified domain.

Here is a screenshot (on Win 7) showing a (filtered) view of the same event.

image

How to create a Mini Dump?

If you ever want to get a Mini Dump of a process (of course for debugging purposes) the easiest way to do so is to use Task Manager (or use Sys Explorer). Just find the process you are interested in, right click and select “Create Dump File” and voila.

One thing to be careful – make sure you are using the same version of the Task Manager (or Sys Explorer) as the process. For example if your process is x32 (and you are running on a x64 system), then make sure you are using x32 version of Task Manager and not the x64 as that will cause issues.

Creating a mini dump

PowerShell script to kill named processes

There are times when you need to kill a number of processes in one-go like today when Chrome crashed a few times hanging all the running instances – next time Google says, one tab cannot bring down all of them – send them my way :). For such times, a PowerShell script is all you need.

I wrote up a simple one which takes the process name as input and then kills all the processes which match that name.

#Script is not signed, so need this.
Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

#Need to set the param to a variable
$target = $args[0]

if($target) {
    $orphanProcs = get-process | where {$_.Name -eq $target}

    #Check if list is null; if not kill all the procs
    if ($soonToBeDeadProcs) {
        #display list
        $soonToBeDeadProcs

        #kill list
        $soonToBeDeadProcs | foreach { $_.Kill() }
    }
    else { Write-Host "Oops, no processes found older with the name: $target" }
}
else { 
    Write-Host "Oops, no arguments passed. You need to provide one argument (the Process Name)."
    Write-Host "Example 1: killproc chrome"
    Write-Host "Example 2: killproc 'some other process'"
}

Example Output (Killing Chrome in this case):

PS C:\Users\amit.bahree\Desktop> .\killproc.ps1 chrome

Handles  NPM(K)    PM(K)      WS(K) VM(M)   CPU(s)     Id ProcessName
——-  ——    —–      —– —–   ——     — ———–
    139      30    34292      46708   164     3.87    376 chrome
    137      22    20932      33648   149     2.48   1260 chrome
    141      21    17896      31328   148     3.01   3572 chrome
   5434      37    56932      66528   266 1,134.36   4940 chrome
    139      22    20288      33084   150     4.12   5032 chrome
    145      21    16576      31368   149     0.58   5148 chrome
    147      19    14384      26992   150     1.42   5604 chrome
    142      23    32292      37416   156     8.42   6528 chrome
    136      17    12456      23964   142     0.30   6732 chrome
    144      26    27004      39136   156     0.98   6736 chrome
   1586      90   151224     209888   512   395.87   7184 chrome
    138      22    21388      33916   151     3.76   7504 chrome
    123      13     7756      15196   126     0.56   7512 chrome
    142      21    23112      35552   150     2.01   9860 chrome
    140      18    13032      25148   150     1.73  10432 chrome

Hadoop in Azure

My dear friend Mario has finally got around to blogging and one of his latest posts shows, it is possible to run Hadoop (which if you are not familiar with, can be thought of as an open source version of Google’s MapReduce) in Azure. You need to setup a typical configuration of nodes (Name Nodes, Tracker and Slaves).

Sure, there are a number of dependencies some you would expect, others not (e.g. Cygwin – cringe!; but hopefully that will go away with Hadoop 0.22). I wonder what overheard the Cygwin runtime has?

It would be interesting to know if someone is (or planning) to use this at work.

Tips on Buying a UPS?

After moving to Bangalore, it turns out that I would need to get one or more UPS’s for the machines at home. The place we will be moving to in a few weeks does have power backup, but if/when there is a power cut it takes a few minutes for the generators to kick in and is not instantaneous as I was thinking.

I have never bought a UPS until now and don’t have any experience with it – what are the things that I need to consider? I will have the following equipment running which will need to be powered up for about 15 minutes:

  • 4 Desktops (including a MCE and WHS)
  • Two 17” LCD Monitors
  • A set of powered Speakers (optional)
  • Few switches
  • KVM Switch
  • VOIP Phone
  • Wireless Router
  • DSL Modem

Would it make sense to buy a few smaller UPS’s instead of one big one? Which is a good one? How much wattage/capacity should I look to get? Can one get second-hand ones – are they recommended? Does the UPS required any maintenance or are they maintenance free these days? 😕

Of all the machines, the WHS is one of the most critical ones. Is there any UPS’s which work well with some Add-Ins? I am interested in WHS shutting down in an orderly fashion so as to save all the data whenever the UPS battery gets low (in case for some reason the generators don’t kick in).