Category: Tutorial

Novell username variable

Hi all,

 

just a quick blog about a variable I discovered whilst writing a login script. I’ve been looking around for ways to perform actions based on the user name. So I came across the %nwusername% variable which when tapped in gives you the name of the logged in novell user on a computer. Those of you who work with novell systems will know that the novell network user is separate from the workstation user so normally you get a login for the network then you are presented with the local user login as well.Which will give you a problem if you use the %username% variable as it will only tell you the workstation user and not the novell user.

 

Anyway I’ll blog again shortly and post up the script I’m working on, nothing fantastic but I think it would be good if I can get it to work with blat so the script emails me when it has been run inside a user account.

 

variable %nwusername%

Blat Link

Common ports for the 70-291 exam

Hi all,
Thought I would do a quick post about common ports for the 291 exams, these ones would be very useful to memorize in case questions come up about them in the exam, (ip filtering etc I suppose may ask about them).

So here’s a small list of ports, I’m sure I will add to them as I read through my books, All ports are TCP unless otherwise specified.

FTP 20 and 21
HTTP 80
HTTPS 443
DNS UDP 53
SMTP 25
POP3 110
PPTP 1723
L2TP UDP 500 + 1701 + 4500
Kerberos UDP 88

As you can see a lot of these ports you should already know from previous ms exams (client ones) so there’s not much else to memorize. But this may be a good starting point.

I would highly recommend creating your own list and printing them out and sticking them up in your office prior to taking the exam as it’s a great way of memorizing them (I used to do the same with min and recommended sys specs for the client and server exams).

TTFN

DHCP Relay Agent

Hi all,

 

Just thought I’d write a quick little ditty about the DHCP relay agent and some fun and games I’ve been having with it whilst studying.

My main network is 192.168.1.x/24, on it is my DC/DNS/DHCP server with a few other bits and bobs plus my ADSL modem/router. on that network is a server called "rras" who has 2 nics, one is 192.168.1.42 and the other is 172.16.10.2/16 which is connected to another virtual switch. the only thing connecting the 2 networks is the rras box. on the 172.16 side is one client PC. rras has been set up on the server and also the DHCP relay agent has been added to the 172.16 card and pointed to my DHCP server of 192.168.1.8 .
The DHCP server has 2 scopes for both subnet’s all working fine. my ADSL modem/router also has a static route added to direct traffic bound for 172.16 to the 192.168.1.42 card. The "RRAS" server has also been added to the "rras and ias" group in Active directory.

Now the thing that has been bugging me is that the client PC has not been picking up any IP addresses. When I ran network monitor on both network cards of the rras server I saw discover packets being sent by the client, and I saw them popping out the other side of my network and I also sensibly enough saw offer packets being sent back to the 192.168 card on rras. What I wasn’t seeing is the offer packets  popping out on the 172.16 subnet so that the DHCP process could continue.

 

This was really weird and I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working then all of a sudden it seemed to kick in and started working. I couldn’t tell you why it suddenly started working other than I added the 172.16 scope to the DHCP server about an hour previous so I don’t know whether there is naturally a delay in the relay agent working with the DHCP server.

 

The other thing that I found abit annoying in all my study material (3 books, mspress,exam cram and sybex) is that they don’t say specifically which network card you should add the DHCP relay agent too. I assumed that it would need to go on the card attached to the subnet without a DHCP server but it was not specified. So whilst I was having this trouble I was wondering if I needed to add the relay agent to both cards!? Luckily it started working before I had tried that out.

encryption Protocols

Just spotted this on the technet website which gives you a good brief summery of the encryption protocols which can be used with remote access (rras).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738300.aspx