Posts Tagged ‘windows server’

How to check Microsoft IIS webserver version

Monday, July 21st, 2014

If you have to tune some weirdly behaviour Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) webserver, the first thing to do is to collect information about the system you're dealing with – get version of installed Windows and check what kind of IIS version is running on the Windows server?

To get the version of installed Windows on the system you just logged in, the quickest way I use is:
 

Start -> My Computer (right mouse button) Properties

check-windows-server-version-screenshot-windows-2003-r2

Run regedit from cmd.exe and go and check value of registry value:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MicrosoftInetStp\VersionString


check-iis-webserver-version-with-windows-registry-screenshot

As you can see in screenshot in this particular case it is IIS version 6.0.

An alternative way to check the IIS version in some cases (if IIS version return is not disabled) is to telnet to webserver:

telnet your-webserver 80
 


Once connected Send:

HEAD / HTTP/1.0


Also on some Windows versions it is possible to check IIS webserver version from Internet Information Services Management Cosnole:

To check IIS version from IIS Manager:

Start (button) -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> "Internet Information Services" IIS Manager

From IIS Manager go to:

Help -> About Microsoft Management Console


Here is a list with most common IIS version output you will get depending on the version of Windows server:

 

Windows NT 3.51 1.0
Windows NT 4 2.0-4.0
Windows Server 2000 5.0
Windows XP Professional 5.1
Windows Server 2003 6.0
Windows Vista 7.0
Windows Server 2008 7.0
Windows Server 2008 R2 7.5
Windows 7 7.5
Windows Server 2012 8.0
Windows 8 8.0
Windows Server 2012 R2 8.5
Windows 8.1 8.5

If you have only an upload FTP access to a Folder served by IIS Webserver – i.e. no access to the Win server running IIS, you can also grasp the IIS version with following .ASP code:
 

<%
response.write(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_SOFTWARE"))
%>


Save the file as anyfile.asp somewhere in IIS docroot and invoke it in browser.

Start Event Viewer from Command Line (Prompt) – eventvwr.msc to Debug Windows server issues

Friday, November 6th, 2015

eventvwrmsc-event-viewer-windows-7-screenshot-view-windows-log-and-dianose-errors

If you’re a sysadmin which needs to deal with Microsoft Windows servers locally or remotely via Remote Desktop RDP client (MSTSC.EXE) or inside a Windows Domain Controller, you will have to frequently debug Windows isseus or Application caused errors by reviewing debug information stored in Event Logs.

Event Viewer is a precious tool to debug often errors with missing libraries or failing programs on Windows boot and thus on M$ Windows it is the Swiss Army knife of sysadmin.
However as staring Event Viewer using the GUI menus, takes a lot of step and looses you time, e.g., you have to navigate to menus:

1. Start button Picture of the Start button
2. clicking Control Panel
3. clicking System and Security
4. clicking Administrative Tools
5.then double-clicking Event Viewer.‌
6. Granting Administrator permission required If you’re prompted for an administrator password or confirmation

It is much handier to just start it with a shortcut:

Press Windows (Button) + R
– To invoke run prompt

and type:

eventvwr.msc

In case if you’re running eventvwr.msc to connect to remote Windows Server run from command prompt (cmd.exe):

eventvwr-run-from-command-prompt-with-a-smart-shortcut-to-save-time-when-administrating-windows-servers

eventvwr.msc /computer=OTHER_Computer_Name

event-viewer-log-reader-and-debug-tool-for-windows-PC-and-windows-servers-adminsitration

Check Windows load avarage command – Get CPU usage from Windows XP / 7 / 8 / 2012 server cmd prompt

Wednesday, August 19th, 2015

Check_Windows-load-avarage-command-Get_CPU_usage_from_Windows_XP-7-8-2003-2010-2012_server_cmd_prompt

If you used to be a long years Linux / UNIX sysadmin and you suddenly have to also admistrate a bunch of Windows hosts via RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol)  / Teamviewer etc. and you need to document The Load Avarage of a Windows XP / 7 / 8 servers but you're puzzled how to get an overall load avarage of Windows host via command in a UNIX way like with the good old uptime  Linux / BSD command e.g.

 ruth:$ uptime
 11:43  up 713 days 22:44,  1 user,  load average: 0.22, 0.17, 0.15

Then its time to you to get used to WMICWMIC extends WMI for operation from several command-line interfaces and through batch scripts. wmic is a wonderful command for Command addicted Linux guys and gives a lot of opportunities to query and conduct various sysadmin tasks from Windows command prompt.

To get an loadavarage with wmic use:
 

C:\>wmic cpu get loadpercentage
LoadPercentage
1

 


or
 

@for /f "skip=1" %p in ('wmic cpu get loadpercentage') do @echo %p%
1%
%

 

on Windows 7 / 8 and 10 as well Windows Server 2010 and Windows Server 2012 for more precise CPU loadavarage results, you can also use:
 

C:\> typeperf "\processor(_total)\% processor time"

"(PDH-CSV 4.0)","\\Win-Host\processor(_total)\% processor time"
"08/19/2015 12:52:53.343","0.002288"
"08/19/2015 12:52:54.357","0.000000"
"08/19/2015 12:52:55.371","0.000000"
"08/19/2015 12:52:56.385","0.000000"
"08/19/2015 12:52:57.399","0.000799"
"08/19/2015 12:52:58.413","0.000000"
"08/19/2015 12:52:59.427","0.000286"
"08/19/2015 12:53:00.441","0.000000"
"08/19/2015 12:53:01.455","0.000000"
"08/19/2015 12:53:02.469","0.008678"
"08/19/2015 12:53:03.483","0.000000"
"08/19/2015 12:53:04.497","0.002830"
"08/19/2015 12:53:05.511","0.000621"
"08/19/2015 12:53:06.525","0.768834"
"08/19/2015 12:53:07.539","0.000000"
"08/19/2015 12:53:08.553","1.538296"

 

How to mount NTFS Windows XP filesystem on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD

Friday, May 11th, 2012

Mounting NTFS hdd partitions on FreeBSD logo picture

A friend of mine bring home a Seagate External Hard Disk Drive using USB 3 as a communication media. I needed to attach the hard disk to my FreeBSD router to transfer him some data, the External HDD is formatted to use NTFS as a main file partition and hence to make the file transfers I had to somehow mount the NTFS partition on the HDD.

FreeBSD and other BSDs, just like Linux does not have embedded NTFS file system mount support.
In order to add an external write support for the plugged hdd NTFS I looked in the ports tree:

freebsd# cd /usr/ports
freebsd# make search name='ntfs'
Port: fusefs-ntfs-2010.10.2
Path: /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-ntfs
Info: Mount NTFS partitions (read/write) and disk images
Maint: ports@FreeBSD.org
B-deps: fusefs-libs-2.7.4 libiconv-1.13.1_1 libtool-2.4 libublio-20070103 pkg-config-0.25_1
R-deps: fusefs-kmod-0.3.9.p1.20080208_7 fusefs-libs-2.7.4 libiconv-1.13.1_1 libublio-20070103 pkg-config-0.25_1
WWW: http://www.tuxera.com/community/

Port: ntfsprogs-2.0.0_1
Path: /usr/ports/sysutils/ntfsprogs
Info: Utilities and library to manipulate NTFS partitions
Maint: ports@FreeBSD.org
B-deps: fusefs-libs-2.7.4 libiconv-1.13.1_1 libublio-20070103 pkg-config-0.25_1
R-deps: libublio-20070103 pkg-config-0.25_1
WWW: http://www.linux-ntfs.org/
freebs# cd sysutils/fusefs-ntfs/
freebsd# ls
Makefile distinfo files/ pkg-descr pkg-plist
freebsd# cat pkg-descr
The ntfs-3g driver is an open source, freely available read/write NTFS
driver, which provides safe and fast handling of the Windows XP, Windows
Server 2003 and Windows 2000 filesystems. Almost the full POSIX filesystem
functionality is supported, the major exceptions are changing the file
ownerships and the access rights.
WWW: http://www.tuxera.com/community/

Using ntfs-3g I managed to succeed mounting the NTFS on my old PC running FreeBSD ver. 7_2

1. Installing fuserfs-ntfs support on BSD

Before I can use ntfs-3g, to mount the paritition, I had to install fuserfs-ntfs bsd port, with:

freebsd# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-ntfs
freebsd# make install clean
.....

I was curious if ntfsprogs provides other utilities to do the ntfs mount but whilst trying to install it I realized it is already installed as a dependency package to fusefs-ntfs.

fusefs-ntfs package provides a number of utilities for creating, mounting, fixing and doing various manipulations with Microsoft NTFS filesystems.

Here is a list of all the executable utilities helpful in NTFS fs management:

freebsd# pkg_info -L fusefs-ntfs\* | grep -E "/bin/|/sbin|README"
/usr/local/bin/lowntfs-3g
/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g
/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g.probe
/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g.secaudit
/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g.usermap
/usr/local/bin/ntfscat
/usr/local/bin/ntfscluster
/usr/local/bin/ntfscmp
/usr/local/bin/ntfsfix
/usr/local/bin/ntfsinfo
/usr/local/bin/ntfsls
/usr/local/sbin/mkntfs
/usr/local/sbin/ntfsclone
/usr/local/sbin/ntfscp
/usr/local/sbin/ntfslabel
/usr/local/sbin/ntfsresize
/usr/local/sbin/ntfsundelete
/usr/local/share/doc/ntfs-3g/README
/usr/local/share/doc/ntfs-3g/README.FreeBSD

The README and README.FreeBSD are wonderful, reading for those who want to get more in depth knowledge on using the up-listed utilities.

One utility, worthy to mention, I have used in the past is ntfsfix. ntfsfix resolve issues with NTFS partitions which were not unmounted on system shutdown (electricity outage), system hang up etc.

2. Start fusefs (ntfs) and configure it to auto load on system boot

Once fuserfs-ntfs is installed, if its necessery ntfs fs mounts to be permanently supported on the BSD system add fusefs_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf(the FreeBSD services auto load conf).

freebsd# echo 'fusefs_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf

One note to make here is that you need to have also dbus_enable="YES" and hald_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf, not having this two in rc.conf will prevent fusefs to start properly. Do a quick grep to make sure this two variables are enabled:

Afterwards fsusefs load up script should be run:

freebsd# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/fusefs start
Starting fusefs.

Another alternative way to load ntfs support on the BSD host is to directly load fuse.ko kernel module:

freebsd# /sbin/kldload fuse.ko

3. Mounting the NTFS partition

In my case, the Seagate hard drive was detected as da0, where the NTFS partition was detected as s1 (da0s1):

freebsd# dmesg|grep -i da0
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: Fixed Direct Access SCSI-4 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 953869MB (1953525164 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 121601C)br />GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider da0s1 is ntfs/Expansion Drive.
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider da0s1 is ntfs/Expansion Drive.

Therefore further to mount it one can use mount_ntfs (to quickly mount in read only mode) or ntfs-3g for (read / write mode):

If you need to just quickly mount a disk drive to copy some data and umount it with no need for writting to the NTFS partition do;

freebsd# /sbin/mount_ntfs /dev/ad0s1 /mnt/disk

Note that mount_ntfs command is a native BSD command and have nothing to do with ntfs-3g. Therefore using it to mount NTFS is not the same as mounting it via ntfs-3g cmd

freebsd# /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g -o rw /dev/da0s1 /mnt/disk/

Something, I've noticed while using ntfs-3g is, it fails to properly exit even when the ntfs-3g shell execution is over:

freebsd# ps ax |grep -i ntfs|grep -v grep
18892 ?? Is 0:00.00 /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g -o rw /dev/da0s1 /mnt/disk/

I dunno if this is some kind of ntfs-3g bug or feature specific to all versions of FreeBSD or it is something local to FBSD 7.2

Thought ntfs-3g, keeps appearing in process list, praise God as of time of writting NTFS support on FreeBSD prooved to be stable.
Read / Write disk operations to the NTFS I tested it with works great. Just about 5 years ago I still remember write mode was still experimental. Now it seems NTFS mounts can be used with no hassle even on production machines.

4. Auto mounting NTFS partition on FreeBSD system boot

There are two approaches towards 'the problem' I can think of.
The better way to auto mount on boot (in my view) is through /etc/fstab use

If /etc/fstab + ntfs-3g is to be used, you will however change the default /sbin/mount_ntfs command to point to /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g, i.e.:

freebsd# mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig
freebsd# ln -s /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g /sbin/mount_ntfs

Then to mount /dev/da0s1 via /etc/fstab add line:

/dev/ad0s1 /mnt/disk ntfs rw,late 0 0

To not bother with text editor run:

freebsd# echo '/dev/ad0s1 /mnt/disk ntfs rw,late 0 0' >> /etc/fstab

I've red in posts in freebsd forums, there is also a way to use ntfs-3g for mounting partitions, without substituting the original bsd /sbin/mount_ntfs, the exact commands suggested to be used with no need to prior mv /sbin/mount_ntfs to /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig and link it to ntfs is:

/dev/ad0s1 /disk ntfs rw,mountprog=/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g,late 0 0

For any other NTFS partitions, for instance /dev/ad0s2, /dev/ad2s1 etc. simply change the parititon name and mount points.

The second alternative to adding the NTFS to auto mount is through /etc/rc.local. /etc/rc.local content will be executed very late in system boot. :

echo '/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g -o rw /dev/da0s1' >> /etc/rc.local

One disadvanage of using /etc/rc.local for mounting the partition is the hanging ntfs-3g in proc list:

freebsd# ps ax |grep -i ntfs|grep -v grep
18892 ?? Is 0:00.00 /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g -o rw /dev/da0s1 /mnt/disk/

Though, I haven't tested it yet. Using the same methodology should be perfectly working on PC-BSD, DragonFlyBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD.
I will be glad if someone who runs any of the other BSDs can confirm, following this instructions works fine on these BSDs too.

How to set up Path to .exe GNUWin32 binary files in Windows XP / Vista / 2003 / 2008 (Setting PATH to executables on Windows)

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

I’ve been working on a servers running Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 these days.
As I wanted to be more flexible on what I can do from the command line I decided to install GNUwin (provides port of GNU tools), most of which are common part of any Linux distribution).
Having most of the command line flexibility on a Windows server is a great thing, so I would strongly recommend GNUWin to any Windows server adminsitrator out there.

Actually it’s a wonderful thing that most of the popular Linux tools can easily be installed and used on Windows for more check GnuWin32 on sourceforge

One of the reasons I installed Gnuwin was my intention to use the good old Linux tail command to keep an eye interactive on the IIS server access log files, which by the way for IIS webserver are stored by default in C:WindowsSystem32LogFilesW3SVC1*.log

I’ve managed to install the GNUWin following the install instructions, not with too much difficulties. The install takes a bit of time, cause many packs containing different parts of the GNUWin has to be fetched.

To install I downloaded the GNUWin installer available from GNUWin32’s website and instructed to extracted the files into C:Program FilesGnuwin
Then I followed the install instructions suggestions, e.g.:

C:> cd c:Program FilesGnuWin
C:Program FilesGnuWin> download.bat
...
C:Program FilesGnuWin> install c:gnuwin32
...

After the installation was succesfully completed on the two Windows machines, both of which by the way are running 64 bit Windows, it was necessery to add the newly installed GNU .exe files to my regular cmd.exe PATH variable in order to be able to access the sed, tail and the rest of the gnuwin32 command line tools.

In order to add C:GnuWin32bin directory to the windows defined Command line Path , I had to do the following:

a. Select (Properties) for My Computer

Start (button) -> My Computer (choose properties)

b. Select the My Computer Advanced (tab)

Then, from the My Computer pane press on Advanced tab

c. Next press on Environment Variables

Windows environment variables screenshot

You see in above’s screenshot the Environment Variables config dialog, to add the new path location in System Variables sectiom, between the list I had to add the c:GNUwin32bin path locatiion. To find I pressed on Edit button scrolled down to find the Variable and hence added at the end of the long list defined paths.
After adding in GNUwin, the Windows path looks like this:

C:Program Files (x86)EWANAPI;C:WINDOWSsystem32;C:WINDOWS;C:WINDOWSSystem32Wbem;C:Program Files (x86)IntelNGSMSMPFiles;C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SQL Server100ToolsBinn;C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server100ToolsBinn;C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server100DTSBinn;C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SQL Server100ToolsBinnVSShellCommon7IDE;C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0Common7IDEPrivateAssemblies;C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SQL Server100DTSBinn;C:WINDOWSsystem32WindowsPowerShellv1.0;C:gnuwin32bin

Further on, I launched the tail command to intercatively take an eye on who is accessing the IIS webserver.
Sadly this worked not, trying to use tail with the IIS ex10116.log log;

C:WindowsSystem32LogfilesW3SVC1> tail -f ex10116.log

Spit an error tail: ex10116.log: Bad file descriptor

Since I couldn’t use tail -f I looked for alternative and a quick search led me to Tail 4 Win32 . Lest the name suggests it is supposed to work on 32 bit arch Windows the version on tailforwin32’s website is working perfectly fine on 64 bit Windows as well.
What it does is to simulate a normal tail -f command inside a very simplistic window interface. You see it in action with opened IIS log on below’s screenshot:

GUI Tail for Windows screenshot

Finally my goal is achieved and I can take an eye interactively on IIS logs. End of the article, hope it wasn’t too boring 😉