MadMaxLax

Tumblr for Max Struever. Max's Meanderings. Yeah. I'm tumbling now. madmaxlax.com

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Registry Entry to Allow remote admin/management

We have a bunch of newer, Win 2012 servers, all of which are not on an active directory domain. Because of this, we have local accounts across the servers with matching credentials. This works for most things like shared folders, but the one place where this isn’t sufficient is remote admin tasks, like running a scheduled task or remote restarting. This is because of Windows ACL, to get around this without Active Directory Domains, you need a special registry entry

here is the command to add the registry entry via powershell

New-ItemProperty -Name LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy -path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System -propertyType DWord -value 1

or go into regedit and make it yourself

go to  HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

make a new key  LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy

make it a DWORD and the value 1

setting this on your machine should allow remote machines to perform admin tasks if they have the same admin login 

if you also would like to add the remote server to the fancier ‘Server Manager’ App included in win 2012 server, you can use this command

Set-Item wsman:\localhost\Client\TrustedHosts SERVER1 -Concatenate -Force

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A cool set of icons I made while learning, using only CSS (with LESS) and HTML and Font Icons

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(via squirrel.jpg (300×300))

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GitHub and SSH with 1&1 Hosting

I got my first GitHub repository set up today with my host, 1&1. 

The GitHub walkthrough made it super easy. 

There was one tiny issue with an error '' but stackexchange came to the rescue and suggested 

eval `ssh-agent`

which worked! 

made my first commit of just some messing around stuff. I wanted a way to save my previous versions so that I didn't break stuff. 

http://xkcd.com/1296/

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Super Simple Group icon with Bootstrap Glyphicons http://jsfiddle.net/n5zcyuyh/

Just overlap two and make one of them a bit lighter

[buzzfeed]

Friday afternoons

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Awesomeness in Web design

This is a (growing) collection of cool design aspects I come across online. You’ll probably see some of it show up in my own sites (if I can figure out how to do it!).

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Making a Windows Time Server

Recently, I went through the process of setting up a Windows Server (2012) as a time server for other machines on the network. It was super easy. 

So, I work in IT for a company with a large laboratory. We have a small, firewall'd off network where all of the lab computers live with (mostly) no internet access. Safety First. 

Since the data from these lab computers is important, the timestamps and thus the time on these computers needs to be accurate. Since they don't have access to the internet, they can't have perfectly auto-updated time from time.windows.com for example. So how can they stay up to date? Well, one option is to set up a separate machine to act as the time server, and it can get the time from a radio signal or some other over-the-air means. This is a bit cumbersome and unnecessary, getting a whole new device on the network just to host the time. Fortunately, I came up with an easier, cheaper, and quicker solution. The lab PC's can't reach the internet, however, they can reach another server that straddles the network and can reach the internet. So, I figured it must be possible to make that server which can reach the internet get an updated time from time.windows.com, and then relay it as the definitive time for other machines. 

Turns out, that's true!

It was made easy for me since these lab computers are not on an Active Directory domain. You just need to set up your server as an NTP server. This is fairly straight forward and just consists of a few registry edits. 

In the Windows Registry, go to HKLM > System > CurrentControlSet > Services > W32Time > TimeProviders > NtpServer

and change the "Enabled" value to 1 (decimal)

Then, run a command prompt (as administrator) and enter 

w32tm /config /update

This will commit the change and make your computer/server respond to Time Update requests!

And that's it! You can still set this machine to get updates from time.windows.com or another time site, and then other computers can get their updates from this machine. Super easy and saves you needing to buy a time server. 

These are the links I came across that helped me out:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/the-enterprise-cloud/configure-a-standalone-ntp-server-in-windows-server/ http://www.timetoolsglobal.com/2013/06/21/how-to-synchronize-microsoft-windows-to-a-ntp-server-1/

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My First GitHub Contribution

I've been getting back into the development game and trying to see everything that's out there. GitHub is hugely popular now, not just as a convenient place to host your personal git repositories, but also almost as sort-of portfolio for developers, a place to display your work. I had been aware of GitHub but recent Wired article really showed me how powerful it has become. Also, having recently trying to get back into coding, it was particularly of interest to me.

I wanted to be a part of it. 

A while later, however, and I still had not actually done anything. I had tried here and there to check out open-sourced applications to maybe contribute to, but it was so daunting! 

Fast forward to this week:

I was working at my desk in Chrome and frequently needing to split tabs in order to be able to see two at a time (with the help of Windows 7's Snap). I was (lazily) thinking how nice it would be to do that all in one shortcut key. After a very quick google search, low and behold, there was already a super simple chrome app that did that: Tab to Window Keyboard Shortcut

It was exactly what I was looking for. It temporarily filled my (lazy) need. 

Then I thought, "What if you could also have the option of doing this but with a new tab." I checked the options and no such function existed, BUT, it was open sourced and on GitHub. Thanks to GitHub's incredibly easy interface, I was able to look at the source code and even edit it right in the browser! (I'm a big fan of that, recently playing with CodeAnywhere and Cloud9 web-based IDEs). After making the changes I thought were correct, I was able to download the zip file and test it in my own Chrome, using developer mode. It of course did not work right away (not only was this my first github contribution but also my first experience at all with a Chrome extension!), but after some more googling and debugging, got it to work locally! 

I then submitted my changes in a branch on the GitHub repository, and even made my first pull request!

Because I'm such a nerd, it was all very cool and exciting. And now that I've gotten some experience with GitHub (and Chrome extensions!), I think it will make future work that much easier. 

Later

[madmaxlax]

Tumblr! What's Gonna Be Here?

Hey

So, obviously I'm new to Tumblr.

This is going to my new spot for blog-type posts. 

"But you already have Facebook and Twitter, what's left?"

Great question. This will mostly host stuff that is too nerdy for Facebook and too wordy for Twitter. But stuff I felt was at least a little important. 

There will be a lot of web-development related posts, as I am currently getting myself caught up on some of the latest web site making practices. 

Later

-Max