ajbritton

You don't know just how geeky that sounds Yes I know, small things amuse small minds! But I'm surely not the only one who'll be delighted by this addition...will I? C'mon MSI hackers... don't make me start a poll on this one!

I just found a link on Aaron Stebner's weblog to a zipped up copy of the latest version of Orca.

I also note that the latest version of Orca has the ability to generate it's own GUIDs. Woo hoo! It's finally possible to create an MSI by hand without referring to an online GUID generator and copy/paste!

You don't need to download the entire SDK. I've updated the link so it now points to the Windows 2003 Server R2 Platform SDK Web Install. I've also added a footnote on how to get ORCA.MSI by doing a minimal SDK install.

I thought it was time to try to bring a little order to the Essential Software List on the WiKi so I've categorized it!

Not quite true, System has at least ANONYMOUS access to the network, if not EVERYONE.

Katem, You might also consider the support angle to all this. Suppose you manage to get a working system together by doing some reading up, making use of local resources and edugeek website. What will then happen is that something will break and you will have to fix it. You need to feel confident that you can make it work again. If that's not the case then you need to be paying someone so you can call them up and get help.

Surely what you need here is not another 'domain' but another 'site'. Once you set up the 'site' in AD, you can control how replication traffic flows across the link.

Custom script which calls DBATTACH to make a SIMS backup then calls NTBACKUP to backup to tape.

That's handled by SIMSPERM.BAT Does the SIMSPERM do folder modify rights ? really ?!? Which folder are you referring to? SIMSPERM takes a single command line parameter which should be an NT/2K group (or user I suppose) and grants it the following permssions on the PC on which it is run; Full Control on %WinDir%\SIMS.INI %ProgramFiles%\SIMS (including all files/subfolders) %AllUsersProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\SIMS Applications (including all files/subfolders) Registry permissions on HKLM\Software\Classes HKLM\Software\Classes\Interface HKLM\Software\Classes\CLSID HKLM\Software\Classes\TypeLib SIMSPERM does this using SubInAcl

That sounds fine, Geoff. I'm really after some ready built code I can just bolt into a web-site.

I'm looking for a script that works like this 1 - Input a master password 2 - Inport a secondary password 3 - Combine the two passwords to produce a text string 4 - It should be possible to recovery the secondary password by providing the text string and the master password I'm sure I've seen something like it somewhere...

Why not just put the batch file and DELPROF in the GPO as well? That way it's cached on the PCs and should run if disconnected.

oh poo. Cards on the table; I was hoping to learn all about remote access by getting all the info in one place (forum or WiKi) :oops: . 'spose I'll have to work it out for myself and ask questions as I go. I'll post 'em in the networks forum then... ](*,)

Kind of. but I sort of take 'networks' to mean 'local area networks' and judging by where the questions pop on other forums, I don't think I'm the only one. Remote access solutions can take several forms, and the networking is only part of it. If not a forum then what about a section on the WiKi. Maybe those who have already sorted their remote access could jot down a few notes about how it was done, the pros & cons and so on.

Genius / Masochist tag? gimme, gimme, gimme! Easy really. The functions below will tell you if your logged on user or computer are in (or below) an OU. Actually what they do is search the LDAP string (LDAP://CN=object,OU=container,OU=container,DC=mydomain,DC=com) for whatever you send in the sOU parameter. To be on the safe side, you should specify the OU like this 'OU=ouname,' including the trailing comma. I'm sure there are more elegant or clever ways to do this but these work for me. Function UserInOU(sOU) ' Returns true if the user is a member of the specified OU (or descendant) Dim oAdSys, sUserDN Set oAdSys = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo") sUserDN = UCase(oAdSys.UserName) UserInOU = (InStr(1, sUserDN, UCase(sOU)) > 0) End function Function ComputerInOU(sOU) ' Returns true if the computer is a member of the specified OU (or descendant) Dim oAdSys, sComputerDN Set oAdSys = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo") sComputerDN = UCase(oAdSys.ComputerName) ComputerInOU = (InStr(1, sComputerDN, UCase(sOU)) > 0) End function

There's a regular flow of posts about one kind of 'remote access' solution or another. Maybe we should have a forum for these questions...

I use single forest with 2 domains to isolate the management of Admin and Curriculum networks. The Admin domain is the forest root domain. The only extra hassle we get from this (as opposed to having seperate forests) is that replication is sometimes a fiddle to get working between the domains.

Wise Package Studio also has 2 methods of tracking (Smart Monitor / Snapshot). On the course I went on we were advised to use both simultaneously and then spend hours filtering out all the duplicate registry entries. SmartMonitor is great for finding out what went on during the installation and not just seeing the state at the end. Having used WPS for a while now though, I only use SmartMonitor when a snapshot capture fails to capture all relevant info.

Have to say that I've never noticed a delay when executing a compiled AutoIT script. Most logon time is spent processing group policy anyway. Whatever scripting language you use, the interpreter will have to load and execute. I tend to use AutoIT when I need a user interface or to do automation. In these cases, absolute speed is not really a concern.

The answer is in the share permission... Test scenario; Server: 2003 Client: XP SP2 User Account: member of Domain Users, Students Share Permissions: Everyone: Full Control Folder Permissions: Administrators: Full Control (This folder, subfolders & files) Students: List, Traverse, Create Folder, Create File (This folder only) Students: Read, Write, Execute (Subfolders & Files only) OK, so I logged on to the client as a student and sure enough I was able to create a file in the test folder. I checked the permissions on the file from the server and sure enough they were Admins: Full; Students: RWX. I tried to delete the file from the client. Access denied. At the client again, went into properties of the file, Security tab and was able to add whoever I wanted with whatever access I chose (cos I'm the owner of the file). Happily deleted the file. I then changed the share permissions from Everyone: Full Control to Everyone: Change. At this point I could create the file, could not delete it and had no access to the security controls. I also tried setting a Deny to 'change permission', and the 'delete' options. These had no effect!

agreed, but that's not NTFS permissions preventing them from changing access rights, it's environment lockdown.

Lots of useful looking stuff here... http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

I don't think it's a good idea to repackage SIMS into an MSI for several reasons. 1 - It's .NET app, which can be awkward to repackage 2 - SIMS release regular updates which would be difficult to keep on to of. 3 - If SOLUS ran on a PC which had been installed from a repackaged MSI and it replaced some files, the MSI self repair may kick in and put back older files. For those reasons, I went down the route of wrapping the SIMS installers in and MSI. That appeared to work initially, but I later discovered that SIMSInfrastructureSetup.exe was not installing correctly because it wraps around the Microsoft .NET 1.1 installer, which is also MSI based. Doing a nested MSI install like this appears not to work. The MSI had appeared to work initially because all the PCs I used it on had .NET 1.1 installed anyway. I'm now at the point of doing the install from a startup script. Once I've tested my AutoIt script, I'll post it.

Whatever seems easiest at the time. Mostly .VBS with a smattering of .CMD and a hint of compiled .AU3