Category Archives: Microsoft

Everything that MS has branded as their’s.

DeltaCopy, Rsync, Cygwin and Windows to Linux backups

I wrote a while back regarding Rsync backups from Windows servers to Linux using DeltaCopy.

It’s all been working ok but I’ve had some files failing with a “file has vanished’ message.

At first I tried searching for a solution based on the failures being any file with a special accent character.

The log email that I get sent by DeltaCopy contained something like this:

[text]
Profile datafiles failed to execute.
Execution log
————-
sending incremental file list
file has vanished: "/cygdrive/D/datfiles/A standard Windows type file?.jpg"
file has vanished: "/cygdrive/D/datfiles/Another file with two questionmarks ??.docx
….
[/text]

Investigating the Windows server the files did exist and they were not “in use” during the backup. However, some (note: not all)  some, files had special non-standard English characters in the file names. So characters with umlauts etc, like È, É, Ê  were giving issues alongside some punctuation characters that appeared normal but I suspect have been prepared from a non-English keyboard or system with a different character set.

So assuming that the character set was the issue I went searching.

I had narrowed it to the Cygwin toolkit rather than Rsync itself and came across this old message thread that included a link to a modified cygwin1.dll as http://www.okisoft.co.jp/esc/utf8-cygwin/  except that the link was broken. So I chased a modified cygwin1.dll and found what appears to be the updated link at http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/utf8-cygwin/.

Downloading the compiled library file cygwin1-dll-20-11-18.tar.bz2 and extracting it to my Windows server using 7-Zip I renamed the old dll as cygwin1.dll.orig and copied the modified cygwin1.dll into the DeltaCopy directory.

Then I re-ran a data file backup that had given me “file vanished” errors and it seemed to work. But the next time it ran, it gave errors again.

So I delved deeper and found that the version of Rsync that is distributed with DeltaCopy is quite old, replacing the Rsync toolkit that supports DeltaCopy was the next thing to try and it worked a treat. I will document that process shortly.

 

 

Windows SBS 2008 and WSUS 3.0 Wizard Object Moved Error

I have done battle with an SBS Server in recent weeks. Some of it was simple fixes, while getting WSUS working and updates generally has been challenging.

The server had not been patched for almost 18 months and the reason was that WSUS was not working and there were some group policies that apparently were disabling connections even for the server.

I have not fully resolved this but one of the key items was this Microsoft TechNet Thread on WSUS Configuration Wizard where I learn that there is a mandated update KB2734608 which resolved the connection issue.

Now that the server is patched and updated, I’ll delve into what the workstations need to get their dose of Windows medicine.

SME Server 8.0 Outlook email external connection imaps

I had the need to setup Outlook to connect to an SME Server 8.0 recently and at first glance it seemed easy enough but it did not work as expected.

The primary issue appears to be that Outlook does not like to play with the SME Server SSL or Ports without being shown the way.

The end result is a step by step guide that I have published over at the WrenMaxwell Knowledgebase complete with screenshots of each step.

I suspect that this may well apply to other self-hosted servers beyond SME Server and kept the text generic for that purpose, but if you are trying to get your SME Server to work then the first thing to do is make sure that the imaps and smtps ports are open on the firewall and on the SME server.

The only other thing that needs doing is aligning the server name with the external hostname and the self-issued SSL certificate.

It was interesting that setting up a couple of portable devices, an iPhone, iPad, and Android all worked with the SME Server connection without any specific settings being required, the server was just accepted and worked from the get-go.  Microsoft Outlook, however, seems to raise barriers.

I did reference this Microsoft article KB286197 as a preliminary to this process and found it lacking for the options of secure SSL connections and certainly it has the basics but insufficient detail to guide an appropriate outcome for an SME Server connection.

The SME documentation over at contribs.org is also lacking a bit of input and I might try to help out there if I can make some time.

Adding SSRS Reporting Services to an existing SQL 2008 Instance

Trying to add Reporting Services to an existing database instance and when I select the instance in the SQL installer Reporting Services is not an option.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6987741/cannot-add-reporting-services-to-an-existing-instance-of-sql-express-2008

3 Years ago this question was raised and there is still no answer. Why? Because there is a trick to all of this.

So what is the issue that prevents an instance of SQL Server Express 2008 from having Reporting Services added as a feature?

Simple. The installed instance is not the same version as the installing version being used to add the feature.

Using, for example as I was, a server with multiple instances, SQL Express 2008 R2 Advanced, the Reporting Services feature was not available for the instance that I wanted to add it to.

Installing a new instance worked fine as I tested this to make sure. This meant that it was not a service prerequisite that was missing.

Using http://stackoverflow.com/questions/141154/how-can-i-determine-installed-sql-server-instances-and-their-versions to get the following query:

[text]

<code>SELECT SERVERPROPERTY(‘productversion’), SERVERPROPERTY (‘productlevel’), SERVERPROPERTY (‘edition’)</code>

[/text]

Check each instance for its version. In my case I got

Original instance that will not accept Reporting Services showed as 10.50.4000.0 SP2 Express Edition (64-bit)

and

The newly installed instance with SSRS showed as 10.50.1600.1 RTM Express Edition with Advanced Services (64-bit)

Checking at http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2013/01/18/sql-server-a-list-of-various-sql-server-rtm-and-service-pack-number/ for the list of SQL editions I get:

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 10.00.4000.00

and

SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM 10.50.1600.1

Ok, so what to do about it?

Upgrading a single instance of SQL does not appear to be an option, at least I could not find a way to do so, when the server already had other instances with the later version.

In any case, the outcome was to install a fresh instance for the application with Reporting Services.