X-IO Technology ISE Bad Password Immediately After Reset

We installed a rack of X-IO ISE 200, and 800 series SAN shelves for POC testing purposes this week. A random password was generated to replace the default and stored in our password safe as is our procedure. Unfortunately immediately after setting this password we could no longer log in with the new one, nor the default! A bit of hammering led me to discover that this was caused by the random password containing a backslash character. As soon as I removed the backslash and attempted to log in the password worked again. Apparently the set password routine stripped the backslash (probably sanitizing input) and set the password, while the login routine treated it as a valid password character. Could that mean that the authentication fields are not sanitized at all? I hope little Bobby Tables doesn't try to log in...

DIY Fiber Tester

Ever find yourself staring at a bundle of unknown fiber optic cables without your trusty (and expensive) Fiber Identifier? Fear not! As long as you're carrying your Android phone or iPhone you are in luck. Activate your LED flashlight and point one end directly into one strand of fiber. Check the fibers on the other end and you will see immediately which is which! I've uncovered a similar device on Instructables which would also be helpful but nothing beats the convenience of a device you're already carrying with you anyway.

Count all computer accounts in Active Directory

I needed to quickly get a count of how many computer objects:

Import-Module ActiveDirectory
Get-Adcomputer -Filter * | Measure-Object

gave me the info I was looking for!

Magic Buttons

Sudden mysterious spam increase with Exchange Online Protection

We've been using Exchange Online Protection and it's predecessor Forefront Online Protection for Exchange for about 5 years now. Somehow, suddenly, in the last couple of months we got a drastic increase in the amount of spam being delivered to users' mailboxes. I found, read, and even commented in this thread where other users were seemingly encountering the same issue.

Eventually I, with no support from MS, found the source of my issue though I'm not exactly sure how it came about.

We had always had our default content filter set to move spam and high confidence spam directly to the online quarantine. At some point this changed to what is now (and maybe always was) the default behavior of delivering the spam to the users' junk mail folder as described in this technet article. We did not have the necessary transport rules in place to actually cause the mail to go to junk email so it was just being delivered to the inbox.

I'm not clear if the default behavior changed, or if our rule had been modified and then subsequently reverted to default.

I can say that we signed up to demo Exchange Online so it's possible that reverted during the setup of our temporary "hybrid" demo situation. The timing seems about right but I can't say for certain this is the root cause of the issue.

High latency (ping) on every other packet

This morning I was troubleshooting some issues with out Aruba IAP105 access points (Dell branded). When attempting to ping either internal or external IPs I saw very strange behavior. Internally the first packet would have a latency of 1 or 2ms, the next over 900ms. This was perfectly regular and predictable, and external pings showed similar symptoms. Searching and searching and searching eventually yielded this link. Why yes, I was in fact running Metageek's inSSIDer tool in my troubleshooting attempts. Closing inSSIDer immediately fixed the high latency issue. I'm glad it only took me an hour of frantic searching to come up with this solution!

Install Filemaker Pro 7 on Windows 7

Filemaker Pro 7 came out in 2005, but one program in my agency was still using it for a particular database application. Upgrading would be expensive since all clients would need to be upgraded simultaneously as well as possible modifications needed on the database. Since we already own the software I went ahead and installed on a new client yesterday.

The first error is described in this forum post. After the installation was almost complete an error would pop up that openssl.exe had failed to run. Using the solution provided in this article seemed to work. I set the date back to 6/9/07 and didn't receive that particular error.

Frustratingly, though, the application would then fail to run with an error that read "This application has been installed incorrectly or modified by another program. Please run the installer to get a fresh copy of the application after determining the cause." None of the solutions provided by diligent googling seemed to apply (or work - I tried).

What did work was to start the installer in XP compatility mode. Instructions are shown here for using Windows XP compatibility mode. I didn't need to make any specific settings changes after install, and the OpenSSL error noted previously doesn't seem to have any actual affect on this process.