OSX VPN issue

For a while I've noticed that if VPN dies while connected (eg. If you put your computer to sleep before disconnecting) it won't reconnect until after a reboot.

I checked routing tables and logs etc with little success and I JUST realised that when it starts 'racoon' (a key management daemon) starts up.  A stale racoon process causes issues when trying to connect hence if you kill it first then try and connect it works fine.

Something like this should do it (from terminal):
 sudo kill `ps -U root -o "pid,comm"|grep racoon|cut -d" " -f1`

SCCM PXE and WDS

Last weekend I started setting this up and had a few problems.  As is my way I checked the docs which appear to be non-existant and then the community and finally found one page with some details.  Basically these are the hints you need.  The last two are the ones that caused my troubles.

• As is always the way in SCCM, check the package status before assuming a package is available or removed
• Check the pxesetup log before assuming pxe is (de)installed
• If everything is in one subnet and you can probably leave DHCP options alone
• Start with WDS and PXE uninstalled, then install wds, reboot, install pxe, reboot
• Make sure you have both 32 and 64 bit PE images, even if you will ever use them both
• No matter how much windows tells you off for not configuring WDS, don't configure it

IBM vs Dell

*sigh* this is why I buy Dell.

A few months ago I had a component fail on a dell datastore, from me reporting the issue to me having the part - one hour.

Eight days ago I had a part fail on an IBM datastore, from me reporting the issue to having the part - 8 days and counting.

Both had 4 hour response warranty bought with them.

Shrinking a windows volume in VMWare ESX

I searched and found some disruptive and complicated ideas on doing this.  Most involved using VMWare converter offline but some suggested using robocopy etc.

The problem is I didn't want to have to reboot or disrupt services but I needed to shrink the SCCM DP volume so I could move it to smaller, faster disk.

So, I figured out another way:

1. In the storage MMC
1. Defrag the disk - you can't shrink past existing fragments
2. Shrink the volume
2. In VM settings, make a new volume the size of the now shrunk volume
3. In the storage MMC
1. Make a mirror
2. Wait for it to sync
3. Delete the old volume from the mirror
4. In the VM settings, delete the old volume

Hey, it's me

As happens from time to time, today I figured out a cool way to do something.  I figured it was about time I found somewhere to share this.  So begins my blog.

The first few posts are likely to be windows focused, SCCM is central to my current key project.  But fear not!  I use whatever tools suit the purpose and a few upcoming projects are OpenBSD and Ubuntu based with some web, DHCP, DNS, firewall etc stuff mixed in :)