Fascinating article about the real roots of the economic meltdown, by the author of Liar’s Poker

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A woman who my mother knows,
Came in and took off all her clothes.
Said I, not being very old,
“By golly gosh, you must be cold!”
“No, no!” she cried. “Indeed I’m not!
I’m feeling devilishly hot!”

Roald Dahl (of course)

Another series of names for servers:

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, Ceres, Phobos, Deimos, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Atlas, Sedna, Eris, Charon, Gaspra, Mathilde, Eros, Nix, Hydra, Nereid, Prometheus, Pandora, Hyperion, Tethys, Calypso, Leda, Kuiper, Oort, Aldebaran, Altair, Antares, Arcturus,  Sirius, Rigel, Polaris, Regulus, Procyon, Deneb, Betelgeuse, Castor, Pollux, Bellatrix

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” — H. L. Mencken

Updated to WordPress 2.6.3 this morning. Piece of cake, as usual, and no issues so far.

I make a point of avoiding politics here, but the New York City Council really ticked me off today by passing an extension to term limits, in direct defiance of 2 public referendums, in what can only be called a backroom deal. You can find how your individual councilperson voted here…personally I think everyone on this list who voted yes needs to be thrown out of office, particular those who were coming up against term limits in this election season. I’d be hard pressed to think of a more self serving conflict of interests.

Tools, both online and off, for creating technical documentation (among other things). I’ll add more as I find them.

Gliffy: online diagramming software, for everything from network diagrams and technical drawings to flowcharts and floorplans

Pencil: opensource add-on to turn Firefox 3.x into a sketching tool

This may have just become my favorite music video.

Via

…at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.

Change happens — change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

Acceptance speech, Barack Obama

Sometimes chaining application objects just doesn’t cut it. Say you’ve got some files you need to distribute after an MSI finishes running, but you don’t want to call the MSI install every time. Now, you could add the files to the original MSI, but if this is one that gets updated regularly, you don’t want to have to make the same modifications for every update. The easier solution is to create a second ZENworks app and call it from the Launch after Termination script.

The following syntax will load the application object without firing up the Application Launcher and without refreshing every other object association:

NALWIN /a=”TREENAME:.App-objectname.ou.ou.o” /f /h

Stick an @ in front of the line and you don’t even need to specify a scripting engine, as it will just use the Novell Client login script processor.

This will likely become a page unto itself as I add more of these.

Search the contents of ALL filetypes (by default Windows only searches inside files with known extensions)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex
Create a DWORD named FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions and set it to 1

Sidhedevil, recommending therapy:

But ultimately, you’re going to need to go back and fix the errors in the operating system, not just tweak the scripts.

Via

Apple hasn’t done ZENworks administrators (or Active Directory ones for that matter) any favors with iTunes 8. The install is needlessly complex, and installs some crap you’d probably just as soon not have on your end users machines. Why would I want to give non-administrative accounts Apple Software Update? Additionally, the setup tries to start the iTunes services during setup and users don’t actually have the rights to do so.

The new version of iTunes also includes (and requires) QuickTime to be updated to 7.5.5, so we’ll include that with this distribution. That application object can also be used as a standalone app to update the users’ QuickTime installs, regardless of whether they’re using iTunes or not.

We’ll edit the MSIs to remove the call to start the services, pull out unneeded icons and prevent calls to the Apple Software Update.

What you’ll need:
Apple iTunes 8 Setup - download from here
A compression tool that can extract executables (I’ll use 7-Zip)
An MSI editor (in this case, I’ll stick with Orca as it’s free and fairly straightforward)

I • Set up source files

• Extract the iTunes8Setup.exe into your source folder.
  If you use 7-Zip (or WinRAR), you can just right click and extract.
• Delete the AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi, MobileMe.msi and SetupAdmin.exe.
  We won’t be using these.

• Using Orca, edit the Bonjour.msi file.
  Click on the CustomAction table.
  Right click on the InstallPackages action and use Drop Row to remove the action.
  In the Shortcuts table, drop the rows for both shortcuts.
  Save your changes and close the MSI.
• Using Orca, edit the QuickTime.msi file.
  Click on the Shortcuts table.
  Drop the rows for QuickTimePlayer_Desktop, QuickTimeUninstaller and QuickTimeReadMe.
  Save your changes and close the MSI.
• Now use Orca to edit the iTunes.msi file.
  Click on the CustomAction table.
  Right click on the InstallPackages action and use Drop Row to remove the action.
  In the InstallExecuteSequence table, drop the row StartServices.
  In the InstallUISequence table, drop the row InstallPackages.
  Click on the Properties table.
  Change the value of REGSRCH_DESKTOP_SHORTCUTS to 0 (zero).
  Change the value of IAcceptLicense to Yes.
  Change the value of SCHEDULE_ASUW to 0 (zero).
  Finally, in the Shortcuts table, drop the row for the AboutiTunes shortcut.
  Save your changes and close the MSI.

II • Customize application settings

• Install iTunes and QuickTime on a test machine.
• Launch the QuickTime Player.
  Select Edit, Preferences, Player Preferences.
  Customize your settings as desired. I generally just turn off Show Content Guide at startup.
  Select Edit, Preferences, QuickTime Preferences.
  On the Update tab, disable Check for updates automatically.
  Exit QuickTime Player.
• Launch iTunes, and proceed through the setup wizard, customizing as desired.
  Select Edit, Preferences.
  On the General tab, disable Check for updates automatically.
  Personally, I also uncheck Genius in the Show section.
  On the Sharing tab, uncheck all options.
• Copy %appdata%\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunesPrefs.xml to your source folder.
• Copy %AllUsersProfile%\Application Data\Apple Computer\QuickTime\QuickTime.qtp to your source folder.

III • Create ZENworks applications

• Create one MSI-based ZENworks application for each of the 4 MSI files.
  No reboots required.
  If you prefer you can hide progress (I only do so for the Bonjour and Mobile Device Support installs).
• In the iTunes application object, add the following as a Run after distribution script: XCOPY \\server\volume\path\to\source\iTunes8\iTunesPrefs.xml “%*appdata%\Apple Computer\iTunes\” /Y
• In the QuickTime application object, add the following as a Run after distribution script: XCOPY \\server\volume\path\to\source\iTunes8\QuickTime.qtp “%*CommonAppData%\Apple Computer\QuickTime\” /Y
• In the iTunes application object, click on Run Options and select Applications Dependencies.
  Add your installers for AppleMobileDeviceSupport, AppleQuickTime and AppleBonjour.

Update: 8.0.1 came out today, so I thought I’d make some notes while I update the application objects.

Extract the installers as above. Using Orca, doublecheck the ProductVersion in each of the Property tables to determine which of the MSIs have been updated. In this case, only the AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi and the iTunes.msi have been updated, so trash the rest of the files. Edit those MSIs as listed above and drop them into your source directories and your finished.

Usually Prompted Macros in ZENworks application objects only prompt for values on their first runs. To create one that will prompt for a macro value every time, add the following to a Run after termination script (or append it to the end of your script if you already have one):

RD C:\NALCache\ETREE\.Application-Name.OU.OU.O /S /Q

REG.EXE DELETE HKCU\Software\NetWare\NAL\1.0\Distribute\TREE_NAME\XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX /f

REG.EXE DELETE HKLM\SOFTWARE\NetWare\NAL\2.X\Macros\TREE_NAME\XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX /f

Script Engine: %*WINSYSDIR%\cmd.exe /c
Script Extension: .bat

Replace .Application-Name.OU.OU.O with the DN of your application object.
Replace TREE_NAME with the name of your eDirectory tree.
Replace XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX with the GUID of the application object.

I was trying to write an AutoIT script to manipulate the Firefox user.js preferences files, which are stored in the users’ Firefox profile folders. Unfortunately with Firefox, the initial user profile is created in a “salted” directory under %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. The folder name uses a randomly generated 8-character string followed by a dot and the word default, like this: df3etnz3.default. This can make scripting modifications of the user preferences a real pain in the ass, as you can’t be sure what the name of the user profile folder is.

Fortunately, there’s a file named profiles.ini in %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox that lists the folder name, so we can pull the information from there. The initial profile will be listed on line 7 of the profiles.ini so:

; Find the Firefox user profile
 $file = FileOpen(@AppDataDir & "\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini", 0)

; Extract the raw profile path
 $rawpath = FileReadLine($file, 7)
 FileClose($file)

; Extract the actual Firefox profile directory
 $mozfolder = StringRight($rawpath, 16)

; Create Profile Path variable
 $mozpath = @AppDataDir & "\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\" & $mozfolder

Now you can just reference the profile path using $mozpath.

Because I work for a large advertising conglomerate -

BrainStorm, ThinkTank, BrightIdea, WowFactor, BreakThrough, TechSavvy, PopCulture, MediaBlitz, StarPower, FastTrack, ComfortZone, GamePlan, TouchBase, HotConcept, MindSet, NextLevel, DayDream, KnowledgeBase, CriticalMass, RazorsEdge, OldSchool, TeamPlayer, WinWin, TaskForce, MileStone, CoreValue, MasterPlan

Of course, I’ll never get to use these…we’ll wind up giving them some ridiculous set of numbers and letters that no one can remember like NYNWPRPZPSN0104 or something equally inscrutable.

In most situations, when I need to run an installation using Local Administrator rights on a locked down workstation, using ZENworks I can just set the Application Object to Run as unsecure system user and be done with it. This allows the installer to interact with the desktop so I can still give the users progress bars and dialog boxes, but the install runs with administrative rights.

Unfortunately Run as unsecure system user requires an imported workstation object, and while the workstation import service is working flawlessly at many of our sites, it’s not hitting every computer in others and broken in some (thanks in large part to servers being moved around in the tree as part of an ongoing re-engineering project).

Usually this isn’t such a big deal for us. If we need to get something deployed with elevated privileges, we whip up an AutoIT script that drops the setup files into the %temp% directory and then use RunAsSet to install the program as one of our local Administrator accounts. The reason the files need to be dumped down to the local machine is that those local admin accounts are not network accounts and have no rights to the server volumes. As soon as the RunAsSet command takes effect, the script can’t access the source files if they’re still on the server.

Enter Microsoft Office 2007. The source folders for this monster total well over a gigabyte, which would need to be copied to the local hard drives of hundreds of systems at a time before the installs could even begin (and mind you, it takes a while to install Office as it is). What I really needed was a way to execute the installation from our Netware servers but using a local Windows administrator account’s rights.

This will take two scripts (you might need three if you don’t use ZENworks). In the Installer script, you’ll need a network account that can map a drive to the installation source folder. It should only need Read and File Scan on a Netware network.

First Script: Launcher.au3

; Hide the tray icon
AutoItSetOption(”TrayIconHide”, 1)

; Launch Installer
RunAsSet(”localadmin”, @ComputerName, “password”, 0)
RunWait(@TempDir & “\Installer.exe”)
RunAsSet()

Second Script: Installer.au3

; Hide the tray icon
AutoItSetOption(”TrayIconHide”, 1)

; Define our command line
$cmd = “I:\setup.exe /adminfile I:\Updates\Office2007Install.msp /config I:\Enterprise.WW\config.xml”

; Map a drive to the installation source
DriveMapAdd(”I:”, “\\path\to\installer\files”, 0, “.user.ou.ou.o”, “usrpassword”)

; Run our command line
RunWait($cmd)

Now compile both of the files into executables, create a ZENworks application object that drops them both into into the temp directory and then fires up the Launcher.exe program. Alternatively, you can either write a batch file to do that or use a third AutoIT script:

Optional Script: Starter.au3

; Hide the tray icon
AutoItSetOption(”TrayIconHide”, 1)

; Start the whole process
FileInstall(”C:\SRC\Launcher.exe”, @TempDir & “\Launcher.exe”, 1)
FileInstall(”C:\SRC\Installer.exe”, @TempDir & “\Installer.exe”, 1)
Run(@TempDir & “\Launcher.exe”)

There may be a more elegant way to do this, but so far this is the only method that has worked for me. I’m open to suggestions on ways to improve it and would especially like to know if anyone can come up with a way to get it all into one script. Comments are held for review on my site so don’t expect to see them show up right away, but the new dashboard in Wordpress 2.5 makes them kind of hard to miss so it won’t take long.

שֵׁת ירד

Another server naming scheme, discarded because we have offices in places that actually experience these conditions.

Maelstrom, Typhoon, Hurricane, Tsunami, Vortex, Whirlwind, Cyclone, Tempest, Tornado, Monsoon, Sandstorm