Cisco ASA and WebVPN

Cisco released new firmware for ASA - 8.0(2).

WebVPN significantly improved: provides RDP, Citrix, VNC access, AnyConnect - SSL VPN client, better Cisco Security Desktop. If you use WebVPN I suggest you to update ASAP. The admin interface is somewhat different, sometimes confusing. But it gives all you need to get stable WebVPN.

Unfortunately there are some known bugs in this version, as example:
CSCsj00288 CSD - Keystroke Logger check fails when HP Quick Launch app is running

I just discovered new release of CSD - 3.2.0.136, let's try...

Exchange cluster error id 1146

On a Exchange 2003 SP2, W2003SP2, Veritas Software Foundation 4.3 MP2, Scanmail 7.0
we have an error: ClusSvc Warning Failover Mgr 1146 N/A SCHGVAEX001 The cluster resource monitor died unexpectedly, an attempt will be made to restart it.

The cluster gets restarted causing about 3 minutes downtime for users. It repeats few times during a month. The Ms KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886652/en-us does not apply in our case. The problem started after Windows Server 2003 SP2.

MS recommends to run non-MS cluster resources in separate monitors - option option “Run this resource in a separate Resource Monitor” of the cluster admin console. I applied this to Veritas volumes and Scanmail

Let's wait and see what it will bring.

update: problem is gone!!!
update: not really, error is back again. I hope it will not be so often.

How to set ACL in Cisco ASA VPN from IAS

Cisco ASA can work with access lists from IAS Radius. Add to the IAS policy the attribute 'Cisco-AV-Pair' as example:
ip:inacl#1=permit ip host 192.168.1.1 any
and
ip:inacl#2=permit ip any host 192.168.1.1
This will limit IP traffic only to/from this host.

Script for Windows updates remote installation

Hello,

if you are using WSUS for workstations it is more or less easy, you set GPO to automatically download and install. Then you approve/reject updates in WSUS console. However for server it's better to setup automatically download. The installation itself should be manual. To automate the manual patch installation use this script:

http://www.vbshf.com/vbshf/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=199&start=1

Put this script on the file share, together with follwing cmd

c:\windows\system32\cscript.exe \\server\UpdateHF\updatehf.vbs action:install mode:silent email:yourname@yourdomain.com restart:1

Then you can use GUI for psexec or LANGuard Network Security Scanner or other tools to run this command remotely.

HP Version control agent bug

HP VCA shows drivers with old version, but can not install new ones. For example in my HP DL360G4 it was showing "HP ProLiant Smart Array SAS/SATA Controller Driver for Windows Server 2003" version 5.0.0.32, but when I try to install update to version 6.6.0.32, the system would tell that
"The software will not be installed on this system because the required
hardware is not present in the system or the software/firmware doesn't
apply to this system."

Workaround is to rename folder Discovery in C:\hp\hpsmh\data\cgi-bin\vcagent.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1127033

I believe definitive solution will come with VCA patch soon.

Sharepoint HTTP compression

as you know, you can enable IIS compresion to improve Sharepoint performance over WAN (http://www.bluedoglimited.com/SharePointThoughts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=63).

However, when you open documents from Sharepoint using Office (Excel or Word), then compression does not work. It looks like it's because Windows WebDav client does not support header "Accept-Encoding:"(gzip or deflate). Without this header compression will not work.

How to let non-admins to manage Power options in Windows XP

http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2005/02/09/370263.aspx