October
Sub-archives
Oct 29, 2009
Notes on the Iomega ix4-200d
Pros and cons after using it for a few days
I still love the ix4-200d NAS, but there are a few things that got left out of the owner's manual that I had to figure out by trial and error.
- Rsync only works against unsecured (wide open public) folders.
- If you need secured folders to keep your vital files from being accidentally moved/touched/altered/deleted, using CIFS sharing will enable the security, but you may find that file copy or sync operations take longer than just an rsync operation due to additional overhead in the protocol. SMB signaling can get loused up quickly on a slow or unreliable link.
- If you absolutely need to move large files between two of these at geographically distant locations, you can set up an rsync or copy operation to a USB-attached hard drive, mail that drive to the other location and rsync them from the drive to the destination folder. A poor-man's workaround for keeping fulls and incrementals in sync when the line just won't pass enough traffic to suit.
- Turn off the power saving on the hard disks. Nice idea, but it takes almost a minute to spin all of the drives up so that the share becomes usable. Unless you really love watching the Windows hourglass spin...
AD permissions and BES on SBS 2003
A workaround for Admins in small businesses using BES on SBS2003.
In some small firms running Blackberry Enterprise Server or Blackberry Professional, some BES users may be Domain Admins or Admins on the server. A not-so-recent patch to 2003 enables a scavenging operation in Active Directory on accounts for users belonging to protected groups such as Administrators or Domain Admins that will clear the permissions needed by BES to access this user's mailbox. This was meant to be a safeguard against someone escalating their rights, but practically means that Admins need to use a day-to-day account for their email needs (which isn't a bad idea in itself to separate daily ops from God Mode). As with all things, there is a workaround.
You can use the Dsacls.exe utility to add the entries that are being
stripped off the Admin's user objects. To do this, change the AdminSDHolder
permissions. Then, add the entries that you want. Because all the
entries use the security principal SELF, this workaround should not
introduce any security problems.
The following workaround changes the AdminSDHolder
object. Then, the AdminSDHolder object is propagated to each user
account that is a member of a protected group. Follow these steps:
1. Install the Microsoft Windows 2000 Support Tools from the Windows
2000 CD. These tools include the Dsacls.exe utility. You can use the
Dsacls.exe utility to view, modify, or remove ACEs on objects in Active
Directory.
2. Create a batch file that contains the following code.
dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=mydomain,dc=com" /G "\SELF:CA;Send As" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:CA;Receive As" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:CA;Change Password" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:RPWP;Personal Information" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:RPWP;Phone and Mail Options" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:RPWP;Web Information"
Note Replace "dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" with the distinguished name of your domain.
3. Wait for an hour so that Active Directory has time to rewrite the
security descriptor of all the user accounts that are members of any
propagated groups.
4. After the ADC replicates the changes, all users appear as "user" instead of as "CUSTOM."
You
might also apply security update 916803, security update 912442, or the
daylight saving time update for Exchange Server that is described in
the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 926666
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926666/ ) Update for daylight saving
time changes in 2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2. If you do
this, you must prevent the AdminSDHolder from overwriting permissions
that are granted to a BlackBerry Services account on protected groups.
To do this, create a batch file that contains the following code:
dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=mydomain,dc=com" /G "\SELF:CA;Send As" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:CA;Receive As" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:CA;Change Password" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:RPWP;Personal Information" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:RPWP;Phone and Mail Options" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=<mydomain>,dc=com" /G "\SELF:RPWP;Web Information" dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=mydomain,dc=com" /G "\BlackBerrySA:CA;Send As"
Note:
In this batch file, BlackBerrySA is a placeholder for name of the
BlackBerry Service account (normally besadmin). If you have accounts in multiple domains,
you can also specify the domain in the command line by using the
following format:Domain\BlackberrySA.
Alternatively, best practices recommend that you do not use accounts that are members of protected
groups for e-mail purposes. If you must have the rights that are given
to a protected group, we recommend that you have two Active Directory
user accounts. These Active Directory accounts include one user account
that is added to a protected group, and one user account that is used
for e-mail purposes and at all other times.

