Finally! Something interesting!

OK here’s a fun one! I just got back from lunch to discover an outage on one of our exchange servers.

To be more specific an outage on a particular mail store. All other stores on that server were fine. The boys had kicked the server over but that didn’t resolve anything. All five databases in the store were dismounted when the server came back online.

Finally! Something interesting!

We got the stores back online by forcing them to ignore missing log files (we could always bring back lost mail from the archiving server, yes we do send every piece of email we receive to an archive server doesn’t everyone?). Then we began collating data on the outage and pretty quickly a picture started forming.

I’ll list these in reverse chronological order so as to build the suspense!

Event ID 104 – 4/19/2010 12:26
MSExchangeIS (3240) Mail P-T: The database engine stopped the instance (3) with error (-1090).

For more information, click ....

Event ID 486 – 4/19/2010 12:26
MSExchangeIS (3240) Mail P-T: An attempt to move the file "C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E02.log" to "C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E020005DC2D.log" failed with system error 2 (0x00000002): "The system cannot find the file specified. ". The move file operation will fail with error -1811 (0xfffff8ed).

For more information, click ....


Event ID 259 – 4/19/2010 12:21
The file C:\EXCHANGE LOGS\Mail P-T\E02.log contains the Malformed Archive Trojan. No cleaner available, file deleted successfully. Detected using Scan engine version 5400.1158 DAT version 5955.0000.

This looks to me like our Anti Virus product found what it thought was an infected file E02.LOG and deleted it; as a result exchange lost the plot! As would I if someone removed one of my transaction logs midflight.

So yeah new policy, exclude your exchange transaction logs from your Anti Virus scans!

I has da powa!

Love it or hate the iPhone is a popular piece of kit. It’s got a lot of great features including a super friendly UI, disturbingly friendly at times. Like going to dinner at an undiscovered serial killers home, everything is shiny on the surface just don’t go down to the basement.

Aside from the suspect practices of its creator one of my big gripes with the hardware itself is battery life. I struggle to get 24 hours use out of a full charge. Of course I could charge it every night but where does that leave me when I forget? Those that know me know that forgetting stuff is one of my more adorable or onerous personality traits depending on how long you’ve known me.

So after a couple of weeks of experimentation I’ve come up with a few battery saving tips that may extend your devices operational hours.

• Turn off Bluetooth
• Turn off Wi-Fi

Obvious enough really these two saved me some power... But hold onto your undies it's going to get more obvious;

• Turn down Backlight Brightness

This change gave me the most visible improvement to battery life. With the backlight on the minimum setting I got 3 days out of a charge! Admittedly I couldn’t use the phone outside during the day... But that was a sacrifice I was willing to make for the sake of science.

I’ve set the backlight brightness to about 10% and that seems to be a happy medium for me.

DiRT 2 - Cheaters Paradise

So the guys at work scored a few copies of DiRT 2 and we've been having fun setting times and breaking each others records. Well those of us that have the "Time" (IE Skill) to be competitive.

The online leader board allows us to keep track of each other and download each others ghosts to race against. It's always a laugh to download the Bosses 2.08 minute time then beat it in 1.42 minutes... Don't know why that is, perhaps I'm just really petty.

But I digress the issue with the leader boards is the bloody cheaters! When you've got world record holders 20 - 40 seconds faster than everyone else you know something is amiss.

I've managed to get a hold of a ghost lap for one such record holder and about 100m from the start line he just veers of the road and cuts an enormous section off the track! CHEATING BASTARD! Well I of course tried to follow his clearly more optimal racing line but my car just reset on the road leaving me feeling frustrated and guilty for trying to cheat.

Well those feelings of frustration were short lived. For it is a well know fact when something annoys a geek he'll move heaven and earth to address the annoyance.

Fortunately for me I didn't have to move Heaven or Earth just some files.

Dig around in the games install folder and you'll never know what you'll find! Well in my case I found each track has a file called "resetlines.cqtc" if this file were to "go missing" so will the reset lines for that track. Then the user is free to drive where ever they want! So that's how they're doing it!

CHEATING BASTARDS! But at least I can see how it's done. Also I'll admit it is fun to be able to explore the tracks a little more and invent little challenges for myself.

Clearly CodeMasters don't really mind if the user twiddles with their racing sim then posts to results on the public leader boards. This is a trivially easy "mod" (IE exploit) that is just plain dumb. I take this as a sign of the games multiplatform development. But having said that how difficult is it to perform the same Exploit on a hacked XBox 360? I can't comment on that having never made the attempt but I IMAGINE it wouldn't be much harder.

For crying out loud I moved a file and was able bypass huge sections of track... It seems to me that this would be a very easy exploit to monitor and prevent. Given that it extensively diminishes the enjoyment of the online leader boards for many users, it's really just not good enough.

For shame CodeMasters FOR SHAME!

The Prank

We use a Sharepoint Document Library at work. Basically this is the go to location for any work we're doing. It contains Project Plans, Change Request, Requisitions, network diagrams and thousands of other documents. I Start most mornings by clicking the link indicated below;



This morning that link redirects to this;


Yup that URL is now http://portal/sites/ti/rick.swf

"Never Gunna Give you up! Never gunna let you down!"

Ohnoes! We've been RickRolled! I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

More information on that valuable cultural phenomenon is available here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling

It's great to be be able to have a laugh at work. However the boss seemed ready to crack until I created him a new link;

Remote Desktop to Support video and 3D applications!

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/03/18/Explaining-Microsoft-RemoteFX.aspx

Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 will include enhancements to Remote Desktop services that will greatly enhance the RDP experience. Apparently they're offering a Client Side GPU decoder obviously with the encode happening on the RD Server.

That's quite exciting.

I'll be able to remove the 20m DVI and USB cables that run from the Server room to the Bosses Desk!

Devil LAN

OK so have a look at this graph and tell me it doesn't look like a row of Devils!



This data is captured from the uplink on an IP camera. It looks like at dawn and dusk every day the traffic spikes and then during the night it's double what it is during the day... Creating the impression of a row of little horned creatures.

It's a interesting artifact and I can only guess at it's cause... Possibly some peculiarity in the Video Codec?

300GB Short Stroke

Last post I mentioned a 300GB short stroke across 6 x 2TB drives.


Well anyone want to see how fast that is?

OK then here it is.


600MB/sec!

In a DESKTOP!

Praise be to the sweet merciful lord! This is brining me some serious happy.