P for Positive » Windows Server http://www.pforpositive.com Just another WordPress weblog Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:53:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 How to Remotely Get Members of Local Administrators Group http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/11/how-to-remotely-get-members-of-local-administrators-group/ http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/11/how-to-remotely-get-members-of-local-administrators-group/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 03:20:58 +0000 admin http://pforpositive.wordpress.com/?p=13 There are a several programs and scripts to get the members of local administrators group on a Windowx XP or Win2K Pro computers. Recently I wrote a batch file based on the command

psexec -n 5 \\<computer_name> net localgroup administrators

‘psexec’ is a  command line utility that allows you to run processes on remote computers. The utility is part of command line toolkit provided by Microsoft and can be downloaded from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx.

A variation to the above command is

psexec @filename.txt net localgroup administrators

This commands takes a file with a list of computer names as an input. Hopefully in another post I will write the reason why I chose to write a batch file with computer name instead of using a file with computer names.

]]> http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/11/how-to-remotely-get-members-of-local-administrators-group/feed/ 0 How to exports memebers of Active Directory group http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/10/how-to-exports-memebers-of-active-directory-group/ http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/10/how-to-exports-memebers-of-active-directory-group/#comments Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:43:25 +0000 admin http://pforpositive.wordpress.com/?p=3 There are a lot of scripts floating around to export members of AD group. Following is one way of displaying first and last names via command line

dsquery group -name <name_of_the_group> | dsget group -members | dsget user -fn -ln

To learn more about dsquery and dsget, please see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732952.aspx, and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755162.aspx.

]]> http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/10/how-to-exports-memebers-of-active-directory-group/feed/ 0 Updating DNS Entries while Minimizing the Downtime http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/04/updating-dns-entries-while-minimizing-the-downtime/ http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/04/updating-dns-entries-while-minimizing-the-downtime/#comments Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:36:00 +0000 admin http://www.pforpositive.com/?p=77 If you ever need to update the DNS records for your servers, make sure that you set the TTL value to few seconds first. This will minimize your downtime to a few seconds.

TTL (or time to live) is the amount of time for which other computers or DNS servers will cache your IP address. Suppose the TTL for your IP address is 12 hours. Now suppose you change your IP address at 12PM. The DNS servers and computers that cached your IP address at 11:59AM will keep trying to go to the old IP address until 11:59PM!! Following these steps will ensure minimum downtime

1. Note the current TTL. Suppose it is ‘x’

2. Decrease the amount of TTL. Suppose the new value is ‘y’

3. Wait for ‘x’ amount of time before making the change

4. Change the IP address. The maximum downtime will be ‘y’

So if the TTL is 12 hours and you change it to 1 minute, wait for 12 hours before changing the IP address. The downtime will be 1 minute.

]]> http://www.pforpositive.com/2008/04/updating-dns-entries-while-minimizing-the-downtime/feed/ 0