SCCM 2012 Application Catalog - Login Prompt (Multiple Domains)

In a AD Multi Domain environment, I've found that even after following the guidance from Microsoft regarding delegating permissions to the relevant web application folders (found here) I've still encountered prompts for credentials when accessing the web based Application catalogue which is by default http://servername.domain.com/CMApplicationCatalog.

Based on some research and also backed up by Chris Bradford's blog post, it appears that the problem can be caused by the 'Add default Application Catalog website to Internet Explorer trusted sites zone' option in the SCCM Client Settings. I've found it best to set this to 'False' and fallback on our internal namespace being registered via other means in the correct IE Security Zone.

To ensure that the NTLM credentials are passed through when accessing internal namespace addressed resources either add your domain with a wildcard (*.domain.com) or your server name to your IE Intranet Zone. This can be done via manually or by script but certainly appears to produce better results than using the SCCM Client option.

Portal Web Site Control Manager detected PORTALWEB is not responding to HTTP requests. The http status code and text is 401, Unauthorized.

I've found the message "Portal Web Site Control Manager detected PORTALWEB is not responding to HTTP requests.  The http status code and text is 401, Unauthorized." in the logs of the server which hosts our SCCM 2012 Application Catalog, when diagnosing the issues with the 'SCCM Software Center' failing to display available software showing a message of "Loading Software Center returned error code 0x80041001(-2147217407)". Also when browsing to the Application Catalog it displays a "Server Error in '/' Application" error. Googling the issue, it appears to be widespread with SCCM 2012 and related to WCF Activation.

The resolution can be found in the following MS KB - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2015129

I would also recommend testing any Application Catalog related issues experienced on a client by accessing the Catalog via other clients. I have found clients can be at fault more times than the server.

Quick and Dirty .NSF Audit Script

In order to better understand our mail environment we wanted to ascertain approximately how much email was being held locally on our workstations in the form of local archives. I therefore wrote the script below in VBScript to be ran as a Computer Startup Script via Group Policy. The script performs a WMI query and then hands the result over to a Stored Proc in a SQL Server DB.

 Option Explicit  
 On Error Resume Next  
 Dim strDBServerName, strDBName, strDBUser, strDBPass, strConnString, strComputerName, strNSFSize, strLine, strNSFMarkerPath  
 Dim wshNetwork, cmdObj, recObj, sysinfo, objFSO, objFileMarker, colFiles, objWMIService, objFileNSF  
 Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")  
 strNSFMarkerPath = "C:\NSFSurvey.txt"  
 If NOT objFSO.FileExists(strNSFMarkerPath) Then  
      Set wshNetwork = WScript.CreateObject( "WScript.Network" )  
      Set sysInfo  = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")  
      strComputerName = wshNetwork.ComputerName & "." & sysInfo.DomainDNSName  
      strDBServerName = ""  
      strDBName = "NSFSize"  
      strDBUser = ""  
      strDBPass = ""  
      strConnString = "driver=sql server;server=" & strDBServerName & ";database=" & strDBName & ";uid=" & strDBUser & ";pwd=" & strDBPass  
      Set cmdObj=createobject("adodb.command")  
      Set recObj=createobject("adodb.recordset")  
      Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & wshNetwork.ComputerName & "\root\cimv2")  
      Set colFiles = objWMIService.ExecQuery _  
   ("Select * from CIM_DataFile Where Extension = 'nsf' AND (Drive = 'C:')")  
      If colFiles.Count = 0 Then  
           Set objFileMarker = objFSO.CreateTextFile(strNSFMarkerPath)  
           Wscript.Quit  
      End If  
      For Each objFileNSF in colFiles  
           strNSFSize = CLng(strNSFSize) + objFileNSF.FileSize  
      Next  
      'Wscript.Echo strNSFSize  
      With cmdObj  
           .activeconnection=strConnString  
           .commandtype=4  
           .commandtext="dbo.USP_NSFSize"  
           .parameters.refresh  
           .parameters(1).value = strComputerName  
           .parameters(2).value = strNSFSize  
           .execute  
      End with  
      Set objFileMarker = objFSO.CreateTextFile(strNSFMarkerPath)  
 End If  

The TSQL for the table is below;

 SET ANSI_NULLS ON  
 GO  
 SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON  
 GO  
 SET ANSI_PADDING ON  
 GO  
 CREATE TABLE [dbo].[NSFSizes](  
      [Timestamp] [datetime] NULL,  
      [computerFQDN] [varchar](55) NOT NULL,  
      [NSFSize] [bigint] NOT NULL  
 ) ON [PRIMARY]  
 GO  
 SET ANSI_PADDING OFF  

And also the Stored Proc

 SET ANSI_NULLS ON  
 GO  
 SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON  
 GO  
 CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[USP_NSFSize]  
      @strComputerName varchar(55),  
      @strNSFSize bigint  
 AS  
 INSERT INTO dbo.NSFSizes (Timestamp, computerFQDN, NSFSize) VALUES (GETDATE(),@strComputerName, @strNSFSize)  

Configuring IBM IMM from Windows (Remotely)

I had a server shipped to a remote site today and had forgotten to preconfigure the network settings for the IBM IMM. Luckily this can be configured from the machine from within Windows.

To do this, first of all download the Advanced Settings Utility for appropriate operating system, in this case Windows Server 2008 R2, so I selected the x64 version from the IBM site.

Download and extract the utility and then run it from  a command prompt. I required just the IP Address, Subnet Mask and Default Gateway address changing to static values. This will also disabled DHCP on the IMM interface and then reboot the IMM to apply the new address.

asu64.exe set imm.hostipaddress1 192.168.1.10

asu64.exe set imm.hostipsubnet1 255.255.255.0

asu64.exe set imm.gatewayipaddress1 192.168.1.1

asu64.exe set imm.dhcp1disabled

asu64.exe set imm.reboot

IBM Hardware Warranty Lookup

The URL for the IBM Hardware Warranty lookup site is here

Exchange 2010 Management Console connecting to a decommisioned server

You may find that the Exchange Management Console still attempts to connect to a previous Exchange 2010 server when opening, this can be resolved by navigating to the "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v14\AdminTools" registry key and deleting the NodeStructureSettings value.

Once deleted start the Exchange Management Console and it should automatically detect the On-Premises organisation and this time connect to a live server.

HP MPIO & DSM Install

For those servers that show the yellow question marks in Device Manager labelled as "HSV300 SCSI Array Device"







The  HP MPIO & DSM Install can be found here