Synchronize Windows with a Linux ntpd server


I have a Windows Server 2008 DC and I wanted to use my internal time server on a linux box running ntpd.

After a little hunting around, I found the command required to set Windows up to use the correct time peer.
w32tm /config /update /manualpeerlist:"0.pool.ntp.org,0x8 1.pool.ntp.org,0x8" /syncfromflags:MANUAL

After making this change, you need to restart the Windows Time Service by issuing the following 2 commands,
net stop w32time
net start w32time

If you have problems, first make sure the Windows Time Service is enabled.

This works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

ProFTPd Connection Delay

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I noticed that ProFTPd took a few seconds to connect. On a LAN, it should be instant.

Sniffing traffic, it seemed that ProFTPd was first making an auth request using the ident protocol before falling back to user/pass authentication. This seems to be the standard behaviour according to RFC’s 912, 931 and 1413

Some google searching turned up a page over at metafilter concerning connection delay.

Adding this to the ProFTPd configuration file disabled the auth checks and made connecting/authorising instant, as it should be.
IdentLookups off

On Debian, the ProFTPd config file is at /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf

Exchange 2007 Catchall Capabilities

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A popular mail configuration is to send all mail for a domain that doesn’t match a valid recipient to a single catchall address. Exchange 2007, like Exchange 2003, does not support this setup.

An Exchange 2007 server configured as an Edge Transport server is capable of forwarding all mail destined for a particular domain to another address, but isn’t aware of which addresses are for valid users. You can create individual transport rules for each valid user to exclude themselves from the catchall, but this is tedious and an extra step for all AD administrators.

However, wilbertdg has created a clever Transport Protocol Agent for Exchange 2007.

Exchange2007 (like Exchange 2003) doesn’t provide CatchAll functionality. CatchAll is the ability of an SMTP server to redirect messages to non-existing recipients to a specific address.

This CatchAllAgent is an Exchange 2007 Transport Agent. The CatchAllAgent can be configured to redirect the recipient address for unknown recipients to a ‘catchall’ address such that such messages end up in a dedicated mailbox. The configuration allows for multiple domains, but you can only specify a single target address for each of those domains.

You can find more information and download the software at http://www.codeplex.com/catchallagent.

Website Downtime

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The firewall’s hard drive gave up whilst I was on hoiliday last week. It has been replaced and reinstalled.

8 year old Compaq Deskpro, quietly sifting through packets, on its third HDD. Omm nom nom nom…