Blog

VPC to VMWare Mouse Problem

Jerald Carter — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Today I took an older VPC base image for Sever 2003 with SQL 2005 I had created and converted it to a VMWare Server 1.x image using the VMWare Converter. I had done this countless times with various XP and Vista VPC's without encountering any problems. Upon booting the new VM and installing the VM Tools, my mouse was stuck in the lower left hand corner. This was not a good sign! I spent a while looking for answers on VMWare's sight with not much luck. I did find some excellent advice on ZarkBlog... Various solutions included:

Removing the Virtual PC Additions before conversion
Installing VMWare Tools without the VMWare Mouse Driver in a custom install
Removing the value msvmmouf value from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E96F-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\UpperFilters and rebooting

The last option was clearly the easiest to implement and worked flawlessly!

VB.Net Email Wrapper Class

Jerald Carter — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:49:00 GMT

Introduction

System.Net.Mail is easy to use, so why would I want to have a wrapper for it?

I have often found myself writing this code over and over again. Each time its different and managing multiple version of the same functionality across projects is not very efficient. Consistent code is always easier to maintain.

Background

This wrapper class was the outcome of a discussion on how to encapsulate some common features used in sending email. The environment had multiple SMTP gateways, and it was nice to have the From address to always be supplied under the context of the current account executing the code. Additionally, having the ability to send email asynchronously was important to allow applications to be more responsive.

One note to be mindful of when using the SendMessageAsync method is that if the spawning thread exits prior to the async thread, the email will not be sent.

Features

The Email wrapper class has the following features:

Ability to send synchronously or asynchronously

Event handler to listen for asynchronous updates

MailAddressCollections for To, CC, and Bcc

AttachmentCollection for attachments

Enumeration of known SMTP gateways

Usage Examples

Simple Synchronous Example:

Try
    'Get an Email object
    Dim emailObject As New Utilities.Email()
    Dim emailSubject As String = String.Empty
    Dim emailBody As New StringBuilder()
    emailSubject = "Random Subject"
    emailBody.Add("I now have a body")

    'Set the values
    emailObject.Priority = Email.EmailPriority.High
    emailObject.Body = emailBody.ToString()
    emailObject.Subject = emailSubject
    'emailObject.MailFrom is defaulted
    emailObject.BodyIsHtml = True
    emailObject.MailTo = "hello@world.com"

    'Send the email
    emailObject.SendMessage()
Catch ex As Exception
    Throw
End Try

Simpler Synchronous Example:

Try
    'Get an Email object
    Dim emailObject As New Utilities.Email("FromAddress@world.com", "ToAddress@world.com", "Random Subject", "Email Body")
    emailObject.BodyIsHtml = True

    'Send the email
    emailObject.SendMessage()
Catch ex As Exception
    Throw
End Try

Download Source

Email.zip (4kb Zip)

VB.Net: Returning AD UserName from Multi-Domain Forrest

Jerald Carter — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:06:00 GMT

Growth sometimes brings out the unexpected flaws in designs. What seems like a quick solution, may intern lead to what I have affectionately call 'Learning Opportunities'.After a recent expansion from a single domain environment to a multi-domain forest, the following VB.Net function ceased functioning for retrieving the user's full name.

Public Shared Function GetADUserName() As String
    Dim returnString As String = String.Empty
        If HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated Then
            Try
               Dim DomainUser As String = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent.Name.Replace("\", "/")
               Dim ADEntry As New DirectoryEntry("WinNT://" & DomainUser)
               Dim FullName As String = ADEntry.Properties("FullName").Value

               returnString = FullName.Substring(FullName.LastIndexOf(",") + 1)
               returnString &= " " & FullName.Substring(0, FullName.LastIndexOf(","))
            Catch ex As Exception

            Finally

            End Try
      End If
      Return returnString
End Function

Doing some research resulted in the realization that the WinNT provider would only work correctly in a 'flat domain'. Some modifications to an existing application allowed for the following replacement utilizing the LDAP provider in the DirectoryServices library. The key is to enable Referral Chasing.

Public Shared Function GetADUserName() As String
   Dim returnString As String = String.Empty
      If HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated Then
         Try
             ' Set the root search path
             Dim ldapPath As String = "LDAP://DC=MyDomain,DC=COM"
             Dim entry As New DirectoryEntry(ldapPath)
            ' AppSettings holds username and password
            ' This allows the query to run outside the context of the impersonated user
            ' This user currently is delegated rights in AD
            entry.Username = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("AdUser").ToString
            entry.Password = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("ADPassword").ToString
            entry.AuthenticationType = AuthenticationTypes.Secure

            ' Retrieve the current user's ntid
            Dim DomainUser As String = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent.Name.Substring
                         (WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent.Name.LastIndexOf("\"))

            ' Set your filter
            Dim filter As String =
                   String.Format("(&(objectClass=user)(sAMAccountName={0}))", DomainUser)
            Dim searcher As New DirectorySearcher(entry, filter, New String() {"displayName"})

           ' Allow searches to span multiple domain referrals
           searcher.ReferralChasing = ReferralChasingOption.All
           Dim result As SearchResult = searcher.FindOne()

          If Not IsNothing(result) Then
             'Verify the property was returned
             If (result.Properties.Contains("displayName")) Then
                returnString = result.Properties("displayName")(0)
             End If
          End If
       Catch ex As Exception
           'Some error handling here
       Finally

       End Try
   End If

   Return returnString
End Function

More LDAP Queries: Accounts never logged in

Jerald Carter — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 10:30:00 GMT

In continuing to audit a network, the number of accounts in Active Directory did not match employee records, nor previous asset records.

While using the interval variable for lastLogonTimeStamp will find accounts that have not logged on in a specific time period, it will not find accounts which have never logged on. The following queries will find them:

(&(objectCategory=Computer)(!lastLogonTimeStamp=*)(!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))
(&(objectCategory=User)(!lastLogonTimeStamp=*)(!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))

LDAP to find users with Remote Access Privileges

Jerald Carter — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 10:35:00 GMT

We have all been in the position where we have started a new job with an existing organization where security was somewhat lax. Inevitably during the process of locking the network down you have to deal with the VPN / Dial-up access problem.

The first step is to determine who already has access. This is fairly easy to accomplish using LDAP filters.

(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(msNPAllowDialin=TRUE))

This filter will show you all of the user accounts that have Allow Access checked for Remote Access on the Dialin Tab of the ADUC MMC.