Enable File and Printer Sharing using Group Policy

Group Policy is a one of the most useful tools found in the Windows 2000 and later Active Directory infrastructure. Group Policy can be used to set File and Printer Sharing on all computers joined to the domain. If the computer is joined to a domain, members of the Domain Admins group might be able to perform this procedure. The following example uses Windows 2003 Server. The procedure for 2008 is almost exactly the same.

Enabling File and Printer Sharing in Windows XP

File and Printer sharing is required for sharing your computers resources. In addition, a special share, called the admin$ share is used to remotely manage and install software on Windows XP systems. By default file sharing is blocked in the firewall. The following steps will enable file and printer sharing in Windows XP.

Enabling File and Printer Sharing In Windows Vista

By default File and Print Sharing is disabled on Windows Vista. Many times file and printer sharing is also needed for remote administration tools that access the admin$ share. Enable File and Print sharing by following these steps:

Enabling File and Printer Sharing In Windows 7

File and Printer Sharing disabled by default in Windows 7, and unfortunately Microsoft has yet again changed the method to turn it back on. The steps you need to take are now different than the ones you took in Vista. So how do you get it back up and running in Windows 7?

Terminal Server 2003 - Universal Print Driver with Fallback Driver

Unfortunately, client printing in Terminal Server 2003 can be very frustrating. However, it almost always boils down to issues with drivers. Lots of drivers are simply not compatible with Terminal Services. Stick with Windows native drivers whenever possible and keep the number of drivers low. Using third party drivers is usually trouble.

HP Universal Print Driver solves Windows 7 Printing Problems for LaserJets

The introduction of Windows 7 has once again raised the annoying issue of whether existing printers are supported. Users want to know whether the printers they already have in-use or are considering are currently supported with Windows 7 print drivers (and, if not, when will they be supported).

Disconnect all users from MS SQL Server 2005/2008 Database

To get exclusive access to the database to perform maintenance tasks etc. you can set the database to Single User Mode, which permits only one database connection at a time. At that moment if other users try to access the database while you are working on that active connection, they will receive an error.

Synchronize Windows Server Clock with Internet Time Server

Windows includes the Windows Time service - W32Time. The purpose of W32Time is to make sure that all computers that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or later versions in an organization use a common time.

Keyboard Shortcuts in a Remote Desktop Session

You can use the following Remote Desktop keyboard shortcuts to perform many of the same keyboard shortcuts that you can use with Windows.

MS Windows Telnet command

Telnet is a simple, text-based terminal emulation program that allows you to connect to another computer across the network or by using the Internet (usually over port 23).

Group Policy Search - Online Policy Settings Reference and Search Tool

The Group Policy Search (GPS) is a browse and search tool for Microsoft Active Directory Group Policy Settings. This online tool from Microsoft allows you to easily find existing Group Policies and registry keys for different settings under Windows. You can either browse through the tree structure to find the settings you are looking for or use the search box to find them.

PDF writer for Citrix or Terminal Server environments

Wilco Van Bragt of vanbragt.net consultancy has a great review of several popular pdf writers available for Terminal Services environments. Products reviewed include:

  • PDF995
  • CutePDF Writer
  • PDF Creator
  • Doro PDFWriter
  • BullZip PFDWriter
  • Microsoft Office 2007 PDF Converter
It’s an excellent article if you plan on using a pdf writer in a TS or Citrix environment and is available on Wilco’s website at: PDFWRITER FOR TS

proFTPd - Create individual directories for each user account

This post explains how to modify the proFTPd Administrator tool to make the create users tool actually create individual directories for each account that is created.

Managing Packages With Yum Command

Yum (Yellowdog Updater Modified) is an interactive, automated update program which can be used for maintaining systems using rpm by super users (root). It is used to check, install, remove or update to the latest version of a package or group of packages while ensuring that all dependencies are satisfied. Login as the root user to install and update the system.

ProFTPd - Install with Virtual Users and Web Admin support on CentOS 5.x

ProFTPD is a high-performance, extremely configurable, and secure FTP server, featuring Apache-like configuration and great performance. This post describes how to install a Proftpd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. Using virtual users is far more efficient as it allows you to setup and manage literally thousands of ftp users on a single host.

To simplify end-user account creation and management, we will be using a web-based tool called proFTPd Administration. The tool, with some additional programming, also automates the creation of individual directories for each account that is created.

Avoid Package Conflicts with Yum Priorities

Its always best to install packages from the vendor's original repositories before installing from third party repositories like RPMForge. Installing from different repositories can result in package conflicts between RPMForge and CentOS Updates repository. To avoid this, we should use the “yum-priorities” plugin.

Install, Remove & Autostart X Window System on CentOS

If you need to add X to the server after install or you installed from the Server ISO and it didn't install X, how do you install X?

Installing, Disabling & Removing RPMforge Repository

RPMforge is a collaboration of Dag, Dries, and other packagers. They provide over 4000 packages for CentOS, including mplayer, xmms-mp3, and other popular media tools. The RPMforge collaboration repackages many RPMs that are not included as part of the stock Linux distributions, including versions of many packages still in testing. Visit the RPMforge Website for more information.