Setting up a standalone (non-domain) Windows Server 2008 as Time Server (ntp) and its client servers.

Before I start this I have to say that a lot of the information I give below can be obtained in the following excellent articles. I do recommend reading these articles as it fully explains the w32tmn service.  I have tried to just simplify for my specific scenario.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/industry_insiders/archive/2006/08/29/w32-tm-service.aspx

http://www.piclist.com/techref/os/win/w32time.htm

edit: NTPTool – I used this tool to help me fault find issues, its free and a great little tool (http://www.ntp-time-server.com/ntp-server-tool.html)

note: Please ensure there is nothing running on port 123, existing ntp software, or if you are using the ntptool I refer to, ensure this tool is closed when you are starting the service. The service will start ok, but nothing will work, and even with debugging login turned on you will find the w32tim service does not give you any informative error messages, it will just time out trying to connect.

note: another issue I found was that it would appear that after syncing for a while the clients would then fail to sync. I discovered this after spending hours trying to debug a new client I was setting up (it was behind a firewall so I figured I had something misconfigured. But in the end a restart for the ntp server fixed the problem…..) Grrrr… man I  love wasting my time chasing my tail, thanks MS!. In the end I set up a scheduled task to restart the w32time service daily, hopefully this fixes my issue.

For reference the errors I was seeing the the w32time service log on the client was.

• “Packet test 8 failed (bad value for root delay or root dispersion).”

additional info: I got this error a few times setting up a new server to talk to the ntp server. In each case it was resolved by a restart of the w32time service on the ntp serve machine. Strange but that's MS.

additional info: mmmm maybe it wasn’t MSs fault….. , I found that while configuring the clients I actually configured the server as well (via scripts) so it was trying to sync with itself. I have now corrected this its syncing with an external source. Fingers crossed this fixes the issue.

additional info: Something I have just discovered is that in Windows 2008 the windows time service is by default set to manual. The trigger to start the service is in task scheduler under Microsoft\Windows\TimeSynchronisation.

This means after a restart the time service will not sync until the scheduler event is triggered, by default this is weekly on Sunday @ 01:00.

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I have recently had to setup an internal ntp server to allow our servers to have consistent internal time.

Originally we had an ntp server setup on our firewall, due to an upgrade of the firewall this was no longer possible.

The decision was to create a couple of servers internally to sync with an external (internet) time source and then allow all other internal servers to sync with these servers… Sounds easy enough… :) You’d have thought so….

I was certain you could set windows as a time server, however on investigation I found that it wasn’t a nice straight easy process to setup the ntp server and its client server to sync from the newly created internal  ntp server.

Below I detail what I had to do to get this up and running, and the problems I had and what I did to overcome them.

Background.

Our environment is a server farm containing a number of standalone servers. No Domain, which would have automatically have set up the servers to sync with a DC.

Procedure

Setup ntp server

To force a standalone server to become an ntp server, instead of just an ntp client, you must change a few registry entries.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters

In the above registry key check that TYPE is set to ‘NTP’, it should be if the server is NOT in a domain. It was in my scenario.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config\

Modify the DWORD AnnounceFlags, set it to 5 (it probably is set to 10).
5 here is a combination of 0x04 - Always reliable time server and 0x01 -Always time server.

Next we enable the ntp server

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpServer\

Modify the DWORD Enabled to 1 (should be 0).

Next we setup up the polling interval, if this is default it is probably set to 7 days (604800 seconds).

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient\

Modify the DWORD SpecialPollInterval to 1800 (decimal), this will set polling to every 30 minutes.

Now I set up my time source using the GUI (right clicking the clock, adjust date/time settings, etc..) on this server, however as you will see later I had issue with the internal servers doing this. So I include here the w32tm command to do the same thing from the command line, running from the command line fixed the issues I had later.

(Please watch the quotes here, ensure they are the right type (I had issue that something kept reformatting the quotes to “xxx” from "xxx", this caused problems, so is you copy and paste the below command I would replace the quotes manually to ensure you have the correct type. This took me a while to track down.)

w32Tm /configure /manualpeerlist:"timeserver1.com,0x09 timeserver2.com,0x09"  /syncfromflags:manual /update

Here we configure a list of servers for our ntp server to sync to.

/manualpeerlist: This is a space delimited list of servers with mode.

mode (0x09) – Is a code to tell w32time service how to sync. In our case we have combined 2 mode values to create 0x09 (0x01 and 0x08 )

Mode Values

• 0x01 - use special poll interval SpecialInterval
• 0x02 - UseAsFallbackOnly
• 0x04 - send request as SymmetricActive mode
• 0x08 - send request as Client mode

/syncfromflags: Set to manual which informs the time service that our list of servers is conatined in th peerlist.

/update: Should alert the time service that update to configuration has occurred and it should implement them, it will also resync time.

(more info / more info2)

In the image below I have tried to show the issue that confused me for a while. I was expecting my changes to be picked up by the windows adjust/date time gui. In the example below I  set the peerlist to wwv.nist.gov, the gui was used originally to set the time server to time.nist.gov. All I will say is ignore this diaglog if you are stup w32time from th ecommand prompt this gui is just confusing.

If you are having issue with the time service not picking up your changes, you can try restarting the w32time service.

net stop w32time && net start w32time

Setup windows servers as ntp clients to our windows ntp server

First we need to change the polling interval so the time service syncs more regularly. The default is probably set to 7 days (604800 seconds).

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient\

Modify the DWORD SpecialPollInterval to 900 (decimal), this will set polling to every 15 minutes.

I had real issue just trying to use the server settings value in the “adjust time/date settings dialog” in windows. It just did not work. The only way I got this to work was to use the command line.

w32tm /configure /manualpeerlist:<IP of configured internal ntp server>,<mode> /syncfromflags:manual /update

Now I tried to use (w32tm /resync) to force a rysnc but I got an error message, however I have since found that the clock had synched, so not sure what the error message was about.

w32tm /resync
Sending resync command to local computer
The computer did not resync because no time data was available.

note: if you need to configure a windows 2000 server then this can be done using the command.

net time /setsntp:<server>

net stop w32time && net start w32time

*********************************************************************
*********************************************************************

w32tm Parameters

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773263(WS.10).aspx

w32tm registry entries

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q223184/

Setting Up logging for NTP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816043

 

Reference URLs

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816042

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875424

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/114492/computers/how_to_configure_a_windows_time_server.html

http://www.winserverkb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/windows-server-networking/10/NTP-bug-in-Windows-2003

Excellent articles on time service in  windows.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/industry_insiders/archive/2006/08/29/w32-tm-service.aspx

http://www.piclist.com/techref/os/win/w32time.htm

NTPTool

http://www.ntp-time-server.com/ntp-server-tool.html

Setting up a standalone (non-domain) Windows Server 2008 as Time Server (ntp) and its client servers.

Dell Bluetooth, Minicard 370–current updated drivers.

I have a DELL latitude 6500, with this I have a Bluetooth mouse (Microsoft BT 5000). It worked for a month or two and then disconnected from the laptop and then would not re-pair with the laptop.

On review it seemed that by installing the BT drivers from the DELL website for the laptop I could fix this issue.

However on review of the drivers on the DELL site, they are quite old. To cut a long story short finding newer drivers was not easy, however in the end I came across this guy who had done the same thing.

The DELL mini-card is in fact a Broadcom card. He had found drivers on a couple of sites, in the end I grabbed a x64 windows 7 driver from the gateway site.

This allowed me to re-pair my mouse and laptop, and has also given me updated drivers for the Bluetooth stack on my DELL latitude laptop.

Dell Bluetooth, Minicard 370–current updated drivers.

Windows: Add multiple DNS servers to NIC (netSh)

Note: I have now changed the script slightly. I have added a IPCONFIG /ALL at the top, this allows me to easily review the connection name (and also copy and paste into the input field if needed).
Also I have found the address=”” parameter is not valid in versions prior to netsh in windows 2008, so now it is just addr=””
I have highlighted the changes in PURPLE in the script below.

Recently I had to configure a number of servers. I had to change the dns server IP addresses.

Now I did not want to go through all the servers 1 by 1, changing the IPs in the GUI.

Enter left, Netsh. This great little tool, allows you to configure a whole range of things within windows. But in my case I was just interested in dns servers.

First command sets the default dns server ip, then the following commands add the additional dns servers and specifies where they sit in the order via index=n.

Netsh interface ip set dns name="<connectionname>" source="static" address="x.x.x.x"

Netsh interface ip add dns name="Team 1" addr="x.x.x.x" index=2

Netsh interface ip add dns name="Team 1" addr="x.x.x.x" index=3

Netsh interface ip add dns name="Team 1" addr="x.x.x.x" index=4

Now put this into a batch file and we are laughing. Login and run, job done.

Now this does assume all servers will have a network adapter named the same thing, so I may have to change if I come across a different adapter name. mmmmm, that gets me thinking I can get round that by setting up an input into the batch file……

OK, so I did do that and here is the batch file contents. It prompts for a interface name (it has a default setting, as most of the NICs in my setup have the same name), also takes an comma separated list of dns server ip’s. The first in the server ip list will be the default dns server, and then the rest will be added in order (so the last in the list in the batch file will be the last in the dns server list).

So if you are going  to use this make sure you change the list to dns server ips and also change the defaultNIC variable to your most common NIC name.

IPCONFIG /ALL

SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

SET DNSServerIPaddresses=10.0.0.1,10.0.0.2,10.0.0.3,10.0.0.4
SET DefaultNIC=Nic1
SET /A Index=1

:InputNetworkAdapter
SET /p vAdapterName=Please enter network adapter name (default="%DefaultNIC%") :-

FOR %%A IN (%DNSServerIPaddresses%) DO (
    IF !Index! equ 1 (
        Netsh interface ip set dns name="%vAdapterName%" source="static" addr="%%A"
    )
    IF !Index! gtr 1 (
        Netsh interface ip add dns name="%vAdapterName%" addr="%%A" index=!Index!
    ) 
    SET /A Index=!Index!+1
)

mmm, this has got me thinking now…. with some psexec magic should be able to get this done remotely without having to connect to each machine….. O well I will save that for another day, I need to get this moving….

addition – run remotely on multiple servers.

OK, so I did use psexec and it worked a treat. I create two batch files and copied psexec into the same folder. Then I create a list of servers names, the script will prompt for a serverlist. I also created a subfolder called reports, I crate textfile of the stdout of the psexec command. the output contains a ipconfig /all berfore and after running the netsh lines, this will allow for reviewing and you can ensure that the change has held.

This script should happily work on windows 2000, 2003 and 2008 servers.

startAutoDNS.bat

:InputServerList
SET /p vserverList=Please enter filename of server list (default="serverlist.txt") :-

IF "%vserverList%"=="" (
    SET vserverList=serverlist.txt
)

FOR /F "eol=# tokens=1 delims=," %%A IN (.\%vserverList%) DO START CMD /C ".\psexec \\%%A -s -f -c autosetDNS.bat>reports\output_setDNS_%%A.txt"

autoSetDNS.bat

SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

IPCONFIG /ALL

SET AdapterNames=Team 1,Local Area Connection,Local Area Connection 2,Local Area Connection 3,Local Area Connection 4
REM substitute
SET AdapterNames=%AdapterNames: =/%
SET DNSServerIPaddresses=10.0.0.1,10.0.0.2,10.0.0.3,10.0.04

FOR %%B IN (%AdapterNames%) DO (
    SET /A Index=1
    SET vAdaptername=%%B
    SET vAdaptername=!vAdaptername:/= !
    FOR %%A IN (%DNSServerIPaddresses%) DO (
        IF !Index! equ 1 (
            Netsh interface ip set dns name="!vAdaptername!" source="static" addr="%%A"
        )
        IF !Index! gtr 1 (
            Netsh interface ip add dns name="!vAdaptername!" addr="%%A" index=!Index!
        )
        SET /A Index=!Index!+1
    )
)

IPCONFIG /ALL

Windows: Add multiple DNS servers to NIC (netSh)

Throttle a windows network transfer (copy)

A while back I wanted to try and throttle a file copy between servers across a wan link vpn.

I struggled to find a solution to this, however in the end I came across a program from nullsoft (creators of winamp), its a freebie and was developed ages ago. However I have found the program to work extremely well.

To transfer to a network location you have to be able to map a drive to that location, and you can only copy entire folders. But for what I wanted this is fine.

You can then control bandwidth on the slider bar.

The program is called nscopy, it was available from nullsoft directly but that link appears to be gone. However I have found a download here

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/NSCopy.shtml

Throttle a windows network transfer (copy)

PowerShell: List full path info for all files of specified extensions

I needed to get a list including path of all the files in a massive folder structure of a specified file extensions.

To do this I used PowerShell, using the Get-Childitem cmdlet to list folder content recursively and filtered to just list *.dll’s and *.exe’s. This is then piped to the foreach-object to iterate through and list the full file name (which includes path). This is then piped to the out-file cmdlet which dumps the contents into a text file.

Get-ChildItem \\remoteserver\remoteserverfolderpath  -Recurse -Include "*.dll","*.exe" | foreach-object {$_.Fullname} | Out-File c:\files.txt –width 1024

PowerShell: List full path info for all files of specified extensions

Windows Search - Advance Query Syntax

The other day I had to try and work out how to filter files within a windows server 2008 explorer window. I knew 2008 had some good search features but had never got into using the search other than just typing in filenames or extensions with wildcards

i.e.

• filename.*
• *.jpg

So I started looking into AQS. There are a number of properties you can choose but I need to filter by extension and to not list folders or images. Below is the query I construction

ext: NOT (.rtf OR .doc OR .docx OR .txt OR.xls OR.msg OR .pdf OR.wps OR .xps OR .pub OR .ppt OR.odt) AND type: NOT image AND kind: NOT folders

So

ext: NOT (.rtf OR .doc OR .docx OR .txt OR.xls OR.msg OR .pdf OR.wps OR .xps OR .pub OR .ppt OR.odt)

This part will list all files with extentions

ext:

except with .rtf,.doc ,.docx,.txt,.xls,.msg,.pdf,.wpf,.xps,.pub,.ppt,.odt

NOT (.rtf OR .doc OR .docx OR .txt OR.xls OR.msg OR .pdf OR.wps OR .xps OR .pub OR .ppt OR.odt)

except  files of type image.

AND type: NOT image

except folders

AND kind: NOT folders

You can view other available properties here

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

Windows Search - Advance Query Syntax

A DRAC 5 error has occurred–Media Active-X plugin install

Recently had this issue after getting DRAC 5 to work in Internet Explorer 9 (IE9).

Whenever going to the media page I would get offered the install, but the error would be on the page. Clicking install would drop me back to the login page for the DRAC.

I have found 2 fixes.

1. Add the IP address of the DRAC server as a site into the local intranet zone in the security tab in Internet Options.

2. For the internet zone, in security tab in internet options, select custom level and in the ActiveX controls and plug-ins Enable Automatic Prompting for ActiveX Controls.

A DRAC 5 error has occurred–Media Active-X plugin install