- BareTail. A free real-time log file monitoring tool.
- CamStudio. Free screen recording software.
- CDBurnerXP. Burns CD-ROMs, DVDs, audio CDs, and ISO images.
- Comodo Firewall Pro. Is a firewall and antivirus application.
- DriveImage XML. Is a program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives.
- FileZilla. GUI FTP client.
- GParted LiveCD. Manages partitions on systems.
- InfraRecorder. Burns ISO images and creates data and audio CDs and DVDs.
- Lansweeper. Is a network inventory tool that performs hardware scanning, software scanning, and Active Directory (AD) reporting.
- LocatePC. Emails you whenever any private or public IP address in your system changes – great for tracking a stolen computer.
- MyDefrag (formerly JkDefrag). Defragments and optimizes disks.
- Nessus (formerly NeWT). Network/computer vulnerability scanner.
- Ngrep. Is a packet sniffer based on finding matching text strings.
- Notepad++. Is a text and code editor (more info).
- NTFS Undelete. Recovers deleted files that are no longer in the recycle bin.
- Open Computers and Software Inventory (OCS Inventory NG). Provides detailed inventory data for an entire network of computers as well as deploys packages.
- OpenSSH. Creates secure, encrypted shell sessions.
- PageDefrag. Determines how fragmented your paging files and registry hives are, and defragments them.
- Paint.NET. Free image and photo editing software for Windows.
- PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost) — Backup and Restore Disk Partitions.
- PRTG Traffic Grapher. Is a powerful network monitor.
- System Information for Windows (SIW). Gathers detailed information about a computer’s system properties, settings, and displays.
- TestDisk. Recovers damaged partitions, makes non-bootable disks bootable again, and repairs damaged boot sectors.
- TrueCrypt. Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.
- WinDirStat. Determines how space is being utilized across disks and visually represents the results in multiple ways.
- WinPE (Windows Preinstallation Environment). Lets you make a Windows command-line boot recovery DVD.
- WinDump. WinDump is the Windows version of tcpdump, the command line network analyzer for UNIX / Linux.
- Winfingerprint. Is a network scanner.
- Wink. Builds screencast recordings.
- WireShark (formerly Ethereal). Network protocol analyzer.
- XML Notepad. Is a specialized XML editor.
- ZoomIt. Magnifies portions of a screen and lets you draw on and annotate the screen.
Category: Administration
Bulk mailbox-enabling users using the Exchange console
In Exchange Server 2007 SP1, the Exchange console (EMC) allows you to create mailboxes for existing users. When selecting an existing user in the New Mailbox wizard, you can select multiple users by using the regular SHIFT-Click (to select a continuous list of users) and CTRL-click (to pick the users you want).
First we need to find the users without mailboxes. The get-user command will list all users. The RecipientType property of the user is either User or UserMailbox. As the name clearly suggests, those with UserMailbox as RecipientType are already mailbox-enabled – leaving those with RecipientType User.
You can enable all users with RecipientType User:
get-user | where-object{$_.RecipientType –eq “User”}
Yes, that may not be a great idea! So let’s filter these users. If these users reside in a particular Organizational Unit, we can restrict our search to that OU. In this case, we’ll look for users in the OU called “People”:
get-user –organizationalUnit people | where-object{$_.RecipientType –eq “User”}
Now we get a list of all users (who are not mailbox-enabled) from that OU. We can further restrict this list to all users who are members of a particular department. Since Sales is our favorite department, let’s pick Sales:
get-user –organizationalUnit people | where-object{$_.RecipientType –eq “User” -and $_.department –eq “Sales”}
Now we’ve got a smaller list of folks – those residing in the People OU belonging to Sales dept. and aren’t mailbox-enabled yet. Let’s go ahead and mailbox-enable these users:
get-user –organizationalUnit people | where-object {$_.RecipientType –eq “User” -and $_.department –eq “Sales”} | Enable-Mailbox –Database “EXCHANGE1Mailbox Database” | get-mailbox | select name,windowsemailaddress,database
The above command mailbox-enables these users and outputs a list of their names, default email address, and the mailbox Store on which their mailbox(es) reside.
Similarly, you can also use other user attributes of user accounts like city, state, country, etc. to selectively mailbox-enable users.
PowerShell / Exchange shell does to VBS scripts what scripting did to repetitive GUI tasks.
AD Users & Computers UI lets you list the mail column for each object, which displays the default (SMTP) email address for objects. You can export the list from ADUC as csv/txt. However, any additional email addresses in the proxyAddresses attribute are not exported.
There’s no GUI to list/export all email addresses. Here’s a script to do that – ListEmailAddresses.vbs.
File: ListEmailAddresses.zip
What does it exactly do?
– Queries Active Directory for Contacts & Groups
– Lists their email addresses
– Queries Users
– Lists enabled users’ email addresses
– Lists disabled users’ email addresses separately
– Outputs to command line and also to a text file – c:proxyaddresses.txt
– X.400 addresses are ignored
How do we add email addresses to Public Folders?
It should be pretty simple – If Get-Mailbox shows the emailaddresses property for a mailbox, and Set-Mailbox allows you to use the -EmailAddresses switch to add email addresses, one can’t be blamed for believing it’ll work the same way for Public Folders.
Objects other than Public Folders need to be mailbox or mail-enabled to be Exchange recipients, Public Folders do not (Yes, they are mail-enabled by default). To modify mail-related attributes of Public Folders, you use the Set-MailPublicFolder command.
To add additional email address to a (mail-enabled) Public Folder:
$PF = Get-MailPublicFolder “Sales”
$PF.EmailAddresses += “Sales-EMEA@domain.com”
$PF | Set-MailPublicFolder
The first line gets mail-related properties of Public Folder “Sales” in a variable called $PF. Next, we add the additional email address, without wiping out the existing ones. Finally, we commit the change using Set-MailPublicFolder.
If you simply use Set-MailPublicFolder “Sales” -EmailAddresses “Sales-EMEA@domain.com”, it will replace the existing values in the EmailAddresses property.
Another difference to note between how the Set-PublicFolder and Get-PublicFolder commands work, compared to Set-MailPublicFolder and Get-MailPublicFolder – the former takes a relative path of a Public Folder. For instance, to get the Sales PF if it’s in the root of the Public Folder tree, we would need to add a before the name:
Get-PublicFolder Sales
However, the Get/Set-MailPublicFolder commands work using the alias/display name of the PF. Why the difference? One way to look at it – when using Get/Set-PublicFolder, you’re working with the actual Public Folder. When using Get/Set-MailPublicFolder, you’re working with the Active Directory object created for that Public Folder (which holds mail-related attributes, making it possible for a Public Folder to be mail-enabled).
To change the primary email address of the Public Folder “Sales” from “Sales@domain.com” to the new address we just entered – “Sales-EMEA@domain.com”:
Set-MailPublicFolder “Sales” -EmailAddressPolicyEnabled $false -PrimarySmtpAddress “Sales-EMEA@domain.com”
As you may have already figured out, we exempted the Public Folder from getting EmailAddressPolicies applied. In Exchange Server 2003/2000, you could change the default email address of a recipient, without unchecking the checkbox. Result: A few minutes after you completed the change, Recipient Policies would apply and change the primary email address back.
Exchange Server 2007 doesn’t let you change the default email address without exempting the recipient from email address policies.