Category: HTTPS

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Exchange 2007 HTTP HTTP Redirect HTTPS Linux Outlook Web Access OWA Windows

HTTP Redirection in IIS7 on Windows Server 2008 for Exchange 2007

I spent a couple hours over the past two days trying to figure out how to redirect requests from the root of my domain to the /owa directory. To boot I wanted to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. I needed to simplify the method of connecting to Outlook Web Access – basically make it ID10T-proof. This way users don’t have to specify HTTPS or use the /owa directory. They can simply type mail.mydomain.com in their browser and voila, they are directed to the right location.

As with most things more than one way exists to skin this cat. The two most common ways I discovered (both of which have some limitations and problems) were to either use HTTP REDIRECT in IIS Manager, or to use a custom 403 error page.

The simplest and most elegant solution I found was to create a one-line default.asp file. Of course you have to have ASP installed/enabled on the server and default.asp needs to be in (preferably alone or at the top of) your default documents list.

Wait no longer – all you need in the default.asp file is:

<% Response.Redirect “https://mail.mydomain.com/owa” %>

That’s it. It’s that simple!

Now when your users access (http://)mail.mydomain.com they will magically and instantly be redirected to the secure and correct location of https://mail.mydomain.com/owa.

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CLI Command Line FTP GNU HTTP HTTPS Linux Open Source Passwords SourceForge WGET wget examples Windows

GNU WGet for Windows (Windows 7, Vista, XP, etc.)

Whether you need a quick-and-dirty way to download a file via HTTP, HTTPS or FTP; or test a web page or recursively download a whole site, WGET is a great tool for the task.

GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive commandline tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc., on both Windows- or *nix-based systems.

GNU Wget has many features to make retrieving large files or mirroring entire web or FTP sites easy, including:

  • Resume aborted downloads, using REST and RANGE
  • Use filename wild cards and recursively mirror directories
  • NLS-based message files for many different languages
  • Optionally converts absolute links in downloaded documents to relative, so that downloaded documents may link to each other locally
  • Runs on most UNIX-like operating systems as well as Microsoft Windows
  • Supports HTTP proxies
  • Supports HTTP cookies
  • Supports persistent HTTP connections
  • Unattended / background operation
  • Uses local file timestamps to determine whether documents need to be re-downloaded when mirroring
  • GNU Wget is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Wget has an extensive set of options, the full list of which can be viewed from the command line with “wget –help.”  Here are a few useful examples

Example 1 – Download the default page for given site to your current directory:

wget powercram.com

Example 2 – Recursively download the default page plus an additional level based on links from the default page:

wget -r -l 2 powercram.com

Example 3 – This will do as in example 2, additionally specifying username and password if required by site:

wget -r -l 2 --random-wait --http-user=powercram --http-password=powercram powercram.com

Example 4 – WGET can be used to recursively mirror your site, including download all the images, css and javascript, etc., and localize all of the URLS (so the site works on your local machine).  You can even save all the pages as .html files.

– To mirror your site:

wget -r http://www.powercram.com

– To mirror the site and localize all of the URLs:

wget --convert-links -r http://www.powercram.com

– To mirror the site and save the files as .html:

wget --html-extension -r http://www.powercram.com

Download WGet for Windows, install it, play with it and have some fun.

GNU wget runs on any version of Windows, including 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, Windows 7.

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