Author: Tom

I'm a Senior System Admin for a large multinational company, currently focusing on Windows Server Administration & VMware Virtualisation.

CISCO IP Phone Reset Codes

In order to perform a factory reset of a phone if the password is set, complete these steps:

  1. Unplug the power cable from the phone, and then plug in the cable again.The phone begins its power up cycle.
  2. Immediately press and hold # and while the Headset, Mute, and Speaker buttons begin to flash in sequence, release #.The Headset, Mute, and Speaker buttons flash in sequence in order to indicate that the phone waits for you to enter the key sequence for the reset.
  3. Press 123456789*0# within 60 seconds after the Headset, Mute, and Speaker buttons begin to flash.

SQL Extract from WSUS Database

Today i had a customer come to me and ask if i could easily gather and provide any data on the versions of BIOS firmware running around their network. After looking in to the best way to achieve this i found that WSUS automatically gathers this information when any client machines check in, however there is no export function within the WSUS console to gather this data into a usable format.

As the data is there we can get to it directly using SQL Management Studio or SQLCMD  (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53591)

Simply install either of the above tools and connect to the SQL Database hosting WSUS this will either be on a SQL server or hosted locally on WID and run the following script

use SUSDB

select distinct ComputerModel,BiosVersion,FullDomainName

from tbComputerTargetDetail td, tbComputerTarget t

where t.target_id = td.target_id

 

Exchange Powershell Mailbox Search

Recently i had to delete some emails from a few user mailboxes. Now i had the choice i could either log in to each mailbox and delete the emails manually or use the Exchange Management Shell. Now i had in excess of 100 mailboxes to process so i chose to use the exchange shell to remove the emails

The syntax for the exchange management shell is as follows:

Search-Mailbox -Identity “username or alias” -SearchQuery ‘Subject:” Your query “‘ -DeleteContent

This is good for one mailbox however this is still Powershell so i can pipe the output of Get-Mailbox as follows to check and delete from every mailbox

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery ‘Subject:”Your query”‘ –DeleteContent

As a additional note you can use the following additional syntax to make copies of the mail found by the search

-TargetMailbox “Search Mailbox Name” -TargetFolder “Your Target folder”

 

 

BIND Configure DNS to return the same IP Address for all hostnames

So today I’ve been asked to provide a POC for a 3CX Phone System installation at a small site of 5-10 users. As part of this installation i was asked if i could re-use some old CISCO 7941 IP Phones. These phones are only partially supported by the 3CX system and required some DNS trickery to get there NTP working as the client no longer had a CISCO support contact to download the correct firmware files.

Continue reading BIND Configure DNS to return the same IP Address for all hostnames