Lead, Follow, or Move

Microsoft Access Based Enumeration

Adam Bell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:37:48 +0000

Have you ever had one of those moments in IT, when you discover a tool, and a light bulb goes on inside your head, and you say to yourself “I’ve needed this for ages! This really fixes issue X”?

I’ve had that a few times (maybe I need to get out more?), and one of those times was a few years ago with a tool from Microsoft, named as only MS can: Windows Server 2003 Access Based Enumeration or ABE. I took it for granted that everyone knew about this great tool, and was using it. That was until I suggested to a client that it may help his corporate share restructering project, and he looked at me blankly. In fact the more people I’ve mentioned this to, the more blank looks I’ve got. So, if you’ve not heard of it you’re probably asking what the damned thing does?

ABE, is a very small download from Microsoft, that provides a piece of functionality everyone has been wishing for since, well NT4 in my case. Basically when you have a user connect to a shared folder, and they are browsing within that folder structure, if they don’t have permission to a folder/file then they just don’t see it. Gone are the previous issues of getting access denied messages, followed by helpdesk calls to clarify if they should be allowed in to Folder Y. Great huh?

As part of installing ABEUI.msiyou have the following options:

Configuration choice during installation

Post installation changes can be made through CLI using abecmd.exe or through a tab on the share’s property dialog:

Options for configuration ABE on the Property sheet of the share folder

Acess Based Enumeration requires Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1. It’s not required on Windows Server 2008, because the behaviour is already included, but is not configurable. Finally

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit - Video Walkthrough

Adam Bell — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:20:23 +0000

There’s a pretty good video walk through available on Technet by Microsoft’s Richard Smith.

It runs for 30 mins, and provides a very good example of setting up a simple lite touch install in MDT. Well worth a look if you’re new to this tool!

It’s alive …

Adam Bell — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:10:09 +0000

Yes, despite something of a hiatus, there is still life here

The move back to Australia, organising work, home and everything else associated with relocating 15,000 miles (again) caused more interruption than I originally imagined.

Now that everything is settled, and back to relative normality, you can expect to start seeing more activity from this small niche of the blogsphere.

Quick Tip: enabling a LAMP server on Ubuntu “desktop” 8.04

Adam Bell — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:55:45 +0000

Something useful I noticed today is that you can install MySQL, PHP, and Apache onto the Ubuntu “desktop” easily with the following:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

Found in the Ubuntu Community Documentation.

A quick way to get a development environment up nice and quick!

Weekly Poll #5

Adam Bell — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:12:37 +0000

This weeks poll is about 3rd party applications for PowerShell.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you feel I’ve omitted someone please drop me a comment. For details check the PowerShell Toolbox

Weekly Poll #4

Adam Bell — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:45:43 +0000

So due to an unfortunate hardware situation we missed last weeks Poll, but It’s been resolved now, and so here’s Poll #4:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Here’s the detailed breakdown of the features in the 2.0 CTP

Weekly Poll #3

Adam Bell — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:43:19 +0000

A little late this week, but here it is.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you feel I’ve missed any significant options please leave a comment. There’s becoming quite a tower of power, but I tried to keep the list reasonably short.

PowerGUI PowerPack Tutorial

Adam Bell — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:07:49 +0000

I have just finished watching a really good tutorial on how to create PowerPacks in PowerGUI.

This gives you a great insight into what can be done with PowerGUI and has given me a few ideas of my own

Well done Kirk, and thanks to Dmitry for pointing it out!

Weekly Poll #2

Adam Bell — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:32:46 +0000

This weeks Weekly Poll is now up.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you’d like to suggest a poll please email me with Weekly Poll in the subject line.

Weekly Poll

Adam Bell — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:26:31 +0000

I know there hasn’t been much new content recently, but there has been work going on behind the scenes. I’ve sorted through all the posts and organised the Categories and Tag’s a lot better, and I’ve added some more useful plugins.

I still need to revisit the code samples page, but I hope to have that sorted soon.

One new idea, that I’d like to try out is to run a Weekly Poll. I’ll try and run a new poll every Monday, and I’d like the Poll to be driven by you guys. Email me your Poll with Weekly Poll in the subject line by Sunday each week.

For the first Poll, I’ve picked something that will let me shape my content better for you.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Go here to vote, or see the right sidebar on the website.