Powershell: simple script for port monitoring (SMTP, HTTP, FTP, etc) using “system.net.sockets.tcpclient” class

Recently we had a requirement to check SMTP of two diffrent servers and run a script if both servers failed. i googled around for the tool but ended up putting together this script.

Its not the most prettiest but it works, and im sure you guys will make something much better out of it.

# Define the host names here for the servers that needs to be monitored
$servers = "relay1.host.com","relay2.host.com"
# Define port number
$tcp_port = "25"

# Loop through each host to get an individual result.
ForEach($srv in $servers) {

$tcpClient = New-Object System.Net.Sockets.TCPClient
$tcpClient.Connect($srv,$tcp_port)

$connectState = $tcpClient.Connected

If($connectState -eq $true) {
Write-Host "$srv is online"
}
Else {
Write-Host "$srv is offline"
}

$tcpClient.Dispose()

}

If something is wrong or if you think there is a better way please free feel to comment and let everyone know. its all about community after all.

Update 4/18/2016 –

Updated the script with the one provided by Donald Gray – Thanks a lot : )

Exchange 2010 Mailbox PST export – New-MailboxExportRequest

Remember the Export-Mailbox command on exchange 2007??? The main problem I personally had was the annoying outlook requirement. 
With the exchange server 2010 service pack 1 release, M$ introduced a new Cmdlet to export mailboxes on the server. And it does not require outlook.
New-MailboxExportRequest

Step 01 – Mailbox Import Export Role Assignment
Grant the user account permissions to export mailboxes (By default no account has the privileges to export mailboxes)
New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role “Mailbox Import Export” -User administrator

Step 02 – Setup the Export File Location
We need a network share to export files. (Eg – \Exch01PST_export)
Note:
The Cmdlet gives an error if you point to a directory directly on the Hardisk (Eg – F:PST_export)
Create a Shared folder on a serverNAS and grant Exchange Trusted Subsystem user account read/write permissions to the folder
Exporting Mailbox Items with “New-MailboxExportRequest”

Supporting Cmdlets that can be used with MailboxExportRequest
Cmdlet
Description
Topic
Start the process of exporting a mailbox or personal archive to a .pst file. You can create more than one export request per mailbox. Each request must have a unique name.
Change export request options after the request is created or recover from a failed request.
Suspend an export request any time after the request is created but before the request reaches the status of Completed.
Resume an export request that’s suspended or failed.
Remove fully or partially completed export requests. Completed export requests aren’t automatically cleared. You must use this cmdlet to remove them.
View general information about an export request.
View detailed information about an export request.
In this example
Shared folder name-  PST_export
server name- EXCH01
Share Path –  \Exch01PST_export
Mailbox – amy.webber

Folder permissions – 

For this example we are going to use New-MailboxExportRequest cmdlet with the following parameters :

-baditemlimit 200 -AcceptLargeDataLoss
AcceptLargeDataLoss
The AcceptLargeDataLoss parameter specifies that a large amount of data loss is acceptable if the BadItemLimit is set to 51 or higher. Items are considered corrupted if the item can’t be read from the source database or can’t be written to the target database. Corrupted items won’t be available in the destination mailbox or .pst file.
baditemlimit
The BadItemLimit parameter specifies the number of bad items to skip if the request encounters corruption in the mailbox. Use 0 to not skip bad items. The valid input range for this parameter is from 0 through 2147483647. The default value is 0.
Exporting the Whole Mailbox
Run the following Cmdlet to initiate the mailbox move request:  New-MailboxExportRequest
New-MailboxExportRequest -baditemlimit 200 -AcceptLargeDataLoss -Mailbox amy.webber -FilePath \Exch01PST_exportamy.webber.pst

Exporting the User’s Online Archive
If you want to export the user’s online archive to .pst, use the –IsArchive parameter.

New-MailboxExportRequest -baditemlimit 200 -AcceptLargeDataLoss -Mailbox amy.webber  -IsArchive -FilePath \Exch01PST_exportamy.webber-Archive.pst

Exporting a Specific Folder
You can export a folder from the users mailbox using the -IncludeFolders parameter
Eg: inbox folder layout-
To export the inbox folder
New-MailboxExportRequest -baditemlimit 200 -AcceptLargeDataLoss -Mailbox amy.webber -IncludeFolders #Inbox# -FilePath \Exch01PST_exportamy.webber.pst
Checking the Progress of the Mailbox Export Request

To check the current statues of the mailbox export request use the following cmdlet:
Get-MailboxExportRequest | Get-MailboxExportRequestStatistics
People do crazy stuff scripting with this Cmdlet. Look around in the interwebs for some scripts.
Useful links:
Until next time…

Hacking WatchGuard Firebox to Run pfsense- nanoBSD


Hi Internetz, its been a while…

So we had an old Firebox X700 laying around in office gathering dust. I saw this forum post about running m0nowall on this device. since pfsense is based on m0nowall, I googled around to find a way to install pfsense on the device and found several threads on pfsense forums. 
It took me a little while to comb through thousands of posts to find a proper way to go about this. And some more time was spent on troubleshooting the issues I faced during the installation and configuration. So I’m putting everything I found on this post, to save you the time spent googling around. This should work for all the other firebox models as well.

What you need :

Hardware

  • Firebox 
  • Female to Female Serial Cable – link
  • 4GB CF Card (We can use 1Gb, 2Gb but personally I would recommend at-least 4GB)
  • CF Card Reader

Software

  • pfsense NanoBSD
  • physdiskwrite –  Download
  • TeraTerm Pro Web – Enhanced Telnet/SSH2 Client – Download

The firebox X700

This is basically a small X86 PC. we have a Intel Celeron CPU running at @1.2Ghz with 512MB Ram. The system boots using a CF card with watchguard firmware
The custom Intel motherboard used in the device does not include a VGA or a DVI port. we have to use the serial port for all the communications with the device

There are several methods to run pfsense on this device.

HDD

Install PF sense on a PC and Plug the HDD to the firebox.

This requires a bit more of a effort cause we need to change the boot order on bios. and its kinda hard to find IDE laptop HDD’s these days

CF card

This is very straight forward Method. We are basically swapping out the CF card already installed on the device and booting pfsense from it. 


In this tutorial we are using the CF card method

Installing PFsense

  • Download the relevant pfsense image


Since we are using a CF card we need to use the PFsense version built to work on embedded devices.

NanoBSD version is built specially to be used with CFcards or any other storage media’s that have limited read write life cycle

Since we are using a 4GB CF card, we are going to use the 4G image

  • Flashing the nanoBSD image to the CF card


Extract the physdiskwrite program and run the PhysGUI.exe
This software is written in German i think but operating it is not that hard

Select the CF card from the list.

Note : if you are not sure about the disk device ID. use diskpart and determine the disk ID

Load the ISO file
Right click on the Disk “Image laden > offnen”

select the ISO file from the “open file” window
program will prompt you with the following dialog box

 


Select the remove 2GB restriction and click “OK”
It will warn you about the disk being formatted (I think), click yes to start the disk flashing process. a CMD window will open and show you the progress

  • Installing the CF card on the Firebox

Once the flashing process is completed, open up the Firebox and Remove the drive cage to gain access to the installed CF Card

Remove the protective glue and replace the card with the new CF card flashed with pfsense image.

  • Booting up and configuring PFsense

since Firebox does not have any way to connect to a display or any peripheral ports. We need to use a serial connection for communicating with the device

Install “teraTerm pro web” program we downloaded earlier.

I tried using putty and many other telnet clients didn’t work properly

Open up the terminal window

Connect the firebox to the PC using the serial cable, and power it up

Select “Serial” and select the com port the device is connected to and click OK(You can check this in device manager)

  
Many other tutorials says to change the baud rates. but defaults worked just fine for me
Since we already flashed the PFsense image to the CF card we do not need to install the OS

By now on the terminal window you should be having the PF sense configuration details. just as with a normal fresh install.

It will ask you to setup VLan

Assign the WAN, LAN, OPT1 interfaces.

ON X700 interface names are as follows 

Please refer to pfsense Docs for more info on setting up 


http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tutorials#Advanced_Tutorials


After the initial config is completed. you do not need the console cable and Tera Term
you will be able to access the PFsense via the web-interface and good ol SSH via the LAN IP



Addtional configuration

  • Enabling the LCD panel

All firebox units have a LCD panel in front
We can use the pfsense LCDproc-dev package to enable and display various information

Install the LCDproc-dev Package via the package Manager

Go to Services > LCDProc

Set the settings as follows


Hope this article helped you guys.Dont forget to leave a comment with your thoughts 

Sources –

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?board=5.0

Managing calendar permissions in Exchange Server 2010

Admin may get asked to set and add / Edit permissions for shared Calendars.
these Sharing options are not available in EMC, so we have to use exchange power shell on the server to manipulate them.
View existing Calendar permissions
Get-MailboxFolderPermission -identity "Networking Calendar:Calendar"
There are 4 MailboxFolderPermission cmdlets in Exchange Server 2010:
Each cmdlet have different syntax, follow the links for more information..
In this scenario we need to set following permissions to the Calendar Resource named “Networking Calendar.

user – “Nyckie” – full permissions

all users – permissions to add events without the delete permission

  • To assign calendar permissions to new users  “Add-MailboxFolderPermission”
Add-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "Networking Calendar:Calendar" -User [email protected] -AccessRights Owner
 
  • To Change existing calendar permissions  “set-MailboxFolderPermission”
set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "Networking Calendar:Calendar" -User default -AccessRights NonEditingAuthor
 
This assigns the owner righs to the user “nyckig” for the calendar of the “Networking Calendar” resource.and sets NonEditingAuthor permissions as the default permission for the calendar for all other users
__________________________________________
Here are the other permission levels you can assign:-
None – FolderVisible
Owner – CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderOwner, FolderContact, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems
PublishingEditor – CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems
Editor – CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, EditAllItems, DeleteOwnedItems, DeleteAllItems
PublishingAuthor – CreateItems, ReadItems, CreateSubfolders, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, DeleteOwnedItems
Author – CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible, EditOwnedItems, DeleteOwnedItems NonEditingAuthor – CreateItems, ReadItems, FolderVisible
Reviewer – ReadItems, FolderVisible
Contributor – CreateItems, FolderVisible
The following roles apply specifically to calendar folders:
AvailabilityOnly – View only availability data

LimitedDetails – View availability data with subject and location

source –

technet.microsoft.com

http://blog.powershell.no/2010/09/20/managing-calendar-permissions-in-exchange-server-2010/