IPv6 support for WSL2! 🥳
Ok, this one is huge: Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 now has native support for IPv6! Almost exactly a year ago I asked about when we’d get IPv6 support in WSL2 on Twitter X, and now we have it.
Windows SID to username and vice versa
Sometimes you need to convert a Windows SID (security identifier) to an username, or vice versa (username to SID). In this post I show you a couple of methods to translate the one into the other using VBScript and PowerShell.
…Get SQL database backup details with PowerShell
Learn how to query the .bak file for header information. Whenever I need to restore an SQL Server .bak backup file, I want to know some properties of the backup file to make sure I’m working with the correct file(s). Luckily, the .bak file and PowerShell provide all the information I need, so I don’t have to start a Restore procedure in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) just to view the header information. As you know, SSMS is slow…
…Get IIS Current Connections using PowerShell
Do you want to know how to get the current number of connections to IIS hosted websites? The information is stored in Windows Server Performance Counters, and you can get it using Get-Counter cmdlet in PowerShell of course. But in post I’ll show you a different -and perhaps even faster- method using WMI/CIM and Win32_PerfRawData_W3SVC_WebService. Read on…
Install SSL/TLS certificates in Windows Server using PowerShell
The following PowerShell snippet can be used to quickly install an SSL (or TLS) certificate in Windows Server. It assumes you have a PFX file and its password. The default location is Cert:\LocalMachine\My, to use for IIS websites.
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Tune Windows Server TCP/IP and IIS
When you have set up your ASP.NET / .NET or PHP configuration for high performing websites in Windows Server, it sometimes becomes important to reconfigure Windows Server’s TCP/IP stack and IIS too. You may have to increase network throughput and performance, or you just might run out of available ports / sockets (aka port exhaustion). And, as you know, fast page loads are more and more important nowadays for seach engine optimization (SEO) and user experience. Therefore we’ll dive into tuning IIS and TCP/IP stack for high performance websites and high volume of web requests a bit.
…Install Windows Updates using PowerShell
You can use PowerShell to install Windows Updates automatically, unattended and simple. Neat, right? For this, you don’t have to have an enterprise environment with WSUS, or Windows Server, but since this is Sysadmins of the North, I assume you do. In this post I’m going to show you how to install Windows Updates with PowerShell and the PSWindowsUpdate module.
…Send email with PowerShell
Easily send your DevOps reporting by email with this PowerShell function, because the Send-MailMessage cmdlet is obsolete. Of course you’ll be using StartTLS and authenticated SMTP as additional security.
…Are you in my blocklist?
Recently, Jeff Starr wrote about blocking IP addresses posting random string comment spam. That post reminded me about my own older post about blocking WordPress comment spammers manually. With just a few manual steps, you create your own little blocklist for WordPress in either a .htaccess or web.config file. Here are the IP addresses I’m currently blocking. Note, this list can get long (loooonnggg).
Create an additional SQL Server Login
Sometimes you need to create an additional SQL Server Login (user) for your database (databases). Here is a small T-SQL snippet that creates such a login for contained databases in SQL Server and adds memberships.
…Monitor SQL Server and databases in depth using Zabbix
SQL Server performance monitoring in Zabbix: Keeping your SQL Server and databases in top shape is key for a good performing SQL Server database server and its databases. A good performing server makes happy customers, and that’s what puts bread on the plank, right? In this post I’ll show you how you can use Windows Performance counters, PowerShell and Zabbix for in depth monitoring of your SQL Server server and SQL databases.
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Query all WordPress posts in MySQL not having a Yoast SEO meta description
If you just started using Yoast SEO it’s sometimes nice to know which posts don’t have a meta description yet. Knowing this, you can add the description which is good for your SEO results. Here is a query you can use to query all posts in WordPress not having a Yoast SEO meta description yet. You can run this on your MySQL prompt or in phpMyAdmin.
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Configure Windows Debugging Symbols in WinDbg
Before you can properly debug crash and memory dumps in Windows (Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows Server), you need to install WinDbg -Windows Debugger- and its debugging symbols. In this article I explain how to set up these debugging symbols for WinDbg in Windows.
…Extract files from an MSI package
Windows has the ability to allow the MSI package (.msi file) contents to be extracted using the command line or via a script. I keep forgetting the correct msiexec syntax to use to extract files from an .msi file (MSI package), so here is a short post with the command.
…Connect to a KVM host through an ssh tunnel and arbitrary port in Windows 11 and WSL 2
If you need to connect virt-manager to a KVM host over ssh in Windows, then Windows 11 and WSL 2 made things a whole lot easier for you. Even if you need to connect virt-manager through an ssh tunnel and arbitrary port because your network is reachable only through a bastion host with ssh key authentication. Here is how.
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