Paul Brown's Blog

Adding a Mailbox Server Role to Exchange 2010: “Database is mandatory on UserMailbox”

// December 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Microsoft, Technology

I came across an interesting error while adding a Mailbox Server to my Exchange Server 2010 environment the other day. The error was pretty clear-cut, and the solution was also pretty simple, but very non-intuitive, so I thought I’d explain how to fix it here. To give full credit, I got my answer from this dialog on the Microsoft TechNET forums, and the fellow with the username Nair.SS helped my solve the problem. It turns out another individual was having exactly the same problem, and he got his issue solved as well. Many thanks to Nair.SS.

The Error

The error message is pictured in this screenshot, and I’ve included the text in the caption:

Error Message when trying to add a mailbox server to Exchange Server 2010.

Here’s the text from that error dialog box.

The following error was generated when “$error.Clear(); if ( ($server -eq $null) -and ($RoleIsDatacenter -ne $true) ) { Update-RmsSharedIdentity -ServerName $RoleNetBIOSName }” was run: “Database is mandatory on UserMailbox. Property Name: Database”.

Database is mandatory on UserMailbox. Property Name: Database

One important detail to include here is that I had two mailbox servers installed in this environment and I was unable to gracefully uninstall them. Thus I had to delete them out of Active Directory using ADSI Edit. I’m pretty sure this is what caused the problem.

The Fix

One of the mailboxes had incorrect settings in Active Directory, so I used ADSI Edit to edit that user.

I connected to the Domain well known Naming Context in my root domain and found the user named CN=FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042. I’m not sure if all those numbers will be the same for everyone, but you can just find the FederatedEmail user. The homeMDB property was blank, so I inserted the CN value of an existing database into the value field, formatted as such:

CN=db1,CN=Databases,CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT),CN=Administrative Groups,CN=GTRI,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=gtri,DC=test

After inserting the database value in the homeMDB field

I went to install the additional mailbox role, and it installed without any problems. There was one other blog post found here that noted the particular error posted above, but the solution offered was different than mine. This error might have multiple solutions, but that post’s proposed solution did not work for me.

If you have anything to add, please leave it in the comments. Hope this helps!

Halloween 2009 – Cylon Jackolantern

// November 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Fun, Technology

Historically I am not much into participating in Halloween festivities, mainly because I can never come up with a great idea for a costume. Maybe next year that will change. This year, however, I did come across a site in my Google Reader (I don’t remember which blog was the original source) that included a video blog from MAKE Magazine about making a cylon jackolantern.

Here’s the original MAKE video post about it:

There’s a link on that page to Evil Mad Scientist Labs where they sell a basic Larson Scanner kit in their store, and that is the one I used in my jackolantern. Next year I might order the parts separately and take an even more DIY approach (perhaps even etching my own circuit board). This basic kit was a fun little project and it let me exercise some soldering skills. Take a look at how my final product turned out below.

And see him in action! This video is probably a bit too long, but it’s only 20 seconds and I didn’t feel like editing it.

Brizzly – a fresh new way to use Twitter

// September 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology

It seems like Twitter is all the talk around the tech news bubble these days. You can’t listen to an episode of Buzz Out Loud or This Week in Tech (my two favorite technology podcasts) without at least one mention of this little social network that was more or less launched at the 2006 South By Southwest (SWSX) festival in Austin.

On the surface, twitter seems kind of dumb. I explain it to friends as being like FaceBook, but only with the status update feature. That’s about it, except people have built services on top of twitter that make it incredibly more useful than simply status updates. I won’t go into all of those services here, but I have been beta testing one particularly useful way to interact with twitter, and that service is called Brizzly, created by the folks at thinglabs.

Brizzly main page

General Interface

I’ve been testing Brizzly for almost two weeks now, and I’ve found that it just makes twitter easier to use. There aren’t a lot of features to talk about, but they are well-implemented. The general interface is simple and well thought out. Posts appear in the center of the screen, and the sides contain navigation/filtering links and trending topics. On the left, you can choose to see your entire timeline or just your @replies or DM’s, and you can create custom searches. A blue dot appears next to any item that has new messages. This is particularly useful for custom searches, as there is no need to use search.twitter.com any more! (there is also a search bar across the top of the Brizzly page, which is convenient). The trending topics are nice to have, and you can see an explanation of any topic by clicking it.

A nice touch to these sidebar items is that they are stationary as you scroll down the page. Another nice feature is that when you get to the bottom of the timeline that is currently visible, the page automatically appends the next set of tweets, just like Google Reader does (funny thing, since two of the lead developers, Jason Shellen and Chris Wetherell, came from the Reader team).

Also worth noting is that when you receive a Direct Message, a window appears above the trending topics with the message, and you can basically treat it like a chat window and respond to the message or close the window. And finally, regarding the general interface, it is nice that an asterisk is prepended to the site’s title when there are new messages (like GMail’s number of unread messages in its title). This means you don’t have to keep refreshing the page to see if something new is there.

Embedded Pictures/Videos and Unshortened URL’s

One killer feature is the in-line embedding of images and videos from TwitPic, Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo, among others. This allows users to never have to leave the site to see pictures/videos that are posted using the most popular image and video hosting providers.

Example of embedded images and videos

While embedded pictures and videos has always been a feature, yesterday the Brizzly team added an image uploading feature into the service. As announced on TechCrunch, the images are hosted on the Amazon servers (that also host the Brizzly application), and they are given a http://brizzly.com/pic/*** link. This is a nice feature, but I think this might not be as universally friendly with the rest of the 140-character twitter world because of the longer links.

Brizzly also expands URLs that have been created with any of the more-than-enough URL shorteners out there. For example, if someone posts a bit.ly link to twitter, I will see the original link, not the bit.ly link. This is really handy for security reasons, so I at least know what domain name I’m headed to when i click the link. Aside from security reasons, it’s just kind of nice to see real links instead of shortened links all over the place.

Conclusion

Like I said, I’ve been using Brizzly for almost two weeks, and I love it. There are some minor bugs, but this thing is still in beta, so that’s perfectly fine with me. The one bug I have noticed the most is when Brizzly thinks I have new posts to the timeline, and I click refresh only to find no new updates. I’ve seen this happen on most browsers on both Windows and Mac.

Overall, Brizzly makes it much easier to use twitter, and I’m looking forward to the Brizzly team rolling out new features as they come out of beta. If you use twitter, head on over to www.brizzly.com and sign up for an invite. It took about three weeks for me to get my invite after signing up.

Review: CLEAR WiMax in Atlanta

// July 6th, 2009 // 39 Comments » // Technology

A lot of people complain about their Comcast service in Atlanta, but I can say I have been 99% satisfied with my Comcast cable internet service for the past three years. They give me 18+ Mbps down and 5-6 Mbps up regularly, and I’ve only had two or three very short outages.

As good as Comcast is, though, the new WiMax service from CLEAR just might win me over. I missed their demo day in Atlantic Station, but after hearing about it, I went on a twitter search to hunt down a trial of CLEAR’s service. I was able to get my hands on some WiMax equipment for only a short 48 hour test period over an already-busy weekend, but I was able to get some data points.

Background:

Before I share my results, though, a little bit about CLEAR WiMax. Basically they offer a viable alternative to your home internet, and they also offer a mobile option. There are a couple of options you can order from CLEAR. As the salesman told me, though (and I agree with him 100%), there is only one option: Unlimited Home and Mobile for $55/month. There are other ever-so-slightly cheaper plans that place caps on your data, or that only offer one of the two services. For $55/month, you get a fixed residential modem, plus you get a USB dongle that gives you internet pretty much anywhere in Metro Atlanta. See their local coverage map for Atlanta here.

Boxes

Mobile USB modem

Fixed residential modem

Back of the residential modem

With the Home and Mobile option, you get an advertised 6Mbps down and 500 Kbps up connection. This varies where you live, of course, since the WiMax towers are placed in various spots throughout Atlanta.

My Results:

When I received my trial package, the first thing I did was to pop it into a laptop running Windows XP just to get some quick speed tests.

First speed test

Since speedtests can sometimes be deceptive, I used a ~118 MB file to test upload and download speeds via FTP. These tests showed a consistent download speed of ~430 KB/s and an upload speed of ~58 KB/s. I did not notice any bandwidth throttling through the entire file transfer, a painfully obvious characteristic seen when uploading from a Comcast connection.

Download summary

Upload summary

All of these numbers are from the mobile USB device on a Windows XP laptop. One peculiarity I found was that speedtest.net detected my network being in the Seattle/Portland area, which I believe is where the CLEAR WiMax main hub is located. When I selected the Atlanta server on speedtest.net, I got the following results:

Speedtest with Atlanta server selected

I’m not sure what that means, but I didn’t have much time to play with different settings to notice any difference.

Another oddity I discovered in all of my testing was that I was able to get noticeably faster speeds out of the mobile USB device than the fixed residential modem. While the mobile device would get an average 4.5 Mbps, the residential modem would get close to 3.5 Mbps. This is still not bad, it’s just something I thought was odd. I was still able to watch high-def streams of the Daily Show from Hulu (as high-def as Hulu gets, anyway) through both the mobile and the residential connections. Pulling multiple streams through the residential modem might slow things down a bit, though.

Installation for both mobile and residential modems was a breeze. You just run a quick installer for the USB device and when you plug the device in, all you have to do is open the CLEAR Connection Manager and click connect. The only drawbacks to using the mobile modem is that the software is not Windows 7 compatible, and even worse, it is not Mac compatible.

Mobile USB modem with USB elbow

The residential modem installation was even easier. I plugged the modem into the wall, then connected the ethernet cord from the modem into my AirPort Extreme wireless router. This was simply a matter of swapping my Comcast cable modem for the WiMax residential modem.

I also had the chance to test this while riding in a car up to the Duluth area. I was getting very similar download/upload speeds while traveling at 70+ mph, and it only dropped out once around spaghetti junction (+/- a mile or two).

Pros:

• Super Easy Setup

• Decent download/upload speeds

• Affordable

• Flexibility of having fast internet access throughout metro Atlanta

Cons:

• Not Windows 7 or Mac compatible

• Speeds not near as fast as cable internet (this is only a negative if you actually need super-fast internet, which most people don’t)

• Unattractive and awkward USB dongle

Final Thoughts:

I think that CLEAR WiMax is a perfectly viable alternative to other broadband services. It’s not as fast as my Comcast connection, but I don’t necessarily need 18+ Mbps. It is definitely faster than any BellSouth DSL connection I’ve ever touched. It is cheaper than my Comcast service (because I don’t have cable tv), and in addition to being cheaper, I get two connections – a fixed modem for my apartment and a totally separate mobile USB modem. The only reason I am not switching right now is because the USB modem is not Mac compatible, since my primary computer is my MacBook Pro.

I recommend anyone in Atlanta to try out this service (to make sure it works at your residence and in locations where you would roam). You can get a 2-day trial by contacting William Higgins (find a short video about CLEAR WiMax and his contact info at www.wimaxatl.com). He’s a sharp guy and will answer any questions you have about the service.

UPDATE (9/15/09): If you sign up for Clear WiMax service, please use my referral code, n49dt2. Thanks!

UPDATE (12/17/09): I was just informed that the Clear referral program was discontinued as of December 5th. If anything changes, I’ll post another update here. Thanks to everything who used my referral code!

Ravensburger 3000 piece puzzle

// June 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I generally keep a pretty busy schedule, but lately I’ve had more free time, and I moved into an apartment almost a year ago, so I have more space to work. So I decided to take the plunge and buy a 3000 piece puzzle. I was rooming with a German guy in the summer of 2003, and since we were enjoying a lot of puzzles with the kids at the local church day camp, he introduced me to the Ravensburger brand of puzzles. From then until now, I had only seen their puzzles in local board game shops or on their website, but I knew they made one of the biggest puzzles in the world, at 18000 pieces, and I knew that the build quality of their puzzles is among the best out there.

A 1,000 piece puzzle is pretty normal for everyday puzzlers, so I wanted something more substantial than that, but I also knew I wasn’t going to come close to the 18000 piece one. I have a thing for maps (I even have a world map shower curtain), so I figured this 3000 piece one would be a good puzzle to break me in.

When I would tell people I was working on a 3000 piece puzzle, they would look at me like I was crazy. After a quick google search on Ravensburger puzzles, though, I think I have found some people way more crazy than I thought I’d find. This site is about a couple who probably assembled the 18000 piece Ravensburger before almost anyone else. Reading the comments on that page show that there are some dedicated people out there. One person spent ~$1900 getting the puzzle and then framing it! I also discovered there is a 24000 piece puzzle called the LIFE: The Great Challenge. There is a family who documented themselves putting this puzzle together, and I think I may use their technique to frame my tiny 3000 piece one.

On several occasions I had groups of people help me put my puzzle together when we’d have movie nights at my apartment, but I probably did about 60% of it myself. I received the puzzle in the mail on 3/16/09 and finished it on 6/4/09. It is still taking up a good chunk of the kitchen table, but at least I have a table I can eat at now. Here’s a visual timeline of the puzzling. For the next puzzle I do I think I will hang a camera above the table and make a time-lapse video of the process.

Microsoft’s Office Communications Server Is Broken

// June 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Microsoft

At my day job, I primarily deal with Microsoft products, and of those, my main project is implementing Office Communications Server. I had rolled out a stripped down version of OCS 2007 back around Christmas, and in February Microsoft released OCS 2007 R2. The difference between the two versions is not worth going into here, but they did change some substantial infrastructure elements with the upgrade.

As I was installing the 2007 version, I wanted to gouge my eyes out repeatedly, as the process to get the servers installed was painful to say the least. I was hoping they would fix at least some of this with the 2007 R2 release, but no, it is still just as painful. To sum up most of the frustration, I will say that the installer looks like an easy step-by-step walk-through, but there was a theme that kept recurring as I experienced this installation. You have to run different sub-steps of the installer from different servers under different usernames (Active Directory domain admins, schema admins, local administrators, etc.), and the error messages hardly gave a clue.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with too many details, but I did come across two particular screenshots that I thought were funny. In true This Is Broken taste (which has moved to Good Experience since I was actively following it), here are two screenshots that show that OCS is written sloppily, and is simply “broken”.

There is plenty more I could write about with regard to this product, but I thought those two pictures summed it up pretty well.

Microsoft Exchange 2007 Setup Error

// February 12th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Microsoft

I don’t plan on putting many posts about Microsoft products up here (who am I kidding, I have enough trouble posting anything), but I ran across this problem at work the other day and since it was a silly problem that wasted a few hours of my time, I thought I’d share it with you.

Basically, I am installing Exchange 2007 from scratch in a test environment on a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine. Our domain controllers are all running Windows Server 2003, so we are running at a Window Server 2003 domain functional level. After having used the 32-bit evaluation version of Exchange 2007 to prep the schema, prep Active Directory, and prep the domains (the 64-bit version is required in production environments, and for domains with Server 2003 DC’s, you have to use the 32-bit evaluation version for all the prep steps), I ran the Install Exchange step of the Exchanger installer application. Here’s the resulting error I received from the installer:

For the sake of Googlability (yes, that is a word), I will type out the error in plain text here.

Error:
Setup needs to contact the Active Directory schema master but this computer is not in the same Active Directory domain as the schema master (DC=abc,DC=org).

Error:
Setup encountered a problem while validating the state of Active Directory: Exchange organization-level objects have not been created, and setup cannot create them because the local computer is not in the same domain and site as the schema master. Run setup with the /prepareAD parameter on a computer in the domain gtri and site Default-First-Site-Name, and wait for replication to complete.

Well, this error didn’t help solve the problem at all, because the local computer was definitely in the same domain and site as the schema master. We eventually traced the problem back to the fact that I had used the 32-bit RTM version of Exchange to prep the schema, AD, and domains, instead of the 32-bit SP1 version of Exchange. I went back and reran the prep steps and the Exchange installation step went off without a hitch.

So, lesson learned: When installing Exchange 2007 SP1 on a Windows Server 2008 machine (or any machine) and you have to prep the schema, Active Directory, and domains with the 32-bit version of Exchange 2007 because your DC’s are 32-bit, make sure you are using the SP1 version of Exchange 2007 32-bit and not your old non-SP1 version you have sitting around.

Lights in the Sky

// November 30th, 2008 // No Comments » // Music

If you know me at all, you would probably assume I am not a Nine Inch Nails fan. If you had asked me a year ago if I liked NIN, I would’ve told you I was not a fan. A few things happened in recent months that have drawn me toward the creative genius that is Trent Reznor. Throughout the existence of NIN, Reznor has always been openly against the recording industry, doing things such as holding studio time under pseudonyms as to not draw attention from the recording industry. In early 2008, NIN released their latest album, The Slip, for free on the internet.

The Slip album cover

This is where I come into the story. The Slip’s free distribution caught the attention of the tech industry, with several of my favorite podcasts, including c|net’s Buzz Out Loud and Leo Laporte’s This Week In Tech. After hearing about it from these shows, I decided to download the album and see what it was like, knowing I wasn’t particularly interested in Nine Inch Nails’ music. As it turns out, this album sounded very different from the typical NIN songs you typical hear on the radio. Many songs do not have any lyrics and have an ambient feel to them, which I enjoy as background music.

In addition to downloading this album and becoming slightly interested, I also saw that Ken Wilson, over atwww.avclub.us was making his way down to the Atlanta showing of the Lights in the Sky tour, and he posted some videos of the show on his vimeo page. This is where I discovered that when Trent Reznor puts on a concert, he really provides a full immersive multimedia experience, not just a band playing loud rock music.

I decided I wanted to see this show, but since I missed the Atlanta date, I checked out the tour dates and found that one of the shows was going to be in my hometown, Greenville, SC, at the BI-LO Center. My friend Simon and I headed up to the show, and I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know what Trent Reznor looked like, and I had only heard a small portion of NIN’s music.

I won’t go on with all the mundane details, but it was a mind-blowing experience. There were three LED walls on stage (the front two being the kind that you can see through when no video is being transmitted), each could be lifted into the air, and there were several walls of movable lights as well. The video walls were interactive to both the music and to Trent’s movement on stage. For instance, in one song, the band was enclosed in the front two video walls, both showing a rainstorm, and when Trent stepped close to the front wall, it would reveal him as he moved around. At other times in the concert, there would be a bump map moving to the beat of the synthesizers, all the while blended in with a live video feed of Trent’s face with a microphone as he sang.

I’ve posted some videos that I shot below, but check out the other links as well.

The making of Nine Inch Nails’ Lights in the Sky set: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53S5wTWBz_c

NIN’s website to let you remix multi-track NIN songs and listen to other folks’ remixes:http://www.remix.nin.com

NIN’s YouTube video page: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ninofficial

My videos and pictures:

Discipline

mvi_5361

mvi_5364

NIN – The Greater Good

NIN

Atlanta Gas Shortage of 2008

// September 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Car

Well, folks, I’ve been wanting to start blogging for a while now. The main reason I chose to hold off is because I didn’t think I had much to write about, but lately I have more frequently had experiences that I thought would be blog-worthy. And if I start posting, maybe this thing will take a certain direction. In the meantime, consider this blog a stream of consciousness from my brain.

Today I had my first true experience with gas shortages. I understand there was a gas shortage back in 1973 (see this page), but I have never experienced one of these in my lifetime.

I haven’t filled up my gas tank in 12 days (yes, I walk to work), but it was getting low, so I set out this morning to investigate the situation. I found about 15 gas stations without gas and 1 with gas. The one with gas was a Marathon station, and I didn’t feel like waiting in line for gas.

Later that day I decided I should suck it up and just go wait in line, so I drove back to Marathon and waited in this line that was wrapping around Northside Drive into 10th St. Here’s a news guy filming the occasion:

The wait was only about 10 minutes, but when I finally got to the pump, I saw this:

Since I drive a BMW, I was a little concerned about putting this Octane Booster junk in my gas tank, but after calling a car-savvy friend, I went ahead and got the booster, which was in a scary hot orange bottle:

This ended up adding about 30 cents per gallon of gas, so it wasn’t quite the price gouge I thought it was going to be. My car seems to have been driving okay since I put this jet fuel in my gas tank.