WSUS Delete Obsolete Updates

NOTE: Usual warnings apply. Do a backup before making any changes. If you are unsure about anything in the post then ask or look for more information or help before attempting it.

Over time WSUS will accumulate update metadata that can create performance issues for clients. In large environments this can be quite an issue.

There is a script Microsoft often provides during Premier Support calls to cleanup this update metadata, however there are a few issues:

• The query can take a *really* long time to run if there are a lot of updates to cleanup. In some cases it can take *days*
• You need to stop all the WSUS services while it runs
• If it fails for whatever reason, it will have to start all over because it doesn’t commit the changes until it completes successfully
• While it runs, the TEMPDB and Transaction logs will grow quite significantly until the data is committed
• It gives no useful information on progress

There is a TechNet article (This is essential reading and has LOTS of important stuff) and a Forum Post where an improved version was written that gave progress of the cleanup, however it didn’t address the temp/transaction growth issues or the time issues. To this end I have applied my very rudimentary SQL scripting skills.

MSSQL user can’t connect until password change

Creating, or recreating, a SQL user account and I forgot to untick the “must change password” option. Damn.

If you try to disable the password policy options, you get a message saying “The CHECK_POLICY and CHECK_EXPIRATION options cannot be turned OFF when MUST_CHANGE is ON. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 15128)”

Rather than recreate the account, you can disable the options using a script

Source: http://www.webofwood.com/2009/01/29/fix-a-sql-server-login-which-has-must_change-set-to-on/

USE Master
GO
ALTER LOGIN [username] WITH PASSWORD = 'samepassword'
GO
ALTER LOGIN [username] WITH
      CHECK_POLICY = OFF,
      CHECK_EXPIRATION = OFF;

 

 

Microsoft Product Versions and build number reference

This will be a quick reference page for links to build numbers for versions of various products

Configuration Manager 2012

Exchange 2007-2010

Exchange 2013

SQL Server

Windows Server and Workstation – Need better reference with build numbers

SQL Data Compression and Configuration Manager = BAD

First off just to clarify, I am not a SQL guru, so on this topic I “know of” the feature but don’t really know that much about it.

We recently experienced a problem building a new Primary Site where the database replication links to the CAS failed and nothing we tried could fix the links. We resorted to completely uninstalling the site, deleting the Primary database and rebuilding the entire server OS from scratch. No matter what, the links replication just would not work.

RCMCTRL.LOG – Lot’s of these types of errors
Error: Replication group “Hardware_Inventory_4” has failed to initialize for subscribing site H01, setting link state to Error.

Error: Exception message: [ALTER TABLE SWITCH statement failed. Source and target partitions have different values for the DATA_COMPRESSION option.]

As it turns out, the SQL DBA’s had enabled a wonderful new feature in SQL2012 called Data Compression. In SQL land it probably makes sense and does wonderful things, but in ConfigMgr world it’s BAD.

MS SQL2012 install fails with SQL.CAB is corrupt installing Reporting Services

This only seems to happen when installing Reporting Services, and it’s incredibly annoying. An install of a new database (default or instance) works fine.

Install_sql_rs_Cpu64_Action : InstallFiles. Copying new files

The following error has occured:

The cabinet file ‘Sql.cab’ required for this installation is corrupted and cannot be used. This could indicate a network error, an error reading from the CD-ROM, or a problem with this package.

Click ‘Retry’ to retry the failed action, or click ‘Cancel’ to cancel this action and continue setup.

 

A search of install media etc does not find a SQL.CAB file anywhere, so I’m guessing this is either some kind of generic file that is stated in the error, or it’s a file embeded inside another cab somewhere. I’ve tried re-downloading the install DVD media in case it was corrupt but that doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

I have found various technet posts and similar that mention sql.cab corruption, and they talk about it failing when using an ISO file for a virtual DVD in a virtual machine (which I am doing), but this *has* worked at different times using a virtual disc.

Installing PHPBB forums on Windows Server 2012 and SQL 2012

My Adventures with PHPBB running on an all Microsoft platform began many years ago. Much trial and error resulted in the first forums with V2. When they released V3 there was a much improved situation with documentation and guides, but it was still a tough thing to get right. It’s a community that favours Linux/Apache/MySQL, so getting assistance for Windows/IIS/MSSQL is pretty tough.

This time around I’m starting a completely fresh install on Windows Server 2012, with IIS 8, and MSSQL 2012. I’ve been “upgrading” over the years and have completely forgotten all the tweaks I needed to make it work, so that as well as dealing with any new “features” of the latest MS software is why I’m writing this entry.

Disaster Recovery – SQL Express databases

The continuing journey in the very slow quest to restore everything.

This post is the recovery of the SQL Express database used by the Threat Management Gateway (TMG 2010) firewall. The SQL Server (ISARS) and (MSFW) instances were failing to start with an eventid:9003 message saying “The log scan number passed to log scan in database ‘master’ is not valid”

Essentially it would appear the MASTER database was corrupted, and as per the other servers the backup was also messed up. :sigh: