Category: Code

Update drive label with no letter

Jeff Miles Leave a comment

In the process of re-organizing naming structure of a set of Cluster Shared Volumes, I had a need to rename the volume upon an iSCSI disk that was presented to the cluster.

Originally I sourced this article which requires a drive letter associated with the volume in order to find the proper object.

Following that, I came across this article which had the syntax I needed in the last post.

Here’s the script I used successfully:

$drive = gwmi win32_volume -filter "Label = 'Old Name'"
$drive.Label = "New Name"
$drive.put()

Azure PowerShell DNS – Modify TTL

Jeff Miles Leave a comment

A brief note on modifying TTL on an Azure DNS record set. This is changed on the record set, not the record itself.

The Azure DNS PowerShell docs don’t make it explicitly clear how to do this, however using “help set-AzureRmDnsRecordSet -examples” gave me a clue on how to achieve it.

The key is the middle line here:

$rs = Get-AzureRmDnsRecordSet -Name "msoid" -RecordType CNAME -ZoneName "domain.com" -ResourceGroupName "DNS"
$rs.TTL = 3600
Set-AzureRmDnsRecordSet -RecordSet $rs

 

 

Exchange Online PowerShell access denied

Jeff Miles Leave a comment

I am attempting to test aspects of Office 365 Modern Authentication in a UAT environment prior to enabling it within our production Tenant.

Part of this work is testing the Exchange Online PowerShell access, as there is quite amount of automation configured in our environment and we want to ensure it doesn’t break. I’ve read it “shouldn’t”, but that’s a dangerous word to trust.

Until now I’ve been unable to make the PowerShell connection to Exchange Online in our UAT environment, receiving the following during my attempts:

New-PSSession : [outlook.office365.com] Connecting to remote server outlook.office365.com failed with the following error message:[ClientAccessServer=servername,BackEndServer=servername.prod.outlook.com,RequestId=e6f6b9e7-7c5e-45ec-87fe-59332db1fb95,TimeStamp=8/17/2017 3:16:52 PM] Access Denied For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.

I can use the same account to connect in-browser to http://portal.office.com, and it is set as a Global Administrator in O365, so I know that the account itself has appropriate access.

Interestingly, if I connect with the MFA-supported PowerShell method, with the same account, it connects successfully.

Through testing I’ve determined that using any on-premise account synchronized through Azure AD Connect fails with the same “Access Denied” message, while any cloud-only account connects successfully.

I began to look at our ADFS implementation in UAT since that is a key component for authenticating the on-premise user account. This environment has ADFS 2.0 on Server 2008 R2, which is different than production but shouldn’t be a barrier to connectivity (without MFA).

After comparing the O365 trust configuration and finding no issues, I decided to use the Microsoft Connectivity tool to test. Using the Office 365 Single Sign On test, I saw a failure with this error:

A certificate chain couldn't be constructed for the certificate.
Additional Details
The certificate chain has errors. Chain status = NotTimeValid.

This let me on the path to fixing expired/broken SSL certificates in our UAT ADFS, which I posted about previously here.

Now that the SSL problem is resolved, I attempted to connect to Exchange Online PowerShell again, and was successful!

Looks like this “Access Denied” message was directly related to the expired certificate of the ADFS proxy.

 

 

ADFS 2.0 renew Service Communications certificate

Jeff Miles Leave a comment

I’ve recently solved a problem with the help of Microsoft Premier Support that didn’t have any references online that I could find.

Looking at the ADFS console under Certificates, the “Service Communications” section had a message of “Certificate not found in store”.

Connecting to the certificate store showed a proper external SSL cert for our UAT ADFS DNS name. Trying the option “Set Service Communications Certificate” in ADFS produced the error:

The Certificate could not be processed.
Error message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

This error led me to this discussion on the Microsoft forums, with the following command to attempt:

Add–PsSnapin Microsoft.Adfs.PowerShell Set–AdfsCertificate –CertificateType “Service-Communications” –Thumbprint “aa bb cc dd …”

However, when I tried to run this command I repeatedly got the following error:

The type initializer for 'Microsoft.IdentityServer.Dkm.ADRepository' threw an exception. Microsoft.IdentityServer.PowerShell.Commands.SetCertificateCommand

The resolution: run PowerShell as the ADFS service account, and then use the command above to set the certificate. After this, I was able to restart the ADFS service and the console displayed the certificate properly.

I also needed to update the certificate on the ADFS proxy in IIS to get a successful result from the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer.

WordPress 403 error when saving post

Jeff Miles 1 Comment

While writing my last post, I encountered a strange error with WordPress. I had written up the majority of my post, and went to save the draft and received this error:

403 error from wordpress

I tried copying and pasting my text into a new post, and it still gave the error.

I found I could still type a few words and save a draft, so I began experimenting with the remaining text of my post that hadn’t been saved yet.

Eventually I stumbled across the word “web dot config” like this (can’t type it obviously)

 

When this was included in the body of my post, it would not save. This is a really hard item to come up with accurate search terms for, so I couldn’t find any specific references of anyone else having and solving this problem. I suspect it has something to do with the .htaccess and re-write rules configured within WordPress.