My use case for a customer was to configure WSUS for a couple of DMZ servers. The DMZ servers are not domain-joined. So I create a PowerShell script to configure the registry so I can easily deploy the settings to the servers.
You can use this script also for non domain-joined servers
With Powershell ISE you can use CTRL + SPACE for auto completion.
Powershell ISE Completion
But when you work in a native Powershell window you don’t have this option. And many often you cycle with tab completion trough the powershell and because you press the TAB button too soon you have to remove characters and cycle again trough all the commands.
Unit now 😉
There is an easy fix you can implement so the Powershell have the same auto completion like bash.
Type notepad $profile for Windows or gedit $profile for Linux
Add the line Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function MenuComplete
Add line in $profile
Save the file and restart Powershell
And now you have a much better working tab completion
Today I update my dual boot system and unfortunately my Debian OS wasn’t booting anymore. The root cause was that Windows decide to reclaim the EFI boot.
I was working for an elementary website of a friend of mine. I pushed the website to GitHub so it’s was way easier to maintain the site.
But I thought it must be easier than transferring all the changes every time by an FTP program. So I found git-ftp and of course FTPS didn’t work out of the box 😉
Windows
What you have to do to enable GIT FTP (on Windows)
And the next time you make a change you only have to do
git ftp push
When you get an errors like these:
zo 19 dec 2021 23:11:50 CET: Retrieving last commit from sftp://******:***@s*******/public/sites/*********/.
* Trying *********:22...
* Connected to ******* (********) port 22 (#0)
* Found host ******** in /home/******/.ssh/known_hosts
* Set "ecdsa-sha2-nistp256" as SSH hostkey type
* Closing connection 0
curl: (79) Error in the SSH layer
zo 19 dec 2021 23:11:50 CET: fatal: Could not get last commit. Use 'git ftp init' for the initial push. Can't access remote 'sftp://******:***@********'. Network down? Wrong URL? exiting..
I had to check my DHCP configuration for a Dell Wyse Thin Client. But when you configure specific options like 161 and 162 you don’t see that options in a Wireshark capture during a Windows DHCP request.
I like Wireshark. But I don’t like to install software on a server for troubleshooting purposes. Especially when you need software like PCAP to sniff some network data.
But what you can do is capture data data with netsh, copy the data to your workstation, convert the data so you can read it with wireshark and do you thing.
Capture the data
Run this command to capture the data (elevated command prompt)
For me, this was a pain in the ass for a long time. When I connect to a Windows server through RDP/RDS it sometimes takes more than 2 minutes to connect to a server. Today after some waiting, and waiting and some more waiting I did a deep dive with Wireshark to figure out why it was so slow.
My setup
Azure domain joined Windows 10 device (Laptop)
Connection over a Cisco Anyconnect VPN
Remote Desktop Manager (Devolutions)
Native RDP client
MremoteNG
Remote VS local
I know for sure the issue should be in my setup. Because when I connect first to a jump host (RDP) and then connect to other domain-joined servers everything was connected almost immediately after I put in my user credentials.
What to do (TL;DR)
There are four things you have to modify to speed up the initial remote desktop connection speed:
Disable SSL / TLS1.0
Disable Netbios on the VPN network adapter
Disable automatic proxy settings in Windows
Change the credential to domain.local\admin or a[email protected] instead of domain\admin
Disable SSL / TLS1.0
No, you don’t have to negotiate what protocol you have to use to connect a server. Use TLS1.2 or I don’t want to connect with you 😉 So:
How to
Start > Run > Regedit
Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Client
If the TLS 1.0 and Client folders doesn’t exists create these keys
Create a 32 DWORD value with the name Enabled
Value data: 0 (Hex)
Restart the client
Enabled = 0
Disable Netbios on the VPN adapter
What I was seeing in my Wireshark capture is that RDP was trying to broadcast to get information over NETBIOS. You have a DNS server so you don’t need a legacy broadcast protocol! Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshot of the capture but you can always check yourself 😉
How to
Change the VPN Adapter and reboot the computer:
Disable Netbios
Disable the proxy
After connection to a server with RDP and you enter the credentials Windows is trying constantly to WPAD.domain.local to autoconfigure itself. WPAD stands for Web Proxy Auto-Discovery and I think you never want to autoconfigure a MITM ehh proxy device. You always want to have full control of your device. So, disable this to speed up the connection and make your device more secure.
Wireshark Capture WPAD A record
How to
Go to settings
Search for proxy
Switch the Automatically detect settings to Off
Restart Windows
Turn WPAD off
Change the login name
I found out that this is the most annoying and time consuming one. I always use DOMAIN\User when I connect to a server. But this is what happens:
Domain.Domain.TLD
Kerberos is doing a DNS query on _kerberos._tcp.dc._msdcs.domain.domain.tld and of course he will never can find that double domain A record. But if you change the logon name to domain.tld\admin or [email protected] Kerberos will find the A record and connects immediately 🙂
Top speed!
Kerberos
And even now it’s possible to tune the Kerberos authentication further and fix the last KRB5KDC_ERR_PREAUTH_REQUIRED error you can see in the screenshot. Maybe next time but for now I’m happy with the initial connection speed 🙂
So I configure a “configure automatic updates” policy for testing purposes but the auto-update and installation won’t work. The main cause….? Lack of patience 😉
The Windows Update Agent periodically checks the WSUS server for updates. Updates it finds, it reports state for: Installed, Not Installed, Not Applicable. If a “Not Installed” update is approved and available, the WUA queues the installation files for download if the Configure Automatic Updates policy is set to AUOption ‘3’ or ‘4’.
The download occurs via Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) subsequent to the WUA finding the update as available for download.
When the download of the update is completed, the WUA does one of two things:
If the Configure Automatic Updates policy is set to AUOption ‘4’, then the WUA will schedule the update for installation at the scheduled time. This scheduled installation does NOT require access to the WSUS server to be conducted.
If the Configure Automatic Updates policy is not set to AUOption ‘4’, then the update will be retained on the client computer until a user launches the Windows Update applet from Control Panel and initiates the installation.
So bottom line; the updates must first be downloaded on the client and ONLY then will Windows apply the “Automatically download updates and install them on the schedule specified” action
After this commands BITS will download the updates and prepare the installation. When you start Windows update you can see the available update
The default of the WSUS communication check-in (report and detect) is 22 hours. If you don’t want to wait so long you can change the “automatic updates detection frequency” to every hour (do not to this every hour on production policies!)
And now wait till the magic happens 🙂
Last but now least. When you change setting in the “configure automatic updates” policy you can trigger the client with powershell so you don’t have to reboot the client
gpupdate /force net stop wuauserv net start wuauserv (new-object -Comobject Microsoft.Update.AutoUpdate).Detectnow()
You get get more information about Windows update log with the command.
Get-WindowsUpdateLog
Happy updating!
OK… Even with all the tips. Sometimes you need rename the software distribition folder also so I present to you: The PLZ GIVE ME ******* UPDATES NOW SCRIPT!!!! (runas admin)
Sometimes you want to test a mail application without spamming the internet with your garbage. Use can user Papercut to local test your mail application.