Archives for July, 2008
MS SQL Database Backup
A simple, yet very powerful script that will backup all of the databases on your Microsoft SQL Server to flat file for easy backup and restore. Additional features, such as limiting the number of archive files to keep and copying the latest file to a different directory, are also available.
PPTP & Routing Interesting Traffic
Today I was a client’s corporate office configuring a new Cisco PIX 506 firewall with VPN support. While the PIX supports IPSEC, we decided to use PPTP because client side configuration on Windows 2000/XP is very straight forward and rather simple for a non-technical employee to configure.
After configuring PPTP on the PIX (which is a snap), I configured and tested a Windows XP workstation using a dialup connection. While the test was a success (the tunnel was established and the secure network could be accessed), internet access failed because the PIX won’t/can’t redirect traffic that isn’t on it’s local network (Plug: the Cisco VPN Concentrator can perform this task with ease). A simple fix for this problem would appear to be to modify the Windows VPN connection and disable the use default gateway on remote network option, but now no traffic is getting though the VPN tunnel to the secure network.
Downstall Utility
Downstall - download & install - is a quick utility I wrote using AutoIT that downloads and installs a program in one step.
It’s usage is rather easy, from the command line run Downstall with three command-line options and it will do all the work: download the program and run the executable with options that you define. In addition, status of each step along the way will be outputted to a log file for examining upon failure.
Hello World (x3)
Some say that the third time is a charm, hopefully that’s the case. I guess we’ll see…