Few times in the past when I was doing some changes on Cisco devices remotely I was a victim of myself, when wrong order of commands just disconnected me from device without ability to connect back. After few experiences of this kind I discovered magic command “reload” which can help and save the day.

So, when doing changes which can impact remote terminal connection to device it’s a good idea to initiate reload before making changes. In case something goes wrong device will reboot itself and will come back with previous configuration.

lab-r01#
lab-r01#reload in 15
Reload scheduled in 15 minutes by admin on console
Reload reason: Reload Command
Proceed with reload? [confirm]
lab-r01#
*Mar  1 03:11:11.659: %SYS-5-SCHEDULED_RELOAD: Reload requested for 03:26:09 UTC Fri Mar 1 2002 at 03:11:09 UTC Fri Mar 1 2002 by admin on console. Reload Reason: Reload Command.
lab-r01#

Once everything is configured and connectivity to device was not lost we can cancel reload process.

lab-r01#
lab-r01#reload cancel
lab-r01#

***
*** --- SHUTDOWN ABORTED ---
***

*Mar  1 03:11:19.415: %SYS-5-SCHEDULED_RELOAD_CANCELLED: Scheduled reload cancelled at 03:11:19 UTC Fri Mar 1 2002
lab-r01#

It is very helpful and can save time and rescue from trouble.

When upgrading drivers on HP TouchSmart tm2 tablet important is to keep in mind that HP Quick Launch Buttons package might disable screen auto-rotation. In order to restore that functionality remove HP Quick Launch Buttons and install older version of that package from here. Full information about package is available on HP Quick Launch Buttons web page availabel here.

Another option might be registry settings adjustment. Parameters which control screen orientation and bahevior are located under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Hewlett-Packard\HP Quick Launch Buttons\Schemes\Default\8526

There are two important parameters:
Notebook_Docked_DisplayOrientation = 0
Tablet_UnDocked_DisplayOrientation = 3

Available values for those parameters:
0 – primary landscape
1 – seconday portrait
2 – seconday landscape
3 – primary portrait

When browsing repository of all scripts I did use in past, I found one which might be interesting. What this script does is:

• Backups database to disk (name of database stored in @dbname, patch for backup stored in @archive_path, name of backup fine stored in @fname)
• Compresses database backup using WinRAR (full command where to find WinRAR and how ot use it stored in @archive_cmd)
• Generates set of commands for FTP client (series of xp_cmdshell commands redirecting output to F:\Backup\ftpcmds)
• Uploads compressed backup to FTP server using command prompt FTP client command

I had that as small procedure executed automatically with SQL Server Agent. Script is for Microsoft SQL Server and I was running it on SQL Server 2000 and 2005. Here is code for that small procedure:

DECLARE @fname varchar(255)
DECLARE @fname_backup varchar(255)
DECLARE @fname_archive varchar(255)
DECLARE @archive_path varchar(255)
DECLARE @dbname varchar(255)
DECLARE @archive_cmd varchar(255)
DECLARE @put_cmd varchar(255)

SET @dbname = 'dbApplication'
SET @fname = @dbname + '_' + LTRIM(STR(DAY(GETDATE())))  + '.' + LTRIM(STR(MONTH(GETDATE()))) + '.' + LTRIM(STR(YEAR(GETDATE())))
SET @archive_path = 'F:\Backup\'
SET @fname_backup = @archive_path + @fname + '.BAK'
SET @fname_archive = @archive_path + @fname + '.RAR'
SET @archive_cmd = '"C:\Program Files\WinRAR\WinRAR.EXE" a ' + @fname_archive + ' ' + @fname_backup
SET @put_cmd = 'echo put ' + @fname_archive + '>> F:\Backup\ftpcmds'

PRINT @fname_backup
PRINT @fname_archive

BACKUP DATABASE @dbname TO DISK = @fname_backup WITH INIT

EXEC xp_cmdshell @archive_cmd
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'echo open 192.168.10.101> F:\Backup\ftpcmds'
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'echo user dbupload>> F:\Backup\ftpcmds'
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'echo password123>> F:\Backup\ftpcmds'
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'echo cd DB_Backup>> F:\Backup\ftpcmds'
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'echo bin>> F:\Backup\ftpcmds'
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'echo ha>> F:\Backup\ftpcmds'
EXEC xp_cmdshell @put_cmd
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'echo bye>> F:\Backup\ftpcmds'
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'ftp -d -i -n -s:F:\BACKUP\ftpcmds'

I hope that will be handy for someone to automate databsae backups and transfers.

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Installation screenshots from System Center Virtual Machine manager 2012 installation. I did installation in my virtual LAB environment as part of excercise with System Center 2012.

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Quick procedure to logon or logoff phone extension to or from ShoreTel IP phone. Steps listed below will allow to bring your phone extension to phone located in remote site and then send back to home ShoreTel IP phone. Of course both phones have to be part of same ShoreTel infrastructure (have to be managed from same ShoreTel HQ server).

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During the quest about Angeline’s daughter it might be not possible even to find Aldis. It is possible that he died during attack on Solitude. In that case some easiest way is to bring Aldis to player 🙂

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Sometimes would be nice to hover over land of Skyrim and watch everything from above or even take some pictures of cities and places from sky. But how to do that?

Best way to fly around like a bird is to enable free camera moves. That will allow to freely move around and observe everything from above, like bird flying over Skyrim.

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Quick config snippet to setup external NTP server to synchronize time on Cisco IOS router.

labisr-01(config)#ip name-server 4.2.2.2
labisr-01(config)#ntp server 0.europe.pool.ntp.org
Translating "0.europe.pool.ntp.org"...domain server (4.2.2.2) [OK]
labisr-01(config)#clock timezone GMT 0
labisr-01(config)#

Once NTP server is set we can check status of it:

labisr-01#sh ntp associations
address         ref clock     st  when  poll reach  delay  offset    disp
*~88.191.227.26    82.197.188.130    3    37    64  377    38.7    2.04     1.4
* master (synced), # master (unsynced), + selected, - candidate, ~ configured
labisr-01#

labisr-01#sh ntp status
Clock is synchronized, stratum 4, reference is 88.191.227.26
nominal freq is 250.0000 Hz, actual freq is 250.0000 Hz, precision is 2**18
reference time is D442C30E.7A93ED17 (22:58:22.478 GMT Mon Nov 5 2012)
clock offset is 2.0449 msec, root delay is 71.69 msec
root dispersion is 61.25 msec, peer dispersion is 1.36 msec
labisr-01#

One thing which came handy for me was list of timezones I can use on Cisco devices. That came very useful during NTP deployment. So, here is is… timezones available for use on Cisco platform.

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