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Powershell•Windows•Windows Server

Powershell: Getting Inactive AD Users

September 23, 2019 by AJNI No Comments

Hey folks!

Here is a quick way to find inactive AD Users in your environment. Get-ADUser ist the cmdlet we are going to use.

We are getting all users from the highest OU (domain.com) and using the Property LastLogonDate, which will not be returned if not specified in the -Properties parameter. After that a Where statement is going to show users that haven’t logged in since 90 days or more.

Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties lastlogondate | where { $_.lastlogondate -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-90) }

We could also specify the OU where the command is going to search:

Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties lastlogondate -SearchBase “OU=TerminatedEmployees,DC=Company,DC=com”| where { $_.lastlogondate -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-90) }|select Name,Lastlogondate

There is also the -SearchScope Onelevel parameter to determine that we are not going to search recursively:

Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties lastlogondate -SearchBase “OU=TerminatedEmployees,DC=Company, DC=com” -SearchScope OneLevel | where { $_.lastlogondate -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-90) }|select Name,Lastlogondate

Have fun!

Reading time: 1 min
Citrix XenApp•Cloud Computing•Virtualization•Windows Client OS•Windows Server

Group Policies and IE Mode in Microsoft Edge Chromium

August 31, 2019 by AJNI 2 Comments

MS Edge Beta has been out for some days now and the Group Policy Templates are already available for download, which are crucial for IT Pros.

You can download them here.

How to import them in the GP Editor? Easy. You can test them on your local machine first. Just copy the files msedge.admx and msedgeupdate.admx to C:\windows\PolicyDefinitions and the language .adml files to C:\windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US.

In an Enterprise environment you normally move these files into the central group policy store, located under \\domain.com\SYSVOL\domain.com\policies\PolicyDefinitions.

After opening Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc), under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates you will see the newly imported Policies:

Now let’s specifically configure the IE Mode feature. For that we need to configure two settings. The first will configure the IE Mode and the second one lists the websites that are affected by IE Mode.

Under Microsoft Edge > Configure Internet Explorer Integration you want to select Internet Explorer Mode in order to integrate IE with the new Edge in case one of the specificied URLs is visited:

The second one is located under Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Use the Enterprise Mode IE Website List. You can use a file:///C:/local/path.xml, a \\network\path or a https://URL that hosts the XML file. I will be using a local path here.

With the MS Tool Enterprise Mode Site List Manager you can easily add or edit the site list. Just add a new URL, select the IE Mode you want to use and save it as an XML.

Now do a gpupdate /force, restart Edge and test your site. You will know that the policy has applied if you see the IE icon when you visit a site you have specified in the Enterprise Mode Site List Manager.

If you are having issues getting this to work, make sure your device has the latest Windows Updates installed, like stated in the Microsoft documentation.

Also this feature is not yet supported on Windows Server 2016 and some older versions of Windows 10.

If you have problems with MS Edge on Windows Server 2016 RDS with Citrix XenApp, you will have to exclude the process msedge.exe from Citrix hooks:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook
REG_SZ “ExcludedImageNames”
Value “msedge.exe”

Reading time: 1 min
Windows•Windows Client OS•Windows Server

Microsoft Edge Beta is available

August 22, 2019 by AJNI No Comments

Microsoft yesterday announced in their blog post that the Beta Build of their Edge Browser is generally available.

If you don’t know yet, Microsoft is replacing “old” Edge which had the EdgeHTML rendering engine with Chromium, a rendering engine Chrome also uses.

To this day, two channels were available for use: Canary and Dev. Canary updates daily and Dev weekly. The Beta channel should be a stable release containing the properly tested features and updates every 6 weeks.

Enterprise Customers can also download the Policy Files with the Administrative Templates (.admx). Some interesting settings are roaming profiles and Internet Explorer Mode. Roaming profiles make the deployment in RDS (formerly Terminal Services) environments very appealing.

Microsoft Edge can be downloaded here – you have the option to download any of the 3 different builds.

Reading time: 1 min
Citrix XenApp•Citrix Xendesktop•Cloud Computing•Virtualization•Windows•Windows Client OS•Windows Server

Quick Tip: How to properly delete local Windows User Profiles

July 1, 2019 by AJNI No Comments

Are you trying to delete a local Windows User Profile because something doesn’t behave the way it should? Here is a quick and easy tip to remember.

Deleting a user profile is very straightforward, if you know how to. Just deleting C:\Users\<username> is not enough though. In fact stranger things might occur if you just delete the user’s folder.

There are two ways of deleting a user profile:

Method 1: Advanced System Settings (Very easy)

By going into the Advanced System Settings you can delete a user profile. The user obviously has to be logged off, otherwise the “Delete” button will be greyed out.

Method 2: Regedit

Note: It is always a good idea to make a backup of your current Registry entries BEFORE making any changes. You could for example rename the registry key or “Export” it by right clicking on the key you want to backup. Sub-keys are also backed up.

There are cases where the user profile is not listed in the Advanced System Settings, but the user folder is present under C:\Users. In that case you can firstly delete the profile SID under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\

You do not have to know the user’s SID, the Key “ProfileImagePath” will help you determine the username associated with the SID.

After deleting the whole key (left side), you can also delete the user’s folder under C:\Users.

Reading time: 1 min
Linux•Virtualization

Claiming a free SSL certificate for your website

June 5, 2019 by AJNI No Comments

Today my free SSL certificate expired, so I decided I could guide you to claim yours as well.

You will generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) on your local machine (I have a Linux VM hosting my site on Apache2), send the request to www.sslforfree.com and after that download your new signed certificate.

The process of obtaining a certificate is very simple and painless, however there is a catch: these kinds of certificates usually have a validity period of 4 months. Which means you have to renew it every so often.

Like mine here:

So let’s get started.

Generating your Certificate Signing request with openssl

First of all, you will need a config file, which contains all of the certificate’s attributes. Mine is named ajni.conf. Here is the content of the config file. I have highlighted the attributes you need to adapt based on your environment.

[ REQ ]
default_bits = 2048
prompt = no
encrypt_key = no
default_md = sha256
distinguished_name = dn
req_extensions = req_ext
[ DN ]
CN = ajni.it #Common Name
emailAddress = ajnik@outlook.com
O = Non Profit #Organization
OU = Ajni #Organizational Unit
L = Meran #Locality
ST = Suedtirol #State
C = IT #Country
[ REQ_EXT ]
subjectAltName = DNS: www.ajni.it, DNS: ajni.it

Now that you have a config file, you can execute the openssl command to generate a CSR. Once again, I have marked the variables.

openssl req -new -config ajni.conf -keyout ajni_key.pem -out ajni.csr

Copy the content of your CSR (in my case ajni.csr) somewhere for later use. The string should have the following format

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST—-
dUKFAPtXm076zSFdoriy4v7p1Xa4N9nteRxkbi66bK0GqsqoeoUMprOOoOLMwzPOlvkLS0= dUKFAPtXm076zSFdoriy4v7p1Xa4N9nteRxkbi66bK0GqsqoeoUMprOOoOLMwzPOlvkLS0=
—–END CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–

Send your CSR to SSLforFree.com

Go to www.sslforfree.com, insert your domain name and hit Create Free SSL Certificate

You have 3 options to prove to SSLforFree that the domain belongs to you:

I chose to use the DNS verification (option 3). You will need to create 2 TXT records on your domain (for domain.it and for www.domain.it).

Once you have added both TXT records you can proceed to download the certificate. Select “I Have My Own CSR”, since you created one with openssl. It is, from a security standpoint, safer than letting SSLforFree create a private key for you.

Note that DNS records can take some time to replicate, so you might need to wait a few minutes before downloading the certificate.

You can verify the records at https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx.
The verify link on www.sslforfree.com didn’t always work for me.

Now copy the content of the public certificate itself and the CA Bundle (which contains the Root and Intermediate Certificate).
You will need them in order for the browser to trust your site/certificate.

Create 2 more text files, each containing the content of the 2 certificates. The files need a .pem extension:

Modify your Apache2 config file

At this point you have 3 files in total: your public certificate, your private certificate and your CA certificate. Now change the config file of your apache virtual site under /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/domain.conf or default-ssl.conf.

The relevant parameters are SSLCertificateFile, SSLCertificateKeyFile and SSLCertificateChainFile. Set the path of your files. For example, /etc/apache2/cert.pem. You might need to enable the SSL apache2 module.

The www-data user needs read permission on those files.

a2enmod ssl

Restart Apache2

Lastly, restart the apache2 service

service apache2 restart

One browser refresh and my site has already the new certificate:

If you have any questions feel free to comment down there, I will happily assist you.

Cheers!

Reading time: 2 min
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