Install Windows Updates using PowerShell
You can use PowerShell to install Windows Updates automatically, unattended and simple. Neat, right? For this, you don't have to have an enterprise environment with WSUS, or Windows Server, but since this is Sysadmins of the North, I assume you do. In this post I'm show you how to install Windows Updates with PowerShell and the PSWindowsUpdate module.
Send email with PowerShell
Easily send your DevOps reporting by email with this PowerShell function, because the Send-MailMessage cmdlet is obsolete. Of course you'll be using StartTLS and authenticated SMTP as additional security.
Are you in my blocklist?
With just a few manual steps, you create your own little blocklist for WordPress in either a `.htaccess` or `web.config` file. Here are the IP addresses I'm currently blocking. Note, this list can get long (loooonnggg).
Create an additional SQL Server Login
Here is a small T-SQL snippet that creates such a login for contained databases in SQL Server and adds memberships.
Monitor SQL Server and databases in depth using Zabbix
Whether you run a .NET web application or administer a webserver that hosts .NET web applications, it is important to keep an eye out for memory usage. As developers and systems administrators we're all too familiar with OutOfMemoryException. As the name suggests, the exception is thrown when a .NET application runs out of memory, something you don't want to happen.
Query all WordPress posts in MySQL not having a Yoast SEO meta description
If you just started using Yoast SEO it's sometimes nice to know which posts don't have a meta description yet. Knowing this, you can add the description which is good for your SEO results. Here is a query you can use to query all posts in WordPress not having a Yoast SEO meta description yet. You can run this on your MySQL prompt or in phpMyAdmin.
Configure Windows Debugging Symbols in WinDbg
In this article I explain how to set up debugging symbols for WinDbg in Windows.
Extract files from an MSI package
To extract all files from a .msi file, use the following msiexec command and arguments.
Connect to a KVM host through an ssh tunnel and arbitrary port in Windows 11 and WSL 2
If you need to connect virt-manager to a KVM host over ssh in Windows, then Windows 11 and WSL 2 made things a whole lot easier for you. Even if you need to connect virt-manager through an ssh tunnel and arbitrary port because your network is reachable only through a bastion host with ssh key authentication. Here is how.
Windows 11/10 and WSL 2 DevOps environment
In this post I describe some of the settings and changes I made to make my Windows 10 and Ubuntu WSL into a fully fledged development environment. Here are the settings and tools I use for DevOps/SysOps on Windows.
YubiKey support in OpenSSH for Windows 11 and Windows 10
Now Win32-OpenSSH has decent support for FIDO/U2F hardware authenticators you can finally use your YubiKey for SSH authentication in Windows 11, jeej! Here is how.
How to display longer username in `ps`
Have you ever had the need to show the full username in ps output? Here is how. Normally in Bash, the ps output truncates an username to 7 characters and a \+ sign, e.g IUSR_60\+. In cases when you absolutely need the full username in ps, this can be pretty annoying. Here is how to display longer usernames in ps
Monitor .NET CLR Garbage Collected heap from your web application
Whether you run a .NET web application or administer a webserver that hosts .NET web applications, it is important to keep an eye out for memory usage. As developers and systems administrators we're all too familiar with OutOfMemoryException. As the name suggests, the exception is thrown when a .NET application runs out of memory, something you don't want to happen.
Quickly check EnableTrailerSupport isn't set in your network for http.sys (CVE-2022-21907)
Find out fast if your IIS webservers have EnableTrailerSupport enabled for https.sys in the registry
Convert SqlCe database to SQL Server
Now the SQL Server Compact (SQL CE) database type is unsupported, it's recommended by Microsoft to upgrade to SQL Server. But how do you convert your SqlCe database? I'll explain in this article, read on.