Original Configuration A dual interface pfSense install in Azure layout. Internet<= frontend subnet WAN Interface=><=Pfsense=><=LAN Interface backend subnet=>Protected LAN Package Update Causes Failure I made the mistake of doing a package upgrade on...
James McDonald
Hyper-V Manager VM State Column displays “cannot connect to virtual machine configuration storage” on first startup after reboot
TLDR; Check your disk I/O or you'll spend hours fault finding for naught The following are stream of consciousness notes of attempts to get a Hyper-V Ubuntu 25.04 VM working when the root cause was disk I/O exhaustion Weird Issues Observed A whole bunch of issues...
Very Slow Performance of Fedora 41, 42 and Ubuntu 24.04, 25.04 Guests on Hyper-V on Windows 11 Enterprise
TLDR; This turned out to be a disk I/O starvation problem. You can leave your VM at 4096MB as long as you have decent fast disk to run from. TLDR; Give your VM's 9216MB of RAM instead of the default 4096MB Just spent an hour or so trying to install F41,42 and...
Missing Microsoft 365 Desktop Apps after Applying a License in admin.microsoft.com
Problem: You apply a Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Premium license in admin.microsoft.com and the End Users Office Install is is complaining that there is no valid license available after opening the Desktop App Versions of Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook etc as...
Capture a Full Page Screenshot in Google Chrome
Full page screenshots are very useful when documenting long configuration pages (unifi, pfsense, opnsense etc), or capturing all the elements of a webpage design for future reference (for example when you want to know if an update has caused a styling change)...
Checking Inbox Rules
One thing a hacker might do to redirect email so that the Microsoft 365 email user doesn't see it is to create an inbox rule to hide, forward or delete messages. Especially from the IT Support provider Here is a power shell script to download and save the inbox rules...
Enable Bitlocker
System Drive # Enable on C: drive (edit to taste) Enable-BitLocker -MountPoint "C:" -EncryptionMethod XtsAes256 -UsedSpaceOnly -TPMProtector # Add a recovery password Add-BitLockerKeyProtector -MountPoint "C:" -RecoveryPasswordProtector Get-BitLockerVolume C: # View...
Get the OS Version from the Command Line
Correct Get-ComputerInfo outputs the correct OSName Get-ComputerInfo | Select-Object OSName,OSDisplayVersion OsName OSDisplayVersion ------ ---------------- Microsoft Windows 11 Enterprise 24H2 Using Format-List Get-ComputerInfo | fl OSName,OSDisplayVersion OsName :...
Send from an Alias – Shared Mailbox
Say you have your primary email [email protected] and an alias [email protected] If you want to send as [email protected] you need to "Configure Exchange Online to Send from Aliases" (see below) Caveats With a Shared mailbox sending from an alias only works in Outlook...
Getting the Site Switcher Button to Appear on the Unifi Network Console
The Site switcher button doesn't show up until you go to Settings => System => General Tab => Site Management and check the Multi-Site Mangement checkbox and Apply the changes (on devices that support multi-site) Multi-site is NOT supported on all Unifi Network...