Xlight FTP server

Found a great FTP server daemon for Windows which supports SFTP and has some advanced functionality for authentication. It's an excellent replacement for the bog-standard IIS FTP server if you need to encrypt your data transfers or need to support authentication which is integrated with your Active Directory.

There is a free version and paid-for versions which add some of the advanced functionality.

Get it from the following link: http://www.xlightftpd.com

Sending an email via Telnet

Great easy to follow instruction from the excellent MX Toolbox site. It's sometimes useful to use Telnet to send an email as you can see what is happening during every step in real time, rather than having to wade through log files.

http://community.mxtoolbox.com/blog/2010/09/10/telnet-test-a-great-troubleshooting-tool-technique/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Mxtoolbox+(MXToolbox+Blogs+and+Forums)&utm_content=Google+UK

Powershell script to purge files

The following powershell script will allow you to delete all files in the current directory, and any subdirectories, older than 3 months old. I would suggest sticking it in a script and automating it.

gci -r *.* | ? {$_.lastwritetime -lt (get-date).addmonths(-3)} | ri

Adding DNS entries via command line

Use this little time-saver when you have a large number of DNS entries to add. You will need admin access to the DNS server.

It uses the dnscmd.exe command line tool so you can easily put it into a batch file and add many entries at once.

For example:

dnscmd servername /recordadd mydomain.com host /createptr A 192.168.0.1

The command above will add a record of 'host.mydomain.com' with an address of 192.168.0.1 into the server specified in 'servername' and it will also create the corresponding PTR (reverse-dns) entry.

dnscmd.exe can also be used for all other Windows DNS-related commands.

How to list mailboxes in an Exchange 2007 database

Get-Mailbox | Sort database, name | Format-Table name, database

PuTTY Connection Manager

Just found a fantastic add-on the the ubiquitous PuTTY application -- Putty Connection Manager. This application adds tabs to PuTTY so you no longer have multiple windows floating around your screens. Simple but effective. You can get it from http://puttycm.free.fr/cms/

Using FIND as a GREP alternative for Windows

You can use the Windows 'find' command in a similar manner to how 'grep' would work in a UNIX-based system.

Find can search through files for strings but also can have output piped to it. So for example, to list all the services containing the word 'Sophos' on a remote computer, you can use the syntax:

sc \\computername query |find "Sophos"