Essential Open Source Tools For Windows Admins

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese provides a list of 15 open source tools for enhancing your Windows server-side experience. 'You might imagine that the best place to go for improving your Microsoft server-side experience is to the mothership itself. In many cases, you would be right. But the truth is there are a meaningful number of open source tools that go above and beyond what Microsoft has to offer in support of Windows Server, Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint. Many of these alternatives provide — for free — more powerful capabilities than what you'd get with third-party retail products.'"

Comments

Easy

[aglider]

Linux

Re:Easy

[spongman]

Yes! With one simple install you can make your whole infrastructure; the code your engineers spent so much time writing and maintaining; the third-party software you bought; your support contacts; in fact your whole business - stop.

Highly recommended!

(or was your comment a joke, in the not-funny sense?)

Re:Easy

[uvajed_ekil]

Yes! With one simple install you can make your whole infrastructure; the code your engineers spent so much time writing and maintaining; the third-party software you bought; your support contacts; in fact your whole business - stop.

Highly recommended!(or was your comment a joke, in the not-funny sense?)

Wait, is this the joke? That you think Linux is a joke? Maybe the engineers spend way too much writing and maintaining code in your company, and maybe Windows is the problem? Having bought expensive, broken third-party software is no reason to be a slave to it forever. Transitions take some work, which can pay off dramitcally from both a maintenance and cost perspective. There are alternatives that work, you know. But admitting that, and advocating something that you have no experience with or knowledge about, should put your own job at risk. So I understand your reluctance, though it could be characterized as willful ignorance.

Re:Easy

[MSesow]

Fantasy Football is D&D for people who would never be caught dead playing D&D. Along the same lines, Fanboy-ism is rooting for the home team for people who never follow sports. And of course, obl. xkcd relating to this. If you can't see the humor and truth in this as it relates to both of the parents, maybe you should relax a bit.

Re:Easy

[said213]

"Or are you suggesting they throw away all their desktops, their hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars in windows software, and pay a giant team of developers to rewrite all that from scratch just so....they can what? Say they are leet?"

This.

"you are incredibly naive about what these machines actually do or you are a total zealot who would be happy to torpedo a company..."

Neither. With such knowledge, one can appreciate how and where resources are wasted. It's less a question of "what these machines do" than it is a question of what these machines *cannot* do... and the list of "cannot do" is vastly greater in reference to MS powered servers than the list of "cannot *yet* do" is in reference to the capabilities of a *NIX system. One is controlled by artificial limitations, the other is limited by artificial controls.

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Spongman means that you can't and shouldn't replace an entire existing system just because you want to.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Easy

[Dog-Cow]

Windows will happily run whatever software you care to write. You are an unreasonable and unreasoning fucktard.

There is not a single product, free or otherwise, that does what AD does, or even half as well.

Re:Easy

[said213]

Thanks for the name-calling... Always a suitable substitute for a qualified response!

AD is the dumbed-down whore which has replaced systems administrators with wizards.
Are you a wizard?

Re:Easy

[Culture20]

There is not a single product, free or otherwise, that does what AD does, or even half as well.

*single* is the key word. You could cobble together a system with openldap, puppet/cfengine, some rsync over ssh and other scripts, but there is no single product. Of course, single products aren't the unix way, so there shouldn't be an expectation of a single product. It's like saying there's no single product, free or otherwise that does what windows' "net" does. Well, no %@$! "net" is almost like busybox, except without the good reason for cramming everything into one binary.

Re:Easy

[pnutjam]

I manage Windows all day, every day. I deploy Windows workstations, push software (to windows), scan for viruses, store files on the local subnet, and troubleshoot the network, and manage my Windows Servers with my trusty Linux "servers" I have under the desk next to mine and at any other key network locations. I can provide a backup server, router, local file share, firewall, or network tap with a retired PC and Linux.

Linux is an essential tool for any competent Windows Admin.

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

So wait.

You suggest then that we should over-complicate things, relying on multiple software packages and bullshit to cobble together what I already have in a single solution?

With all due respect, you can go back to the dark days of computing where you needed some asshole in a basement somewhere basked in the green light of the terminal screen(s) so that anything would even remotely fucking function.

Me? I'll spend my time in AD wizards and other such nicities that walk me through the trivial unimportant bullshit so I can focus my fucking efforts on making the IT and Business intelligence systems work better and more efficiently for the benefit of my corporate overlords.

Tell me halfwit...who brings more value to the company? The asshole sitting there spending 8 hours a day keeping the duct tape and piano wire together, or the guy using the tools to actually improve the bottom line?

No wonder Linux is just a fucking embedded system & web servers out there. It is fucking useless for anything else per the words of the asshats above - those being the "ambassadors" for your "product". "No, we don't have AD, but if you combine these 17 technologies and employ a team of 3 people to keep the scripts from fucking up we can do something that's almost as good."

Fuck what a joke. Go back to your mom's basement & leave the thinking to those of us in the real world thankyouverymuch. Fuck what asshatery. Douche.

Re:Easy

[hairyfeet]

So let me see if I have this straight, You are ADVOCATING throwing away a working turnkey solution for a "solution" that consists of a half a dozen programs, none of which are design to go together or are even by the same teams, will take a hell of a lot more work, and is at risk of breaking any second when one of those separate teams puts out an important update that hoses the rest, and you are saying you're NOT a zealot?

People you realize this kind of crazy loony tune bullshit makes you ALL look like nutballs, yes? that the reason Linux has the rep of the OS for crazy basement dwellers is EXACTLY because of what guys like you post, right? You mod down anyone who doesn't drink the koolaid, and when they point out something your OS can NOT DO, you say "sure it can" and then bring out the most backwards ass halfbaked solution that nobody with a functioning brain would EVER use in a fortune 500 company!

If you want to sell your product you have to have sane arguments folks. You can't go foaming at the mouth that Bill Gates is secretly running the Illuminati, and you sure as hell aren't gonna sell your product by saying a bunch of half assed products that aren't even designed by the same teams or guaranteed to work together equals a drop in turnkey solution. This kind of BS just makes you all look like zealots, and hurts the cause more than a thousand MSFT "Get the facts" campaigns because it smacks so badly of religious bullshit. Why didn't you just write "Free as in freedom, fight teh powerz!" while you were at it?

Re:Easy

[crafty.munchkin]

Feel free to tell that to my former employers, who seem to think they are going to save thousands by moving away from linux to an all Windows environment... I'm just watching the train-wreck leave the station from a safe distance :)

Re:Easy

[gmack]

Actually the backend Unix stuff is not as fragile as you might think. Most of it is designed to be combined with other tools and even the tools that aren't defined by either Posix or the SUS tends to be slow to change and the writers are very paranoid about changing even command ling arguments. It is only the desktop related stuff that sees a high rate of churn.

Having said that, There are several Linux based Exchange replacements as and a Google search just showed me a couple for GPO and Sharepoint but Samba 4 is supposed to include the ability to work as an Active Directory server (will be interesting when it's out of beta).

Re:Easy

[hairyfeet]

Well when samba 4 comes out it should be tested and vetted and see if it is a possible replacement. But surely as a reasonable person you can't honestly expect to sell a corporation 'Hey get rid of your working turnkey solution, for this thing that should be out in a year or so. In the mean time here's this bunch of programs not written for each other, not even written by the same teams, and has NO guarantees that a major update for one won't break everything else. Have fun!"?

It is just amazing to me how religious zealotry seems to blind even the most common sense! I actually had a Linux zealot the other day stand their and bold faced argue that making anything easier is simply appealing to morons and when i pointed out that if one were to take that to its logical conclusion, that we should all have to go back to time sharing on a PDP11 and carrying our programs on punch cards, since pretty much every single advance since then has been in one way, shape, or form, designed to make things easier? I got told I'm a shill and M$ Ninja!

I swear it is like the PETA mess we saw here the other day. it seems like all the sane people went to Solaris and BSD and all that is left in the community is the batshit that consider the OS a religion instead of a tool and think CLI is some sort of deity to be worshipped. I simply use the best tool for the jobs, which for me is Windows on the desktop, FOSS in the embedded space. But to hear the zealots talk if I don't spend all my days in a bash shell I'm a cross between a moron and Satan.

Re:Easy

[gmack]

As I said: "will be interesting when it's out of beta". I make a good living on Linux and am not about to play games with client money.

You can't just lump all Linux users/advocates into a single group. There are several kinds of Linux user:
1. The tech. Makes money off Linux and prefers the command line when it makes life easier but would rather not touch it for things that require constant change such as setting a Wireless access point.
2: The newbie: Someone who installed Linux because they heard it was cool or because they bought some laptop that came with Vista but with borked drivers with no drivers available for XP(I've seriously seen this). This user will never EVER touch the command line and exists entirely on the default options while adding new software with Synaptic.
3. The tinkerer:These guys love the command line and like experimenting in general.
4: The 3133T: Likes the Linux because using something hard makes him feel superior to the masses. These guys annoy the techs to no end and risk turning the newbies off of Linux entirely. The annoying thing is that they don't mind that they turn people off Linux because it makes them feel even more superior. Next time you meet one just nudge them in the direction of something harder like one of the BSDs. The rest of us will thank you.

#1 tool

[h4rr4r]

Cygwin is the first thing every windows server needs installed.

Re:#1 tool

[Stavr0]

Agree, but I prefer http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ -- less powerful but plays nicer with Windows native APIs

Re:#1 tool

[toadlife]

I created an MSI with all of those goodies and pushed it to every server and workstation.

Re:#1 tool

[Verunks]

actually cygwin is quite useless on a server, it's only useful if you need to execute bash scripts and you don't really want to write bash scripts on linux either, better use something like python
as for the article some of the tools seems quite "meh", they also put nmap two times since zenmap is included in the nmap installer for windows
also they didn't mention managepc (http://managepc.net/) it can read pretty much any wmi info from other windows computers without the need to install any client

Re:#1 tool

[jsnipy]

needs more sysinternals

Re:#1 tool

[Guidii]

Mod parent up. Sysinternals/Winternals are wonderful tools that every Windows geek should know about.

Re:#1 tool

[hairyfeet]

Question:....why? I mean I can see it if you are a Linux admin just moonlighting on a WinServer as a favor or something, but if you are the administration full time on WinServer wouldn't it be smarter to stick with the native Powershell? What advantages does Cygwin give over Powershell? Do Cygwin scripts run natively across the network like Powershell scripts do?

Having never used Cygwin I'm curious to see what advantage that you think it gives an admin over Powershell. Because it seems like with .NET being everywhere that it would make more sense to just stick with what you already have deployed, am I missing something?

Re:#1 tool

[Eponymous Coward]

A lot of times it boils down to familiarity and convenience, especially in a place that has a mix of Unixy and Windows servers. I don't think Powershell is missing anything except the ability to run bash scripts.

Re:#1 tool

[Handbasket Passenger]

Seems that this post is referring to non-MS tools... since MS acquired Sysinternals, it goes to reason they wouldn't include it. A little post-article mention of Sysinternals and other very useful free/cheap tools from MS would have been appreciated (I.E. Windebug, SOS) if you're reading this, Mr. Bruzzese

Re:#1 tool

[X0563511]

Oh yea, all those other goodies you can install are totally useless. You'd never want SSH on windows, or (just about anything else available on Linux).

Re:#1 tool

[X0563511]

I think you're confusing the cygwin bash shell with what cygwin.dll lets you do - compile linux stuff to run on windows mostly transparently.

Re:#1 tool

[SanityInAnarchy]

PuTTY is a better SSH client, at least on Windows, than Cygwin's SSH.

Re:#1 tool

[X0563511]

I was talking about the server. PuTTY is a client (and a very good one I will agree)

Re:#1 tool

[mickwd]

Perhaps you should try Cygwin's mintty

From that page: "Mintty is based on code from PuTTY 0.60 by Simon Tatham and team. The program icon comes from KDE's Konsole. Mintty ties directly into Cygwin and leaves out PuTTY's networking functionality, which is provided by Cygwin's openssh and inetutils packages instead. A number of PuTTY issues have been addressed."

They really should make it Cygwin's default terminal, if they haven't already.

Re:#1 tool

[eht]

Agreed, I gave up on Cygwin because it crashes too often for my taste and when it crashes in one Cygwin app, it crashes for all Cygwin apps at the same time, so that long script you have running in the background just hosed itself because you just wanted to run a quick little thing.

Re:#1 tool

[SCHecklerX]

I have these installed to run from a usb drive. Even have a full activestate perl implementation working with zsh shebang and everything :-)

Re:#1 tool

[sgt scrub]

Ironically, now that Microsoft purchased sysinternals, it is not listed.

Re:#1 tool

[David Gerard]

Cygwin and its sshd. Being able to ssh into Windows boxes is essential.

Cygwin is also just the thing if you're using Nagios - you can write bash scripts to use as plugins.

Re:#1 tool

[h4rr4r]

SSH server, bash, a scripting language that will be around in another 10 years when MS gets bored of PowerShell and decides to replace it with something else so they can make all the windows admins get their certs again.

What you are missing is .NET will again be replaced by some other flavor of the week. I want something that will just work. Plus powershells object crap is too much clutter for getting things done fast.

Re:#1 tool

[Billly Gates]

Also in Unix everything is a text file. Not true on Windows which defeats the purpose. What is there to awk, sed and grep? Event log files? Thay are in XML and there is a seperate program anyway.

PowerShell is more powerful for Windows and you can pipe objects which is what Windows uses instead and it has access to .NET.

Re:#1 tool

[Matheus]

Yeah.. parents parent clearly has no idea what Cygwin is all about.

Cygwin IS the first thing we install on ANY Windows host we manage. SSH being essential but the power you have once that infrastructure is in place is fantastic.

Our biggest difficulty being the remote deployment of Cygwin to our hosts that are otherwise dropped from image. Being that each has to be seeded host-specific post-deploy we must use Windows RPC tools to get in the door and all of them have certain issues and are not readily maintained. (Eg. I developed a nice lil JavaSE app to process all of the remote executions via exec and all of the commands that ran just fine when on the command line had different symptoms when run via Java-Exec. My end solution actually had to use 3 different remote execute programs to get Cygwin installed and SSHD up and running... after that we're golden)

Re:#1 tool

[Kalriath]

I don't see why being able to SSH into Windows machines is essential at all. If you're that obsessed with only having a command line, Windows comes with a perfectly tolerable Telnet server. But other than that, you have Remote Desktop, which is far superior. SSH is not needed.

Re:#1 tool

[David Gerard]

The situation I'm thinking of is a largely Unix infrastructure with a few Windows boxes. It worked for us.

Re:#1 tool

[Macka]

Last update for those unixutils tools was 8 years ago. I hope there are no nasty security bugs lurking in there or you've just compromised your entire estate.

Re:#1 tool

[Blue23]

I don't see why being able to SSH into Windows machines is essential at all. If you're that obsessed with only having a command line, Windows comes with a perfectly tolerable Telnet server. But other than that, you have Remote Desktop, which is far superior. SSH is not needed.

You want to personally log into the box and bandwidth isn't an issue, feel free to use remote desktop. And be sure that whatever youre doign have a very limited audience, since you can only have a few (two?) active at once. It's a nice tool.

You want to automate, ssh beats writing Expect scripts for telnet. And doesn't send passwords (and the session) in cleartext. Any halfway competend administrator (and every sniffer and rootkit out there) can get cleartext.

You want to transfer information, scp (secure copy, part of ssh) is encrypted. See above.

Dogmatic like for one tool just because it's a good tool doesn't do anyoen any good. Telnet has it's place (though hopefully not anywhere that wants security), and remote desktop is great tool for a very limited number of users who need a GUI session. Don't let that blind you to other tools that can solve other needs, like automation and encryption.

BTW, this isn't windows bashing. I use remote desktop, and powershell is quite nice and I want to become more fluent. It's bashing because you don't use a tool thinking the tool isn't good for others.

Indeed

[Sduic]

"Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 15: VirtualBox" -- TFA

Re:Indeed

[PCM2]

I don't have a need to run a lot of servers, but I do really like the VMware Workstation product for software testing and Linux-based development on a Windows workstation. I'm aware that VMware provides a lot of tools that are practically essential for datacenter virtualization. That said, when the Windows 8 Developer Preview shipped, I was surprised to learn that it wouldn't run on VMware -- only VirtualBox. For all VMware's strengths, VirtualBox seems to do a better job of its core function: virtualization. I'd hardly compare that to the difference between GIMP and Photoshop.

My Picks

[jamesgamble]

7-Zip, Notepad++, TrueCrypt, UltraVNC

Re:My Picks

[magamiako1]

If you run a business with Windows you should be using Windows 7 Enterprise for any nominal amount of computers. Once you move to Enterprise, you can use Bitlocker, which has FIPS-validated AES256 encryption, integrated into Active Directory, and you have recovery agents available.

Re:My Picks

[camperdave]

I'll ++ your Notepad++ pick. When massaging a bunch of filenames, the vertical column edit mode is helpful, as is the regex search/replace feature. Plus it is extensible via plugins and macros.

Re:My Picks

[afidel]

Add Putty, and if you do a lot with AD the joeware tools aren't open source but they are gratis and extremely useful.

Re:My Picks

[xenocide2]

"FIPS-validated AES256 encryption, integrated into Active Directory"

What does that mean? Your sysadmin can decrypt your bitlocker?

Re:My Picks

[Sigma 7]

Your sysadmin can decrypt your bitlocker?

Yes.

Remember that it's an enterprise deployment of BitLocker. This differs from a personal deployment, where the company may sometimes need access to an encrypted computer if the person originally using it was hit by a bus.

Re:My Picks

[BattleApple]

I started using UltraEdit in '99 (which has those features) and became a loyal fan, until it go too expensive for upgrades. At the time it was the only editor I could find that could deal with the large files I needed to edit. I use gvim on windows almost exclusively now. I still use UltraEdit once in a while for the column edit mode, I still haven't found a good way to do what I want in gvim. I'll probably try Notepad++ for that now.

Re:My Picks

[UnknownSoldier]

I _used_ to _love_ Notepad++, but it _sucks_ for customization

- Can't put each file type with its OWN background color, font, and font size
- Can't bind SHIFT+ for cursor movement
- The font size list is HARD-CODED, TWICE in the source code. i.e. You can't chose a 6 pt font without hacking the source.

Re:My Picks

[Coren22]

Or fired....
Or forgets his password...

No AD Stuffs?

[Caratted]

This site is crucial to not being driven insane by the default AD management tools (we use 2008 R2), and getting more hardware with my budget.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not all of these tools are that useful...

[magamiako1]

Tools I agree with:
-Wireshark
-NMAP

Tools I disagree with:
-UltraDefrag: Windows Vista and Windows 7 include built-in, very capable, automatic defragmentation tools

Everything else is on a situational basis and depends largely on your environment. If you've got a massively virtualized system, Virtualbox is not necessary.

Re:Not all of these tools are that useful...

[_0xd0ad]

Can anybody give a brief summary of the differences between UltraDefrag, Defraggler, and the native defrag utility in Windows 7? The only difference I'm aware of is that the native utility only defragments entire drives, whereas the other two can defragment a single file or folder.

Re:Not all of these tools are that useful...

[X0563511]

MyDefrag beats them all. Does sorting and other optimizations, and calls the built-in Windows defragmentation API to do the actual work. Scriptable as well.

Re:Not all of these tools are that useful...

[_0xd0ad]

MyDefrag doesn't support boot-time defrag.

I really don't like the name either.

Re:Not all of these tools are that useful...

[magamiako1]

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/01/25/disk-defragmentation-background-and-engineering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx

While I don't have a summary on the other defrag tools, Microsoft has a very good write-up on defragmentation with Windows 7, I suggest it as a good read.

Re:Not all of these tools are that useful...

[Runaway1956]

Something that Window's defrag tools never seem to do, is to defrag the metadata, and the swap file. I've found that the metafile defrag has been overhyped by some vendors, but that data can be fragmented all over the disk. It's nice to defrag it into only a few pieces, rather than hundreds. Performance does improve. The swap file? I can defrag that, manually, by deleting the swap file, reboot, then create a new, static swap file. I can't believe the number of people who allow Windows to manage that file, only to have it broken up into dozens of bits and pieces! Seek times measured in seconds just suck!

So - Windows defrag leaves something to be desired.

Re:Not all of these tools are that useful...

[Billly Gates]

Defragler has a tendency to report 10% fragmentation when the built in one in Windows 7 says 0% fragmented. I hit defrag and it doesn't do anything. Weird

UltraDefrag (fail)

[Manip]

This list is fairly poor, but I just wanted to draw negative attention to UltraDefrag and all third party defrag programs. A lot of people use third party solutions but very few actually know why they are using them, except for claims like "they are better!" The truth is that defragging a hard drive is a fairly simple process that is hard to get wrong, you literally just re-organise chunks together into blocks. Windows Defrag gets it right, and to be honest you cannot improve on just getting it right, so why do third party solutions need to offer an alternative? The best they could accomplish is matching the Windows Defragger, and the worst is that they could do a poorer job...

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[hedwards]

Probably because we have better things to do than to hit defrag whenever the fragmentation hits 15% or so and that the built in defrag can't defrag files that are in use at the time. A lot of the 3rd party utilties will allow you to have them run automatically every week or two so that you don't have to pay attention to that. Additionally, some of the 3rd party utilities use the same algorithms that the official defragger uses to accomplish the task.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[leathered]

I've always liked O&O Defrag, with lots of options available to arrange files on the disk in the way you want. To be honest though I can't remember the last time I've even felt the need to defrag a production server. It seems that the performance penalty for fragmentation has become more or less irrelevent with today's systems.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[SJHillman]

The defrag tools built into XP and earlier were utter crap. When they worked, they worked... but they were extremely prone to crashes, hangs and took forever. This is what gave rise to the belief that you need a separate defrag program. Fortunately, all that got fixed with Vista/ Win7, but most people are stuck on their third party defragger or don't know it got fixed.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[gallondr00nk]

This list is fairly poor, but I just wanted to draw negative attention to UltraDefrag and all third party defrag programs. A lot of people use third party solutions but very few actually know why they are using them, except for claims like "they are better!" The truth is that defragging a hard drive is a fairly simple process that is hard to get wrong, you literally just re-organise chunks together into blocks. Windows Defrag gets it right, and to be honest you cannot improve on just getting it right.

Traditionally, Windows defrag tools will defrag the data but won't reorganize it by doing things like putting system files at the start of a partition and everything else afterwards. On Windows 2000 and XP, the Windows tool was actually a basic version of Diskeeper which MS had licensed, that didn't have the functionality for organising the disk. Your data may not be fragmented, but you still end up with large seek times because the system files are all over the partition.

If you want my recommendation, Jkdefrag is a great third party tool.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[magamiako1]

Yes, free space consolidation is a part of the Vista and 7 defragmenter.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[magamiako1]

Windows 7 and Vista automatically defragment without user interaction.

Bonus points is the 7 defragmenter will disable itself on SSDs automatically as well.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[QuantumRiff]

Depending on the size of your file system blocks.. if you use a server with Shadow Copy enabled, and run a defrag, you will lose all of your "previous versions" as it sees every file touched as an update, and basically overwrites the previous versions buffer. I think (but not sure) you need 16k clusters or bigger to prevent that. I run Defrag manually, only when really needed on my file servers, because otherwise users can't retrieve backups themselves, and I have to get them from tape.. (ie, I do it after a major deadline is done)

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[dave562]

Diskeeper defrags on the fly.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[hedwards]

They finally added that with 7? I'll have to look into that. I've only been using it for a couple months.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[_0xd0ad]

My Win7 computer came preconfigured to defrag on Wednesdays at 01:00, IIRC.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[X0563511]

Does it intelligently put files commonly accessed together together on the disk, leave space for frequently changing files to expand/contract, etc?

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[Amouth]

you are correct that your clusters have to be 16k or larger..

my question is why haven't you taken the time to back up, reformat to 16k clusters, and restore.. do it once and you don't have to worry about defrag and shadow copies running into problems.. i'm sure it's a lot less work then having to go get backups from tape, and scheduling defrag around major deadlines rather than need.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[afidel]

Yeah, and it can do more than is available through the API's that other third party tools use. Diskeeper is from the guys that made the builtin defrag program that is included with Windows.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[jthill]

MyDefrag works _great_. It creates "zones" and you can define them yourself if you want. Plain defrag helps a little, but my stepdaughter's computer gets very, very slow after a few months and plain defrag wouldn't fix it, not even the space-consolidating kind. Most people would think that's probably malware (she's one of the ones who can't really distinguish the monitor from the computer), but mydefrag did amazing things for Orbiter's startup time so I figured what the hell. mydefrag completely fixes it, it runs like new. The tool doesn't just defrag, it gathers (and sorts, if you want) related files so cold-cache startup time for every app plummets. In fact, it seems to markedly improve responsiveness even after they're warmed up, I'm stumped for why. I put the really huge files and the deadweight at the end of the disk so very few seeks have to span them and they never have to move, songs and such in a separate swamp, there's no reason to sort them in any particular order. Caches and temp files and logs in another unordered swamp, files accessed during startup in another, the rest of the apps' files all gathered and alphabetized

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[GameboyRMH]

Also the built-in defrag will use up all your RAM until it is full if you have no swap file. Had this happen on a Win7 system with 12GB RAM.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[QuantumRiff]

Well, Where i was working.. each office had around 300GB of data on their fileshare, mostly stuff for local office needs. Most offices were connected with a bonded T1 line. We would have had to either ship a large USB drive to each local office, and walk a bean-counter through plugging it into the server, or backup/restore over a dual T1, that was also carrying other traffic. It was decided since all servers were on a 4 year rotation to just deploy new ones with the cluster size increase.. Also, the older servers couldn't hold the files when they were re-formatted to 16k sectors.. basically, every small text and csv and xls file would be a minimum of 16k, and would have shot some directories through the roof, filling the disk on the older servers..

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[Amouth]

well there - answered my question, sorry I've heard a lot of people complain about defrag & VSS messing with each other, rather than take a logical sane look at the problem and plan a solution, in your case you did.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[Culture20]

Only if you leave your computer on overnight on a Wednesday. Yet another reason to enforce an always-on power policy.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail)

[magamiako1]

It will defrag whenever there's idle time to do it, it does not have to be on a Wednesday night.

ClamWin Seriously?

[Riceballsan]

I can't really say much from experience with most of these, but clamwin? I am always in favor of open source when it is on the same league as paid software, but in this particular case... you are just asking for trouble if you cut this corner.

Re:ClamWin Seriously?

[phantomfive]

Really? Do you consider Symantec to be that much better? What experience have you had? In my experience all virus protection is somewhat haphazard.

Re:ClamWin Seriously?

[GameboyRMH]

Yeah the ClamWin virus DB is woefully inadequate. Which is really too bad, because if it didn't suck then MoonSecure might be worth using.

I would add

[phantomfive]

I would add Metasploit to the list, that is if you have any kind of custom website (most companies do). It would suck to have your user accounts or personal data spread all across the internet.

VERY Cool: I'm part of 1 of them... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html

(Pretty cool!)

* It's a very good defragmentation program, which is WHY I tried to help out their dev. team w/ this suggestion after seeing others complain of CPU usage & what-not in their forums...

APK

P.S.=> Process Priority Control is credited to me there (after I gave the authors some easily ported Borland Delphi + Windows API calls code (the REAL "active ingredient" was in API calls), in order to port it into C for UltraDefrag -> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2993462&group_id=199532&atid=969873 which is VERY easy to do for an experienced developer): "Will wonders NEVER cease..."...

... apk

Amanda backup ineligible?

[Stavr0]

There doesn't seem to be any Amanda servers for Windows, only clients.

Netmon

[Gitcho]

While I truly love wireshark, if we're talking microsoft server admin, you might want to think about Microsoft Network Monitor (current ver == 3.4). It does most of what wireshark does but pairs packet streams to windows processes. If you're on an enterprise premier support call with Microsoft, they'll only accept a pcap from netmon.

Re:Netmon

[atamido]

Netmon actually does a pretty good job of dividing traffic up into different processes, which really speeds up narrowing down your capture to just the important bits. Wireshark will divine more information from your capture natively, and I frankly just like its interface more. That said, they are pretty similar with one important difference, Wireshark has to install some third party driver to support captures while Netmon installs a small Microsoft supported driver that is likely to be updated via Microsoft Updates. That means that we have no problem installing Netmon to be available on our Windows Server images. So in the end, we just use Netmon.

Lose the Borg Face

[drkich]

I know haters will hate and Slashdotters love to hate Microsoft, but honestly, what the hell does open source tools have to do with the Borg Face?

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[Bob-taro]

I know haters will hate and Slashdotters love to hate Microsoft, but honestly, what the hell does open source tools have to do with the Borg Face?

That sounds like something the Borg would say.

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[camperdave]

Hover your mouse pointer over the borg face and your question will be answered. Since this is a story about tools for Microsoft servers, it was tagged with the Microsoft icon.

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[Jeng]

The Borg face has to do with windows, that is a borgified Bill Gates.

It's due for a replacement.

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[lonelytrail]

Seriously?
There are MANY open source tools for windows and some of them are really good for the 'doze sysadmin.
Just because it's open source, doesn't mean the tool is required to ONLY run on Linux, does it?

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[Hal_Porter]

They should have some pictures of him doing charitable work with the Gates Foundation.

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[Bob-taro]

No, nothing so extreme in the other direction either. How about, oh say putting up a non-troll image that represents Windows. Say the four color window icon.

Have you seen the windows topic icon? It's not much better.

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[GameboyRMH]

I think we should transfer the Borg gear to a Tim Cook face for the Apple icon. I've been saying this for a couple of years now.

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[Genda]

There was a time that the borg face was well earned. Microsoft at one time had a reputation for dirty deeds done cheap (a lot of behind the scenes Machiavellian manipulations and orchestrations designed to kill off competitors, real and perceived.) Bill had a reputation for being ruthless, and Microsoft had a penchant for partnering with other companies duplicating their core technology then burying them.

I applaud Bill for getting religion and looking to polish up his karma, being a humanitarian beats being a corporate hit man. That said, M$ is nowhere near the threat they use to be. They have solid competition on every front, and though Windows 8 may finally get them in the budding phone and tablet market, its going to be a long tough slog, and I wouldn't hold my breath. If I was going to put a borg face on anyone these days it would be Larry Ellison. Talk about assimilation and an ego with its own zip code.

I kinda like this image of Steve Balmer for the new Microsoft logo. Perhaps with little dark shades doing the Ray Charles/Stevie Wonder head tilt. Or better yet, a paper captains hat. Something rowdy without being too mean spirited.

Re:Lose the Borg Face

[phayes]

No. The borg face is not a stupid joke as you are trying to depict it but a mark of contempt that /. bestowed on Microsoft back when it thought that it could use it's monopolies to trample others into the dust at will. The collective memory of people on /. does not forgive past attempts on MS's part to deprive us of our livelihood easily and the continued use of the borgface is a sign of that. Those that call it childish miss the point.

Defrag in general (fail)

[Viol8]

If Windows had a decent file system defragmenters would be a thing of the past. Windows is the only (supposedly) serious server side OS that requires them. I've yet to have to defrag my 1999 vintage linux file server.

Re:Defrag in general (fail)

[X0563511]

That's funny, because I've had to use "e2fsck -D" before to reduce an obscenely slow pile of files to usability. To be fair, that there was such a huge pile of files to begin with was the fault of someone being a tool.

That said, having to use it is quite rare.

mRemote NG

[leathered]

If you hate having multiple RDP, SSH, Telnet etc windows all over your desktop you should look at mRemote NG.

ClamWin is garbage

[ArchieBunker]

It might be ok for checking a suspicious file or two but scanning an entire drive would take days. Its THAT slow, seriously.

Re:ClamWin is garbage

[b0bby]

most other commercial antivirus software, which may scan a drive much faster, but also significantly slows down *everything* at *all* times.

I'll just give a shout out here for ESET NOD32 - it stays out of the way, and consistently gets good marks in comparison tests. I have no complaints.

SysInternals

[Anonymous Coward]

SysInternals - The best toolset for Windows. It is pity that the it's author was hired be the evil MS....

Re:SysInternals

[Culture20]

SysInternals - The best toolset for Windows. It is pity that the it's author was hired be the evil MS....

I'm happy he was hired. I didn't fully trust sysinternals until it was offered for download from Microsoft's website. And, Mark supposedly learned a couple tricks to make his pstools work better after he was hired.

Untrue: Defrag API has MANY options... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

IN fact, even when you look @ other defraggers (commercial ones) like PerfectDisk &/or Diskeeper (if not O&O) for example?

There are MANY variations on the defrag strategy programmatically!

So, what you're stating here:

"Windows Defrag gets it right, and to be honest you cannot improve on just getting it right, so why do third party solutions need to offer an alternative? The best they could accomplish is matching the Windows Defragger" - by Manip (656104) on Monday September 19, @11:58AM (#37443118)

Isn't true...

* Additionally, defraggers offer individual file defrags, placements & rejections of defrag of certain files, & much more, that Windows' std. defrag does not (inclusive of a drivemap which Win7/Server2k8 no longer offer, but older models did).

APK

P.S.=> I also spoke to their dev. team personally in forums/email etc. in regards to it also, & had a "small part" in the programs' "evolution", via ProcessPriority control API usage in code -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2435272&cid=37443252 , so I know what these guys went thru and how they did some of the work in it, as well as what options were chosen (such as boottime defrag being another in addition to CPU usage/scheduling priority control, etc./et al)...

... apk

Re:Better check your engineers ...

[jsnipy]

the answer to your question is "write to standards"

Re:GPL Email Server with a GUI

[Dr_Barnowl]

Management sayeth - "But we can't use a GPL email server.... we'll have to release all our emails under GPL!!!!!"

*humorous trolling ends here*

Yahoo!

[uvajed_ekil]

I install Yahoo! toolbar for Internet Explorer before anything, its teh shit.

Re:Yahoo!

[Billly Gates]

"I install Yahoo! toolbar for Internet Explorer before anything, its teh shit."

Also browse the internet with IE 6, before any security updates are installed, and without any anti virus protection for security tools and possible trojans on the mission critical server too when you are done with Yahoo Toolbar.

PDM

[phrostie]

Any recommendations for a CAD PDM?

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[mewsenews]

clamwin antivirus is devastatingly inferior to microsoft security essentials. google "clamwin userinit.exe" to read about clamwin's false positives leaving computers inoperable back in 2009

Bandwidth monitoring

[l_bratch]

Is there anything similar to iftop [1] for Windows?

[1] http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/

Re:Bandwidth monitoring

[BlueScreenO'Life]

Yes.

Sysinternals Process Explorer, and add the network graphs.

Re:Bandwidth monitoring

[l_bratch]

Process Explorer, along with most other network monitoring tools only seems to show interfaces' total bandwidth. iftop shows per-connection upload and download bandwidth. Please correct me if I'm missing something in Process Explorer though.

Re:Bandwidth monitoring

[BlueScreenO'Life]

You can add a bandwidth graph showing only totals.

But in addition to that you can add, for each process, separate columns with the upload and download network usages. These are not history graphs, but amounts of packets or bytes transferred during the last interval (the "Delta" columns) or since Process Explorer was started (e.g. "Send Bytes", "Receive Bytes"). Good enough for most purposes. Admittedly what it doesn't do is break it down by interface (or device, in Windows parlance).

SpiceWorks

[Kamiza Ikioi]

How in the world can you talk about administration in a Windows environment and not mention SpiceWorks.com? It's an end-to-end, 100% free support system and help desk.

Re:SpiceWorks

[SCHecklerX]

Which our incompetent windoze admins have installed here and STILL can't figure out how to keep it from trying to probe networks that haven't been in use for over a year.

Re:SpiceWorks

[Kamiza Ikioi]

That's sad because it's pretty damn easy to setup.

Re:SpiceWorks

[IshmaelDS]

It's not open source. I agree it's awesome and I use it, but the article is about Open Source windows admin tools.

PuTTY

[bpfinn]

I use PuTTY daily.

Re:PuTTY

[excelsior_gr]

Me too!

Together with WinSCP and Xming.

Re:PuTTY

[dbIII]

I like Xming (and even donated to the guy that does it) but it is missing a few things required to display some older commercial *nix applications.

Server-side experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, do these tools give me a sunny beach with palm trees? Spectacular mountain views and waterfalls? Good food? Hot sex?

No? Then please stop calling everything related to using software an experience.You use it to get a job done, that is its purpose. The experience the admin (or any other person that uses software for other reasons than entertainment) has can certainly make a difference, but that facilitates its purpose. Don't treat it as if it is the purpose.

This is what you get if you treat the "experience" as the purpose.

I nominate...

[JustNiz]

any linux distro's install disk.
Why struggle with the lame duck that is windows? just blow the whole thing away.

Re:I nominate...

[b0bby]

Why struggle with the lame duck that is windows?

One word: Exchange.

Re:I nominate...

[JustNiz]

There are many opensource equivalents:
Zimbra, open-xchange, communigate pro to name but a few.

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[Amouth]

while i am a fan of MS security essentials for end users - MS intentional prevent it from running on their server OS's. (and for good reason, it's not designed for that workload environment). so when it comes to free ClamAV is up there on the server side.

Re:You need 15?

[MrMacman2u]

Heh, actually I have a variety of platforms including a few embedded devices, SO the additional tools I use, including the shell, compilers and utilities varies from server to server depending on their job or task. The only thing that immediately springs to mind as really being universal across all of my devices is the kernel itself!

Though there may be one or two other utilities or programs that might be common to all of them.... I'm not about to put forth the exertion to check ;)

Re: So you have a kernel?

[MrMacman2u]

Copy and pasta!!!

Actually, I'll save people wanting to kill me, see my above post to the first AC :)

Windirstat

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Windirstat Portable to check who is the "disk eater" user of the day.

Re:Windirstat

[EXrider]

I mount the drive across the network from a Unix box and run a combo of du piped to grep and sort on it.

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[Caesar Tjalbo]

Holy moly, but I hate InfoWorld. Without mentioning all the ads, or their apparent unrealization of the fact that browsers have scroll bars (though to be fair they're not the only ones), my biggest complaint is that never, not once have I read one of their articles and gotten what the headline promised.

I think this is generally true for all the IDG 'content' and not because they copy it to about every site in their 'network' (SEO by lots of reciprocal links to sister sites, really).

This is what passes for tech journalism?

No, it's selling ad-space on the promise of content and every so often, albeit rarely, there's something interesting coming out of the IDG 'network'.

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[b0bby]

That's true, but MSE isn't licensed for/won't install on servers so it doesn't apply.

15?

[tokul]

Which Linux distribution comes in 15 CDs or DVDs?

Re:15?

[burning-toast]

15 CDs = 14 CDs for Debian Sarge binaries, +1 CD for Knoppix?

That used to be my tool-box for a while when setting up servers and workstations on slow internet connections some time back.

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[Anonymous Coward]

In clamwin's defense, almost every major antivirus has had a catastrophic false positive at some point in the last 10 years.

It's a statistical improbability that any of them never will have the same issue.

If you are trying to clean a virus that has infected important system files there is a chance that you will have to delete said system files in order to remove the virus.

Clamav (clamwin's engine) creates an easy to read text file listing all files moved/deleted/cleaned, so I can just look at what was deleted and replace it from the original disks.

Honestly, I prefer an AV that will completely remove the virus, even if that will render the system unbootable. At least that way I know that it wont just reinfect itself again as soon as I reboot.

Re:GPL Email Server with a GUI

[GameboyRMH]

The other day someone was trying to convince my boss that the risk of a backdoor in open source code is greater than the risk of a backdoor in closed source code, and that it takes an uber-leet top hacker to audit code.

Trying to stick their ugly proprietary fingers in a government database project. Fuck those guys.

Really, no RDTabs?

[zero0ne]

It may not be "open-source" in that there is no source code available for it, however it is freeware and is required for any Windows Administrator that always has multiple RDP sessions running.

RDTabs

file sizes

[HeyBob!]

This has been helpful (showing who/what is hogging disk space)
Windirstat
http://windirstat.info/

Re:file sizes

[fat_mike]

Wouldn't it be easier to just setup quotas in Active Directory?

We're starting to move to VMware's Virtual Desktops which makes a lot of these obsolete

We have people spread all over the country working out of their homes where I spend hours each month cleaning up the latest Farmbook Toolbar or whatever fake virus scanner they've installed or etc, etc etc because they have to have Admin access. VD's take this away from them and make my life easier so go VD's!"

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[account_deleted]

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+2

[sgt scrub]

WinSCP
Xming

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[Runaway1956]

Haven't looked at HyperV in ages. I remember when it was trash. Every other virtualization tool available at the time was better suited to the job. Things change, though. Maybe HyperV is worth looking at again - but I tend to stick with what works for me. I'll stick with VirtualBox, and dabble with VMWare, thank you.

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Re:I hate InfoWorld

[Runaway1956]

As has been pointed out already, the article deals with MS servers. MSSE is not available for servers, and I don't think that Avast free version is available for servers. ClamAV is free, for servers, for desktops, for workstations, for home use, for enterprise. No restrictions.

What is the cost for Avast on an enterprise server, anyway? Hmmm - looks like $175 for the bargain basement deal, and $250 for the more robust business version. http://www.avast.com/business

That's not a lot of money - unless your business runs on a financial shoestring. In today's economy, a lot of businesses are run on shoestrings!

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command window

[devent]

Can anyone please explain to me why there are no alternatives to the Windows "command prompt" aka cmd.exe? I know about Cygwin, but it's the same ugly cmd.exe window. I don't mean a bash or the powershell, I mean an alternative to the ugly window, that is black and you just have two scrollbars right and bottom.

This ugly window lacks many of the "advanced" features, like simple copy&past (right click copy, right click past), better fonts (why I can't choose from all the true-type fonts available?), maybe some tabs?

I don't know why MS took the effort and time to develop the powershell if it's still running in the 1991 cmd.exe window.

Like that project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ (it's GPL and free of course)

Re:command window

[CrashNBrn]

You can add more monospaced TrueType fonts to the Command window.

You can enable copy/paste. Click on the Window icon left side, Properties. Select Options [x] Quick Edit Mode, [x] Insert Mode. The command window has had that for 15+ years or more.

Enabling color in the command window is pretty simple as well. It has had that for 15 or 20+ years.

Tabs require a non-MS add-on.

Re:command window

[devent]

Why is that all not enabled by default? I thought Windows is not the hobby OS where you need to spend hours to tweak it until it works. But thanks for the tips, I can use them the next time I open VirtualBox with Windows XP from my Fedora Linux.

Re:command window

[_0xd0ad]

Why is that all not enabled by default?

Because it tends to break legacy DOS apps that use the mouse in text-mode, and the preferred behavior is that which doesn't break things by acting differently. If you want it to act differently, you have to explicitly configure it to do so.

Legacy DOS didn't natively support copy-and-paste at all... you had to do an >out.txt if you needed to capture the output. Then you could open it in your text editor of choice. Be glad you have it at all.

And the ability to change the colors of the command prompt was around long before Windows ever existed, using ansi.sys.

I thought Windows is not the hobby OS where you need to spend hours to tweak it until it works.

It works about the same as DOS ever did with no tweaking, and it has a few new features (such as copy-and-paste) which you can enable if you are inclined to do so. And if you do want to tweak it, I doubt that you could spend more than five minutes looking through the entire dialog to set the command prompt options. It certainly doesn't take "hours".

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[IshmaelDS]

It's not installable on a server OS and it's also not licensed to run in a commercial environment with more than 10 PC's. Chances are if your a full time admin for a business you have more than 10 PC's in the office.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail) (x2?)

[Thing 1]

Just curious; how do you "leave space for frequently changing files to contract"?

Backup

[Trogre]

Now that ntbackup has been deprecated, how about a decent backup tool that isn't that horrible abomination that comes bundled with Server 2008+?

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[HouseOfMisterE]

MS does license MSE for installation on their compatible server products, and the installer works without problems. They changed the terms almost a year ago with the release of MSE 2.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail) (x2?)

[X0563511]

File is appended. File now extends (and needs the space). File is truncated, and it contracts. This isn't all that unusual a pattern to see when a file is written to.

Re:I hate InfoWorld

[b0bby]

Thanks, I'd missed that since they still don't list any severs among the supported OSes. As far as I can tell, they still don't officially support it, but it works.

My list

[glassware]

Stuff that's truly open source:

FileZilla - Their FTP client is wonderful for all the partners I communicate with. Their server is also fantastic although it doesn't host SFTP.
WinSCP - Just like FileZilla, but scriptable from the command line. The user interface is less nice though.
ImgBurn - Replaces all those crappy CD-burning programs that vendors love to pre-install.
7-Zip - A bit better than ZIP, compresses a bit more, runs a bit faster, and it reads all those lame formats like RAR plus awesome formats like .tar.gz.
Notepad++ - The best text editor out there.
FFMPEG - Command line conversion for videos!
PDFCreator - Much nicer than Adobe PDF and free.
Putty - Many of you have said it, but it's still awesome.

Stuff that's free but still useful, well, mostly Foxit Reader.

My criticisms of this list

[mysidia]

Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 15: VirtualBox

No. In this case the open source tools are weak; VirtualBox is cool, but in my experience not so stable all the time. Use VMware Workstation or VMware Server or ESXi/Hyper-V/XenServer as appropriate for important admin work.

Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 14: Virtual Router

Hell no... Can anyone spell "pwn m3"?

Essential open source Windows admin tool No. 13: ClamWin Antivirus ... does not come with an on-access real-time scanner ... Although it may not work as well as a commercial real-time option for virus scanning,

Are they fsck'in insane?

Windows admins have good security tools available that actually work... why the heck would we want to trade them for a tool with lower up-front cost but higher cost of ownership in the form of more frequently having systems get infected needing to get rebuild, and all those resulting headaches?

Periodic scanning is essential in a security strategy, but should not be the first line of defense, because it's slow to respond -- scans take along time. The use of real-time tools is practically mandatory in a reasonable end point security strategy.

Having a machine able to infected with no real-time detection mechanisms 12 to 18 hours before the next scheduled scan is a really really bad idea.

Exchange is STILL well named :(

[dbIII]

So version 2010 FINALLY gets the same archiving that could have been done with any other MTA in the last two decades by adding simple entries to /etc/aliases? They did warn you with the name, Exchange it for something better.

Treesize

[Hyperhaplo]

I prefer Treesize

Re:UltraDefrag (fail) (x2?)

[_0xd0ad]

Whoosh.

Files don't need more space to contract; they need more space to expand.

Printer Friendly Link

[evansvillelinux]

Here's the printer friendly version of said article: http://www.infoworld.com/print/173188

Re:UltraDefrag (fail) (x2?)

[X0563511]

Perhaps then you should go back and re-read my original sentence:
"... frequently changing files to expand/contract ..."

Re:UltraDefrag (fail) (x2?)

[_0xd0ad]

They still don't need space to contract. You could have left it off altogether.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail) (x2?)

[X0563511]

I apologize then for being too specific. Go troll elsewhere.

Re:UltraDefrag (fail) (x2?)

[_0xd0ad]

I'm just explaining Thing 1's joke because you apparently didn't get it.

GnuWin32 & NirSoft

[JakFrost]

GnuWin32

CoreUtils
DiffUtils
FindUtils
Gawk
Grep
Sed
WGet
Zip/UnZip

NirSoft

All Utilities (Ignore False-Positive VirusScan Warnings)

Re:UltraDefrag (fail) (x2?)

[Thing 1]

Hi, thanks for that. Wasn't really a joke per se; it was the observation that you concluded with, which caused the OP to enter fits. Sad, really, to see. He wasn't being "too specific"; he was mischaracterizing the operation. Oh well; perhaps he learned something.