Tips

OneDrive + AVD + FSLogix = Password Prompts

I recently setup a few AVD pools for internal and customer use. I was running into an issue where OneDrive login would not persist across logins. After every sign in to the session host I had to re-authenticate. Then I built another pool that was even worse – Office activation wouldn’t stick either. If you have ever gone done the Google rabbit hole of WAM, ADAL, Office Shared Computer Activation, License Token roaming and so…

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Tips

Azure CSP Subscription Privs and the AdminAgents Group

While working on a client’s Azure subscription(s) I found that my CSP privs weren’t giving me owner permissions through Partner Center. This was due to the fact that the client had multiple subscriptions and only one of them was created by my firm through Partner Centers. The other was a retail, Azure Plan sub. I wanted to have the engineers in my firm admin the subscription with their partner tenant account rather than an in-tenant…

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Howtos

Let’s Encrypt Certificates and Remote Desktop Services

Background With the potential of SSL certificates in Chrome being considered expired after 90 days and the inevitable downtime from not renewing a certificate in time, its time to get serious about automating the renewal and installation of certificates on all platforms. This process is well honed for popular webservers but other applications require custom solutions. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services relies heavily on trusted SSL certificates to function properly. I’ve worked on two methods of…

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Howtos

Triggering HomeKit Automations with a Fortigate

Problem Statement and Proposed solution I use Apple HomeKit as my smart home platform of choice. Its not perfect and doesn’t have nearly the ecosystem that Alexa does but I like it and it compliments the fact that I use mostly Apple devices in the rest of my network. I don’t do anything all that complicated because I rent so there is a limit to the amount of smarts I can integrate. One feature I…

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Tips

Linux ARP Table Overflow

TL;DR – The sysdig utility can help you find the process sending ARP requests. I recently ran into a problem with my “core” server. Its a trusty little Ubuntu 22.04.1 box that wears a lot of hats. In order to combine all of the functions it requires it has some more exotic network setups such as client VPNs, policy based routing, IPv6 an multiple wired and wireless interfaces. Linux is incredibly powerful but sometimes getting…

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