bloggingIT

Steve and I have often been stumped with migrating users simply because there’s not an easy to follow “how to”. So here’s an easy-to-follow “how to”.

To migrate users across domains, you will need the Active Directory Migration Tool from Microsoft. Install this on both servers.

First thing’s first - you’ll need to create a trust between the two domains. To create a trust:

1. Set up a secondary DNS zone on each domain controller you plan to use. You need to enable Zone transfers on the DNS servers, and then create a secondary zone on each server of the other domain.
2. Create a domain admin user account on each domian with the same username and password.
3. On one of the servers you are working on, access Administrative Tools > Active Directory Sites and Trusts. Right-click on the domain you are using - and then click properties. From here, you can create a two-way trust between each domain.

Now we’re ready to migrate users. If you need the passwords migrated as well, you will need to complete these steps. If not - skip to the next part.

1. On the source domain controller, you will need to create a key file. Open up the command prompt and type in the following (replace the italics with your settings):
   admt key /option:create /sourcedomain:<em>your.domain</em> /keyfile:<em>C:\MyKey.pes</em> /keypassword:*
2. Once the key file has been created - you need to install the Password Server. Run %systemroot%\admt\pes\pwdmig.exe to install. During the installation, you will need to use the key file that we created in the previous step. You will also need to specify a domain administrative account to run the service.
3. Now copy the keyfile to the target server. We need to manually import the key so that the passwords will transfer:
   admt key /option:import /sourcedomain:<em>your.domain</em> /keyfile:<em>C:\MyKey.pes</em>/keypassword:*
   Enter the same domain and pasword you used in step 1.
4. On the source domain controller - open Active Directory Users and Computers, and double-click on the BUILTIN\Administrators group. Add the target domain administrator to the group (eg. targetdomain\administrator).

Now to migrate those accounts! Woo!

1. Open the ADMT tool from Administrative Tools
2. Right-click on the Active Directory Migration Tool folder
3. Click User Account Migration Wizard
4. Select the source and target domain
5. Select the users either with a file or though the AD tool
6. Select the target OU where you would like the users to be migrated to in your new domain
7. Select how you would like passwords to be handled. If you are migrating the passwords, you will need to start the Password Migration Server Service on the source domain now.
8. Answer the remaining questions appropriately.
9. Job done!

The new user accounts will appear in the new domain.

My new phone has finally been transferred. After living with the agonisingly difficult Nokia N80 for 2 years - I’ve arranged to try out the BlackBerry Pearl. Orange managed to cock up the transfer to the new SIM card, so I’ve been humping a spare phone around with me for 10 days because I wouldn’t know when the transfer would take place.

So far, the experience has been good. The phone is nice and responsive and the sound quality good. It charges through a standard USB connection without the need for drivers to be installed on the computer it is connected to.

Connecting to my wifi network was a cinch. I need to have a bit more of a play yet. I’m still to try out the instant messaging and synchronization tools - but that’s around the corner.

Here’s hoping that this wont be an agonising experience like the N80 ended up being.

Steve and I have been working on a YouTube video downloader based in PHP. One of the features that I’ve been adding in is the ability to upload videos of any format and be encoded into a FLV, just like those big YouTube sites.

One of the problems I’ve been having is that the WMV videos race through at over 10 times the speed of the video, and leave the audio playing at normal speed. This, apparently, has to do with WMVs (and any ASF-based video) using a variable frame rate.

To get around this, you simply need to set a frame rate manually with -ofps. So, to convert a video from WMV to Flash video, you’d need a command like this:

mencoder MyVid.wmv -o MyVid.flv -of lavf -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=56 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=flv:vbitrate=400:mbd=2:mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3 -srate 22050 -ofps 25

This will keep the frame rate to 25 fps. Now, all I need to do is work out how to get the correct frame rate for the whole video…

I’m not big on sending my files over the internet to random websites - but the boys over at Media Convert have done a sterling job to create a 1-stop file conversion site.

I was struggling to find a program that would convert an OpenOffice Draw file (.odg) into something easily read on Windows. Eventually I settled on converting it to a PNG.

The process was painless. Upload the file, wait a few moments, and then download the converion.

The site even does music and video formats, as well as a raft of others.

Rock on.

Today, I had to setup an Oki C5650 on a network, and find out how many pages had passed through it due to an surprisingly quick turnaround in toner. I was struggling to find the default admin password for the web interface as it wasn’t in the online manual.

Knowling that searching the internet is much better than my library abilities, I managed to find the password at Art of Hacking. In true form, there’s a very useful page that has user collected default passwords for thousands of devices. And in true hacking form, it’s called etc/passwd.

I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron over the weekend. The process was relatively painless, and some of the upgrades made little, but nice, improvements.

Finally, the UPNP media rendering functionality in Rhythmbox is working!

To set this up, you need to access the command line, and install the pyhton-coherence package:

sudo apt-get install python-coherence

Once installed, fire up Rhythmbox, and click on Edit > Plugins.

Once there, tick the box for DLNA/UPnP to enable UPnP.

Click Close and you should see a new shared tab on the left, which will list your network UPnP servers.

It’s somewhat limited in that it doesn’t present you with the various folder views that other media renderers will - but at least you can pick out music from network devices.

Cool.