Author: Mike Erps

Resetting SCCM Agent if patch installation fails

Mike Erps 12 Comments

From time to time, a ticket will be created in regards to System Patches failing in an SCCM environment. To fix this, there are really only two major steps:

  1. Rename the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder to SoftwareDistribution.old (stop Windows Update service before renaming, then restart the service).
  2. Rename C:\Windows\System32\catroot2 to catroot2.old (stop the Cryptography service before renaming, then restart the service).

After this is done, run these actions from the configuration manager:

  1. Discovery Data Collection Cycle
  2. Software Updates Deployment Evaluation Cycle
  3. Software Updates Scan Cycle

The procedure above has taken care of the issue pretty reliably. If the updates still don’t install properly, you may have to download the specific updates and install them manually.

Read More

How to rescue your data on a failing hard drive with dd_rescue

Mike Erps 11 Comments

I just got done answering this question for someone at work:

What was that app that allowed you to duplicate the failing hard drive?

So I figured, why not put it out there for the Internets to see?

It’s the dd_rescue command within Knoppix. (I’ve always used 5.0 or 6.1 – I think dd_rescue is still included in version 7)

You need to boot to the Knoppix CD/DVD and run dd_rescue on the DISK, not the PARTITION.

Syntax:

dd_rescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb

Given that /dev/sda is your source drive, and /dev/sdb is the destination drive.

You can check your disk configuration like this:

fdisk -l

Read the output from there to see which disk is which. Your best bet is to use a sanitized drive as the destination so it’s easier to tell which disk has stuff on it and which doesn’t.

Since this is all command line, I HIGHLY recommend running a practice job using data that doesn’t matter before going forward with real data. This process can easily ruin good data if you have the command backwards.

Additional switches:

You can use these switches to “sandwich” a bad spot on the drive and pick up as much data as possible.

-s defines the start position.
Ex: (will start at 15G and go forwards)

dd_rescue –s 15G /dev/sda /dev/sdb

-r defines working from front to back
Ex: (will start at 15G and go in reverse, back to the beginning of the drive)
(-r does not use DMA buffer, which can increase error correcting abilities)

dd_rescue –r –s 15G /dev/sda /dev/sdb

Read More