Unknown Error Deleting Files and Folders on Windows Server 2012R2 on a DFS Share

I had an issue where a couple of users were trying to delete a folder called collections. Typically this isn't a hard issue you hit the delete key and it's gone. However we have a bit of a mixed environment with Macs and some Linux workstation accessing an assortment of files and folders, not to mention we do have live thumbnails in our environment being used as well. So as you know that means issues with the thumbs.db hidden file.

What is thumbs.db file?

A thumbs.db file used to quickly display thumbnail images inside a given folder. It is a hidden file so you can't see the file unless you set Windows/File Explorer to show hidden files. Even then depending on the system that last access the .htaccess file you may not see it. Mac OS has a bad habit of writing bad .htaccess files on windows shares especially in a domain environment. They have gotten better over the years, but occasionally you do get a malformed one. A thumbs.db file can keep Windows from letting you delete a folder, change permissions or ownership of files in a directory because Windows is keeping the thumbs.db file open.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2999243/windows/manage-thumbs-db-files-in-windows-and-on-the-network.html

Typically if this were a windows problem you do the following

1. Press Windows + C and Type Control Panel
2. Click "Appearance and Personalization"
3. Click "Folder Options"
4. Open the "View" tab
5. Uncheck "Display file icon on thumbnails"
6. Click OK, and exit control panel. You should now be able to delete the folder and the thumbs.db file.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-files/unable-to-delete-thumbsdb/476dbfa7-6cd8-43a7-b162-c9228edd3049

As you can tell from the beginning of my post this wasn't going to work, and it didn't.  My problem was a legacy file from 2015, it was not visible or accessible in Windows Explorer even with show hidden files and folders enabled. This file was causing failures for removing the folders and changing ownership and permissions from the folder root.

Error when trying to change security permission/ownership

Error trying to change ownership

For me I am well aware of this issue and the fix is easy, but you need a unix/linux system to connect to the share to remove the file.

Problem Thumbs.db File

You need to connect to the share folder with the linux/unix system.  I am using a Ubuntu 16.04 VM on Server 2016 to do this.  Go to File -> Connect To Server... -> then put in the name or ip of your server.

You will then be prompted for the username and password of the server (in this case it is just our domain login credentials)

List of Windows Shares

When you mount the share by default you can see all hidden files and folders.  When you go to the directory where your having the issue you can try delete the problem file.  If you have an issue move the problem file to another directory you create using your linux client.  When you do that Windows Explorer shouldn't have enough time to make the thumbs.db in use and you can then delete the folder.

Linux SMB View

This is how I typically get rid of problem files like this.  It is usually garbage left over and it is annoying but easy to fix, and you don't have to do this to often.

Installing powershell 6.1 on openSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed

Installing powershell on openSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed is relatively straight forward with the exception of a few issues. 

1) adding the repository doesn't work though their command line that they have issued on their powershell instructions

2) They neglected the instructions for adding OpenSSL 1 which is required

If you go to the Powershell Repository on github there are a set of instructions to install powershell on openSUSE and we are going to follow them and I will add the deviation points so you can get powershell running on openSUSE.  The link for the original Microsoft instructions are https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/setup/installing-powershell-core-on-linux?view=powershell-6

You can view a 12 Minute video of the procedure on my youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yzDH0v99Us

Open a Terminal Window and Copy and Paste the following

# Register the Microsoft signature key
sudo rpm --import https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc

Now we want to add the repository to our openSUSE system.  Open Yast and Open Software Repositories.

Select Add

Select Specify URL

Name and Add the Repository URL listed below

# Add the Microsoft Repository
https://packages.microsoft.com/rhel/7/prod/

You will get a warning about the Repository not being digitally signed.  If you want to use powershell I would add the Repo.

Once complete go to your terminal and run a zypper update

# Update the list of products
sudo zypper update

Then in the terminal in stall powershell using the command below.

# Install PowerShell
sudo zypper install powershell


You will get the error below

Problem: nothing provides libcurl needed by powershell-6.1.0-1.rhel.7.x86_64

 Solution 1: do not install powershell-6.1.0-1.rhel.7.x86_64

 Solution 2: break powershell-6.1.0-1.rhel.7.x86_64 by ignoring some of its dependencies

Select Option 2.

Once the install is down in Terminal you can start powershell but you will get an error about libssl that no usable version is found like the image below.

# Start PowerShell

pwsh

To fix that we go back to YAST and we need to go to Addon Products -> software manager and do a search for libssl

You will want to add libopenssl1_0_0 and libopenssl1_0_0-32bit

Once the install is done you can now run powershell!  You will know this by the

PS \Home\$USER (in this case administrator)

Storage Spaces Lost Communication or IO Error and Intel SSD Event ID 129

I had a major issue with our company's primary Hyper-V Server.  It was housing our primary AD controller, User Storage and Share, along with 2 other VMs.  The symptoms were major IO read/writing, reports of disconnects, and a loss of access to the AD, and user files.  According to our log files we were getting iANSMiniport, and Intel Nvmestor errors.

Here are some log file samples

According to the logs the system starting giving Event ID 129 warnings and this continued to happen every 10 seconds and affected our DHCP, DNS and user logons.  After a forced shutdown everything was fine according to the logs until later that morning when users started to have lag and login issues.



You can read more about Event ID 129 Here

We sent the server in for diagnostics and according to the Authorized Service Depot, they could not find anything out of date except for the bios.

Since this was a "Main Production Server" it was decided that we would move the virtual ad controller from the production server to a dev server to run until the failure of the drive could be determined so the organization could continue to run.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/4052341/slow-performance-or-lost-communication-io-error-detached-or-no-redunda

After doing a second forced shutdown and boot up I was able to shut down the virtual machines running on the servers and did a full export of the data to an external drive.  This made sure we did not lose any data but it did inconvenience some users as the data had to be copied back from the dev server.

Unfortunately I didn't find the Microsoft article about Event ID 129 until about a week after our issue at that point I had  destroyed the storage spaces volume, but I did find it useful as I installed some additional software which seemed to help the server recognize the NVMe drives better.  For that you need to install not just the Intel SSD Toolbox, but also the SSD Data Center tool and the Data Center NVMe SSD Drivers.  The errors in the Event ID 129 before the Maintenance 8 release seemed to be a little too coincidental to what we were experiencing.

Symptoms

When this issue occurs, your cluster may experience any of the following symptoms:

• Slow workload performance
• Virtual disks in the cluster that have an Operational Status value of Detached or No Redundancy.
• Physical disks that report a status of Lost Communication or IO Error.

I haven't had a chance to verify the issues have been 100% corrected but from the testing I have done some major stress testing on the storage spaces setup using hyper-v to do mass exports of VM's to the storage array with no issues at all, HD tune and crystal disk mark have also shown the Storage Spaces Array to be in good shape.

https://www.intel.ca/content/www/ca/en/support/products/81000/memory-and-storage/data-center-ssds/intel-ssd-dc-p3600-series.html

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28175/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Toolbox?_ga=2.179938403.692315852.1538156647-366274783.1537922699

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28035/Intel-SSD-Data-Center-Tool-Intel-SSD-DCT-?_ga=2.179938403.692315852.1538156647-366274783.1537922699

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27517/Datacenter-NVMe-Microsoft-Windows-Drivers-for-Intel-SSDs?_ga=2.192759661.692315852.1538156647-366274783.1537922699

Using, Adding and Changing VLANs on Windows 10

To use vlans under Windows 10 you need to use powershell and the setup is pretty simple. Open powershell as an administrator type in the following

Set-NetAdapter –Name "Ethernet Adapter Name" -VlanID XXX where "Ethernet Adapter Name" is the name of your ethernet adapter and xxx is the VLAN ID number in this case 99

If your ethernet adapter supports VLANS you will get asked to apply the vlan to the ethernet adapter much like the image below

Otherwise you will get an error like this

If your successful then you can get DHCP if it is enabled on the network or make changes to your IP address with what ever you need.  As you can see below I have a .97.83 address from a DHCP server on VlanID 99

I had 2 different laptops I tested this with a Lenovo Y580 with a Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.30), and a Lenovo ThinkPad E570 with a Realtek R8111GUS PCI-E Ethernet Controller.  The Realtek did not seem to support vlan tagging though windows but you can try installing the Realtek diagnostic toolkit and see if you can get vlan tagging enabled.  This was a test just with straight Windows 10.