How to prestage a computer in Active Directory

Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 September 2011 10:58 Written by A.Jesin Wednesday, 28 September 2011 10:58

This tutorial explains prestaging a computer object in the Windows Active Directory database. Prestaging means to add a computer to the Active Directory database before joining the computer to the domain. By prestaging a computer you can make sure the WDS (Windows Deployment Services) server responds only to known computers. By default if you join a computer to a domain the computer object is created in the Computers container, even though you can move it to another container later, by prestaging you can place the computer inside the container of your choice even before joining it to the domain. Read More…

Installing ADSI edit in Windows Server 2003

Last Updated on Monday, 26 September 2011 08:41 Written by A.Jesin Monday, 26 September 2011 08:41

The ADSI (Active Directory Service Interfaces) editor is a management console that comes along with the Windows Server support tools. Using this you can edit each and every attribute of the objects present in your active directory database. The support tools for the Windows Server OS is present in the OS installation CD. It is located at

[CDDRIVE]:\SUPPORT\TOOLS\SUPTOOLS.MSI

If you don’t have the OS CD you can download it from Microsoft

After installation got to Start -> Run and type adsiedit.msc to get the ADSI edit console. If you get an error message saying adsiedit.msc is not found you have to register the DLL file required for it manually. To do this go to Start-> Run and type regsvr32 adsiedit.dll.

Happy Tweaking !

Hide Last Logged in Username in Windows (Security Policy)

Last Updated on Sunday, 25 September 2011 08:21 Written by A.Jesin Sunday, 25 September 2011 08:21

This tutorial will show you how to hide the last logged in Username in Windows by editing a security policy. But you’d have seen a similar article Hide Last Logged in Username in Windows, this article will describe how to do the same by editing the windows registry. This tutorial will be useful when applying this setting as a policy in a domain environment, but this can also be done on a normal workgroup environment using the secpol.msc command.

Go to Start -> Run or [Windows Key] + R and type secpol.msc, the “Local Security Policy” Window opens. Navigate to Local Policies -> Security Options and look for the policy “Interactive logon: Do not display last user name” and change it to enabled. To apply the changes immediately go to Run and type gpupdate.

Cisco Account Lockout using login block-for

Last Updated on Thursday, 22 September 2011 05:11 Written by A.Jesin Thursday, 22 September 2011 05:11

Account lockout policies can be implemented on Cisco equipment to prevent Brute-Force attacks. This tutorial will explain how to use login block-for command to block users if they exceed a certain number of incorrect login attempts. The login block-for command will block all telnet and SSH connections to that router if incorrect credentials are entered for a specified number of times. Read More…

How to configure NIS server in Linux

Last Updated on Sunday, 4 September 2011 08:07 Written by A.Jesin Sunday, 4 September 2011 08:07

This article explains how to configure Linux as a NIS (Network Information Service) server. Both server side and client side commands are listed in this tutorial. NIS is a directory service which centralizes user administration. The instructions I outline here will work for Red Hat variant operating systems like CentOS, Fedora etc. NIS was originally called Yellow Pages or YP, but due to copyright issues it was renamed to Network Information Services (NIS). But still packages and services required for NIS start with yp. This tutorial will also explain the usage of autofs for mounting the home directories of users created on the NIS server. Read More…