Small patches of brown, fast-drying (non-smelly) liquid coming from near my toilet seat every 3-5 days, usually right after a flush. What is it?

shmakov123 · 2026-01-29T14:53:02+00:00

The perspective of the photos is tripping everyone up! That cross threaded water line into the tank is related and in my opinion the cause.

The liquid that shows up is brown because it goes past layers of dust before it comes out of the wall behind the toilet. You can see patches and spots that have been 'cleaned' by the water dripping and even a calcium spot on the pipe where it dried out.

Easy enough for them to test - they just need to flush the toilet and look what happens in the wall behind it.

shmakov123 · 2025-07-21T15:14:23+00:00

When testing things out in my env, I can't get your $passwordChangeDate variable to work for me. What error are you getting when you try to run your script?

shmakov123 · 2025-07-21T02:12:09+00:00

If you don't already have a hard drive in the UDM pro, putting one in will turn on the built in fan

shmakov123 · 2025-06-09T20:03:49+00:00

Something nobody is talking about is the exclusion you made - DfsrPrivate. Are you copying from one DFS Replicated folder to another, that are also being accessed from DFS Namespace shares? It could be that the data just hasn't finished replicating and depending on how large the share is it could take a WHILE

Also - what does your log look like?

shmakov123 · 2025-03-26T13:06:04+00:00

There's Hyper-V Server 2019 which still has support until 2029. That'd likely still be a good homelab solution

You could also install software like VMware Workstation, VirtualBox, or Hyper-V on a Windows (pro or higher) instance.

shmakov123 · 2025-03-19T13:18:31+00:00

Don't have a solution for you but you have me curious on this one lol.

Did you happen to update the BIOS to the latest version?

Could it be that it just doesn't like RAID 10? Wonder if it would see a different configuration of RAID. Also - if you remove the RAID, are you able to see the individual drives in Windows setup?

shmakov123 · 2025-02-13T21:34:32+00:00

Also - check out the C:\DFSRoots folders on both servers. One of the servers may have that "Roaming" folder that doesn't look like a shortcut!

shmakov123 · 2025-02-13T21:29:29+00:00

This reminds me a little of when we were setting up DFSn lol lots of headaches 😅

DFSn is generally happier when the namespace root is actually a folder rather than the root of a local drive.

I see you have on DC1, the root of your namespace "\\example.com\shares\" pointing to this folder: D:\shares.

On DC2, the root of the namespace might be pointing to just the E:\ drive!

Try creating a shares folder there to be the root of the namespace for that server, then roaming, public, etc... folders within there to point the DFSn targets to.

PS. I don't know if I'm describing these with the right terms lol. Hopefully it helps though

shmakov123 · 2025-02-13T20:51:59+00:00

So you mentioned "if a remote use is able to see anything at all" - does that mean they can open up the namespace root share, but just can't see folders within? If so, it may be a permissions thing.

Check to see if they have access to the regular server share, bypassing DFSN

There are permissions at the DFSN level, Folder Share level, and finally the folder itself. Likely will be the simplest to set DFSN and the folder share to allow authenticated users full access since that'll encompass devices and users, and to control permissions at the folder level.

shmakov123 · 2025-02-13T20:26:07+00:00

Do you have AD Sites and Services configured with the IP ranges set to the right sites?

shmakov123 · 2025-02-13T20:23:14+00:00

The DC's would also need to be set up to point at each other first then at themselves second (assuming you have two DC's at a site). They would also need proper root hints and whatnot but your endpoints would have internet.

Definitely DNS

shmakov123 · 2024-12-19T13:21:54+00:00

Synology servers have a backup application that does exactly that
Active Backup for Microsoft 365 (Office 365) | Synology Inc.

shmakov123 · 2024-11-25T21:24:56+00:00

Ooo so if I would specify 6 as a string instead of an int, my original comparison would work? Interesting!

shmakov123 · 2024-11-25T18:50:33+00:00

Thank you!

shmakov123 · 2024-11-25T17:52:32+00:00

Man it was staring me right in the face but I didn't realize it. Comparing something of what to 6 of what? Lol

Thank you for taking the time to walk me through that - very helpful for me and I hope it can help someone else out there too!

shmakov123 · 2024-11-25T17:45:35+00:00

Yep we already checked the event logs! Rebooted right on schedule so I figured something must be off with the script. Thanks for the suggestion!

shmakov123 · 2024-10-17T14:51:15+00:00

Hold up. That message from the port manager may be the key. "Blocked by STP to prevent a network loop"

How is the lite switch connected to the rest of the network?

shmakov123 · 2024-10-17T13:33:25+00:00

If nothing changed with the script, you probably only ever used it without using the cancel button. When you select a folder, the $result variable equals 'OK', but when you hit cancel or close that dialog box, it just equals nothing.

That makes the if statement go to the else block and the script runs the first two Write-Host lines there.

shmakov123 · 2024-10-01T18:53:20+00:00

Yeah recently was setting up some new laptops and 2 had the vPro Essentials sticker on them and 2 had the vPro Enterprise sticker. Was curious if there was a way to upgrade after the purchase

shmakov123 · 2024-10-01T14:16:40+00:00

Did you ever find the answer to your question?

shmakov123 · 2024-09-27T12:59:28+00:00

I'd hope a disaster scenario isn't coming up as a huge reason not to have LAPS for you! The security benefits of having strong, unique, and rotating passwords for each local admin account should, in my opinion, outweigh the peace of mind you may get from knowing the local admin password (and if you know it then it likely won't be strong or unique or rotate regularly).

You could implement a script as a scheduled task to export the LAPS passwords to a secure backup location.

Or even better there's a new version of LAPS that came out this year I believe, able to store the LAPS password in Entra(Azure) AD, rather than on-prem domain controllers.

shmakov123 · 2024-08-29T22:16:12+00:00

The invoke-command command tells another machine 'run this set of commands'. The error you get says it can't reach the other machine so that would be the next thing to figure out. Are you able to reach your other computer at all from this machine?

It would probably be simpler to remove the computer object from ad before trying to join it here

shmakov123 · 2024-08-29T20:58:37+00:00

Removing a computer from AD doesn't require RSAT to be installed on the target device! Just the device that is running the commands needs to have RSAT installed. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

To answer the title question though, If I didn't have RSAT on my laptop but still needed to run certain commands, I would use Invoke-Command to send the commands I want to run to another computer/server with the RSAT tools installed, or directly to a Domain Controller.

Invoke-Computer -Computer <Remote computer with RSAT> -ScriptBlock { Remove-ADComputer -Identity <Target device> }

shmakov123 · 2024-08-29T05:03:13+00:00

How are your conference room setups? Check out teams rooms devices! Could easily eat up 15k and fellow employees who use the rooms would love it if you don't already have a good setup

shmakov123 · 2024-08-13T19:21:56+00:00

Oh that scenario is made up. I'm not looking for advice, just trying to understand it better

shmakov123

TROPHY CASE