Exchange

HTTP Status Codes explained for web servers

As a web administrator I encounter quite a few instances where a weird HTTP status is returned to a browser.Even using them often it’s hard to remember the codes 100% and what they all mean. Sure, a 404 means the file doesn’t exist and a 200 is a good response… but what about the harder more obscure ones? Generally the toughest to resolve revolve around permissions and the HTTP 401.x status, here is a good article explaining the HTTP 401 sub status codes for IIS (The general idea will flow over to other web servers like apache as well).

As a  added bonus here is a great article that explains a vast variety of other HTTP Status codes.

How to retrieve HTML web pages with VBScript via the Microsoft.XmlHttp object

Recently, I had a situation where I had to pull down a HTML page to compare it to a known copy of the page. Certainly, IE or FireFox– or Google’s Chrome would have done the trick and I could have viewed the source. But that would require me to do work every time we needed to check the page against the known good source.

 Instead I wrote a script to pull the HTML source and echo the response to the console (or a messag box if you are not using cscript to execute the script). While not a full blown HTTP QA script it does do the job of getting the HTTP responses from the server and is certainly a core part of any QA script anyone would write.

Basically the script uses the Microsoft.XMLHTTP object to preform all the HTTP calls and retrieve the HTML page. It sounds scary, but if you look at the script below I think you’ll find that it really is quite easy to accomplish.  So, here is the script’s code:

URL=”http://www.gamersigs.net/“
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(”WScript.Shell”)
Set http = CreateObject(”Microsoft.XmlHttp”)

On Error Resume Next
http.open “GET”, URL, False
http.send “”
if err.Number = 0 Then
     WScript.Echo http.responseText
Else
     Wscript.Echo “error ” & Err.Number & “: ” & Err.Description
End If
set WshShell = Nothing
Set http = Nothing

Enjoy!

Useful site: Tons of free books online… did I mention free?

I like free stuff. Who doesn’t? And with the price of technology books you can imagine I was amazed when I found a pretty cool site recently, Scribd, that allows you to upload electronic documents. They then add this document to the database they have and make it search-able. Plus, you can search the database for specific subjects or words.

Not only are regular people uploading books and documents, but there are publisher’s uploading books. Sometimes they are just excerpts, but sometimes they are entire books as well like:

ASP Programming for the Absolute Beginner
Beginning ASP NET 3 5 in C Sharp 2008 From Novice to Professional
MSPress Exam 70-284 Implementing and managing Exchange server 2003

There’s even a CCIE Study Guide and my personal favorite the VBScript Complete Reference !

 And Many Many more… so stroll on over there and see what you can find!

Enjoy!

Eventlog search tool — Find quick help with windows event log entries

While not VBScript related, I found this Microsoft Eventlog and Error Message Search a few days ago as I stumbled around looking for tools that I thought network administrators would need on my site that I’ve been toying with– I had to share the tool with you as well!

 The tool itself is an awesome resource, similar to EventID.net– except it’s FREE and it comes from Microsoft themselves providing links to Microosft content about the event entry or error message.

 You can search for any combination of the following:

Microsoft Product|
Version
Message ID
Event Source
File Name
Language

When you do it takes you to a search result page that lists the available results for your specific search, each seem to have not only an example of the message, but also an explanation of what the event means…. and the best part a section entitled User Action that gives a possible solution for the problem!

 Enjoy the tip!