Setting up iOS14 mail with Azure AD App Consent

If you locked down your Azure AD to make it so users can't consent for approval on apps, then you may end up with iPhone/iPad users trying to setup their devices with iOS 14. Well, they can't consent, and the app isn't listed in the gallery or anywhere else. The user gets a message Need admin approval for Apple Internet Accounts. Instead of turning user approval back on, or trying to get a hold of an iOS 14 device yourself, you can still do the approval.

Head over to your Azure AD tenant and grab your Tenant ID (from the Overview tab). Then modify the following URL to add your tenant ID in:

https://login.microsoftonline.com/TenantID/oauth2/authorize?client_id=f8d98a96-0999-43f5-8af3-69971c7bb423&response_type=code&prompt=admin_consent

Heading to that URL should prompt for consent, and then your users can get in. Note that i omitted the redirect_uri parameter which would send you to the next site, so it may seem to hang after you approve. Just give it 10 seconds and close it out and have the user try.

Domain Controller Demotion Error: The operations master roles held by this directory server could not transfer to the following remote directory server.

In demoting a Domain Controller, ran into the following error:

The operations master roles held by this directory server could not transfer to the following remote directory server. 

FSMO Role: CN=Infrastructure,DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=local

Apparently during the last demotion, the roles for the DNS Zones weren't transferred (both for Forest and Domain). There is an easy fix, but it wasn't very straight forward to google.

1. On the new Domain Controller (the one you're not demoting), open notepad and paste this into a file named fixfsmo.vbs:
   
   

   const ADS_NAME_INITTYPE_GC = 3
   const ADS_NAME_TYPE_1779 = 1
   const ADS_NAME_TYPE_CANONICAL = 2
   
   set inArgs = WScript.Arguments
   
   if (inArgs.Count = 1) then
       ' Assume the command line argument is the NDNC (in DN form) to use.
       NdncDN = inArgs(0)
   Else
       Wscript.StdOut.Write "usage: cscript fixfsmo.vbs NdncDN"
   End if
   
   if (NdncDN <> "") then
   
       ' Convert the DN form of the NDNC into DNS dotted form.
       Set objTranslator = CreateObject("NameTranslate")
       objTranslator.Init ADS_NAME_INITTYPE_GC, ""
       objTranslator.Set ADS_NAME_TYPE_1779, NdncDN
       strDomainDNS = objTranslator.Get(ADS_NAME_TYPE_CANONICAL)
       strDomainDNS = Left(strDomainDNS, len(strDomainDNS)-1)
       
       Wscript.Echo "DNS name: " & strDomainDNS
   
       ' Find a domain controller that hosts this NDNC and that is online.
       set objRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://" & strDomainDNS & "/RootDSE")
       strDnsHostName = objRootDSE.Get("dnsHostName")
       strDsServiceName = objRootDSE.Get("dsServiceName")
       Wscript.Echo "Using DC " & strDnsHostName
   
       ' Get the current infrastructure fsmo.
       strInfraDN = "CN=Infrastructure," & NdncDN
       set objInfra = GetObject("LDAP://" & strInfraDN)
       Wscript.Echo "infra fsmo is " & objInfra.fsmoroleowner
   
       ' If the current fsmo holder is deleted, set the fsmo holder to this domain controller.
   
       if (InStr(objInfra.fsmoroleowner, "\0ADEL:") > 0) then
   
           ' Set the fsmo holder to this domain controller.
           objInfra.Put "fSMORoleOwner",  strDsServiceName
           objInfra.SetInfo
   
           ' Read the fsmo holder back.
           set objInfra = GetObject("LDAP://" & strInfraDN)
           Wscript.Echo "infra fsmo changed to:" & objInfra.fsmoroleowner
   
       End if
   
   End if
   

2. Open an administrator cmd prompt at the location of the vbs
3. Run it once each with ForestDnsZones and DomainDnsZones (or just specify the one you're getting in the error) like this:
   
   

   cscript fixfsmo.vbs DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=local

4. You will need to fully close and re-run dcpromo to do the demotion, but it should go through now

Credit to this blog for the script.

Setting up ConnectWise Manage with Duo Access Gateway via SAML

This will give you all the details on how to set up ConnectWise Manage with Duo Access Gateway via SAML. I could not find any documentation for the pairing of these two products, so there was a little bit of trial and error.

Pre-Requisites

• A Duo Access Gateway (DAG) server already setup and ready to go.
• A Duo account with Duo MFA or higher licensing. (the free version does not support this)
• You must have an admin account to both CW:M and Duo (duh)

Recommendations/Caveats

• The moment you save the SSO configuration in CW:M, it will remove all settings related to LDAP and existing 2FA with Google Authenticator. The CW documentation says it disables it, but no, it rips it out.
• I recommend you sync your training database and do the setup there first. This way you can do it live, and also avoid issues caused by the point above
• I am not going to train you on how to use the various products, this is just about the integration. I expect you already know how to create applications in Duo and add them to the access gateway.
• This example is going to be for the training database in CW:M, so all URLs etc will reference that. The fake CW:M URL i will be using is manage.domain.com, and your DAG URL will be dag.company.com

Duo Setup

1. Log into the Duo Admin Panel and create a new Application of type SAML - Service Provider
2. Enter the following settings:
   
   • Service Provider Name: ConnectWise Manage - Training
   • Entity ID: https://manage.company.com/v4_6_release/auth/training/metadata
   • Assertion Consumer Service: https://manage.company.com/v4_6_release/auth/training/Acs
   • Service Provider Login URL: https://manage.company.com
   • NameID Format: urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress
   • NameID attribute: userPrincipalName (this can also be mail, just make sure it's an email address format that your DAG is pulling in from your identity source
   • All other settings: default
3. Click Save Configuration
4. Scroll down and set the name of the Application (i recommend setting it to the same thing: ConnectWise Manage - Training)
5. Save and then click the link at the top to download the configuration file
6. Head over to your DAG admin panel and upload the downloaded json file
7. Download the certificate

CW:M Setup

1. Navigate to System > Authentication (or Setup Tables > SSO Configuration)
2. Set the following options:
   • Description: Duo Access Gateway (this can be whatever you want)
   • SSO Type: SAML
   • Login URL: copy and paste SSO URL from the DAG Admin
   • Identity Provider ID: copy and paste Entity ID from the DAG Admin
   • Identity Provider Certificate: upload the certificate you downloaded from the DAG Admin
   • Locations: check the box for the locations that this SSO applies to. In most cases it will just be All.
3. Save and you're ready to test
4. Use a different (incognito/private) browser window to test so you don't get locked out.
5. Upon login it will redirect you to the SSO login. It will also handle user enrollments here so if this is a brand new org it's a good way to force your users to enroll
6. Once you're done and tested, repeat the process for your production database. Replace training in the URLs with your company id. Create a new Duo Application for this, that way you will have it always working in both live and training.

Chrome, Remote Desktop Services, and Time Zone Redirection

If you're using RDS and have enabled the GPO for Time Zone Redirection, there is a small issue with Chrome that may cause some issues. For whatever reason, JavaScript date functions in Chrome will pull the system's time data instead of the user's. So if your server is in UTC and your user is in Eastern, Chrome's detection will come back as UTC. Firefox and Internet Explorer do not appear to have this flaw (i did not test with Edge).

To tell if you're affected, open the Chrome inspector (Ctrl+Shift+I) and go to the Console tab. If you just enter in new Date() you will see a preview of what the date is, including the time zone.

As far as i can tell, there is no workaround, if someone has one please let me know. I'll be setting up separate pools for users just for this.

Fortigate SSL VPN with LDAP User Authentication

The documentation was pretty inaccurate/unclear on a lot of this, so there was a bit of trial and error. This assumes you're already familiar with setting up SSL VPN and already have it working with local user accounts. Here's how you do it:

Pre-requisites

• You need your SSL VPN portal and settings configured already
• You should also have already created your SSL VPN policy (allowing from the SSL VPN interface to your LAN)
• The above requires you to add a user or group already, you can re-use that group for the items below if desired

Set up LDAP Server

I'm using Active Directory, but you can use any LDAP based directory service. The example below assumes your AD domain is domain.local.

1. Navigate to User & Device > LDAP Server
2. Add a new server and enter the settings:
   
   • Name: this is the friendly name, i usually just put the hostname in
   • Server IP: obvious
   • Server Port: leave this default unless you know what you're doing
   • Common Name Identifier: This defaults to CN, which means Common Name. This is dumb. Your users are not going to log in as "Bob Smith", they're going to log in as bsmith or bsmith@domain.com. Set this to userprincipalname if you want them to use their UPN (username@domain.com) or maybe samaccountname if you want them to just use their username.
   • Distinguished Name: You can't use the Browse button until you fill out the rest of this page, but this can just be DC=domain,DC=local. Note: if you choose to scope this further than the domain as listed, your group (in the next section) must be in scope.
   • Bind Type: Regular
   • Username/Password: You can start off with a domain admin for testing, but ultimately you should create an unprivileged service account to use here
   • Secure Connection/Protocol: I used secure and selected LDAPS. If you don't have LDAPS then don't use it.
   • At this point you should be able to Test Connectivity and get a success.

Set up your group

1. In Active Directory, create a group and add users to it. I called mine SSL VPN Users
2. In the Fortigate, navigate to User & Device > User Groups
3. Click on Create New
4. Name the group the same as you created in AD (this isn't important, just a friendly name)
5. Select Firewall as the type
6. Under the Remote Groups section, click Add, select your LDAP server, and then search/select your group.
7. Important: You have to right click on it and select Add Selected. After that, hit OK, not before.
8. Hit OK again to save the group
9. Configure your SSL VPN firewall policy to use this group for authentication

Testing

At this point you should be done, because you already set up your SSL VPN, right? You should be able to log in as the user now, you can go to Log & Report > VPN Events to see what the error is if you're not able to log in. You can also use the command diag test authserver ldap "YOUR LDAP SERVER NAME" youraccount@domain.com yourpassword to do a direct test.

Apple Open Directory - Options Greyed Out after IP Change

I recently had to move a few Apple servers from one site to another for a client, and after the move the Open Directory was half-working (opens, lets you view users, but can't add/remove/edit). There were a few no-brainer fixes that i had to do initially, but at the end of the day the final fix was pretty much a bandaid.

Overall obvious steps:

1. Make sure your hosts file (/etc/hosts) is referencing the right IPs, in case anything changed.
2. Make sure the system is set to the right IP(s) for DNS.
3. Make sure the DNS Server records are updated to the new/correct IPs for both the forward and reverse zones.

The bandaid fix for me

In my case, when authenticating within the Workgroup Manager, it would lag and then eventually log in. Nothing in the logs about what was wrong, but the New User button was greyed out, as well as all of the fields on the actual accounts. For whatever reason i could reset passwords, not sure why. The ultimate fix was to add an additional network interface to the server, and set the IP address to the old IP of the server. Yep.

Troubleshooting Steps

• First i fired up tcpdump and did a filter of "port 53" to see if any DNS requests were going out or coming back in incorrectly. Didn't find anything there.
• Next i did tcpdump "host 10.x.x.x" (with the old IP of the server) on a hunch, to see if it was trying to send any traffic there. And yep, it was, on port 389 (LDAP).
• Knowing that, i did a grep for the IP in /etc and a few other places but couldn't find it, assuming it's in a binary DB somewhere or something. So the only solution is to make the traffic actually connect.
• In Networking, i added a new interface under the existing Ethernet, gave it the same IP of the server before the move, but with subnet mask 255.255.255.255. This allows the IP to respond without interfering with any other IPs on the subnet.
• After making that change, the directory connected and started working instantly.

Migrating to Office 365 from BAE Systems / Silversky Hosted Exchange

This was a fun one... not an easy process to figure out so hopefully this helps someone. To migrate away from the BAE Systems aka Silversky Hosted Exchange platform, you need to get a few things:

1. Your Office 365 organization should already be set up and ready to go (obviously)
2. An admin account in Hosted Exchange that has Full Access to the mailboxes you wish to migrate, and is a licensed user (has an Exchange package)
3. Either an Outlook installation you can use, or the testconnectivity.microsoft.com website will also do.
4. Access to the BAE Systems Exchange Provisioning Console (it's a java app)

Office 365 Setup

At this point you should have your organization created, domain added, and at least one licensed user (admin account is ok). That part of the setup is far out of scope for this guide.

Getting Admin Access

If you have just a few mailboxes, then you can just do this yourself. I highly recommend you test this with one or two mailboxes first, as i have had the built-in cusrpt@ account not work correctly.

For each user:

1. Open the user account in the provisioning console
2. Go to Packages, and edit the Exchange package
3. Launch the Mailbox Rights Management window
4. Add your admin account and grant it Full Access
5. Save all the way out, rinse and repeat

If you have a ton of mailboxes, then you may need to call support. You can launch multiple instances of the provisioning console to pipeline the requests, but i just did 500 users, so that wasn't happening. In that case, you can call support and get them to run a Powershell command to grant you access. It may take a little work to get them to escalate it, and they also may want to charge you for it. I'm not going to go over the details of the command here, you can google that one.

Starting the Migration Batch

1. Open the Exchange admin center, and head over to Recipients/Migration
2. Create a new Migration batch, "Migrate to Exchange Online"
3. Set the batch type to Cutover
4. Enter the account credentials that you set up in the previous section (the one with access to all the mailboxes)
5. It will probably give you an error at this point, that's why this guide exists. You now need to enter the Exchange server and RPC proxy server. Here we go...
   The easy part first: set the RPC proxy to exchange.postoffice.net. Now the hard part. Use either the testconnectivity.microsoft.com website, or (for the security conscious) your Outlook's Autodiscover feature. To use the former, just go to the website and enter the info, doing an Autodiscover test. To use the latter, ctrl+click on your Outlook icon, go to Test E-mail Autoconfiguration, enter the credentials and un-check the Guessmart options.
   
   At this point, regardless of the option, you will end up with the Autodiscover XML output. In here, you will see a section that says:
   
   

   <Protocol>
     <Type>EXCH</Type>
     <Server>2bd60169-a9ac-4f15-bdd4-dea1a11129a7@yourdomain.com</Server>
   

   
   You need to copy/paste the contents of the Server tag (the part that looks like an email address, including the @yourdomain.com). This is what you use for the Exchange server field.
6. Once you've done that, you do need to use the advanced/more option and set Authentication to Basic and Mailbox Permission to Full Access and hit Next
7. Name your batch, select the notification email (aren't you glad i told you to have at least one licensed user?), and you can start.

At this point, you're migrating. You can monitor the batch status from the console like you normally would. If doing a large number of mailboxes, use Powershell.