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Bash Script – Pcapsipdump Spool Directory File Rotation – OR – Rotate Directories Based on YYYYMMDD Format

In the config file for the pcapsipdump program, there is a retention option where you are supposed to be able to enter the number of days to keep the directories in your spool folder and it should auto purge out the old directories/files, however, this option either doesn’t appear to be implemented yet or doesn’t work if you run the app as a different user (could be a permissions issue maybe?).

Anyhow, this script is my solution to the problem. It could also very easily be modified and used where someone needs to search and delete directories that are based on YYYYMMDD format with the ability to whitelist or ignore certain directories, hence the alternate title. Yet another alternate title could even be “Bash Script Functions – Convert YYYYMMDD to Unix Time and Vice Versa” but obviously the script would need modified a little because it has been tailored to fit my needs.

When run as a cron job, the script will grab both the spool directory and the retention period from the pcapsipdump config file and will purge out any old folders based on YYYYMMDD format so they aren’t eating up all your valuable disk space.

I also added a couple of noteworthy user-configurable options. The first being a directory whitelist feature (IGNORE_DIRS array), this option can be used in situations where there are directories that you don’t want purged or would like to keep the data indefinitely and that can also be used in conjunction with the PURGE_ALL feature to delete out any subdirectories that aren’t specifically listed in the whitelist if you are a clean freak.

Download it now – pcaprotate.sh

#!/bin/bash
#
# pcapsipdump file rotation
# By Nathan Thomas
# 12/05/2014
#

### VARS ###
# Location of the pcapsipdump config file
CONF_FILE='/etc/default/pcapsipdump';

# Keep the spool folder clean - Delete all folders (except those in the ignored directories array)
# yes - Keep the spool folder free from any directories not in the ignore list
# no - Don't worry about any other random folders in the spool directory
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Exchange Server 2010 – Get a List of Mailboxes by Size

In the Exchange Management Shell, to get a simple list of mailboxes sorted by size, in descending order: 

Get-Mailbox | Get-MailboxStatistics | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -descending | ft DisplayName,TotalItemSize -autosize

Now let’s dig a little deeper and show each mailbox’s storage quota limit status and display the total count of email messages as well:

Get-Mailbox | Get-MailboxStatistics | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -descending | ft DisplayName,StorageLimitStatus,ItemCount,TotalItemSize -autosize

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pcapsipdump – Dump SIP Signalling and RTP Streams Per Call Leg into Separate Pcap Files

For a VoIP administrator, in order to properly diagnose and troubleshoot issues sometimes, you need the ability to go to be able to go back in time and dig deep within packet traces to get to the heart of the problem. Unfortunately, this means following the NSA’s policy and doing blanket data collection if you can handle the disk storage requirements.

Sure if the problem is easily reproducible, then you can either do a SIP trace in your VoIP software to get just the signalling data or if you need the RTP streams too, you can use “tcpdump” to capture the packets and avoid this scenario altogether but that isn’t always the case and using tcpdump certainly does have it’s limitations.

Capture (pcap) files get huge and harder to work with, you have to create filters to find the data you need, the list goes on and on. Of course, there are some helpful switches you can use to try to get around this when trying to capture data for long periods of time but then you still run into the problem of needing to run the application as a daemon, rotating log files, and then you still have to dig extensively for the data you need.
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Windows Explorer – Cannot Read From the Source File or Disk

Sometimes when users on a Mac manipulate files on a Windows network share, files get left with missing attributes where there is no security tab in the properties, you cannot take ownership of the files nor can you delete them and you get an error message that states “Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk.”.
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Asterisk Dialplan Module – stdexten

Very similar to the stock version of standard extension in extensions.conf on Asterisk 11 with some minor customizations to the variables passed to it. Technically, this is not what I’m calling a “module” (which is actually a subroutine), this is just an example of the stdexten context which some may find useful.

In my scenario, under no circumstances would there be any reason to have to change the voicemail context, so the arguments that get passed are: The devices to ring, the timeout period (how long to ring the extension), and the destination voicemail box. If neither of the second and third arguments are passed, then it assumes a timeout period of 25 milliseconds and the extension passed in argument one as the voicemail box.
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