As previously posted the update due on Tuesday November 27th will amongst many other things improve the remote access experience for Windows Home Server users by providing them with a “trusted SSL certificate” for their home servers. That means customers will be able to access their home server from outside the home without any security warnings being generated by the web browser.  GoDaddy, a leading provider of Web domain addresses, is the provider of the free trusted certs which have a 5 year expiration date with a street value of $100 – all for free!

More details on GoDaddy’s SSL Certificate’s are available in the PDF guide Why you need a SSL Certificate.

We were sent a private beta of Jungle Disk for Windows Home Server, an online, off site backup solution for Home Server.

Once the add-In was installed we were able to use the new Online Backup tab under the settings dialog to configure Jungle Disk. From here we clicked the link to take us to the Amazon S3 signup page. But if you have an account already you just need to insert your two security keys as supplied.

Within this tab, you also have the option of selecting which shared folders you want to backup and the time frame in which you would like this to happen. By default it uses the time that you have set in the Backup tab. In my example 12 midnight till 8 am. Your files will now be backed up during this period each day.

After the initial backup, only new or changed files will be uploaded and If the time period you have set is not long enough for your initial backup to complete, it will continue on the next day as needed.

You also have the option of limiting the bandwidth used by the backup, in case you use upstream bandwidth intensive applications like VOIP etc, and you can also specify after how many days that you would like to remove deleted files from your online backups.

The main screen allows you to pause your next scheduled task and start a backup immediately if required. The screen is mostly taken up by a log, that shows if there are any backup warnings or errors. A shortcut is also provided to take you back into the online backup settings tab as and if needed.

The Restore Files button opens another screen that enables you to select which SERVER to restore from (in case you have more than one). From here you also have the option of displaying files that are no longer present on your server, in case of situations like accidental deletion etc. This makes it easy to restore those files that are missing, quickly and easily.

As we stated earlier, at the moment Jungle Disk for Windows Home Server is only currently available as an internal preview build but will be available shortly as a public beta. Several features which are planned for the final release version are:

• Multi-version backup / restore
• File / folder / file-type filtering
• Byte-level incremental backups for changes to large files
• More complex scheduling options
• Additional restore options
• Custom encryption settings (similar to the desktop version of Jungle Disk)
• Backup history display
• Integration with the WHS Health / Error reporting system

We look forward to the public beta release, as I am sure many of you are too.

When using remote access you may find that uploading or downloading a large file or a group of files will cause the connection to time out before the operation finishes with the error message “The remote connection to the computer timed out. Please connect again.”

By default, remote access is configured to timeout after 20 minutes, which is adequate for uploading/downloading about 15 MB even at slow DSL speeds but if you are frequently seeing this error message, you’ll need to adjust the timeout value to something higher. Setting the timeout to 30 up to 60 minutes is reasonable if circumstances require it. Setting a timeout interval that’s too long increase your security risk and can consume an unreasonable amount of resources on a server.

It is easy to change this timeout value:

1. Using mstsc.exe, start a Remote Desktop Connection session to your home server.
2. Use notepad.exe, to edit C:\Inetpub\remote\web.config.
3. Locate the following line:
   <sessionState mode=”InProc” cookieless=”false” timeout=”20″/>
4. Replace “20″ (which represents 20 minutes) with a larger number to allow your uploads to finish.
   If you change the timeout value to more than 200 minutes, you must also change the executionTimeout value. Search for the following line
   <httpRuntime maxRequestLength=”2097151″ executionTimeout=”12000″/> 
   and increase the executionTimeout value (measured in seconds) to the same or greater value than the timeout value (measured in minutes).
5. Save your change, close the file, restart the IIS after this edit or better still, restart the server. Any edit to IIS or a related issue with the web    configuration will need the web services to be restarted and log off from your Remote Desktop Connection session.
6. Use Remote Access to upload your file or files to ensure that the timeout parameter you chose is sufficient to complete the upload.

One of the “silent features” of Windows Home Server is the ability to give people access to your shared folders even though they aren’t even in your household.  You don’t need to associate user accounts with computers, which means you can create as many users as you need in WHS and them assign them permissions on individual folders.  Using the WHS web interface, these people can now access your server and browse shared folders — a perfect way to give grandma and grandpa access to see the latest photos of your family from afar!

Using the web interface, they login with the username and password you have given them and then go to the Shared Folders tab.  From there the can view your files, download them to their local PC’s and view or print them off.  You can even give them write permissions which will allow them to upload files — a perfect way for an extended family across the country, or across the world, to share photos and have a “central family server” for storing them on!  The best part about it, it doesn’t matter if they use Windows, Mac, Linux or an old Amiga — as long as they have a web browser and Internet access they can connect up.

Just one more way Windows Home Server helps keep your home, and your family, connected.

Guest Blogger

Robert Stinnett
www.robertstinnett.com

Microsoft enthusiast and evangelist Benjamin Gauthey has posted a two minute Webcast in French showing a D-Link IP camera being remotely controlled via the web sites pane within the remote management interface of Windows Home Server.

Available from here.

English translation by Google.

If you are using a computer without the connector (console) software on it (e.g. at work trying to access your home server) and you try to connect to the web interface of WHS then the following error appears:

Home PCs with the connector/console software installed have the server’s certificate automatically installed during connector setup. Computers without the software installed don’t have this certificate and so the error message.

To stop this error appearing; when accessing the web interface we need to export the certificate from a PC with the connector/console software on it and then import it into the PC without the software on it.

EXPORT

1. So on the PC with the connector/console software on it open your web browser and type in your https://xxxx.livenode.com address
2. To the right of the address bar click on the Padlock icon and then View certificates
3. Click the Certification Path tab
4. Double click the long GUID number (root certificate)
5. Click the Details tab
6. Click the Copy to File… button
7. Export the certificate somewhere safe using default option

IMPORT

1. Move the certificate to the machine without the connector/console software
2. Double click the the .cer file and select Install Certificate… on the General tab
3. Click Next on the wizard that opens and place a dot in Place all certificates in the following store
4. Click Browse and select Trusted Root Certification Authorities and click OK
5. Click Next and then Finish

That’s it. You can now access your web interface on your PC without the connector/console software via your livenode.com dynamic address, your server name e.g. SERVER or localhost without getting the dreaded error html page.

Imagine this scenario. You are at a friend’s house and you want to upload 25 files from his PC to your WHS using the upload feature from the Shared Folders tab within the web interface. Now if you have tried this you will know that it takes forever, but no longer.

The latest news from the German Ms Homeserver Blog is that using OnTheFlyUnzipper will allow you to add hundreds of files in a ZIP or RAR archive, upload this file to your Windows Home Server and the add-in will then automatically uncompress the files. Saving you time, bandwidth and of course megabytes within your upload.

Other options or functions include:

• unzip only archives with a special prefix in the filename (if you don’t want to unzip every archive)
• delete the archive after uncompressing
• create a folder for the contents of the archive
• select the shares that should be monitored for archives
• runs as a service

Well done to developer Alex (AliG) for this add-in and apart from the download a PDF User guide is also available.

Some of you have emailed asking which ports you need to forward on your router for Windows Home Server. So here we go:

The first port to forward to your WHS is the “standard web traffic” (HTTP) port 80, although this is optional. If you don’t forward it, you can access your WHS machine using https://<address> instead of http://<address>

Next is the “secure http web traffic” (HTTPS) port 443.

Then Remote Web Workplace (RWW) which uses port 4125. This enables you to access the web interface feature.

 Web Interface Feature

Finally the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) port 3389. This allows you to use “Remote Desktop Connection” to connect to your Windows Home Server desktop.

 Windows Home Server Desktop

All ports are TCP only – UDP is NOT necessary.

More and more Internet Service Provider’s (ISP’s) are blocking the default ports which allow access via the web interface to your Windows Home Server. With this workaround we will have you remotely connecting to your server using your favorite browser.

The two ports in question here are 80 and 443. If your ISP is only blocking port 80 you only need to forward port 443 to your WHS and then connect using https:// and NOT http://

But what if your Internet provider is blocking both ports. What can you then do to allow web access to Windows Home Server?

Well, we have a workaround for you.

First remote desktop to the WHS as the Administrator and click Start, right click My Computer and select Manage.
In the left pane expand Services and Applications, expand Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, expand Web Sites and right click on Default Web Site (making sure that it is highlighted first) and choose Properties.

From the Web Site tab you can manually type the port number you want. In this example we use 8008 for http (TCP Port) and 600 for https (SSL Port).

You can now click OK and close the Computer Management Console.

We now need to forward these two new port numbers in the WHS firewall on the server.

Click Start, Control Panel then Windows Firewall. On the Exemptions tab we need to click Add Port. We then insert 8008 for the name and 8008 for the port and make sure that TCP has a dot in it. We then OK this and do the same again, but this time inserting 600 instead for name and port and again making sure TCP is dotted.

We can now OK out of the dialogs and Log Off the Windows Home Server.

Finally we need to forward these two ports to our WHS in the router.

If you need help with this part try this site. Select your router then go through the instructions replacing the port numbers with the ones from above, making sure that you do both ports.

You can now access your WHS via its web interface using:

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8008/home
https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:600/home

Please note that without the /home part it will not work.

If your router does Port Redirection (NOT the same as Port Forwarding) you need not do any of the above, but instead you could forward external port 8008 to 80 and forward external port 600 to 443 on your router instead.

UPDATE 19 October 2007: My article describes using port 8008 for HTTP and port 600 for SSL. Carsten Hartmann bought to my attention that port 600 is still a fairly low port number and will more than likely be blocked too since ISP’s normally block ports below 1200. In his situation he used port 8008 for HTTP and 8009 for SSL, which is simple and easy to remember. He added, remember to stop and start your IIS services after you make the changes .
You can access your server by https://Servername.homeServer.com:8009/remote

UPDATE 25 June 2007: SME has posted a valid point that if their ISP blocks the ports, they don’t want you to run servers and you agreed to follow their rules by accepting the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).  Personally my ISP has the ports blocked BUT only disallows FTP servers. So the Windows Home Server is OK. But your provider may be different, CHECK with them first as your account may be deleted by your provider!

You can view the WHS log files from a remote desktop connection (under Start->Accessories) to the server or from the web interface if you have done what was discussed here to get the full Home Server desktop and not just the console.  Make sure that you logon as Administrator with your WHS password. Then go to the event viewer via All Programs, Administrative Tools then Event Viewer. 

When a user establishes a Remote Desktop connection to the WHS this connection will remain active until the user selects “Log Off” from the Start Menu. If a user simply closes the remote desktop window when they’re finished, that username will still remain logged on.

The software running on the WHS to facilitate the Remote Desktop connection will only allow for up to two simultaneous sessions. Active and disconnected sessions are calculated in this connection limit as is the Administrator account also. The console session, however, does not count against the connection limit.

If a third attempt is made to login to the server, the dreaded “The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections” error will be shown to the user, and they will be unable to complete the login process. You can’t even connect to disconnect the old sessions BUT there is a way around this:

Simply click OK to the error message and wait for unto 30 seconds for the window to close then simply type the following in a Start – RUN or CMD Prompt on your client machine.

mstsc /v:00.00.00.00 /f -console
 
Replace 00.00.00.00 with your server’s IP Address or server name. e.g.SERVER

Type in your administrator password. This will then connect you to the Console Session on the server and allow you to remote control the machine again.

Once in Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then  click Terminal Services Manager.

In the left hand column you should see your server name. Click on it once. Note the Users Tab in the right pane.

You should see a list of users. You need to reset the two “Disconnected” users. You can do this by right clicking the disconnected user and selecting “Reset.” You should now be able to connect with RDP again after Start – Log Off.

When logging in under this special Console session always kill the inactive sessions first, because if you get disconnected again you will have to connect your monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Only use this session to terminate the other two sessions and not for any other use.

In future when you are done with a Remote Desktop session on WHS, you should always use “Log Off” rather than disconnecting by closing the RD window with the X as this will disconnect from the session but leave it active.

P.S. You could also use the easy option and just reboot the Windows Home Server.

When accessing the Server after logging into the web interface (”Remote Access to Windows Home Server Console”, then “Connect to your Home Server”), you only get the Windows Home Server Console, and not the full Home Server Desktop. The good news is that this can be easily changed.

On the server, open C:\Inetpub\Remote\rdpload.aspx in Notepad and locate the following two lines:

MsRdpClient.SecuredSettings.StartProgram = "HomeServerConsole.exe -b"; (this is on one line)

and

MsRdpClient.SecuredSettings.WorkDir = "<%= WorkDir %>";

These tell the browser based RDP session to use HomeServerConsole.exe as the “shell”, with a command line parameter to tell it not to show the Minimize and Exit buttons.
 
Replace the two lines, above, with the following two lines:
 
MsRdpClient.SecuredSettings.StartProgram = "Explorer.exe";

and

MsRdpClient.SecuredSettings.WorkDir = "c:\\Windows";
 
This tells the RDP session to use explorer.exe as the “Shell”, which it normally is anyway.

Now, when you access your Windows Home Server using the web interface, you’ll see the standard Desktop inside your browser window.