What’s the best vehicle for mountain bikers?
Being a mountain biker means travelling a lot. Unless you happen to live in the Scottish highlands, or in North Wales, you don’t tend to have huge amounts of trails on your doorstep. And even if you do, who wants to ride the same trails all the time?
So, we drive. A lot. We get up early on a saturday morning and load bikes and kit into a car or van and set off in search of trail gold.
But what’s the best sort of vehicle to use if you’re a mountain biker? I’ve had fast cars, new cars, old cars, small cars, big cars, and vans. I also used to drive tractors, but they’re a bit slow and unless you count a trailer, don’t have much storage space.
Currently, I drive a ford focus estate. It’s awesome. It’s a few years old so i don’t worry about the odd scratch and scuff, and I can get a full suspension mountain bike inside without taking the wheels off and still pile all my kit in. With the front bike wheels off, you can easily get two bikes and two people in, plus kit. It does over 50mpg because it’s a diesel.
The estate version of the focus has a flat boot, so there’s no lip to get the bikes and kit over when loading or unloading, and the rear with the boot up provides a good sheltered seat to get changed if the weather’s not too bad. There are also some handy little compartments in the boot that are useful for storing tools and/or food.
Previously, I’ve had a lovely Audi A3. Brand new, company car. Climate control, leather and incredible sound system. Bloody nightmare. Constantly worried about scratching it, and had to use a bike rack, which means you can’t leave it anywhere unattended, and your fuel economy drops pretty drastically. Gorgeous car, and great to drive, but completely impractical for someone who wants to put dirty kit and people inside it, and dirty bikes on the rack on it.
On a trip to Scotland once, we hired a transit van. This was pretty awesome, to be honest. We got about 8 bikes and lots of kit in, although it took some working out, and careful arrangement of fork stanchions and blankets…
Three people in the front, and we were sorted for a road trip (the other guys went in a car). However, you can’t get from the cab to the rear of the van because of the bulkhead, and the fuel economy isn’t great.
Now, what about this? A pickup truck. We saw this in Wales on a recent trip to llandegla. I doubt it’s road legal. Anyhow, a pickup truck is great for biking, but do you ever actually need to drive off-road? I’ve been mountain biking for most of my life, and I’ve never actually needed to drive off-road – that’s what the mountain bike is for. Of course, it’d be amazing for shuttle runs…
I have to say however, there are some beautiful VW caddys around, but who could risk chucking a mountain bike in the back of this beauty?
To be honest, the best vehicle I’ve ever had was this Mercedes Vito. I genuinely loved driving it because it handled so well, and it’s perfect for short or long trips with the bike(s). With split front seats and a row of seats behind that you can also split and remove one, it means you can get from the drivers seat into the back of the van perfectly easily. I’ve had four people and four bikes, plus kit, comfortably in the vito.
If the weather is bad, it’s easy to get changed inside before the ride, and even do some pre-ride mechanical checks and lube the chain and stuff. After a ride, the rear door lifts up to provide some shelter from the rain (or sun..?), and you can chuck the bikes in before hopping in yourself to get into dry clothes without doing that ridiculous manoeuvre of trying to get changed in the seats of a car without giving yourself cramp. Also, it’s rear wheel drive, and that always means a little extra fun.
What’s your ideal mountain biking vehicle?
Fixing “the trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed” without leaving the domain or restarting.
Sometimes you’ll find that for any one of a multitude of reasons, a workstation’s computer account becomes locked or somehow otherwise disconnected from the actual workstation (say, if a machine with the same name joins the network, or if it’s been offline for a very long time). When you try to log on to the domain you’ll get a message that states:
“the trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed”
Now, what I would normally do in this situation is un-join and re-join the workstation to the domain, which works, but creates a new SID (Security Identifier) and can therefore break existing trusts in the domain with that machine, and of course it requires a reboot. So if you don’t want to reboot, and you don’t want to break existing trusts, do this:
Use netdom.exe in a command prompt to reset the password for the machine account, from the machine with the trust problem.
netdom.exe resetpwd /s:<server> /ud:<user> /pd:*
<server> = a domain controller in the joined domain
<user> = DOMAIN\User format with rights to change the computer password
* = the domain user password
That should do it, in *most* cases.
Use Prezi for your presentations
It’s better than powerpoint.
Troubleshooting SYSVOL replication between domain controllers, using DCDIAG
Since we had a power outage a few days ago, I’ve seen some problems with replication of the sysvol folder throughout the domain controllers, most likely due to some file corruption on one domain controller that halted replication to the remaining domain controllers. (The domain controller in question had a disk fail in the RAID 1 array, which then refused to rebuild due to disk issues on the existing live disk.)
The sysvol folder is where all group policies and logon scripts are held, and is accessible by all domain members in order to process the policies and scripts. The “original” is held on the first domain controller in the domain.
Replication of the sysvol folder is separate to Active Directory replication. Sysvol replication relies on the File Replication Service running on the domain controller, and any failures are logged in the windows event logs.
Firstly, we had to work out what was going on. This is best done by examining the event logs for these errors, and running some diagnostic tools on the servers – in this case, DCDIAG. DCDIAG is part of the Server 2003 support tools package.
The output looks like this:
C:\>dcdiag
Domain Controller Diagnosis
Performing initial setup:
Done gathering initial info.
Doing initial required tests
Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\”DOMAIN CONTROLLER”
Starting test: Connectivity
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test Connectivity
Doing primary tests
Testing server: Default-First-Site-Name\”DOMAIN CONTROLLER”
Starting test: Replications
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test Replications
Starting test: NCSecDesc
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test NCSecDesc
Starting test: NetLogons
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test NetLogons
Starting test: Advertising
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test Advertising
Starting test: KnowsOfRoleHolders
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test KnowsOfRoleHolders
Starting test: RidManager
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test RidManager
Starting test: MachineAccount
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test MachineAccount
Starting test: Services
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test Services
Starting test: ObjectsReplicated
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test ObjectsReplicated
Starting test: frssysvol
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test frssysvol
Starting test: frsevent
There are warning or error events within the last 24 hours after the
SYSVOL has been shared. Failing SYSVOL replication problems may cause
Group Policy problems.
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” failed test frsevent
Starting test: kccevent
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test kccevent
Starting test: systemlog
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457
Time Generated: 08/17/2012 15:44:48
(Event String could not be retrieved)
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457
Time Generated: 08/17/2012 15:44:50
(Event String could not be retrieved)
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457
Time Generated: 08/17/2012 15:44:51
(Event String could not be retrieved)
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457
Time Generated: 08/17/2012 15:44:52
(Event String could not be retrieved)
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457
Time Generated: 08/17/2012 15:44:52
(Event String could not be retrieved)
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457
Time Generated: 08/17/2012 15:44:52
(Event String could not be retrieved)
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x00000457
Time Generated: 08/17/2012 15:44:53
(Event String could not be retrieved)
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” failed test systemlog
Starting test: VerifyReferences
......................... “DOMAIN CONTROLLER” passed test VerifyReferences
Running partition tests on : DomainDnsZones
Starting test: CrossRefValidation
......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation
Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
......................... DomainDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom
Running partition tests on : ForestDnsZones
Starting test: CrossRefValidation
......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CrossRefValidation
Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
......................... ForestDnsZones passed test CheckSDRefDom
Running partition tests on : Schema
Starting test: CrossRefValidation
......................... Schema passed test CrossRefValidation
Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
......................... Schema passed test CheckSDRefDom
Running partition tests on : Configuration
Starting test: CrossRefValidation
......................... Configuration passed test CrossRefValidation
Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
......................... Configuration passed test CheckSDRefDom
Running partition tests on : nic
Starting test: CrossRefValidation
......................... nic passed test CrossRefValidation
Starting test: CheckSDRefDom
......................... nic passed test CheckSDRefDom
Running enterprise tests on : nic.local
Starting test: Intersite
......................... nic.local passed test Intersite
Starting test: FsmoCheck
......................... nic.local passed test FsmoCheck
The failed tests above are due to past errors being in the event log from before the sysvol fix. If you’re having sysvol replication errors, you’ll see the replication tests failing, along with systemlog and frsevent failures.
To fix this, the intact sysvol folder needs to be forced to replicate across the domain. The process is as follows:
Stop the FRS service on all domain controllers.
Locate the Burflags entry under the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NtFrs\Parameters\Backup/Restore\Process at Startup
And change the DWORD value to D4 on the “source” domain controller (this is to flag an authoritative restore, and D2 on the child domain controllers (non-authoritative). Before doing this, take a backup of the sysvol folder, but make sure you store it on the same partition, otherwise permissions may change, and this would impact group policy if you had to restore it.
Then restart the FRS service on all domain controllers (the D4 one first) and wait for replication to occur. This can take up to a few hours, depending on the infrastructure, number of domain controllers, and size of the sysvol folder.
Afterwards, running
Net share
At a command prompt will also show you the shared folders on the domain controller – so once this replication is complete, you should see the sysvol and netlogon shares present.
Then you can also run DCDIAG tests on each domain controller to confirm.