Linux
Free Open Source Computer Management
Jan 30th
Hey what’s going on fellow Admins? I thought I would drop by aTa today to drop the latest Tech Chop video on you. In this episode I talk about a really great computer management solution that runs on your favorite flavor of Linux.
By computer management, I mean it’s sort of in the same category of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, but way easier to setup. Plus since it’s open source, there are no licensing costs. It’s called FOG.
FOG can clone hard drives, and deploy the disk images in a multicast. Not only that, but you can deploy software with it, map printers and join computers to Active Directory.
Check out the video:
If you have any questions about FOG that I didn’t cover in the video. Capabilities, installation questions, etc. Let me know in the comments!
By -=El Di Pablo=-
How To Spoof Email in Linux, iPhone and Android
Nov 23rd
Greetings fellow Admins! It’s me, El Di Pablo from Bauer-Power and Tech Chop taking the reigns here at AskTheAdmin for a little while. I was chatting with Karl, and apparently he is working 70 hour work weeks lately, and hasn’t had time to keep up with the posts here. Me being the nice virtual online friend that I am, I volunteered to write up some posts for a week or two to give you guys some original content.
Now, today isn’t going to be one of those days though. Today, I am going to post my latest video from my monthly video show Tech Chop. In this episode I show you three ways you can send spoof emails using your iPhone, Android, and also from Linux. Spoiler alert! Sending spoofs from your iPhone or Android phone is way easier than Linux. However, since you are using the terminal to do it in Linux, that automatically boosts your geek cred by +5 and in turn makes you look cooler.
Here’s the video:
Links for the apps and commands used can be found here: (Spoofing Email For Dummies)
Sending out these spoofs is actually a pretty funny prank you can play on someone. In the video I mentioned sending one to the desktop tech that works for me, and he almost had a heart attack. He says he is saving it for blackmail purposes now, so maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Anyway, still funny if you ask me.
If you want to check out more videos from Tech Chop, visit TechChop.com. If you want to watch the videos on your TV using a set-top box like Boxee, or Roku, you can catch Tech Chop on the Tech Podcast Network!
Know of other tools that will allow you to send spoofs? Are they easier to use? Let us know about them in the comments!
Hack Windows Passwords in Win 7 (Video)
Mar 9th
We as administrators need tools. That is just a fact of life, and that is one of the reasons I just released Bauer-Puntu Linux 9.10R2.
I always have a copy of it on my USB stick, so I figured why not add some tools. One of them being a Windows password reset tool! Using this tool we can easily hack the Windows 7 Administrator password.
In this video episode of Bauer-Power (Which Karl so graciously let me re-post here) I show you how easy it is to hack Windows passwords using Bauer-Puntu Linux!
Besides Windows password hacking, Bauer-Puntu also gives you tools for:
- File recovery
- File shredding
- Hard drive wiping
- Disk imaging
- Disk partitioning
- Offline Virus Scan
Version 10.04 will be coming out soon. What other kinds of tools do you want to see on it? Like a different Live CD/USB distro? What is your favorite? Hit us up in the comments!
By ElDiPablo of Bauer-Power
Download the Google Chrome OS Virtual Machine via GeekLad
Nov 20th
Last week, Techcrunch reported rumors of the release of the Google Chrome OS. They stated that the info came from a reliable source, and indeed that source was reliable. Google had an event at their headquarters, and indeed provided new details and a demo of the Chrome OS. The Chromium Blog has some great videos that provide some additional information about Chrome OS as well.
The Chromium OS source code is available for download (Chromium OS is the open-source version of Google Chrome OS), and you can compile and build it. It took some time, but I did manage to do this on my 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) machine. I also managed to put together a VirtualBox virtual appliance that is all ready to go. I built a torrent for it, so feel free to download it here:
Download the Chromium OS VirtualBox Appliance Torrent
Please continue to seed, as I’m sure there will be many people out there wanting to try it out.
To use it, just start up VirtualBox, click File and then Import. Navigate to the chromiumos.ovf file and select it. The virtual appliance will be imported into VirtualBox and you should be good to go.
I also included a txt file that more or less has the commands I used to build it. You may be able to run it as a script, although I haven’t confirmed that it will work. I guess you could say I more or less took “script-like notes” as I was building Chromium OS.
If you hit Ctrl+Alt+T when you first log in, you’ll get a shell prompt. You can run “sudo su” (no quotes) to log in as root, and I’ve set the password to “password” (no quotes). If you use this machine for anything serious (although I doubt you would), be sure to change the password.
It is absolutely astounding how fast it boots. It really is nearly instant-on and takes a mere few seconds to bring up the login screen.

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Once you log in with your Gmail account, it launches and you’ll see the Chromium interface open up to your Gmail. There is also a Google Calendar tab and a New Tab tab. The little chrome sphere appears in the upper left corner, but when you click on it you don’t get a menu as you see in some of the Chrome OS videos. Instead, you get a Google.com account login page.

As you can see, it looks very much like the Chrome OS screenshots that had surfaced last month. Of course, being that this is running on a virtual machine without any decent video drivers on the operating system, the resolution is quite low (800×600). Your dear old granddad may be the only one that actually finds it visually appealing at this resolution.
Right now the most impressive thing is how fast this operating system loads. Of course, it should load fast because there really is hardly anything there. In any case, it is rather neat to see an early release in action. The fact that it actually works on a virtual machine is quite promising. Eventually as drivers for more hardware are incorporated into it, it should be possible to run it your own real hardware.
I also found a VMWare virtual disk image on a Google Wave about the Chrome OS. You can download it here:
Download the Chromium OS VMWare Virtual Disk Image
As of now, the link to the VMWare disk image is valid and the download works. However, I haven’t tried using it, so I can’t confirm that it will run on VMWare without issue. Enjoy your Google Chrome OS virtual machines!
[Via GeekLad]
How can I join a Ubuntu machine to my domain?
May 14th
When my old boss at Websense first introduced me to the world of Linux, being from a Windows shop, I naturally asked him how to join my Linux workstation to the domain. He of course said, “Why would you want to do that? Don’t taint the pureness of open source!” So I never pressed the issue.
That is, until yesterday afternoon. I decided to give it a go again, and I have to tell you they have made it really easy. I read some blog posts on this before, and it used to be kind of a pain in the arse to do it. Not any more with the use of LikeWise Open which is available in the Ubuntu repositories.
To install it and set it up, just do the following steps (Via AnotherSysadmin.Wordpress.Com):
sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install likewise-opensudo domainjoin-cli join fqdn.of.your.domain Administratorsudo update-rc.d likewise-open defaultssudo /etc/init.d/likewise-open start
After that is done, you can log out, then log back in with your domain\username account (You have to add the domain\ first). Here is the beautiful screen shot of my Ubuntu machine in Active directory:
Pretty cool right? I bet you never knew it could be that easy to do. Try it yourself. Let me know how it goes in the comments.
Last night Ubuntu saved my life – How I used Ubuntu to recover ALL my files…
Mar 30th
Commodore 64 here to bring you another horror story from binary-land. Lord knows I’ve been through hell and back with computers. Overheating CPUs, which were fixed by the cold of the winter outside my apt; crashing hard drives which were fixed or accessed by various means; faulty power supplies, which had me gutting and re-assembling my machine; and many more.
Up to this point, the only time I actually lost data, was to my ex-wife, who got to keep the computer with all my stuff in it, while I made away with a crappy laptop. Other than that, I’ve always been able to salvage my data somehow.
This time I had a new problem. Upon conferring with the Admin, to whom I have exclusive access (belonging has perks people, hit the comments if YOU want to belong as well) we came to the conclusion, based on past problems that were brought to his attention, that I have a power supply which is not supplying a steady stream of power to my hard-drives and various other internally powered devices. Now so far, to the best of my knowledge, a hard drive and ram are really the only components that can suffer from a faltering power supply. For the past 6 months, my computer has eaten through 3 Western Digital hard drives, which I’m sure were perfectly fine from the get-go. I will note here that I DO NOT blame Western Digital for these issues. I am a fair consumer which doesn’t point unnecessary blame where it is not due. I will however give them a call and will update this blog with their responses and whether they are able to help me at all along the lines of some replacements.
My problem started because of me. I let waaaay to much time go by before I blew the inordinate amount of dust out of my computer, and more importantly, my power supply. I have gotten into the bad habit of leaving my case open, as I am also inordinately lazy. This probably contributed to the systematic weakening of my power supply. My hypothesis is that the dust caked up on the power supply fan, causing the power supply to rise in temperature, and over time this started to affect it’s power output. This, in turn, caused my hard drives to fuzz in a very weird, intermittent way. At first we thought that my snazzy hard drive enclosure was the culprit. I had one of my drives, my all-important work drive with all my years of work, in an enclosure which, through an lcd display provided me spin-up and temperature info, but more importantly this enclosure allowed my drive to be cold-removed from my machine easily. My justification was, that in the case of a fire, or a world-wide Huxley style pron hunt, I would have the ability to simply slide my drive out of my machine, and make off with my all-important stuff. Karl and I had hypothesized earlier on, that this was the culprit to the failing of my first WD-320 drive. At the time this was my data drive on which I kept all my data, but I also had a recent copy of the data on another drive, so it was no big deal.
So I removed the offending enclosure and drive, and continued on with a slightly bruised ego and one less hard drive in my collection. For about a few months this was fine. Most likely there was now less power being drained from the power supply so this proved to be a stop-gap measure which lasted only a few months, which I only know now.
Then the unthinkable happened. Something that hasn’t happened to me in years. A full-out dead freeze in Windows, which upon rebooting, no longer existed according to the cryptic error message my BIOS was giving me. Windows was gone. Since I couldn’t deal with the problem right there and then, I popped in my newly burned Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD to leave some semblance of a usable computer intact on my PC.
A few days later I was actually able to spend some time recovering or repairing my machine, whichever came first. Since I had turned the machine off the night before, I booted up and noticed that Windows was beginning to boot. Hooray!
By some miraculous feat, Windows was booting up! However, my beloved work drive was not showing up. Upon checking BIOS I noticed that the hard drive was being detected, but Windows couldn’t see it! Before I could do much else, Windows froze again. At this point I realized Windows wasn’t coming back, and that I had to concentrate my efforts on damage control rather than repair. Recovering my work files became my top priority.
Enter Ubuntu.
At first, Ubuntu did not recognize my work drive. Then, after a few minutes, my work drive appeared in the My-Computer-esque Home window Ubuntu had given me. Eureka! The OS sees my drive. I quickly connected my LaCie external USB drive and double clicked on the WD-320 drive which contained all my precious work files. One more obstacle: I received an error which said something to the effect of (loosely translated) “Ubuntu needs you to give it the command, in the command prompt, to mount the drive with the force option activated.” I popped open Firefox and Googled just the first part of the error and was presented with some results to some blogs which contained the exact command, with switches, that I was to use to successfully get my drive accessible in Ubuntu. The command worked an I proceeded to copy the 130 Gigabytes of precious data from my half-broken, limping hard-drive to my ever solid external USB drive. A few hours later the operation was complete. I can rest easy now.
A later memory test, courtesy of the good people that brought the Ubuntu Live CD, revealed that my memory chips were fried too – looks like a job for Crucial.com.
It’s been a week now, and thanks to Ubuntu, getting my data accessible after a hard system crash like that was not something I had to lose sleep over. Since I was able to safely offload my data without having to overhaul my computer, I was able to get some sleep that night, and many other nights following the incident. Sleeping is not an issue when you know your data is safe, even if for the time being.
Now I can slowly work on getting the $500 together to buy 2 new hard drives, and 2 new ram chips, so that one day my computer will be restored to it’s former dual-screen, design station ala Commodore glory. But in the meantime, I can survive rather comfortably using my Mac, and my resuscitated PC running Ubuntu 7.10. In all fairness this was a harrowing situation, but the availability of a self-contained, graphical operating system, that can run off a CD on a PC with nothing in working order besides a power supply, a motherboard, and some limping hard drives and memory chips, enabled me to not have to put my life on hold again to ensure access to my important stuff.
Piece of mind, that’s what it came down to.


