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=-

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!

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

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.

<!—more—>

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]

1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt-get install likewise-open
3. sudo domainjoin-cli join fqdn.of.your.domain Administrator
4. sudo update-rc.d likewise-open defaults
5. sudo /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.

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.

_TheSleepingCommodore_

It is I, El Di Pablo here to bring you a quick Ubuntu tip for the week. I haven’t written on aTa in a while due to my hectic schedule, but I am sure you have seen me milling about the comments quite a bit.

Anyhoo, so there I am last night, screwing around on my Ubuntu laptop surfing porn doing homework when I noticed that all of my minimize and maximize buttons were missing from my windows.

The only way to minimize and maximize my windows were to right click on the bottom task bar and select it from the menu. WTF?!?!?

Well, it turns out that those buttons aren’t completely controlled by Gnome. For those buttons, Gnome uses a windows manager call Metacity. To get those buttons back I had to open a terminal and run the following command:

Once I did that, my buttons came back, and I was able to minimize and maximize like a mofo! Do you have any good Ubuntu tips/tricks you want to share? Hit us up in the comments!

By El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

“…Perhaps you think your email is legitimate enough that encryption is unwarranted. If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don’t you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something? If you hide your mail inside envelopes, does that mean you must be a subversive or a drug dealer, or maybe a paranoid nut?…” -Philip Zimmerman, Creater of PGP

PGP, or more specifically OpenPGP is a great, and more importantly FREE method of securing your data and your e-mails. You don’t want “The Man” reading your e-mails, and neither do I.

There are many PGP and OpenPGP programs out there, but the one that is the most versatile that I have seen is called GnuPG. It comes in some form for every operating system. It comes standard with Ubuntu Linux, and there are versions for Windows and MAC.

If you are a fan of Mozilla Firefox, and Thunderbird like I am, then you will be happy to know that there are GnuPG plugins for both of them. Enigmail for Thunderbird, and FireGPG for Firefox. Of course you have to have GnuPG installed for the plugins to work.

If you have any doubts on the strength of the encryption, it uses PKI and the encryption keys can go up to 4096 bits, which is so strong that if you take all of the computing power on the planet it would still take something ridiculous like 10 billion years to crack (Give or take). I also found a quaint little article here about how the FBI has problems cracking PGP.

“So ya ya ya, yackity smackity… where do I download this fantastic software?”

I thought you would never ask. You can download it from the following sites:

Mac

Linux

Enjoy!

Written by El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

Have you installed Ubuntu server and noticed that when you login to it there is the generic CYA login message from Ubuntu about them not providing warranty blah blah blah blah? Of course you have! Personally, I am not one to stick to defaults very often, especially when it comes to generic welcome messages that can be easily changed! Here is what the original message looks like:

Linux Hostname 2.6.24-18-generic #1 SMP Wed May 28 20:27:26 UTC 2008 i686

The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.

To access official Ubuntu documentation, please visit:

http://help.ubuntu.com/

Yuck! How boring is that? Why not change it to something a little more fun? Or perhaps, if this is a company Ubuntu server, maybe something a little more customized for your company? Changing the message is really quite simple. Just run the following from the terminal:

sudo nano /etc/motd

Make your changes, and save them. It really couldn’t be any easier than that. Now you might have something that looks like this:

For those not in-the-know, motd stands for “Message of The Day” which according to Wikipedia is used to:

…display rules, administrator contact, or simply a piece of ASCII art. This is frequently used in schools or workplaces such as offices.

Have you created a funny or strange motd message on your Linux box? Care to share a screen shot? If you have some good ones, please post a link to them in the comments.

[EDIT]- By The way, if you don’t want your new cool message changed back at reboot, you will also have to edit /etc/motd.tail as well. And yes Jeremy, you can use vi instead of nano!

By El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

Open Source cake… Here is an excerpt that caught my eye that I wanted to share with you:

I have now been Microsoft-Free at work for about 7 weeks. I have also found solutions for almost all of the initial hurdles I encountered in the first week.

Here is the list:

Email – I now have Thunderbird working flawlessly as my email client in sync with Exchange. I do need to talk to the Exchange admin to change a setting on the Exchange Server so I can use the Calendar functionality with Sunbird. I am currently use Webmail for my calendar.

Office – Open Office has worked well with Word, Power Point, Excel, and Adobe documents. I can use Wine to install Visio on my Ubuntu desktop. This doesn’t allow me to be totally Microsoft-Free but there is no answer for Visio’s proprietary format that I am aware of. This is not an issue with Open Source, the problem is that Microsoft doesn’t use an open standard for
their Visio product. Open Office Draw works fine for creating new drawings but can’t import Visio documents saved in Visio format. I also downloaded OxygenOffice Professional that gives me the much needed templates and clip art that Open Office was missing.

Browser – I have been using Firefox at work for years so this a no brainer.

Printer – I do have one unresolved issue. I have an old HP Laserjet (about 8 years old). Although I can see the driver I can’t get the printer to work. I have not invested a ton of time trying to fix it.Before all of the Microsoft defenders start slamming me, let me put my disclaimers out.

My goal of this article is to prove that people can be productive at work without the need of Microsoft software. I am not saying that because I can be productive that everyone should abandon Microsoft and start a project to implement Linux corporate wide. However, I do recommend to those who are open to exploring alternatives that they should start a small pilot project with a handful of desktop users. I think a 5-10 person pilot with Ubuntu or Mepis would be a great way to learn about the opportunities and challenges that an Open Source OS resents.

This is low risk and high return.

A pilot like this will give your IT shop an opportunity to try out alternatives without disrupting the day to day business.When I first started my experiment I was trying to keep it a secret out of fear of attacks from angry Microsoft worshipers (especially from the admins and desktop support). What I am finding out is that most of the folks that I was hiding from are sick and tired of supporting Windows and are proponents of Linux. Several of them are using Linux at home. One of the guys I talked to has Vista and XP installed on his laptop. He swaps out the hard drive when switching between OS’s. He is less then impressed with Vista and complains about the slow boot time (2 times slower then XP).

I recently moved to a new office and a desktop guy saw my Ubuntu desktop when I was moving. I expected an ear full but instead the guy said he fully supports a move to Ubuntu and wished the company would move in that direction.

These stories are coming from Microsoft certified engineers who have spent years supporting Microsoft tools. These stories are not coming from anti-Microsoft people who worship Linux.

“You can run Linux on an empty soda can and an old 9 volt battery if you wanted to!”

 

Since this laptop isn’t much better than an empty soda can, I decided I would give it a shot. I put Xubuntu 7.04 on it because of the lower overhead than regular Ubuntu with Gnome. I couldn’t use the regular Live CD installer though, so I had to use the alternate install cd that uses a text based installer instead. Now everything is working fine.

What I am going to use this for though is something my wife can use when she goes to the coffee shop. She keeps asking if she can borrow my laptop, but I am always using it. Besides, my laptop is running Linux also, which she doesn’t care for so much.

How am I going to make her use this one, when she doesn’t like Linux in the first place? Easy, I am not asking her to completely make the switch (That would be suicide). No, I am only asking her to use this as something to play with when in the coffee shops, or wherever she needs to take a laptop. She still has her desktop PC at home with Windows on it for anything important to her. I also changed the GDM login screen to make it look like a Windows XP welcome screen, and the desktop wallpaper to the grassy fields to make her feel a little more at home! If only I can find a Windows XP USPLASH theme also then this laptop will be complete!

Originally Posted on Bauer-Power By El Di Pablo

I am always playing around with different fonts and such in Windows as I strive to play around in various graphic programs for promotional material and other stuff. Every once in a while I have to add a new font that I downloaded from the Internet. Most of us know how to do that already in Windows (If not, email help_at_asktheadmin_dot_com), but what about Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is starting to gain share in the computer OS realm, and a lot of people want to know how to do average everyday things on it. One of those things people want to know (I know they want to know because they ask me…you know?) is how to add fonts to Ubuntu.

Well its simple, all you have to do is to download your favorite font. Then in your home directory, crate a folder called .fonts (The ‘.’ makes it a hidden file). Just drag your newly downloaded font into that folder and, you guessed it, you are done!

Just open up your favorite graphics program, or whatever else you use fonts in, and your new font will be ready to go!

Got any other Ubuntu tips you want to share with the group? Hit us up in the comments!

-El Di Pablo of www.Bauer-Power.net

It took a while, but I got my stickers, and I was a happy camper. I promptly removed my Windows sticker from my laptop, cleaned off the old adhesive with some rubbing alcohol, and replaced it with my shiny new Ubuntu sticker. I proudly showed the world around me that I didn’t answer to multi-million dollar, self absorbed, monopolistic software  companies like Microshaft. No, I did things on my own terms using free, as in FREE BEER, software available to anyone savvy enough to download it and install it!

I decided I would extend that same offer to you my readers, and anyone else that comes along that enjoys the freedom that Ubuntu Linux has to offer!

I will print out, and mail you a sheet of six “Powered By Ubuntu” self adhesive stickers free of charge! I am a big proponent of Ubuntu, and I want to spread the Ubuntu love to as many people out there as possible!

The sticker comes from the Free Software Stickers book that I blogged about quite a while ago. Sure, you can download the book yourself, print out the stickers and tape them to your laptop all ghetto style and whatnot. I on the other hand will print them out for you on nice, self adhesive sticker paper for a more professional look that says, “Hey, I’m not a douche bag!”

Here is a photo I snapped using my Blackberry of the one I have on my laptop:

So you want some right? I knew you did. All you have to do is mail me a self addressed stamped envelope to:

Bauer-Power Ubuntu Stickers
www.Bauer-Power.net
1520 Petree Street, Suite 632
El Cajon, CA 92020

When I get your envelope, I will return it with your sheet of FREE “Powered By Ubuntu” stickers!

For you Kubuntu users, I haven’t forgot about you either! Just change the address from Bauer-Power Ubuntu Stickers to Bauer-Power Kubuntu Stickers and I will send you stickers reflecting your choice in Linux desktop managers!

Please tell all your friends!

For Linux, you don’t need any special software to change the boot up screen, you just need to know where to get new boot screens! I get my boot screens from gnome-look.org. If you use Kubuntu, then you can get your splash screen from kde-look.org. All you have to do is do a search for usplash.

When you find the right one, all you have to do is download it, and as root copy the enclosed .so file to /usr/lib/usplash.

Once copied run the following from the terminal:

sudo update-alternatives – -install /usr/lib/usplash/usplash-artwork.so usplash-artwork.so /usr/lib/usplash/YOUR_SPLASH.so

After that, run this in the terminal:

sudo update-alternatives –config usplash-artwork.so

Choose the number corresponding to your new splash screen and press enter.

Then run the following in the terminal to update the boot process and make your changes stick:

sudo update-initramfs -u

Some of the splash screens I have used require you to change your boot resolution. You will have to check with the creator of the boot screen to find out if that is necessary. (Hint: They usually post that on the download page, along with instructions on how to do that).

Once all is done, reboot and you should see your fancy, 1337 new splash screen! Here is a screen shot of my personal favorite (Fingerprint Usplash Theme):

Do you know of other places to get cool usplash themes for Ubuntu besides gnome-look and kde-look? I am always on the lookout for cool new boot splash screens. Please let me know in the comments.

Originally Posted On Bauer-Power.

-Philip Zimmerman, Creater of PGP

Of course it doesn’t, it simply means you value your privacy.

PGP, or more specifically OpenPGP is a great, and more importantly FREE method of securing your data and your e-mails. You don’t want “The Man” reading your e-mails, and neither do I.

There are many PGP and OpenPGP programs out there, but the one that is the most versatile that I have seen is called GnuPG. It comes in some form for every operating system. It comes standard with Ubuntu Linux, and there are versions for Windows and MAC.

If you are a fan of Mozilla Firefox, and Thunderbird like I am, then you will be happy to know that there are GnuPG plugins for both of them. Enigmail for Thunderbird, and FireGPG for Firefox. Of course you have to have GnuPG installed for the plugins to work.

If you have any doubts on the strength of the encryption, it uses PKI and the encryption keys can go up to 4096 bits, which is so strong that if you take all of the computing power on the planet it would still take something ridiculous like 10 billion years to crack (Give or take). I also found a quaint little article here about how the FBI has problems cracking PGP.

“So ya ya ya, yackity smackity… where do I download this fantastic software?”

I thought you would never ask. You can download it from the following sites:

Windows

Mac

Linux

Enjoy!

Originally Posted on Bauer-Power by El Di Pablo

I recently set up some servers at work, two of them were VMWare GSX servers running webmin for administration (I promised Karl I would post something about webmin later) and also a McAfee ePO server. Both servers use encrypted HTTPS for secure web administration.

Now I don’t know how you feel about it, but I don’t want to have to type in H-T-T-P-S every time I go to a secure website. I am just too lazy for that (I’m an American for crying out loud! That is one of the reasons we have fast food!). No, I want to type in an address or server name in my browser bar and hit enter, that’s it!

In order to do that, you have to have a means of redirecting traffic from unsecure port 80 to secure 443 (Or whatever port your server is listening on). You can do this easily by providing a plain html page in your servers webroot directory with the following code in it:

<meta equiv=”Refresh” content=”5; URL=https://yoursecuresite.com”>

The content number is the number of seconds before redirection, so you can increase it or decrease it to your liking. Now instead of manually typing https://yoursecuresite.com and risking possible carpal tunnel from all of that added typing, all you have to do is type in yoursecureserver.com and let the html do the work!

There are other ways of doing this to be sure (Share your way in the comments) but this is one of the easiest ways to do it and works with all web server software be it IIS, Apache etc.

By: El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power

_TheNothingFunnyHereAdmiN_

As with most servers, you want to configure it for static IP addressing to make life a little more simple for everybody. Linux servers are no exception. The only trouble with some flavors of Linux servers is that they are strictly command line for less overhead and better performance. So how does one configure Ubuntu server for static IP addressing in the terminal you ask? Simple:

1. First you need to edit /etc/network/interfaces using your favorite text editor (I like nano):sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
2. Next you need to enter your static IP information:#The primary network interface
   auto eth0
   iface eth0 inet static
   address 192.168.0.100
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   network 192.168.0.0
   broadcast 192.168.0.255
   gateway 192.168.0.1
3. Save your changes.
4. Now you need to point your server to your DNS server. To do this, you need to edit /etc/resolv.conf:sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

   name server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Replace the x’s with the IP address of your DNS server)

5. Save your changes, then restart your network:sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
6. Now test it by pinging www.asktheadmin.com. If all went well, you should be all set!

Have you had to set up a production Ubuntu server in your environment? Tell us about your experience in the comments!

You’ve gotten so accustomed to using MS Office and Open/Star Office just wont make you happy.

You like Adobe Acrobat and have web apps that require Internet Exploiter.

Photoshop…Lotus Notes….Winrar….Flash, Dreamweaver, iTunes, Quicktime, etc…

Nope you can’t use Ubuntu, not with those things.

Just yesterday I stumbled across a product, which I am told has been around for a long time, it’s called CrossOver from Codeweavers.

For $40 you can run just about anything you want on a Linux machine from the Windows world with this version of WINE on Barry Bonds approved steroids. It is drop dead simple to install and put applications on it.

Currently on the Ubuntu box I am running MS Office XP, Acrobat Reader, IE 6 and a couple other apps just for shits and giggles.

Haven’t had too much of a problem getting the applications to install yet, with the exception of a Citrix client.

According to their website there are a lot of Win32 games that are supported as well, so if you’re a gamer it will make the transition to Linux easier to swallow.

Look it up and give it a test drive. It is worth it and might convince you to put Ubuntu on your personal machines knowing you can run much of the important apps you are used to. Let us know in the comments if you like it, hate it or use something else!

We found this how to on Lifehacker but the meat of the post came from a little know blog called Ubuntu Unleashed.

We love giving props to the little guy – so here you go have some PROPS!

The Ubuntu Unleashed blog has a great tutorial on remote controlling your Linux system—even through a Java-enabled browser. Here’s the whole deal:

1. Install packages. Code: sudo apt-get install x11vnc vnc-java
2. Set up a password for clients. Code: x11vnc -storepasswd
3. Open up ports 5800 and 5900 on your firewall
4. Run the terminal command: x11vnc -forever -usepw -httpdir /usr/share/vnc-java/ -httpport 5800 and add it for auto-starting in future sessions

That third step isn’t quite so simple, but luckily we’ve covered that ground before. The same warnings and disclaimers about running a VNC server in that link above apply here. While the guide and code are written from an Ubuntu users’ perspective, the packages and commands, possibly with a little tweaking, should be available in most distributions. Windows and Mac users can get help setting up their own VNC connections through this guide.

Do you do VNC? What do you use to get your remote administration going? In the comments guys!!

_TheQuickPostingAdmiN_

Me: Wow this thing is so much smaller and lighter than I expected. It’s like the X1.
Wifey: That’s not a tablet.
Me: No it’s suppose to be the 2710p TABLET. There has to be a release here somewhere… What no touch screen? Do you have to configure it?
Wifey: That’s not a tablet.
Me: Yeah it’s not a tablet.
Wifey: Told you so.

Long story short I got the wrong machine and an I told you so about technology from the wife! Thanks guys :)!!

I wound up with the 2510p ultra portable. Which I might add is pretty sexy I might add. The machine was in the wrong box apparently and the 2710 is en-route Saturday delivery. Double fun!

I am still on the hunt for my dying X1. I am a slacker but it is still hanging on. I almost can’t bear the thugh of breaking her down for parts. But this whole laptop / tablet mix-up made me remincse about the chick who put her finger through her Q “touch screen”!Sure glad I didn’t try to make the screen turn by putting a little elbow grease into it :)!

Stay tuned for reviews on both machines! See ya when I see ya!

_TheReviewingAdmiN_

This will create a decent machine for you or your significant other to browse the web and work on office documents. Who would have thought Windows XP was so bloated!

Step Three Open up services and run through them disabling the ones on the following list

• Alerter
• Application Layer Gateway Service
  (Internet Connection Sharing and the Internet Connection Firewall)
• Automatic Updates
• Background Intelligent Transfer Service
  Uses idle network bandwidth to transfer data. (For windows updates)
• ClipBook
• Computer Browser If you are on a network with other computers, and need to see them, this may be a useful tool. Otherwise, disable it.
• Cryptographic Services
• Distributed Transaction Coordinator
• Error Reporting Service
• Help and Support
• Human Interface Device Access
• Indexing Service
• Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) / Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)
  Provides network address translation, addressing, name resolution and/or intrusion prevention services for a home or small office network. We do all of this via our router.
• Messenger
• Net Logon (only used in a domain)
• NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
• Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
• Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator
• Remote Registry
• System Restore Service (This one i will leave up to you)
• TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
• Telephony (If you use a modem to connect to the internet, leave it enabled.)
• Telnet
• Terminal Services (unless you will need to remotely connect to this machine – doubtful)
• Themes
• Uninterruptible Power Supply
• Upload Manager
• Windows Time
• Workstation

Download OpenOffice or any other variation just because MS Office is a memory hog! Use FoxIt instead of Adobe PDF reader… Thats it you should have a tight little system now. If you can bump the memory up – Do it! Old memory is cheap on eBay or you might be able to find it on Crucial.com!

After turning off the suggested services you will not be able to use Windows Updates unless you turn back on on:

1. Automatic Updates
2. Background Intelligent Transfer Service

Have You Entered Our “Its A Friggin’ Laser” Contest Yet?

_TheUnBloatedAdmiN_

First of all, I want to say that I am actually kind of a n00b when it comes to Compiz Fusion, and the whole 3D desktop thing. I only recently started using it with the latest version of Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon 7.10) where it is installed by default if your graphic card supports it.

Let me give you a little bit of a background on the project. It wasn’t always called Compiz Fusion. No, according to Wikipedia:

Compiz Fusion is the result of a merge between the old Compiz community plugin set “Compiz Extras” and the parts of the Beryl project.

That is fine and good, but seriously, what is it? In short, it is a set of plugins and other elements independent of the window manager core which provide a bunch of cool animations, and 3D effects. One of the most well known effects is the 3D cube used when moving from one workspace to another.

According to the Compiz Fusion Project:

Compiz Fusion aims to provide an easy and fun-to-use windowed environment, allowing use of the graphics hardware to render each individual window and the entire screen, to provide some impressive effects, speed and usefulness.

When Karl originally asked about it in the comments section of his post, “Honey, We are a Ubuntu Household Now” he asked if Compiz Fusion was a way to “Windowize” Ubuntu. I wouldn’t say that, however for you Vista Fanboys, you might find the 3D features of vista comparable to the 3D features of Compiz Fusion. In fact here is a video comparing Windows Vista and Ubuntu with Compiz Fusion (Actually it is with Beryl, but it is basically the same):

If you want to see a video of Ubuntu with actual Compiz fusion, I recorded a short video of my Ubuntu laptop here a while back.

So basically, Compiz Fusion is the Linux answer to the public demand for kick-ass graphics in their computing experiences. As you can see by the video(s), there are many cool little aesthetically pleasing visuals you can turn on or off to really add some pizazz to your normally mundane computer.

-El DI Pablo
You can keep up with El Di Pablo, author of Bauer-Power.net and guest contributer on AskTheAdmin here.

I am in a support class to get a better grasp on the platform and in two weeks I will be back again for Server training. After the class I will be taking my certifications. So that will be another notch on The Admin’s belt. Lets just say I went in with an open mind and so far I love it.

Proper tools for the proper job. Well as I have been accustomed to Ubuntu here and here with our new Mac here this has put me over the top. Check out my little bitty PC in a world of big macs.

Different jobs require different tools and that is why there are different Os’s. Don’t bash unless you are at the command prompt (geeky pun intended). Off to the Mac command line. (Still have to stay ahead of the class!!) Stay tuned for some Mac revelations and goings on…

_TheReEducatedAdmiN_

According to Wikipedia:

“Wake on LAN (WOL, sometimes WoL) is an Ethernet computer networking standard that allows a shut-down computer to be booted remotely.”

Sweet! Now we know what it is how do we do it? It is actually pretty easy. First you need a NIC (Network Interface Card) that supports WOL, and you need a motherboard with BIOS that support WOL. The good news is that most modern day NIC’s and Motherboards support WOL, you just have to be sure that it is turned on in the BIOS. A lot of Motherboard manufacturers turn it off by default as a security feature.

Now that it is turned on, we need a program that will do it. WOL is not a built in command or program in Windows or Linux, you need a utility to do this. The good news is there are a plethora of tools out there. One for Linux is aptly named ETHERWAKE (sudo apt-get install etherwake wakeonlan for Ubuntu). There are some other configurations you need to make this work in Linux, which I will let you Google yourself. For this post I will mainly concentrate on Windows.

In Windows there are a bunch of tools, one I found that I like is called MC-WOL. The reason I like this one, and once again there are many like it, is because this lets you wake up computers that are on a different network. Some tools will only work on the same network you are on so be sure to look at all of the features and plan out exactly what you need. The good thing about MC-WOL is it works on both your local network, and across other networks.

So now we have our tool, the only thing we need it the MAC address of the computer we want to turn on, and if it is on a different subnet or network, we will also need the IP address of the target computer, or broadcast address for that network (If you use DHCP and the IP addresses changes). Can anybody tell me why we need both a MAC and an IP Adress if going across different networks? I will give you four guess and the first three don’t count! The reason for this is WOL operates at layer 2 of the OSI model which requires MAC addresses, but in order to be routed to another network, we need logical addressing which operates at layer 3 of the OSI model. Anyhoo, enough about that.

So, to get the MAC address of our target computer you can simply run ipconfig /all, and write down the HEX number for your network card (Hint, it is called physical address). You will also get the IP address, and subnet mask of that computer using that as well (write it down). With the IP address and subnet mask, you should be able to identify the broadcast address pretty easily by using a subnet calculator. If the computer is set to static, all you need is the IP address.

Now with that information we are ready to test it out. Turn off that target computer, and run the following command from command line (Remember to change the information for your machine, e.g. your target MAC and IP):

MC-WOL 00:01:02:58:A3:C7 /a 172.16.1.125

To do this using the broadcast address for the network you would use:

MC-WOL 00:01:02:58:A3:C7 /a 172.16.1.255

If you did everything correctly, your computer should now be turning on!

Originally Posted on Bauer-Power By El Di Pablo

This is my first post as an Ubuntu user

The Admin has been through computer hell these last few days. First my Dell Latitude X1 refuses to charge… So I have been trying to be savvy and save my 7 hour battery just for emergencies. This is not for the faint of heart!

After troubleshooting galore I have come to the conclusion that it’s the power module on the motherboard of that mother clucker. Dell does not sell that module – but they say it should just be re-soldered. but they won’t tell you to do it…Nor will they tell you how to do it with a small soldering gun…

The dude continued to tell me that I was probably better off getting a new machine. That caused me to inquire into the price of the board. He said he couldn’t be sure but with installation it would be in the area of a G bone…Without the processor!!! I didn’t pay a thousand bucks for the whole thing (I love eBay)!

I found a spot downtown, near my office, that says they can fix it for me for $250. We’ll see about that! Then to top it off my desktop hard drive just up and died on me. I was down to running strictly off my Dopod. Which wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be! But we will save that for the Dopod review this weekend. (I promise… Stop the emails… No Wait We Like Them… Keep The Emails Coming!).

I was so fed up I just pulled the hard drive out connected via a IDE to USB joint and popped an UBUNTU CD into the drive. I pushed a 4gb memory stick in that bitch and called it a day. Out of the box all I needed to do was activate the network and that’s it. I was off Ubuntuing around. Firefox, Gimp, MSTSC… I was golden. I haven’t found anything that I can’t do in Ubuntu yet – built in Bit Torrent client, CD/DVD burning tools and a repository with a shit-load of other crap you don’t need but will probably download anyway!

Then I went to try and explain this to the wife :)…

Honey, We use UBUNTU now… Its the same but different…

So thats it all I have to say is “go to hell you cold unforgiving Windows…” @ least until we demo Windows Server 2008 this weekend!

_TheUbuntuAdmiN_

Anyone got any tips for an Ubuntu n00b??…

Two months later still loving Ubuntu – Actually upgraded to the Gutsy Gibson AND my buddy helped me resolder my X1. So far so good. Any other converts out there?

And here are some posts you might have missed this week:

• Caffeinated soap? Are you serious?
• Setting Up VNC in Ubuntu, Gutsy Gibson.
• Mac Trojan in The Wild. Are they following me?
• Leopard: Is there a high contrast dock replacement?
• Is this the Google gPhone?
• Top 10 Geeky Costumes for Halloween 2007
• An Easier Way To Google your Windows Error Message.
• Why my new favorite web browser is FLOCK
• How do I manually back up my Outlook PST file?
• Last night Ubuntu saved my life.
• What The Hell Happened To My Task Managers Tabs?
• Adding Calendar functionality to Mozilla Thunderbird.
• How to let Google do your Googling!

Thanks again Roxio for letting us host this great contest! We hope all you Roxio fans come back for our MAC contest coming up soon!

_TheAdmiN_

I love 7Zip so much that I wanted to get it for Linux as well. The Linux port for 7Zip is called P7Zip and unfortunately it is all command line baby. The switches and syntax kill me with this command line version. It makes no sense to me, and I can’t find any good examples online for the proper syntax.

There is good news though, and it doesn’t require switching your car insurance to Geico. No, the good news is that someone has made a GUI front end to P7Zip! This bad boy is called Q7Z. It comes in both pre-configured Deb and RPM packages, as well as a binary installer for some of the other Linux flavors out there. It makes using 7Zip in Linux a snap!

Once installed, you may or may not have to create your own launcher to run it, but that is okay. The launcher command for it (At least in Ubuntu) is /usr/bin/Q7Z.pyw. Once installed, compressing in 7z format couldn’t be simpler!


Originally Posted on Bauer-Power By El Di Pablo

Not wanting to give up, or revert to an older version of Windows, I decided to keep poking around in the Linux world for a solution. There are a lot of them out there that will run just find on such a machine, but the trick it so get one that my wife won’t mind using when going to the Java Mama’s coffee shop with my little girl.

II found the perfect distro for my wife in Dream Linux! This is one of the many lightweight live CD distros out there that also have the ability to install to hard drive. The cool thing about Dream Linux that I like, and my wife likes especially since the popularity of MAC’s now days (Damn they have good marketing don’t they?) is that this is pretty much a MAC clone complete with the animated launcher bar at the bottom, and yes, that bar works well on the Pentium III without slowing it down!

If you have a relatively newer computer, it also supports Berly and AIGLX, which means sweet 3D desktop goodness!

Of course, I wouldn’t even try using Berly on a Pentium III, but it does make a strong case to test it out! Another cool thing about it is the graphical front end to ndiswrapper, which lets you use Windows drivers for hardware that isn’t supported under Linux! Just open the GUI, point it to your driver inf file, and away you go! I did have to add the following line to my /etc/rc.local script to make some hardware work after boot up, but that is a minor tweak and hardly a deal breaker:

The best thing though is that it is Debian based, so apt-get is in full effect, which means that if something you use normally is missing, you can get it and install it easily! For me, network manager is essential for easy WPA configuration. It didn’t come pre-installed on Dream Linux, but a quick apt-get later and I was good to go!I’m not quite ready to name Dream Linux as a replacement distro of choice yet, for me my favorite is still Ubuntu, but it really is pretty great, and works well on older computers!

Have you tried it out? Do you have a favorite Distro for similar Situations?

Originally Posted on http://www.bauer-power.net