Tech Chop Ep 4: When a Sledge Hammer Meets a Dlink Router

Almost a year ago exactly my family and I moved into a new house. With that house I decided I wanted to upgrade our wireless Internet from 802.11G to 802.11N. Why not right? I mean with 802.11G you only get about 54Mbps, and with 802.11N you get up to 300Mbps. Seems like a no brainer.

Well, I decided to take a trip to Fry's and get myself a new 802.11N router. That's when I found a Dlink DIR-615 for sale. It was around $25 if I can remember correctly. After I got it all set up I thought it would work out pretty great. I was wrong. I had nothing but problems with that router. So many problems in fact, I decided to make this episode of Tech Chop about it. I figured I would give my review, then smash the living crap out of it with an 8lb sledge hammer! Enjoy the destruction!

Do you have a Dlink DIR-615? Like it? Dislike it? Let me know in the comments!

del.icio.us Tags: dlink,dir-615,c1,review,sledge hammer,smash,802.11n,router

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Exercises in Wastes of Time: Star Wars in ASCII

I have seen this in the past, but I am fairly sure I have never blogged about it. Not sure why not, I mean on a scale of zero to Über Geek, this thing breaks the scale. You see, someone with a crap load of time on their hands went ahead and re-created Star Wars using only ASCII art! The guy who created this is Simon Jansen.

There are a couple of ways you can watch this ridiculous waste of time. The first and easiest way is to browse to http://www.asciimation.co.nz. There you can watch the show via a simple web browser, as well as read the FAQ’s to find out little tid bits like how it was made, and why. For instance, here is a quote from the FAQ’s on why it was made:

[Q] Why (oh God, why)?
[A] Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Makes sense right?

Another way, and even geekier is to watch it via telnet! That’s right, you get geek cred for watching a movie completely in ASCII, and more geek cred for using an out-dated terminal protocol to watch it! All you have to do is telnet to towel.blinkenlights.nl using your favorite telnet client!

Sweet baby Jesus this is a great waste of time isn’t it? Know of more geeky things like this? I would love to melt my brain watching the entire Lord of The Rings Trilogy in ASCII!

del.icio.us Tags: star wars,ascii

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How To Enable Remote Desktop Remotely

I was stumbling around the Internet today when I came across a post written by my buddy Karl over at AskTheAdmin.com. This article didn’t come from his blog though, it came from the IT Knowledge Exchange. Still, I thought this post was really useful, so I thought I would share it with you here.

His post showed you how to enable Remote Desktop (RDP) remotely using the remote registry feature in Windows. Now I have checked, and this method works on Windows 2003 Server all the way up to Windows 2008 R2. The only thing you may have to make sure you have working though is the remote registry service on the target machine.

Here is how you do it:

• First log on to another machine on your network.
• Open Regedit
• Click File –> Connect network registry.
• Type in the servers name or IP address.
• Click OK
• Browse to the Hot Key Local Machine hive on the server in questions registry
• Locate the following key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
• Click on it to show its keys.
• Look through the keys for the REG_DWORD value called fDenyTSConnection.
• Double-click on the value.
• Edit the DWORD Value box and change the value data from 1 (Remote Desktop disabled) to 0 (Remote Desktop is enabled).
• We need to restart the remote machine using the command line. Launch CMD and type in this command: shutdown -m \\servername -r -t 00

Once the server reboots, you should now have RDP access! Pretty cool right?

Via [Karl Gechlik and It Knowlege Exchange]

del.icio.us Tags: how to,enable,remote desktop,rdp,rdc,remotely,registry

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Ubuntu 11.04 Going to Unity? Bauer-Puntu is Sticking With Gnome!

I heard through various sources on the Internet that the folks at Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu are planning on getting rid of Gnome in the next version of Ubuntu which is scheduled to release in April of next year. Getting rid of

Gnome? Yep, you read that correctly. They are making the full switch over to the newer Unity interface.

Now this sort of makes sense. I mean for one, they are now using Unity in the Ubuntu Netbook Remix version which is pretty slick. Also, the man who helped start the Unity Project, Mark Shuttleworth, is also the man behind Canonical, the company that started Ubuntu. It's what we call in the business, Synergy!

Is Unity such a good idea for the desktop though? I'm not so sure. Some of you might think so. Then again, some of you like KDE too. Not me though, I am a Gnome man through and through. It's what I first started with and it's what I'm used to!

Here is a blog post from Jono Bacon, Canonical's Ubuntu Community Manager, on the recent announcement:

Mark [Shuttleworth] just announced at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando that we will be shipping the Unity environment in the Ubuntu desktop edition. Unity is the environment we shipped on the Ubuntu Netbook Edition for the first time in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, and users and OEMs have been enjoying the experience. It is an environment that is inspired by great design, touch, and a strong and integrated experience.

I think this is a fantastic opportunity for Free Software, and this is going to be a busy cycle. We have a lot of work to do, and we know that quality is a firm focus for this release, and we have identified a solid set of issues we need to focus on and resolve, but I know the final product will be something that we will all be proud of. Another key focus is performance; we have already started porting Unity from mutter to Compiz and the initial work is much faster, most notably on hardware that has traditionally had the most trouble from bug reports. Quality meets design meets performance. Together as a community we can make this rock.

Yeah, sorry Jono and Mark. I am just not sold. In fact, if I can help it, in the next version of Bauer-Puntu I will try to stick with the classic Gnome Interface. I may even have to switch over to use Debian as the base distro, but I will try my damndest to keep Gnome looking like Gnome.

What do you think? Is this a good move on Ubuntu's part? Do you like the new Unity Interface? Do you think people will be quick to adopt it? Let us know your take in the comments!

del.icio.us Tags: ubuntu,11.04,unity,bauer-puntu,linux,gnome,Natty Narwhal

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Get a Graphical View of You Hard Disks

I am sitting in a VMware class right now learning about how to install, configure and manage VMware vSphere 4.1. The thing is I do this stuff every day at my day job. So why am I here? Well, you have to take a VMware class if you want to take the VCP4 exam. It’s required. It’s also very lame! Just give me a book, and let me go take the test! Don’t make me take a $4,000 useless class!

Anyhoo, so needless to say, I’m not paying very good attention. At this moment we are learning about attaching iSCSI storage. Like I said, I do this all the time. I get it! Instead, I am surfing around on StumbleUpon looking for cool stuff, and I found something you might find interesting. It’s a Windows tool that not only shows you where all your disk space is going, but it shows you in a graphical way! It’s called WinDirStat! Here is a screen shot of my disk space in class:

 

From their page:

WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows.

On start up, it reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views:

• The directory list, which resembles the tree view of the Windows Explorer but is sorted by file/subtree size,
• The treemap, which shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away,
• The extension list, which serves as a legend and shows statistics about the file types.

The treemap represents each file as a colored rectangle, the area of which is proportional to the file's size. The rectangles are arranged in such a way, that directories again make up rectangles, which contain all their files and subdirectories. So their area is proportional to the size of the subtrees. The color of a rectangle indicates the type of the file, as shown in the extension list. The cushion shading additionally brings out the directory structure.

One of the things I like is the little Pacman figure when it does it’s initial scan of the drive! For practical uses though, I think this is a good tool for file server administrators because it allows you to run a report on a particular folder and send an email to the owner to tell them how much space they are using, and to clean it up!

What tools do you use to monitor disk space usage? Are they free? Do they provide cleanup options? Let us know in the comments!

del.icio.us Tags: free,disk,space,reports,graphical,windirstat,disk cleanup

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Bauer-Puntu Linux 10.10 is Available!

Bauer-Puntu 11.04 is out!

As promised, I have released a new version of Bauer-Puntu Linux due to it’s surprising popularity! For instance, just last month Bauer-Puntu 10.04 was downloaded over 6,000 times! That is 5,999 times more than I ever thought. Who knew that it would be so popular?

I think the popularity really stems from my Bauer-Power video where I show people how easy it is to reset or blank local administrator passwords using Bauer-Puntu and CHNTPW. I also did another video showing how easy it is to hack WEP keys using Grim Wepa and Bauer-Puntu. If you are wondering, yes both of those packages are in the new release!

I did something a little different with this version. I tried it in the past, but it was too hard to do before. This time I got things figured out. I built this distro using the Ubuntu Minimal CD, so I was able to keep a whole lot of bloat off the system. What does this mean? It means a faster running operating system than the standard Ubuntu distro, as well as a faster install time! Still though, even with using the Ubuntu Minimal CD, I wasn’t able to keep this thing under 1GB, so it still has to run on a DVD or at least a 2GB USB Thumb drive.

Speaking of USB Thumb drives, I decided not to make a USB image this time as too many people had problems with it last time. I think it is best to download the ISO and write it to USB following the instructions in step two here: (Ubuntu USB Instructions)

Here is a short list of programs I included in this distro:

• GParted - Disk Partitioner
• PartImage - Disk Cloning
• CHNTPW - Windows Password Cracker
• Wipe - Secure File Deletion
• TestDisk - File Recovery
• ClamTK - Antivirus
• GrimWepa - GUI WEP/WPA Cracker using Aircrack-ng backend (Booya!)
• Cairo Dock - Mac OSX like dock
• VirtualBox - Free Virtualization Software
• Adobe Flash
• Java

I also added the following by request:

• SET – Social Engineer Toolkit – Plus I bookmarked the tutorials in the browser ;-P
• Metasploit Framework 3.5.0
• CheckGmail
• Ubuntu Tweak
• Parcellite
• Yarssr

Finally I installed Google Chrome as the default browser this time. Lately I have just found Firefox to be too resource intensive, and thought I would give Chrome another go. I’m sure there are some other apps that I put on there, but it’s escaping me at the moment. I guess you will just have to download it to see!

Here are some screen shots:

Live DVD boot Screen

Desktop

Grim Wepa

SET (Social Engineer Toolkit)

Metasploit

Installer

Login Screen

Okay, I know you want the goods. Here are the download links. If you want to use the Torrent method, I would only ask that you seed it for at least 24 hours after downloading it to help me out!

• Bauer-Puntu 10.10 ISO
• Bauer-Puntu 10.10 Torrent

Also, it’s not easy to make this distro every 6 months. It takes a lot of time and effort away from my friends and family. I would appreciate it a great deal if you could donate some money to the cause.

del.icio.us Tags: bauer-puntu,linux,download,iso,torrent,10.10

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How To Make Network Manager Applet Work After a Minimal Install of Ubuntu

I am in the process of making Bauer-Puntu Linux 10.10. This time around I wanted to try my hand at using the Ubuntu Minimal CD so I can keep the distro small, and not have a lot of stuff I don’t use on it. I tried this for version 10.04, but I couldn’t get the proprietary drivers to work right. This time around, that worked fine, but for some reason the Network Manager Applet would not show up in the notification area like it would if I did a full install of Ubuntu. After searching around for a while, I finally got it to work!

I will walk you through setting up a Mininmal install of Ubuntu, then how to get Network Manager Applet to work. Once that is working, you should be good to go on the rest of your customizations.

1. Download the latest Ubuntu Minimal CD
2. Install it like usual, and don’t select any packages when prompted
3. After the install, reboot and login.
4. Edit your apt-sources by un-commenting (Remove #) out all commented repositories (Follow these instructions)
5. Update your sources by running the following:
   
   >sudo apt-get update
   
   
6. Download a modified version of the script mentioned here: (How To Achieve Ubuntu Minimal) by doing the following:
   
   >wget http://ftp.bauer-power.net/dl/ubuntu-mini.sh
   
   
7. Once downloaded, make the script executable by doing the following:
   
   >chmod +x ubuntu-mini.sh
   
   
8. Execute the script by doing the following:
   
   >sudo sh ubuntu-mini.sh
   
   
9. Wait for the script to work it’s magic, and install your minimal Ubuntu system!

Ok, now that you have achieved Ubuntu Minimal now the part about getting Network manager Applet to work right comes into play. Here is what you have to do:

1. Open a terminal and issue the following:
   
   >sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop
   >gksudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces
   
   
2. Comment out everything under “The Primary Network Interface” in /etc/network/interfaces
3. Open /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf with your favorite text editor:
   
   >gksudo gedit /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf
   
   
4. In section [ifupdown] find the line managed=false and replace it with managed=true. Save and quit.
5. Run the following commands from the terminal, and you should now see the Network Manager Applet running in the notification area!
   
   >sudo service networking start
   >sudo service network-manager restart

I wish I had found this trick for the last two version of Bauer-Puntu! It is way easier to start with a minimal install than it is to start with full blown Ubuntu and removing the bloat.

If you are waiting for Bauer-Puntu 10.10 to come out. Please be patient. It should be ready in the next few days or so. That is, as long as I can find the time to keep working on it!

Via [Ubuntu Forums and Ubuntu Wiki]

Technorati Tags: how to,network manager,applet,ubuntu,minimal,system tray,notification area,missing

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