04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009

Thursday, April 30, 2009

iPredator | Stay Anonymous Online

Tech Blog - iPredator is a new Internet anonymity VPN service The Pirate Bay will be introducing and offering for a small monthly fee , as more and more file sharers will be harass in the future, both by the entertainment industry and ignorant corrupt politicians passing laws forcing ISP to comply with their demands of monitoring their customers activies, iPredator will be a valuable tool in providing Internet anonymity, even country such as Philippines has already started looking into ways to legally monitor and prosecute Internet users and downloaders in the country making the iPredator service worth looking into in the very near future, check out iPredator.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

3 Most Usefull Windows Vista Gadget

Gagdet Review - I know that a lot of people is not fond of Microsoft Windows Vista however a lot of people are stucked using it, so we might as well make the best of it and enjoy it here 5 sidebar gadget that I found to be most usefull on Windows Vista I hope you find it as usefull as I do.

Speed Test (Monitor CPU, RAM, Internet) - I recommend you to get this gadget which I found to be most useful, with this I find that I can minimized slowness of my computer as I would be able to identify which of the programs I run are memory/CPU hog to avoid running them simultaneously with other programs

Description of Speed Test Gadget

With Speed Test you can monitor CPU (over 8 cores) and RAM usage by itself and it has the ability to test;

- Maximum bandwidth speed (Internet Speed Test)
- Your own website download speed, response time and errors
- Hard drive space and activity
- Ping response times
- WIFI Signal strength
- Battery Charge status
- LAN bandwidth
- Upload and download data transfers
- Single process memory usage

You can get Speed Test Gadget Here

Wireless Meter - This is very useful gadget instead of clicking your wireless icon then viewing connection details or going ot the command line to type ipconfig /all, with this Vista gadget you will be able to immediately see your wireless network information such as SSID, signal quality, IP address, External IP address, IP lookup with google maps, upload speed, download speed and whether your connection is secure or not secure, its is one of the best Windows Vista sidebar gadget.

You can get Wireless Meter Gadget here

Control System - This is a simple Windows Vista Sidebar gadget that allows you to control standby, shutdown, restart, logoff or hibernate your Computer from you Windows Sidebar.

You can get Control System Gadget here

Tech Blog Quick List of howto's:

Monday, April 27, 2009

Dreamhost Free Hosting Promo | For Soon to be Displaced Geocities User

Tech Blog - I'm pretty sad that Geocities is closing as I learned howto code HTML in notepad and building my first site with Geocities back in 97', I'm also sad that one of the first 5 sites I made almost a decade ago still exist and will soon be unavailable, I never expect it to live forever nor do I expect it that Yahoo will actually close down Geocities a site which have started personal sites and probably teaches a lot of kids then how to build websites with a lot of animated gifs, annoying sounds, eye burning background, anyway a Eli a friend of mine of sysadmindayph.com, pointed me to a blog by Dreamhost that they are offering soon to be displaced Geocities user 2 year free hosting with Dreamhost for the first 1000 people to sign up with no string attached, which I promptly did and was able to get my 2 years hosting for free, all I did was verify that I'm a Geocities user by editing a page and have “I’m off to DreamHost!” on it, link of my Geocities page here and voila my hosting for 2 years is created and ready to go, below is a quote of the Dreamhost Blog regarding the promo.

“In honor of WebRing” or something, we are now offering to the first 1000 GeoCities users who sign up TWO YEARS of a completely free DreamHost account (including domain registration)!

No strings attached.

All you have to do is verify you are an existing GeoCities customer by creating a page on your GeoCities account (or editing an existing page) to have the phrase “I’m off to DreamHost!” on it!

Then when you signup for us, simply put the full url to that page as your “promotional code” and you’ll get a 2 year plan (normally $214.80) free!

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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Swine Flu | Protection Against Swine Flu

I know this is not tech related post this is just something I need to share think of it as spreading information and hopefully help prevent it, as Swine Flu continuous to spread it would be a good idea to update ourselves with some simple tips on protection against Swine Flu, its also good to know that there has been no reported cases of the Swine flu in the Philippines and the Philippines authority are taking the Swine flu seriously and had taken action such as airport screening and imposed ban on importation of hogs and pork product from Mexico and the US even though it doesn't spread by eating contaminated pork.

Tips on Protecting against Swine Flu

- Use antibacterial wipes to wipe your keyboard, phones or anything that a lot of people use
- Wash your hands with soap and water
- Generally be clean, basic good hygiene helps a lot
- Stay away from sick people
- Use mask if your in crowded public places, mask must be graded N95, like this one "3M 8210 N95" for it to be effective
- Read CDC's Swine Flu Key Fact here and understand what it is and how it is spread

More Detailed Tips from CDC on the Video Below

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Ubuntu 9 Released | Download now!

Tech Blog - Canonical has announced the released of Ubuntu 9 Desktop Edition, today you can download Ubuntu 9 Jaunty Jackalope for free here support, also released simultaneously with Ubuntu 9 desktop was Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR), according to Canonical's press conference Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements to improve the user experience, like Shorter boot speeds which would ensure faster access to computing environment, Enhanced suspend-and-resume features, Intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments, and more wireless devices and 3G cards, so check out the new Ubuntu 9 and experience Linux power.

Tech Blog Quick List of howto's:

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Twiter | Twitter | Twitpic Photo Service | Twitter Apps

Tech Blog - Everybody seems to be twitting these days, a lot of my colleagues and friends are crazy with twiter (twitter), its such a fun thing to do and very convenient as you can post anything very quickly, but have you every thought that twittering would even be better if you can upload pictures accompanying the post you just made, imagine taking an image using your phone then posting it with a short message on twiter, if you think that would be great then you should take a look at a new Twitter apps called Twitpic.

Twitpic lets you share photos on twiter easily, you can share your photo through your phone, Twitpic API , on the Twitpic page itself, or twiter client, Twitpic is so conevenient that you don't even have to use a seperate account for it, if your already a user of twiter then you already have an account on Twitpic, check out Twitpic photo sharing service for twiter here

Tech Blog Quick List of howto's:

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Ubuntu Howto | Understanding Shadow file

Ubuntu Howto - What is the "/etc/shadow" file - the file stores the actual password in encrypted format for user's account with additional properties related to user password, fields colon as a delimter.

Not all Unix systems uses the shdaow file, as some traditional Unix systems still uses the /etc/passwd to store one way encrypted password, one way of finding out if your system uses a shadow file is to check the passwd file if the foremat of it is something like the one below the chances are your using a shadow file, or just use the command "ls -la /etc/ | grep -i shadow" to see if shadow file exist, since this is an Ubuntu howto and I pressume you using an Ubuntu distribution then you are definitely using a shadow file :)

mileyugly:x:2006:10000:Miley:/home/mileyugly:/bin/bash

The "/etc/shadow'' file not only contains the password but also contains account expiration information, its look like the sample below

mileyugly:Od9mbkrTLchV.:11763:0:99999:7:::

The field are seperated by colon

First feld - Username field 8 characters, its a match with the entry on passwd

Second field - Password Field 13 characters, most of the time encrypted, no entry means no password is needed to login

Third field - Number of days since password has been changed, since Jan 1, 1970.

Fourth field - Number of days before password may be change 0 indicates password can b changed anytime

Fifth field - The maximum number of days the password is valid

Sixth field - The number of days before password is to expire that user is warned that password must be changed

Seventh field - The number of days after password expires that account is disabled

Eigth field -days since Jan 1, 1970 that account is disabled i.e. an absolute date specifying when the login may no longer be used

To change your password, use the passwd command.

I hope this Ubuntu howto help you, enjoy!

More Ubuntu Howto Links below

Tech Blog Special Build your own IDS or IPS
Ubuntu Howto | Multiple IP | IP Aliasing | Howto
Ubuntu Howto - Sharing folder with Windows on Ubuntu using Samba

Thursday, April 16, 2009

EASUS Partition Master Review

Tech Blog - Back in January I was asked to review EASUS Partition Manager, anyway after a couple of month EASUS have release a new improve(feature) partition tool called EASUS Partition Master, I received a copy of EASUS Partition Master Server Edition, this release still contain the same features and problems I found with the previous version, let talk about some important features on the new EASUS Partition Manager which are Disk Copy Wizard which let you replace the older smaller hard disk by a newer larger hard disk or same capacity hard disk without having to install the Operating System and applications once again. The other important feature is Partition Copy Wizard partition copy helps you to copy partition to the unallocated space on the hard disk, which is very helpfull as it also let you adjust the partition during the process, also the new EASUS Partition Master now officially support Windows Vista, it can aso now convert FAT to NTFS, now for the problem I ecnounter EASUS Partition Master still can't properly detect my external 500gb disk, t still shows up as unformated like the previous version of EASUS partition tool, in conclusion the new EASUS Partition Master is a good tool to have, the price is great as they offer a free version minus some feature such as Disk Copy and Bootable Disk Creation, which you probably won't miss you can get the new EASUS Partition Master here.

Main Features of EASUS Partition Master

Resize, Move partitions without losing data.
Disk Copy, Partition Copy to protect data.
Copy with Resizing to fit target space.
Create, Delete and Format partitions with simple step.
Convert and Explore partition.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A Free Standlone Anti-Virus ClamWin

Tech Blog - With all the worm and virus going on this month, first with the Conficker worm and lately Mikkey worm that is affecting twitter users, I thought it would just be great to do another post about free anti-virus for your computer's protection, ClamWin is a free standalone anti-virus program it comes with an open source code and it is based on ClamAV engine, which I use on my Linux/Unix mail server to do e-mail scanning, anyway ClamWin is a standalone anti-virus just like the Sysclean by Trendmicro but unlike Sysclean you don't have to manually download the definition yourself as ClamWin will update its definition automatically once it is installed on your computer, based on my experience ClamWin is a great anti-virus with a price that can't be beat, it very good at detecting viruses and worms, it integrate itself to the OS well that it works with Windows Explorer, it has an add-in for Outlook which I think will be usefull for outlook users and one of my favorite feature on ClamWin is you can do scheduled scanning this is important as ClamWin doesn't do realtime scan, the only thing I don't like with ClamWin is its a bit slow when doing a full scan, apart from that its a great tool to have on your tool kit, complete features of ClamWin below

High detection rates for viruses and spyware;
Scanning Scheduler;
Automatic downloads of regularly updated Virus Database.
Standalone virus scanner and right-click menu integration to Microsoft Windows Explorer;
Addin to Microsoft Outlook to remove virus-infected attachments automatically.

You can get ClamWin here

Tech Blog Quick List of howto's:

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Conficker Worm Panic Scare!

Update - April 10, 2009

Since conficker worm is coming on April 1, you might want to arm yourself with knowledge on how to get rid and protect yourself from it, below are some information about conficker worm from Microsoft website, also note that Microsoft have patched the vulnerability exploited by Conficker worm way back in October, so if your using genuine Microsoft Windows product you should be fully patched and should be safe from being infected over the net, provided you have auto update turned on and installed the patch, check out KB958644 for more info on the update, if your using pirated Windows I would suggest you start scanning your machine follow the instruction here and see information below symptoms of infection.

Account lockout policies are being tripped.
Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), Windows Defender, and Error Reporting Services are disabled.
Domain controllers respond slowly to client requests.
The network is congested.
Various security-related Web sites cannot be accessed.

What is Conficker worm:

The Conficker worm is a computer worm that can infect your computer and spread itself to other computers across a network automatically, without human interaction.

Am I at risk of having the Conficker worm?

Most antivirus software could detect and block the Conficker worm, so if you have updated antivirus software on your computer, you are at a much lower risk of being infected by the Conficker worm, if for some reason you believe your infected by Conficker worm just follow the 10 Easy Steps Virus and Malware Removal

What does the Conficker worm do?

To date, security researchers have discovered two variants of the worm in the wild

Win32/Conficker.A was reported to Microsoft on November 21, 2008.
Win32/Conficker.B was reported to Microsoft on December 29, 2008.
Win32/Conficker.C was reported to Microsoft on February 20, 2009.
Win32/Conficker.D was reported to Microsoft on March 4, 2009.

Win32/Conficker.B might spread through file sharing and via removable drives, such as USB drives (also known as thumb drives). The worm adds a file to the removable drive so that when the drive is used, the AutoPlay dialog will show one additional option

Source:

http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/962007

Update April 9, 2009

Worm:Win32/Conficker.E: identified by the MMPC on April 8, 2009

Also Known As:

Win32/Conficker.worm.119296 (AhnLab)
Win32.Worm.Downadup.A (BitDefender)
Win32/Conficker.A (CA)
W32/Conficker.G (Authentium (Command))
Win32/Conficker.AQ (ESET)
Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Kido.o (Kaspersky)
Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.js (Kaspersky)
W32/Conficker.worm.gen.d (McAfee)
W32/Confick-D (Sophos)
W32.Downadup (Symantec)
Trojan.DR.Kido.CE (VirusBuster)

Summary

Worm:Win32/Conficker.E is detection for a variant of Win32/Conficker and is already identified by current signatures. Conficker.E infects other computers across a network by exploiting a vulnerability in the Windows Server service (srvsvc). If the vulnerability is successfully exploited, it could allow remote code execution when file sharing is enabled. Conficker.E is installed by previous variants of Win32/Conficker. This variant will self-terminate on May 3 2009.
Microsoft strongly recommends that users apply the update referred to in Security Bulletin MS08-067 immediately.
Microsoft also recommends that users ensure that their network passwords are strong to prevent this worm from spreading via weak administrator passwords. More information is available here.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Playing Downloaded Roms on NDSi

Tech Blog - Nintendo NDSi has just been out for a week or so, after they took their time making sure you won't be able to play downloaded NDS roms on the new NDSi with your existing R4 or Suprcard here comes another tool that would do the things R4 and Suprcard does on your NDS lite, it is called Acekard 2, it will play all NDSi and NDS roms on your NDSi and NDS lite unit without conversion just like R4,

Full product description below:

Perfect compatibility. no need to convert. no need to flash.
Write save file directly to TF card. No more save type selection
Auto patching DLDI. Run homebrew programes without convert.
Support soft Reset, Support Download play. Support Wi-Fi
Support SDHC Micro SD card. No Maximum size limited
Support any brand of micro SD No slow down.
Support Action replay, Build in editor.
Low Power Consumed. Long playing time.
Easy operation Support Customize Skin
Support launch slot-2. Support expand package
4 level brightness adjustment
Support reading TXT files. listening MP3 and watching Movie

I don't support piracy on everything but I suggest you guys buy the good games and pirate the crappy games so that the makers of crappy games run out of business and stop developing crappy games. :)

Tech Blog Quick List of howto's:

Friday, April 03, 2009

Alice Fun Programming and Learning Tool

Alice is a free and open source object-oriented educational programming language with an integrated development environment. It is developed over Java. Alice uses a drag and drop environment to create computer animations using 3D models. The software is developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, Alice is a complete programming language, designed to teach the basics of programming using the same principles that are used to teach traditional programming languages, the programming concepts are the same yet the approach is very different.

It is a very good tool for teaching kids and first time programmers as it removes the frustration experience by most people such as grasping the syntax with Alice your will student will be able to create programs that are interesting to them, if you are looking for an educational programs for your kids or student that will help them learn programming I would recommend Alice, it is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free, you can download it here (alice.org)

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Fix Corrupted Volume and Directory /var/run on Linux

I work on a host running CentOS 5 with SATA raid 1 mirror few days ago, After watching the boot up screen I discovered that one of the disk is not being detected, so I turned off and disconnect the main disk and configured the mirrored disk as main disk since it should have the same data it shouldn't matter, I don't know why the disk didn't detect the mirrored disk immediately when it failed as my prime concern right now is to get the data off as I am informed they don't have an updated backup, during boot up I also discovered that various services are not able to write to "/var/run" specifically "Can't create/write to file '/var/run"

Doing ls -la on var will show that the "/var/run" directory is corrupted (see also screenshot below)

[/var]# ls -la
total 2147483844
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Mar 11 2008 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Mar 31 14:30 ..
?rwsrwsrwt 65535 4294967295 4294967295 4294967295 Jan 1 1970 run

Attempt to chown, chmod failed, attempt to unmount "/var" since it is assigned to its own volume

Before I attempt to unmount the volume I copied all the content of "/var" to a free external disk, except for "/var/run", as at this point I planned just to format the "/var" volume

After copying the file the only way I was able to unmount my "/var" was to edit "/etc/fstab" and comment it out

LABEL=/usr/local1 /usr/local ext3 defaults 1 2
#LABEL=/var1 /var ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=SWAP-pdc_dagahb swap swap defaults 0 0

NOTE: When copying file make sure to use -p optio as in cp -pr to keep permission and owenrs intack

Then do a reboot

Once the corrupted volume is unmounted, I boot into single user mode and did

# mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/pdc_dagahbchp8

After formating I edit my "/etc/fstab" and added the line below to have the formatted volume mount to "/var"

/dev/mapper/pdc_dagahbchp8 /var ext3 defaults 1 2

Then I did mount -a, and copied all the files back to my /var, had to manually create some\ folders in /var/run like mysqld and utmp, after setting the permission chmod 644 on utmp and chmod 770 on mysqld which didn't work for mysqld as shown on the screenshot, so I end up doing chmod 777 /var/run which I have to fix later on, anyway I was able to bring up MySQL on the host and the data out, I know I can just copy the "/var/lib/mysql/data" folder and just recreate the table on the mysql db, but I also want to bring the host up first and make sure that the files are not corrupted and maybe hoping I can salvage this host, instead doing a rebuild, I hope this help.