deranjer - A Productive Life

PHP Real-Time Search Using MySQL and AJAX

2011-10-24T19:59:00.000-04:00

Recently I decided that instead of posting all of my links directly on my homepage (It was becoming a long list, and annoying to have to edit the HTML every time to add a link) I would create a php based search engine, that used AJAX for real-time results.

After using Google for an extended period of time, finally found my first link: http://woork.blogspot.com/2007/11/simple-search-engine-in-ajax-and-php.html (I DON'T recommend this unless you know what you are doing, it is full of errors/missing syntax/db connections). After following this guide (and fixing mistakes) I realized this did not work as I had hoped. When I searched for my keyword, it did not appear to matter what keyword I searched it pulled all the results up. Since I am not a php expert, went back to Google and found the following article: http://blogs.nightglass.com/jeremy/2008/07/23/realtime-search-with-php-mysql-and-prototype/

The second article was a much better guide on how to set up real time search, now I just had to edit it to my needs... here is what I wanted.

A search engine that would search my MySQL database of internal website links based on 3 keywords that I specify upon creation of the link. So I created a MySQL database, lets take a look at the layout. (Please note I am not even close to proficient with MySQL, which is why I'm using phpmysql).

MySQL Database Setup

The first field is the Index, a simple auto-increment field just to make my links have a unique number. The next field is "link_text" which is just the html link. Then I have my three tag fields, the next is the current timestamp, if for example I wanted to show the latest links that were added.

Form.html - The search box setup

The "Form.html" sets up the basic search box, and calls the javascript file, lets take a look:

 
  Live Search!
  
 
 
  Keyword Search:

Fairly simple, ignore the first half, that just is styling for the search box. The part we need starts at "from id="searchform"". That creates the search box. Notice "onkeyup" this updates the results every time a key is let up. The "name=searchq" is also tied to our next php script, so remember that name.

Prototype.js is the javascript that creates the search results, which can be found here.

Search.php - Where the magic happens

Lets take a look at our "search.php" document, which is the main part we need to know.

 


"; //this div is used to contain the results. Mostly used for styling.
   
 //This query searches the name field for whatever the input is.
 $sql = "SELECT link_text FROM Links WHERE link_tag_1 LIKE '%$searchq%' OR link_tag_2 LIKE '%$searchq%' OR link_tag_3 LIKE '%$searchq%' ";
   
 $result = mysql_query($sql);
 while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
  $id = $row['link_text'];
  echo "$id";
                echo "br"; 
  }   
  echo "div";
 }
?>

*Note: I have not yet cleaned the input, so make sure you do that to avoid MySQL injection. Also, because blogger hates me, had to remove the formatting from the last div tag, and there is some odd formatting at the very top.

The first lines are standard, you are connecting to your MySQL server, connecting to your link database and table.

The interesting part is when you grab your search query from form.html "$searchq = $_POST['searchq'];". If it is empty, you will display nothing. Else, you will start getting search results. Next is your sql command. You are selecting the link_text that matches any of your tags for that link. The "%" signs specify any characters before or after the search term, so you don't have to type out the entire tag to get a match, you can type one letter and it will match any of the letters in all of the search terms, and will narrow it down as you type.

Next, we set $id to equal row "link_text" which is just the fully formatted html link, so this displays in your popup box. If you don't like the popup box, go ahead and delete or reformat it in Form.html, I did not like the look so changed it to a simple blue link that appears below search results.

EDIT: The files how now been uploaded to google docs, link to download here. Let me know if you have any problems.

Okay, you should be ready to go, happy searching. Next time I hope to post about adding/changing entries in your mysql database from a web page.

Backuppc Basic Setup and Configuration on Debian Lenny for Windows and Linux Hosts

2010-05-03T11:46:00.003-04:00

Backuppc is an extremely robust and flexible backup solution for your entire network. Unfortunately, the very complex and flexible nature of Backuppc makes it a very complicated solution to setup and get working correctly. However, as usual, installing the application on debian is very easy:

sudo aptitude install backuppc

Unfortunately that is only the first step... once it is done installing, it will have you answer some setup questions about setting up the web interface. It will also generate a password for the web interface that you will need to use to log on.
Once the setup is complete, you can visit the backuppc web interface through http://localhost/backuppc. One of the errors you may be greeted with is "Error: Unable to connect to BackupPC server". If that happens, it may be because backuppc is not running, or is attempting to run under the wrong user. To fix this (in almost every case), you need to change your use to backuppc, and start backuppc again.

su backuppc
/usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC -d

This should start backuppc as a daemon, solving your problem, and allowing you to once again revisit the web interface.
The web interface is laid out (in my opinion) in a slightly confusing way.

The view you will see when you first log on is an overall server status page. Once you have hosts with backups, there will be some very useful graphs displaying pool storage size. Good, you have the basic program up and running... now for a little bit of customization.

Changing the Backuppc Pool Directory

By default, all your backups are stored at /var/lib/backuppc. However, I wish to store my backups on another disk drive that has a lot more storage than my system disk. To do this we need to create a soft link from the default backup directory to whatever directory you wish to store the backups. You will notice that we create two directories called "pc" and "cpool". "pc" is where all the files are stored, and those two directories were originally causing permission issues.
Changing the Pool directory:

cd /var/lib/backuppc
sudo rm -r *ln -s /var/lib/backuppc /new_drive/backuppc
sudo mkdir pc cpool
cd ..
sudo chown -R backuppc *

If you have problems, it may be a permissions issue:

sudo chmod -R 777 backuppc

I would recommend not leaving the permissions wide open... just make sure it is a permission error and slowly restrict the permissions until everything works correctly. Now the backups should redirect directly to your new drive.

Adding Hosts

Now we need to add some hosts for backup. Select "Edit Config" from the left menu. Click on the "Hosts" tab. Here we can add hosts for backup. I personally have DNS reservations for all of my hosts, so I can add by IP, however if your hosts will have different IP's I would highly recommend checking the DHCP option. As long as your hosts are registered in DNS backuppc can track them and back them up no matter where they are. Add the hosts you will be backing up, hit save, and then click on the "Xfer" tab.

Setting Default Xfer Options (for Windows)

Next, we need to set the default transfer settings. This is mostly a setting for large networks of pc's that are set up the same way, which makes it unnecessary for the admin to configure each pc individually. Click on "Edit Config" on the menu on the left, and select "Xfer" from the top menu. How you set this up depends entirely on your network setup. I have two Windows 7 PC's, so I will be setting the default settings for a SMB share.

The above screen shot shows the settings I set for the default. I chose SMB for the transfer method. The advantage of using SMB is that it is already built into Windows... which is good from an ease of use scenario, but is not as good from a security standpoint. For the SMB share name, I added the administrative C$ share, which is the entire C$. In this instance I also should have set default "Include/Exclude" settings. This part is not extremely intuitive, and it took me a little while to figure that out. Shown below is one of my host machines.

To ensure that only the right files are backed up, we need to add first the "SmbShareName" to the "New Key" field, and click "Add". Once we have added the base share name, we can add the individual paths that we wish to backup. You will notice above that I told backuppc to backup only the "Users" directory under the C$ share. So now, instead of backing up the entire OS, backuppc will only backup "C:\Users", which is a much better option. You can obviously add more than one folder. You can also add folders to exclude, which is a nice option as well. Notice that the "Override" box is checked... that just means that this host differs from the default configuration in this area.

Backing up the Localhost

Backing up the localhost is the easiest of all the pc's to backup (in my opinion). The easiest way to backup your linux localhost is through "tar". In the top host drop-drop menu, select "localhost". Click on "Edit Config" which will enter the host-specific configuration. Select "tar" and from the "XferMethod" drop-down menu. Next, we need to select the tar share names that we wish to back up. Since the localhost is not running a whole lot of services, and is not mission critical, I am only backing up the /var and /etc directories. Go ahead and save the config and you should be ready to backup your localhost!

Backing up Linux Hosts with Rsyncd

I prefer the rsyncd method for backing up linux hosts. It does involve installing rsyncd on the linux hosts in question, but it is a rather quick install.

sudo aptitude install rsync

Once that is done installing, we need to setup the configuration file. On linux, the config file is called rsyncd.conf and is located at /etc/rsyncd.conf.. so

sudo nano /etc/rsyncd.conf

Now we copy the config in:
Now we need one more file to complete the configuration. The file is called rsyncd.secrets, and is stored in whatever place you specified in rsyncd.conf. The file only contains one line

backuppc:Yourpassword

The format of the file is simple: username:Password. Make sure the username matches exactly what you specified in rsyncd under "auth users", otherwise you will have difficulties.
Next we need to secure the secrets file:

sudo chown root /etc/rsyncd.secrets
sudo chmod 600 /etc/rsyncd.secrets

Next, lets setup the backuppc side... shown below is a screenshot of the configuration.

The "RsyncShareName" is the share name that you specified in the rsyncd.conf file. The username and password should match exactly what is in the rsyncd.secrets file, and make sure the "RsyncdAuthRequired" is checked. You will notice in the config I posted above, I was very aggressive and made the share root be root. That being the case, there are many folders I should exclude from backing up, since they are either temporary folders/files or files/folders I really don't want backed up (i.e. floppy). As well, be very careful about hard/soft links as those can cause issues.
If you experience problems, there is one configuration issue that you can check on the backuppc server.
When using rsyncd for backuppc you will need the File::RsyncP perl module installed. It may be installed already, but if not perldoc File::RsyncP, to make sure RsyncP is installed.
As well, the log file on the client machine is a great help as well, located at /var/log/rsyncd.log.

Restoring Files, Logging and Information

Well, you now have a local backup solution for all your PC's. Now you can use backuppc's powerful logging and reporting functions to view the status of all your backups. As well, you can easily browse your backups and restore files if needed. To browse backups, just select your host, and in the left menu will be an option to "Browse Backups". Select this to browse and restore backups.

Congratulations on completing the basic Backuppc setup. Hopefully in a later post more advanced topics can be covered.

Udev "Error" in Debian Sid, Kernel Upgrade difficulties

2010-04-15T18:38:00.010-04:00

So I have been hesitant for some time now to upgrade by Debian Lenny box, due to some upgrade errors I encountered in the past due to dependency conflicts. (I have now switched to aptitude, which seems to do much better). However, it was finally time.. I had several hundred updates to run, so it was time. When I ran this installer, I received the following error:

Manually Upgrade the Kernel

So, it was time to upgrade my kernel manually.. no way around it. I downloaded the latest kernel for Sid (2.6.32-3-686 at the time of running) and manually installed, which I've never done (not too difficult, or so I thought)....

I then needed to reboot after the kernel installed, so that changes could be made. I waited patiently on reboot for my server to come back on-line.... it never did. I went over and hooked up a screen to my server, and noticed that GRUB had errored out.

Fix Grub

I noticed that the problem must be that for root it was looking at (hd0,1) and root=/dev/hdb1 (not possible).
So after changing (hd0,1) to (hd0,0) and root=/dev/hdb1 to root=/dev/hda1. I'm not entirely sure why, however, if you do run into this issue, I would recommend that before you reboot, run this command:

sudo update-grub

Generating grub.cfg ...
Found background image: moreblue-orbit-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-3-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-3-686
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686
done

This may fix your problem. If you need to, you may manually edit your grub file to make sure it is correct.

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

Haven't had a problem since!

Happy upgrading!

Jinzora 3 Tutorial - Setup and Configuration on Linux

2010-04-13T20:13:00.002-04:00

Prerequisites:
Jinzora requires the following programs:
A web server, I recommend Apache2
PHP (PHP 5 is the latest).
MySQL (or some other version of a database) - Free and easy to download and setup.

Obtaining the files:

Download the lastest Jinzora3 at http://github.com/jinzora/jinzora3
untar the file to the directory you wish to install it in.. /var/www/ for instance

tar -zxvf jinzora*

Rename the folder as you desire.. since I have a jinzora2 installation I name mine Jinzora3.

sudo mv jinzora* jinzora3

I change the permissions and ownership of jinzora

sudo chown -R www-data jinzora3

If you want to make things easier run the command below...sometimes causes permission issues!

sudo chmod -R 700 jinzora3 **

Or, if you want...

sudo chmod -R 755 jinzora3 **

I would recommend locking this down further than 755..... not nearly as safe!

Web Based Installer

Visit jinzora3 in your browser: http://localhost/jinzora3. You should see the below page

Choose your language and select "Proceed to Requirements"

Here Jinzora will check your computer for requirements.. you may need to change permissions, just change the permissions for each of the files/folders listed, and recheck requirements, you shouldn't have any difficulty with that.

PDF support is used for album art, and is not required.
Your default PHP installation will most likely not meet requirements... you will need to edit your php.ini file to meet these requirements (just searching for those terms (such as "memory_limit" and "max_execution_time") should find the setting in the php.ini file).
Locate php.ini (mine is located at /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini) and make the necessary changes.

Once you are all set.. "Proceed to License". Accept...

For Installation type, choose defaults unless you know what you are doing. Main settings is a very important section:

Choose your username and password for the admin account Choose the default access that non-authenticated users have - tooltips explain the options. Choose your front-end...there is a small thumbnail to assist you... Import settings are also very important, and depend on your media. My media is all organized into folders, so I choose "Filesystem" for the data structure, and I dont read the tag data, since I don't necesarrily keep that updated. The Media layout is another setting that needs to be carefully configured. The default is Genre which means the folder structure is "Genre/Artist/Album/Songs". I am not that detailed, I have mine laid out as "Artist/Album/Songs". After you have that all set up, continue to "Backend Setup".

Setup database, this is quite self-explanatory, it is just for setting up the MySQL backend for Jinzora.

Next, you will need to import your media. Using the web-based file browser select the directory to import music from. Depending on what you selected before, and how much music you have, this may take some time. After that, proceed to "Save Config" and then launch Jinzora. Once you launch Jinzora, you will be greeted with the following error message:

Remove /var/www/jinzora3/install (if that is your directory)

sudo rm -r /var/www/jinzora3/install

You will now be able to log onto Jinzora3 by visiting http://localhost/jinzora3 (or whatever IP and naming scheme you used).

After Install Setup

If you immediately receive a long amount of errors when you log on that are PHP errors you need to change to following line in your php.ini (if you can...it is useful for debugging)

display_errors = on TO display_errors = off

And.. technically that is it. The interface should be easy to navigate. You can start building playlists, or play a random selection of songs. When you select "Play" your browser will download (by default) a m3u playlist file... just open the file in your player of choice and you should be good to go!
There are, however, a few troubles you may run into. Jinzora is able to convert different file types on the fly.. however, this option usually needs to be setup correctly to do this. To set this up, we need to edit the settings.php file, which is located in the root folder. (We can also edit this from the Jinzora interface... however I find the interface to be rather clunkly... however, if you wish to do so, click on the little hammer icon "Admin Tools" then to system tools -- settings manager -- main settings -- resampling). Lets go ahead and open the file:

nano /var/www/jinzora3/settings.php

There are a few settings we need to check to make sure they are set correctly.

$allow_resample = "false"; -- Change from false to true
$path_to_flac = "/usr/local/bin/flac"; --change to /usr/bin/flac
(on my distro at least, try "whereis flac" to locate flac on your distro)
$path_to_faad = "c:pubfaad"; --change to $path_to_faad = "/usr/bin/faad"; (again, double check)
$path_to_mplayer = "/usr/bin/mplayer"; --change to $path_to_mplayer = "/usr/bin/faad";
$mplayer_opts = "-ao pcm -aofile /dev/stdout"; --change to $mplayer_opts = "-f 1 -o /dev/stdout";
$always_resample = "flac|mpc|wv|wav|shn|m4a|ape|ofr|ogg|wma|m4a"; --add m4a if you need to

As a person preference I like to add:

$allow send email = true

You should be all set up for resampling! For grins, here is a chunk of my settings.php

$allow_resample = "true"; 
    $force_resample = "false";
    $default_resample = "32";
    $resampleRates = "192|128|112|96|64|48|32";
    $path_to_lame = "/usr/local/bin/lame";
    $path_to_flac = "/usr/bin/flac";
    $path_to_mpc = "/usr/local/bin/mppdec";
    $path_to_wavunpack = "/usr/local/bin/wvunpack";
    $path_to_oggdec = "/usr/local/bin/oggdec";
    $path_to_oggenc = "/usr/local/bin/oggenc";
    $path_to_mpcenc = "/usr/local/bin/mppenc";
    $path_to_wavpack = "/usr/local/bin/wavpack";
    $path_to_wmadec = "c:pubwmadec";
    $path_to_faad = "/usr/bin/faad";  
    $path_to_shn = "/usr/local/bin/shorten";
    $path_to_ofr = "/usr/local/bin/ofr";
    $path_to_macpipe = "/usr/local/bin/macpipe";
    $path_to_mplayer = "/usr/bin/faad";      
    $mplayer_opts = "-f 1 -o /dev/stdout";
    $lame_cmd = "/usr/local/bin/lame -S --silent --quiet -m j -b ";
    $lame_opts = "/usr/local/bin/lame -b 32 -f -m m";
    $always_resample = "flac|mpc|wv|wav|shn|m4a|ape|ofr|ogg|wma|m4a";
    $always_resample_rate = "128";
    $allow_resample_downloads = "true";
    $resample_cache_size = "100";
    $no_resample_subnets = "(192.168..*..*)|(127..*..*..*)";
    $multiple_download_mode = "zip";
    $single_download_mode = "raw";
    $allow_send_email = "true";
    $email_from_address = "user@jinzora.org";
    $email_from_name = "Jinzora";
    $email_server = "server";
    $jukebox = "false";
    $jukebox_display = "default";
    $jukebox_default_addtype = "current";
    $default_jukebox = "stream";
    $jb_volumes = "100|90|80|70|60|50|40|30|20|10|0";
    $allow send email = true

Playing Music in the Web Browser

Next, we can setup your in-browser player. Once again, that can be changed from the web interface. Go to Admin Tools -- system tools -- settings manager -- main settings -- playlist, and at the bottom there is a setting for "embedded_player". This can be set to many different kinds of players... the official list of players listed for jinzora is:

A player I really enjoy is xspf. Just enter xspf into the embedded player field, and next time you play a song, the player will open up start playing the file.

For mobile phone integration, there is a free app for Jinzora3 on the android operating system for playing your tunes on the go!

That finishes the basic overview of how to get Jinzora3 up and running... enjoy your music anywhere you go!

Using Ketarin to Automatically Update Software Packages

2010-03-22T22:21:00.002-04:00

Program Overview

After using Debian, it quickly becomes frustrating switching to Windows... especially when you want to easily and quickly check and update all of your software packages. There are several programs that allow some similar functionality, such as AppSnap and AppUpdater, but I find that Ketarin has the most features and offers the most flexibility and customization.

When you first launch Ketarin, you will not have any applications in your window, and as a first step we will quickly add an application from an online database.

Adding Applications - the Easy Way

Click on the arrow for "Add new application" and from the drop down menu select "Import from online database". Next you just need to search for the application you need, select it and hit "Import". The application will automatically be added to your list.
Next, we need to configure the application so that it automatically downloads to the correct directory. To do this, we need to understand Ketarin variables. Below is a list of common variables from the Ketarin Howto, found here.

Name	Content	Example
{file}	Location of the downloaded file (only for commands) Remember to enclose this variable in double quotes (”) if the path contains spaces.	c:\…\x.exe
{filesize}	Size of the downloaded file in bytes	1482245
{root}	Root of the application startup path	c:\
{category}	Category of the application	Security
{appname}	Name of the application	Ketarin
{appguid}	GUID of the application	{AC1DB…}
{url:ext}	Extension of the file that is being downloaded	exe
{url:basefile}	Base file name of the file that is being downloaded	Ketarin-0.9

Now, we can use the variables to create a download path and name for our application, so we can copy and paste the line into every single application we download. Let us take a look at a sample application shown below.

We can see the application we are downloading is the ffdshow codec, and that we are downloading it into the Media category. Using the variables we can see that we are downloading the file to C:\Apps\Media\ffdshowx64.exe.

Adding Applications From FileHippo

You will notice that there is an option for "FileHippo ID". This is another excellent option for downloading programs. Just search for a program on filehippo, and use the last part of the URL (after download) as the ID. For example, for Trillian Astra, the FileHippo URL is http://filehippo.com/download_trillian_astra/. The FileHippo ID would be "trillian_astra". These two options are the easy options for step one for obtaining the most updated program files from the internet.

Installing Applications Automatically

The second step can be found in the "Commands" section. There is an option for Ketarin to run commands before or after downloading the application. In this instance, since we want to install the application after it is downloaded, we need to get the application to install silently after download. This is actually the tricky part. It can be a challenge to discover what switches are needed to make sure the application installs silently. Unfortunately, some applications do not even offer the option of installing silently, and those will have to be installed manually.

Above is show the command we are executing after ffdshowx64 to get it to install correctly. Using the Ketarin variable {file}, we do not have to enter the entire path manually, which is a very nice feature. Some of the common silent install switches are: /s /S /q (/q is for msi files mostly) /SILENT /VERYSILENT /quiet.

You can also run the installer with the /? switch, and sometimes it will tell you the silent install option. If all else fails, Google it.

Installing Applications - the Hard Way

Unfortunately, you will run into applications that require a little bit more work to download easily. While filehippo has a good amount of files, it will certainly not have all of the files you may need. This is where things get tricky. You will need to specify where to download the file, and (even more difficult) tell the program how to determine what the filename will be. Lets take a look at an example, namely Virtualdub x64. Virtualdub is available for download from Sourceforge, which is a tricky site to use. First, we need to determine what the latest version of Virtualdub is. To do so, the author's website becomes quite helpful.

http://virtualdub.org. The current version is easily noticed. Now we need to tell Ketarin to use that number to dynamically update the version number.

To do this, we need load the page in and select a variable, but before we can do that we need to specify a download location, which is where we use our sourceforge link:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/virtualdub/VirtualDub-{version}-AMD64.zip?download

This is what the regular download page looks like on sourceforge:

However, you will notice the download link is different, the download URL is different from the page download process, so our download URL becomes: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/virtualdub/VirtualDub-{version}-AMD64.zip?download

Now, of course we need to specify a value for the {version} variable. For that we click on the variable button, which loads the following screen:

First, click on the plus button to add a variable, and name it version. Then add http://www.virtualdub.org to the "Contents from URL:" field, and hit load. Next search for your version number inside of the page. You should easily find it. Next, select the part of the line before it.. how much you select is up to you, and select "Use selection as start". Do the same for the part of the line after the version number. I assume Ketarin uses the start and end selections to make sure it has the correct version number, so choose carefully. If you program has a particularly tricky version number, you can specify multiple variables.

There! You added one program using the advanced method. Many of these programs will present a new challenge as they will all be different, but using these tools, you should be able to figure out how to extract the necessary information.

Now, to update all of your applications, all that is needed is to select "Check for updates and download" from the Ketarin Menu,

and all of your applications should automatically download, and install themselves in the background, without ever bothering you.

As well, if you are really a fanatic you can schedule a task to run with the following command:

C:\Apps\Ketarin\Ketarin.exe /silent /notify /log=C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\SoftwareUpdates.log

This will cause Ketarin to run silently in the background updating, so you never even have to think about it.

The one drawback to Ketarin is that sometimes when you silently install applications, they can fail for whatever reason, and you will not be notified, and if the program continuously fails, you will NEVER know that your application is out of date.

Ketarin is a powerful program, and a program that saves you a large amount of time downloading and installing your applications. I suggest you use it.

Tutorial on how to Setup an Openvpn Server on Debian, with a Windows Client

2010-03-08T18:28:00.002-05:00

First, we need to quickly install openvpn on our debian server.

aptitude install openvpn

Next we need to locate our easy-rsa folder, on debian it is located at /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa
If you are having trouble finding it, try the following:

updatedb

locate easy-rsa

Once we find the folder, we need to copy it to /etc/openvpn:

cp -R /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa /etc/openvpn

cd /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/2.0

Now we need to edit some variables, to make things easier for us.

sudo nano vars

Once you open up the file vars, you should see the something like the following at the bottom:

Change those values to reflect your values.
Now we need to build the certificate authority, so in the /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/2.0 directory run the following commands:

. ./vars

(dot space ./vars)

./clean-all ./build-ca

This should build the certificate authority (CA) certificate
Many of the values should be autopopulated since we filled out the information. The one value you may need to fill is the Common Name. Enter the name of your server for the value. Next we need to generate the server key:

build-key-server server

Next, we need to setup some keys for the clients, so that they can connect to the server. You have two choices for setting up clients. You can require the clients to enter a password to connect, or just generate the key files needed to connect. In this example we will be generating the files without password. If you wish to use a password, replace ./build-key with ./build-key-pass.

./build-key client1

Again, it will ask you for a client name, enter the name of the client. When it asks for a challenge password just leave it black and press enter. Next we need to generate Diffie Hellman paramaters.

./build-dh

This command may take a while to complete. Once the command completes, you should be able to navigate to /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/ and the files you generated should be located within. Next, we need to copy the keys that are needed for the OpenVPN server into the correct folder:

cp ca.crt ca.key dh1024.pem server.crt server.key /etc/openvpn

Obviously, whatever the name will reflect whatever you entered originally. Next, navigate to /etc/openvpn, to edit the configuration file.

sudo nano openvpn.conf

This is an example configuration, very basic, change the names of the .crt and .key files to the ones you made, and you should be all set. As well, I added the client-to-client line because I want my clients to be able to talk to eachother.
Next, lets start OpenVPN:

/etc/init.d/openvpn start

You can ping yourself as a quick test to see if you are up and running.

$ ping 172.17.0.1
PING 172.17.0.1 (172.17.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 172.17.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.041 ms 64 bytes from 172.17.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.030 ms

Next, we need to configure the clients. In this example, I am using two windows clients to connect to the server.
I like the gui for OpenVpn, available here: http://openvpn.se. (See below for Windows 7 fix). Once you install it, navigate to C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config. Now, you need to copy the following files to our config folder from our server:
client.crt
client.key
ca.crt

Next, we need to create a client configuration file to use. For windows, the client configurations all end with .ovpn. So lets create a file called config.ovpn, and use the following:

You will need to change the name of your .key and .crt files, and your remote IP address as well. Obviously, if you are connecting remotely, you can enter a domain name as well.

Once you connect, you should now be able to easily ping the Openvpn server. If not you may need to check your firewall to make sure everything is working. Don't forget to port forward the correct port to your OpenVPN server, or you will not be able to access your server from outside of your network.

If you need clients to be able to talk to eachother, you may need to execute the following command on your linux box.

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Currently, setup on Windows 7 requires a little bit more setup than other versions of windows. First, download the latest release client, from http://openvpn.net/release/, and run the program in compatibility mode for Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and run as administrator. This will give the program the permissions it needs.

If you encounter problems, remember to turn off any firewalls that may be in the way.

Howto Tutorial on setting up Apache2, Php5, Mysql 5.0, phpmyadmin 4 on Debian Lenny (Squeeze Repos)

2010-02-03T17:00:00.005-05:00

Recently, I had to rebuild my debian server, and decided to cover (in more depth this time) setting up several essential web server services. I enabled the squeeze repositories, (I need them for the deluge torrent server setup). The first thing we need to do is install apache2.

Apache2 Setup and Basic Configure

sudo aptitude install apache2

This should automatically set up and configure apache2 for you. It should also start the apache2 service at the end of installation. If not, here are some useful commands for apache2:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 [stop | start] - Starts or Stops the apache2 server.
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 [restart | reload] - Restarts the apache2 server, or reloads the apache2 configuration files. Many times, all you will need to do is reload the configuration files and not restart apache2 entirely to apply changes.
Note: When you install apache2, it creates a new user named "www-data". This is the user that apache2 uses. By default, the document root for apache web server is /var/www/
To test your configuration, type http://localhost or IP address if you are configuring remotely, and it should say "It works!".
Many of the configuration options can be changed by editing the apache2.conf file.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

As well, many user configurations can be written to the httpd.conf file located in /etc/apache2/ folder along with apache2.conf
If for some reason apache2 is not working, you can ensure it is running by using the following command:

ps aux | grep apache2

This should list at least a few instances of apache2 running.
As well, if you want to change site specific settings, you can edit your default site file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Next we will be covering PHP5, and how to integrate that into apache2.

PHP5 Installation and Integration with Apache2

Installing php5 is quite simple:

sudo aptitude install php5

Installing php5 should automatically link it with apache2 correctly. However to ensure that it is installed correctly, or if you encounter problems, you can check the following.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Around line 115, you should see the following lines:

Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.load
Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.conf

Make sure these lines are correct, and not commented out. This ensures that apache2 loads all of the enabled mods. Now if we want we can check to see which mods we have in our enabled folder.

ls -la /etc/apache2/mods-enabled

Notice that the mods-enabled are all links to .conf and .load files in the mods-available folder.
If you want to enable a mod there is an easy way to do that in debian:

a2enmod

This should bring up a large list of modules you can choose from to install, so just type the module you wish to install and apache should install it.
Next, you will notice that apache2 will not server .php file extensions by default, when there is a index.html file in the folder. This is caused by a specific mod that is enabled with apache2 by default when installed. The mod mod_dir controls what extensions and names are served first. To change this we use the following command:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/dir.conf

You should see the following line:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.cgi index.pl index.php index.xhtml index.htm

Change this line to suit your needs and you should be all set to go. Now, to test you php installation, you can create a simple php page and load it in the web browser. It should display a large amount of information about you php installation.

If the page loads successfully without errors, you should have php5 installed correctly.

Mysql 5.0 Server Installation and Configuration

sudo aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client

Follow the command prompts to set up an administrator password and you should be all set, mysql server 5.0 should be installed. To test the installation, log onto mysql:

mysql -u root -p

Enter your password and you should be logged into your mysql server. If you are good at mysql that might be all you need to get things done. However for those that need a little more help, we will install phpmyadmin.

Phpmyadmin Install and Configuration

Phpmyadmin is a very powerful tool for managing your mysql installation. Installing has to be done after you install your webserver, as phpmyadmin will automatically set itself up.

sudo aptitude install phpmyadmin

I am installing version (4:2.11.8.1-5+lenny3). As the package installs, it will prompt you to select the web server you have installed. Select apache2, and you should be all set. To access phpmyadmin, you should be able to navigate to http://localhost/phpmyadmin, and once you log in you should be able to manipulate mysql from your web browser.

Howto setup Remote Desktop over Internet, Dynamic DNS

2009-12-27T09:37:00.002-05:00

Recently, I was helping a few friends to remote desktop into their machines over the internet, and was annoyed at the amount of work and explaining required, so I'm putting together this simple guide to ease the process of me having to explain everything, and hopefully get the most complete and simple guide out there on the web.

***Disclaimer***
This guide will show you how to connect to your computer using windows remote desktop and port 3389. I do NOT recommend this if you are worried about security. I may add other options later to this guide.
******
Essentially, this guide will show you how to remote desktop into your computer over the internet. First, before you go through all of the trouble, let me inform you of Log Me In which essentially does the same thing... with better encryption and the free version has many useful features, and works on more operating systems. However, this tutorial also covers mapping a free (or purchased) hostname to dynamic DNS, which has other benefits such as setting up your own webserver.

There are six simple steps that need to be done to achieve remote desktop over the internet:
1. Ensure your Operating System has the capability.
2. Enable remote desktop.
3. Ensure the host's firewall is properly configured.
4. Setup port forwarding on the host router.
5. Enabling Internet access.
6. If you have a dynamic IP, setup DDNS (dynamic DNS)
7. Configure automatic DDNS updates.

First, lets take a look at the most common setup you will be working with:

Essentially, you will be attempting to remote desktop to a remote computer through your (typically) home router, to the internet, through the remote router, and to the remote desktop.

Operating System Compatibility

First you need to ensure that your operating system supports remote desktop (aka terminal services). The desktop versions of the Windows operating system support remote desktop, as well as many of more feature-heavy versions of windows, such as Ultimate. Windows Home Edition does not support remote desktop as a server. However, Windows HE does have a Remote Desktop Client, which enables it to connect to a remote desktop. As well, almost all linux distros have the ability to connect to remote desktop sessions.

Enabling Remote Desktop

Enabling remote desktop is quite simple. The screenshot below shows how to enable remote desktop on Windows 7, which should be very similar to Windows Vista. Essentially, right-click on My Computer, select properties, and look for "Remote".

Then, just enable remote desktop. Another important step to take is to enable the appropriate users access to remoter desktop. By default, the administrator already has access to remote desktop. Your computer is now set up to receive remote desktop connections! If you have another computer in the same LAN, you can go ahead and test this to see if this works.. if not, you will have to complete the next step!

Host Firewall Configuration

If you are unable to connect, you may have a problem with your firewall. In Windows, these settings should be found in the control panel, under "System and Security". Ensure that "Remote Desktop" is enabled and allowed.

Port Forwarding on the Host Router

However, enabling remote desktop on the host machine will be very unproductive (get it?) without enabling port forwarding on your router. Port forwarding essentially tells your router that when an external request is made for port 3389 (the remote desktop port) it should forward that request to a certain IP Address, specifically the one that is hosting remote desktop. Connecting to your router to make this configuration is quite easy. Look on your router itself.. there should be a default IP address (something like 192.168.1.1 or 10.10.10.1) on the router for you to use to connect. As well, there should be a default username and password. Next, direct your browser there by typing http://[IP ADDRESS], i.e. http://192.168.0.1 and logging in using the username and password. (Hint: if you are still using your default username and password I highly recommend you change it. It is very insecure.) Once you log on, you will need to go through your menus until you find something called "Port Forwarding". Once you find that, you will need to forward port 3389 to your computer, so you can connect to it from a remote machine.
However, to do so you need to determine the IP address of your computer. The easiest way to do that is to run ipconfig on your computer. To do so, hit the start button and (on Windows XP and earlier, select Run) type cmd.exe in the command prompt, and hit enter. This should bring up a black command command prompt. Type "ipconfig" into the command prompt and hit enter. Next, look for Local Area Connection, and IP address, or IPv4 address. This is the address you will enter into the port forwarding address on your router.

Next you need to ensure that remote desktop is working in the LAN before we attempt to connect over the internet. You will need another computer in the same LAN (behind the same router) to attempt to connect to the computer. To do so, you will once again bring up the run prompt, (or in Windows Vista and 7 in the search box) type mstsc and press enter. This will bring up a window that looks similar to the one shown

below. In the computer box, you need to enter the IP address of the remote computer you wish connect to. After you enter the IP address and hit connect, you will be prompted to enter your username and password to connect. After you login, you should see your desktop and be able to interact with it remotely!
Next, we need to make sure we can replicate this effect over the internet.

Setting up Internet Access

To access your computer over the internet you need to have some way to find your computer in the vast maze of the internet. To do this you need to know your external IP address. Just like your router assigns IP addresses to your computers, you internet provider assigns IP addresses to all of it's subscribers. To access your computer, you need to know your external IP address. The simplest way to find your external IP address is to visit IP Chicken where your IP address will be shown. However, many providers, for various reasons, give out dynamic ip addresses, which will change periodically, which will render your ability to connect to your computer limited to until your IP address changes. Fortunately, there is a way to rectify the situation.

Setting up Dynamic DNS

To rectify a dynamic DNS problem, you need an easy way to link your changing IP address to an unchanging address. This can be done with a web address using dynamic dns. (DNS is a service that converts and IP address (77.200.65.70 for example) to a web address). To do this, you need a dynamic dns service such as DynDNS. DynDNS is the most popular service for this, but there are others. Once you have an account at DynDNS, you can add a host, and it will allow you to choose from several options for a hostname. For example, my hostname from dynDNS is http://deranjer.is-a-geek.com.

Automatically updating Dynamic DNS

After setting up your hostname, you need to set up a way for your IP updates to reach dynDNS. This is done one of two ways. You can run an updater that runs on your computer and sends updates to dynDNS, or you can set up dynDNS to run on your router. Most modern routers have an option for setting up a dynamic IP updater directly from the router. Just choose your service, enter your username and password, and you should be good to go. If your router does not support this, download the dynamic IP updater program and run that on your computer, and that should keep it updated. Now you should be able to remote desktop into your home computer using your website address (sometimes it takes a little while for the DNS updates to cascade all the way down, so if you are unable to reach it sometimes just waiting will clear that problem up).

This concludes the guide for remote desktop over Internet. Happy remote desktoping!

Example Preseed file tutorial for Debian Lenny PXEboot Server

2009-11-09T15:11:00.002-05:00

The Default File

The next step for our PXE Server (for the previous step see here) is to make an option for an automated deployment. This is especially useful in a production environment as you can network boot a computer, feed the appropriate options in the command line and walk away, with entire confidence that the OS will install flawlessly. Now for the preseed file to work correctly the default file needs to be edited (again, see here).

DISPLAY boot.txt  DEFAULT lenny_i386_install  LABEL lenny_i386_autoinstall         kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux         append ramdisk_size=14984 locale=en_US console-setup/layoutcode=en_US netcfg/wireless_wep= netcfg/choose_interface=eth0 netcfg/get_hostname=DebianServer netcfg/get_domain= console-keymaps-at/keymap=us url=http://192.168.1.100/pxescripts/preseed.cfg initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz --  LABEL lenny_i386_install         kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux         append vga=normal initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz  -- LABEL lenny_i386_linux         kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux         append vga=normal initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz  --  LABEL lenny_i386_expert         kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux         append priority=low vga=normal initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz  --  LABEL lenny_i386_rescue         kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux         append vga=normal initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz  rescue/enable=true --  LABEL xen_i386_install  kernel xen/vmlinuz  append vga=normal initrd=xen/initrd.gz --  PROMPT 1 TIMEOUT 40

If you inspect the file above you will notice the line that is used for the preseed.cfg file, which must be one line, but is broken in this example for formatting. :

LABEL lenny_i386_autoinstall kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux append ramdisk_size=14984 locale=en_US console-setup/layoutcode=en_US netcfg/wireless_wep= netcfg/choose_interface=eth0 netcfg/get_hostname=DebianServer netcfg/get_domain= console-keymaps-at/keymap=us url=http://IP ADDRESS/pxescripts/preseed.cfg initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz --

Alright, lets break a little bit of this down. In order for our auto installation scheme to work, there need to be some options passed on directly to the kernel, and lets go over a few of them.
1. ramdisk_size - stores some execution space in the RAM, speeds things up.
2. locale=en_US and console-setup/layoutcode=en_US - setting US English as the default language
3. netcfg/wireless_wep - I believe this is for a wireless password, but not entirely sure.
4. netcfg/choose_interface - This allows you to chose the network interface that will be used
5. netcfg/get_hostname - allows you to set the hostname of the machine.
6. netcfg/get_domain - allows you to set the domain of the computer
7. console-keymaps-at/keymap - allows you to set the keyboard mapping
8. url=http://IP ADDRESS/PATH/preseed.cfg - specifies where the preseed.cfg file can be found.
Now you will notice that many of these are defined in the default file... if I wasn't lazy, and this was a work environment, it would be better to manually enter at least one of these, namely netcfg/get_hostname. This way I would not have to go back and change the hostname for almost all of the machines... a big time saver. As well, you'll notice that to fetch the preseed.cfg file I used a http:// address.. I believe a ftp:// and file:// prefix will work as well. Now, the reason these options all need to be passed on directly to the kernel is because many of these options are asked before the networking is configured. So until the machines gets an IP address during installation (which is after the language is decided) the preseed.cfg file is not available to fill in the answers... so these options need to be directly passed onto the kernel.

The Preseed.cfg File

d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US d-i console-setup/layoutcode string en_US d-i netcfg/choose_interface select auto # Keyboard selection. #d-i console-tools/archs select at d-i console-keymaps-at/keymap select us # Any hostname and domain names assigned from dhcp take precedence over # values set here. However, setting the values still prevents the questions # from being shown, even if values come from dhcp. d-i netcfg/get_hostname string DebianTest d-i netcfg/get_domain string domain_not_set.invalid d-i netcfg/wireless_wep string ### Mirror settings # If you select ftp, the mirror/country string does not need to be set. d-i mirror/country string us d-i mirror/http/countries select us #d-i mirror/protocol string ftp  d-i mirror/http/hostname string ftp.us.debian.org  d-i mirror/http/directory string /debian d-i mirror/http/proxy string http://192.168.1.100:3142 # Suite to install. #d-i mirror/suite string testing # Suite to use for loading installer components (optional). #d-i mirror/udeb/suite string testing d-i mirror/suite string lenny ### Partitioning # If the system has free space you can choose to only partition that space. # Note: this must be preseeded with a localized (translated) value. #d-i partman-auto/init_automatically_partition \ # select Guided - use the largest continuous free space # Alternatively, you can specify a disk to partition. The device name must # be given in traditional non-devfs format. # Note: A disk must be specified, unless the system has only one disk. # For example, to use the first SCSI/SATA hard disk: d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/hda # In addition, you'll need to specify the method to use. # The presently available methods are: "regular", "lvm" and "crypto" d-i partman-auto/method string lvm # If one of the disks that are going to be automatically partitioned # contains an old LVM configuration, the user will normally receive a # warning. This can be preseeded away... d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true # The same applies to pre-existing software RAID array: d-i partman-md/device_remove_md boolean true # And the same goes for the confirmation to write the lvm partitions. d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true # You can choose one of the three predefined partitioning recipes: # - atomic: all files in one partition # - home:   separate /home partition # - multi:  separate /home, /usr, /var, and /tmp partitions d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe select atomic # This makes partman automatically partition without confirmation. d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true d-i partman/choose_partition \ select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk d-i partman/confirm boolean true ### Clock and time zone setup # Controls whether or not the hardware clock is set to UTC. d-i clock-setup/ust boolean true # You may set this to any valid setting for $TZ; see the contents of # /usr/share/zoneinfo/ for valid values. d-i time/zone string EST ### Apt setup # You can choose to install non-free and contrib software. #d-i apt-setup/non-free boolean true #d-i apt-setup/contrib boolean true # Uncomment this if you don't want to use a network mirror. #d-i apt-setup/use_mirror boolean false # Select which update services to use; define the mirrors to be used. # Values shown below are the normal defaults. #d-i apt-setup/services-select multiselect security, volatile #d-i apt-setup/security_host string security.debian.org #d-i apt-setup/volatile_host string volatile.debian.org # Additional repositories, local[0-9] available #d-i apt-setup/local0/repository string \ # http://local.server/debian stable main #d-i apt-setup/local0/comment string local server # Enable deb-src lines #d-i apt-setup/local0/source boolean true # URL to the public key of the local repository; you must provide a key or # apt will complain about the unauthenticated repository and so the # sources.list line will be left commented out #d-i apt-setup/local0/key string http://local.server/key ### Account setup # Skip creation of a root account (normal user account will be able to # use sudo). #d-i passwd/root-login boolean false # Alternatively, to skip creation of a normal user account. #d-i passwd/make-user boolean false  # Root password, either in clear text d-i passwd/root-password password ********** d-i passwd/root-password-again password ********** # or encrypted using an MD5 hash. #d-i passwd/root-password-crypted password [MD5 hash] # To create a normal user account. d-i passwd/user-fullname string Debian Server Administrator d-i passwd/username string deranjer # Normal user's password, either in clear text #d-i passwd/user-password password insecure #d-i passwd/user-password-again password insecure # or encrypted using an MD5 hash. d-i passwd/user-password-crypted password $1$ApZFpRq5$X38skX90ZL36YOnbYt/3J #Set environment # This is fairly safe to set, it makes grub install automatically to the MBR # if no other operating system is detected on the machine. d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true # This one makes grub-installer install to the MBR if it also finds some other # OS, which is less safe as it might not be able to boot that other OS. d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true # Individual additional packages to install d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server webmin nxclient  ### Package selection tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, desktop #tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, web-server #tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, kde-desktop ### Opt out of the popularity contest d-i popularity-contest/participate  boolean false ### Finishing up the first stage install # Avoid that last message about the install being complete. d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note xserver-xorg xserver-xorg/autodetect_monitor boolean true xserver-xorg xserver-xorg/config/monitor/selection-method \ select medium     xserver-xorg xserver-xorg/config/monitor/mode-list \     select 1024x768 @ 60 Hz

Now I will explain some of the more cryptic/hard to grasp elements of the preseed.cfg file
The first few lines set the installer language and keyboard layout... I don't think those are necessary, they should have passed directly to the kernel. Next, I am telling the installer to automatically choose the interface to use. The next few lines are not necessary, as we passed those on directly to the kernel. The mirror settings section is very important, especially if (like me) you decided to cache (using apt-cache or apt-mirror) files to ease bandwidth traffic. The first two lines select the country, and the directory string sets the distribution. The proxy string is the key for making sure the files are pulled from your personal apt-cache. As you can see, I'm pulling it from my web server, with the port for my apt-cache defined. Next, the suite specifies the version of the linux distro. The partitioning can be difficult to set up, especially if your machines have one, two or more hard drives. If the machine only has one hard drive, specifying a hard drive is not necessary. Since one of my testing machines has two hard drives, I added the "d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/hda", which specifies that the installer should use the first hard disk. Next, after selecting lvm for the method, you can choose one of the pre-defined partitioning schemes. The options are:
# - atomic: all files in one partition
# - home: separate /home partition
# - multi: separate /home, /usr, /var, and /tmp partitions
As you can see, I chose the atomic method. For improved performance, you may want to choose one of the other methods.
Next, you can set up the user accounts and passwords. The first thing you can do is set the root password. In the example, the password is sent in clear test (it is masked in the example), but I certainly recommend you send the password as a MD5 hash. To generate a MD5 hash, just run the following command:

$echo "password" | mkpasswd -s -H MD5

Next, you can choose the package that you want to install. I chose the standard desktop install.
Essentially, that covers the trickier parts of the preseed.cfg file. Happy automated installing!

Tutorial, Howto setup Debian Lenny Linux PXEboot Server with DD-WRT DHCP options

2009-11-02T22:35:00.129-05:00

Recently, I decided it was time to drop the CD/DVD installs of linux and move to something easier and quicker (although that is debateable). As well, a few of my computers have no disc drive and switching disc drives from computer to computer gets very old very quickly. As well, if a computer has a slimline drive opening the case to temporarily add a CD/DVD drive is too much work. I finally decided to install a PXE server on my debian box, to allow network booting. Networking booting is an extremely handy way to install operating systems, boot to recovery tools, ect.

Installing and Configuring a Tftp Server

The first thing we need to do is install a tftp server. The tftp server will be used to serve the files to the computer that is booting up. To install a tftpd server on debian we do this from the command prompt:

$sudo apt-get install tftpd-hpa

When you install the tftpd-hpa server, a few dialogs should come up. Just make sure you set the correct path for the server root. The newest version of tftpd-hpa is different than the older version, but since I'm running the cutting edge, I will be covering the newest version. After configuration, we will need to make sure the config file is setup correctly. If you ever need to reconfigure the file just run the following command:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tftpd-hpa

Now to take a look at the config file:

$sudo nano /etc/default/tftpd-hpa

The config file should appear as follows: Ensure that the "TFTP_DIRECTORY = /var/lib/tftpboot" directory is the correct path to your tftpboot directory. Everything else should be correct.

Creating the Directory Structure/Downloading the Files

Now we need to create the directory structure necessary for PXEboot. First, create the directory /var/lib/tftpboot. Next we will be creating several files and directories. When we are finished, the directory structure will look as follows.

Next, we need to download the appropriate initrd.gz, linux, and pxelinux.0 files, which can be found several places.. such as here. In the newest version of debian PXEboot, they have a GUI bootable version, however I decided to stick with a text boot version, and this tutorial will be about that option. Once the initrd.gz, linux, and pxelinux.0 files have downloaded, put them in the appropriate folders. In my configuration, I also have a xen folder for booting and installing a xen server, but that is not covered here. If you are interested, the xen boot option should be available for download from the download link above.

Creating the Menus and Defining Options

Next we need to create the default and the boot.txt files. The boot.txt file is the menu that shows up when you boot the computer.. in this example it will be a text only file. The configuration of the file is extremely simple. The only part you need to pay close attention to is the exact wording of the boot options.
Next, we need to create the default file, which links to the boot.txt file. The default file should look something like this:

DISPLAY boot.txt

DEFAULT lenny_i386_install

LABEL lenny_i386_autoinstall
        kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux
        append ramdisk_size=14984 locale=en_US console-setup/layoutcode=en_US netcfg/wireless_wep= netcfg/choose_interface=eth0 netcfg/get_hostname=DebianServer netcfg/get_domain= console-keymaps-at/keymap=us url=http://192.168.1.100/pxescripts/preseed.cfg initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz --

LABEL lenny_i386_install
        kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux
        append vga=normal initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz  --
LABEL lenny_i386_linux
        kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux
        append vga=normal initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz  --

LABEL lenny_i386_expert
        kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux
        append priority=low vga=normal initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz  --

LABEL lenny_i386_rescue
        kernel debian/lenny/i386/linux
        append vga=normal initrd=debian/lenny/i386/initrd.gz  rescue/enable=true --

LABEL xen_i386_install
 kernel xen/vmlinuz
 append vga=normal initrd=xen/initrd.gz --

PROMPT 1
TIMEOUT 40

The text box is not wrapped, to prove a point. Everything entered after the append option must be on one line, otherwise it will not work. The labels in the default file must match the labels in the boot.txt as that is how the files are linked. Obviously, you can add new labels to the default file, as long as you match it with the boot file. I added the lenny_i386_autoinstall label, which will hopefully be covered later. The DISPLAY option tells the PXEboot server what file to display for the menu. The DEFAULT option tells the PXEboot server which label is the default label, which works well in conjunction with the TIMEOUT option. The TIMEOUT option is by default zero (no time limit) but in my configuration I set a timeout of 40 seconds, which means that in 40 seconds of no activity, the DEFAULT option will be booted.

DHCP Server Options

However, there is still one piece of the puzzle missing. You need a network booted machine to know where to look for the PXEboot server. This sort of configuration will need to be passed to the machine via DHCP options. In this instance, I will be using a router with dd-wrt installed to pass the DHCP options to the client. Since dd-wrt is linux based, the command should be quite similar if you are using a linux DHCP server. With dd-wrt make sure that you are using DNSMasq for DHCP, which can be found directly under the setup tab.

Next, you will need to add the option that will tell the client where to look for the server and what server to look for when network booting. The option is configured under the DNSMasq box (not the DHCPd option, which may appear more relevant). The format for the dhcp-boot option is: dhcp-boot=filename,servername,ipaddress

The filname option is what the name of the file is that the PXEclient should look for... in this case, that file is pxelinux.0. The servername is not necessary... as you can see I left it out. However, the commas are necessary.

Troubleshooting

For troubleshooting, I recommend you install Wireshark to sniff network traffic. It is a very useful tool. Next, a few common troubleshooting methods for narrowing down the problem.

Ensure the TFTP server is working. If your client is unable to find the pxelinux.0 file, make sure you can tftp files from any machine (even from the machine that your tftp server is installed on). This error could be cause by an incorrect tftp boot path, or the tftp server is not running.

Ensure that your network card/BIOS is PXEbootable. An obvious problem, sometimes upgrading the BIOS will solve this.

If all else fails, sniff the network traffic. Use Wireshark to sniff the network traffic, this will help troubleshoot problems.

Hopefully soon I will cover using a preseed.cfg file to do an automated network boot and install.

Google Wave First Look and Tutorial

2009-10-25T17:27:00.009-04:00

Well I recently received my Google Wave account, and have been busy having fun with it ever since. Since Google Wave is actually getting a lot of press (which is unusual for a very beta tech product) there is actually a rather large public community on Google Wave, busily testing all of the features. Since I did get my invite, I thought I would share with everyone a little bit of how Google Wave works.

First off, the UI looks quite beautiful, and has many options for reorganization to maximize the space you have available to you. This will come very much in handy later, as you will see. Shown below is the default view you will see when logging into Google Wave.

The far left panes shows your "Contacts" and "Navigation" pane. Currently, the contacts listed in the pane are all "extension" contacts, more about that later. The "Navigation" pane is rather self-explanatory, and is similar to the gmail navigation pane. The "Inbox" is somewhat self-explanatory, and works in a similar way to an email inbox, yet also adds the functionality of an RSS feed of sorts. Notice the number highlighted in green under the time for each wave. This is the number of unread messages in each wave. When viewing the wave you will see wavelets/blips/messages that will either have a green bar on the left hand side, or they will be encircled in green. These are the unread messages. Clicking on them will mark them as read. The view to the far right is the "Message" view, which shows all of the wavelets and blips in the wave. Essentially, a wavelet is a threaded conversation inside of a wave, and a blip is an individual "post". For an in-depth terminology reference see here. The nice thing about the UI is its ability to be reorganized. For example, reading a very large, in-depth wave will become tiresome if you have to read it all in a tiny window on the right hand side. So, as shown below, you can minimize or hide windows. Notice the Inbox, Navigation and Contacts windows are minimized at the top of Google Wave.

There are essentially two types of waves: public waves and private waves. To see a list of public waves, go to your search bar and type with:public which will bring up a massive list of public waves. At this current point in time, public waves are a massive mess, as there is no easy way to manage/garden them. It is akin to a massive global chat with embedded images/gadgets/bots. I believe the real potential for Wave is with private waves, which are waves that are invite only. This allows you to invite only people you trust, so that you can be productive inside of a wave. As well, as it currently stands, if you click on a public wave, it will automatically be joined to your inbox, and with a massive amount of people constantly adding posts, it becomes a rather large mess.

If you look at the image above, you will notice that there is a extension added to the wave called "ClarkPoint". This is a very handy application, as it allows you and anyone you add to your wave join in an instant conference call.. using VOIP. All each of you need to do is click on "Group Call" and you will instantly be in a conference call. As an added benefit of being in a wave.. all of you will be able to add notes simultaneously, in real time. A very big benefit indeed.

Next, lets cover extensions/bots/gadgets.

Gadgets

Gadgets are essentially applications that run inside of a wave. For example, lets say you wanted to see if everyone in you wave wanted to go on a trip. You could insert a "Yes/No/Maybe" gadget. This would allow everyone in the wave to cast their vote. You could also add a map gadget, and everyone could see you (in real time) zoom into and out of the map, and add markers, and they could do so as well (in real-time).

Bots

Bots are added as users to your contacts, and you can add them to your wave, and (as far as I know) affect the entire wave. For example, you can add a bot called "cartoonybot@appspot.com" and all of your conversations (the ones that occur after you add the bot) will be converted to speech bubbles, as shown below.

Another bot, called py-robot@appspot.com, integrates wolfram alpha (for more information on wolfram alpha click here) data into a Google Wave. To use this functionality, do a wolfram alpha search surrounded by brackets "[]" and py-robot will automatically post directly under you with the results of your search... very impressive. As it is still in beta, it does not have all of the functionality of wolfram alpha.

Wave Editing and Navigation

At this point in waves, everyone can edit anyone's blips. Obviously, this is a serious problem, and hopefully one that will be addressed in a new version. Essentially, to reply to a wave with a new post at the bottom of the wave, hit the reply button on the upper menu bar, shown below. The next button, the playback button, will playback sequentially everything that happened on the wave. The archive button will archive the wave thereby removing it from your inbox. The mute button will also remove the wave from the inbox, but make it available for searching. The spam, read, and unread buttons are all features of email, and operate the same way. The trash can will trash the wave. The move to button will move the wave to a folder of your choice.

When editing a wave, if you want to reply directly to another post, you can click on the arrow at the far right to drop down options and select reply to this message. Private reply allows you to reply only to the message's author. Clicking "Reply to this message" will reply to that message, and not at the end of the wave.

Inbox and Wave Management Theories

I believe that the Wave "Inbox" will be completely unlike an email "Inbox". I think that the amount of information that Wave will generate will explode making the classic inbox model unstable. I am positive that due the extreme flexibility of the Wave platform many websites will use that for their forum, in at least some capacity. Obviously, if the forum is being used heavily, you do not want that wave popping to the top of your inbox every time someone changes or adds to the wave. You would need a way to specify notifications, or at least have a way to filter the wave to get the information you need. I believe the trend that will emerge, (and believe me, not a new trend really) will be a search based inbox. For example, you would create custom queries for different inbox views and switch through those views as needed. Some examples are with:me and with:public, for a full list, see here.

Currently, public waves are massive beasts that have you scrolling through hundreds of posts, and it is possible for dozens of those posts all throughout the wave to be edited at the same time. This forces you to scroll thorough the page each time to find the specific thread you were looking for, in a vastly changing, confusing mess. There needs to be a way to at least jump directly from unread blip to blip.. history will technically perform this, but at this point in time is much to slow and unwieldy to use in this manner. Perhaps a tag-cloud bot could be written to jump to certain parts of the wave... I think that could be something very useful.

Another difficulty encountered is chat management. I was testing out a conference call gadget, (add it to the wave and all of the members can click add to conversation and the flash based application will use the microphone and camera to connect all the users) and someone chatted to me asking where I found the gadget. The conversation went as follows:

hey.. sry.. mike not on right now lol Where do I get this gadget? THanks and you just dropped itin hear? one sec.. let me look it up.. searched the web to find it. I found it. www.ribbit.com/wave Thanks though. Click on teh Green button to add by URL.. should add it.. oh okay.. cool.. there are some other ones like it... they work well too.. no problem. yeah cya. cool see ya.

Obviously, we were both typing in the same space, deleting some of our own text, some of the other person's text, and something that may have made sense to us at the time is now a jumble of unusable text. Using playback is not an option to figure this out, as it is not sensitive enough to catch all of our little edits. This is something that needs to be worked out.

Overall, I am very excited for the potential that Google Wave holds. I'm looking forward to the community to develop Google Wave into a very valuable product.

[edit] Now you can check out my YouTube video covering the basics of Google Wave!

Exchange 2007 Installation on Windows Server 2008 (Part 1)

2009-10-24T01:12:00.006-04:00

Recently, I decided to install Exchange 2007 on a VM for training purposes. The setup was as follows:

1. Virtualbox - for virtualizing two machines.

2. Windows Server 2003 - AD/DNS and Exchange Client.

3. Windows Server 2008 - Exchange 2007

The networking for these machines actually was really difficult and involved much more work than should have. My plan was to have the machined network be on its own internal subnet, yet have access to the internet via a bridged interface. However, I was unable to easily get the Virtualbox host interface to easily give 192 addresses to the internal VM's while maintaining an external 10 dot IP address. In the end (against my better judgment) I gave the internal VM's a 10 dot ip address and attached another nick to the host machine and bridged that interface with the VM's. Needless to say the VM's were completely updated and locked down as soon as possible. On my Server 2003 VM I ran dcpromo and configured AD and DNS. The domain I named "test.local", an oversight considering my eventual plan was for Exchange to accept and send mail to external addresses. Next I installed Windows Server 2008. (Note: With Virtualbox and Exchange 2007 do not choose dynamically expanding storage. Exchange will complain about not having enough mailbox space.) Once Server 2008 was installed and joined to the domain, it was time to install the pre-requisites for Exchange. The nice part about the Exchange install (and new Microsoft product installations in general) is that Microsoft has become "Information heavy". Error messages have (in general) become much more detailed and often contain directions and links to fixing the problem. However the problem often arises that the messages are much more verbose, and yet still as worthless. If you did not know the prereq's for an exchange install when you insert the install disc it has a list for you to follow, as shown below.

On a lot of servers, .Net framework and Microsoft Management Console will already be installed. Next, Powershell will need to be installed. Powershell is a very handy server management tool. Windows is apparently going the way of linux for the ability to manage server without wasting the server's resources by forcing it to display a GUI.

After installing Powershell you should be all set for starting the actual exchange install. However, first, Exchange 2007 will test to make sure that your domain passes all of the requirements for installation. For more information follow Microsoft's requirement list, found here. When the Exchange installer ran on my server, it discovered I had unmet requirements. The requirements I needed were IIS. I installed the following:

The default IIS 7 package
IIS 6 Managment Tools
Static and Dynamic Compression
Basic and Digest Authentication

After installing the following components, the Exchange install started without any difficulties. The Exchange install took a rather large amount of time (over 40 minutes). Everything appeared to install without incident. After creating a snapshot of the hard drive, I rebooted the server. Next, I ran the Exchange Management console. Upon loading, Exchange loads the Finalize Deployment Wizard. The next recommended thing to do is to run the best practices wizard, to make sure everything is working correctly. This option is found in the toolbox. The wizard will initially look for updates before running, and once it is updated it will direct you to the welcome screen. From the welcome screen it will have you select an AD server to connect to. Considering I only had one, it was a rather easy choice. It gives an estimated time of one minute, however in my case a few seconds was all that was needed. Next you come to the main page, which has several options. First you can select the scope of the scan... for me I obviously chose the only Exchange server I had running.

Next, I could chose from several different types of scans. I chose the Health Check, which I believe is something you should run the instant you add an Exchange server. If this was a production environment, I would perform the Performance Baseline Check as well to have something to compare future performance against.

The Health Check took about 3 minutes to complete, and then gave me an option to view the report, which I did. Immediately, the report showed any critical errors. I had one critical error, namely "Offline address book definition is missing." To fix the error, I performed the following. I went to Server Configuration -> Mailbox -> Mailbox Database -> Properties -> Client Settings. From there it will show that the "Offline Address Book" is missing. Just click browse and select an offline address book.
I am unsure why this error occurred, and why this was not able to install correctly without forcing me to correct it manually.
Now I had to add some mailboxes. As far as I can tell in Exchange 2007, adding users in active directory does not add them to Exchange 2007, so I added them under Recipient Configuration -> Mailbox -> New Mailbox. Adding them here would add them in Active Directory, and would give them an Exchange mailbox. Quick and easy... I am not sure why adding them in Active Directory does not add them automatically to Exchange. I believe this should be a feature.

Now, I was ready to begin testing. The first thing I did was forward port 443 to my exchange machine, to allow external access to Outlook Web Access (OWA).
I tested this from a remote machine, and this worked fine, I was able to successfully log in and send and receive emails. (Note: To run in "full blown" mode, OWA requires Internet Explorer. Firefox (and I assume other browsers) can run OWA in "Lite" mode. I recommend using IE, as the web interface is quite beautiful when using IE, as shown below.

One thing I noticed (and this I did not know about) was that if you have a Sharepoint server you can access the documents using the "Documents" tab in OWA. Very handy feature, if my Sharepoint Server was up and running I would have tested that feature, as I'm curious as to how exactly that works. Apparently you are also able to access Windows File Shares from that interface.
Next, I was able to install Outlook 2003 on my DC. I started up Outlook 2003, specified that I was connecting to an Exchange server and everything set up correctly, and worked excellently right out of the box, as shown below.

At this point in time I was quite satisfied that at least Exchange was working with minimal amount of work on my part. Then, after getting Outlook 2003 working, I decided to move to Outlook 2007.

I installed Outlook 2007 on the DC as well, and when I started the program, it found my user name in the Exchange Mailboxes, and automatically filled in my user name and password. I clicked next, and then it prompted me enter a password to connect to the Exchange Server. However, no matter what combination of user names, passwords, and domains, I was unable to log on. So I finally clicked "cancel", and then Outlook displayed the error "The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable.

Outlook must be online and connected to complete this action." After clicking "okay" another dialog box comes up. That dialog box has you resolve the name for the server.

After making sure everything was correct, I clicked "Check Name", however Outlook was unable to resolve the name. Nslookup queries proved successful, and considering that Outlook 2003 worked fine, this was an interesting error.

Next, I attempted to manually connect to the exchange server. However, this also proved impossible.

My next post will cover everything that was attempted to resolve the problem, and more about Exchange Server 2007.

Switching from Hamachi to NeoRouter

2009-10-07T22:20:00.000-04:00

Due to the problems I kept on having with my Windows 7 laptop Hamachi connecting to my Debian Server Hamachi, I have switched VPN solutions. So far I have been pleasantly surprised... it has all of the same features of Hamachi (as far as I can tell) and a few more nice features of it's own. For gaming, hamachi, unfortunately, was slightly weak. Trying to play a CS:S game would fail, as the addresses would not all be class C address. However, with NeoRouter, the IP's are all class C addresses (configurable), so this should not be a problem.

However, NeoRouter has a few more configuration steps that need to be taken for it to be set up, compared to Hamachi. For one thing, you must install a server version of NeoRouter, in addition to all of the client versions. Fortunately, NeoRouter has a Linux version in the form of a .deb package for easy installation on Debian. Running the server install on Debian does not give you any configuration options... once it's installed it's installed and running. Interestingly enough, you are unable to edit the server configuration at at all from a linux machine.. you must have a windows machine... in the same LAN (according to their documentation... you should be able to do it externally.. just have to prep your firewall first). However, once you open the server configuration (shown below), you can edit the options. The small screen on the right is the client view. To access the server options, you need to go to File -> Options and then log on to server. This is done by entering the username and password that you use to log onto your linux box. The logon-to value is the IP address of the linux box. That will bring up the screen shown below. The logon-to value is the name of the "Network" that you created (The first time you logon this will be the IP address of the linux box). The IP address box will show the IP address of the server, and below the port number (32976 is default).

Next, you are able to add user accounts (as shown below). These are user accounts that your friends (or you) can use to log on. The value that these accounts add is that you can assign "User" vs "Administrator" accounts, and give your friends user account credentials to sign onto your network.

The computers tab (shown below) helps regulate access permissions that users have to certain computers. You can add users and then turn the firewall on for that user, and add or delete access to certain parts/ports on your computers... very nice, and it has a granularity that Hamachi does not.

The connections tab allows you to set P2P connection settings. This is a very useful feature, as you can tell the computers in the same network to create direct UDP connections. This should allow for faster connection speeds, as you are able to go directly from peer to peer without interacting with the server. As well, (this is a guess) you may be able to continue utilizing NeoRouter even if the server goes down (as long as the UDP connection stays up, once the UDP connection is lost, you will need the server).

Lastly is the settings dialog (shown below). The "Current domain" shows what domain you are currently logged onto. This is the setting that you defined when you logged on by what you entered into the "log into" box. When you first configure the server, you enter the IP address of the server, and you configure and join the network that way.

However, once you leave the LAN, you would have to enter your external IP address. This obviously becomes very difficult if you have a dynamic IP address.. you would first have to find your IP address before you entered it into the "log-on" box. As well, every time that IP address changed you would have to re-enter it. The domain option changes all this. When you enter a domain name your NeoRouter client sends an https request to the NeoRouter servers (not your server) and checks to see what IP is registered to that domain... so essentially NeoRouter acts as a DDNS server for your VPN. This is one step removed from Hamachi, which also sets up the connections... with NeoRouter your server still handles connections, but your clients contact NeoRouter to find the server. However, I actually have a DDNS account, so I can enter my domain name and I will always be able to find my dynamic IP.

Now I'm going to explain exactly how this works, to the best of my ability.. hopefully this is accurate. The server will receive all requests to join your "domain", (sometimes using NeoRouter's DDNS service) and will then (by default) connect each client directly using UDP, after assigning them all IP addresses. The clients are then able to connect directly as a VPN. If a client loses connection it will again contact the server.

The only other thing left to test is NeoRouter's ability as a service. With Hamachi, you did not have to be logged on to Windows to use Hamachi, we will see if NeoRouter is the same way.

Hope that helps some of you if you wanted a better choice than Hamachi.

Windows XP to Debian Server Switch

2009-10-01T23:54:00.021-04:00

Recently, I decided to switch from Windows XP to Debian, and further more decided to go cutting (read: bleeding) edge and install Debian Squeeze (Debian 6), which is still in the "unstable" phase. At the bottom of this post, I have a Youtube link to a video detailing the installation.

The list of programs that I had on my windows "server" was quite normal, nothing extremely special:
1. Subsonic - for streaming music\video (with my internet connection the video really wasn't practical.

2. uTorrent - I'm kind of a packrat, and I have almost all of the newest versions of software in RSS feeds (Check out SARDU antivirus, UBCD, etc.. I have RSS feeds for all that software so I can download the newest version automatically). As well, I for some reason need to have the newest releases for my favorite linux distro's.. you guessed it, RSS feeds.

3. Hamachi - For VPN, because I need a better router before I will implement OpenVPN, don't have enough NVRAM in my router for it to work. Feel free to donate to help me buy a better router :D.

4. Apache - hosts my web server, which hosts my freemind maps, and other test environments.

5. Freemind - For creating the mindmaps... I had this application shared through another computer, however since I was redoing that computer I was hoping to find a way to remotely share applications.

6. Remote Desktop - As I am not linux-fluent, I would need the gui for somethings, as I would not be able to accomplish everything from the command line.

The following programs were eventually used on my Debian server:

1. Subsonic - since this is Java based it works on pretty much anything. The first install went without any errors, but did not appear to work. Purging the installation and reinstalling worked... not sure what went wrong. As well, I had to change the ownership of some of the files, to root ownership.. my default logon was throwing up permission errors. However, once that was corrected, subsonic was up and running very well. The next thing I had to do was get it to start on boot. By adding the following line to /etc/rc.local "/var/subsonic/standalone/subsonic.sh" Subsonic will boot on startup... rather easy compared to some programs rather long startup scripts.

2. Deluge - Bittorrent was eventually taken over by Deluge. This was a rather difficult one... I originally went for Transmission.. I then realized I wanted something with a Webui. Transmission was said to work with something called Clutch. However, I was unable to get that working. From there I turned to Deluge.. however, the debian repositories appear to be very out of date, they only had Deluge .5. I downloaded Deluge version 1.1.9, and after MANY struggles with dependencies for compiling and installing I finally got it up and running. The only complaint I have is that RSS feeds cannot be managed from the Webui.

3. Hamachi - Hamachi was rather easily installed, however there is one error that occurs when starting.. for some reason the tuncfg command is not run... I believe this is a permissions issue, and is something that needs to be changed with my startup script. As well, there seems to be problems connecting my windows 7 laptop to my server using hamachi; the hamachi connectivity is sporadic. I am currently looking into another solution.

4. Apache2 - Apache has been replace by Apache2. The installation was once again, very easy on debian, sudo apt-get install Apache2. There has been a change with apache2. You now edit the apache2.conf file instead of the httpd.conf file. It is my understanding that you can add lines to the (empty) httpd.conf file and they will be applied. All I did was copy my backed up web files to /var/www and replace the index.html, and I was once again up and running.

5. Freemind - Freemind was easily installed on debian, and worked exactly as it did on windows.

6. NxServer - I originally tried VNC viewer, but VNC was unable to run the server headless.. or at least I was unable to get it working. So I installed nxserver, and installed nxclient for viewing. NOTE: Once I installed xfce4 for the desktop manager, then I was able to use X11 forwarding to forward the desktop to the windows machine.. more on this in another post.

Extras:
1. Webmin - Webmin is an amazing web-based administration suite for linux. A simple install and you can connect via port 10000. Webmin has many advanced options for managing your server, from apache2 configurations, to Samba configurations, all on a nice web-based interface, as shown below.

Essentially, I was able to replace my windows server with alternative software.. now it was much more difficult to get up and running, since I was quite inexperienced with Linux, but now that it is up and running, it runs much quicker than my windows box was running.. although most of that is due to the fact that I am running the server "headless". Below is a video detailing some of the installation.

At this point, the server is up and running... I have not run into any unexpected problems (once I got everything running strongly, when first configuring I ran into a lot) but there are a few kinks to work out still, especially with X11 forwarding.

Windows 7 x64

2009-08-19T19:34:00.004-04:00

So I was at my friends house and decided to blow away my Ubuntu partition and install Windows 7. Shocking, I know.. what prompted my decision to give Ubuntu the boot? Well, the unfortunate issue was that I was not able to sleep or hibernate my laptop. Or, more accurately, I was able to sleep or hibernate... I was just unable to restore my computer from sleep or hibernation, I was forced to reboot my computer every single time. As much as I love Ubuntu, this was not a situation I could handle. I was unable to resolve the issue, so decided to go Windows 7.

As for x64... I chose that because that is what was available. I may switch to 32 bit in the future, as that works out better for me. For example, neither of my x64 machines are able to access TS Webaccess for remote apps from Server 2008... because you need to have service pack 3 installed. Service Pack 3 is.. you guessed it... only available for 32 bit versions of Windows. Which is a slight disappointment, but you can always publish the remote apps to a share and access them that way, which works out rather well.

My overall impression of Windows 7 is a good one. Just enough eye candy to make it look nice, yet still responds quite snappily. One of the new features I noticed that I hadn't heard about (not that I've really done a lot of research into Windows 7 features) is homegroup. Essentially, it's "My Shared documents" except that it makes it very easy to set up... cool.. but not a feature I would ever use considering I'm a network security major. Now here's where my idea comes in.. (Microsoft, I hope you are listening) create a nice button called "Customize my Windows Installation" which will allow you strip out everything you don't need in your Windows installation. If you allowed someone to knock some money off the price if they removed that feature... that would be awesome.

Other than that, I wasn't blown away by Windows 7, but I also wasn't pissed or bored about it either. I do miss my Ubuntu... but until I can safely put my laptop to sleep.. it will remain off my laptop.

Sharepoint Server 2007 on Server 2008

2009-06-17T16:30:00.009-04:00

I love MSDN. I recently attained a copy of Server 2008 and Sharepoint Server 2007 from MSDN, and have installed them both on one of my computers. Initially, there were several problems getting the default ISO to install, due to compatability issues. Server 2008 (which was apparently designed to give helpful but useless information for EVERYTHING you do) automatically pops up and informs you that it is not able to install Sharepoint because of compatability issues. A quick google search turned up this page, which gives a very useful step by step on how to solve the problem. The installation and configuration of Sharepoint takes a rather large chunk of time. Once you are done "installing" Sharepoint, you have to (at some point) run the configuration wizard, shown below.

Now, to run sharepoint, you need to have IIS enabled. I already did have IIS installed and enabled, so that I could run Remote Apps on my terminal server. (That is another story.) However, this brings me to my next point, which is that Sharepoint does not integrate very smoothly with any existing web sites or web applications. Below is a picture of IIS after sharepoint has been installed. You will notice that the web site that I had previously set up (For my Remote App website) was immediately disabled to open the port for SharePoint. I switched to a different port for my TS website, and everything worked again. Now SharePoint is up and running with the default configuration.

As usual, the default configuration is not enough to make me happy. The SharePoint Server runs great on the internal network, by entering http://computername/ but thats kind of pointless to me. If I was a large company, this might be enough to satisfy me, but to me its quite worthless. I want to be able to access my files from any web browser, anywhere. Technically, since I run Hamachi on all of my computers (and portably from my USB stick) I could do a rather ingenious workaround. I could bind the websites to my Hamachi 5.x.x.x IP (and hope nothing broke.. shouldn't be a problem) and access the files "from the Internet" that way. However, that wouldn't be the elegant, flawless solution I am looking for. Fortunately, SharePoint allows you to configure mappings for external access. Go to your Central Admin Page. (Check your start menu for a shortcut, or check IIS for the port and manually enter it into the browser.) From the main page (shown below), there is a list of common startup tasks that need to be done.

Go to Application Management -> Create or Extend Web Application -> Extend an existing web application. Once you enter that page, you will need to select an existing web application. Select the one that is already mapped to port 80. Next, type out a description for your site. Type your external URL into the host header, and copy-paste that into the URL section at the bottom of the page. Finally, change the zone to Internet. Done!

To check your settings, go to Operations -> Alternate Access Mappings. You should see your URL listed.

One last thing that should be done is to configure Excel Services. Excel Services determines how xlsx files are handled when they are opened in a web browser. Excel Services can be managed from Shared Services. Open Excel Services Trusted File Locations. Most of the options are self-explanatory.

That should have all of the basic options configured for your Sharepoint Server! Next time a slightly more in-depth tutorial will be covered.

Freemind, Apache, IIS 7.0

2009-06-13T22:49:00.004-04:00

Recently, I moved my website away from Apache running on Windows XP Professional, to a slightly higher powered Windows Server 2008, using IIS 7.0. Unfortunately, the switch to IIS 7.0 was not an easy one in the least. Apache was a little difficult to pick up originally, but at least almost ALL of the configurations were stored in a central text file that could be easily edited, and was highly configurable. As well, you installed Apache, (and PHP 5) added extensions in the httpd file, repointed the home directory, and a few other minor configurations (.htaccess for example) and it just worked. With IIS 7.0, that is another story. Attached is a picture of the error I get whenever I try and load a mindmap.

If anyone knows what the problem is, feel free to comment. This next picture is how the Mindmap is supposed to look.
In IIS 7.0, I added a MIME type for .mm files "application/freemind" (I think), which had no effect as well. When I edit the .html file to point to the mindmap as a local path, and open the mindmap on the local machine, everything works fine.

In the end, I was forced to install Apache and IIS 7.0 on the same machine, and use Apache for that site, and IIS 7.0 for my sharepoint site.

I am hoping that in the near future mindmaps will be able to be edited entirely online. This will allow for easy viewing and editing from any web browser, using the power of Java. I am currently looking into publishing Freemind on my Remote Apps Terminal server, which will allow me to connect via a web browser, run the remote app, edit the map, and save it again. Certainly not the ideal solution, but it is a solution that works.

MCSA - 70-290

2009-06-11T10:24:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I headed back to my old school, Davenport, and took the 70-290 exam, Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Environment. I took it now for two main reasons. 1) The second chance option is available. If I fail it the first time, I get a second chance. 2) The exam was on sale, which brought the price down to 90 dollars. As it turns out, I didn't need to worry at all. Unfortunately, the 70-290 exam was very easy. Many of the questions were very basic, and did not go in depth at all. As well, there were only 44 questions on the exam. The simulations were better, they at least covered multiple areas, and simulated real life problems, yet even so, they were not very difficult either. The required score to pass was a 700. I got 880, and finished quite quickly. I will start studying for my 70-291 exam (which promises to be a bit more difficult) starting next week.
My next exam will most likely be the Vista client exam. I believe that combined with the Security+ exam, I will have MCSA 2003:Security status.
Next, I will either continue on to get my MCSE for 2003, my Network+ and A+ certifications, or attack my CCNA certification.

WolframAlpha Overview and Tutorial

2009-05-20T21:37:00.008-04:00

The new "search engine" WolframAlpha.com is live, and it is awesome. However, there are several conditions I must make to that statement. First, I say "search engine" loosely, as essentially it is a data aggregation, evaluation, computation, and display engine. Wolframalpha is not a search engine to use if you need to find, for example, this blog. Entering aproductivelife into wolframalpha will get you a big fat question mark. However, entering two names (as shown in the picture below) will get you more information than you could ever need. I am guessing the information regarding names is pulled from the US census, considering the data is from 2007. However, it has a plethora of information: name rank for 2007, historical name rank, and graphs both of the names on the same graph for easily comparable information.

Entering "weather zipcode" will bring up a large amount of information about the weather at your current zipcode, including large amounts of historical data.
As well, try entering mathematical formulas into the search box, and watch as wolframalpha does its best to solve it.
Is wolframalpha a google killer as some pundits believe? Not true in the least bit. To find information you use google. To have specific, easy to find information displayed, computed, and otherwise manipulated, use wolframalpha.
Consensus: Wolframalpha is beautiful. Use it when possible.

Cisco site to site VPN

2009-04-16T20:18:00.004-04:00

Well i recently created a Cisco Site to Site VPN using GNS 3. GNS3 is program that is like Cisco's packet tracer, which is router emulator. GNS3 takes it further than packet tracer does by ENTIRELY emulating the router IOS. You must, however, have access to your own IOS images. As well, GNS3 is quite difficult to set up and get working correctly, so follow the tutorials closely. However, once GNS3 is up and running correctly, it is extremely useful for learning everything you could possibly need to know about Cisco. As well, you can hook up virtual machines and include them in your GNS3 topology. However, I recorded the video of me setting up the site to site VPN, and uploaded it to YouTube. You can see part one below, and part two here.

My plans are to see if I can get a complete enterprise level network up and running in GNS3, by spanning it across several computers. I have a few difficulties to overcome.. namely figuring out the entire mess of how to use GNS to connect both logical and physical connections across multiple computers and make all of it work. I have a feeling it will be invaluable experience.

To get started on this goal, I have 3 computers sitting in my basement right now. The first one has 384 MB of RAM, the other 2 have 256, and all three have 800mhz processors. I brought 2 of them up with 2003 and ran dcpromo on one, and installed DNS on it. The other I only managed to get 2003 installed so far. On the last computer I installed puppy linux. I also got a 5 port gig switch on sale 5 dollars after rebate, and thats holding them all together.

On another note, today I just became security plus (2008) certified. I got 840 out of 900. The passing score is 750. My next exam will either be the Network Plus exam, or the 70-290 exam.

Freemind

2009-02-18T21:23:00.000-05:00

I decided to avoid homework until spring break, which is occurring next week, so I'm starting spring break tonight! It's exciting, but won't last that long, as I will be heading over to Seminary (internship) to create a network map in Visio and start working on securing the network, which is my capstone project.

However, since I have the time, I started creating my life mindmap, using Freemind. Freemind can quickly and effectively create excellent beginner mindmaps, and has an easy learning curve for beginning. However, I still need to look into some of the advanced features, such as graphic integration and others.
However, once I noticed that the freemind browser which allows you to view your *.mm files (freemind files) in a web browser, I was caught up in that project. I quickly installed apache web server (and got a dynamic DNS account) on my server and set it up so that I could view my freemind files using either the flash method or the java applet method.
I come to find out (after fooling around with changing a template html file, and adding the java applet) that the newest beta version of Freemind allows you to directly export your mindmaps as java applets (and I think flash files as well). I will be using the USB version of that from now on, to make it easier.

Come to find out, I REALLY want to be able to edit these mindmaps from a browser interface, just to simplify things. However, I haven't discovered a way to do that yet. It won't be too much of a hassle to edit the file manually (the web server's root dir is on a shared directory on a VPN) but I want to feel cool and edit it from anywhere. Feel free to comment if you know how to edit the mindmaps from a browser interface.

That has been keeping me busy last night and tonight!

Virus

2009-01-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

Well, my domain controller caught a very nasty virus, a fake program called "Anti-spyware 2008." This virus was the worst virus I have ever encountered. It modified the host file so that I was unable to surf to ANY online virus scanners, it blocked some of the more popular removal programs from running, and upon booting up locked my computer from running. I managed to do a ctrl-alt-del operation and run programs from there with some efficiency. Manually trying to remove the virus by booting into safe mode and trying to access the registry brought up an error.. something to the effect of the registry being locked. I was unable to access the registry. As well, since I am running server 2003, many antivirus scanners will not run on it, which also severly limited my options. I have decided to completely redo the computer. Unfortunately, the cd drive does not work, and the drive is a Dell slimstyle drive. To install Server 2003 last time, I had to open the case, replace the IDE cable, install a CD drive and hard drive on the cable, fiddle with the jumper settings, and run it with the case open. I think the BIOS has an option that allows me to boot from USB, which I will attempt when I have some time, hopefully on the 16th. I am debating on whether or not to reinstall Server 2003 or Windows XP (I wish I could run Server 2008.. if anyone wants to donate a computer to me, a poor college student, feel free!), and I think I have settled on XP. I was not really using the domain function anyways, it was more for testing and fun.

Back in school

2009-01-07T20:59:00.000-05:00

Well as of Monday the 5th I am back in school, and it is quickly eliminating all of my free time, which is not good, considering my domain controller went down to a virus, and I am having a very hard time restoring it. I would normally boot from a CD I have that would allow me to explore files and edit the registry. However, my domain controller does not have a working CD drive, and since it is a Dell slim design, it uses the slimline drives, of which I have none. To install Server 2003 on it I had to crack open the case, replace the IDE cable with one that had two connections (one was needed for the hard drive) and install it from the CD with the case open. Not the easiest solution. Since the virus has blocked all access to the registry, (im going to try from the command prompt but doubt it will work, as safe mode did not either) I am in a little bit of a bind. So that will be keeping me busy in my spare time.

Organization of the day

2009-01-04T12:58:00.000-05:00

Well, since my laptop has a lightscribe drive, and since I used my $10 off $20 coupon for Officemax (actually used two of them, and got a large CD organizer case, a small CD organizer case, and lightscribe all for $40 instead of $60), I am organizing my entire CD/DVD game collection. I have many burned CD/DVD's that contain many different things, and so I am consolidating some of them (burning the multiple CD's to one DVD), and burning lightscribe labels on some, and organizing almost all of them in my large CD organizer. I will keep the cases, and most likely store them elsewhere. This will allow me to easily organize my CD's and DVD's in a way for me to easily search for one, which used to be a rather difficult undertaking.
Now, for creating the labels, since most of the labels are just for "at a glance" recognition or just for fun, I am using the default Lightscribe Template Maker, from lightscribe.com. Feel free to comment a plug for a favorite lightscribe label maker program (if its free I might check it out). I find the Template maker to be simple, with limited options, but quite easy to use. I am about 30 minutes away from actually seeing the end result of my first Lightscibe label, so hopefully it looks good.
My small CD organizer is for all of my troubleshooting/important CD's and DVD's which I will most likely stash in my backpack. This allows me to have an arsenal of tools available for me to quickly fix a broken computer.
On a side note, I have been experimenting with "Ubiquity" a plugin for firefox, and I belive it has great potential, but needs a lot more development. Here is a youtube link for the demo video, (which I found using Ubiquity) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knNS-5em7xU
Another thing going on right now is Greasefire, which I am using with Greasemonkey. It essentially shows you a picture under the greasemonkey logo which signifies that there are greasemonkey scripts that apply to the particular page that you are on.
Essentially that is what I am currently up to.

Happy new year!

2009-01-01T13:25:00.000-05:00

Well, happy new year everyone. Grand Rapids (for the first time) had a rather massive celebration that took place outside. The plain white t's sang, etc. I did not go, considering it was about 5 degrees outside, but apparently that didn't stop anyone, because according to the youtube videos, the crowd was MASSIVE.
Anyway, I thought I would throw out a quick post regarding the websites I frequent the most, regarding productivity, in order of importance:
1. Lifehacker.com - Great site, covers a lot of ways to optimize and improve your life in every area.
2. Makeuseof.com - A lot like lifehacker, has a great list of programs and websites that you can use.
3. 43folders.com - How to be productive, without much of an leaning towards computing.