The Legendary Fred. Holy man or Hallucinating Ham?

So we were back at St. Patrick's Academy this weekend working on one of the Red Hat servers. The problem as always is the local ISP provider can't make up their mind if they want to offer fixed IP or DHCP to their business customers.

So after going all school year with a fixed IP that I helped them set up last fall, they get bounced to a DHCP and all the dumb terminals go down. So big whoopidy-doo, we can fix it. Should only take 30 minutes or so.

So I go in and navigate the terminal command line in Red Hat Nash for the firewall setup and when I find it I switch it to DHCP and set the DNS servers to what was in the letter sent to the school. Nothing... I get a big fat nothing!!!
So back to the drawing board. I hooked up my laptop to the router and check my IPCONFIG (since I was already booted up in Windows) and grabbed the IP address I got and plugged those numbers into the schools firewall. I know, what a noob right. You can't actually hook up to a router that needs a fixed IP and have it give you your IP, that is against the very nature of networking and of course it failed also. So after telling a few jokes and some internal cursing I go back and set up the DHCP like I started with.

So nothings been happening for a few minutes and Old Man Fred decides to put his hands on a terminal and start preaching Hell Fire and Brimstone and asking it if it had the faith to be healed and to put a $20 in the plate. Now I know that Fred is crazy and all, but what happened next almost made me blow my cork.

The server behind me made a little beeping noise and all the terminals popped on just like that.

AWWWWW now come on, that had nothing to do with Fred!!!!

So I was a little miffed and the legend of Fred continues.

I guess when all attempts at sanity fail, you can still try the insane attempts.

Update for Broadcom Wireless

Image by Neokrisys via Flickr

This is a follow up article for my original post Bad Karma

After a recent mishap on my PC I decided to update to the 64 bit version of Ubuntu even though I had planned on waiting for 10.04 Lucid Lynx LTS (long term service).

Now after running on the 64 bit version for a few weeks my wireless card had started acting funny. That's funny as in strange, not funny as in ha ha. Every time I powered on my computer and the wireless card was on I would not get any available Access Points, but when I turned the power off to the card I would get a list of A.P.'s but no way to connect to them. My temporary solution was to boot up the PC with the card turned off and then power it on after logging into Ubuntu. What a pain!!!

Next solution. In the windows world if something isn't working you just uninstall it and re-install it so that's what I tried. OH NO!!! When I tried to re-install the drivers I ran into problems that I didn't have the first time.

Problem 1. Ubuntu couldn't fetch the CD-ROM
Solution 1. insert the CD-ROM (DVD), go to the terminal and use sudo apt-cdrom add

Problem 2. everything that I had loaded from my previous article was already loaded and when I tried to enable the driver it failed
Solution 2. after making the Disc installable you want to use synaptic to search for and install bcmwl-kernel-source and then reboot.

Now i'm back in business and looking forward to many more happy days on Ubuntu.

Free classes

So it's about that time again... you know... when your current job has about run it's course. You've gotten about all the job experience you're ever going to get and another promotion is so far off that it doesn't seem worth the wait.

What are you going to do? How about learning a new skill?

Over the years I've been asked to do many things by my customers and I've usually had no problems except in the area of webpage development. Copying and modifying other peoples code just isn't a great replacement for actually knowing it myself.

Now I've come across a new site that has a systematic approach to teaching HTML, Browser Scripting, XML, Server Scripting, Web Services, Multimedia, and Web Building.
The best feature is that it's free to learn. That's right FREE as in it doesn't cost you anything to read their pages, follow their examples and take their quizzes.
Of course if you want to get a W3 certificate it will cost you $75 per certificate for each of the following...

• HTML Developer
• JavaScript Developer
• XML Developer
• ASP Developer
• PHP Developer

If you want to learn more just head over to W3 Schools Website and check them out.

Installing the AWUS036NH

So my new project is learning the Backtrack 4 suite. As many experienced security professionals know, the cheap broadcom wireless adapters that come with your Dell, HP, Asus, ect. laptops aren't very useful.
Of course they're good enough to get on your home router or get PWN'd at the coffee shop, but when it comes to packet insertion or sitting by in monitor mode you need a better card and hopefully one designed around the Atheros chipset.
Since I don't have a PCMIA slot, I ordered the AWUS036NH usb adapter from Alpha Networks.

I was hoping that it would be plug and play, but unfortunately that is only in my dreams. After a day and a half I finally found a combination in different forums that got this installed and working on my two linux systems.

In Ubuntu 9.10

1. Copy driver for network card to Desktop
2. Open a terminal
3. sudo –i
4. cd /home/ubuntu/Desktop
5. tar -xf 036NH_2009_1110_Linux.tar.bz2
6. cd 2009_1110_RT3070_Linux_STA_v2.1.2.0
7. gedit os/linux/config.mk
8. Change "HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=n" and "HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n" to y
9. make && make install
10. gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and add:
    a. blacklist rt2x00usb
    b. blacklist rt2x00lib
    c. blackist rt2800usb
11. reboot

In Backtrack 4

1. I used the above directions to load the driver
2. I had to do iwconfig in the terminal to find the name of my card which was ra0.
3. Next I used ifconfig ra0 up to make it active.
4. Finally I started wicd (like network manager in kde) and put the name ra0 in the preferences for the wireless interface name.

The only exceptions to these instructions is

in ubuntu step 4, the ubuntu is the name of the user.
ubuntu step 5 may have a different name depending on your driver package

using the ubuntu steps in backtrack you will not use gedit. instead just navigate to the file and double click. (you are root user so no need for sudo)

Hopefully this helps someone and happy hacking.

Embedding Video in MediaWiki

So I'm still working on my MediaWiki project and decided to make a help site just like I did previously. One of the things I wanted to do was be able to embed video inside a page. Unfortunately I can't just throw a copied HTML code from the sites I was using.

I decided to use the MediaWiki extensions project add on.

• To do this you will need the EmbedVideo.php that you can find on the project page.
• Next you will need to add the code to your wiki page in the format of {{#ev:service|id}} or to change the viewable size {{#ev:service|id|width}}

the "service" is the video service website (ie. youtube), the "id" is the number or code that is associated with your video which you can find in the embed code and finally the width is the width in pixels.

The services that come with the Embed Video extension are Dailymotion, FunnyOrDie, Google Video, sevenload, Revver and YouTube. Google Videos is not taking uploads anymore, but is still hosting previously uploaded video's.

Unfortunately my video was too large for any of these services to upload and I was already using Vimeo which is not automatically supported by the Embed Video extension.

• To fix this, I had to edit the EmbedVideo.php file to include the following code in the supported services section at the bottom. Start by placeing a comma after the last ) after youtube

• Then insert this code...

'vimeo' => array(
'url'=>'http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=$1&;server=www.vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color="'
)

Just make it match the format of the other services and you should be good to go.

If you have any problems with the embed video extensions or have suggestions for other projects in mediawiki, feel free to e-mail me and perhaps we'll use your suggestion for a further follow up article or a new article.

Wiki while you work

Many moons ago I was involved with a project of creating an internal wiki to host an internal document and solutions guide for the I.S. department I worked for. I wanted to use MediaWiki or MoinMoin but was challenged to create a LAMP, WAMP OR WIMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP / Windows, Apache, MySql, PHP / Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP) and was unsure how all these were setup. As a result we used instiwiki and got by, but I was never satisfied with our result.

Fast forward more than a year and a half and... I still am unsure how to compile a stack from scratch mostly from lack of time since I'm not working with anything that requires these servers.

For people like me the people at Turnkey Linux have created a host of virtual appliances including the object of my search which was turnkey mediawiki. At turnkey they provide an image that includes a minimal version of Ubuntu's LTS (long term service) operating service and every application required to have your application server operate "out of the box". For me that included the whole LAMP stack, mediawiki and the webmin tool for remote administration.

What I did was copy the ISO file which I could have burnt on a CD, but I decided to install the ISO directly to virtual box. I don't have a dedicated box to create a server with at this time, and with such minimal resource needs I can't see wasting a box for this one application. See my article on reducing fear during the switch for a very short write-up on virtual box.

So far, out of the box, I have been able to look at the wiki home page, and log in as the web admin. I need to get java installed on my browsers so I can continue to look at all the web admin tools, but so far I've invested 30 minutes of time and of course zero dollars. If turnkey mediawiki works for me the way I'm hoping it will, you can expect to see other write-ups on other turnkey virtual appliances.

If any of my readers have used other turnkey Linux products or any other virtual appliances, feel free to drop me a line at computerdoctor.help@gmail.com and get your article included in a possible follow up article.

...and getting the video editor to work is priceless

So after a disappointing run with Kdenlive I next tried Cinelerra. I originally did not go with cinelerra because it wasn't in the package repositories for Ubuntu. I tried to install the package from source code, and to be honest I'm not at the level where I can successfully install from source and track down all the dependencies needed.

I followed a video by mstjohn33 on how to install cinelerra in Ubuntu 9.10 and it worked. Thank you to mstjohn33 for such a clear walk through.
Now before I gallop off into the sunset with praise to the hilt for cinelerra, I have to be honest. Cinelerra is not an entry level video editor for the weekend warrior. You will have to do your homework to make this software work. For example I spent three days searching forums and trying to make sense of the instruction manual to get a simple blur box to work for me.
I also spent almost a week trying to figure out how to render a video to play in Windows Media Player.
I am in no way an expert in cinelerra, but the price is right (hee hee) and I got the job done.

As a side note, to convert a video to WMV for Windows media player, there is no settings inside cinelerra that do this automatically for you. You will need to render it in the least lossy format possible and use the following command line to convert it...

ffmpeg -i "sourcefile.avi" -s 320x240 -b 1000k -vcodec wmv2 -ar 44100 -acodec wmav2 -ab 56k -ac 2 -y targetfile.wmv

You will need to change the sourcefile.avi to what your original video is and the targetfile.wmv to what you want your file to be named.
I also edited the 320x240 to be 800x600 because that was the size my source file was created as.

I wish I could elaborate on the other settings in the command line, but I found the code on another site and copied it and edited what I knew and let it fly and it worked.

If a picture's worth a thousand words, what's a video worth?

Getting back to my love for video creating, I started a task of making a video documentary on using the ebrary reader or Adobe digital editions in Linux (see article back to school and going linux). I almost tried doing a video capture from a virtual Linux machine inside Windows, but then I had the idea to try to create the whole video and edit it using open source software in Linux. I started by using xvidcap to capture screen clips and then instead of going back to AVS to mix the video in Windows, I installed Kdenlive.

Now I will be the first to admit that this program is fairly new, the documentation is about on par with open source projects which is to say almost non-existent, and the program itself crashed multiple times.

On the plus side though this program has a fairly large set of features which are comparable to many entry to mid level video editors. The forums at their website are a great resource like many other open source sites with a following of helpful and friendly users. Also, it goes without saying that the price of $0.00 is very attractive since I've already paid over $50.00 per year to use AVS to create my videos in the past.

I was able to complete my video, albeit without an audio track yet (because I'm not sure if I want an audio track with it yet) and I will be showcasing the video later this week at work.

Thank you to the developers at Kdenlive for your hard work and I hold high hopes for your project and await the day that you are a major competitor in the world of video editing.

Bully Tries To Steal And Gets Caught

When I was a kid I used to love playing at my cousins house. They had all the cool toys and a lot of them. The only problem with playing with someone elses toys is that you have to play by their rules.

But that's not to say that if you only want to play that you have to go play with someone elses toys. You could make your own toys or play with free toys. We used to make some of our favorite toys out of scrap lumber that was left over from some project at the house. My brother and I would make our Army guns out of wood and we played for hours with our "new" toys.

How do you think we'd feel if our cousins would decide that their store bought toys weren't good enough and they came over and took our homemade toys home with them and told everyone that those toys were in fact theirs.

Far fetched right? Well after some research it seems that Microsoft has done just that.
The newly toted WUDT tool that was offered as a way to deploy the windows 7 ISO to a bootable USB drive is actually a stolen open source tool that is protected by GNU and should have been left open source.

Microsoft has been in the proprietary software business for so long that I don't think they are ready or able to learn how to play nicely with the open source community yet.
You would think that After the highly publicized lawsuit between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft in 1997 over the abuse and forced incompatibility of the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine that lessons would have been learned.

Microsoft, listen carefully. The global community will no longer tolerate being bullied because you believe you are bigger and better. Your days of being the only choice have come to a close. It time to trim the fat and find out what your customers need and want instead of forcing your bloated and over advertised software on us. Consider this a friendly suggestion because I could care less what happens to you as a corporation, but I would be sad to see such great potential toppled by it's failure to adapt.

Ubuntu 9.10 Has Bad Karma For Broadcom Wireless

For all the Ubuntu users out there we heralded in the new version of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala this past weekend.

Now before I start on my rant I want to put up a disclaimer on my comments. I absolutely love Ubuntu and will continue to use it, write about it, train on it, and promote it.

Now on to the rant...

After spending months of joy with each version of Ubuntu since Hardy Heron I have never had a successful update either graphically or by the command line. How can a distribution that works almost flawlessly on a fresh install have such a poor updater?

Like I always do, I backed up my personal files and tried the updater and from 9.04 to 9.10 I found the following errors upon booting up Karmic

• touch-pad mouse did not work
• Firefox was extremely slow
• Sound card did not work

At this point I tried fixing each problem separately, but after getting the touch-pad working and then going through a handful of solutions for Firefox I decided it wasn't worth the effort and I'd rather do a fresh install. Of course now we get to the meat of the rant...

After doing a fresh install I find that my broadcom wireless card wasn't detected. This is just plain weird because it was detected on the live cd. My solution was to load the broadcom drivers off of the live cd with the following steps...

1. Open Synaptic Package Manager
2. Load the Live cd in it's drive (or thumb drive if you install with that media)
3. Go to Settings / Repositories / Ubuntu Software
4. Check mark the installable from cd and close
5. Refresh Synaptic
6. Search and install

• fakeroot
• patch
• dkms
• bcmwl
  

7. Reboot computer

Hurray, now it works for me. Hope this helps.

Now I urge the hard workers at Canonical, during their 100 paper cuts initiative, to please focus on improving their graphical updater so it... well... works.

Is Freedom Ever Free?

While talking with co-workers regarding the merits of using Linux and open source software I always get the same foaming at the mouth comments about not being compatible and blah blah blah that I always seem to dispel if they are willing to give a little effort.
But in retrospect I think I've over simplified the difference of being a computer user and a computer operator.

When I grew up I had two paths to take when I was introduced to computers. Like Neo I chose to take the red pill and find the truth of the computer world, how it works, investigating new technology and rejecting commonly thrown about metephors like viruses, bad code, glitches, etc. that was bandied about to explain users that had gotten themselves into a bind with bad input. I could have of course easily chosen the blue pill like so many user sheeple and stared numbly at my screen playing games and clicking buttons to work other peoples inventions, considering my PC's as glorified televisions.

In reality a user will be led by the hand by their GUI and play the games and use the program and cry to their local repairman for help when they get themselves stuck. Why? Because they can't be bothered by learning and troubleshooting their problems for themselves. When things are going good they will never expand their mind with learning.

As I grew up, the "secrets" of the computer world were discovered in thick user manuals, and gleaned from the sage wisdom of older technicians and programmers. Today however wisdom is still gleaned from our peers and wiser "geeks", but the way we listen to them has changed vastly. With the power of the internet connecting so many of us from vast far flung places and probably never coming face to face in our daily travels, we are able to read or watch each others solutions, opinions, and various bits of wonder. This is why I write, in hopes that someone may need a solution that I have created or gleaned from others work.

Every operating system from the original MS DOS versions and Unix command lines, to the new Windows, Macintosh, Linux GUI systems will all need a learning curve to operate proficiently. Don't be fooled into thinking that one is easier than the other by virtue of it's flashy appearance. They all have quirks and problems to overcome, they all break down from time to time with careless use, and they can all get similar jobs done with the correct applications. To be truely free you must free your mind by taking on the yoke of knowledge and learning so you can choose how you want to use your computer. Every OS is only a tools, so swallow your red pill today and find out... How's your tool working for you?

Complete Your Uninstalls In Windows

Have you ever had a program that for whatever reason doesn't seem to be working or was set up wrong? Like many users I usually just uninstall it and re-install it and see if it's any better.
Now days it seems that after the re-install the program comes up with the same settings and user information as before I uninstalled it.
WHY?
This is such a plague to me and my customers that I started searching for answers, and like so many things I found it at work.
While troubleshooting the peachtree accounting software I had a case where after installing on a Microsoft Vista machine the software would not load. We needed to install using the Administrator Rights, but even after uninstalling and re-installing the program didn't work.
One of my co-workers explained that even after uninstalling a program, many times items are left in the registry or in the file system and these settings remain for future installs to point to.
The cure? RevoUninstaller.
Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.
Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet!
With its advanced and fast algorithm, Revo Uninstaller analyzes an application's data before uninstall and scans after you uninstall an application. After the program's regular uninstaller runs, you can remove additional unnecessary files, folders and registry keys that are usually left over on your computer. Even if you have a broken installation, Revo Uninstaller scans for an application's data on your hard disk drives and in the Windows registry and shows all found files, folders and registry keys so you can delete them.
With its unique "Hunter mode", Revo Uninstaller offers you some simple, easy to use, but effective and powerful methods for uninstalling software. You can use it to manage your installed and/or running software programs.

The software comes in two packages. The first being the full version installed to your local PC, and the second being a portable version (easily used on a thumb drive or a shared network drive)

This is by far one of the most useful tools for Windows that I've ever found and has become a permanent edition to my tool collection.

Calling all geeks! If any of you play the download games that give you a one hour preview, let me know if after uninstalling with RevoUninstaller and re-installing the game, do you get another perview?