Technicus stultissimus

How to Make a Linux Powered Coffee Roaster

2012-01-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

Source
watch the video, here’s the direct link.

Many coffee drinkers find that coffee taste much better when done at home, but many of them will come across that an actual coffee roasting machine may be out of their budget.
One gentleman, Andrew Tridgell, wanted to put his own twist on the ‘Corretto’ roaster. For his coffee roaster, however, he wanted to use a computer to control the required power. His solution involved a Linux laptop and a lot of intelligence to make his own coffee roaster.
The Setup
Required: A Corretto roaster, a thermocouple, and a Linux powered laptop.

The Corretto roaster consists of a bread machine, and a heat gun. The bread maker is the best choice for a coffee roaster for two very important factors: a built in stirrer (metal is a better choice for it won’t melt), and the ability to hold a high amount of heat. A heat gun is used because it can reach the proper temperature for roasting the beans (which is 210 degrees). Tridgell added in a Linux (Can’t go wrong with penguin powered coffee!) and a thermocouple to help control the temperature. For your information, the original Corretto roaster used sound of the beans cracking (about 2-4 sets of cracks) to tell when the beans were properly roasted.
The Procedure

VBoxHeadless

2012-01-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

Source
Running Virtual Machines With VirtualBox 4.1 On A Headless Ubuntu 11.10 Server
This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with VirtualBox 4.1 on a headless Ubuntu 11.10 server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI.
[...]
Now we must add the user that will run VirtualBox (administrator in this example) to the vboxusers group:

sudo adduser administrator vboxusers

VirtualBox is now installed and ready to be used.
3 Using VirtualBox On The Command Line
3.1 Creating A VMTo create a VM on the command line, we can use the VBoxManage command. See

VBoxManage --help

for a list of available switches and (highly recommended!) take a look at http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html.
I will now create an Ubuntu 11.10 Server VM with 512MB memory and a 10GB hard drive from the Ubuntu 11.10 Server iso image (which I have stored in /home/ubuntu-11.10-server-amd64.iso):

VBoxManage createvm --name "Ubuntu 11.10 Server" --register
VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu 11.10 Server" --memory 512 --acpi on --boot1 dvd --nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 eth0
VBoxManage createhd --filename Ubuntu_11_10_Server.vdi --size 10000
VBoxManage storagectl "Ubuntu 11.10 Server" --name "IDE Controller" --add ide
VBoxManage storageattach "Ubuntu 11.10 Server" --storagectl "IDE Controller" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium Ubuntu_11_10_Server.vdi
VBoxManage storageattach "Ubuntu 11.10 Server" --storagectl "IDE Controller" --port 1 --device 0 --type dvddrive --medium /home/ubuntu-11.10-server-amd64.iso

3.2 Importing An Existing VM
Let's assume you have a VM called examplevm that you want to reuse on this host. On the old host, you should have a directory Machines/examplevm in the VirtualBox directory; Machines/examplevm should contain the examplevm.xml file. Copy the examplevm directory (including the examplevm.xml file) to your new Machines directory (if your user name is administrator, this is /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/Machines - the result should be /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/Machines/examplevm/examplevm.xml).In addition to that copy the examplevm.vdi file from the old VDI directory to the new one (e.g. /home/administrator/.VirtualBox/VDI/examplevm.vdi).
Afterwards, you must register the imported VM:

VBoxManage registervm Machines/examplevm/examplevm.xml

3.3 Starting A VM With VBoxHeadlessRegardless of if you create a new VM or import an old one, you can start it with the command:

VBoxHeadless --startvm "Ubuntu 11.10 Server"

(Replace Ubuntu 11.10 Server with the name of your VM.)
VBoxHeadless will start the VM and a VRDP (VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol) server which allows you to see the VM's output remotely on another machine.
To stop a VM, run

VBoxManage controlvm "Ubuntu 11.10 Server" poweroff

To pause a VM, run

VBoxManage controlvm "Ubuntu 11.10 Server" pause

To reset a VM, run

VBoxManage controlvm "Ubuntu 11.10 Server" reset

To learn more about VBoxHeadless, take a look at

VBoxHeadless --help

and at http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#vboxheadless

Ubuntu variants

2012-01-25T10:50:00.000-08:00

Source
The Ubuntu Linux-based operating system (OS) has spawned a number of official and non-official variants that generally differ from the main Ubuntu release in one or two small, but very specific, ways. Some of the more prominent Ubuntu variants include

Kubuntu: Ubuntu with KDE as the graphical desktop instead of Gnome
Macbuntu: Ubuntu with a Mac OS X-inspired desktop shell
Lubuntu: Ubuntu with the LXDE desktop instead of Gnome
Xubuntu: Ubuntu with the Xfce desktop instead of Gnome
Mythbuntu: a Xubuntu-based, Xfce4 desktop OS variant with MythTV installed
Edubuntu: an education-focused variant of Ubuntu
Ubuntu Studio: a multimedia-focused variant of Ubuntu

DSL tune up

2012-01-23T21:03:00.000-08:00

Quelle

Nun lassen sich Ihre Messergebnisse langfristig speichern und sogar mobile Verbindungen messen, etwa per Handy. Zudem sorgen neue, leistungsfähigere Testserver für noch zuverlässigere Messwerte. Persönliche DSL-Statistik erstellen

Kurzzeitige Schwankungen der DSL-Geschwindigkeit sind normal. Mit Langzeitmessungen weisen Sie zweifelsfrei nach, dass Ihr Anschluss nicht nur gelegentlich, sondern generell zu langsam ist. Von nun an werden bei registrierten Nutzern auf Wunsch alle Messungen abgespeichert und in einer persönlichen Übersicht angezeigt.
» Weitere Informationen zur Erstellung persönlicher Statistiken
DSL-Anbieter-Tempo exakt ermitteln

Der erweiterte DSL-Speedtest misst nun das Tempo, das der Anbieter Ihrem Anschluss zuweist, direkt am Router. Nach der einmaligen Installation einer Zusatzsoftware funktioniert der erweiterte DSL-Geschwindigkeitstest genau wie der normale.
Achtung: Diese Messung funktioniert nicht mit allen Router-Modellen.
» Weitere Informationen zum erweiterten DSL-Geschwindigkeitstest
» Download: Programm für den erweiterten DSL-Geschwindigkeitstest
Für Internetanschlüsse per TV-Kabel oder DSL-Verbindungen ohne Router ist der erweiterte Speedtest nicht geeignet. Hier funktioniert nur der normale DSL-Geschwindigkeitstest von COMPUTER BILD.
Mobile Internetverbindungen messen

Ab sofort lässt sich auch die Leistung Ihres mobilen Internetzugangs messen, zum Beispiel UMTS-Zugänge per Notebook oder Internet-Verbindungen mit dem Handy. Rufen Sie einfach den Speedtest mit Ihrem Handy oder einer anderen mobilen Verbindung auf, wählen Sie den entsprechenden Tarif und führen Sie die Messung anschließend wie gewohnt durch.
» Weitere Informationen zur Messung mobiler Verbindungen

Schnelle VDSL- und Kabelverbindungen messen

Die technischen Möglichkeiten der Testserver wurden erweitert, sodass nun auch sehr schnelle Verbindungen (Kabel, VDSL) bis zu einer Geschwindigkeit von 70.000 Kilobit pro Sekunde exakt messbar sind.

Der Pingtest funktioniert bei mir nicht

Um den Pingtest ausführen zu können, sollten Sie Ihre Firewall für die Dauer des Tests deaktivieren. Wenn Sie Bedenken haben, die Firewall ganz zu deaktivieren, können Sie alternativ nur die Funktion "ICMP/Eingehende Echoanforderung zulassen" aktivieren. Diese Option finden Sie bei den "erweiterten Einstellungen" Ihrer Windows-Firewall.
Wenn Sie über einen DSL-(WLAN-)Router verfügen, besteht die Möglichkeit, dass auch dort der Ping blockiert wird. Sehen Sie in der Bedienungsanleitung Ihres Routers nach, wie Sie diese Blockade zeitweise deaktivieren können.

» Top-Tipps zur DSL-Optimierung
Die Hauptgründe für eine langsame Internetverbindung
Das kennen Sie bestimmt: Sie haben einen schnellen DSL-Anschluss gebucht, das Tempo lässt aber zu wünschen übrig! Diese Problematik ist keine Seltenheit. Zwei Ursachen kommen für das Dilemma infrage:

Das Anbieter-Problem: Weniger DSL als versprochen
Einige Anbieter versprechen zwar die Höchstgeschwindigkeiten eines Sportflitzers, liefern tatsächlich aber nur die Leistung eines Kleinwagens. Sie bieten beispielsweise DSL 16000 an, garantieren aber lediglich ein Tempo von 7.000 Kilobit pro Sekunde (kbit/s). Im Kleingedruckten steht dann nicht ohne Grund „bis zu 16.000 kbit/s“.
Das Heim-Problem: Falsche Hardware und falsche Einstellungen
Nicht immer tragen die DSL-Anbieter die Schuld an der Misere. Selbst bei fehlerfreien Internet-Leitungen kann es zu lahmen Breitbandverbindungen kommen. Die möglichen Ursachen liegen dann bei Ihnen – im heimischen Gerätepark. Nicht korrekt konfigurierte Netzwerkkarten, alte Router, falsches WLAN-Equipment und schlechte Empfangsbedingungen, die das WLAN-Funknetzwerk stören, sind typische DSL-Bremsklötze. Schnelle Hilfe: Durch Neupositionierung von WLAN-Router, PC oder Notebook erreichen Sie oft mehr Leistung. Fehlerhaft eingestellte Netzwerkkarten optimiert das Hilfsprogramm TCP Optimizer.

Was Sie sonst noch tun können, lesen Sie in der Bildergalerie:
10 Top-Tipps zur Erhöhung des DSL-Tempos.

Schließen Sie Ihr DSL optimal an
In vielen Wohnungen oder Häusern gibt es mehrere der herkömmlichen TAE-Telefonanschlussdosen. Der Anschluss an verlängerten TAE-Zweitdosen kann zum Geschwindigkeitsverlust führen.
Tipp 1
Verbinden Sie das erste DSL-Gerät, also den Splitter, möglichst mit der ersten TAE-Telefondose in Wohnung oder Haus.
Konfigurieren Sie Ihre Netzwerkkarte mit TCP Optimizer

Die Netzwerkkarte im Desktop-PC oder Notebook muss optimal eingestellt sein. In der Regel ist sie das auch. Falls nicht, stellt der TCP Optimizer die idealen Werte für Ihren DSL-Anschluss ein.
Nutzen Sie das Hilfsprogramm TCP Optimizer, um Ihre Netzwerk- oder WLAN-Karte optimal für den DSL-Anschluss zu konfigurieren.
» TCP Optimizer: Die Netzwerkkarte optimal für DSL einstellen
Belegen Sie einen neuen WLAN-Kanal im Router
Sie nutzen einen WLAN-Router? Dann kann es sein, dass benachbarte WLAN-Funknetze die Leistungsfähigkeit Ihres WLANs beeinträchtigen, besonders in einer dicht besiedelten Stadt.
Wechseln Sie den WLAN-Funkkanal. Oft sind Router auf dieselben Kanäle voreingestellt. Auf welchen Kanälen die Geräte der Nachbarschaft laufen, können Sie mit der Software NetStumbler prüfen. Wählen Sie einen Kanal, der möglichst weit von den meistbelegten Kanälen entfernt ist.
» Download: Gratis-Programm NetStumbler herunterladen

„ Die Wahrheit über lahmes DSL“.

» 10 Tipps für sicheres WLAN
» Darum lahmt DSL-Technik oft
» Umfrage: DSL-Kunden wütend
» Bestenliste: WLAN-Router
» Alles über WLAN-Router

NTLM versions and network compatibilities

2012-01-22T15:47:00.000-08:00

Sourcehttp://www.sevenforums.com/network-sharing/5369-networking-file-share-between-windows-7-windows-xp.html SourceB

Trying to share files between my three machines (there are actually none windows machines as well using SMB share).

They all work with each other except "Windows 7" is misbehaving.

Everyone is prompted for a password to browse the 7 machine, and 7 is asked for password when it tries to look at any other device. This is obviously a "password encryption" thing that I have run into before, but now I cannot seem to find a solution.

I have the following changes to Windows 7:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa LmCompatibilityLevel=1

Which I think is all I had to do with Vista and XP to get them to cooperate. Since I do not have gpedit.msc, is there any other registery changes that need to be made for this work? Thank you.

-----------------------------

secpol.msc also has, under Security Options, Network Security: LANManager Authentication Level ... which can make changes to thesetting.registry: HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA Look for the0 = sent LM adn NTLM, never use NTLMv21 = use NTLMv2 if negitiated. LM, NTLM and LTLMv2 can be used2 = send NTLM only.3 = sent NTLMv2 only.4 = Domain controllers refuse LM.5 = Domain controllers refuse LM and NTLM. ---------------------------- It does not look like 7 "Home" has secpol.msc either. I tried settingLmCompatiblityLevel to 0 and 1, neither seemed to work.=====================

Windows XP SP2, Vista, Windows 7 clients unable to connect to Netware CIFS
=====================
eSafe Proxy with NTLM v2.0

Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and higher use NTLM v2.0-only by default. eSafe Proxy uses NTLM v1.0. The default setting within Windows can be changed to operate in a mode which is backwards compatible with eSafe Proxy. Take the following steps to change the NTLM settings:

1. Open the Group Policy Editor with gpedit.msc;
2. Go to Computer Configuration – Windows Settings – Security Settings – Local Policies – Security Options;
3. Go to the setting: Network security: LAN Manager authentication level
4. Change this setting to: Send LM & NTLM – use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated
5. Apply the policy with gpupdate /force

The picture shows the policy setting within Windows.
This should solve the problem with single sign-on on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and higher.

======================
Disable NetBIOS and NTLM on Windows 2003 Domain Controllers
About NTLMv1/LM ... I don't think it's a problem disabling them (maybe only if you have some very old OS on your network). Regarding NETBIOS
I think the domain controller need this functionality for the replication. Anyway, for fully disable NETBIOS and SMB check

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/Sec...n2k/a0604.mspx
(as you can see it's not enough to check Disable Netbios over TCP/IP from
Advanced TCP/IP settings).
Andrei Ungureanu
www.eventid.net
Free Windows event logs reports
http://www.altairtech.ca/evlog/
=================

How to prevent Windows from storing a LAN manager hash

LLTD responder on Windows Server 2003

2012-01-18T16:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.ehow.co.uk/list_6620360_alternatives-network-magic.html
Installing Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) on Windows Server 2003

In one of my previous articles – "Hide your Vista Computer on the Network" I wrote about what the network map is in Vista.

The network map on a computer running Windows Vista shows a graphical view of the computers and devices on your network and how they are connected by using the LLTD protocol. Thing is, that in order to display Windows Vista/2008 computers in the network map you need not do anything special. However, in order to make Windows XP computers appear in it, you will need to download and install the LLTD responder before it can be detected and appear on the network map. You can read more about this issue in my "Installing Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) on Windows XP" article.

You can download the update from the following link:

Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder (KB922120)

All this is good and well, however there's one little catch. By default, you can’t run the LLTD responder update under Windows 2003. If you try to run the update you'll get this error:

However, you can try to force the update to run by performing these steps:

Note: Installing LLTD on Windows Server 2003 is NOT SUPPORTED by Microsoft, and has mixed results. Do NOT do it if you don't know what you're doing, and if something breaks, don't expect anyone to help you.

After downloading the update, navigate to the folder where you've saved the file and right-click it. Select Properties.
Next, in the Compatibility tab, click to select the Run This Program in Compatibility Mode for, and in the drop-down list select Windows XP. Click Ok.

You can now install the update. You will not be prompted for a reboot, but you might want to reboot anyway.

Next, you need to install the LLTD protocol in the network adapter's properties. Go to the downloaded file from step 1, and double-click on it as if to install it. Do NOT proceed with the installation, just leave the welcome screen open. Now go to your hard disk, and on the partition with the largest available free space you'll find a folder which's name is made of many letters and numbers (name varies, so there's no point in typing it here).

Open the network interface's properties screen, and click install.

In the network component type click Protocol and the click on the Add button.

In the Select Protocol window click Have Disk, and browse to the folder from step 4. In that path, look for the file called rspndr.inf. Click Ok.
In the Select Network Protocol window click the Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder and click Ok. After a short installation, the new protocol should be available in the network interface's properties screen.

To be safe, reboot the computer. It should now be visible on the network map.

As noted above, this procedure is not supported in any way. Use at your own risk.
=================================
Unattended Windows Vista tech. on Windows XP/2003
UPDATE (09/12/2007): Updated with the list of applications and components listed here:
Windows Vista components available for Windows XP.
With Microsoft releasing a number of applications developed for Windows Vista also available for Windows XP, I’ve put together a quick ‘how to’ guide for performing an unattended install for each application.

Windows Internet Explorer 7 [ Windows XP 32-bit | Windows Server 2003 32-bit ]
Windows Media Player 11 [ Windows XP 32-bit ]
Windows Defender 1.1 [ Windows XP / Server 2003 32-bit ]
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 [ Windows XP / Server 2003 32-bit ]
Windows Desktop Search 3.01 [ Windows XP 32-bit | Windows Server 2003 32-bit ]
Remote Desktop Connection 6.0 [ Windows XP 32-bit | Windows Server 2003 32-bit ]
Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder [ Windows XP 32-bit ]

The approach I’ve taken here are direct command lines for installing these applications as you would do with a custom Windows CD or installing after Windows is installed on the computer. You could fit these installs to tools such as Microsoft SMS or Altiris Deployment Solution. If you deploy via Group Policy then you’ll have to take a different approach.
Here’s a breakdown for each application including the command line you need to use for an unattended or silent install. I have the Windows XP version executables listed, so for Windows Server 2003 you will have to adjust the file names.

Windows Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer can be installed during Windows Setup via CMDLINES.TXT. This will ensure that the latest version of IE is installed as soon as Windows setup is complete from a clean install. This command will stop the setup program from downloading updates during install and will display a dialog box with a progress bar. You can also add the /NO-DEFAULT switch to prevent setup from making Internet Explorer the default web browser. You can get a full list of command line switches by running IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.EXE /?.

START /WAIT IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART /UPDATE-NO

Windows Media Player 11

This application is for Windows XP only, but then who needs WMP 11 on their Terminal Server? Unlike Internet Explorer, I’ve not been able to get Windows Media Player to install via CMDLINES.TXT. This command will install Windows Media Player without you seeing any install user interface during setup.

START /WAIT wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe /Q:A /C:"SETUP_WM.EXE /Q:A /R:N /P:#e"

Windows Defender 1.1

This command line will install Windows Defender silently prevent Windows Defender from running after setup is complete.

START /WAIT MSIEXEC /I WindowsDefender.MSI ALLUSERS=TRUE REBOOT=SUPRESS CHECK_WGA=0 LAUNCHPROGRAM=0 LAUNCHSCAN=0 /QB-

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0

The .NET Framework 3.0 includes the .NET Framework 2.0 so you do not have to install that version separately. You will see a dialog with a progress bar during install.

START /WAIT dotnetfx3.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

Windows Desktop Search 3.01

The Windows Desktop Search setup application will accept the /PASSIVE switch so that a progress bar is displayed during setup, but the /QUIET switch is required to prevent setup from displaying an ‘Install Complete’ dialog once finished.

START /WAIT WindowsDesktopSearch-KB917013-V301-XP-x86-enu.exe /QUIET /NORESTART

Remote Desktop Connection 6.0

Like Internet Explorer this application can be deployed via CMDLINES.TXT using a custom Windows setup source.

START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB925876-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder

The LLTD Responder will install via CMDLINES.TXT. Here’s a description of what the LLTD Responder is from the Microsoft web site:

The network map on a computer running Windows Vista shows a graphical view of the computers and devices on your network and how they are connected by using the LLTD protocol. The LLTD responder must be installed on a computer running Windows XP before it can be detected and appear on the network map.

START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB922120-v5-x86-ENU.exe /PASSIVE /NORESTART

Full List

I’ve updated this script with the applications listed here. Windows Installer 3.1 is a requirement for installing .NET Framework 3.5.

@ECHO OFF
REM Windows Installer 3.1
START /WAIT WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM Microsoft Core XML Services 6.0
START /WAIT MSIEXEC /I MSXML6.MSI ALLUSERS=TRUE REBOOT=SUPPRESS /QB

REM Internet Explorer 7
START /WAIT IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART /UPDATE-NO

REM Windows Media Player 11
START /WAIT wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.EXE /Q:A /C:"SETUP_WM.EXE /Q:A /R:N /P:#e"

REM Windows Defender 1.1
START /WAIT MSIEXEC /I WindowsDefender.MSI ALLUSERS=TRUE REBOOT=SUPRESS CHECK_WGA=0 LAUNCHPROGRAM=0 LAUNCHSCAN=0 /QB-

REM .NET Framework 3.5
START /WAIT dotnetfx35.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM Windows Desktop Search 3.01
START /WAIT WindowsDesktopSearch-KB917013-V301-XP-x86-enu.EXE /QUIET /NORESTART

REM Remote Desktop Connection 6.0
START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB925876-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM LLTD Responder
START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB922120-v5-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM Image Mastering API
START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB932716-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM Microsoft Management Console 3.0
START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB907265-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM Windows Script 5.7
START /WAIT scriptenXP.exe /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM Windows PowerShell 1.0
START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB926139-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM XPS Essentials Pack
START /WAIT MSIEXEC /I "XPSEP XP and Server 2003 32 bit.MSI" ALLUSERS=TRUE REBOOT=SUPRESS /QB

REM Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP) version 2.0
START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB920342-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM Silverlight 1.0
START /WAIT SILVERLIGHT.EXE /Q

REM Network Diagnostic Tool
START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB914440-v12-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM WS-Management v1.1
START /WAIT WindowsXP-KB936059-x86-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

REM Windows Rights Management Services Client with Service Pack 1
START /WAIT WindowsRightsManagementServicesSP1-KB839178-Client-ENU.EXE /PASSIVE /NORESTART

===========================
Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder
How do I search for computers using Windows 7
Windows 2003 R2 Network Visibilty - Forum

Installing Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) on Windows Server
KB 922120 - LLTD (Link Layer Topology Discovery) protocol support
Why doesn't Windows 2003 R2 Standard Edition like Vista
Hide your Vista Computer on the Network
Getting XP Computers to Appear on Network Map
Installing Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) on Windows XP
How to include Windows XP computers in your Vista or Windows 7 network map
What is a Network Map?
Having multiple computers in the same home, or small office, is common. It’s becoming a rule, rather than an exception. Moms, Dads, and children all want to be online simultaneously as they work and play. As the number of computers increase so does the complexity of the network. Vista introduced a useful feature called Network Map. Network Map is a graphical map of the network showing locations, connections, and other basic network information.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well you just knew it couldn’t be that simple! Since Network Map was introduced in Vista it isn’t compatible with XP by default. This means only computers running the Vista and later operating systems show in the map. The screenshot below is of the Network Map. In the map you can see HP-DV9500 is connected wirelessly (dotted line) to the router, which has a wired connection to my ISP. Also notice that computers using operating systems other than Vista do not show in the map, but are listed below as “can not be placed in map”. The ZD7020 is running XP and the Server is running Windows Home Server, neither of which can be mapped by Vista or Windows 7.
[...] look for the rest!
Layer by Layer Troubleshooting with a Cisco Router

Networking with different Windows

2012-01-18T09:34:00.000-08:00

New features and functionality in PortQry version 2.0 (for NT5.2)
Networking home computers running different versions of Windows

If your network contains computers running different versions of Windows, put all computers in the same workgroup Let's assume that you've already set up the physical network itself. If you haven’t, see What you need to set up a home network.

After your network is set up, the next step is to fine-tune it so that all the computers can find each other—something you'll need if you want to share files and printers.

If computers running Windows XP are part of your network, it’s important to use the same workgroup name for all of the computers on your network. This makes it possible for computers running different versions of Windows to detect and access each other. Remember that the default workgroup name is not the same in all versions of Windows.

To find or change the workgroup name on a computer running Windows XP

Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
In System Properties, click the Computer Name tab to see the workgroup name. To change the name, click Change, type the new name in Computer name, and then click OK.

To find the workgroup name on a computer running Windows Vista or Windows 7
Open System by clicking the Start button , right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties.

The workgroup name is displayed under Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings.

To change the workgroup name on a computer running Windows Vista or Windows 7
Open System by clicking the Start button , right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties.

Under Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings, click Change settings.
In System Properties, on the Computer Name tab, click Change.
In Computer Name/Domain Changes, in Workgroup, type the name of the workgroup you want to use, and then click OK. You will be prompted to restart your computer.

The workgroup name is displayed in the System window

Set the network location to Home or Work

Next, check the network location on all computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7. The network location is a setting that allows Windows to automatically adjust security and other settings based on the type of network that the computer is connected to. For more information, see Choosing a network location.

There are four network locations:

Home. The computer is connected to a network that has some level of protection from the Internet (for example, a router and a firewall) and contains known or trusted computers. Most home networks fall into this category. HomeGroup is available on networks with the Home network location.
Work. The computer is connected to a network that has some level of protection from the Internet (for example, a router and a firewall) and contains known or trusted computers. Most small business networks fall into this category.
Public. The computer is connected to a network that's available for public use. Examples of public network types are public Internet access networks, such as those found in airports, libraries, and coffee shops.
Domain. The computer is connected to a network that contains an Active Directory domain controller. An example of a domain network is a network at a workplace. This network location is not available as an option and must be set by the domain administrator.

For your home network, make sure that the network location type is set to Home. Here's how to check:

Open Network and Sharing Center by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type network, and then click Network and Sharing Center.

The network location type is displayed below the network name.

The network location type is displayed in Network and Sharing Center

If your network type is public, click Public network, and then select the network location you want.

Warning

You should only change a network to Home or Work if it's a known and trusted network, such as your home or small business network. Changing a network in a public place to Home or Work can be a security risk because it allows other people on the network to see your computer.

Make sure your firewall allows file and printer sharing

If you're using Windows Firewall, you can skip this section, because Windows Firewall automatically opens the correct ports for file and printer sharing when you share something or turn on network discovery. (For more information about network discovery, see What is network discovery?) If you're using another firewall, you must open these ports yourself so that your computer can find other computers and devices that have files or printers that you want to share.

To find other computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7, open these ports:

UDP 3702
UDP 5355
TCP 5357
TCP 5358

To find other computers running earlier versions of Windows, and to use file and printer sharing on any version of Windows, open these ports:

UDP 137
UDP 138
TCP 139
TCP 445
UDP 5355

To find network devices, open these ports:

UDP 1900
TCP 2869
UDP 3702
UDP 5355
TCP 5357
TCP 5358

To make HomeGroup work correctly between computers running Windows 7, open these ports:

UDP 137
UDP 138
TCP 139
TCP 445
UDP 1900
TCP 2869
UDP 3540
TCP 3587
UDP 3702
UDP 5355
TCP 5357
TCP 5358

Turn on additional file and printer sharing options

By changing your network location to Home or Work, network discovery is automatically turned on . You can also turn on these sharing options individually:

Network discovery
File sharing (in Windows 7, this is automatically turned on when you share a file or folder)
Public folder sharing

When you turn on these options, your computer can:

Find other computers and devices on your home network and have other computers find your computer
Share its files and folders
Share its Public folders

Note

Password-protected sharing is a special option that's discussed below.

To turn on network discovery, file and printer sharing, and public folder sharing in Windows 7
Open Advanced sharing settings by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type network, click Network and Sharing Center, and then, in the left pane, click Change advanced sharing settings.

Click the chevron to expand the Home or Work network profile.
Select the options to turn on network discovery and file sharing.
Under Public folder sharing, do one of the following:
- To share your Public folders so that people on other computers on the network can open files in them but can't create or change files, click Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open files.
- To share your Public folders so that people on other computers on the network can open files in them and also create or change files, click Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open, change, and create files.
  Click Save changes. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

To turn on network discovery, file sharing, public folder sharing, and printer sharing in Windows Vista Open Network and Sharing Center in Control Panel.

Under Sharing and Discovery, click the chevron next to File sharing to expand the section, click Turn on file sharing, and then click Apply. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Click the chevron next to Public folder sharing to expand the section, and then do one of the following:
- To share the Public folder so that people on other computers on the network can open files in it but can't create or change files, click Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open files, and then click Apply. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. This is the default setting.
- To share the Public folder so that people on other computers on the network can open files in it and also create or change files, click Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open, change, and create files, and then click Apply. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Click the chevron next to Printer sharing to expand the section, click Turn on printer sharing, and then click Apply. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Consider using password-protected sharing

Password-protected sharing is a more secure method of sharing files and folders on a network, and it is enabled by default. With password-protected sharing enabled, people on your network can't access shared folders on other computers, including the Public folders, unless they have a user name and password on the computer that has the shared folders. They will be prompted to type a user name and password when accessing the shared folders.

For quicker access, you might want to have matching user accounts on all your computers. For example, Dana wants to use password-protected sharing to more securely share files and printers between her two computers. On Computer A, she has the user account "Dana22" and the password "Fly43$." If she sets up that same user account and password combination on Computer B, she can more quickly access shared files on Computer B. If Dana changes the password on one of these computers, she must make the same change on the other computer.

To turn on password-protected sharing in Windows 7

Open Advanced sharing settings by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type network, click Network and Sharing Center, and then, in the left pane, click Change advanced sharing settings.
Click the chevron to expand the Home or Work network profile.
Under Password protected sharing, click Turn on password protected sharing, and then click Save changes. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

To turn on password-protected sharing in Windows Vista

Open Network and Sharing Center in Control Panel.
Under Sharing and Discovery, click the chevron next to Password protected sharing to expand the section, click Turn on password protected sharing, and then click Apply. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

To share a file or folder

In any version of Windows, you can right-click a file or folder, click Share, and then select the people or groups you want to share with. You can also assign permissions so that those people can or cannot make changes to the file or folder you shared. For more information, see Share files with someone.

Using the network map

The network map in Network and Sharing Center is a graphical view of the computers and devices on your network, showing how they're connected and including any problem areas. This can be helpful for troubleshooting. Before a computer running Windows XP can be detected and appear on the network map, you might need to install the Link-Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) protocol on that computer. For more information, go to Network Map Does Not Display Computers Running Windows XP on the Microsoft website.

If the LLTD protocol is installed but computers running Windows XP still don't appear on the network map, firewall settings could be preventing Windows from detecting them. Check the firewall settings and make sure that file and printer sharing is enabled. To learn how to do this, if you're using Windows Firewall, open Help and Support and search for "Enable file and printer sharing." Open the Help topic, and then scroll to the end. If you're using another firewall, check the information that came with your firewall.

Do you have any third party firewall installed on the computer or are you using Windows Firewall?
Were you able to access remote desktop connection on this computer earlier?
Did you make any changes to the computer before this issue started?

However, if you are using Windows Firewall and if Windows Firewall is blocking a program and you want to allow that program to communicate through the firewall, you can usually do that by selecting the program in the list of allowed programs (also called theexceptions list) in Windows Firewall.

Access the links below and follow the steps to troubleshoot the issue and add the program to exception list.

windows7/Allow-a-program-to-communicate-through-Windows-Firewall

windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Open-a-port-in-Windows-Firewall

A port stays open all the time, so be sure to close ports that you don't need open anymore.

Open Windows Firewall by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type firewall, and then click Windows Firewall.
In the left pane, click Advanced settings. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
In the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security dialog box, in the left pane, click Inbound Rules, and then, in the right pane, click New Rule.
Follow the instructions in the New Inbound Rule wizard.

If you’re having trouble allowing other computers to communicate with your computer through Windows Firewall, you can try using the Incoming Connections troubleshooter to automatically find and fix some common problems.

Open the Incoming Connections troubleshooter by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type troubleshooter, and then click Troubleshooting. Click View all, and then click Incoming Connections.

For information about advanced firewall troubleshooting, see Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Troubleshooting Guide: Diagnostics and Tools and Troubleshooting Windows Firewall settings in Windows XP Service Pack 2 for advanced users.

----------------

If you are using any third party firewall, you may contact the security software manufacturer and check how to change the settings for you to use remote desktop
Remote desktop or Terminal services use TCP port 3389, not port 137.
Port assignments for TCP and UDP.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc959833.aspx

Service overview and network port requirements

Reset Roaming Profile and Folder Redirection Permissions

2012-01-17T16:13:00.000-08:00

Source
[...]
Resetting Permissions
If you run into permission issues, first make sure your parent folder permissions are correct as defined above.
If you need to reset permissions on a user folder, you will first need to take ownership of the entire folder, then reset permissions, then assign ownership back to the user. While it is possible to do this in the GUI, if you need to do it for lots of users, you’ll want to develop a script. Starting from Richard Teachout’s article, I came up with the following approach. Notes:

You can use the built-in utility takeown to assign ownership to Administrators. However in order to assign ownership back to end users, you’ll need to download and install subinacl.
For permission assignment, you can use the built-in cacls utility. Although Mr. Teachout recommended the /G parameter to grant permissions, I had better luck with the /P parameter to replace permissions. This hopefully takes care of the odd permission on some profiles where the user has full access to the top folder only.Using /G on that kind of folder generates errorlevel 13 and the message "The data is invalid".

My environment has the following physical folder structure:
D:\RoamingProfiles
D:\RoamingProfiles\UserDocs
D:\RoamingProfiles\UserDocs\User01
D:\RoamingProfiles\UserDocs\User01
D:\RoamingProfiles\UserProfiles
D:\RoamingProfiles\UserProfiles\User01
D:\RoamingProfiles\UserProfiles\User01.V2 – used by new Windows 7 profile folder redirection
D:\RoamingProfiles\UserProfiles\User02
D:\RoamingProfiles\UserProfiles\User02.V2

The ScriptBased on that structure, I created my script in the D:\RoamingProfiles folder, and assumed it would be run with a single parameter, the %UserName%. Here are the basic commands. As always, use at your own risk!
[...]

VPN Can’t Ping from LAN to LAN

2012-01-17T16:07:00.000-08:00

Source

Unfortunately after configuring the VPN, I could ping from the router to the other LAN, but I could not ping from one LAN to the other LAN. Not good!

I got lots of help from the VPN and VLAN and authors. Long story short: the VLAN setup was not allowing packets on the local LAN to be forwarded to the VPN tunnel.

The solution is to manually add a one-line forwarding instruction to each router. The exact instruction depends on which VLAN you wan to route to which VPN tunnel.

The VLANs are listed under Advanced > VLAN. Choose the Bridge name for the VLAN you want to connect.

The tunnels are named as follows: tun11 = OpenVPN Client1, tun12 = Client2, tun21 = Server1, and tun22 = Server2. You can see which tunnel is active under Advanced > Routing. This screen shot is from my OpenVPN server:

On both the client and sever, my main LAN (that I want to share across the VPN) is on br0. The server is tun21 and the client is tun11. So on the OpenVPN server router, I ran this instruction from Tools > System:

iptables -A FORWARD -i br0 -o tun21 -j ACCEPT

and on the OpenVPN client router I ran this instruction:

iptables -A FORWARD -i br0 -o tun11 -j ACCEPT

Voila! Bi-directional ping happiness, from server’s LAN to client’s LAN and vice-versa.

To make the instructions “sticky,” save the corresponding instruction in Administration > Scripts > Firewall on each router, and reboot the router.

This functionality may eventually become “standard” or part of the GUI, but for now, a pair of simple instructions lets you use OpenVPN on a router running VLANs.

runas command

2012-01-17T15:33:00.000-08:00

You’ll need admin privileges to stop and start a service.

On XP, you can use a command like this:

runas /noprofile /env /user:Administrator cmd

You will be prompted for the Administrator password, and a new command window will open.

Ping request could not find host

2012-01-17T15:32:00.000-08:00

Fix for Ping request could not find host "FQDN of server" Error
I can ping by their IP address but not by their name
ping 192.168.1.3 --works
ping familypc --doesn't work
Ping request could not find host ___ Please check the name and try again
Solution

Need to setup WINS server or service on one of the computer. Or if you're using one of those gateway/router for internet sharing, you can set your wins server as that since it has capabilities of DHCP

Best solution

Windows firewall was blocking port 137. After unblocking it worked fine.

Ping Request Could Not Find Host

At command prompt

ping myserver.mydomain.local

I get back the message “Ping request could not find host myserver.mydomain.local. Please check the name and try again.”

An nslookup works fine, so I know the SBS server is there and is responding to DNS requests.

In fact, I can “ping myserver” without problems. But for some reason, pinging the fully-qualified internal name doesn’t work.

Sometimes, I can just type “ipconfig /flushdns” to clear this up. Today that didn’t work. However once I actually stopped and started the DNS cache, ping started working

net stop DNScache
net start DNScache

---------

Windows XP Home SP3. “PING name” does not find the host, and “PING ip-address” works fine. Also, “NSLOOKUP name” and also “NSLOOKUP name dns-server-ip-address” both work fine; that is NSLOOKUP works using it’s own default, and also using any valid DNS server I specify. But, PING and various other software like browsers, anti-virus, and pretty much any other name-dependent software will not function.

--------

Can still ping both ways by IP addr but not by computer name and hence Network Neighborhood only shows the source PC name, and can not see the other shared folders

---------------

Are NSLOOKUPs resolving the names correctly? Does it help if you stop then start the “DNS Client” service (not just “DNSCache”)?

Windows DNS weirdness: nslookup finds, ping doesn't

Despite multiple cache clearings, browsers can't find it either (it's an internal website). I am suspecting this is why. I am not sure how, after several /flushdns and /registerdns, if nslookup finds it right off, why can't anything else..?

--------------------------
nslookup does not use the same references as ping

Ping will directly query the DNS server defined in ipconfig
nslookup will quiery the DNS server, on the AD domain controller your security was authenticated on.
Ping simply asks DNS give me the ip so I can ping it.
Their is no record in DNS for a myhost PC. But the code within the AD DNS schema has a refernce for a nslookup so you are returned the address of your authentication server..
If you invoke nslookup and put a x in front of it, you will get a > prompt. Type in a question mark at the prompt and you can see the switches to get the info you need with nslookup.

---------------------------

Win 2k3 'Round Robin' setting

I didn't set this box up - looking at the DNS settings, i see it's set for round robin.

configured on the workstations? To clarify, on your workstations, do you have the primary DNS server as the ADC and a secondary DNS server ip that points to a non-Active Directory DNS server?
Answer
On Windows 2000 and later, if a request to your primary DNS server times out, it switches to the secondary DNS server and stays with it for a period of time. However, nslookup always connects to the primary.
Take a look at this article and be sure to read the part about caching negative responses.

How to Disable Client-Side DNS Caching in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

Windows contains a client-side Domain Name System (DNS) cache. The client-side DNS caching feature may generate a false impression that DNS "round robin" is not occurring from the DNS server to the Windows client computer. When you use the ping command to search for the same A-record domain name, the client may use the same IP address. This behavior is different from Microsoft operating systems earlier than Windows 2000. These operating systems do not include the client-side DNS caching feature. This article describes how to disable DNS caching.
Note This article refers to the client portion of DNS. Do not use this information for making changes to DNS servers.

To stop DNS caching, run either of the following commands:

net stop dnscache
-or-
sc servername stop dnscache

To disable the DNS cache permanently in Windows, use the Service Controller tool or the Services tool to set the DNS Client service startup type to Disabled. Note that the name of the Windows DNS Client service may also appear as "Dnscache."
Note The overall performance of the client computer decreases and the network traffic for DNS queries increases if the DNS resolver cache is deactivated.
The DNS Client service optimizes the performance of DNS name resolution by storing previously resolved names in memory. If the DNS Client service is turned off, the computer can still resolve DNS names by using the network's DNS servers.
When the Windows resolver receives a positive or negative response to a query, it adds that positive or negative response to its cache, and as a result, creates a DNS resource record. The resolver always checks the cache before querying any DNS server. If a DNS resource record is in the cache, the resolver uses the record from the cache instead of querying a server. This behavior expedites queries and decreases network traffic for DNS queries.
You can use the Ipconfig tool to view and to flush the DNS resolver cache. To view the DNS resolver cache, type ipconfig /displaydns at a command prompt. Ipconfig displays the contents of the DNS resolver cache, including the DNS resource records that are preloaded from the Hosts file and any recently queried names that were resolved by the system. After a certain time period, the resolver discards the record from the cache. The time period is specified in the Time to Live (TTL) associated with the DNS resource record. You can also flush the cache manually. After you flush the cache, the computer must query DNS servers again for any DNS resource records previously resolved by the computer. To delete the entries in the DNS resolver cache, type ipconfig /flushdns at a command prompt.

[...]

Subnet Prioritization

The Windows XP DNS resolver also uses Subnet Prioritization. If the resolver receives multiple IP address mappings (A resource records) from a DNS server, and some of the records have IP addresses from networks to which the computer is directly connected, the resolver places those resource records first. This behavior reduces network traffic across subnets by forcing computers to connect to network resources that are closer to them.
Although subnet prioritization does reduce network traffic across subnets, in some cases you may prefer to have the round robin feature work as described in RFC 1794. If so, you can disable the Subnet Prioritization feature on your clients by adding the

PrioritizeRecordData

registry entry with a value of 0 (REG_DWORD data type) in the following registry key: For additional information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DnsCache\Parameters

297510 How to Modify Time to Live on Domain Name System Records

286834 The DNS Client Service Does Not Revert to Using the First Server

For more information, see the Microsoft Windows XP Professional Resource Kit Documentation, chapter "DNS Caching, Network Prioritization, and Security."

Reply

We have no secondary internal DNS, and had round-robin set on the DNS server: i already turned that off. We are serving 2nd/tertiary DNS servers via DHCP to client workstations. I've turned off neg caching for all stations, serving a .reg via GPO. So far, on my own machine, i have seen no issues. Since this has been sporadic, it'll likely be a few days before i know it's gone for good.
I'm hoping this will also clear up the weird sudden-loss-of-shares and exchange issues

...

So: it is NOT resolving the CNAME correctly, but when asked about the machine itself, data, it resolves to the correct IP, and then the CNAME resolves "thru" the machine name to the target IP.
I incremented the serial the last time i made DNS changes. I made the above-suggested zero-neg-cache registry change. I have rebooted the machine and ensured all settings are current and policies are being applied.

DNS resolve problem with ping but not nslookup
windows XP SP3
my PC was not able to resolve DNS with most internet software
I tried pinging google and it also fails.
ping www.google.com
Ping request could not find host www.google.com. Please check the name and try again.
But nslookup can still work
*** Can't find server name for address 192.168.0.1: Non-existent domain
*** Default servers are not available
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.0.1
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.l.google.com
Addresses: 209.85.165.103, 209.85.165.104, 209.85.165.147, 209.85.165.99
Aliases: www.google.com
------------------
Ping isn't going to work with many of the external host sites, so this isnormal. If you can do an nslookup on a site, then dns is resolvingcorrectly.
------------------
tenroc2o0o:

I've had the exact same issue on two computers and until I read this form it didn't occur to me it might have to do with SP3. I had just deployed SP2 & SP3 via group policy to over 40 PCs at my clients location while joining all of their computers to the new active directory network.

Basically, unless I use nslookup, DNS doesn't work. This includes Firefox, Internet Explorer, as well as internal active directory lookups to authenticate usernames and passwords against the domain. Noone could log on to the computer as a domain user - had to logon as local admin to work on it.

This means I could, say, "nslookup myserver.mydomain.local", get the IP, and then manually ping the IP and get a reply.

However, if I said "ping myserver.mydomain.local" it would say "Ping request could not find host myserver.mydomain.local. Please check the name and try again."

To me, basically this means nslookup can query because it simply opens a winsock connection on the DNS port and gets a query itself, whereas ping, IE, Firefox, and Windows itself for active directory domain authentication all cannot since they use the DNS Client service.

I had this same problem on now two computers. The first one, which I worked on earlier this week, I ended up formatting the computer to fix.

I tried specifying a static IP & DNS instead of using DHCP.

I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the network adapter.

I checked the Winsock using LSPFix to make sure there weren't any files missing or malware.

I checked hijackthis log for other malware - all clean.

I tried resetting all of the registry entries for the TCP/IP stack using

netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt

SP3 reinstallation fixed all of the DNS query issues.

It's worth noting that even though DNS didn't work, WINS and NetBIOS still did so I could still connect to our server via \\myservername (or by IP of course). (whereas \\myservername.mydomainname.local did not because that's a DNS entry)

I just connected to my server & ran the SP3 update again and it fixed all of the DNS resolution problems.

----------------

Linux

I got the same problem with my two new virtual redhat and suse. It was the directory LDAP client which was the problem. Now both servers are running correctly.

If using linux (redhat or suse):

look at nsswitch.conf & ldap.conf

1) put "bind_policy soft" in /etc/ldap.conf

2) nsswitch.conf must minimum have:

passwd: compat

group: compat

hosts: files dns

networks: files dns

services: files

protocols: files

rpc: files

ethers: files

netmasks: files

netgroup: files

publickey: files

bootparams: files

automount: files nis

aliases: files

3) reboot

4) check with: ping, nmap localhost.

5) now you can enable your ldap client again. (RH: authconfig ; suse: yast2 ldap). It will modify your nsswitch.conf

-------------------

pings and nslookup problems are not related to AD, rather they are based on the client's network configuration and the client side resolver service

Name Server lookup

2012-01-17T13:41:00.000-08:00

Using NSLOOKUP for DNS Server diagnosis

The DNS protocol has been around for decades and is a stable and reliable protocol. Even so, DNS does occasionally have problems. PING is a great tool for DNS server diagnosis, and I tend to use it quite frequently myself. However, sometimes PING just doesn’t give you enough information about the problem at hand. When you need more information about a DNS problem than what PING provides you with, you can always turn to the NSLOOKUP command. In this article, I will show you how to use NSLOOKUP.

[...]
The NSLOOKUP Shell
Now that I have shown you how to use the NSLOOKUP command to see the IP address or addresses associated with the domain, let’s do something a little bit more useful. One of the things that you can do with NSLOOKUP is to look up a specific type of DNS record. A good example of this is an MX record.
In case you aren’t yet familiar with all of the intricacies of DNS, the MX record points to the organization’s mail server. For example, suppose that someone wanted to send an E-mail message to you, one of the first things that their mail server would have to do is to resolve your domain’s IP address. However, a normal address resolution won’t usually work for this purpose. In Figure A, you saw that when I ran a DNS query against the brienposey.com domain, the domain resolved to the address 24.235.10.4. Keep in mind though, that this is the IP address of the server that hosts my Web site, not the address of my mail server. If someone wanted to send me an E-mail message their E-mail client would have to resolve the IP address of my domain’s mail server. This is where the MX record comes into play. The MX record is a record on a domain’s DNS server that specifies the IP address of the domain’s mail server.
As you can see, the MX record is rather important. Suppose however that your domain was having trouble receiving E-mail and you suspected that a DNS server issue was to blame. You could use NSLOOKUP to confirm that the domain does indeed have an MX record and that the MX record is pointed to the correct IP address.
Earlier I briefly mentioned that you could work within the NSLOOKUP shell. To troubleshoot an MX record problem, you pretty much have to work within this shell. Therefore, you would start the process by entering the NSLOOKUP command at the command prompt.
Once the NSLOOKUP shell is open, you will need to tell NSLOOKUP which DNS server you want to query. To do so, enter the SERVER command, followed by the DNS server’s IP address. You can also enter the server’s fully qualified domain name (assuming that it can be resolved) as an alternative to the server’s IP address.
Now that you have specified a DNS server for NSLOOKUP to use, you can query domains without receiving the non-existent domain error messages that you saw earlier (as long as you remain within the NSLOOKUP shell). To do so, you would simply type the domain name that you want to query. For example, if you look at Figure C, you can see where I have specified a particular DNS server and then queried an external and an internal domain.

Figure C: The error messages go away if you specify a DNS server

Now, let’s get back to the business of looking up a domain’s MX record. To do so, you need to issue a command that tells NSLOOKUP to query based on MX records. The command that you will have to use is:

SET QUERY=MX

Issuing this command by itself won’t give you any information about the domain’s MX record though. For that you have to actually query the domain by entering the domain name. If you look at Figure D, you will see that I have specified an MX query and then entered the production.com domain name. NSLOOKUP now returns a wealth of information pertaining to my domain’s MX record.

Figure D: When an MX query is specified, you can get a wealth of information about your domain’s MX record

============
nslookup is a network administration command-line tool available for many computer operating systems for querying the Domain Name System (DNS) to obtain domain name or IP address mapping or for any other specific DNS record.

This is an example of interactive, prompted use of the nslookup application. The user executes the program without any arguments and issues parameters and queries at the program prompt ('>'):

 $ nslookup
 Default Server:  dsldevice.lan
 Address:  192.168.1.1
 > server 8.8.8.8
 Default Server:  google-public-dns-a.google.com
 Address:  8.8.8.8
 > set type=mx
 > wikipedia.org
 Server:  google-public-dns-a.google.com
 Address:  8.8.8.8
  Non-authoritative answer:
 wikipedia.org   MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mchenry.wikimedia.org
 wikipedia.org   MX preference = 50, mail exchanger = lists.wikimedia.org
 > exit

In this example, the program first displays its default name server configuration, after which the user changes the name server to be used to the host at IP address 8.8.8.8. The type of query to be performed is specified by setting the type of record to be fetched (MX record). Finally, the user simply issues the domain name at the prompt to receive the query results. The command exit ends the interactive session and terminates the program.

Source
[very old command, not recomended for NT6.1??]
Para utilizar Nslookup.exe, tenga en cuenta lo siguiente:

El protocolo TCP/IP debe estar instalado en el equipo donde se ejecuta Nslookup.exe
Se debe especificar al menos un servidor DNS cuando se ejecuta el comando IPCONFIG /ALL desde un símbolo del sistema.
Nslookup siempre devolverá el nombre del contexto actual. Si no califica totalmente una consulta de nombre (es decir, si no utiliza el punto del final), la consulta se anexará al contexto actual. Por ejemplo, la configuración de DNS actual es att.com y se realiza una consulta en www.microsoft.com; la primera consulta saldrá como www.microsoft.com.att.com porque la consulta no está completa. Este comportamiento puede ser incoherente con las versiones de otro proveedor de Nslookup y este artículo pretende clarificar el comportamiento de Nslookup.exe de Microsoft Windows NT.
Si ha implementado el uso de la lista de búsquedas en el Orden de búsqueda del sufijo de dominio definido en la ficha DNS de la página Propiedades de Microsoft TCP/IP, la devolución no se producirá. La consulta se anexará a los sufijos de dominio especificados en la lista. Para evitar utilizar la lista de búsquedas, utilice siempre un Nombre de dominio completo (es decir, agregue el punto final al nombre).

Nslookup.exe se puede ejecutar en dos modos: interactivo y no interactivo. El modo no interactivo es útil cuando sólo se necesita devolver un fragmento de datos. La sintaxis para el modo no interactivo es la siguiente:

   nslookup [-option] [hostname] [server]

Para iniciar Nslookup.exe en modo interactivo, basta con escribir "nslookup" en el símbolo del sistema:

   C:\> nslookup
   Default Server:  nameserver1.domain.com
   Address:  10.0.0.1

Si se escribe "help" o "?" en el símbolo del sistema se generará una lista de comandos disponibles. Todo lo que escriba en el símbolo del sistema que no se reconozca como un comando válido se supone que es un nombre de host y se intenta resolver utilizando el servidor predeterminado. Para interrumpir comandos interactivos, presione CTRL+C. Para salir del modo interactivo y volver al símbolo del sistema, escriba exit en el símbolo del sistema.
Lo siguiente es la ayuda generada y contiene la lista completa de opciones:

Commands:   (identifiers are shown in uppercase, [] means optional)
 NAME            - print info about the host/domain NAME using default 
                   server
 NAME1 NAME2     - as above, but use NAME2 as server
 help or ?       - print info on common commands
 set OPTION      - set an option
    all                 - print options, current server and host
    [no]debug           - print debugging information
    [no]d2              - print exhaustive debugging information
    [no]defname         - append domain name to each query
    [no]recurse         - ask for recursive answer to query
    [no]search          - use domain search list
    [no]vc              - always use a virtual circuit
    domain=NAME         - set default domain name to NAME
    srchlist=N1[/N2/.../N6] - set domain to N1 and search list to N1, N2, 
                          and so on
    root=NAME           - set root server to NAME
    retry=X             - set number of retries to X
    timeout=X           - set initial time-out interval to X seconds
    type=X              - set query type (for example, A, ANY, CNAME, MX, 
                          NS, PTR, SOA, SRV)
    querytype=X         - same as type
    class=X             - set query class (for example, IN (Internet), ANY)
    [no]msxfr           - use MS fast zone transfer
    ixfrver=X           - current version to use in IXFR transfer request

 server NAME     - set default server to NAME, using current default server
 lserver NAME    - set default server to NAME, using initial server
 finger [USER]   - finger the optional NAME at the current default host
 root            - set current default server to the root
 ls [opt] DOMAIN [> FILE] - list addresses in DOMAIN (optional: output to 
                  FILE)
    -a          -  list canonical names and aliases
    -d          -  list all records
    -t TYPE     -  list records of the given type (for example, A, CNAME, 
                   MX, NS, PTR, and so on)
 view FILE       - sort an 'ls' output file and view it with pg
 exit            - exit the program

Se pueden establecer varias opciones diferentes en Nslookup.exe ejecutando el comando set en el símbolo del sistema. Para ver una lista completa de estas opciones, escriba set all. Vea arriba, bajo el comando set, para obtener una lista de las opciones disponibles.

[...]

Solucionar problemas de Nslookup.exe

El servidor predeterminado superó el tiempo de espera

Al iniciar la utilidad Nslookup.exe pueden producirse los errores siguientes:

*** No se puede encontrar el nombre de servidor para la dirección w.x.y.z: Agotado el tiempo de espera

NOTA
w.x.y.z es el primer servidor DNS mostrado en la lista Orden de búsqueda de servicio DNS.

*** No se puede encontrar el nombre de servidor para la dirección 127.0.0.1: Agotado el tiempo de espera

El primer error indica que no se puede alcanzar el servidor DNS o que el servicio no está ejecutándose en ese equipo. Para corregir este problema, inicie el servicio DNS en ese servidor o compruebe si hay problemas de conectividad.
El segundo error indica que no se ha definido ningún servidor en la lista Orden de búsqueda de servicio DNS. Para corregir este problema, agregue a esta lista la dirección IP de un servidor DNS válido.
Para obtener información adicional, consulte el artículo o los artículos siguientes en Microsoft Knowledge Base:

172060 NSLOOKUP: No se puede encontrar el nombre de servidor para la dirección 127.0.0.1

No se puede encontrar el nombre de servidor al iniciar Nslookup.exe
Al iniciar la utilidad Nslookup.exe puede producirse el siguiente error:

*** No se puede encontrar el nombre de servidor para la dirección w.x.y.z: Dominio inexistente

Este error se produce cuando no hay ningún registro PTR para la dirección IP del servidor de nombres. Cuando Nslookup.exe se inicia, hace una búsqueda inversa para obtener el nombre del servidor predeterminado. Si no existen ningún dato PTR, se devuelve este mensaje de error. Para corregirlo, asegúrese de que existe una zona de búsqueda inversa y que contiene registros PTR para los servidores de nombres.
Para obtener información adicional, consulte el artículo o los artículos siguientes en Microsoft Knowledge Base:

172953 Cómo instalar y configurar el servidor DNS de Microsoft

Nslookup no funciona en dominios secundarios

Cuando se consulta o se realiza una transferencia de zona en un dominio secundario, Nslookup puede devolver los errores siguientes:

*** ns.domain.com no puede encontrar child.domain.com.: Dominio inexistente

*** No se puede hacer una lista del dominio child.domain.com.: Dominio inexistente

En el Administrador de DNS se puede agregar un nuevo dominio bajo la zona primaria, creando así un dominio secundario. Al crear un dominio secundario de esta manera no se crea un archivo de base de datos independiente para el dominio, por lo que al consultar así ese dominio o ejecutar una transferencia de zona en él se generarán los errores anteriores. Al ejecutar una transferencia de zona en el dominio primario se mostrarán datos tanto para el dominio primario como para el dominio secundario. Para evitar este problema, cree una nueva zona primaria en el servidor DNS para el dominio secundario.

Networking troubleshooting for dummies

2012-01-14T14:40:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Home Networking Problems and Mistakes
Tips for Troubleshooting Windows File and Printer Sharing

How to Find a MAC Address

Windows 95 and newer: winipcfg
Windows NT and newer: ipconfig /all
Linux and some Unix: ifconfig -a
Macintosh with Open Transport: TCP/IP Control Panel - Info or User Mode/Advanced
Macintosh with MacTCP: TCP/IP Control Panel - Ethernet icon

Causes of Dropped Network Connections
Windows Server 2003 Networking TCP-IP AND WINS AND IPSec AND Print AND Firewall (pdf)
Step by Step Configuration of NAT PAT
Router/Public IP
Configuring a Second Router on a Static Network

Ping requests seem to be redirecting to my own IP

ping 192.168.1.1
Pinging 192.168.1.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.25: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.25: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.25: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.25: Destination host unreachable.
Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)

The WiFi signal is fine, i get full bars, and have checked the exact strength with InSSIDer. The ethernet cable is also fine.

Did vista change the way ping responds?
ping 192.168.1.10
Pinging 192.168.1.10 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.106: Destination host unreachable.
...
Ping statistics for 192.168.1.10:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
ping 192.168.1.111
Pinging 192.168.1.111 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.106: Destination host unreachable.
...
Ping statistics for 192.168.1.111:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Sounds like routing issue.
Is the 192.168.1.106 the local computer? Or this post may help
Ping 192.168.1.101 but the response is 192.168.1.107

Reply from other computer destination

Ping problem - Spiceworks Community

Please tell me why I have different result when I ping from 2 workstation on my network.

Pinging 192.168.137.101 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.137.199: Destination host unreachable.
[where 199 is the workstation(Windows 7) IP]

or
Pinging 192.168.137.101 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
...

Ping statistics for 192.168.137.101:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
[the IP of the workstation (Windows XP)is 192.168.137.29]
....

While I'm not sure the results are displayed differently. Both errors tell me that the device you are trying to ping is OFFLINE or the Firewall is enabled and ICMP is blocked.

------------------

Is 199 the workstation you are trying to ping or 101 and 199 is the switch? (that is what it looks like to me)?
Are you pinging from two totally different machines to the same destination? If so it looks as if (guessing) you might have a bad network cable or switch port in regards to the destination machine.

----------------------

Are you pinging for the name or the ip address?
You could try to flush the DNS on both machines you are pinging from by entering in
ipconfig /flushdns
at the command prompt to make sure they have the latest info from your dns server.

Or get into the dns server and

remove the entries in both the forward and reverse lookups then
reload to make sure they match the ip address of the machines and then
flush the dns on the machines you are pinging from.

Run a tracert and see where it fails to know if it's a turned off switch in between or the end device that's unavailable.

-------------------

My take?
192.168.137.199 is your Win7 workstation.
The replies are from this adapter telling you it cannot "Find" the 192.168.137.101 IP Address
This is the Expected response in this situation from Win7
The XP machine gives its default response for a non responsive ping, request timed out. This also is the expected response from XP.
No problem, this is the proper response from both machines if they cannot get to the IP address requested.
The issue is:
Why can they not get to .101, possibly a firewall issue?
-------------------
Response indicated is correct for both a WIN 7 and XP OS. To troubleshoot ping your gateway to verify you are reaching your switch then ping .29 from 199 and the reverse that will prove that you can reach the switch and other machines on the same subnet. If that works check the .101 device for connectivity. Your options for 3 devices in the same subnet are incorrect gateway, incorrect subnet mask, software or hardware firewall blocking ICMP, no power or no lan connection at device .101.
-------------------

Do you have any kind of subnetting in place? If your Win7 box is 255.255.255.128 or smaller you will be spanning subnets and if you don't have routing in place, you'll receive that error.
For the XP side, check that .101 is online and has no FW running. Timeouts usually mean the machine is not there or is blocking ICMP.

-------------------

Win 7 is probably using IPv6 and your XP is not. You could also check your DNS on both machines, but I'd guess it's the IPv6 on Win7 causing your issue.

=======================

Unable to connect but could do previously

ipconfig /all

DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.3(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 03 July 2011 10:23:37
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 06 July 2011 10:51:57
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

ping 208.67.222.222
Pinging 208.67.222.222 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.1: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: Destination host unreachable.
Ping statistics for 208.67.222.222:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

This is very odd...

Pinging 192.168.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.1 ...
the reply IP is from another PC!

Correct behavior:

ping 192.168.2.1
Pinging 192.168.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64

It seems a common problem with Windows 7 that one's internet can suddenly be unable to connect via the ethernet cable or over wireless when it had worked previously.

There are numerous solutions that have worked for others according to my research but unluckily for me none of them are resolving this issue on my system and I have been forced to seek guidance.
Compaq 615
Windows 7
TP-Link modem model: TD-W8901G
Everything worked great for the first week I had this service installed then I unplugged the modem to clean my room and haven't been able to connect since, either via wireless or with the cable despite the connection showing a strong signal.

I know some services from 3rd party software can create problems like mine, such as anti-virus bundles or Apple software but I don't have the usual culprits running, such as Bonjour routine/program that comes with Adobe CS3 or Mcafee anti virus.

Here are some things I have already tried...
Update the network driver.
Steps to update network driver:
1. Click on start button.
2. In the search box type devmgmt.msc and then press enter.
3. Select the network card device and right click on it
4. Now select properties.
5. In the properties window, under Driver tab, click on Update Driver button.
6. After the installing the updates restart the computer.
For more information visit: Update a driver for hardware that isn't working properly
Tried this, it didn't work.

Try resetting the TCP/IP stack.
To reset the TCP/IP stack go to this article and either click on "Fix it for me" or follow the instructions to fix it yourself: How to reset Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) .
Tried this, it didn't work.

Troubleshoot using the Network troubleshooter in Windows 7 and check for the issue. Follow the below provided link.
Using the Network troubleshooter in Windows 7
Tried this, result was:
"Your broadband modem is experiencing connectivity problems.
Restart your broadband modem:
1. Unplug or turn off the modem.
2. After all the lights on the modem are off, wait at least 10 seconds.
3. Turn the modem back on or plug it back into the power outlet.
To restart a modem that has a built-in battery, press and quickly release the Reset button. If this doesn't fix the problem contact your internet service provider.
Problems found
The connection between your access point, router, or cable modem and the Internet is broken."
I followed those instructions and nothing worked. Despite it saying I have connectivity problems, remember it does show a strong signal!

Uninstall and reinstall ethernet adapter driver.
Tried this, it didn't work.

I first learned that by disabling and then enabling the local area connection, internet access is restored. Certainly its not the perfect solution and i can bare myself the pain in doing the same task every time i turn the PC on.
Fix No Internet Access in Windows 7 - Tildemark blogs
Tried this, it didn't work.

Disable TCP-IPv6
Tried this, it didn't work.

Go to Start - Search Box - TYPE "msconfig" - Hit Enter - Services Tab - Click the ceck next to ##Id_String1.6844f930_1628_4223_b5cc_5bb94b879762## Apple Computer, INC - Hit OK and Restart your computer.
Tried this, I don't have this Id string listed.

1. Take the LAN cable out
2. Restart and allow the WiFi to function or find nothing
3. Plug the LAN cable in. From this point on (until the next time you Restart), no "Unidentified Network" (two conflicting Networks) and Internet Access.
Tried this, it didn't work.

Unplug router for a minute, or reset it.
Tried both, neither worked.

Router firmware upgrade will solve problem working with windows 7.
Tried this, but was unable to follow the process because I get a dialogue box pop-up requesting user/pass:
"A user name and password are being requested by http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. The site says: "TD-W8901G"
With both the correct username and pass (pasted from network properties) or original password (given that I had changed it) for some bizarre reason it doesn't seem to be accepted. Definately and unconditionally the correct user/pass but not accepted and thus cannot attempt possible firmware upgrade solution.
Turn firewall off.
Tried this, it didn't work.

Find and select "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) in the list then choose the properties button.
The properties window for the TCP/IPv4 protocol opens.
I have the buttons for "Obtain an IP address automatically" and "Obtain DNS server address automatically" selected.
Click the "Advanced" button to open up the Advance TCP/IP Settings window. It should show that you have DHCP enabled, however, in my case the default gateway address for my network was blank. I clicked the "Add" button beneath the Default Gateways box and added the gateway setting for my LAN here. That was it. As soon as I clicked the add button to add the gateway IP address I entered, it connected and I had full Internet access and no further problems connecting automatically after rebooting Win 7.
If you don't already know your LAN's gateway IP address, you can find it by going to the "Search programs and files" box on the Windows Start Menu (bottom left) and typing the command "cmd". Then hit enter to bring open a DOS box. In the DOS box window type the command "ipconfig" and hit enter on your keyboard. Look at the resulting list of numbers displayed beneath the section titled "Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection." The IP address of your LAN's Gateway is listed across from "Default Gateway."
Tried this, it didn't work.

Safe Mode With Networking.
Tried this, it didn't work.

Start
Accessories
Scroll to the "Command Prompt"
Highlight "Command Prompt"
Hold Shift and Right-click on "Command Prompt"
Choose "Run as Administrator"
You are now in the System32
Run this command: netsh winsock reset
It will prompt you to reboot your pc.
Reboot and try to reconnect to your preferred wireless.
Tried this, it didn't work.

Go to the device manager
select network card
right hand mouse button and go to properties
then the advanced tab
find network address
select not present
Now go to start and type CMD at the prompt type:
ipconfig /release
Enter
ipconfig /renew
Enter
Tried this, it didn't work.

- Click Start Button
- Type: ncpa.cpl
- Right click the Wireless Adapter and choose PROPERTIES
- Click and highlight the Internet Protocol TCP/IP Version 4 option
- Click the Properties button
- Choose “Use the following IP address”
- Enter the following for the IP address: 192.168.1.210
- Enter the following for the Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
- Enter the following for the Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1
- Choose “Use the following DNS servers”
- Enter the following for the Primary DNS server: 192.168.1.1
- Enter the following for the Secondary DNS server: 4.2.2.3
- Click OK
- Click OK
- Reconnect to the wireless signal
Tried this, it didn't work.

----------------------------

Have you tried a direct connection to the Modem, bypassing the Router?
Post an ipconfig /all of the computer in question for review.
Click on Start => in run or search box type cmd press enter (run as Admin for Vista and 7). From the black screen, type the word ipconfig /all and press enter. Right click on the black screen or Command prompt then choose Select All and Paste the results onto your Post.

------------

Have you confirmed that none of your browsers are using Proxy servers?
No but I get the yellow exclamation mark on my connection on the taskbar so it seems to be the whole connection rather than just via Firefox and IE.

------------

Ping DNS

Not sure what this is or how to do it but I tried C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32>nslookup and got this:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>nslookup
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
Default Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.1.1

-----------------

Let's try assigning Static IP to both your LAN and Wireless config by following this guide:
Setting a Static IP Address in Windows 7 - PortForward.com
For your Wireless Setting assign the following Static IP:
IP Address - 192.168.2.51. If this IP is already taken try assigning a diff IP as long as it won't past 250.
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - 192.168.2.1
DNS - 208.67.222.222
For your wired connection assign these Static IP:
IP Address - 192.168.1.3
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - 192.168.1.1
DNS - 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
Also, if you want to use your wired connection, disable your wireless connection, do the same method to your wireless connection to avoid conflict, see if it works this time.

One pop-up:
Warning: Multiple default gateways are intended to provide redundancy to a single network (such as intranet or the Internet).
They will not function properly when the gateways are on two separate, disjointed networks (such as one on your intranet and one on the Internet). Do you want to save this configuration? Yes/No
I figured the new settings for the problem wireless connection are conflicting with the wireless from the school so I disabled that adapter but it hasn't stopped the pop-up warnings. Here is another one:
The IP address 192.168.2.51 you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter 'Miscrosoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter' on this computer. If the same address is assigned to both adapters and they both become active, only one of them will use this address. This may result in incorrect system configuration.
Do you want to fix the problem by entering a different IP address for this adapter in the list of IP addresses in the Advanced dialogue box? Yes/No
--------------------

Please switch the settings back to the way they used to be, DHCP or auto IP assignment on both LAN and Wireless.
Do these commands on both. Click on Start and type cmd.
From Command prompt screen type:
ipconfig /release press enter
ipconfig /renew press enter
Now, disable your wireless connection, then try to connect using your wired connection.

------------------------

It won't release and renew with out proper IP's assigned.
Lets Power Cycle your Modem and your computer to get the IP back.
You may do another ipconfig to see if IPs are back. Test your wired connection after.
How to Power Cycle Your Computer and Internet Connection. | Schrock Innovations Computer Company

---------------------

Is your Network Adapter disabled? Your ipconfig shows a Media Disconnected.
Also, you'll have to type ipconfig /all next time to show us the entire output.
At this point you might want to contact your ISP again and be very persistent. There might be something wrong with the modem.
Can you give us a print screen of your computer's Device Manager, expand Network Adapters?

---------------------

REALLY STUPID..!
These problems all started when I disconnected and unplugged the modem so I could give the room a good clean. One thing I hadn't tried was connecting a cable into a little box with a picture of a telephone on it. I thought this was simply for a landline but given my options had more or less run out I gave it a whirl and hey presto my internet is back!

-------------------------

Okay... you might have overlooked the RJ11 or telephone port

==============================

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/searchform.aspx?search=dhcp+both+servers

Linksys WRT54G as a wireless ethernet bridge

forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1115
network-technologies.org/Projects/Virtual_Brain_Online.php/article/62/

IP static and DHCP problem

2012-01-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.configurarequipos.com/respuestas/pregunta16360.html

Wireless Router Network Diagram	Ethernet Router Network Diagram	Hybrid Ethernet Router / Wireless Access Point Network Diagram	Direct Connection Network Diagram
Ad Hoc Wireless Network Diagram	Ethernet Hub/Switch Network Diagram	Phoneline Home Network Diagram	Powerline Home Network Diagram
Two Router Home Network Diagram

How To Identify Network Hardware IP Addresses on a Local Network
1 - IP Address Notation,
2 - IP Address Classes, Broadcast and Multicast,
3 - IP Loopback and Private Addresses, IPv6 Anycast,
4 - DNS - Domain Name System,
5 - IP Network Numbering,
6 - Subnet Masks and Subnetting

7 - IP Subnetting in Practice,
8 - CIDR - Classess Internet Domain Routing,
9 - IP Practice Test

IP Address of a Router

A typical home network router possesses two IP addresses, one for the internal home (LAN) and one for the external Internet (WAN) connection.

The internal, LAN-IP address is normally set to a default, private number. Linksys routers, for example, use 192.168.1.1 for their internal IP address. D-Link and Netgear routers typically use 192.168.0.1. Some US Robotics routers use 192.168.123.254, and some SMC routers use 192.168.2.1. No matter the brand of router, its default internal IP address is listed in the manufacturer's documentation. Administrators have the option to change this IP address during router setup or at any time later. Unless someone manually changes it, however, this private LAN-IP address remains fixed. This address can be viewed and changed from the router's administrative console.

The external, WAN-IP address of the router is set when the router connects to the Internet service provider. This address can also be viewed on the router's administrative console. Alternatively, the WAN-IP address can be found by visiting a Web-based IP address lookup service like http://checkip.dyndns.org/ from any computer on the home LAN.

Another way to identify the public IP addresses of routers, involves executing a ping or traceroute command. From inside a home network, the (DOS) command "ping -r 1" will send a message through the home router that will cause its IP address to be displayed. For example, "ping -r 1 www.yahoo.com" should result in a message like the following displayed on the command prompt:

In this example, the IP address after "Route:" (209.179.21.76) corresponds to the router WAN address.

On corporate networks, network discovery services based on SNMP can automatically determine the IP addresses of routers and many other network devices.

============================

Static IP address assignment (sometimes also called fixed addressing) is an alternative to dynamic addressing (normally, DHCP) on Internet Protocol networks. Dynamic addressing is convenient. It also allows mobile computers to more easily move between different networks.

However, static IP addressing also offers some advantages:

A static IP address best supports name resolution, so that a computer can be most reliably reached over the network by its host / domain name. Web and FTP servers in particular benefit from fixed addressing for this reason.
Using static IP addresses on home networks gives somewhat better protection against network security problems than does DHCP address assignment.
Some network devices do not support DHCP. Using static IP address assignment for all devices on the home network guarantees to avoid potential address conflicts where DHCP may supply an address already assigned statically elsewhere.

When using static IP addresses on home and other private networks, they should be chosen from within the standard private IP address ranges listed:

10.0.0.0 through 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 through 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 through 192.168.255.255

These ranges support many thousands of different IP addresses. It's common for people to assume that any address in these ranges can be chosen and the specific choice doesn't matter much. This is untrue. To choose and set specific static IP addresses suitable for your network, follow these guidelines.

Do not choose any addresses that end with ".0" or ".255" - these addresses are generally reserved for use by network protocols.
Do not choose the addresses at the beginning of a private range. IP addresses like 10.0.0.1 and 192.168.0.1 are very commonly used by network routers and other consumer devices. These are the first addresses someone will attack when trying to break into a private computer network.
Do not choose an address that falls outside the range of your network mask. For example, to support all addresses in the 10.x.x.x private range, the network mask on all devices must be set to 255.0.0.0, otherwise some static IP addresses in this range will not work.

Verify file SFV, MD5, SHA-1 with ilSFV utility

2011-12-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

Source

ilSFV is a free open-source SFV, MD5 and SHA-1 file verification utility.

It has neat interface and allows batch file verification processing.

You can create and verify checksums for files in subdirectories with optional cache for quickly re-verifying files. It can run in the background and reads BSD style checksum files and other less-known formats. It also has option to find renamed files based on checksum files.

Download ilSFV 1.42MB \ Windows

Acronis managed machine service is unavailable

2011-12-14T20:17:00.000-08:00

Source

To resolve the issue you should have restarted the services:

* Go to Start -> Run -> services.msc
* Right-click on the following Acronis services, and click on Restart:

- Acronis Managed Machine Service;
- Acronis Remote Agent;
- Acronis Scheduler2 Service.

-------------------------------------------

The CAUSE
- Windows is unable to appropriately connect to Acronis Machine Service, hence the reported error.
- Windows is unable to register the created Acronis User as a user with log on as a service RIGHTS.
- Some Windows' files are not available for modification during installation.
- In case you ignore the default user, the user to be used must be an Administrator with the above rights.

SOLUTION
- Go to SERVICES and restart The affected service until the error message disappears
- If you're using a normal Windows Admin user, right click the affected service and SELECT properties
- click the LOG ON tab and check "This account" (specify your system Admin account using the full domain syntax)
- put the current system Admin password and click APPLY
- You will get a message telling you that the Account has been granted the Log On As A Service right.
- STOP and RESTART the service or
- Do a Reboot

NOTE
1. You will have to go through the procedure above every time you change your Admin password. I think that's the idea behind the dedicated default Acronis Agent User account suggested during Installation.
2. You may have to do several reboot in order to get the service started the first time.
3. Ensure the appropriate port is opened if you're using any third party FIREWALL.

-------------------------------------------

1. Programs > Administrative Tools > Services.
2. Right click on "Acronis Managed Service" and Properties
3. Click on the Log On tab.
4. Enter your new password and click "Apply" and "OK"

-------------------------------------------

I set the service to manual. I created a batch file to ( net start MMS ) then created a shortcut to Runas Administrator and placed the shortcut in the startup all user folder. No more error just see the flash of the batch file.
MMS is the service name for the Acronis service causing the issue.

-------------------------------------------

By the way, (as a quick fix) to stop my computer from blue screening on reboot, I booted into Safe Mode and re-disabled the three services:

- Acronis Managed Machine Service;
- Acronis Remote Agent;
- Acronis Scheduler2 Service.

after doing that it would reboot and start fine.

-------------------------------------------

workaround

To properly use Acronis product you need a user that has "log on as service" rights, after looking in system services I found out that Acronis Remote Agent is running as Local Service. I forced the service to run as the user that has the "log on as service" rights and now can with no father problems connect both locally and remotely to with menagment console.

-------------------------------------------

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3235

-------------------------------------------

Actually, the Agent reinstallation should solve the issue.

Problem solved by the german support professionals.
Uninstall with revo uninstaller
then abr_cleanup.exe and
then reinstalling.
Not nice but works
-------------------------------------------

One reason why "Acronis Managed Machine Service is unavailable" will show up is when the user account name or password that Acronis is using to connect is changed (this just happened to me when my domain account password expired and I couldn't get the service to restart because of a login failure but I didn't want to uninstall the software).
To fix this access the services console (e.g. in Windows XP right click My Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications -> Services), right-click on the Acronis Managed Machine Service, left-click Properties, left-click the Log On tab, and then set the appropriate username and password and click OK.
-------------------------------------------
Here is a detailed solution to the problem (for my particular problem):
Acronis Secure Zone had filled up and was not deleting older archives that I had thought it would do. When a job would run, it would hang because the SZ was full. This created a very large log file in the "\ProgramData\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\MMS\LogEvents" and/or "\ProgramData\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\MMS\LogContexts" folder (I forget which one). This huge log file causes the MMS service to hang up and give you the "Cannot connect to 'localhost'" error. Deleting this log file allows the service to start normally, but eventually the problem will happen again if the the SZ problem is not fixed.
The overall cause of my problem was several things:
1) My job option "Error handling" was set to "Do not show messages and dialog boxes while processing (silent mode)"
2) My job option "Clean up archive" was set to "When there is insuffiecent space while backing up"
This combination causes it to fail. Apparently there is a "bug" that if you are running with Error Handling set to silent mode, it never kicks off a notification to the Clean up archive task and hence the job just sits sitting filling up the log file and eventually killing the MMS service. Alternatively, you can leave silent mode on but set the "Clean up archive" to "Use retention rules" which uses a scheduled task to clean the archive instead of relying on a notfication from the job.
I hope this helps others. I found this solution by gathering information from a few posts other people had made and eventually calling and working with Acronis Tier-2 support

--------------------------------------------

http://kb.acronis.com/content/10245

syslinux - extlinux

2011-12-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

Quelle

SYSLINUX is a boot loader for the Linux operating system which runs on an MS-DOS/Windows FAT filesystem. It is intended to simplify first-time installation of Linux, and for creation of rescue and other special purpose boot disks.
When properly configured, SYSLINUX can be used to completely eliminate the need for distribution of raw boot floppy images. A SYSLINUX floppy can be manipulated using standard MS-DOS (or any OS capable of accessing an MS-DOS filesystem) tools once it has been created.

SYSLINUX - Syslinux Wiki
Gerne auch Ubuntu-Packages:

Zitat:

SYSLINUX ist ein Bootloader für das Linux/i386-Betriebssystem, welches aus einem MS-DOS/Windows FAT-Dateisystem gestartet wird. Die Erstinstallation von Linux soll damit vereinfacht werden. Außerdem ist es zur Erstellung von Rettungsmedien und anderen startbaren Medien für spezielle Zwecke gedacht.
Es kann auch als PXE-Bootloader beim Start über ein Netzwerk verwendet werden.
SYSLINUX ist möglicherweise nicht als Allzweck-Bootloader verwendbar. Jedoch hat es sich gezeigt, dass SYSLINUX für eine Reihe von speziellen Anwendungsfällen recht gut geeignet ist.

Syslinux ist ein Bootloader für spezielle Anwendungen (USB-Sticks, PXE-Boot) und ist, meiner persönlichen Meinung nach, nicht für die Verwendung gedacht, wie du es gerne hättest.
Du kannst dir gerne auch nochmal den offiziellen Howto-Bereich zu Gemüte führen, hier wird immerhin auf USB-Boot und ISO-Boot eingegangen.
HowTos - Syslinux Wiki
Im ArchLinux-Wiki wird grob auf die Einrichtung von auf Festplatte installierten Systemen und extlinux eingegangen, hier ist vielleicht für dich was dabei:
https://wiki.archlinux.de/title/Syslinux
Erfahrungen wirst du vermutlich nicht so leicht finden, Syslinux ist ein Spezialfall und wird bei "normal" installierten Systemen nicht verwendet.

==============

Das Syslinux Projekt beinhaltet Bootloader für das Dateisystem FAT (SYSLINUX), die Dateisysteme EXT2 und EXT3 (EXTLINUX), CD-ROMs (ISOLINUX) und das Booten aus dem Netzwerk (PXELINUX). Dies steht im Gegensatz zu anderen Bootloadern, die alle Funktionen in einem Programm vereinen. EXTLINUX stellt auf regulären Linuxsystemen eine einfache Alternative zu GRUB und GRUB2 dar.

EXTLINUX:
Um EXTLINUX zu nutzen, muss ein MBR (Master Boot Record) auf die Festplatte geschrieben werden, von der gestartet wird.
cat /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdX
EXTLINUX wird mittels
mkdir /boot/extlinux
extlinux --install /boot/extlinux
installiert. Alle Pfadangaben in der Konfigurationsdatei beziehen sich auf das hier angegebene Verzeichnis /boot/extlinux.
SYSLINUX:
Um SYSLINUX zu nutzen, muss ein MBR (Master Boot Record) auf die Festplatte geschrieben werden, von der gestartet wird.
cat /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/sdX
SYSLINUX wird mittels
mkdir /boot/syslinux
syslinuxl /boot/syslinux
installiert.
====================

Da wurde eine virtuelle Platte angelegt, Mint 11 drauf installiert, eine Datei angelegt, die einen MBR simuliert, ein Eintrag in der boot.ini ... und jetzt läuft's! Noch mit kleinen Fehlern in der Grafik und etwas langsam, aber es läuft. Bin erst mal geschockt - was ist das jetzt eigentlich - eine virtuelle Maschine unter Windows, oder was?

Nö, Wubi (bzw. in deinem Fall eine angepasste Version für Mint) modifiziert deinen Bootloader, es wird ein Eintrag für Mint hinzugefügt. Wenn dieser Bootmenü-Punkt gewählt wird, wird die Datenträger-Datei gemountet, sodass sie wie eine physikalische Festplatte angesprochen werden kann - und davon bootet das System. Jegliche Aktion von Mint wird nur innerhalb dieser virtuellen Festplatte geschrieben und nicht auf deine physikalische NTFS/Fat32-Partition. Hat auch nichts mit virtuellen Maschinen oder so zu tun.

Zitat:

Zitat von wodim

Natürlich erst mal sinnig: Mein GRUB bootet Win2K, das wiederum Mint 11 über GRUB auf der vrutuellen Platte... Möchte also gar nicht wissen, wie's im RAM aussieht.

Windows 2000 wird in diesem Moment nicht gestartet. Im RAM ist in dem Moment einzig Linux Mint und nichts anderes.

Change resolution and frequency in LXDE Mint

2011-12-13T13:39:00.000-08:00

My solution:
In a terminal type
sudo apt-get install lxrand
sudo lxrand
========================
Source
Use this xorg.conf
Section "Screen"
# The Identifier, Device and Monitor lines must be present
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "VESA"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
#Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
# The favoured Depth and/or Bpp may be specified here

DefaultDepth 24

SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
ViewPort 0 0
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
ViewPort 0 0
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
ViewPort 0 0
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

EndSection
As you can see the defaul Depth is 24, and in that mode "800x600" is the first option, so it will be my startup resolution.
============================
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1877757
============================
How change display resolution settings using xrandr
Xrandr is used to set the size, orientation and/or reflection of the outputs for a screen. It can also set the screen size. There are a few global options; the rest modify a particular output and follow the specification of that output on the command line.
Open the terminal and run the following commands
First you need to enter the following command

$ xrandr

This will display the allowed resolutions
Sample output

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA1 connected 800×600+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 267mm x 200mm
800×600 85.1* +
640×480 75.0 60.0
720×400 70.1

If you want to add a mode with resolution 1024X768, you can enter the following command: (The output is shown following.)

$ cvt 1024 768

Sample output

# 1024×768 59.92 Hz (CVT 0.79M3) hsync: 47.82 kHz; pclk: 63.50 MHz
Modeline “1024x768_60.00″ 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync

Now you need to create a modeline

$ xrandr --newmode

copy the modeline of the previous output to the place mode line

$ xrandr --newmode “1024x768_60.00″ 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync

Now you need to add the above mode using the following command

$ xrandr --addmode VGA1 1024x768_60.00

here for VGA1 you have to use what ever that was there for $ xrandr output

$ xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768_60.00

Running these would change your resolution but this is temporary.these steps were done to make sure that these commands work
Now we need to make these changes permanent
Now you need to edit the default file

$gksudo gedit /etc/gdm/Init/Default

Look for the following lines

PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH
OLD_IFS=$IFS

and Add the the following lines below them

xrandr --newmode “1024×768″ 70.00 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA1 1024x768_60.00
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024×768

Save and exit the file
Credit goes here

Multiple Keyboard Selection in LXDE

2011-12-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

Source
by pmav99 on Mon Mar 14, 2011 In case you haven't found how to do it yet, it involves the following steps
1. Open as root, the following file:

Code: Select all: /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

2. Add a line like this one (obviously change the locales at the appopriate ones :

Code: Select all: @setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll us,gr

3. Log out.
It should work on all distros.
Propably you could just add it at the corresponding file at your home if you don't want the settings to be global.
======================
Keyboard layout switch

Find Maximum MTU

2011-12-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

Source
Thanks!
A script to find the maximum MTU (the value before the packet is fragmented). I was not particularly satisfied with dlsreports guide. The command given for us linux might not work most of the time (doesn’t prohibit fragmentation at time) as well as it is not an automatic operation but relies on trial and error.
=================================================================================

#!/bin/bash

PKT_SIZE=1472
HOSTNAME="www.dslreports.com"

count=`ping -M do -c 1 -s $PKT_SIZE $HOSTNAME | grep -c "Frag needed"`

while [ $count -eq 1 ]; do
 ((PKT_SIZE--))
 count=$((`ping -M do -c 1 -s $PKT_SIZE $HOSTNAME | grep -c "Frag needed"`))
done

printf "Your Maximum MTU is [ $((PKT_SIZE + 28)) ] \n"

=============================================================================================
This script will neatly print out the maximum MTU at the end of the operation after finding the optimal value of the packet size.
Explaination:
-M do : Select Path MTU Discovery strategy do (pro‐hibit fragmentation, even local one)
-c : to stop ping when you are done sending information.

Issues with Ubuntu logo

2011-12-13T12:18:00.000-08:00

Big and Ugly Plymouth Logo in Ubuntu 10.04
Plymouth & Virtual Terminal for ATI/NVIDIA

For Katya:
Download "plymouth-theme-mint-logo" and "plymouth-theme-mint-text" using PACKAGE MANAGER

LXDE Setup Guide

2011-12-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

Source
A Beginners Guide To Setting Up Linux Mint LXDE, The Lightweight Champion

1. Linux File System	12. Updating and Upgrading
2. Browsers	13. Purging and Cleaning
3. Desktop	14. Password and Name Changes
4. Taskbar	15. Hidden GUI's and Run
5. Terminal	16. Dual Monitors and Autostart
6. Wallpaper	17. Sound
7. Installing & Removing Repository Applications	18. Network Sharing
8. Installing Nonrepository Applications & Handbrake	19. Renaming Hard Drives
9. Tarballs, The LXDE Main Menu & Lxmed	20. Flash Player in Firefox & Mint 64-bit
10. Microsoft Programs & Wine	21. Simple Bash Command Examples
11. Main Menu and Internet Links to the Desktop - .Desktop Files	22. Some Important Places

Source
Use LXSession Edit to turn on important services
Unfortunately some useful desktop services are turned off in LXDE by default. So you might need to turn them on manually in LXDE. Please execute 'lxsession-edit' or find 'Desktop Session Settings' in the application menu. Please complain to the developers of the distro you use and asked them to enable those services, such as network manager, in LXDE.

As you can see, network manager, pulse audio, and others can all be turned on here.

Network

After login, the first issue you'll encounter is 'how to connect to the internet'?

Network manager: Actually, network manager works pretty well under LXDE. You just need to turn it on since it's deliberately disabled in LXDE by some distros. Use LXSession Edit to turn it on.
wicd: Many users prefer this over network manager. However it's less user-friendly and it's written in Python. So you'll need python runtime to use it.
connman: The network management tool from Intel. I have tested it but it doesn't work on my laptop.
lxnm: It's currently broken. Don't use it until Fred fixes it.
Other distro-specific ways: Read the 'fine' manuals for your distros.

NOTE: unlike XFCE, Gnome, KDE and almost every other Desktop environment there is no way to "remember" wireless settings in Lubuntu or LXDE Mint, which is a huge snafu. I do not know if ubuntu plans on fixing this and can find no solution in the forums.

Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment

2011-12-13T11:56:00.000-08:00

LXDE, Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, is a desktop environment which is lightweight and fast. It is designed to be user friendly and slim, and keep the resource usage low. LXDE uses less RAM and less CPU while being a feature rich desktop environment. Unlike other iphone photography tightly integrated desktops LXDE strives to be modular, so each component can be used independently with few dependencies. This makes porting LXDE to different distributions and platforms easier.

A good starting point is the General Information page, where you find information on system requirements and compatibility. You also find an overview of distributions including LXDE with installation instructions, plus more general installation instructions, information on LXDE components and our future plans on the wiki. More about LXDE on the lxde.org website, the LXDE blogs, and in the LXDE forum.

Here is a complete LXDE setup guide from the creator of LXDE.

LXDE Components

PCManFM, is a fast and lightweight file manager with features like Drag & Drop support, tabbed browsing (Similar to Firefox), Built-in file searching utility, fast load of large directories, File association support (Default application), Thumbnail for image files, Bookmarks support, correct handling of non-UTF-8 encoded filenames and more
LXLauncher, an easy-mode application launcher
LXPanel, desktop panel. The panel can generate menu for installed applications automatically from *.desktop files. It can be configured from GUI preference dialog, and there is no need to edit config files. The component provides a "Run" dialog with autocompletion.
LXSession, a session manager. The LXSession manager is used to automatically start a set of applications and set up a working desktop environment. Moreover, the session manager is able to remember the applications in use when a user logs out and to restart them the next time the user logs in.
LXSession Edit, an edit manager for session management. The window manager in use in LXDE can be changed, the tool offers the ability to turn on disabled applications.
LXAppearance, a theme switcher. You can change the theme, icons, and fonts used by applications easily.
Leafpad, a text editor
Xarchiver, archiving
GPicView, an image viewer. GPicView features lightening fast startup and intuitive interface.
LXTerminal, a terminal emulator
LXTask, a task manager / system monitor
LXNM, a lightweight network connection helper daemon for LXDE supporting wireless connections (Linux-only)
Openbox, a window manager and obconf
LXRandr, a screen manager. Manages screen resolution and external monitors.
LXShortCut, an easy way to edit application shortcuts
LXMusic, a minimalist xmms2-based music player
LXDE Common, the default settings configuration file for integrating the different components of LXDE. LXDE Common manages the system behavior and functions to integrate icons and artwork.
GtkNetCat, a Graphic User Interface for netcat. Netcat provides system functions as a computer networking utility for reading from and writing to network connections on either TCP or UDP.
Menu-Cache now moved to libexec
LXInput, a config tool to configure your keyboard and mouse under LXDE
lxde-settings-daemon, configures theme, keyboard and mouse for you. (works with lxinput config tool)
LXDM, a lightweight display manager
LXMenu Data, a collection of files, intended to adapt LXDE menus to the freedesktop.org menu specification

How to customize LXDE

Change keyboard layouts
Automatically start some applications
Change window manager in LXDE
Some suggested lightweight applications to be used in LXDE
How to get Folders, Files and Icon Launchers on the Desktop
How to start applications on specific desktops
How to add entries to the menu
How to set hotkeys

Tips and Tricks for Linux Mint 11

2011-12-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

Editions for Linux Mint 11 "Katya"
Desktop environments: LXDE and gnome
=========================
This is the official Linux Mint User Guide, available in many languages in both PDF and ODT formats:
Download link: http://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php
=========================
Source
If you have the Linux Mint system which comes with the default Gnome desktop environment installed in your PC, you might find these tips and tricks useful for working with the system.
Note: The steps described in this article work with Linux Mint 11 and Linux Mint 10.
Start - Herramientas del sistema - Soporte de idiomas

or
sudo gnome-language-selector

Panel

Window

Desktop

File Manager

Keyboard Shortcuts

Sound

Add Fonts, Screenlets and More Software

Drive and Partition

Startup and Shutdown

Linux:VGA boot modes to set screen resolution

2011-12-13T10:38:00.000-08:00

Source
A simple way to set your screen resolution and color depth for most Live Linux distro's is via the use of the vga=parameter boot option.
VGA Resolution and Color Depth reference Chart:

Depth	800×600	1024×768	1152×864	1280×1024	1600×1200
8 bit	vga=771	vga=773	vga=353	vga=775	vga=796
16 bit	vga=788	vga=791	vga=355	vga=794	vga=798
24 bit	vga=789	vga=792		vga=795	vga=799

Wireless devices issues in LInux

2011-12-13T09:41:00.000-08:00

Source
On Debian-based systems (which of course include Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu), and by extension, Peppermint Two, which is derived directly from Lubuntu), the following Debian Wiki page is of great help: http://wiki.debian.org/bcm43xx
On that page, it is pointed out that the firmware-b43-installer package will normally do everything required, including probing for the correct firmware module, once installed. In my case, apparently on Peppermint Two, something was already "there", either installed or configured in a way that created a conflict with the expected behavior. The Wiki page listed above also covers work around behavior to account for issues with module probing.
In case of difficulties, these steps, described on the Wiki page, should resolve the conflict:
The necessary kernel module should be automatically loaded. If necessary, it can be manually loaded via either:
modprobe b43
or
modprobe b43legacy
Verify your device has an available interface:
iwconfig
Raise the interface to activate the radio, for example:
ifconfig wlan0 up
If that still does not immediately resolve the issue, then
modprobe -r b43
echo options b43 pio=1 qos=0 >> /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf
modprobe b43
should take care of it.

Consult the Wiki page for a step by step installation, with follow-up troubleshooting steps. Normally, just installing firmware-b43-installer will perform all steps needed. When that fails, the troubleshooting will take care of the rest. This works great, and I have all of my systems correctly, automatically, and cleanly bringing up the wireless interface now.

A final point: I have found the wicd network management package to be more robust than the network-manager package that is usually distributed, especially in Ubuntu-based distributions. One nice feature of the wicd package is that you can configure your system to automatically connect to a wired Ethernet connection when one is present, and either automatically or manually connect to a wireless network otherwise. Furthermore, you can optionally configure wicd to reconnect in the event of a network disruption or disconnection (and disable that feature if your network tends to "bounce" up and down. The flexibility of these features has resulted in extremely reliable network management on every system in which wicd controls network management.

I did PM the guy who wrote the original HOWTO concerning configuring Broadcom wireless interfaces. His information looks a bit dated. There should be absolutely no reason to have to download source code and have to build it for wireless firmware. That goes a bit against the tone and spirit of this distribution, and moreover, since that stuff was created, it appears that it was either unavailable when I looked at it or inaccessible, but I was unable to even reach the sites mentioned in the HOWTO. But the main thing is that the HOWTO completely misses the big thing: when even the automatic firmware installer can't probe the modules, correctly, there are modprobe steps to probe, remove the probed module, and reinitialize it - if needed - that overcome issues, and we don't touch those areas at all (that I have been able to find) in our existing documentation, yet that was the "magic step" that finally got me past the issues I was facing.

Tips and Tricks for Linux Mint after Installation

2011-12-12T22:25:00.000-08:00

Source
Linux Mint is one of the top free operating systems widely used in the world and currently receives the highest hits at DistroWatch.
Even though it's an Ubuntu-based system, Linux Mint features only one panel at the bottom which looks closer to the taskbar in the Windows system, and a well-organized start menu complete with a useful Search box. It also pre-installs some proprietary software, including the Adobe Flash plugin and necessary media codecs, by default so that you can view streaming media, such as YouTube videos in a browser, and play mp3, mp4 or most other media files with a player right away out of the box.
If you have the Linux Mint system which comes with the default Gnome desktop environment installed in your PC, you might find these tips and tricks useful for working with the system.
Note: The steps described in this article work with Linux Mint 11 and Linux Mint 10.

Tips and Tricks for Linux Mint - Quick Select Index

After clicking a link, use your browser's Back icon to return here.

Panel

Window

Desktop

File Manager

Keyboard Shortcuts

Sound

Add Fonts, Screenlets and More Software

Drive and Partition

Startup and Shutdown

F-OS software:Calculators

2011-12-11T20:56:00.001-08:00

Source

LibreOffice in Ubuntu

2011-12-11T18:39:00.001-08:00

1 History
LibreOffice (pronounced /ˌliː.brəˈɒ.fɪs/) is a free and open source office suite developed by The Document Foundation as a fork of OpenOffice.org. It is largely compatible with other major office suites, including Microsoft Office, and available on a variety of platforms. Its developers' goal is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF file support, accessible to anyone and led by developers which do not have to sign their name to the product.
LibreOffice is a hybrid word, meaning "Free Office". Libre means free (as in freedom) in French and Spanish.
LibreOffice has been downloaded approximately 7.5 million times since its first stable launch in January 2011.^[4] It is the default office suite in many Linux distributions, such as Fedora,^[5] Linux Mint,^[6] openSUSE,^[7] and Ubuntu.^[8]
LibreOffice can be run on Microsoft Windows 2000 (with Service Pack 4 or newer) or newer, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or newer, and Linux-based systems running Linux kernel version 2.6.18 or newer.^[1] Ports for FreeBSD and OpenBSD are being maintained by contributors to those projects, respectively.^[9]

=============================
Source
Easily testing the latest builds of OpenOffice-fork LibreOffice in Ubuntu is now a cinch using the dedicated LibreOffice packaging PPA for Ubuntu users.
Bye bye .deb downloading

Up until now users have had to install via the oh-so-not-so-painful task of downloading a bunch of .debs files. This manual approach to installing updates has meant many users are running older versions, unaware of subsequent releases.

Adding a PPA ensures you are notified of pending updates whilst also offering the advantage of being able to upgrade easily.

Better still adding the LibreOffice PPA won’t affect OpenOffice (if installed) so feel free to take it for a test sans undue stress.

Download

The PPA provides packages for Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04 users.

To add the PPA and install LibreOffice add ‘ppa:libreoffice/ppa’ to your software sources or run the command below in a new Terminal session: -

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libreoffice

Now to make it appear a tad nicer under your desktop environment of choice: -

Ubuntu users should run

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

Kubuntu users should run: -

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

Personal Package Archive (PPA)

2011-12-11T18:31:00.001-08:00

Source by Shawn Powers

Package management in Linux is great, but unfortunately, it comes with afew cons. Granted, most distributions keep all your software, not justsystem software like Apple and Microsoft, updated. The downside is thatsoftware packages aren't always the latest versions. Whatever is inthe repository is what you get. Another frustration is when the softwareyou want to install isn't in the distribution repositories at all.

Usually, it's possible to add software packages, even if they're not inthe repos. For Red Hat-based systems, those are RPM files. ForDebian-based, they're DEBs. Unfortunately, installing applications that way doesn'tgive you upgrades when they're available; you need to keep themupdated yourself. Most package management systems also have the abilityto add third-party repos, but those don't always have the packages you want.

Canonical has a feature in newer versions of Ubuntu that allow the best ofboth worlds. They're called PPAs (Personal Package Archives). Instead ofdistributing .deb files, developers simply can distribute their PPAs.With a PPA, the software is updated automatically along with beinginstalled in the first place. While installing PPAs hopefullywill become simpler, in the short term, they're still pretty easy to install.You just need to find the right PPA structure, usually given by thedevelopers that support the idea. For example, to install the MozillaDaily Build PPA, simply type:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa

Someday, installing a third-party application will be as easy in Linux as itis in Windows and Macintosh. With ideas like PPA repositories, however,your software will stay updated. And, that sounds P-P-Perfectto me.

install and configure wine in mint linux

2011-12-11T08:23:00.001-08:00

Source
Wine is a compatibility layer that lets you, in theory, run applications written for Windows on a Unix-like system (though depending on the application, it can take some tweaking, and some applications just won’t work properly). Wine installs quite easily and runs just fine on Linux Mint 10. First, you’ll need to install Wine with this command at the Terminal prompt:
sudo apt-get install wine
Enter your password to authenticate, and apt-get will download and install Wine. The combined packages come to a little over a hundred megabytes, so it might take a while to install depending upon your connection speed.
After the installation is finished, you’ll have a new Wine category added to your Applications menu.
To install Windows software in Wine, you need to right-click on the installer file and select “Open With Wine Windows Program Loader”.
You can also install Windows software with Wine through the command line, which is often the easier way to do it. For instance, to install the example above, you would use this command:
wine ~/Downloads/INSTALL.EXE
If the application did not install, you’ll probably have to change the Wine settings. The best course is to probably browse the Wine application database, and see if you can find the correct settings there.
=========================
howtoforge.com/installing-windows-software-with-wine-linux-mint-11
shameless copied! Danke vielmals, Christian!
Copyright © 2011 Christian Schmalfeld
c [dot] schmalfeld [at] projektfarm[dot] de
All Rights Reserved.
[...]
Install Windows Software

After having installed Wine you can browse the internet for softwareyou would like to use with it. As I said before, I will use Windows'version of VLC media player. Software you download from the internet isusually stored in your home directory's Downloads folder. I have put my VLC installer on my desktop:

To start working with it you first have to change permissions, otherwise following error will appear:

If you are not certain that you can trust the source you downloadedthe software from, better let it be or download it from another source.If you are certain however, open a terminal, become root with

and grant permissions by entering the following (replace my document path with your file's path):

chmod 777 /home/ctest/Desktop/vlc-1.1.11-win32.exe

Afterwards you should be able to doubleclick it to open it. If not, rightclick and choose Open With Wine Windows Program Loader. This should open the installation setup:

Follow the steps of the setup. When you are asked for theinstallation directory do not be confused about the fact that youproposed a C:\ drive for installation,this is a virtual drive provided by Wine. You can leave it at that orinstall your software somewhere else.

After the installation is done, you can run your software by navigating to the installation path and opening the .exe file. If you were given the option to create a start menu link, your software will also be available on Menu > Wine.

Playonlinux for segmentation

Submitted by Spanky (not registered) on Fri, 2011-11-04 16:12.

I use Playonlinux, and put everything (not just games) in it's own container. This way, experiments don't mess-up good installs, and they can be summarily deleted. Plus, each can use it's own version of wine, and this is separate, from the base system install.

Separate from all that, and the base WINE install, is Picasa; with it's very own container automatically. You don't even have to think about it. However, I have moved it(very custom), and upgraded it to the beta 3.8, with face recognition.

Winetricks often needed

Submitted by JohnP (not registered) on Tue, 2011-11-01 00:14.

For some Windows software, using Winetricks is necessary too. While I haven't attempted any WINE efforts under Mint, I have gotten Quicken 2011 Premium and Quicken 2008 Home and Business working under LUbuntu 10.04. For the specific steps, Greg has been posting updates over at WineHQ.org. http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=107
Today I received a new Quicken H&B 2012, so instructions on getting that loaded will be posted soon. There's nothing in the "system requirements" to make me think it will not work.
I can confirm that MS-Office 2003 works under Wine too. Sadly, not all Windows software can run under WINE. More and more, there are Linux native options, which is very nice.

Windows 7 Service Pack1

2011-12-10T12:24:00.001-08:00

Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 Readme
Documentation
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It?
upgrade only if your version is Genuine!
Installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1Head to Windows Update through your Start Menu search box, and then click on the “Important updates are available” link. If you don’t see this link, click the “Check for updates” on the left side, and it should show up.

You should see Windows 7 Service Pack 1 in the list, and you’ll need to check it (it’s unchecked by default).
Click the OK button, then click to install it, and then just wait. It’ll take a while to download, and once it finishes downloading, it’ll force you to reboot.
This Service Pack 1 is IMPORTANT and should be installed due to hardware transition which is now taking place.Example:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018
Download the ISO here:
microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID...

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 helps keep your PCs and servers on the latest support level. It also provides ongoing improvements to the Windows Operating System (OS), by including previous updates delivered over Windows Update as well as continuing incremental updates to the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 platforms based on customer and partner feedback. This enables organizations to deploy a single set of updates.
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will help you:

Keep your PCs supported and up-to-date
Get ongoing updates to the Windows 7 platform
Easily deploy cumulative updates at a single time
Meet your users' demands for greater business mobility
Provide a comprehensive set of virtualization innovations
Provide an easier Service Pack deployment model for better IT efficiency

Do not click download if you are updating just one computer: A smaller, more appropriate download is now available on Windows Update. The best way to ensure you get Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 is by turning on the Automatic Updates feature. You can use our step-by-step instructions or, if you prefer, let us do it for you. If Windows Update is not offering you the option to install the service pack, see KB 2498452. If you are encountering a problem when installing the service pack from Windows update, see Troubleshoot problems installing a service pack for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
Steps to take before installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 from the Microsoft Download Center
If you choose to install Windows 7 SP1 from the Microsoft Download Center Web site, there are steps that you can take to make sure that you have a good experience when you install the service pack. This article, KB 2505743, provides some suggestions to improve your experience when you install Windows 7 SP1 from the Microsoft Download Center Web site.
In order to download and install Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 you must currently have a Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 already installed.
If you have previously installed a pre-release version of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 on your machine, you must uninstall that version before installing SP1.
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 is available for installation in the same languages made available at original launch of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Instructions
Click the Continue button then on any Download button on this page to start the download, or choose a different language from the drop-down list and click Go.

Do one of the following:
- To copy the download to your computer for installation at a later time, click Save or Save this program to disk.
- To start the installation immediately, click Open or Run this program from its current location.

7601.17514.101119-1850_Update_Sp_Wave1-GRMSP1.1_DVD.iso - This DVD image contains standalone update for all architectures.
windows6.1-KB976932-IA64.exe - This application installs Sp1 to an Itanium 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2.
Windows_Win7SP1.7601.17514.101119-1850.X86FRE.Symbols.msi - Standalone debugging symbols (free) for 32-bit machines.
Windows_Win7SP1.7601.17514.101119-1850.X86CHK.Symbols.msi - Standalone debugging symbols (checked) for 32-bit machines.
Windows_Win7SP1.7601.17514.101119-1850.AMD64FRE.Symbols.msi - Standalone debugging symbols (free) for 64-bit machines. This contains debugging symbols for both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
Windows_Win7SP1.7601.17514.101119-1850.AMD64CHK.Symbols.msi - Standalone debugging symbols (checked) for 64-bit machines. This contains debugging symbols for both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
Windows_Win7SP1.7601.17514.101119-1850.IA64FRE.Symbols.msi - Standalone debugging symbols (free) for Itanium 64-bit machines.
Windows_Win7SP1.7601.17514.101119-1850.IA64CHK.Symbols.msi - Standalone debugging symbols (checked) for Itanium 64-bit machines.

windows6.1-KB976932-X86.exe - This application installs Sp1 to a 32-bit machine running Windows 7.

windows6.1-KB976932-X64.exe 903,2 MB

windows6.1-KB976932-X64.exe - This application installs Sp1 to a 64-bit machine running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

windows6.1-KB976932-X86.exe 537,8 MB
Spanish SP1:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/es-es/details.aspx?familyid=c3202ce6-4056-4059-8a1b-3a9b77cdfdda&displaylang=es

Windows File Sharing

2011-12-10T12:04:00.001-08:00

Source

This is a general checklist for sharing files between PCs in a peer to peer network. There can be other reasons for problems but I think most people new to networking and finding sharing a problem will find the answer somewhere in this checklist.

These checks are all necessary for sharing to work with TCP/IP.
- PCs which are not XP must have TCP/IP installed.
- Each PC must have a unique computer name.
- Each PC must have a network share defined.
- ALL NICS must be on the same subnet (e.g. IP 192.168.0.* subnet mask 255.255.255.0).
- XP PCs must have Netbios over TCP/IP enabled (only essential for XP to talk to W9X PCs).
- MS Client and file and printer sharing must be enabled on each NIC.
- All NICs must have their node type = anything except p-node (peer to peer, or point-point). Check at cmd prompt with Ipconfig /all (XP/W2K) or winipcfg (W9X).
- XP's ICF firewall is permanently disabled. (Only necessary for pre XP SP2).
- All 3rd party firewalls are disabled, uninstalled and deleted (until connection is working).
- PCs have the same workgroup (helps, but not essential).
Allow 15 mins after rebooting a PC for that PC to appear in the workgroup, or for it to see all other PCs. Or you can search for the PC by its computer name.
If all the above checked out and still a problem check these:
Other ideas:
- Realtek cards have been known to be a problem with IRQ conflicts. Move the Realtek card to another PCI slot.
- Check your Services are Started on all PCs: Workstation, Server, TCP/IP Netbios helper, Computer Browser.
- You only need TCP/IP. NWLink NetBIOS, NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBIOS Compatible Transport Protocol are not needed and can confuse things. Remove them.
- XP gives access to its shares via the Guest Account. (Note, the local guest account in user accounts which should be off).
Net Guest Account access is enabled by default in XP, but check it:
At command prompt:
Net user guest
Should return a line with 'Account active yes'.
If not active use:
Net user guest /active:yes
(Still leave the user guest account off)
See link for explanation of guest account:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300489/
Check XP Security policies:
- Access this computer from the network: add guest
- Deny logon locally: remove guest
- Network access:Sharing and security model... -- Guest only
- Deny access to this computer from the network-- check Guest is not here.
Other useful guides for step by step sharing are available here:
http://practicallynetworked.com/shar...ilesharing.htm
MS Tech D/B
http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp
and here:
http://www.homenethelp.com/web/howto/net.asp
Developing a SOHO network, sharing and security (by MS):
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p...et/default.asp
How to share a printer and connect to a shared printer:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en
Ports to open in a firewall for various applications:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/ports.asp
I will try to develop these checks with time. If you have suggestions to add/improve the checklist feel free to post your ideas.
If you have a network problem please start your own thread with the problem. Please do not post your problem here or reply to this thread.

TCP/IP File Sharing Checklist
Wireless a/b/g
If you are waiting a reply from me and none appears, Personal Message me to get my attention.
Note: My views are based on my personal experience and do not represent practicallynetworked.com

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Source
Vista asks for password trying to connect to other Vista PC

Click Start - Network - Network and Sharing:
Password Protected: OFF (unless you want to set up identical usernames andpasswords on ALL computers in your Network) If you have it ON, and no identical usernames/passwords set up, you will be asked for a username and password when you try to access a Vista computer from an XP computer, or a
Vista computer.

-------------

Make sure you can ping the Vista machine from the XP and with that being successful, try this tutorial I put together:
http://willsit.com/XP_Vista.aspx

XP and Vista Networking within a Home Network

Many critics of Microsoft products have thru the years have blamed those products with a lack of security, and sometimes rightly so. Microsoft does everything possible to lock down those products and everyone starts complaining this it is now “broken”.
Well, it is not broken but there a couple of issues you need to resolve and configure to make these two systems “talk” to one another. By “talking” to one another, we mean sharing resources across your home network. Resources could be anything from music files, pictures, or even a printer. In this section, show you the new settings within Vista you need to consider and configure. Vista sees two types of networks, Public and Private.
Navigate to the Network and Sharing Center and take a look at the new features. You will see you connection to the internet and whether it is designated as Private or Public. This would have been determined at the time you made you connection to the internet. For the moment, let’s deal with a private network, which is your network at home. You must have a "Private" network in order to share files within your home environment.

Hit "Customize" on the right side of the panel to make any needed changes.

What we want is a "Private Network" with any name you deisre to identify your network.

Choose Private and complete the wizard.

By default, Public File Sharing will de disabled. We have been talking about a Public folder so just where is it located? Go to the C Drive>Users>Public and within there you will see the “Public Folders”.

Among these there are folders for Documents, Music, Pictures, etc. At this point, only users on the local machine have access to this folder as shown in the graphic below:

Special caveat at this point. These instructions will allow access to

the built in Public Folder from within your local network

Hit the drop down arrow on the right side of the panel and you will be presented with three options:

• Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open files
• Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open, change, and create files
• Turn off sharing (people logged onto this machine can still access this folder)

Special Note:

Option #1 menas that users from another machine can "Read' files withn the public folder

Option #2 means that users from another network machin can "Read, Change, abd Create" Files within the public folder

Option #3 only allows access to user logged on to the local machine, i.e., no network access.

You could circumvent this by enabling the Guest Account but this is not encouraged.

Open, Create, and Change Files are the same as “Modify” within NTFS permissions. NTFS permissions are an advanced set of permissions used by operating systems since Windows 2000 was introduced. No access means just that. The folder is only available to local users on the Vista machine.
In the graphic below you see a Vista machine named VMVista connected to the internet from within a Private Network. My Workgroup name is named “Wills”. Public File Sharing has been turned on for Network users to “Open, Change, and Create “files. My XP machine (Dell1705) has a Username “John Wills” and so does the Vista machine. I can either “map” a drive to the Public Folder or use “Explorer” to use it.

We can now get to the Public Folder, but what about if you want to create a "special" Shared Folder in which you want to restrict access. This would mean that although a User might have an account on the target Vista machine, you can deny access to this new folder.Go to the C drive and create a new folder named “Test”.

Right click the folder and go to Properties. You will see the Security and Sharing tabs (in version Home Premium and Ultimate). Hit the Sharing tab and you are now presented with a couple of options. Look for a button named Share and hit it and you see the box below:

Continuing with the example, I have created a new user named "Network User" choose “Network User” (a local user on my Vista and XP machine) and select add. Hit the Permission Level and determine the level of access they need. Hit the Share button and complete the process. In this case, “Network User” will be given “Reader” access.

Now hit the "Share" button and you will now see the newly created Shared Folder.

This folder is now accessable from the XP machine on the network by either mapping a Network Drive or using the "Explorer" Method.

Go to My Computer and in the Explorer URL type:

\\vmvista\test or \\vmvista\public

and you will see the folders accessable to you.

**Note**

Subsituite the correct name of your Vista machine for this example to work for you.

The owner of the folder (the user who created it) has by default full access to that folder. Now you can add named users on the network or something unique named “Everyone”. This is basically the same process you went thru in the previous example but now you begin to see how the process works. The “Permissions” that you can give to any user are:
1. Reader (Default)
2. Contributor – this means the user can modify the data
3. Co-Owner – gives the user full access to the entire folder
4. Remove (after action)

Something to note. “Everyone” means EVERYONE. Anyone who gains or has access to your network has access to and file or folder with the Everyone permission. A better plan of action would be to give a specific user the permissions they need otherwise put data that “Everyone” needs access to in the Public folder. Beginning to make sense?Continuing with the example, I have created a new user named "Network User" choose “Network User” (a local user on my Vista and XP machine) and select add. Hit the Permission Level and determine the level of access they need. Hit the Share button and complete the process. In this case, “Network User” will be given “Reader” access.

At times this can get confusing but the key to remember is properly allocate permissions. My examples were created with a "virtual" Vista machine using VM Ware and the host machine running XPSP2.

============================

Share Files and Printers between Windows 7 and XP

If you have a home network and are running Windows 7 and have XP on other PC(s) you might want to share files between them. Today we will look at the steps to share files and hardware devices like a printer.
Sharing Files In Windows 7 and XP
Sharing folders between two Windows 7 machines with the new HomeGroup feature is an easy process, but the HomeGroup feature is not compatible with Vista or XP. For this tutorial we are using Windows 7 x64 RC1 and XP Professional SP3 connected through a basic Linksys home wireless router.
First make sure both machines are members of the same Workgroup which by default is named Workgroup.

On the Windows 7 machine go into Control Panel \ All Control Panel Items \ Network and Sharing Center then click on Change advanced sharing settings.

You will want to verify the following settings under Advanced Sharing Settings for the Home or Work and Public profile.

If you want any user to have access the public shares turn off password protection. This is located in Advanced Sharing Settings toward the bottom of the list.

If you want to keep it enabled make sure there is a log in account for the other XP machines and they have a password.

Now if you go into Network in Windows 7 you should see your XP machine and the Windows 7 as well which in this case is Mysticgeek-PC.

To share the printer on the Windows 7 machine go into Devices and Printers from the Start menu and double click on the printer icon.

Next double click on “Customize your printer”.

In the Properties screen click on the Sharing Tab and check the box to share the printer and type in its share name.

If your XP machine is an x86 OS you can install Additional Drivers before setting up the XP machine.

To find the shared folders and devices double click on the Windows 7 machine icon under Network. Here you can see the printer connected to my Windows 7 machine is shared and also the Users Folder.

Continue into the Users folder and Public to see the shared folders, here I also created a folder called XP Share just to keep everything in central location.

Over on your XP machine open up My Network Places to find the Windows 7 (mysticgeek-pc) shared folder.

Double click on the Share folder to find a list of shared folders in the Public folder on Windows 7. If you have password protection enabled you will need to type in the username and password of the user account on the Windows 7 machine first.

Setup XP With Shared Printer
To set up the shared printer in XP you will need to go into Printers and Faxes from the Start menu and kick off the Add Printer Wizard.

Now select “A network printer, or a printer attached to another computer” then hit Next.

Next select “Connect to this printer…” and type in the path for the printer connected to the Windows 7 machine and click next.

Now click Yes to the confirmation message.

Then click Finish the printer to install and complete the Wizard.

In some cases you will need to install the x86 XP drivers for the shared printer because the Windows 7 drivers are not compatible with XP. When everything is installed open up Printers and Faxes to find the shared printer.

This should help you get started with sharing your files and other devices with your Windows 7 machine. When I first started I was able to see the printer on XP right away because I had a HomeGroup set up, but once I deleted it I needed to share the printer like you would for a workgroup. You might also have to do a couple restarts of the XP machine for it to see the shared resources on Windows 7. If you have had any experiences with sharing between Windows 7 and XP leave us a comment!

PC crashed RAID kaput!

2011-12-10T07:29:00.001-08:00

Source
Native RAID and Dynamic Disk Support

What happens if your motherboard just fries, leaving you no choice except buying a readily available replacement? Finally, what if your old board gets discontinued, and you are forced to replace a faulty one with a new version with a different RAID controller?

RAID arrays are gaining popularity among advanced computer users thanks to the built-in RAID support provided by modern motherboards. Assembling several disks into a RAID array allows for increased reliability or higher transfer speeds, or both.
Native RAID Compatibility Issues: Intel, nVidia and VIA Chipsets
What happens if you created a RAID on a system board with a VIA chip set, and then decide to upgrade to Intel or nVidia or vice versa? Or what if your motherboard just fries, leaving you no choice except buying a readily available replacement? Finally, what if your old board gets discontinued, and you are forced to replace a faulty one with a new version with a different RAID controller? In cases like those, plugging in your hard disk array into a new motherboard won’t make a working RAID array. At best, you’ll get several separate disks. At worst, the new RAID system will attempt ‘repairing’ the array, destroying your data to the point of complete loss.
Windows Dynamic Disks: Solution or Problem?Windows 2000, XP, as well as 2003 and 2008 Server employ dynamic disks, a software-based technology that is similar to RAID. Often used on server operating systems, dynamic disks perform similarly to ‘real’ RAID arrays. Windows software enables low-level support of these disks instead of the chips on the computer’s motherboard.
Dynamic disks allow upgrading computer hardware at any time without trouble. Everything is fine until you switch the operating system. Dynamic disks created in Windows 2008 Server are not recognized in prior versions, and RAID 5 dynamic disks are not recognized in Windows XP. As such, dynamic disks are more of an issue rather than a solution to RAID incompatibilities.
The SolutionThe Native RAID and Dynamic Disk Support technology developed by DiskInternals is the real solution to the problem of broken hardware and software-based RAID arrays. The technology recognizes and mounts RAID arrays created with all current Intel, nVidia or VIA chipsets, and fully supports Windows Dynamic Disks, adding backward compatibility between the different versions of Windows.
The technology can mount the following types of native RAID arrays: JBod (RAID 0), Stripe (RAID 0), Mirror (RAID 1), RAID 5 (with complete recovery of all data if any one disk is missing or damaged), and RAID 0+1 (RAID 10). DiskInternals data recovery products employ this technology to repair broken RAID arrays and recover data if any disk is corrupted or damaged.
Native RAID and Dynamic Disk Support supports all types of dynamic disks, including Simple, Span, Stripe , Mirror and RAID 5 arrays, allowing mounting a dynamic disk on any Windows version. You can even boot from a Boot CD and still have access to the RAID and dynamic disks!
Native RAID and Dynamic Disk Support is part of all data recovery products manufactured by DiskInternals. A stand-alone implementation of this technology is featured in a free RAID reader product, Raid 2 Raid.

Data Recovery Solutions for RAID ArraysDiskInternals Raid Recovery

unRAID

2011-12-10T07:03:00.001-08:00

Source
Overview
Digital Media Storage Solutions
unRAID Server is an embedded Network Attached Storage server Operating System designed to boot from a USB Flash device and specifically designed for digital media storage:
Digital Video
Digital Music
Digital Images/Photos
Unique RAID System
unRAID Server employs a unique RAID technology which provides for great configuration flexibility:
Any combination of IDE and SATA hard drives may be used.
All the hard drives do not need to be the same size or speed.
Hard drives not being accessed may be spun down.
Can rebuild any single failed hard drive.
True Incremental Storage
Unlike other RAID systems, unRAID Server supports true incremental storage expansion. You can add capacity by adding more hard drives or by upgrading existing hard drives. This is a great way to make use of older, smaller hard drives you might have laying around.
For example, you might start out by installing one or two new high capacity hard drives along with some number of smaller hard drives you already own. Later, you might decide to replace one of the smaller drives, and unRAID Server will restore the data of the smaller drive onto the new drive, and then expand the file system to incorporate the full size of the new drive.
Better Fault Tolerance
Similar to other RAID systems, unRAID Server permits reconstruction of a single failed hard drive. However in the unlikely event of multiple hard drive failures, data loss would be isloated to only those hard drives which failed. In traditional RAID systems, multiple simultaneous hard drive failure results in complete data loss.
Network Attached Storage
unRAID Server is compatible with Windows Networking. Individual data disks appear as disk shares under My Network Places. In addition, unRAID Server provides a composite view of all your storage through the use of User shares.
User shares permit you to view your storage as if it were one large file system, even though each data disk has it’s own file system. This lets you define share names such as Movies, Video, Photos, etc. whose actual contents are spread out among multiple hard drives.
Installed On A USB Flash Storage Device
unRAID server is designed to be installed on, and boot from, a USB Flash Storage device. All configuration data is also kept on the Flash; the hard drives are only used to store user data.
Supports Multiple Hardware Platforms
unRAID Server is largely hardware independent. System builders: please visit the Hardware Compatibility page on the unRAID Wiki for the latest list of supported hardware.

A more detailed introduction: Technology and Uses

Advantages of unRAID over similar products

No striping, so safer for multiple drive failures; parity protection, so resistant to single drive failure; flexible, can mix and match drive brands, sizes, and types, easily add additional drives, etc...

Each drive is an independent file system. An unRAID array can be thought of as a parity protected JBOD. If the array fails, the individual drives are still accessible, unlike traditional RAID arrays. Spin down can be controlled per drive, so a drive with rarely accessed files may stay off (spun down) for months, saving power costs, and possibly increasing its life. With standard striped RAID arrays, the entire array must be spun up or down, so generally stays spun up.

Some good threads about advantages/disadvantages of unRAID and similar products:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1191
http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2902, particularly this post, but read the whole thread
http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2103.msg15834#msg15834

More threads about the advantages of unRAID in the unlikely event of multiple drive failures:

Disadvantages of unRAID compared to similar products

No striping. So, although it performs well, and better than many NAS solutions, is generally slower than a RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 6, or RAID 10, etc. If performance is very important for an array you may be building, then one of the 4 RAID types just mentioned will be a better choice than unRAID.

Is unRAID for me?
We unRAID users think so, of course. But read for yourself a few forum threads:

"Is unRAID for me?"
"How are you using unRAID Server?" - a small poll
"Seems to me unRAID is NOT cheap" - excellent, very open and candid debate, Buffalo NAS vs unRAID
more to come (when I find them)

Minimum System Requirements?
Intel compatible computer

Motherboard and components compatible with unRAID software (based on Slackware), and Linux kernel 2.6.*
512MB of RAM (recommend 1GB or more depending on usage)
USB flash drive
can operate without video, monitor, or keyboard; does not use mouse
see Hardware Compatibility for extensive hardware and compatibility information

How is unRAID licensed?
The unRAID Server software is available under 3 different licenses:

unRAID Server Basic - FREE! - 3 drives (2 data, 1 parity)

Although the FAQ is good for answering specific questions, if you are browsing for general information about unRAID, why not check out the Best of the Forums. Categorized links are added often, so it pays to check it periodically. It's a great way to stay current with what is happening and being discussed in the unRAID world.

Windows: MoBo upgrade, same hard drive

2011-12-10T05:58:00.001-08:00

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It is possible i think to take a disk image of your old drive using Aconis True Image home, then clone to another drive without the drivers, this would solve your problem i think, as win7 will install its own so it will work, then install the proper drivers for your motherboard. Not as complex as it sounds, but would save you buying any other software again.

--------------------------------------

(* First warning, be sure the HD settings are the same, if you used AHCI, use the same or default settings. If you did not use AHCI on the first mobo then DO NOT USE AHCI on the new one *)
Upon first try the system appeared to load but then locked on the Windows splash screen. Tried to boot into safe mode, but the same outcome. Booted safemode/command prompt and saw that the ATI PCIE video driver was trying to load. Since the new mobo was Nvidia based, this was problematic.

Fix was quick for me.
1. Wrote down the video driver name - (something like atipcie.sys)
2, Booted with Bartpc (or anyother utility that will let you boot and edit the NTFS partition)
3. Deleted the ati driver
4. Booted the drives on the new mobo.
5. installed new chipset drivers for the Asus.
This worked for me. I also had an MSI mobo but I had to copy vga.sys to the ATIpcie.sys to get this to work. Either way, Windows 7 was flexible enough to allow the new drivers to be loaded for the new mobo.

-------------------------------------

If anyone else is looking for a solution to this issue,
1. get a Hirens boot cd
2. boot into the mini xp Provided on Hirens
3.In the hirens utilities, Find registry tools, and click on FIX hdd controller
It launches a dos window, where you select your target root, and choose repair.
It seems to delete the old driver out of current control set 00 from your registry, and replace it with generic version.

=======================

You will have to do what's known as a "repair installation". All your files & programs *should* remain intact, but you will have to reinstall all the Windows Updates plus the drivers for your new board.

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_...

Be sure to back up any important files, documents, pics, etc before swapping boards, just in case something goes wrong. And depending on what you're upgrading from & to, you *may* have to replace more than just the board/CPU/RAM.

=======================

Source

Two possibilities you can hear:

“I just always reinstall the OS.”
“I upgraded once and I didn’t have to do anything to the OS, so that’s what I’m going to try this time.”

Well, Option #1 will certainly work all the time, no matter what. As for Option #2, whether or not the OS will boot depends on the hard disk controller driver. So, just because #2 worked for one upgrade doesn’t mean it will work for another.

Fortunately, whether you use Windows or Linux, there is a very easy way to prepare for a motherboard upgrade.

Now, I’m going to assume that if you think you can upgrade a motherboard, that means you kind of know what you are doing and you can find your away around Windows. If you don’t know how to get to Device Manager in Windows, well, stop right there and either get somebody to help you, or edumacate yourself right quick!

So, to start with, I will assume you are using Windows. For Linux users, see below.

Whether you have Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7, the process for prepping your puter for a motherboard upgrade is exactly the same. What you need to do is to set the hard disk controller driver in Windows to the standard, plain vanilla Windows version. The reason for this is quite simple, and is illustrated in the following example:

You have an AMD processor and VIA chipset in your current machine
You want to upgrade to an Intel-based system
When you swap out the hardware and try to boot, Windows will use the hard disk controller driver for your old chipset, and thus you will get a blue screen because it can’t load the OS. Oops.

The same can be true if you are moving from Intel to AMD, or even from AMD to AMD or Intel to Intel. It’s also possible that you are already using the default Windows hard disk controller, which means you don’t have to change anything. But just in case, do the following:

Go to Device Manager
Expand the “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers“
If you have an entry like “Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller” or “Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller“, you’re all set. Just stop and upgrade your hardware, and you should be fine 99% of the time. If not, carry on to #4.
Right-click the non-standard disk controller entry and choose Properties -> Driver tab -> Update Driver. I’m talking controller entry here, not “ATA Channel o“, “Primary IDE Channel“, etc.
Choose the “Browse your computer/Let me pick” options until you get a list of compatible drivers. Select the default “Standard” driver:
- For a SATA drive: Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller
- For an IDE drive: Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
Click OK, and don’t reboot – shut down your computer and perform your hardware upgrade. If you reboot before your upgrade, Windows may automatically replace the standard driver with the custom one that you just tried to replace!

Before firing up your upgraded puter, be sure to connect your primary boot drive up properly and configure the BIOS with that drive as the first boot hard disk. Normally, I try to connect all the drives in the computer and configure the BIOS boot order and such exactly as it all was in the old computer.

When you turn on your new monster, Windows should load and be able to access the boot hard drive just fine. It may take a bit longer than usual since Windows will be detecting your new hardware and trying to install drivers. Don’t freak out if everything doesn’t work at first – the important thing is to get the OS booted so you can install drivers and get the rest of your hardware configured and functioning properly.

That’s pretty much it. I have found this works 99% of the time. For the 1% of the time that it does NOT work for whatever reason, you can always throw the Windows disc into the optical drive, boot from it, and select a “Repair Install”. This will probably overwrite all your Windows files, and you’ll have to reapply all your Windows updates and such, but at least your data will remain intact. Just be sure not to accidentally wipe the drive. That would be bad, especially if you don’t have a backup. But, you DID make a backup first, right??

=======================

Source

My old motherboard died without my having the ability to delete the old drivers off of the hard drive. I have installed a new motherboard and am attempting to boot into the old hard drive, however, Windows 7 will simply start up, try to load the files, and then enter a restart loop.
I know why this is happening. It cannot find the appropiate files to boot off the hard drive because the new motherboard is conflicting with the old drivers on the old hard drive.
I have attempted to boot off the Windows 7 disc and do a repair, however, it does not work. Right now I am dual-booting from a secondary hard drive, and I have full access to the old hard drive.
Basically, I need to manually delete the old drivers from the old hard drive, or find some way to install the new drivers on it whilst booting from the secondary drive. (In other words, I'm booting off D:\ and I'd like to install drivers whilst on D:\ to C:\)
How can I do this?
Things I will NOT do, and will not even consider, so please don't tell me to:
I will not wipe my old hard drive. The programs and data on it are too valuable. And while the data is easily saved, the programs are not and I'd have to reinstall. Some of the programs were obtained when I was in college and my college distributed free programs by download. Now that I am no longer in college, I'd have to pay hundreds of dollars for replacements (for example, Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Symantec Antivirus).
So to repeat, I will NOT consider a hard drive format and fresh install.
I am, however, willing to do any steps to manually delete or install new drivers, no matter how complex or time consuming the steps are. It is worth it to me. All I need to do is get rid of those old drivers. If someone could tell me how, I'd be greatful.

==========================
Source
you should be able to connect them and use their data. Some items to watch for:
1. If these are IDE units, review how to set their jumpers for Master and Slave roles and how to connect. If they are SATA, do NOT change any jumpers - there is NO Master or Slave in SATA units.
2. When they are installed, check in your BIOS Setup screens where you set Boot Priority Sequence. Make sure neither of these units is part of your boot possibilities.
3. I am not sure how a Windows OS will read or deal with a HDD that contains LINUX OS and data, presumably in a File System that is not what Windows is used to handling. I'm kind of assuming you've already familiar with this issue.
4. Although some people have set up systems that can boot either from one HDD containing Linux or from another containing Windows, I doubt you could simply tell your new machine to boot from that old Linux HDD. I would expect you'd have the same problem as trying to use a Windows OS from another machine - the OS installed on the HDD contains just the right drivers for the devices in the OLD machine, and not the ones for the new machine. In the Windows world there is a procedure called a Repair Install you can do from a Windows Install CD to fix this (sometimes). I don't know how it is handled in Linux.
==========================
www.daniweb.com/forums/thread142082.html

most if not all info in that link is about winxp and not win7 ,and most of the help in the thread or links in the thread are not info releated to when your orignal board is a dead board ,like in the situation !
having said that i don't recall ever getting it to work for me with a broken MB,maybe once when the new boards chipset was the same as broken one .
i would think it may be possible with the lates UBCD/or hirens bootcd .i have one here somewhere that has winxp lite on it that may get you in to where you could uninstall chipset drivers and stuff .but only used it once and not sure even what one it is that can boot to live winxp lite ,

hirens= http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
ubcd= http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
or live linux cd .= http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
==========================

Source

The only problem with buying a new PC ““ one that has existed for years and that hardware technology can’t solve ““ is when you want to move the operating system to your new hard drive. Simply copying your operating system from one hard drive to another doesn’t work, and trying to install your old hard disk into your new PC may result in issues as well. There is a solution to this issue, however.

Making Your Clone

Operating systems are finicky beasts. They don’t like to be copied directly over to a new hard drive, and the operating system on your new PC will most certainly won’t let you copy over it (at least as long as it’s running). There’s good reason for this, in terms of curtailing security threats and preventing accidental operating system damage, but it certainly makes moving a full operating system more difficult.

Since copying operating system files the old-fashioned way doesn’t result in a bootable operating system being transferred over, you’ll need to rely on a process called cloning. Cloning a hard drive replicates all or some of the files on it and also replicates the file structure of the hard drive. This creates a perfect bootable copy. Other MakeUseOf authors have discussed this topic already, so check out Tina’s post about popular freeware cloning software and Benjamin’s post about how to clone a hard drive with Clonezilla.

Cloning Problems

Unfortunately, while cloning does create a perfect copy of your hard drive and the operating system on it, it isn’t always the best solution. The process of cloning is itself a bit complex, and it will presumably require that you at some point have an extra hard drive, since directly cloning your existing drive to the drive on your new PC would wipe out the new PC’s drive entirely.

The other issue with cloning is that creating a perfect copy does not guarantee that your old operating system will work with your new PC. When an operating system installs itself on a PC, it also installs a plethora of drivers relating to your PC’s hardware. If you transfer your existing OS to a new PC, much of that hardware is going to be different ““ and that can be a shock to your OS. It will have drivers for certain hardware, but that hardware is gone. It will try to compensate by installing new drivers automatically, but if it can’t find the right drivers it will likely crash.

You may be able to repair the operating system if you still have the install disc around, or can load the installer onto another bootable device, but this can be a frustrating process.

Transferring Files

If cloning sounds like too much work, or you’ve tried it and found that it failed, you can forgo trying to transfer the entire operating system and instead transfer only your files and system settings.

Windows has a utility for this called Windows Easy Transfer. As the name implies, the goal of the software is to transfer everything from your old PC to your new PC that could easily be lost. It doesn’t transfer software, but it does transfer documents, photos, music, program settings, etc. Once the process is complete, your new PC should behave much as the old one did, and should have all of your personal files as well.

The Windows Easy Transfer software is free, but a direct USB connection between computers requires that you buy a Windows Easy Transfer Cable. You can skip this, however, by connecting two computers via a network and transferring files that way. A direct Ethernet connection is usually quickest.

Linux users can accomplish this same task by using a utility called Rsync.

Apple users aren’t left out in the cold, either ““ OS X comes with a utility called Migration Assistant that will help you transfer files to your new Mac from an old one.

Conclusion

Personally, I don’t recommend that most users go with cloning, although it is the only option that results in a true full operating system transfer. Utilities that transfer all critical system information and your personal files usually give you a better result ““ they transfer important data, but don’t leave room for driver compatibility issues that could cause crashes.

Let us know if you have done this, and if so, what method you chose to go with.

Linux: MoBo upgrade, same hard drive

2011-12-10T05:56:00.001-08:00

Source

The only thing that remained the same was the two hard drives. Everything else changed. I had read that linux just loves being upgraded, so I figured what the heck.

With my Ubuntu install, I didn’t have to set any hard disk controller drivers to a default or anything like that. I simply assembled the new machine, transplanted the hard drives to the new puter, configured the BIOS, and let ‘er rip! The machine booted without a hitch, and this was an “Ancient AMD to Modern Intel” type of upgrade. The only problem I had was that it didn’t want to detect the new ethernet controller. Rather than fighting with it by trying to install an ethernet driver without a net connection on the box, I just plopped an old ethernet card in a spare PCI slot, rebooted, et voila! The ethernet was autoconfigured and I was 100% up and running again.

====================

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8219

====================

Source

Hardware either works or does not work. Two pieces of hardware are either compatible or icompatible. This is the rule. However, when the incompatibility-gap between the two pieces of hardware is small, there is almost always a way to make these two pieces work together as if they were fully compatible. This generally involves the use of one of the various types of adapters or converters. But, it may happen that the adapter is not 100% compatible with the rest of the hardware! So, what comes next in such cases? An adapter for the adapter maybe? Fortunately, in my case it was a small piece of software that came to the rescue and saved my day.

[...]

Under such complicated conditions, the only way to install a Linux distribution on a hard disk of newer technology than my old Quantums, was to:

Disconnect the Western Digital hard disk from the PCI controller and leave an old Quantum HDD on the onboard IDE channel.
Adjust the boot device sequence, so that the mobo boots from the CDROM device.
Install Linux on the old HDD.
Power-off and connect the newer HDD on the PCI controller.
Move the Linux installation from the old HDD to the new one.

The move of the Linux installation would be possible by following the steps of a tutorial like the “Hard-Disk Upgrade HOWTO“,

1. Introduction
2. Install both disks on your system
3. Unmount non-Linux partitions and network drives
4. Partition the new disk
5. Format the new disk
6. Mount the new disk
7. Copy the files from the old disk to the new disk
8. Modify /new-disk/etc/fstab as appropriate
9. Prepare LILO to boot the new disk
10. Make a boot diskette (optional)
11. Remove the old disk
12. Reboot the system, modify LILO configuration file

if old-school partitions were used, or,

in the case of LVM partitions, the move could be easily performed with the following procedure:

Having connected the new HDD, I would initialize the free space as a physical volume, so it could be used in an LVM setup.
Then I’d add this new physical volume to the existing Volume Group, eg: vgextend volume_group /dev/sdb
Finally, I would use the pvmove utility in order to move the data from the old physical volume (on the Quantum HDD) to the new physical volume (WD HDD), eg: pvmove sda sdb

One may think of other ways too, but these will do. For those of you who do not feel very comfortable with moving your installation around, read on…

Smart Boot Manager
One may wonder why I didn’t use Smart Boot Manager, which can boot the machine from any connected device, instead of doing all of this monkey stuff.

The reason is simple. The smart-boot-manager image, which is available from the project’s website, does not work for me. I tried to boot that image in qemu without success. On the other hand, smart-boot-manager images are all over the web, but… would you ever write an image, which has been downloaded from Mr.Unknown‘s home page, to your server’s hard disk Master Boot Record? I would never do that, even if I had to do twice as much monkey stuff as I have described above!

Fortunately, I soon found out that a smart-boot-manager image is included in a source that I can fully trust; in the Ubuntu ISO image, under the install directory, you will find: sbm.bin

This worked OK under QEMU:

# qemu -m 64 sbm.bin

So, after all this, here is what I did in order to install Fedora 7 directly on the new hard disk, which was connected to the PCI IDE controller.

First, I removed the HDD from the PCI controller and left only the HDD on the onboard IDE controller.
I set the boot sequence so that it boots from the cdrom.
I used the Ubuntu CD in order to get to a console.
I wrote the smart boot manager image to the Quantum hard-disk with: dd if=sbm.bin of=/dev/hda
Powered-off the system and connected the new HDD to the PCI controller.
I adjusted the boot sequence so to boot from the HDD on the onboard controller.
Put the Fedora Rescue CD in the CDROM drive.
Reboot the machine. At the Smart-Boot-Manager menu, I selected the CDROM option.
IU performed a network installation and used 100MB of the HDD on the onboard controller for the /boot partition and the new disk for the rest of the system partitions using LVM.

Hardware manufacturers have managed to transform me to a monkey for a couple of days. I have wasted time and money and I still cannot decide about who I am supposed to blame for this mess.

udev

2011-12-10T05:41:00.001-08:00

udev ist ein Programm zur Überwachung und Auswertung von hotplug-Ereignissen. Bekommt udev Informationen über ein neues Gerät, wertet es diese anhand frei konfigurierbarer Regeln aus und gibt dem Gerät einen Namen. Anhand dieses Namens ist es dann als neue Gerätedatei im /dev/-Verzeichnis ansprechbar.

udev-Regeln

Nach udev-Regeln wird entschieden, wie ein Gerät heißt und was passieren soll, wenn ein Gerät erkannt wird, das einer Regel entspricht. Um den Namen zu vergeben, wird ein Symlink vom Kernelnamen des Geräts zu dem Namen erzeugt, den es bekommen soll. Die Regeln liegen in /lib/udev/rules.d/ bzw. bei älteren Systemen auch in /etc/udev/rules.d/. Die einzelnen Regeldateien beginnen hier mit einer zweistelligen Zahl. So ist sichergestellt, dass wichtige Regeln zuerst behandelt werden. Die Regeln werden in alphanumerischer Reihenfolge abgearbeitet. Es können mehrere Regeln auf ein Gerät angewendet werden, das hat z.B. den Vorteil, dass ein Gerät mit mehreren Symlinks ausgestattet wird.

Eigene udev-RegelnEigene udev-Regeln legt man im Verzeichnis /etc/udev/rules.d/ ab. Um sicherzugehen, dass die eigenen Regeln vor den Systemstandards ausgeführt werden, sollte man die Datei mit einer niedrigen Zahl beginnen lassen. Wichtig ist auch, dass die Dateien, die die Regeln enthalten, mit .rules enden, da sie sonst nicht ausgeführt werden.
Ab Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx werden über udev auch Eingabegeräte konfiguriert, da HAL entfällt. Weitere Hinweise hierzu findet man im englischen Wiki .
SYSFS wird in zukünftigen Versionen durch ATTR für Events (event device) und ATTRS für den Haupteintrag ("parent device") verwendet (siehe Beispiel von udevadm weiter unten im Artikel).
MEHR bei der Quelle

chroot zum Grub 2 einrichten

2011-12-10T05:21:00.001-08:00

Auszug

Hier wird die Einrichtung von GRUB 2 beschrieben. Falls das System mit dem „alten“ GRUB gelaufen ist, muss nach dieser Anleitung vorgegangen werden.

Als nächstes muss der GRUB 2 auf der Festplatte sdb installiert werden. Um Verwechslungen zu vermeiden und um sicherzustellen, dass das System mit der neuen Platte läuft, empfiehlt es sich, das Livesystem herunterzufahren, die alte Platte abzuklemmen und das Livesystem wieder zu starten. Jetzt heisst die neue (und einzige) Platte sda.
Zur Installation des Bootloaders muss mit chroot in das Wurzelverzeichnis der Installation gewechselt werden.
Dazu muss zuerst die Partition eingebunden werden:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Damit im installierten System alle wichtigen Systeminformationen zur Verfügung stehen:

sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc

Danach kann man mit

sudo chroot /mnt

in das installierte System wechseln. Mit dem Befehl:

grub-setup /dev/sda

wird GRUB 2 in den MBR der neuen Platte geschrieben. Mit

update-grub

wird die Konfigurationsdatei aktualisiert. Jetzt kann mit

exit

die chroot-Umgebung verlassen werden

Ubuntu auf andere Festplatte kopieren

2011-12-10T04:57:00.001-08:00

Quelle
Zum Verständnis dieses Artikels sind folgende Seiten hilfreich:

Eine Installation von einer alten Festplatte auf eine neue Festplatte kopieren

(mit der gleichen MoBo).

Eine andere Art von Umzug ist es, wenn Festplatten einfach in einen anderen Computer eingebaut werden. Dies ist meist ohne weiteres möglich, sofern die neue Hardware unterstützt wird, und man ggf. benutzte proprietäre Grafiktreiber deinstalliert, oder ggf. benutzte spezielle Bootoptionen anpasst, falls diese nicht auch für das neue System passen.

Es gibt viele Gründe, warum man eine Installation auf eine andere Festplatte umziehen möchte: kein freier Speicherplatz mehr, eine neue leistungsfähigere Festplatte oder ein neuer PC wurde angeschafft usw.

Da es eine Vielzahl an Installationsmöglichkeiten und Spezialfälle gibt, die dieser Artikel nicht alle abdecken kann, wird nur die "Standardinstallation" berücksichtigt:

eine Partition für das System
eine Partition für swap

Informationen zum umziehen einer Software-RAID Installation gibt es z.B. auf ubuntuforums.org

Im folgenden Beispiel wird angenommen: Das umzuziehende Standardsystem ist auf der Festplatte sda installiert und soll auf die neue Festplatte sdb kopiert werden. Das Homeverzeichnis befindet sich mit im Root-Dateisystem (selbe Partition).

Achtung!

Durch Tippfehler z.B. beim Kopieren des Betriebssystems kann das alte System unbrauchbar werden. Daher wird dringend empfohlen, zuvor ein Backup zu erstellen (siehe Datensicherung).

Überblick verschaffenZunächst sollte man sich einen Überblick über das System verschaffen und die Partitionen identifizieren, auf denen sich das Root-System befindet.
Über den Befehl ^[1]:

mount | egrep ^/dev/

erhält man eine Liste der eingebundenen Geräte. Besonders interessant ist das Root-Dateisystem (im Beispiel sda1), das als Wurzelverzeichnis (/) eingebunden ist:

/dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw)

Hat man ein anderes Dateisystem, wie ReiserFS oder ext4, ist das Wort hinter type natürlich reiserfs oder ext4. Ebenso kann die Zahl hinter sda variieren, wenn man Ubuntu nicht auf der 1. Partition liegen hat.
Man erkennt, dass das Root-Filesystem auf der ersten Partition der Festplatte /dev/sda eingebunden ist. Man sollte sicherheitshalber in der Liste überprüfen, dass sich das gesamte Ubuntu-System auf dieser Partition befindet. Tauchen in der Liste noch andere Einträge auf, wie z.B. /dev/sda2 on /home ext3 (...), so befindet sich das System verteilt auf verschiedene Partitionen. Das bedeutet, dass man dies beim späteren Anlegen der Partitionen auf der neuen Platte und beim Kopieren der Daten berücksichtigen muss.

Ubuntu LiveCD herunterladenZu allererst wird die Desktop-CD von Ubuntu benötigt, diese kann hier heruntergeladen werden. Wichtig ist bein 64 Bit Systemen entsprechend ein64 Bit ISO herunterzuladen, da chroot andernfalls nicht korrekt funktioniert. Nach dem Download wird das ISO-Image der Live-CD auf eine CD gebrannt.
Nun wird die neue Festplatte zusätzlich zur alten in den Computer eingebaut. Danach bootet man von der Ubuntu-LiveCD.

Partition erstellenNach dem Booten werden zuerst die aktuellen Festplattenbezeichnungen ermittelt:

sudo fdisk -l

Die Ausgabe könnte folgendermaßen aussehen:

vergrößern

Platte /dev/sda: 500.1 GByte, 500107862016 Byte
255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 60801 Zylinder
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000da950

   Gerät  boot.     Anfang        Ende     Blöcke   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       60737   487869921   83  Linux
/dev/sda2           60738       60801      514080   82  Linux Swap / Solaris

Platte /dev/sdb: 250.0 GByte, 250059350016 Byte
255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 30401 Zylinder
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0007f522

   Gerät  boot.     Anfang        Ende     Blöcke   Id  System

Die Festplatte sda enthält das zu kopierende System in zwei Partitionen: Auf der ersten befindet sich das Ubuntu-System, die zweite Partition ist eine Swap-Partition. Die Festplatte sdb ist komplett leer, es befinden sich keine Partitionen darauf.
Nun muss man die Festplatte sdb mit GParted analog der alten Festplatteneinteilung sda einrichten. Mit analog ist hier die Anzahl der Partitionen gemeint, nicht die Größe. Letztere kann an die tatsächlichen Gegebenheiten angepasst werden:

Systempartition ("/"): muss mit einem Linux-tauglichen Dateisystem formatiert werden
Swap-Partition ("/swap"): siehe Swap-Partition erstellen

Hinweis:

Eine ausführliche Anleitung zum Partitionieren erhält man hier: Partitionierung und Manuelle Partitionierung

Partitionen unter der LiveCD einbindenNach dem nun die neue Festplatte erfolgreich eingerichtet wurde, hängt man die neue Root-Partition wie auch die alte ein. In diesem Beispiel wird davon ausgegangen, dass das bestehende System auf sda1 liegt und die Partition auf der neuen Festplatte sdb1 ist. Dazu werden neue Ordner erstellt und die Partitionen dort eingebunden. Im Terminal werden folgende Befehle für die alte Festplatte benötigt:

sudo mkdir /mnt/alt
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/alt

Dann hängt man die neue Festplatte bzw. Partition, auf die das "neue" Betriebssystem kopiert werden soll, ein.

sudo mkdir /mnt/neu
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/neu

Daten mit dem Programm rsync kopierenNun kopiert man alle Dateien mit dem Befehl rsync von der alten Partition zur neuen:

sudo rsync --stats --progress --numeric-ids -aAhHSP  /mnt/alt/ /mnt/neu/

Hinweis:

rsync ist dem Shell-Befehl cp vorzuziehen.
Bei einer defekten Festplatte kann es vorkommen, dass der Kopiervorgang einfach "hängen bleibt", ggf. friert sogar das gesamte System beim Zugriff auf defekte Sektoren ein. Tritt dieses Problem auf, ist ein schrittweises Kopieren der Daten nötig. Man nimmt sich also analog zu obiger Syntax jedes Verzeichnis einzeln vor. Wird der Kopiervorgang für ein Verzeichnis erfolgreich abgeschlossen, wendet man sich dem nächsten zu - nachdem man mit dem Befehl sync sichergestellt hat, dass die kopierten Daten aus dem Cache auch auf die Platte geschrieben wurden. Kommt es zu besagtem "Hänger", ist die verursachende Datei die letzte in der Ausgabe des Kopierbefehls - diese darf also beim Kopieren nicht (mehr) angefasst, und muss stattdessen später aus einem (hoffentlich vorhandenen) Backup wieder hergestellt werden.

Alternative - Daten mit dem Programm cp kopierenKopierbefehl mit cp:

sudo cp -a /mnt/alt /mnt/neu  # Kopieren mit Übernahme alter Dateiinformationen und detaillierter Ausgabe

Hinweis:

Der Kopiervorgang kann je nach Datenvolumen (und Leistungsfähigkeit des Rechners) etwas mehr Zeit in Anspruch nehmen. Man sollte daher mind. 1-2 Stunden einberechnen!

fstabAls nächstes muss man die Datei /etc/fstab auf der neuen Partition ändern. Falls man das vergisst, kann Ubuntu von der neuen Festplatte nicht gestartet werden, ob wohl es erfolgreich kopiert wurde. Für die Einträge in fstab wird die UUID benötigt, siehe UUID.

Hinweis:

Da Ubuntu seit Edgy Eft statt der Schreibweise /dev/xxx UUIDs benutzt, verweisen die Daten in der fstab sowie auch in menu.lst nach wie vor auf die "alte" Festplatte. Wer sich mit der "alten" Device-Schreibweise leichter tut, kann bei den Anpassungen natürlich auch diese wieder verwenden - es sollten jedoch Vor- und Nachteile gut abgewogen werden. Näheres dazu findet sich an dieser Stelle.

Die UUIDs aller angeschlossenen Laufwerke lassen sich mit folgendem Befehl anzeigen:

sudo blkid

Beispiel:

/dev/sda1: UUID="eb95423b-612f-416b-ad31-02bfedfd74d3" TYPE="ext3" #Alte root-Partition
/dev/sda2: TYPE="swap" UUID="ee472e83-66a8-4397-8648-69abe711a467" #Alte swap-Partition
/dev/sdb1: UUID="6346681b-b88a-4c75-8882-81fa4e731d18" TYPE="ext3" #Neue root-Partition
/dev/sdb2: TYPE="swap" UUID="44887afe-b82b-4fa5-bab6-68afebc4599d" #Neue swap-Partition

Die UUID der neuen Partition (sdb1) lautet hier: 6346681b-b88a-4c75-8882-81fa4e731d18. Nun öffnet man die Datei /etc/fstab auf sdb1 in einem Editor^[2] mit Root-Rechten^[4] und sucht nach den Einträgen der einzuhängenden Partitionen. Hier ein Beispiel:

# /dev/sda1
UUID=4dbbaf05-b0bb-4e3b-bba6-61c8d5d62a77 /  ext3  relatime,error s=remount-ro 0  1
# /dev/sda2 
UUID=3d5ede6f-1c19-4bc2-84da-68fdb1f70c85  none   swap sw   0  0

Diese ändert man wie folgt ab:

# /dev/sdb1
UUID=6346681b-b88a-4c75-8882-81fa4e731d18 /  ext3  relatime,error s=remount-ro 0  1
# /dev/sdb2
UUID=44887afe-b82b-4fa5-bab6-68afebc4599d  none   swap sw   0  0

Dabei werden jeweils die UUIDs ausgetauscht und dazu noch der Kommentar (alles hinter dem #) zur späteren Übersichtlichkeit geändert.

GRUB
Hinweis:

Hier wird die Einrichtung von GRUB 2 beschrieben. Falls das System mit dem „alten“ GRUB gelaufen ist, muss nach dieser Anleitung vorgegangen werden.

Zur Installation des Bootloaders muss mit chroot in das Wurzelverzeichnis der Installation gewechselt werden.

Dazu muss zuerst die Partition eingebunden werden:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Damit im installierten System alle wichtigen Systeminformationen zur Verfügung stehen:

sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc

Danach kann man mit

sudo chroot /mnt

in das installierte System wechseln. Mit dem Befehl:

grub-setup /dev/sda

wird GRUB 2 in den MBR der neuen Platte geschrieben. Mit

update-grub

wird die Konfigurationsdatei aktualisiert. Jetzt kann mit

exit

die chroot-Umgebung verlassen werden.

Abschließend sollten noch die beiden Dateien 70-persistent-cd.rules und 70-persistent-net.rules im Verzeichnis /mnt/etc/udev/rules.d der neuen Festplatte gelöscht werden. Dort hat das Udev-System die Einstellungen für Netzwerkkarte bzw. optisches Laufwerk des Originalsystems hinterlegt. Fehlen diese Dateien, werden sie beim Booten des neuen Systems entsprechend angelegt.

Nach einem Neustart sollte der Rechner jetzt mit dem umgezogenen System normal starten. Bei Problemen startet man den Rechner erneut mit der Live-CD und kontrolliert nochmal sorgfältig die UUIDs und die GRUB 2-Konfiguration.

Falls der Ruhezustand (suspend-to-disk) genutzt werden soll, muss die Datei /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume mit Root-Rechten editiert werden und folgende Zeile eingefügt bzw. mit der eigenen Swap- angepasst werden:

RESUME=UUID=

Danach muss das initrd-Image neu geschrieben werden, das geht über folgenden Terminalbefehl:

sudo update-initramfs -u

Kernel PAE in Linux

2011-12-10T04:43:00.001-08:00

Quelle
Bevor Ubuntu installiert wird, muss man sich für die 32- oder 64-Bit-Version entscheiden. Bei Ubuntu ist angeraten, die 32-Bit-Version zu verwenden. Der 64-Bit-Version bereitet nämlich die Ausführung von 32-Bit-Programmen Schwierigkeiten.
Oft fehlen notwendige 32-Bit-Libraries, die man mühselig aus den einzelnen Paketen heraussuchen muss.
Zwar lassen sich diese Probleme allesamt lösen, wer es jedoch vermeiden will, in die Tiefen der Paketstruktur einzusteigen, sollte die 32-Bit-Version verwenden.
Wer eine 64-Bit-Desktop-Linux-Distribution sucht, sollte über openSuse nachdenken. Es erlaubt die Installation einer 32-Bit-Laufzeitumgebung, die sehr viele 32-Bit-Libraries enthält.
Anders als unter Windows kann Linux auch in der 32-Bit-Version mehr als 4 GByte RAM nutzen. Das funktioniert unter Ausnutzung der PAE-Technologie. Es bleibt die Beschränkung, dass jeder Prozess nur einen virtuellen Adressraum von 4 GByte zur Verfügung hat.
Ubuntu installiert automatisch einen PAE-Kernel, wenn das erforderlich ist. Ansonsten wird der Standard-Kernel installiert.
Wer seinen Rechner nachträglich von 2 auf 4 GByte oder aufrüstet, muss den Kernel per Befehle tauschen.

Den Kernel PAE wird über die Konsole/Terminal installiert:
sudo apt-get install linux-generic-pae

Linux Mint Debian Edition install

2011-12-09T21:49:00.001-08:00

PROBLEM:
The primary language of choice is specified in the initial stages of the installation. However, after copying files to the hard disk, the installer connects to the Internet to download `language packs'. I do not know what they are. Depending on the connection speed, this process takes several minutes.
However, I do not see an express need for downloading them _during_ the installation, if at all! Once the installation is completed, the user can certainly download additional language packs, and install them.
PROPOSED SOLUTION:
Remove this step from the Ubiquity installer for LM. Let users download and install additional language packs, as needed, after booting into the OS post-installation.
MORE at:
Remove downloading language packs during installation

Source

Linux Mint Debian Edition Rolling Release, Linux Mint 10 Xfce installation guide, and at the same time showing you GParted Tutorial, Partition Linux, How To Partition a Hard Drive

Linux Mint Debian Edition Rolling Release, Linux Mint 10 Xfce version is available for download from Linux Mint Home pages here, it is almost 965 MB in size, it can be burned to a DVD, or install it using UNetbootin application to a bootable USB stick. This example is installed on an empty 40 GB hard disk where the system memory RAM are 384 MB.

NOTE: During installation, you can also follow these instructions online! when the desktop opened up, start Firefox and go to helpsite.org site where you can find the installation instructions, and at the same time you can follow these instructions when you installing the Linux Mint 10 Xfce operating system.

Linux Mint Xfce is Rolling Release on top of a Debian Testing package base and uses the same repositories as Linux Mint Debian Edition.This offers the following advantages to Linux Mint Xfce: A huge performance boost, A continuous flow of updates which allows users to keep their system up to date without waiting for new releases, A more mainstream desktop and software selection

If your computer does not boot from the CD / DVD / USB drive, you have to make changes to your computer’s boot sequence in BIOS boot menu.

Using Gparted

[...]

Click and activate the unallocated hard drive, Create a new partition Swap Partition, New Size (MiB) = 1000, File System: = linux-swap, (Linux Swap Size, the application makes it a temporary folder where the system stores the dormant programs, and when you work with large image files. Swap is a type of Random Access Memory (RAM), select the Swap Size of the computer’s hard disk and RAM size, Low RAM and low disk space use 1 GB for swap when hard disk space is very low and High RAM and high disk space use 2 GB for swap when hard disk space is plentiful)

[More at source]

Mint4Win

2011-12-09T21:43:00.001-08:00

Install Linux Mint on Your Windows Computer or NetbookWould you like to try out the popular Linux Mint OS on your Windows computer or netbook? Here’s how you can do it even without a CD/DVD drive with the Mint4Win installer.
Linux Mint
Linux Mint is an increasingly popular distribution of Linux, and many users have found it more user friendly and convenient than other versions. Mint is based on Ubuntu, and as such includes an excellent installer that lets you install it directly from Windows. You install it just like a standard Windows program, and can uninstall it from Command Prompt. The installer is only available in a ISO disk image file, though, so it can still be difficult to install on a computer without a CD/DVD drive such as a netbook. But, with a little trick, you can use the Windows installer for Mint on any PC, no DVD drive required!
Setup Virtual CloneDrive
Linux Mint is only available as an ISO file, so we’re going to mount the ISO file in a virtual CD Drive. We recommend Virtual CloneDrive for this, so if you don’t already have it installed, download it (link below) and install as usual.

You may be prompted to install drivers during the Virtual CloneDrive setup; click Install to complete the installation.

For more information about Virtual CloneDrive, check out our article on Mounting an ISO image in Windows 7 or Vista.
Install Linux Mint in Windows with Mint4Win
Now download the latest version of Linux Mint from the link below. Select the i386 Live CD edition.

[MORE at source]

LibreOffice 3.3 on Linux Mint

2011-12-09T21:36:00.001-08:00

Source
LibreOffice is now available in LaunchPad PPA.

Installing LibreOffice using this method completely removes OpenOffice.org from Linux Mint. You should backup all your custom templates, since purging OpenOffice.org completely deletes them. The spellchecker and the language support packages are also removed.

First you should remove OpenOffice.org by entering in the Terminal:

sudo apt-get purge openoffice*.*

   To install LibreOffice, run the following commands:
   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
     sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install libreoffice

For better compatibility with your desktop environment, you should install one more package:

   sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome
   
   or

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

To reinstall the English language support you can use:

sudo apt-get install language-support-en

For other languages just change en to something else, like ro for Romanian or fr for French.

Tested on Linux Mint 9 and on Linux Mint 10 and there are no issues. You will notice that LibreOffice 3.3 launches faster than OpenOffice.org 3.2 and the apps can be launched from the Mint Menu, from the ¨Office¨ category.

Please note that you may need to install some extensions from the official OpenOffice.org extensions repository, like a spell checker or a specific language pack. After installing some extension you should close LibreOffice and open it again to use the extension.

The keyboard shortcuts for OpenOffice.org should work with LibreOffice. For LibreOffice Calc you can enable the OpenOffice.org legacy shortcuts from the Tools > Options > Compatibility (key bindings) by replacing the default one.

Tags: LibreOffice PPA Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick 10.04 Lucid
Created: 10 months ago.

Building the XO

2011-12-09T21:27:00.001-08:00

Introducing Sugar
by Greg DeKoenigsberg

One Laptop Per Child comes closer to being a reality every day — and every day, more people are looking for ways to get involved with the OLPC project. It will still be quite a while before the XO systems are available for broad distribution, but people can see for themselves what the XO is all about by downloading Sugar, the core of the OLPC Human Interface.

Sugar, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is very different from the desktop environment to which Linux users have become accustomed. The XO was conceived as a tool to allow kids to learn interactively, and Sugar has been designed for that purpose. The first thing that a child sees, therefore, is not a hard disk or a trash can — it’s the other kids in the “neighborhood”. Sugar developers are encouraged to write activities with collaborative elements that are enabled by default. The Human Interface Guidelines discuss the Sugar philosophy in some detail, but really, there’s no substitute for experiencing Sugar directly.

There are a few ways to take Sugar for a test drive. There are Live CD versions of Sugar, and there are also binary images that can be run in emulation mode with an emulation environment like qemu.

The best way to experience Sugar, though, is to build it from scratch — especially if you want to take the next step and develop activities for use with Sugar. Fortunately, building Sugar is getting easier with each milestone. Here are some pointers to get you started.

Sugar Basics

The first thing to understand about Sugar is that it’s based on the future Fedora 7 — which means that unless you’re one of the hardy souls who runs Fedora rawhide, you’re not going to be able to build Sugar on top of whatever Linux distribution you’re running currently without making a few tweaks. That’s part of being a developer: dealing with ever-changing environments.

Good tools help, though. The problem of managing lots of differently built components is a problem that GNOME developers face every day — which is why the Sugar developers have borrowed James Henstridge’s excellent jhbuild from the GNOME project and customized it for use with Sugar. Whether you’re running Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian or Mandriva, you can easily run sugar-jhbuild.

Really, sugar-jhbuild isn’t that complicated; it’s essentially a set of glue scripts that download source code from various repository types, build all that code, and put the resulting binaries into a local directory. The downside of the jhbuild approach is that you’re essentially building a miniature distribution from scratch — kind of like a mini-Gentoo — and that requires both disk space and time. The upside, though, is that the maintainers of the project do all the work of configuring sugar-jhbuild up front. All you have to do is run the scripts, maybe do a little troubleshooting, and be patient. Oh, and make sure that you have git, CVS and subversion installed.

Downloading the Sugar Builder
[...]

The "XO Laptop" -WPA Manual Setting

2011-12-09T21:18:00.001-08:00

The One Laptop per Child non-profit develops a low-cost laptop—the "XO Laptop"—to revolutionize how we educate the world's children. Our mission is to provide educational opportunities for the world's most isolated and poorest children by giving each child a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop; and software tools and content designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

As of March 2011, we have produced XO laptops for roughly 2 million children around the world, the majority of them in Uruguay, Peru, Rwanda, Haiti, Mongolia and the United States. These laptops all run Sugar and Fedora Linux, and have customized software and content builds developed by their national deployment teams in collaboration with OLPC staff. We maintain a regular update of deployment information.

Source

Some builds of the XO software (including early in the original G1G1 program) cannot connect to wireless routers protected with the WPA protocol. Although the networks are visible from the OLPC, they stall when user enters a password.

In order to get around this problem, you've got a few options:

Linux Mint 12 Lisa VS Fedora 16 Verne

2011-12-09T21:03:00.001-08:00

Source
Clem and Linux Mint have made a very grand effort in bringing Gnome3 to a wide market:

Those unwilling to change - Who can choose MATE to make their computer seem like it has Gnome2.
Those who want to try Gnome3 - Who can turn off a number of Shell Extensions to make Mint Lisa be more like default Gnome 3.
Those somewhere in the middle - For these people Mint is just the way they need it.

When Mint loads up it is Gnome3 but with a host of Shell Extensions added. You can use Gnome Tweak Tool (renamed by Mint as Advanced Settings) to turn these extensions on and off. These extensions give Mint a nearly familiar Mint Menu and many other tweaks so that the user does not feel so out of place in the alien land of Gnome3.

[...]

Fedora though is nearly paralized at first boot by their insistance to be totally Open Source. No Flash, no MP3, no... lots of stuff.
Fortunately there is a way that a fresh Fedora 16 instalation can be given all the bionic addons it needs in a few minutes and then you're set - A great and fully finctional, fast and stable Linux Distro that will last.
The trick is this. Install Fedora 16 and then open a terminal - paste this:
su -c 'yum -y --nogpgcheck install http://dnmouse.org/autoplus-1.2-5.noarch.rpm'
Now run:
autoplusand add all of those wonderful bits that the default instalation was missing.

[MORE at source]

MySQL diagrams on OSX

2011-12-09T20:56:00.001-08:00

Quick and Dirty MySQL Diagrams with EOModeler
posted 1645 days ago

Whenever I take on a new project with an existing database the first thing I like to do is generate an entity diagram of all the tables. On OSX you can buy or download any number of third party packages to model tables, but here’s how to do it with software you already own: WebObjects and EOModeler.

The executive version:

Create a MySQL database with Foreign Key relationships; then install the proper JDBC driver for MySQL; finally point EOModeler to your database to generate the diagram.

Although these steps are covered in various places on the web, here’s the whole thing step by step in detail. I assume you have MySQL 5 and OSX 10.4.9.

First, make sure you’re working with InnoDB tables. By default MySQL MyISAM tables will recognize but not enforce Foreign Key relationships. When creating MySQL tables remember to add ENGINE=InnoDB to your CREATE statements.

Next, you’ll need to install the correct driver so Java can connect to MySQL. Download Connector/J to your desktop. As of this writing the most current stable release is 5.0.

Untar the download and look for the following file: mysql-connector-java-5.0.6-bin.jar. You need to copy the jar file to your Java Extensions folder. To do so, open terminal and type the following commands:

cd ~/Desktop/mysql-connector-java-5.0.6sudo cp mysql-connector-java-5.0.6-bin.jar /Library/Java/Extension[Enter your password when prompted]

Next, you’ll need to install EOModeler if haven’t already. It’s included with WebObjects. Search with Spotlight for EOModeler. If nothing turns up, or if you hate Spotlight, open finder and look for the following folder: /Developer/Applications/WebObjects.
- If you don’t have EOModeler, you need to install WebObjects. Find your OSX install DVD (darn!) and pop it in your Mac. Browse the contents and look for the WebObjects package, then double click to install. That’s all.
- If you do have EOModeler you can skip to the next step.
Launch EOModeler and select Model > New to launch the New Model Wizard. In the list of available adapters select JDBC and click Next.
Provide the connection information for your MySQL database. The username and password are simply the username and password you use for your particular MySQL database. Enter the following value for your URL:

jdbc:mysql://localhost/yourdatabasenamehere

The Wizard will next ask you what to include in your model. You might want to uncheck “Ask about relationships” if you have a lot of tables. Click Next.

Select the tables you want to diagram. For starters, just click Select All and then click Next, then click Finish.

EOModeler then generates a list of objects, which isn’t so useful. From the Menu, select Tools > Diagram View.

Schweet! You can save the generated diagram and reopen it in Xcode. You should end up with a diagram that looks something like the image below, foreign keys and all. Tip: if you end up with am archipelago of unconnected tables, you’re probably working with MyISAM tables instead of InnoDB.

Questions? Post them in the comments here. Just don’t expect any replies Sunday night. I’ll be respecting the Bing.