Sh*t Column Says -Information

Column the IT guy says "Have you ever seen a computer that wouldn't pull up information before?"

Sh*t Column Says -USB

Column, do you have any USB to Ethernet adaptors?  Column the IT guy says" What is your USB broken?"

WTF!!!!!

OS X Tip: Apple Voodoo - SMC & PRAM Resets

SMC RESET

Shut down the computer.

Disconnect the computer's power cord and all peripherals.

Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.

Release the power button.

Connect the computers power cable.

Power on the computer

PRAM RESET

Shut down the computer.

Turn on the computer.

Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. This step ia done prior to the gray start screen.

Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.

Release the keys.

OS X Tip: Enable User Library Folders In OS X 10.7

In the new version of OS X, 10.7 Lion, Apple has decided to hide the user's Library folders. To enable them, use the below Terminal command.

cd Library

open .

It is important that you do not forget the period in the command.

Google + Invites

I've been playing around with Google + lately, and really like it so far.  If you need an invite, send me your gmail address and I'll send you one.

Adam's Edge: How to disable your data connection in Android

There are tons of resources available to provide the steps that I am about to provide.  I just wanted to share this as well and my story as to why I needed to do this.

Here are the steps that can be performed to disable your data connection on your Android based phone.  This only disabled your mobile data connection such as 3g/4g/etc.  It does not interfere with your WiFi connection/adapter.

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Adam's Edge: FreeNAS 8 RC5 - Shutdown fixed for Acer H340!

The FreeNAS developers have begun providing release candidates for version 8 of their highly acclaimed embedded NAS operating system.

One thing I did not include with my original articles regarding FreeNAS and the Acer H340 was the shutdown command/process not actually shutting the machine down.  If you were to hit the power button on the device, you would hear the shutdown initialization *beep* as it began the shutdown process.  After a few seconds, the network light on the front would go out but the power remained on.  It was safe to hold the power button down to finish shutting the hardware off but who wants to do that?

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Adam's Edge: Keep a handle on your hard drive storage with TreeSize Free

You would think with todays hard drive capacities you would not need to worry about wasted space.  Think again.  If you ever want to know what all of your hard drive storage is being eaten by, check out TreeSize Free by Jam Software.  This tool has been around for years and it still comes in handy

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Scan It Biotch!

Yes this purchased label software really says "Scan it Biotch!!!"

Thanks Active Directory!

I received this error in Active Directory today.  Thanks Microsoft, real descriptive!

Windows Tip: Lookup Remote MAC Addresses

If you ever find yourself needing to lookup the MAC address on a remote Windows computer (maybe your configuring a Cisco IP softphone), try getmac.

In the Windows command prompt type:

getmac /s computername

Replace computername with the name of the PC on your domain.

Below is the output you will receive:

Physical Address    Transport Name

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

00-21-9B-2F-E8-6F   \Device\Tcpip_{1527037D-056C-4BB5-91CC-6E93BC0E85C2}

Can You Hear Me Now?!

Plant Torture

Never has water been so close to a victim of dehydration.

Low Mileage

This baby ain't going nowhere!

Keepin' It Secure

Why have 1 key for 500 PCs when you can have 500 keys on a big ass key ring!

Service With A Smile

Adam's Edge: Mounting a Windows User Hive in Regedit

Ever need information from a user registry hive but could not successfully boot up the computer?  Here is a quick tip that you may not know about.  You can mount a single users registry hive (commonly seen as HKEY_CURRENT_USER when they're logged in and you launch regedit) outside of that users profile.

A few things you will need before you can mount the hive:

-Access to the NTUSER.dat file in question

Read More...

Gator By The Pool

 

An alligator is about 30 feet from our hotel's pool in Orlando Florida.

Configuring Ubuntu Linux as a Cisco console server

Written By James Ravenscroft

It can be a real headache to configure practice labs using a single console cable. An alternative to this is purchasing and configuring a dedicated Cisco access server such as the 2509 or 2511. This is beneficial since you will more than likely run across these types of devices at some point in a production environment, but assuming you don't want to spend the $$$, you can set up a Ubuntu (or other Linux) box to function as an access server using materials you may already have on hand (or which are inexpensive to purchase). I have outlined the steps below using Ubuntu 10.4:

1) Get a USB 2.0 hub, USB-to-serial adapters (something like this should do: http://www.usbgear.com/computer_cable_details.cfm?sku=765288&cats=199&catid=199%2C601%2C461) and Cisco-compatible serial rollover cables.

2) Connect the rollover cables to your USB-to-serial adapters then connect the adapters to the USB hub. Connect the USB hub to a USB port on the Ubuntu box and power it up or reboot. Check under /dev for ttyUSB devices- there should be one listed for each of the USB-to-serial adapters (I have two currently connected to my 4-port USB hub). If these are not present, try connecting the USB-to-serial adapters directly to your USB ports temporarily.

user@Ubuntu64:~$ ls -al /dev | grep 'ttyUSB'
crw-rw----   1 root dialout 188,   0 2011-01-29 12:43 ttyUSB0
crw-rw----   1 root dialout 188,   1 2011-01-29 12:43 ttyUSB1

3) Install and configure minicom, a command-line modem/serial communication program.

$sudo apt-get install minicom
$sudo minicom -s

Serial port setup, option A, change serial port listed to ttyUSB<x> where <x> is the number of the serial port you want to configure, then option E, change to 9600 8N1 (C, Q, Enter); at main screen, select "Save setup as.." and name the configuration to something easy to remember/type later

Once you have saved all your configurations, navigate to /etc/minicom. Each of your configurations should be present as minirc.<configname> where <configname> is the name of each of the configs you entered and saved earlier. Open the files in a text editor to see the configuration which should look like this:

# Machine-generated file - use "minicom -s" to change parameters.
pu port             /dev/ttyUSB0
pu baudrate     9600
pu bits             8
pu parity          N
pu stopbits       1

4) Open a terminal session on your Ubuntu box and launch Minicom ($sudo minicom <configname>). Power up a Cisco device and connect it to each of your cables until you see terminal output from your Cisco device scrolling by in the terminal window. Label the connected cable so that you know which serial-to-USB connection is being used to connect to a given piece of equipment in the future. Do this for each of your minicom configurations until all of your cables are labeled.

Congratulations! You can now connect to your Cisco gear via console cables through your Ubuntu box. Of course it is entirely up to you to ensure that your Ubuntu box is properly configured and secured prior to doing this or anything else on it and you should commit to keeping it properly configured and secure in the future. If you are unwilling or unable to do this, you will want to consider renting live rack time using actual Cisco gear through a site such as http://www.howtonetwork.net or the community rack on http://packetlife.net/ to practice instead. 

OS X Tip: Convert FLAC Files To MP3

If you find yourself in need to convert FLAC files to MP3 on your Mac, ALL2MP3 may be able to help.  This program will convert MPC, APE, WV, FLAC, OGG, WMA, AIF, & WAV files to MP3. You can choose from 4 quality presets for your MP3 output.

AQEMU review and Tun/Tap setup

Written By James Ravenscroft

Here’s a good general review of AQEMU with some screen shots:

http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/linux/AQEMU-Review-122940.shtml

If you are already familiar with setting up virtualization in Virtual Box and VMWare server, AQEMU will be a snap to set up and use.

One thing the review does not cover in detail is setting up bridging and tun/tap. For that, please see my previous post. Once bridging and tun/tap interfaces are set up (sudo /sbin/ifconfig should show br0 and all the tap interfaces you specified in /etc/network/interfaces ), you will want to configure your virtual machines to use your tun/tap interfaces under the Network tab of each virtual machine.

1) You will probably want to set your network card to RTL8139 since this seems to be very well-supported in most guest OS

2) select Connection Mode of Open a TUN/TAP interface

3) Click the green “plus” to the right of the MAC address field to generate a unique MAC for the given VM’s virtual NIC

4) Uncheck the box beside Tun/Tap Script

5) Type the name of the tap interface to be used by the VM

6) Click Apply at the bottom of the Network tab window

IncrediblePBX - lives up to its name

Written By James Ravenscroft

IncrediblePBX is a customized install of PBX in a Flash which includes loads of additional applications. In addition to being a completely free, full-featured PBX system, you can also set up free calling throughout the US and Canada using Google Voice. It can be installed on commodity systems, including Atom PCs and runs fine virtualized as well. A full write-up is here:

http://nerdvittles.com/?p=712

Call quality is great; I used X-lite 4 with an old $15 headset and mic for my test calls. There are a lot of moving pieces in this software suite and the creators/maintainers stress the importance of really knowing how it all works and maintaining a secure configuration. Enjoy!