I was flicking through the usual linux mags I buy the other and came across a link to a java learning tool called Robocode. Its basically a java game where you can pit your tank against others (either the default’s or the ones that other people have written). There are a good number of tanks to choose from to start with and then you edit the code to improve your tanks abilities.
Clonezilla
So I was looking around at open source stuff the other day, specially to see if there was anything like norton ghost around and I stumbled upon clonezilla. I was not quite sure what to expect and it was with some degree of nervousness that I let it loose on a computer. I need not have worried though clonezilla is fantastic simple and very fast. It is very much like ghost used to be, no frills no faff disk cloning. I must admit that when ghost moved to mostly being a desktop app thats when I lost my respect for it.
It runs as a live cd and walks you through all the options etc and give you hints on what options do so even a novice would be able to use it I would imagine. the most difficult bit is selecting the right source and destination disks as both of them were the same make model and size, so I had to just boot the live cd with the source disk in and take down the displayed serial number (I think its a serial number), and use that. Took under 5 minutes to clone an 80GB disk with about 4.5GB of used space.
We have been tightening up security at our place recently which has prompted me to do a couple of simple scripts to find out who has local admin rights and another one to take them away. I again have used a couple of tools to get the job done one is isadmin.exe by Bill Stewart which just checks that locally logged on users group access to see if they are members of the administrators group. The other is blat which is a utility for sending smtp emails by command line. I then pipe the output to a text file and get the contents emailed to me and then just use filters to filter the email into either a box for admin users or a box for non admin users.
That script is:
:script for discovering admin privledges
If exist c:\%nwusername%.txt (exit) else goto :check
:check
echo off
(drive letter):\admin\isadmin.exe > c:\%nwusername%.txt
{drive letter):\BLAT\BLAT C:\%nwusername%.txt -TO (emailadress.co.uk) -SERVER (email server) -F (emailaddress.co.uk)
The bits in () you will obviously need to personalise for your environment.
Once that has reported the results to me any users who have admin permissions then also get added to a script that removes them from the Administrators Group. Again its faily simplistic:
If exist c:\delusr.txt(exit) else goto :script for removing admin Privledges
:Script for removing admin Privledges
echo off
net localgroup administrators %username% /delete > c:\delusr.txt
echo %username% has been deleted from %nwusername% admin account >> c:\delusr.txt
(drive letter):\BLAT\BLAT C:\delusr.TXT -TO (emailaddress.co.uk) -SERVER (email server) -F (emailaddress.co.uk)
So hopefully that will complete the removal or admin rights, I shall wait a week or two then change the text file the first script looks for so that it runs again and hopefully will get no reports of people still with admin rights.
Now of course admin rights are generally given to users because of funky old applications that cant handle tightened permissions so I expect that may be a bit of running around trying to find ways of fixing broken apps.
One thing I must say again is how brilliant notepad++ is for creating and editing any kind of script file. If you need to write scripts I would recommend at least trying it out.
This tool originally I had a bit of trouble finding a use for but the more I used it the better I thought it was. This is basically a dialogue box that pops up when you press alt-space and you tap in the name of the application you want to launch and it will start. Now normally you would think that the vista search bar would be the same thing but launchy is quicker and seems to find alot more of your applications than the search bar does, and obviously in XP you don’t have that option anyway.
Lansurveyor Express Limited Free Edition
Well this is not normally free but solarwinds the people behind lansurveyor have opted to give away its express version absolutely free for a limited time only. This scans and creates a visio document of your live network. So its a great quick way of actually creating a network map which should save a good few hours of messing about with visio. Normally this tool retails for $499 so even if you don’t think you need it now I would urge you to get it because one day you will be asked for a network layout. CLICK ME for a quick demo of lansurveyor
Hi all,
Just a real quick post pointing you to two really cool OSS applications.
One is called Spiceworks and it enables you to scan your network and create an inventory of all devices found without days and days of mapping and writing from scratch. Also it has a built in helpdesk system. So for a small company or limited budget you could use this as your helpdesk and basic change management system. At the very least I would advise you lot to download it and get it to scan your network. Its brill!
Also is an opensource email server I have found called hmailserver. Whilst I have not deployed it yet (too busy geeking over my 291 books). I would really like to get this up and running and put it through its paces. It includes a webmail subsystem as well as access from your favourite smtp/pop client. I would love to get this up and running at the same time as my exchange box and compare the two.
Well I took a shot at the 291 on Thursday and failed it (641 if your interested). To be honest I was quite pleased with the score I got and didn’t expect to pass it anyway. I really just wanted to have a good idea of what I need to work on. Not only is this exam called the beast for a reason its not helping that we don’t use any of this stuff at work so I can only go by my lab.
Whilst the exam is called the beast for a good reason, its not as bad as it seems, anyway now I’ve got myself a nice little chart one what subjects I need to work on and I’ll give it another go again in a month. Hopefully next time I’ll be walking out with my MCSA.
Hi all,
just a quick blog about a variable I discovered whilst writing a login script. I’ve been looking around for ways to perform actions based on the user name. So I came across the %nwusername% variable which when tapped in gives you the name of the logged in novell user on a computer. Those of you who work with novell systems will know that the novell network user is separate from the workstation user so normally you get a login for the network then you are presented with the local user login as well.Which will give you a problem if you use the %username% variable as it will only tell you the workstation user and not the novell user.
Anyway I’ll blog again shortly and post up the script I’m working on, nothing fantastic but I think it would be good if I can get it to work with blat so the script emails me when it has been run inside a user account.
variable %nwusername%
Hi all,
Just thought I’d point out a couple of firefox addons that I have found useful. Firstly Colourfultabs does what it says on the tin, it taints each tab a different colour. But dont worry they are not flashing eye inducing colours but just different enough to help you with telling which one is which.
The other is adblocker plus, this allows you to right click on a pesky banner add and hide it from view, so untidy looking forums and other such sites can be cleaned up very quickly.
Now to buy a ton more memory for my server install openfiler and continue with my 291!
Well I bought myself a nice shiny samsung hd502ij 500gb hard disk to move a virtual server or two onto (the wsus content is really chewing up the disk space). Stuck the drive in my computer and switched her on…….. Nothing, didnt recognise the new disk at all. It turns out that there is a compatibility problem with older via chipsets (my motherboard currently only supports sata 150. but there is a tool you can download called estool you can download an image for floppy or cd rom. Amongst the things you can do with it is force a sata drive to operate at 150 and not the default 300 of modern drives.
I have not actually put the drive back into my pc yet to see if it works but this little bit of info may be of help to some of you. Obviously if I decide in the future to buy a new motherboard then I will need to set it back to full speed. Of course the other option is to get a pci sata card and use it on that.
I’ll let you know later how I get on.
Hi all,
Just another quick post about another couple of really useful utilities I’ve found, one is quite old and I’ve known about it for some time but never actually used it until now.
Keypass Password Safe
I’ve just added this application to my portable apps pen drive, Its an application that you can insert all your websites usernames and passwords to so you dont have to remember loads of different passwords for them. The main concern is obviously security but the application itself is protected with a Master password so you only ever have to remember one password to gain access to all your others.
Where this application comes into its own is its ability to generate random passwords for you for registering with new sites. This means you can have very complicated passwords for sites and never have to actually remember them just copy and paste the generated password into the sites sign up form and you can have a different secure as you like password for each site you register with.
Once you have the passwords and site details in the application you can open the website from the application then select perform autotype to enter your login details for you. Absolutely brilliant!!!
Ccleaner
Ccleaner is an old tool that probably most of you will already know about, I came to use eit when a work colleague bought a laptop in for me to look at. It had got that spyware/av product called advanced antivirus which mascarades itself as a full blown antivirus suit. After wrestling with its removal and associated other spyware and AV issues, (laptop had norton on but subscription had expired in 2003, so was in essence not protected). I put clamwin on it to take care of AV duties in the future and started looking around for a freebie reg cleaner. During the removal of all the problems it had left a few registry issues and startup items that were no longer there so on boot you’d get a few errors pointing to missing files etc. I downloaded Ccleaner and installed it and must say I was very impressed with it. It scans the registry for problems very quickly (it took under 10 seconds to run on this laptop which was great considering how slow and bogged down with rubbish it was). Once it has found the problem entries when you run the delete button it gives you the option to backup the registry enteries its going to delete, which I did. It deletes th entries just as quickly. So just for good measure I rebooted and ran ccleaner a couple more times which picked up the odd straggling issue here and there. After a total of 3 scans with ccleaner I was getting no more issues with missing files or odd things trying to run in the back ground.
So another tool has gone onto my pen drive for future use!