Managing all of the passwords one needs to know for both personal and job-related security is quite a challenge. KeePass is a password management program for Windows. It is open-source and released under the GPL, which means it is highly likely that this project will stay around in some form. It also appears to use […]
Running KeePass Password Management on GNU/Linux with Wine
ClamAV Free AntiVirus Software
ClamAV is a GPL virus scanner that will integrate with mail servers, scan filesystems from the command line, and automatically update its virus signatures. There are many ports of ClamAV to various platforms, including Windows. This article will show how to compile and install ClamAV for a single user on GNU/Linux. First, we grab the […]
Microsoft Windows Metafile Exploit Workaround
[January 5 update: Microsoft released a fix for this vulnerability available here. The below information has some related procedures that may be useful. ] There is a zero day expoit in the wild that can infect your Windows system via email and web browsing. There is no known fix yet, but there is a workaround […]
Monitor Default Web Logs
Most web addresses are all name based on the server side. That is, netadmintools.com and associated logs are monitored and tracked in a different file than requests to the IP address. The first entry in the VirtualHost section of the httpd.conf file for Apache is where the requests without a name go. Stick a very […]
Adding a BugTraq Feed to Firefox
There is a cool feature in Firefox that will put live RSS feeds right on the toolbar simply by clicking the orange icon in the URL window. We have this capability on NetAdminTools. Clicking on the Add Live Bookmark will add a list of our latest articles. For the RSS 2.0 specification, see this page. […]
Tricking out your desktop with Blackbox
After Ximian locking up my console hard, and general disgust with complicated window managers, I decided to trick out a minimalistic window manager. For those of you that are interested, check out Blackbox. The source is 235k. I kid you not. Funny thing is that I wanted to use a more configurable xterm, so I […]
Mozilla 0.9.4 Released
The lack of a web browser that works well with Linux is one of my (and many other peoples) big complaints. For those network administrators out there contemplating a migration to GNU/Linux on the desktop, the traditionally buggy performance and lack of features of web browsers for Linux is a huge stumbling block. I have […]
GNUCash 1.6.2 Compile/Installation
[[LFS Notes: This article worked.. kinda… for my existing Red Hat 7.1 system, and was actually the inspiration for exploring LFS. See the GNUCash 1.6.3/LFS article.]] A few days ago I wrote about improvements in Mozilla. The release of the new Mozilla has made my desktop experience with GNU/Linux oodles better. I decided to push […]
Gnome 1.4 from Source
[[LFS Note: This article was based on my Red Hat 7.1 install. See GNUCash 1.6.3/LFS and the hint on LFS for more info on installing Gnome for LFS or you want to dig really deep into the libraries.]] In the article on GNUCash 1.6.2 Compile/Installation I mentioned that Gnome was more stable after I had […]
XFree86 4.1.0 from Source
[[LFS Note: The below procedure works fine with LFS 3.0]] In my continuing search for compatibility, stability and performance, I decided to compile XFree86 4.1.0 from source and install it. I removed the RPMs for my version earlier version of X, as well as Freetype. I also removed my old fonts. I didn’t have any […]
XFig from Source vs. Xaw3d
I discussed compiling XFree86 from source in my article XFree86 4.1.0 from Source. One problem if you nuke all associated RPMs, is that the Athena Widget Set is included in the XFree86 distribution. This is in xc/lib/Xaw of the XFree86 source tree. What is a Widget Set? Well, this is the style of buttons and […]
KDE 2.2.1 from Source
[[LFS Note: the following was from a Redhat 7.1 perspective. It may or may not work well on an LFS system. For LFS, use the LFS hint to install zlib-1.1.3, jpegsrc.v6b, libpng-1.0.12, lcms-1.07, libmng-1.0.3, tiff-v3.5.5, qt 2.3.1 (change -system-mng to -system-libmng), Openssh (LFS HINT) , lesstif-0.93.9. I added: pcre-3.4, audiofile-0.2.2, libxml-1.8.16, libxml2-2.4.5. After you get […]
Nuking Cookies w/ Netscape or Mozilla on *nix desktops
Storing cookies on workstations has both privacy and security issues associated with it. Generally, we like to nuke our cookie files. There is way too much information stored in them and created during web surfing. I (Agatha) visited a site I’d never seen before and was prompted by name to donate money to the site […]
GNUCash 1.6.3/LFS
I posted some earlier stories in the NetAdminTools Desktop area about struggling with GNUCash. I did eventually build up an LFS system, which I’m writing and posting this article from. There is some good information on the LFS site about getting various combinations of software running on LFS in the hints area. In particular, the […]
Using the MMC to disable Windows Messenger
We have not found a way to easily disable the Windows Messenger service on XP via the application. You can use the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) to do this, though. Select start–>run, enter mmc, and click OK. Select Add/Remove Snap-in, Add, Group Policy, Add, Local Computer, Finish. Here is a graphic of the appropriate part […]
XP Pro ACPI, XP task scheduler issues, and a C twist
There are a variety of issues surrounding ACPI on XP workstations. XP is tied very tightly in to ACPI. The immediate result is, by default, Microsoft’s support for ACPI saves the world a lot of electricity. That is, the information economy kills a lot less wildlife and puts less toxins in the air that we […]
Dynamically updating desktop background with text
Ever wish you could dynamically update the background image of your desktop? Here is a perl script that takes an existing background, finds out the current stock/index prices, and adds the prices to the image. Just put it in your crontab. You could just as easily put ping response times for various servers on your […]
What to do when your user’s hard drive dies
One of the most likely parts to fail on a typical workstation is the hard drive. The user powers on in the morning, and the BIOS screams “Unable to Boot!”. Now, much work can often be done via the web, or at least, the user won’t freak as much if they can at least access […]
Windows XP Service Pack 1
Windows XP Service Pack 1 is out and available here. We had better luck with the network install. The network install is a lot larger; however, the update wizard that was supposed to download just what our workstation needed timed out when contacting the server. A retry started the whole download again. A straight download […]
Managing Disk Quotas on Windows 2000 / XP
One challenge for systems administrators is convincing users to store their files on a network share rather than on their local hard drive. Disk quotas on Windows 2000 and XP can be used to force users to do just that. To enable disk quotas for the users, log on as an administrator, right click on […]
