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• Automating silent software deployments on Solaris 10

  - by datSilencer

  Hello everyone. Essentially, the question I'd like to ask is related to the automation of software package deployments on Solaris 10. Specifically, I have a set of software components in tar files that run as daemon processes after being extracted and configured in the host environment. Pretty much like any server side software package out there, I need to ensure that a list of prerequisites are met before extracting and running the software. For example: Checking that certain users exists, and they are associated with one or many user groups. If not, then create them and their group associations. Checking that target application folders exist and if not, then create them with preconfigured path values defined when the package was assembled. Checking that such folders have the appropriate access control level and ownership for a certain user. If not, then set them. Checking that a set of environment variables are defined in /etc/profile, pointed to predefined path locations, added to the general $PATH environment variable, and finally exported into the user's environment. Other files include /etc/services and /etc/system. Obviously, doing this for many boxes (the goal in question) by hand can be slow and error prone. I believe a better alternative is to somehow automate this process. So far I have thought about the following options, and discarded them for one reason or another. 1) Traditional shell scripts. I've only troubleshooted these before, and I don't really have much experience with them. These would be my last resort. 2) Python scripts using the pexpect library for analyzing system command output. This was my initial choice since the target Solaris environments have it installed. However, I want to make sure that I'm not reinveting the wheel again :P. 3) Ant or Gradle scripts. They may be an option since the boxes also have java 1.5 enabled, and the fileset abstractions can be very useful. However, they may fall short when dealing with user and folder permissions checking/setting. It seems obvious to me that I'm not the first person in this situation, but I don't seem to find a utility framework geared towards this purpose. Please let me know if there's a better way to accomplish this. I thank you for your time and help.

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• Ubuntu getting wrong hostname from DHCP

  - by sam

  When provisioning new Ubuntu Precise (12.04) servers, the hostname they're getting seems to be generated from the DNS search path, not a reverse lookup on the hostname. Take the following configuration BIND is configured with the hostname, and reverse name Normal zone $TTL 600 $ORIGIN srv.local.net. @ IN SOA ns0.local.net. hostmaster.local.net. ( 2014082101 10800 3600 604800 600 ) @ IN NS ns0.local.net. @ IN MX 5 mail.local.net. my-new-server IN A 10.32.2.30 And reverse @ IN SOA ns0.local.net. hostmaster.local.net. ( 2014082101 10800 3600 604800 600 ) @ IN NS ns0.local.net. $ORIGIN 32.10.in-addr.arpa. 30.2 IN PTR my-new-server.srv.local.net. Then DHCPD is configured to hand out static leases based on mac addresses like so subnet 10.32.2.0 netmask 255.255.254.0 { option subnet-mask 255.255.254.0; option routers 10.32.2.1; option domain-name-servers 10.32.2.1; option domain-name "util.of1.local.net of1.local.net srv.local.net"; site-option-space "pxelinux"; option pxelinux.magic f1:00:74:7e; if exists dhcp-parameter-request-list { option dhcp-parameter-request-list = concat(option dhcp-parameter-request-list,d0,d1,d2,d3); } group { option pxelinux.configfile "pxelinux.cfg/pxeboot"; host my-new-server { fixed-address my-new-server.srv.local.net; hardware ethernet aa:aa:aa:bb:bb:bb; } } } So the hostname should be my-new-server.srv.local.net, however when building a Ubuntu 12.04 node, the hostname ends up as my-new-server.util.of1.local.net When building Lucid (10.04) hosts, the hostname will be correct, it's only on Precise/12.04 nodes we have the problem. Doing a normal and reverse lookup on the host and IP returns the correct result Sams-MacBook-Pro:~ sam$ host my-new-server my-new-server.srv.local.net has address 10.32.2.30 Sams-MacBook-Pro:~ sam$ host my-new-server.srv.local.net my-new-server.srv.local.net has address 10.32.2.30 Sams-MacBook-Pro:~ sam$ host 10.32.2.30 30.2.32.10.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer my-new-server.srv.local.net. The contents of the hosts file is incorrect too 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 my-new-server.util.of1.local.net of1.local.net srv.local.net my-new-server So it looks like when it creates the hosts file, it puts the entire contents of the DNS search path into the local address so the FQDN according to the server is the short hostname as defined, then the first domain in the search path. Is there a way to get around this behaviour, or fix this so it gets the hostname correctly? It's picking up the first part of the hostname, then the rest is wrong.

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• How can I reverse mouse movement (X & Y axis) system-wide? (Win 7 x64)

  - by Scivitri

  Short Version I'm looking for a way to reverse the X and Y mouse axis movements. The computer is running Windows 7, x64 and Logitech SetPoint 6.32. I would like a system-level, permanent fix; such as a mouse driver modification or a registry tweak. Does anyone know of a solid way of implementing this, or how to find the registry values to change this? I'll settle quite happily for how to enable the orientation feature in SetPoint 6.32 for mice as well as trackballs. Long Version People seem never to understand why I would want this, and I commonly hear "just use the mouse right-side up!" advice. Dyslexia is not something which can be cured by "just reading things right." While I appreciate the attempts to help, I'm hoping some background may help people understand. I have a user with an unusual form of dyslexia, for whom mouse movements are backward. If she wants to move her cursor left, she will move the mouse right. If she wants the cursor to move up, she'll move the mouse down. She used to hold her mouse upside-down, which makes sophisticated clicking difficult, is terrible for ergonomics, and makes multi-button mice completely useless. In olden times, mouse drivers included an orientation feature (typically a hot-air balloon you dragged upward to set the mouse movement orientation) which could be used to set the relationship between mouse movement and cursor movement. Several years ago, mouse drivers were "improved" and this feature has since been limited to trackballs. After losing the orientation feature she went back to upside-down mousing for a bit, until finding UberOptions, a tweak for Logitech SetPoint, which would enable all features for all pointing devices. This included the orientation feature. And there was much rejoicing. Now her mouse has died, and current Logitech mice require a newer version of SetPoint for which UberOptions has not been updated. We've also seen MAF-Mouse (the developer indicated the version for 64-bit Windows does not support USB mice, yet) and Sakasa (while it works, commentary on the web indicate it tends to break randomly and often. It's also just a running program, so not system-wide.). I have seen some very sophisticated registry hacks. For example, I used to use a hack which would change the codes created by the F1-F12 keys when the F-Lock key was invented and defaulted to screwing my keyboard up. I'm hoping there's a way to flip X and Y in the registry; or some other, similar, system-level tweak out there. Another solution could be re-enabling the orientation feature for mice, as well as trackballs. It's very frustrating that input device drivers include the functionality we desperately need for an accessibilty concern, but it's been disabled in the name of making the drivers more idiot-proof.

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• Installing and configuring Zend Framework 2 server-wide [Ubuntu] and test driving ZendSkeletonApplication

  - by kinologik

  I'm trying to have ZF2 installed for all my subdomains at once (Ubuntu 12.04). ZF2 just launched its first stable version, so I wanted to install it on my development server and finally get my hands dirty with it. I downloaded ZF2 and unzipped the files in /var/ZF2/ (which now contains Zend/[all components]). I then edited /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and added the path to the ZF2 files: include_path = ".:/var/ZF2" I then downloaded the ZendSkeletonApplication and unzipped it in /var/www/skeleton. I know it is suggested to composer.phar to install ZF2 application, but: I don't want to make a local installation of ZF2... I want to make a server-wide installation be able to use my Zend components on all my domains/subdomains on my development server. Before using any automatic installation process, I'd really like to understand that process by doing it manually at first. Obviously, something goes wrong when I fire ZendSkeletonApplication, and I get the following when hit the following URL: http://www.myDevServer.com/skeleton/public/ Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'RuntimeException' with message 'Unable to load ZF2. Run `php composer.phar install` or define a ZF2_PATH environment variable.' in /var/www/skeleton/init_autoloader.php:48 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/skeleton/public/index.php(9): include() #1 {main} thrown in /var/www/skeleton/init_autoloader.php on line 48 I have skimmed through the docs, tutorials and the like, but there are no straight forward answer to this kind of configuration. In the official doc, in the (very short) installation chapter, I see a reference to adding an include path in PHP. But no example... http://zf2.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ref/installation.html Once you have a copy of Zend Framework available, your application needs to be able to access the framework classes found in the library folder. Though there are several ways to achieve this, your PHP include_path needs to contain the path to Zend Framework’s library. But then, when I get to the "Getting Started" chapter, it's all composer.phar and nothing else... http://zf2.readthedocs.org/en/latest/user-guide/skeleton-application.html I'm no sysAdmin, just a Zend enthusiast. I'm pretty sure this PEBKAC problem might be obvious for those who already got in ZF2 previous betas. Thanks for helping my out. EDIT: Problem was resolved, thanks to Daniel M. Just setting up ZF2_PATH in httpd.conf was all that was needed. SetEnv ZF2_PATH /var/ZF2 I also removed the include_path reference in php.ini and everything works just fine. So I have no idea why Zend suggested to include it there in their official docs.

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• Init script & the green [ OK ]

  - by Lord Loh.

  I am trying to install fast-cgi for nginx on an EC2 instance. I followed the steps explained here, but that is meant for Debian and does not work out of the box for a red-hat based system. I modified the script a bit to look like - #!/bin/bash ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: php-fcgi # Required-Start: $nginx # Required-Stop: $nginx # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Short-Description: starts php over fcgi # Description: starts php over fcgi ### END INIT INFO . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions (( EUID )) && echo .You need to have root priviliges.. && exit 1 BIND=/tmp/php.socket USER=nginx PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=15 PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=1000 PHP_CGI=/usr/bin/php-cgi PHP_CGI_NAME=`basename $PHP_CGI` PHP_CGI_ARGS="- USER=$USER PATH=/usr/bin PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=$PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=$PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS $PHP_CGI -b $BIND" RETVAL=0 start() { echo -n "Starting PHP FastCGI: " #ORIGINAL LINE #daemon $PHP_CGI --quiet --start --background --chuid "$USER" --exec /usr/bin/env -- $PHP_CGI_ARGS #MODIFIED LINE daemon --user=$USER $PHP_CGI -b $BIND& RETVAL=$? echo [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/php-fcgi #echo "$PHP_CGI_NAME." } stop() { echo -n "Stopping PHP FastCGI: " killall -q -w -u $USER $PHP_CGI RETVAL=$? echo "$PHP_CGI_NAME." rm /var/lock/subsys/php-fcgi } case "$1" in start) start ;; stop) stop ;; restart) stop start ;; *) echo "Usage: php-fastcgi {start|stop|restart}" exit 1 ;; esac exit $RETVAL The problem I have now is - service php-fcgi start keeps the shell blocked. If I run service php-fcgi start & and then ps aux, I see the php-cgi process running bound to the socket. I see the start command stop only when I execute service php-fcgi stop. How do I solve this blocking issue? I have tried adding an & at the end of the line spawning the daemon. But other scripts do not seem to be doing this. This is the most complicated script I am attempting to modify yet :-( How do I get the script to display the green [ OK ]? I checked scripts like httpd and saw that all they were doing was something as shown below. But I never see a green [ OK ] when I execute php-fcgi. I also discovered that putting echo_success with functions sourced displays the green [ OK ] but I do not see any other scripts in the /etc/rc.d/init.d/ executing echo_success or echo_failure. What have I got wrong? Also, How do i specify PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN with daemon? echo [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/

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• Melting Laptop Power Supply Tip

  - by AlReece45

  Several (6-7) months ago, my laptop power supply cord got a cut in it and stopped working. Having gotten cheap (and short) power supplies in the past, I decided to buy 2 brand new ones from the manufacturer (ASUS). Now, I used my laptop a little less than usual between February and March. During that time I noticed a few times that the power supply, even though plugged in, did not provide power. Often the computer would just off on me. I figured it was just that one power supply being bad. I had left the alternate at my parent's house in another state and asked them to ship it to me. Now, at work the other day I wanted to get a file off the of hard disk. So I booted it up, knowing that it had a low battery, plugged it in. During the first 2 minutes of use, I was told that the battery was low and I should plug it in. I unplugged it, inspected the end (Being plugged in, this was suspicious), and decided I shouldn't plug it back in-- the plastic on the tip was melting from the heat of the metal on the tip. The computer had simply booted up and I had the file-manager open. It had not been on for more than 10 hours. Now I know that computers tend to get pretty hot. However, the melting point of plastic is usually above 200C.. so that's much hotter than the computer should be generating. I went and bought a THIRD power supply. This time a universal one from Best Buy (it was very fast to buy and test). I tried it out on the computer and it's tip is melting as well. My older laptop that uses the universal power supply uses it perfectly (has been about a week and a part of use now). I have tried using the computer without the battery, with the same effect. Obviously, this is not a problem with the power supply. My room mate and I being trained computer techs were contemplating taking the computer apart and desoldering and resoldering on the power tip. (The computer is about 6 months out of its 2-year warranty). We're hoping that will correct the issue as I would prefer to devote my money on a Good Desktop rather than yet ANOTHER $1200+ laptop. Is there any thing I'm missing here that might cause the the tip on the power unit to melt?

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• How to circumvent ISP Limiting "Unknown" traffic - (SSH)Proxy, VPN

  - by connery

  I am having issues with using a proxy/VPN, with my current ISP (Comenersol, Spain). From my point of view they limit traffic by protocol or by traffic they "know" and "dont know". I'll explain my findings so far below. Internet connection in Spain: ~400-420KByte/sec (speedtest.net) OpenVPN Server in Sweden(pfsense): 100/100Mbit. LZO Compression. TCP. Tun. Aes128 Squid Proxy server in Sweden (pfsense): 100/100 (same box as the vpn server). Plain, no encryption. Runs in stealth mode to hide the use of proxy. NOT running OpenVPN or Squid Proxy, this is my findings: When I download a file from my pfsense box in Sweden, I get maximum speed When I run speedtest.net and choose any european server (including Swedish), I get max speed When I download a torrent (with non default port above 10K), I get limited to ~100KByte/sec. Encryption is turned off If I download something through https, I get max speed Running either Squid Proxy or VPN, this is my findings When I download a file from my pfsense box in Sweden, I get ~100KByte/sec When I run speedtest.net and choose any european server (including Swedish and Spanish), I get ~100Kbyte/sec When I download a torrent, I get same limitation ~100KByte/sec When I download something through https, I get ~100KByte/sec I verify the speeds above with speedtest.net measure, firefox measure in addition to having bmon running in terminal in the background. This way I am certain that the speeds I get presented, are in fact correct. If I connect through a different ISP with VPN or Squid Proxy, I get better speeds (400KByte/sec ++) In short: Whenever I tunnel my traffic through Sweden, my SPanish ISP throttles the traffic. I thought tunneling it through Squid would solve the issue, since I then would no longer hide my traffic through encryption. This does not seem to be the case. Wget and fetch gives same result. I did not try 'nc', but I assume this would give the same result. Does anyone know how to circumvent this issue? I would very much like to be able to get full speed with Swedish ip, as this would make me able to stream TV at higher quality than today. 100KByte/sec just does not cut it quality wise. Thanks for reading. Looking forward for your help.

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• How to format and where to put the SPF TXT record?

  - by YellowSquirrel

  EDIT I think I more or less understand the syntax and, anyway, Google is giving, in the link below, the syntax needed. My question is really where to put that stuff. Should I quote every field? The whole line? :) I've set up Google apps for my domain: I've registered the domain with Google by adding the CNAME Google asked and I've apparently succesfully setup the MX Google mail servers. So far I haven't yet a dedicated server: I'm just having a domain at a registrar. Now I want to activate SPF and I'm confused. In the following short webpage: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=178723 it is written that I must add a TXT record containing: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all Where should I enter this? Should this go in the zone (?) file, like I did for the CNAME and the MX records? So far I have something like this: @ 10800 IN A 217.42.42.42 @ 10800 IN MX 5 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. @ 10800 IN MX 5 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. @ 10800 IN MX 3 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. @ 10800 IN MX 3 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. @ 10800 IN MX 1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. google8a70835987f31e34 10800 IN CNAME google.com. Does adding the SPF TXT record mean I should literally have something like that: @ 10800 IN A 217.42.42.42 @ 10800 IN MX 5 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. @ 10800 IN MX 5 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. @ 3600 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all" @ 10800 IN MX 3 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. @ 10800 IN MX 3 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. @ 10800 IN MX 1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. google8a70835987f31e34 10800 IN CNAME google.com. I made that one up and included right in the middle to show how confused I am. What I'd like to know is the exact syntax and where/how I should put this TXT record.

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• Some Memory Slots Not Working on MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 Motherboard

  - by Mike Ciaraldi

  Short version of question: Does anyone have an MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 motherboard, who can confirm that all four memory slots work? Long version: Several months ago I bought an MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 motherboard at Newegg. At that point I installed an AMD A8-5500 processor and two sticks of Corsair Vengeance 8 GB DDR3-1866 memory, and put it into my file server. I installed the RAM in slots 1 and 3, as directed in the manual, to enable dual-channel memory access. It seemed to work fine, so I bought a second identical mobo (which arrived dead, but was quickly replaced by Newegg) and set of RAM, installed an A10-5800K, and put that into my production Linux machine. Again, it seemed to work well. Eventually I happened to notice that on the server only 8 GB of RAM appeared in the BIOS. I tried each of the slots and memory modules individually and in various combinations. I even swapped processors with the production machine. The result was that putting memory in slots 1 and 2 worked (showing a total of 16 GB), but any memory in slots 3 or 4 was not recognized. However, all four memory slots in the production machine worked, and I confirmed this with both processors. I contacted MSI and arranged to ship the defective mobo back to them for replacement under warranty. I did not want my file server to be down in the interim, and I had another machine I wanted to upgrade, so I bought a third identical mobo to use. That one had the same problem -- only memory slots 1 and 2 worked. I tested it thoroughly with multiple processors and memory sticks. I sent the defective mobo back to MSI and they sent me a new one. This has the same memory slot problem. So I sent it back. The replacement arrived the other day and shows the same problem. I contacted MSI yet again and they said that nobody else has reported memory slot problems on this board and it must be my processor. So my score so far is, out of six boards of this model, I have: One where all four slots work. One which was dead on arrival. Four where only memory slots 1 and 2 work. Before I tear my other machines apart and start swapping processors again I thought I would ask if anyone else has this exact model motherboard and could confirm that all four memory slots either do or do not work. According to MSI you should be able to just plug a single memory module into any of the slots and it will work (and it does on the one mobo I have which works correctly). If you have not yet used all four slots, this is a good time to test them so you know if you can expand your memory in the future. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

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• Can I use one virtualbox disk for multiple machines?

  - by mxp

  I'm not sure what search term to use and skimming through the VirtualBox manual didn't help me either, so I ask my two questions here... My setup is this: PC with dual boot into Windows 7 and a Debian operating system (both 64bit). I've created a virtual machine (Kubuntu, 64bit) under Windows and put it's VDI file on a SMB share of my NAS. Then I created a VM under linux using the same settings for memory etc and assigned the existing VDI file to it. My idea was that I could use that virtual machine from Windows and Linux as well. (1) Is this generally something that should work without problems? I noticed that snapshots get me into trouble because they appear to be not visible from the other operating system: The snapshots I took after installing the guest system are not visible under Linux. That's why I shut down the VM after usage and not save its state while it's running. My current problem is this: I have used the VM under Windows first, then under Linux. Now it will only start on Linux. When trying this on Windows the guest OS detects some kind of hard disk error and fails to boot because it cannot mount its drive. Obviously the virtual hard disk won't fail so it must have something to do with me using it under Linux. (2) How can I fix that? Update: It also looks like any changes I made in the VM under Linux have been reset by trying to boot it under Windows. Looks like it's back to the latest snapshot. I'm confused... Update The answer to my first question can be found below. In short: It works, as long as you don't use snapshots. The answer to my second question is this: Under Windows set the VM back to the latest snapshot and then discard the snapshot so it gets merged. There should be no snapshots left at the end. If you have multiple snapshots, discard the earliest ones first (Snapshot 1, then 2, 3, ...). I'm not sure what happens if you start at the end (.., 3, 2, 1). This of course leads to some data loss since you revert all changes since the last snapshot. But at least the VM is usable again.

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• My server's been hacked EMERGENCY

  - by Grant unwin

  I'm on my way into work at 9.30 p.m. on a Sunday because our server has been compromised somehow and was resulting in a DOS attack on our provider. The servers access to the Internet has been shut down which means over 5-600 of our clients sites are now down. Now this could be an FTP hack, or some weakness in code somewhere. I'm not sure till I get there. How can I track this down quickly? We're in for a whole lot of litigation if I don't get the server back up ASAP. Any help is appreciated. UPDATE Thanks to everyone for your help. Luckily I WASN'T the only person responsible for this server, just the nearest. We managed to resolve this problem, although it may not apply to many others in a different situation. I'll detail what we did. We unplugged the server from the net. It was performing (attempting to perform) a Denial Of Service attack on another server in Indonesia, and the guilty party was also based there. We firstly tried to identify where on the server this was coming from, considering we have over 500 sites on the server, we expected to be moonlighting for some time. However, with SSH access still, we ran a command to find all files edited or created in the time the attacks started. Luckily, the offending file was created over the winter holidays which meant that not many other files were created on the server at that time. We were then able to identify the offending file which was inside the uploaded images folder within a ZenCart website. After a short cigarette break we concluded that, due to the files location, it must have been uploaded via a file upload facility that was inadequetly secured. After some googling, we found that there was a security vulnerability that allowed files to be uploaded, within the ZenCart admin panel, for a picture for a record company. (The section that it never really even used), posting this form just uploaded any file, it did not check the extension of the file, and didn't even check to see if the user was logged in. This meant that any files could be uploaded, including a PHP file for the attack. We secured the vulnerability with ZenCart on the infected site, and removed the offending files. The job was done, and I was home for 2 a.m. The Moral - Always apply security patches for ZenCart, or any other CMS system for that matter. As when security updates are released, the whole world is made aware of the vulnerability. - Always do backups, and backup your backups. - Employ or arrange for someone that will be there in times like these. To prevent anyone from relying on a panicy post on Server Fault. Happy servering!

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• Is this iptables NAT exploitable from the external side?

  - by Karma Fusebox

  Could you please have a short look on this simple iptables/NAT-Setup, I believe it has a fairly serious security issue (due to being too simple). On this network there is one internet-connected machine (running Debian Squeeze/2.6.32-5 with iptables 1.4.8) acting as NAT/Gateway for the handful of clients in 192.168/24. The machine has two NICs: eth0: internet-faced eth1: LAN-faced, 192.168.0.1, the default GW for 192.168/24 Routing table is two-NICs-default without manual changes: Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 (externalNet) 0.0.0.0 255.255.252.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 0.0.0.0 (externalGW) 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 The NAT is then enabled only and merely by these actions, there are no more iptables rules: echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward /sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE # (all iptables policies are ACCEPT) This does the job, but I miss several things here which I believe could be a security issue: there is no restriction about allowed source interfaces or source networks at all there is no firewalling part such as: (set policies to DROP) /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth1 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT And thus, the questions of my sleepless nights are: Is this NAT-service available to anyone in the world who sets this machine as his default gateway? I'd say yes it is, because there is nothing indicating that an incoming external connection (via eth0) should be handled any different than an incoming internal connection (via eth1) as long as the output-interface is eth0 - and routing-wise that holds true for both external und internal clients that want to access the internet. So if I am right, anyone could use this machine as open proxy by having his packets NATted here. So please tell me if that's right or why it is not. As a "hotfix" I have added a "-s 192.168.0.0/24" option to the NAT-starting command. I would like to know if not using this option was indeed a security issue or just irrelevant thanks to some mechanism I am not aware of. As the policies are all ACCEPT, there is currently no restriction on forwarding eth1 to eth0 (internal to external). But what are the effective implications of currently NOT having the restriction that only RELATED and ESTABLISHED states are forwarded from eth0 to eth1 (external to internal)? In other words, should I rather change the policies to DROP and apply the two "firewalling" rules I mentioned above or is the lack of them not affecting security? Thanks for clarification!

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• Holding off Windows 2000/3 Server in Shutdown

  - by user1668993

  We have a C# VS2010 application running on a Windows 2000 Server box (there is also a Windows 2003 Server box) as pretty much the only application running. We remove power from the box. There is a short duration battery (maybe 3 minutes of power) which then waits 10 seconds and then decides things are coming down and notifies Windows that it needs to shut down. Windows sends a CTRL_SHUTDOWN_EVENT event to the application which fields it and tries to keep Windows from going down for a while to let another computer which communicates with this one time to do some file work on the first computer. It does this by a timing loop and after the loop is over, it exits gracefully and the computer shuts down. Nice plan but it doesn't work. The application gets to maybe 20 seconds and the application is forcibly killed by Windows and Windows shuts down. At 90 seconds, the hardware firmware running the battery turns off power to the computer. I have tried searching to find out how to hold off Windows for a bit of time. I tried creating (it wasn't there) the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree: \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WaitToKillAppTimeout registry key to 60000 but though it seemed to keep the popup from happening, Windows itself died at about the same amount of time -- we think without having the opportunity to shut itself down gracefully. Maybe the registry key worked but wasn't enough. Basically I have an "ill-mannered" application which is refusing to shut down (for the best of reasons) and without the registry key thing, Windows eventually shuts it down anyway and then shuts itself down. With the registry change, we think what is happening is that Windows doesn't shut down the application but Windows itself is killed suddenly without shutting down but power is still not pulled for about another minute, and then power is pulled. So maybe we have layers here. First there is how long the application tries to stay open. Then there is how long Windows is prepared to allow it to stay open. Then there is ... something... which kills windows. Then there is the power loss. Anyone have any ideas how we can get windows to stay open and in operation say to 70 seconds instead of about 20? Is our registry key right, but not enough? Is there some additional key we need to set to determine how long after windows is notified of a shutdown before it just kills itself? Thanks in advance.

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• SQL Server suddenly using only a small portion of CPU.

  - by hermiod

  We've got a Windows 2008 R2 server running SQL Server 2008. All of a sudden, the SQLServer process is refusing to go above 20% CPU usage. As of last week, when running a heavy query against the db it would rise to 100% usage as I would expect. We've had this server for a while and it seems strange that it would just suddenly have this limit. This limit is causing our queries to take a lot longer than they normally would. No one has (knowingly at least) made any changes to the server configuration. After a bit of investigation, I discovered the sys.dm_os_sys_memory view. This shows 'available physical memory is high' bu at the same time the available physical memory is 339552kb where as the total is 4193848kb. It is worth noting that this is a virtual server running on vmware. Is there a setting somewhere with in SQL Server that sets the maximum CPU usage? I've found the settings in resource governor, although this is currently off as it always has been. We have recently started using Spotlight for SQL Server by Quest Software. It's playback database was located on this server for a short time this morning, I first noticed the problem shortly afterwards, although I hadn't been doing any queries prior to this so I don't know if this is the point at which the problem began, however the database was working as expected on Friday afternoon. The Windows log shows that the following settings were applied to the SpotlightPlaybackDatabase when it was created. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option TORN_PAGE_DETECTION to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option MULTI_USER to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option READ_WRITE to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option ANSI_WARNINGS to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option RECOVERY to SIMPLE for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option QUOTED_IDENTIFIER to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_CLOSE to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. Could any of these settings changes modified the settings applied to the whole server?

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• Apache certificates for some urls not working

  - by Vegaasen

  We are having a rather strange problem with a Apache-installation. Here is a short summary: Currently I'm setting up Apache with https, and server-certificates. This is fairly easy and works straight out of the box - as expected. This is the configuration for this setup: Listen 443 SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile "/progs/apache/ssl/example-site.no.pem" SSLCertificateKeyFile "/progs/apache/ssl/example-site.no.key" SSLCACertificateFile "/progs/apache/ssl/ca/example_root.pem" SSLCADNRequestFile "/progs/apache/ssl/ca/example_intermediate.pem" SSLVerifyClient none SSLVerifyDepth 3 SSLOptions +StdEnvVars +ExportCertData RequestHeader set ssl-ClientCert-Subject-CN "%{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN}s" RewriteEngine On ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyRequests On SSLProxyEngine On ... <LocationMatch /secureStuff/$> SSLVerifyClient require Order deny,allow Allow from All </LocationMatch> ... <Proxy balancer://exBalancer> Header add Set-Cookie "EX_ROUTE=EB.%{BALANCER_WORKER_ROUTE}e; path=/" env=BALANCER_ROUTE_CHANGED BalancerMember http://10.0.0.1:7200 route=ee1 retry=300 flushpackets=off keepalive=on BalancerMember http://10.0.0.2:7200 route=ee2 retry=300 flushpackets=off keepalive=on status=+H ProxySet stickysession=EX_ROUTE scolonpathdelim=Off timeout=10 nofailover=off failonstatus=505 maxattempts=1 lbmethod=bybusyness Order deny,allow Allow from all </Proxy> RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.html [NC] RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://exBalancer/$1 [P,NC] ProxyPassReverse / balancer://exBalancer/ Header edit Set-Cookie "(.*)" "$1;HttpsOnly" ... So - everything works fine and as expected for all of the pages that are not a part of the LocationMatch-directive. When requesting something that matches the LocationMatch-directive, I'm asked for a certificate (hence the SSLVerifyClient required attribute) - and getting all the correct certificates in my browser that is based on the root/intermediate chain. After choosing a certificate and clicking "OK", this is what pops up in the apache logs: [ssl:info] [pid 9530:tid 25] [client :43357] AH01998: Connection closed to child 86 with abortive shutdown ( [Thu Oct 11 09:27:36.221876 2012] [ssl:debug] [pid 9530:tid 25] ssl_engine_io.c(1171): (70014)End of file found: [client 10.235.128.55:45846] AH02007: SSL handshake interrupted by system [Hint: Stop button pressed in browser?!] And this just spams the logs. What is happening here? I can see this configuration working on my local machine, but not on one of our servers. There is no configration differences between the servers, only minor application-wise-changes. I've tried the following: 1) Removing CA-certificate-checking (works) 2) Adding required CA-certificate for the whole site (works) 3) Adding "SSLVerifyClient optional" does not work 4) ++ Server/Application Information Local: -OpenSSL v.1.0.1x -Apache 2.4.3 -Ubuntu -mpm: event -every configuration should be turned on (failing) server: -OpenSSL 0.9.8e -Apache 2.4.2 -SunOS -mpm: worker -every configuration should be turned on Please let me know if more information is needed, I'll provide it instantly. Brief sum-up: -Running apache 2.4 -Server certificates works just fine -Client certificates for some /Locations does not work, fails with errors PS: Could it be related with the OpenSSL version and the "Renegotiation" stuff related to TLS/SSLv3?

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• ssh, "Last Login", `last` and OS X

  - by allentown

  I have hit the googles as much as I can on this, being specific to OS X, I am not finding an answer. Nothing is wrong, but curiosity levels are high. $ssh [email protected] Password: Last login: Wed Apr 7 21:28:03 2010 from my-laptop.local ^lonely tylenol^ Line 1 is my command line 2 is the shell asking for the password line 3 is where my question comes from line 4 comes out of /etc/motd I can find nothing in ~/ of an of the .bash* files that contains the string "Last Login", and would like to alter it. It performs some type of hostname lookup, which I can not determine. If I ssh to another host: $ssh [email protected] Last login: Wed Apr 7 21:14:51 2010 from 123-234-321-123-some.cal.isp.net.example hi there, you are on box 456 line 1 is my command line 2 is again, where my question comes from line 3 is from /etc/motd *The dash'd IP address is not reversed On this remote host, I have ~/.ssh and it's corresponding keys set up, so there was no password request Where is the "Last Login:" coming from, where does the date stamp come from, and most importantly, where does the hostname come from? While on [email protected] (box 456) $echo hostname remote.location.example456.com Or with dig, to make sure I have rDNS/PTR set up, for which I am not authoritative, but my ISP has correctly set... $dig -x 123.234.321.123 PTR remote.location.example456.com or $dig PTR 123.321.234.123.in-addr.arpa. +short remote.location.example456.com. my previous hostname used to be 123-234-321-123-some.cal.isp.net.example, which I set with hostname -s remote.location.example456.com, because it was obnoxious to see such a long name. That solves the value of $echo hostname which now returns remote.location.example456.com. Mac OS X, 10.6 is this case, does seem to honor: touch ~/.hushlogin If leave that file empty, I get nothing on the shell when I login. I want to know what controls the host resolution of the IP, and how it is all working. For example, running last reports a huge list of my logins, which have obtusely long hostnames, when they would be preferable to just be remote.location.example456.com. More confusing to me, reading the man page for wtmp and lastlog, it looks like lastlog is not used on OS X, /var/log/lastlog does not exist. Actually, none of these exist on 10.5 or 10.6: /var/run/utmp The utmp file. /var/log/wtmp The wtmp file. /var/log/lastlog The lastlog file. If I am to assume that the system is doing some kind of reverse lookup, I certainly do not know what it is, as it is not an accurate one.

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• Correcting tree from messed up file tree in NTFS partition

  - by Fullmooninu

  It's a real messed situation, but I'm quite at the end of my options. It's my personal hardrive, so it's very important for me, and yes, I have no backup =( The short story: 1) I have two discs. One with Windows, and another where I had a bit of empty space at the front of the disk, so i could install Linux. The rest was occupied by a 1.8TB NTFS partition filled with data. 2) I installed Linux, and after a while realized there was not enough space for everything, so I tried using Gparted, and told it to re-size the NTFS partition, to a lesser size. 3) The system jammed. I had to reboot and broke the Resizing operation. Here's what I did to fix it: a) Rebooted into Linux Live, and used Testdisk,to deep analyze the disk, and recover the possible partitions. It found several versions of the NTFS partitions, probably made during the resizing. I told Testdisk to open every one of them, and only one could list its files. When trying to open the other options on Testdisk, it showed an error message. I assumed the one without errors, to be the correct one, and I told Testdisk to recover the partition, and write a new MBR. b) The partition had errors, and Linux has a NTFS fixing tool, used it, but the system still had errors. c) So I booted into windows and use chkdsk to correct all errors in the partition. d) Everything seems fine, but now, back in Windows, when I open one file, it opens another file, or part of another file. As in, some files took up the position of other files. What I think happened is that I recovered an old tree, and not the most current one. And that one just happened to be intact, while the most recent one was damaged. As such, the files that were moved during the failed resizing, were now, during the automatic correction, assumed wrongly to be in their correct places. So when I open a file, it tries to open another one. Radiohead - Creep.mp3 will open and it will actually be a bit from another song, or even code from a jpg. Some files seem to be all right, but others have seemed to have had their position taken by others. Anyone knows of something really powerful that can help me solve this?

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• How to find the process(es) which are hogging the machine

  - by Aaron Digulla

  Scenario: All of a sudden, my computer feels sluggish. Mouse moves but windows take ages to open, etc. uptime says the load is 7.69 and raising. What is the fastest way to find out which process(es) are the cause of the load? Now, "top" and similar tools isn't the answer because they either show CPU or memory usage but not both at the same time. What I need is the single command which I might be able to type as it happens - something that will figure out any of System is trying to swap 8GB of RAM to disk because process X ... or process X seeks all over the disk or process X uses 400% CPU" So what I'm looking for is iostat, htop/atop and similar tools run into one with an output like this: 1235 cp - Disk trashing 87 chrome - Uses 2&nbsp;GB of RAM 137 nfs_bench - Uses 95% of the network bandwidth I don't want a tool that gives me some numbers which I can analyze but a tool that tells me exactly which process causes the current load. Assume that the user in front of the keyboard barely knows how to write "process", but the user is quickly overwhelmed when it comes to "resident size", "virtual memory" or "process life cycle". My argument goes like this: A user notices a problem. There can be thousands of reasons ... well, almost :-) The user wants to know the source of the problem. The current solutions give me lots of numbers, and I need to know what these numbers mean. What I'm looking for is a meta tool. 99% of the data is irrelevant to the problem. So what the tool should do is look for processes which hog some resource and list only those along with "this process needs a lot of CPU, this produces many IRQs, this process allocates a lot of RAM (and it's still growing)". This will be a relatively short list. It will be much more simple for someone new to this to locate the culprit from this list than from the output of, say, htop which gives me about 5000 numbers but requires me to fold multi-threaded processes myself (I have 50 lines which say VIRT 2750M but only 16 GB of RAM - the machine ought to swap itself to death but of course, this is a misinterpretation of the data that can happen quickly).

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• Successfully concatenating multiple videos

  - by wiseguydigital

  My mission is to create videos out of old web slideshows. To start with I have jpegs and audio files that worked as Flash slideshows in an old system, structured such as this: Audio structure my_audio_1.mp3 (this file is a 3 second mp3 of silence) my_audio_2.mp3 my_audio_3.mp3 my_audio_4 etc... roughly 30 mp3s per slideshow Image structure my_image_1.jpg (this acts as the opening slide) my_image_2.jpg my_image_3.jpg my_image_4. etc... roughly 30 images per slideshow. As there are almost 100 slideshows that must be converted to video, I have created a web-based interface using PHP to automate the process, that sits on a local system and attempts to combine the files using shell_exec(). The process uses the following workflow: Loop through each slide and make an avi or mpeg. So for instance my_mini_video_2.avi would be a video that consists of my_image_2.jpg and has a soundtrack of my_audio_2.mp3. This slide would last the length of my_audio_2.mp3. Join / stitch / concat all of the mini videos to create the final video (Using a combination of cat and either mencoder or ffmpeg (I have also tried avimerge but to no avail). Transcode the new 'master' video to various formats such as flv etc. I thought this would be simple and have been close on many occasions but it still won't work. I can't get past stage 2 as I can't get a perfect 'master' video. I have now experimented with Mencoder, FFMpeg and seem to have been through every combination I can think of. The problem is that the audio and visuals never sync, no matter what I try. Also, I have even tried created audio-less mini videos, joining the MP3s into one long MP3 using both cat and mp3wrap and then assigning the new long MP3 as the audio track, but this always produces either a very short file or a badly slowed down file and makes the female voiceover sound like a male boxer!!! There appears to be no problems at all with the original files. Does anybody have any experience in producing a video successfully from the same kind of starting point? Or any ideas on what I may be doing wrong? As an example: If I create silent mini-videos, and stitch them together into 'temp-master.mpg' and then join the MP3s together into single MP3 called 'temp-master-audio.mp3', the audio file's duration is 09:10 and the video file's duration is 08:35. They should be the same and the audio will seem sloooow. I haven't posted code as I have written lots and lots of combinations.

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• Tips for maximizing Nginx requests/sec?

  - by linkedlinked

  I'm building an analytics package, and project requirements state that I need to support 1 billion hits per day. Yep, "billion". In other words, no less than 12,000 hits per second sustained, and preferably some room to burst. I know I'll need multiple servers for this, but I'm trying to get maximum performance out of each node before "throwing more hardware at it". Right now, I have the hits-tracking portion completed, and well optimized. I pretty much just save the requests straight into Redis (for later processing with Hadoop). The application is Python/Django with a gunicorn for the gateway. My 2GB Ubuntu 10.04 Rackspace server (not a production machine) can serve about 1200 static files per second (benchmarked using Apache AB against a single static asset). To compare, if I swap out the static file link with my tracking link, I still get about 600 requests per second -- I think this means my tracker is well optimized, because it's only a factor of 2 slower than serving static assets. However, when I benchmark with millions of hits, I notice a few things -- No disk usage -- this is expected, because I've turned off all Nginx logs, and my custom code doesn't do anything but save the request details into Redis. Non-constant memory usage -- Presumably due to Redis' memory managing, my memory usage will gradually climb up and then drop back down, but it's never once been my bottleneck. System load hovers around 2-4, the system is still responsive during even my heaviest benchmarks, and I can still manually view http://mysite.com/tracking/pixel with little visible delay while my (other) server performs 600 requests per second. If I run a short test, say 50,000 hits (takes about 2m), I get a steady, reliable 600 requests per second. If I run a longer test (tried up to 3.5m so far), my r/s degrades to about 250. My questions -- a. Does it look like I'm maxing out this server yet? Is 1,200/s static files nginx performance comparable to what others have experienced? b. Are there common nginx tunings for such high-volume applications? I have worker threads set to 64, and gunicorn worker threads set to 8, but tweaking these values doesn't seem to help or harm me much. c. Are there any linux-level settings that could be limiting my incoming connections? d. What could cause my performance to degrade to 250r/s on long-running tests? Again, the memory is not maxing out during these tests, and HDD use is nil. Thanks in advance, all :)

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• Reliable file copy (move) process - mostly Unix/Linux

  - by mfinni

  Short story : We have a need for a rock-solid reliable file mover process. We have source directories that are often being written to that we need to move files from. The files come in pairs - a big binary, and a small XML index. We get a CTL file that defines these file bundles. There is a process that operates on the files once they are in the destination directory; that gets rid of them when it's done. Would rsync do the best job, or do we need to get more complex? Long story as follows : We have multiple sources to pull from : one set of directories are on a Windows machine (that does have Cygwin and an SSH daemon), and a whole pile of directories are on a set of SFTP servers (Most of these are also Windows.) Our destinations are a list of directories on AIX servers. We used to use a very reliable Perl script on the Windows/Cygwin machine when it was our only source. However, we're working on getting rid of that machine, and there are other sources now, the SFTP servers, that we cannot presently run our own scripts on. For security reasons, we can't run the copy jobs on our AIX servers - they have no access to the source servers. We currently have a homegrown Java program on a Linux machine that uses SFTP to pull from the various new SFTP source directories, copies to a local tmp directory, verifies that everything is present, then copies that to the AIX machines, and then deletes the files from the source. However, we're finding any number of bugs or poorly-handled error checking. None of us are Java experts, so fixing/improving this may be difficult. Concerns for us are: With a remote source (SFTP), will rsync leave alone any file still being written? Some of these files are large. From reading the docs, it seems like rysnc will be very good about not removing the source until the destination is reliably written. Does anyone have experience confirming or disproving this? Additional info We will be concerned about the ingestion process that operates on the files once they are in the destination directory. We don't want it operating on files while we are in the process of copying them; it waits until the small XML index file is present. Our current copy job are supposed to copy the XML file last. Sometimes the network has problems, sometimes the SFTP source servers crap out on us. Sometimes we typo the config files and a destination directory doesn't exist. We never want to lose a file due to this sort of error. We need good logs If you were presented with this, would you just script up some rsync? Or would you build or buy a tool, and if so, what would it be (or what technologies would it use?) I (and others on my team) are decent with Perl.

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• Google Rules for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  In the book What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis outlines ten "Google Rules" that define how Google acts.  These rules help define how Web 2.0 businesses operate today and into the future.  While there's a chapter in the book on applying these rules to the retail industry, it wasn't very in-depth.  So I've decided to more directly apply the rules to retail, along with some notable examples of success.  The table below shows Jeff's Google Rule, some Industry Examples, and New Retailer Rules that I created. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} table.MsoTableGrid {mso-style-name:"Table Grid"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-priority:59; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-themecolor:text1; mso-border-alt:solid black .5pt; mso-border-themecolor:text1; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-border-insideh:.5pt solid black; mso-border-insideh-themecolor:text1; mso-border-insidev:.5pt solid black; mso-border-insidev-themecolor:text1; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Google Rule Industry Examples New Retailer Rule New Relationship Your worst customer is your friend; you best customer is your partner Newegg.com lets manufacturers respond to customer comments that are critical of the product, and their EggXpert site lets customers help other customers. Listen to what your customers are saying about you.  Convert the critics to fans and the fans to influencers. New Architecture Join a network; be a platform Tesco and BestBuy released APIs for their product catalogs so third-parties could create new applications. Become a destination for information. New Publicness Life is public, so is business Zappos and WholeFoods founders are prolific tweeters/bloggers, sharing their opinions and connecting to customers.  It's not always pretty, but it's genuine. Be transparent.  Share both your successes and failures with your customers. New Society Elegant organization Wet Seal helps their customers assemble outfits and show them off to each other.  Barnes & Noble has a community site that includes a bookclub. Communities of your customers already exist, so help them organize better. New Economy Mass market is dead; long live the mass of niches lululemon found a niche for yoga inspired athletic wear.  Threadless uses crowd-sourcing to design short-runs of T-shirts. Serve small markets with niche products. New Business Reality Decide what business you're in When Lowes realized catering to women brought the men along, their sales increased. Customers want experiences to go with the products they buy. New Attitude Trust the people and listen In 2008 Starbucks launched MyStartbucksIdea to solicit ideas from their customers. Use social networks as additional data points for making better merchandising decisions. New Ethic Be honest and transparent; don't be evil Target is giving away reusable shopping bags for Earth Day.  Kohl's has outfitted 67 stores with solar arrays. Being green earns customers' respect and lowers costs too. New Speed Life is live H&M and Zara keep up with fashion trends. Be prepared to pounce on you customers' fickle interests. New Imperatives Encourage, enable and protect innovation 1-800-Flowers was the first do sales in Facebook and an early adopter of mobile commerce.  The Sears Personal Shopper mobile app finds products based on a photo. Give your staff permission to fail so innovation won't be stifled. Jeff will be a keynote speaker at Crosstalk, our upcoming annual user conference, so I'm looking forward to hearing more of his perspective on retail and the new economy.

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• AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch

  - by Rob Chartier

  AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch by Secret Labs + House of Horology Disclaimer: Most if not all of this content has been gleaned from the comments on the Kickstarter project page and comments section. Any discrepancies between this post and any documentation on agentwatches.com, kickstarter.com, etc.., those official sites take precedence. Overview The next generation smartwatch with brand-new technology. World-class developer tools, unparalleled battery life, Qi wireless charging. Kickstarter Page, Comments Funding period : May 21, 2013 - Jun 20, 2013 MSRP : $249 Other Urls http://www.agentwatches.com/ https://www.facebook.com/agentwatches http://twitter.com/agentwatches http://pinterest.com/agentwatches/ http://paper.li/robchartier/1371234640 Developer Story The first official launch of the preview SDK and emulator will happen on 20-Jun-2013.  All development will be done in Visual Studio 2012, using the .NET Micro Framework SDK 2.3.  The SDK will ship with the first round of the expected API for developers along with an emulator. With that said, there is no need to wait for the SDK.  You can download the tooling now and get started with Apps and Faces immediately.  The only thing that you will not be able to work with is the API; but for example, watch faces, you can start building the basic face rendering with the Bitmap graphics drawing in the .NET Micro Framework.   Does it look good? Before we dig into any more of the gory details, here are a few photos of the current available prototype models.   The watch on the tiny QI Charter   If you wander too far away from your phone, your watch will let you know with a vibration and a message, all but one button will dismiss the message.   An app showing the premium weather data!   Nice stitching on the straps, leather and silicon will be available, along with a few lengths to choose from (short, regular, long lengths). On to those gory details…. Hardware Specs Processor 120MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor (ATSAM4SD32) with secondary AVR co-processor Flash & RAM 2MB of onboard flash and 160KB of RAM 1/4 of the onboard flash will be used by the OS The flash is permanent (non-volatile) storage. Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 BD/EDR + LE Bluetooth 4.0 is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 2.1, so classic Bluetooth functions (BD/EDR, SPP/AVRCP/PBAP/etc.) will work fine. Sensors 3D Accelerometer (Motion) ST LSM303DLHC Ambient Light Sensor Hardware power metering Vibration Motor (You can pulse it to create vibration patterns, not sure about the vibration strength - driven with PWM) No piezo/speaker or microphone. Other QI Wireless Charging, no NFC, no wall adapter included Custom LED Backlight No GPS in the watch. It uses the GPS in your phone. AGENT watch apps are deployed and debugged wirelessly from your PC via Bluetooth. RoHS, Pb-free Battery Expected to use a CR2430-sized rechargeable battery – replaceable (Mouser, Amazon) Estimated charging time from empty is 2 hours with provided charger 7 Days typical with Bluetooth on, 30 days with Bluetooth off (watch-face only mode) The battery should last at least 2 years, with 100s of charge cycles. Physical dimensions Roughly 38mm top-to-bottom on the front face 35mm left-to-right on the front face and around 12mm in depth 22mm strap Two ~1/16" hex screws to attach the watch pin The top watchcase material candidates are PVD stainless steel, brushed matte ceramic, and high-quality polycarbonate (TBD). The glass lens is mineral glass, Anti-glare glass lens Strap options Leather and silicon straps will be available Expected to have three sizes Display 1.28" Sharp Memory Display The display stays on 100% of the time. Dimensions: 128x128 pixels Buttons Custom "Pusher" buttons, they will not make noise like a mouse click, and are very durable. The top-left button activates the backlight; bottom-left changes apps; three buttons on the right are up/select/down and can be used for custom purposes by apps. Backup reset procedure is currently activated by holding the home/menu button and the top-right user button for about ten seconds Device Support Android 2.3 or newer iPhone 4S or newer Windows Phone 8 or newer Heart Rate monitors - Bluetooth SPP or Bluetooth LE (GATT) is what you'll want the heart monitor to support. Almost limitless Bluetooth device support! Internationalization & Localization Full UTF8 Support from the ground up. AGENT's user interface is in English. Your content (caller ID, music tracks, notifications) will be in your native language. We have a plan to cover most major character sets, with Latin characters pre-loaded on the watch. Simplified Chinese will be available Feature overview Phone lost alert Caller ID Music Control (possible volume control) Wireless Charging Timer Stopwatch Vibrating Alarm (possibly custom vibrations for caller id) A few default watch faces Airplane mode (by demand or low power) Can be turned off completely Customizable 3rd party watch faces, applications which can be loaded over bluetooth. Sample apps that maybe installed Weather Sample Apps not installed Exercise App Other Possible Skype integration over Bluetooth. They will provide an AGENT app for your smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone). You'll be able to use it to load apps onto the watch.. You will be able to cancel phone calls. With compatible phones you can also answer, end, etc. They are adopting the standard hands-free profile to provide these features and caller ID.

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• How to Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook?  Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way. Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7.  It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions.  Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade.  Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too. Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7.  If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7. Upgrade Advisor First, let’s make sure your netbook can support the extra features, such as Aero Glass, in Windows 7 Home Premium.  Most modern netbooks that ship with Windows 7 Starter can run the advanced features in Windows 7 Home Premium, but let’s check just in case.  Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (link below), and install as normal. Once it’s installed, run it and click Start Check.   Make sure you’re connected to the internet before you run the check, or otherwise you may see this error message.  If you see it, click Ok and then connect to the internet and start the check again. It will now scan all of your programs and hardware to make sure they’re compatible with Windows 7.  Since you’re already running Windows 7 Starter, it will also tell you if your computer will support the features in other editions of Windows 7. After a few moments, the Upgrade Advisor will show you want it found.  Here we see that our netbook, a Samsung N150, can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. We also see that we had one issue, but this was because a driver we had installed was not recognized.  Click “See all system requirements” to see what your netbook can do with the new edition. This shows you which of the requirements, including support for Windows Aero, your netbook meets.  Here our netbook supports Aero, so we’re ready to go upgrade. For more, check out our article on how to make sure your computer can run Windows 7 with Upgrade Advisor. Upgrade with Anytime Upgrade Now, we’re ready to upgrade our netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium.  Enter “Anytime Upgrade” in the Start menu search,and select Windows Anytime Upgrade. Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you upgrade using product key you already have or one you purchase during the upgrade process.  And, it installs without any downloads or Windows disks, so it works great even for netbooks without DVD drives. Anytime Upgrades are cheaper than a standard upgrade, and for a limited time, select retailers in the US are offering Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99 if purchased with a new netbook.  If you already have a netbook running Windows 7 Starter, you can either purchase an Anytime Upgrade package at a retail store or purchase a key online during the upgrade process for $79.95.  Or, if you have a standard Windows 7 product key (full or upgrade), you can use it in Anytime upgrade.  This is especially nice if you can purchase Windows 7 cheaper through your school, university, or office. Purchase an upgrade online To purchase an upgrade online, click “Go online to choose the edition of Windows 7 that’s best for you”.   Here you can see a comparison of the features of each edition of Windows 7.  Note that you can upgrade to either Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.  We chose home Premium because it has most of the features that home users want, including Media Center and Aero Glass effects.  Also note that the price of each upgrade is cheaper than the respective upgrade from Windows XP or Vista.  Click buy under the edition you want.   Enter your billing information, then your payment information.  Once you confirm your purchase, you will directly be taken to the Upgrade screen.  Make sure to save your receipt, as you will need the product key if you ever need to reinstall Windows on your computer. Upgrade with an existing product key If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit from a retailer, or already have a Full or Upgrade key for another edition of Windows 7, choose “Enter an upgrade key”. Enter your product key, and click Next.  If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit, the product key will be located on the inside of the case on a yellow sticker. The key will be verified as a valid key, and Anytime Upgrade will automatically choose the correct edition of Windows 7 based on your product key.  Click Next when this is finished. Continuing the Upgrade process Whether you entered a key or purchased a key online, the process is the same from here on.  Click “I accept” to accept the license agreement. Now, you’re ready to install your upgrade.  Make sure to save all open files and close any programs, and then click Upgrade. The upgrade only takes about 10 minutes in our experience but your mileage may vary.  Any available Microsoft updates, including ones for Office, Security Essentials, and other products, will be installed before the upgrade takes place. After a couple minutes, your computer will automatically reboot and finish the installation.  It will then reboot once more, and your computer will be ready to use!  Welcome to your new edition of Windows 7! Here’s a before and after shot of our desktop.  When you do an Anytime Upgrade, all of your programs, files, and settings will be just as they were before you upgraded.  The only change we noticed was that our pinned taskbar icons were slightly rearranged to the default order of Internet Explorer, Explorer, and Media Player.  Here’s a shot of our desktop before the upgrade.  Notice that all of our pinned programs and desktop icons are still there, as well as our taskbar customization (we are using small icons on the taskbar instead of the default large icons). Before, with the Windows 7 Starter background and the Aero Basic theme: And after, with Aero Glass and the more colorful default Windows 7 background.   All of the features of Windows 7 Home Premium are now ready to use.  The Aero theme was activate by default, but you can now customize your netbook theme, background, and more with the Personalization pane.  To open it, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. You can also now use Windows Media Center, and can play-back DVD movies using an external drive. One of our favorite tools, the Snipping Tool, is also now available for easy screenshots and clips. Activating you new edition of Windows 7 You will still need to activate your new edition of Windows 7.  To do this right away, open the start menu, right-click on Computer, and select Properties.   Scroll to the bottom, and click “Activate Windows Now”. Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then select “Activate Windows online now”. Activation may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed. When it is done, the Activation wizard will let you know that Windows is activated and genuine.  Your upgrade is all finished! Conclusion Windows Anytime Upgrade makes it easy, and somewhat cheaper, to upgrade to another edition of Windows 7.  It’s useful for desktop and laptop owners who want to upgrade to Professional or Ultimate, but many more netbook owners will want to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium or another edition.  Links Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Windows Team Blog: Anytime Upgrade Special with new PC purchase Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium EditionAnother Blog You Should Subscribe ToMysticgeek Blog: Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate (Part 3) – Shadow CopyUpgrade Ubuntu from Breezy to DapperHow to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday

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• Run Windows in Ubuntu with VMware Player

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you an enthusiast who loves their Ubuntu Linux experience but still needs to use Windows programs?  Here’s how you can get the full Windows experience on Ubuntu with the free VMware Player. Linux has become increasingly consumer friendly, but still, the wide majority of commercial software is only available for Windows and Macs.  Dual-booting between Windows and Linux has been a popular option for years, but this is a frustrating solution since you have to reboot into the other operating system each time you want to run a specific application.  With virtualization, you’ll never have to make this tradeoff.  VMware Player makes it quick and easy to install any edition of Windows in a virtual machine.  With VMware’s great integration tools, you can copy and paste between your Linux and Windows programs and even run native Windows applications side-by-side with Linux ones. Getting Started Download the latest version of VMware Player for Linux, and select either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, depending on your system.  VMware Player is a free download, but requires registration.  Sign in with your VMware account, or create a new one if you don’t already have one. VMware Player is fairly easy to install on Linux, but you will need to start out the installation from the terminal.  First, enter the following to make sure the installer is marked as executable, substituting version/build_number for the version number on the end of the file you downloaded. chmod +x ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle Then, enter the following to start the install, again substituting your version number: gksudo bash ./VMware-Player-version/build_number.bundle You may have to enter your administrator password to start the installation, and then the VMware Player graphical installer will open.  Choose whether you want to check for product updates and submit usage data to VMware, and then proceed with the install as normal. VMware Player installed in only a few minutes in our tests, and was immediately ready to run, no reboot required.  You can now launch it from your Ubuntu menu: click Applications \ System Tools \ VMware Player. You’ll need to accept the license agreement the first time you run it. Welcome to VMware Player!  Now you can create new virtual machines and run pre-built ones on your Ubuntu desktop. Install Windows in VMware Player on Ubuntu Now that you’ve got VMware setup, it’s time to put it to work.  Click the Create a New Virtual Machine as above to start making a Windows virtual machine. In the dialog that opens, select your installer disk or ISO image file that you want to install Windows from.  In this example, we’re select a Windows 7 ISO.  VMware will automatically detect the operating system on the disk or image.  Click Next to continue. Enter your Windows product key, select the edition of Windows to install, and enter your name and password. You can leave the product key field blank and enter it later.  VMware will ask if you want to continue without a product key, so just click Yes to continue. Now enter a name for your virtual machine and select where you want to save it.  Note: This will take up at least 15Gb of space on your hard drive during the install, so make sure to save it on a drive with sufficient storage space. You can choose how large you want your virtual hard drive to be; the default is 40Gb, but you can choose a different size if you wish.  The entire amount will not be used up on your hard drive initially, but the virtual drive will increase in size up to your maximum as you add files.  Additionally, you can choose if you want the virtual disk stored as a single file or as multiple files.  You will see the best performance by keeping the virtual disk as one file, but the virtual machine will be more portable if it is broken into smaller files, so choose the option that will work best for your needs. Finally, review your settings, and if everything looks good, click Finish to create the virtual machine. VMware will take over now, and install Windows without any further input using its Easy Install.  This is one of VMware’s best features, and is the main reason we find it the easiest desktop virtualization solution to use.   Installing VMware Tools VMware Player doesn’t include the VMware Tools by default; instead, it automatically downloads them for the operating system you’re installing.  Once you’ve downloaded them, it will use those tools anytime you install that OS.  If this is your first Windows virtual machine to install, you may be prompted to download and install them while Windows is installing.  Click Download and Install so your Easy Install will finish successfully. VMware will then download and install the tools.  You may need to enter your administrative password to complete the install. Other than this, you can leave your Windows install unattended; VMware will get everything installed and running on its own. Our test setup took about 30 minutes, and when it was done we were greeted with the Windows desktop ready to use, complete with drivers and the VMware tools.  The only thing missing was the Aero glass feature.  VMware Player is supposed to support the Aero glass effects in virtual machines, and although this works every time when we use VMware Player on Windows, we could not get it to work in Linux.  Other than that, Windows is fully ready to use.  You can copy and paste text, images, or files between Ubuntu and Windows, or simply drag-and-drop files between the two. Unity Mode Using Windows in a window is awkward, and makes your Windows programs feel out of place and hard to use.  This is where Unity mode comes in.  Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu, and select Enter Unity. Your Windows desktop will now disappear, and you’ll see a new Windows menu underneath your Ubuntu menu.  This works the same as your Windows Start Menu, and you can open your Windows applications and files directly from it. By default, programs from Windows will have a colored border and a VMware badge in the corner.  You can turn this off from the VMware settings pane.  Click Virtual Machine in VMware’s menu and select Virtual Machine Settings.  Select Unity under the Options tab, and uncheck the Show borders and Show badges boxes if you don’t want them. Unity makes your Windows programs feel at home in Ubuntu.  Here we have Word 2010 and IE8 open beside the Ubuntu Help application.  Notice that the Windows applications show up in the taskbar on the bottom just like the Linux programs.  If you’re using the Compiz graphics effects in Ubuntu, your Windows programs will use them too, including the popular wobbly windows effect. You can switch back to running Windows inside VMware Player’s window by clicking the Exit Unity button in the VMware window. Now, whenever you want to run Windows applications in Linux, you can quickly launch it from VMware Player. Conclusion VMware Player is a great way to run Windows on your Linux computer.  It makes it extremely easy to get Windows installed and running, lets you run your Windows programs seamlessly alongside your Linux ones.  VMware products work great in our experience, and VMware Player on Linux was no exception. If you’re a Windows user and you’d like to run Ubuntu on Windows, check out our article on how to Run Ubuntu in Windows with VMware Player. Link Download VMware Player 3 (Registration required) Download Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day trial Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enable Copy and Paste from Ubuntu VMware GuestInstall VMware Tools on Ubuntu Edgy EftRestart the Ubuntu Gnome User Interface QuicklyHow to Add a Program to the Ubuntu Startup List (After Login)How To Run Ubuntu in Windows 7 with VMware Player TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor

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