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Showing posts from March, 2015

Ltsp (ubuntu 10.x) - a bit 0f safety.

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In this section we will add some internet safety software and allow access to the net from the ltsp clients. Step 1: Setting up a proxy To filter the internet we need a tool to allow us to do that. Tinyproxy allows us to do that. Launch the Synaptic Package Manager from the "System" -> "Administration" menu. We need to make sure that community open source packages are available. To do that under the menu "Settings" select "Repositories". Make sure "Community maintained Open Source software (universe)" is selected. Now on the tool menu click Search and type "tinyproxy". Right-click on "tinyproxy" and select "Mark for Installation". Now click Apply on the tool menu. or sudo apt-get install tinyproxy Tinyproxy should now be installed. Step 2: Content filtering. Before we enable the internet connection to the thin clients we want to be able to filter or block s

Italic architecture.

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ltsp update for Ubuntu 10.04

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  This is for LTSP,  mainly for keeping software installed via the standard repositories up to date.  You definitely really need to be at least an intermediate linux user to accomplish this project. Ask for help from an expert if you fell uncomfortable with it. With ltsp you really have two separate file systems to update. One for the regular file system and one for the file system clients. Actually you could have several file systems to update if you are supporting more than one kind of thin client hardware. By now you should be handy enough with the command line that I do not have to put a picture of every result. Quick hint: you can ssh into your server and then cut and paste all the commands from a file or this web page. That is what I am doing now. Update the sources (where the upgrade/update files will come from). $ sudo apt-get update Do the upgrade $ sudo apt-get upgrade In some cases if you did a system upgrade instead of a clean install, you might no

PC diagnosis

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What was the diagnosis from the famous MSWindows PC Tech doctor say about the linux box? It's terminal.

Old time cable saver.

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Ethernet splitter.variant cable saver. Need to be well shielded. Does not work on 1G networks. Take the other end of the cable, cut it to 9 inches and punch down the four pairs using the following wiring scheme: You will need two of them. Jack #1: 1 White/Orange to pin 1keystone jack 2 Orange to pin 2 keystone jack 3 White/Green to pin 3 keystone jack 6 Green to pin 6 keystone jack Jack #2: 4 Blue to pin 2 keystone jack 5 White/Blue to pin 1 keystone jack 7 White/Brown to pin 3 keystone jack 8 Brown to pin 6 keystone jack Once all the pairs are punched down, you can glue together side by side the two keystone jacks. Essentially:

Old time cable saver.

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Ethernet splitter.variant cable saver. Need to be well shielded. Take the other end of the cable, cut it to 9 inches and punch down the four pairs using the following wiring scheme: You will need two of them. Jack #1: 1 White/Orange to pin 1keystone jack 2 Orange to pin 2 keystone jack 3 White/Green to pin 3 keystone jack 6 Green to pin 6 keystone jack Jack #2: 4 Blue to pin 2 keystone jack 5 White/Blue to pin 1 keystone jack 7 White/Brown to pin 3 keystone jack 8 Brown to pin 6 keystone jack Once all the pairs are punched down, you can glue together side by side the two keystone jacks. Essentially:

Geek power.

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For the geek shall inherit the earth.

Caveat emptor.

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Why I will not be using the newest version (much less any other) of Microsoft Windows.

Geek bucket list.

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This is way out of date, but it has it's points Done Item: Geek Bucket list. (from “Daily cup of tech”) Geek Bucket list. (from “Daily cup of tech”) 1. Add a Third Monitor 2. Build a Linux Firewall 3. Build a Network File Server 4. Build a PC 5. Build a Robot 6. Build an HTML based Website using Notepad 7. Bypass a Computer Password on All Major Operating Systems 8. Bypass School or Work Website Blocks 9. Carry a Computer Cleaning Arsenal on Your USB Drive 10. Compile a Linux Kernel 11. Control Your House Lights with a Computer 12. Convert Cassette Tapes to Digital Audio Files 13. Crack a Wi-Fi Password 14. Create “Hello, World” in at Least Five Different Programming languages 15. Create a Disposable E-Mail Account 16. Create a Recovery Drive Image of Your Computer 17. Create a WordPre

Devil in the details.

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Was trying to get a list of systems up on the network.  Pingall.sh would not work at all. It was driving me nuts. So I went to another system and it worked.  $ cat pingall.sh a="" for i in {1..254} do ping 192.168.1.$i -c1 -w1 -v  | grep "icmp_seq=1" done $ ./pingall.sh 64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.623 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.32: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.113 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=4.77 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.125: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.26 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.149: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.306 ms Went back to the original system and decided to do just one ping. $ ping -c 1 192.168.1.32 PING 192.168.1.32 (192.168.1.32) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.1.32: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.363 ms --- 192.168.1.32 ping statistics --- 1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.363/0.363/0.363/0.000 ms After looking at it abou

Nweb revisited.

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Nweb ( http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/systems/library/es-nweb/ ) is a neat little web server (among others) that does well on an embedded machine where static files are important to use, You can also use it in concert with a machine that already has a web server running, but beware it is not secure,  Generally it is for nix based systems, but might be able to be compiled on other systems. The picture is a screen dump from a system accessing a Pogoplug running nweb on arch linux. Of course you need some content, but the source file for nweb comes with a bit of web content for testing. For testing you can use the source directory you will create. Remember you will have to have the development environment  already installed. Note: Good security recommends not having the web development on the system doing the serving. $ mkdir nweb $ cd  nweb $ wget  ftp://ftp.boulder.ibm.com/systems/power/community/aix/nweb/nweb.zip $ unzip nweb $ ls client.c     nweb23_aix6_1_7         

Recent collections.

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Using legacy ports.

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No-solder-parallel-port-break-out (Great for home control) We are going to take the parallel port breakout cable and have some fun with the following code (which I may rewrite) and use some extra parts. Part 1 C code Code source Note asm/io.h s/b sys/io.h in parcon.c Part II Basic code: Freebasic: (code snippet) (Note: Compiled code on linux must be run under sudo or root unless special rights are given to the program via chmod +s.) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 rem turn on D0 (pin 2 on the parallel port) out 888,1 rem get status and print to terminal ? inp(888) rem turn off D0 (pin 2 on the parallel port) out 888,0 rem get status ? inp(888) Code Source Circuit for testing the code. With the cable it will be easier to set up. Simple LED driving circuits You can make simple circuit for driving a small led through PC parallel port. The only components needed are one LED and one 470 ohm resistors. You simply connect the diode and resist

Coding contest.

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Nix cut and paste.

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Development.

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Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy, if both are frozen.

Nexus seven tablet now worthless.

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Money for school test equipment down the drain.  Since  #Android does not want to support #ethernet , I no longer want to use android. Saying you do not support ethernet is amateurish. Not getting a new unit to get left out in the cold again. Android is getting the Apple/Microsoft  disease. Update: waiting to see if a5.1 fixes the issues. Whoopie!! Ethernet is fixed, but still have to test a direct connection to the Arduino, Could not find a setting to set the ip address, so it looks like I will have to use a router to make it work.

Podcast tools

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Here are a few little schematics and stuff I have collected. I will be adding more as we go along. Each of these projects are under ten dollars each. An old computer (that has a soundcard with a microphone input) to use with a free program called Audacity (for an internet radio station you could use shoutcast and icecast also) installed. Yes, we acquired an old computer from a local user group for free. People (obviously Microsoft users) thought It was worthless. Linux makes computer equipment more valuable. $ sudo apt-get install audacity pavucontrol Step 1: Simple Microphone. Microphone: (Any good piezo buzzer should work.) We tried several piezo buzzers and found the larger ones work better. I also plan to try some old speakers also. The real tiny piezo buzzers from old motherboards need a preamp (they are not loud enough and need additional electronics to help them work better). One interesting thing is that you can also use the piezo mi