Computer Tips -Tech Info

For years I’ve been using smartmontools on my linux-based machines. What I’ve absolutely LOVED about it is the advance notice I’ve had of hard drive failures. Two consecutive Decembers I received an email from my server claiming that a drive was dying and had time to replace them rescuing the data. (Although the first one […]

One recent task was install opengroupware on a dapper drake 6.06 install in a virtual machine. I followed the instructions found here and ran into a slight problem. The default install from Ubuntu does not have apache in the enabled repositories. (Apache2)… following the intsructions given I first added opengroupware’s (debian sarge) repository    Send […]

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned my Epson stylus photo 825 before, but I’ve had one for a couple years. The really nice feature (I thought) was the ability to print direct from camera memory cards (at the time I bought it, this was much more rare than in current printers.) Anyway, it had GREAT […]

Might should have typed this up sooner, but… a while back I did an article on the daylight savings changes with regards to Windows 98 and how timezone editor tzedit could be used to make sure these OS’s kept the correct time. Well, on the linux side of things there’s not a lot to the […]

http://www.sleuthkit.org/ Sluethkit… is a collection of tools for forensic analysis of a system. Usually it’s something that would be done when you’ve had a suspected rootkit on the system and you boot to another operating system with sluethkit installed (maybe livecd/etc.) and want to try to analyze and hunt for traces of the rootkit. However […]

A little over a year ago I was doing a web search for my email address (something that’s worth doing from time to time.) I ran across my name in a text file hosted at a domain called….. http://www.freestuffengine.com/ There is a different site active at that domain now (although I don’t know if it’s […]

I’ve spent much of my time the last few years looking at windows support from the linux side of the fence. Certainly linux boot disks and the like are among the most useful utilities that I’ve used. However, I am reminded from time to time that there is a good share of freely available utilities […]

Of course, you shouldn’t be using Windows 98 anymore, it’s unsupported (i.e. no security updates.) However the reality is that there are quite a few Win 98 installs out there perking away. But, with the recent law change with regards to the start/end of Daylight savings time in the US… many Windows 98 users may […]

I want to make a note of this here… Microsoft has announced that XP Home and Media center editions will get extended support on par with that of XP Pro. Essentially this means security updates for these versions of the OS should be available until 2014. Previously support for XP Home was to have ended […]

There are some tools that I make use of almost daily. Either because something strikes my curiousity or because of necessity to find out a bit more about a computer issue. DNS lookup tools fall into the category of “must have” for the kind of stuff I wind up doing. Whether it’s a whois lookup […]