Archive: Tech Support

Recently I had the opportunity to work on an Acer Aspire One netbook. It's rare that I get the chance to work on a linux desktop system for a client. Most of my desktop users that I support run Windo…

I had a machine that I picked up to test internet connectivity. They were able to do email, but not visit web pages. My first thought was that internet explorer may have been a bit sideways, but when…

I've run across this a few places, where a webmaster actually BEGS users NOT to use a firefox plugin or addon when visiting their site. So, I thought it might be interesting to compile a list of thos…

Ugh.... you hate to see those exception OE messages. This particular one happened on an old Windows 98 machine. (Yes, I know, but they want to keep it in service if possible.) The full details are as…

I use Google Calendar for most everything I do. Since I have a number of different jobs I have a tendency to break things down into individual calendars. So I have my personal calendar events, my com…

It's unusual for mail servers to suddenly start rejecting messages internally and from external sources. That's exactly what I saw though over the weekend. A mailserver running mdaemon on Windows 200…

Internet Explorer 7 is going to be an automatic upgrade through WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) on February 12. This was announced last fall, but is now about to become reality. According to Mi…

First, I guess I should give a primer, what's an RBL? RBL stands for Realtime Black List (or Realtime Block List depending on who you talk to.) The idea is there are machines that either 1) have no b…

Windows users know chkdsk, linux users know fsck... users of each MIGHT have heard of SMART. These are different ways of TESTING hard drives. Well, there's also a utility called TestDisk that looks p…

I'm tempted many times to setup an asterisk system at the house - and use VOIP for additional lines. Here's an article on asterisk the easy way., telaisp has good deals on residential voip service.

I've run into a few problems with a windows xp repair install in the last few days that I wanted to detail the problems and what the resolution was. First, it was someone elses laptop needing a hard …

In ubuntu/debian linux software installs, there are such things as "metapackages" which is a package that just describes what OTHER packages it "needs". For instance in ubuntu, the kubuntu-desktop pa…

For quite a while I've used ghost4linux (g4l) for my disc cloning needs. What I REALLY like are the ability to do a network copy of the image to an ftp server and the built in dd_rescue to rescue dat…

I've had a fun time this week dealing with a STRANGE Vista problem on an HP computer (I doubt it's HP specific, but don't know for certain.) The error goes like this... "A problem has been detected a…

I found this not too long ago at a techamok forum... copied here for convenience - not intended to slight the original author.... I only met my brother’s ex-girlfriend’s family once — the year …

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 …

I thought I had already posted this, but I looked the other day and didn't find the article, so I'm posting it now... if it's a duplicate, sorry... I'm still using Ubuntu's Dapper Drake 6.06(.1) as a…

and you can't turn it on without an error... Oh boy... last week I first saw this system and it was running less than the minimum amount of memory, so I thought that could be part of the issue. (It c…

There are lot's of ways to get a file from one place to another, emailing is the first that many think of. (For larger files I'll usually just upload to a directory on the website and then email a li…

You had to know it would be a matter of time. Not long after I wrote about the limitations of Vista's upgrade version I found this. First let me reset. Previous versions of Windows upgrade versions w…

In the last few days, I had to set up something a bit unusual with apache. Basically the goal was to have apache listen for connections on two different ports (the standard port 80 and an alternate p…

There could be a record number of vulnerabilities addressed next week when Microsoft releases an expected dozen updates for its Windows and Office products. (According to Brian Krebs at the Security …

This is something that really looks interesting. Recently Linspire announced their intent to open source the CNR (Click N Run) concept for installing software, launching a wiki based web site that wo…

If you're upgrading to Vista and use an ipod (true Apple branded iPod)... you might want to refrain from hooking the ipod up to the Vista pc. theregister has reported that Apple is sounding the alarm…

Microsoft Vista is now out, the next version of Windows, successor to XP. While Windows XP will continue to receive updates into 2014 there are many that might be eager to upgrade and move to the lat…

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 …

In the past when installing an upgrade version of Windows it meant having your original disk handy to prove that you were REALLY eligible for an upgrade license. What this meant is that if you wanted…

Haven't had the chance to try this one firsthand yet, although I've been watching for this. You may be familiar with ies4linux which is a script that uses wine to download/install multiple versions o…

I thought I had written about this once before, but when I searched the site to find the solution I had come across before, I couldn't find my post.... so, sorry if this is a duplication, but I've ru…

I ran into this some time back and found the solution a few months later and was reminded today to document it here.... The situation is this... Linux host for VMWare server, the guest machine has us…

One of the things I have a tendency to do is save licence key - web confirmation pages to a pdf by printing. It gives a good capture of the document and saves me from actually having another paper to…

Here are a few other notes on linux software raid. I created a directory called raidinfo to keep information in to make it easy to maintain the raid array. First... from the software raid howto, I've…

I like nx server and client, it can really make good use of low bandwidth connections to get a gui link. But, by default it's quick and easy to setup gnome and kde login sessions within nxclient, but…

Not really, news, but I was reminded again this evening that mail is not available at the command line in recent default installs of Ubuntu (or kubuntu /xubuntu). If you're like me and make use of th…

ah... the joys of *nix utilities.... I've just successfully tested a "capture" of a live, running system into a virtual disk image. No, I don't mean that I booted up with an imaging utility. I took a…

The newest Ubuntu (K/X/Edu as well) is out, Edgy Eft 6.10 is finalized and will be supported for 18 months. (Longer support/users seeking stable proven base should stick with Dapper Drake...) One of …

Now... available in Beta form... The Linux version of the Flash player has been stuck at 7 for some time, while many sites require flash 8 for video/etc... (The page to find the beta download is here…

Ebay is apparently aware of some problems with their new "Sell your item" tool and linux web browsers. The linux.com article above says that they tried with several browsers windows/linux/mac and the…

Along the way on my permissions nightmare last night, I made matters worse by changing permissions on a fairly important file. In order to fix that I was going to need to reboot from a boot disk. The…

Yikes, what an evening..... it started innocently enough in the afternoon. I have an old Mandrake 10.0 server that I was upgrading clamav on (recent security update). While I was at it, I was reviewi…

I've been using vmware server quite a bit of course, I've mentioned it before. I had never played around with accessing a usb device in the guest environment though. When I tried (host operating syst…

I saw this great article from enterprise.linux.com giving some good ideas on some of the interesting things that can be done with curl. (Curl is a command line application for accessing URL's (web/ft…

As I mentioned earlier, Bellsouth seemed to be in the midst of a big DNS meltdown when I got up this morning. I spent some time getting various bellsouth customers "worked around" the issue by settin…

This morning, I'm noticing some of the machines I monitor having big DNS problems. It seems to be Bellsouth.net's dns servers gone sideways - none seem to respond. On one network in particular we're …

The first thing I should mention is that this months update from Microsoft is the last for XP SP1 users should plan a migration path to SP2 to keep getting updates to XP. Multiple vulnerabilities thi…

The other day I was trying to partition a drive hooked up via usb. (So it get's /dev/sda as it's device in linux)... I tried a few utilities to access the partition table and all failed, finally, I r…

First, I should disclaim that this is going to be a brain dump of the resources and experience of a quick setup of Ubuntu 6.06 on a software raid based storage system. This may be less than ideal, bu…

One of the "project machines" I've had that's been retired from other service was to become a "storage server" this week. The twin 250GB drives had arrived and I was ready to setup a RAID1 array (mir…

Vmware has launched a tool (windows only it seems) aimed to convert a REAL running system into a virtual machine. (For use with VMWare's virtualization products. The converter also can convert images…

I saw a comment somewhere else that zero-day was overused and in essense ANY previously unknown vulnerability in open source software is technically zero day... the intent here though is to use the w…

After 12 years of effort FreeDos has reached the milestone 1.0 released. It can be found here. I've really found freedos to be quite usable for quite some time as a drop in replacement of MS Dos envi…

There's an article at linux.com that gives a good overview of using testdisk and PhotoRec. Testdisk should be able to recover at the partition level and PhotoRec should be able to just pull the files…

This was weird and now that the switch is replaced I haven't been able to duplicate it, but let me explain. There was a netgear fs608 (8 port unmanaged) switch plugged into a linksys router (model nu…

In my wife's profile on the desktop she said she was getting an error message sending and receiving messages so.... when doing a send/receive of mail I saw evolution giving an error message of "summa…

One of the real frustrations with phone tech support is translating step by step what is needed to the person on the other end. I know it sounds easy, but in reality - what if they've got xyz theme f…

There are a couple notes to pass along with regards to some pretty serious vulnerabilities in various wireless network adapter drivers. First, Sans has information on some Intel Centrino updates that…

Just by way of information..... I've seperated out the www.computerrepairasheville.com and www.ashevillecomputerhelp.com domains now to point to a seperate web site with the main goal of simplifying …

Sometimes you run across a site that's a browser snob. You know the type.... you visit it in Mozilla Firefox or (anything other than IE) and it says, "you must use Internet Explorer version 6 or newe…

Here's the link to Microsoft's advisory. The main workaround seems to be.... Don't open or save powerpoint attachments that you receive from untrusted sources, OR that you receive unexpectedly from t…

Linux has full support for so many file systems. Fat32, which is the filesystem of the Win98 and ME systems has had full read-write support as long as I can remember, but NTFS has not. In fact, NTFS …

I've been keeping an install of Vmware virtual Server through their beta and Release Candidate phase and have seen several places that they've released the 1.0 version today. This release is free (as…

On the heels of yesterdays massive update day from Microsoft, Adobe has released an update for the free Adobe Reader. The Adobe reader is one of those ALMOST essential applications that MOST everyone…

I don't know much about the dv format, except that it is a standard format that many camcorders use. For this reason, many video editors (such as kino for linux) prefer to see files coming in dv form…

I have spent about a week with the 2x page open in one of my browsers. I've been trying to get to know PXES' new incarnation. For background. PXES was hosted on sourceforge.net and was an attempt at …

A couple days ago I had a brief article on the vandals banging away at the door of my ssh server. Like I said, I've, at times, been fairly smug abou the futility of their actions, but.... the persist…

As I was searching online this weekend for something ubuntu related... I ran across this nice reference Wiki.... ubuntuguide.org. They've got a good Ubuntu new user guide and also a few things Mandri…

Sometimes drives just go bad. Surprise. One recent fresh install of Windows XP had started having real stability problems. On running a chkdsk and looking at the event viewer, it was fairly clear tha…

OK - just fresh off solving the reason I couldn't get vmplayer to start on my 1Ghz AMD 64 1GB of memory machine.... I started looking at vmserver. (RC1). Now, vmplayer is a free download (so is vmwar…

I've tried to ask myself if I'd trust someone enough to let them run a remote session on my own desktop to solve a problem. I think the answer is "it depends". If you think about it, I do tech suppor…

So, I had the script all ready, I've got my x11vnc custom compiled to be as widely compatible as possible, I've tested thoroughly on the internal network. The next step was to test my x11vnc "one cut…

Well, I've got a nice way of doing "easy" one click (or one cut and paste) light desktop support for windows or linux, one uses ultravnc sc, the other uses x11vnc with a special wrapper script. So, w…

I've got to say, one of the things I really like about linux are the myriad of options for remotely administering a system. SSH is the one I use the most, but for the graphical you have x (especially…

So, the idea is that I wanted something "like" the Ultranvnc Single Click download, only for linux. The main idea being is that if someone is looking for a bit of desktop tech support on linux, we do…

Ok, some time back I'd done a writeup on UltraVNC SC, which is a nice customizable (windows version) VNC server that essentially let's someone doing remote support build their own downloadable .exe t…

It's hard to believe it's time for a version 5 of knoppix, but ... I guess it is. I was just booting up Knoppix 4 in a qemu session last night and already several days behind 5... Anyway, Knoppix 5 w…

"We tried scanning and all that happened was the lamp moved back and forth.... Nothing else happened." That was the description I had and the request to see why the scanner was broken. It hadn't been…

This is going to sound familiar to those that have been here before, but I've just had a once over of a batch of machines that are going to get thrown away tomorrow and felt compelled to make a list …

By default the apache install for most sites now restricts directory browsing. It's a good idea, you don't want just ANYTHING to be browsable on a web server, but there comes a time that it makes lif…

I can't tell you how many times I've seen this complaint from the bash shell when trying to remove a bunch of files. In this case, I was trying to clear a directory where log rotating had run amuck a…

Since, I've still got a few older Mandrake 10 installs that I'm maintaining as mailservers, there aren't supported security fixes for various things anymore... Friday there was news of a new clamanti…

To change the Google theme of the afternoon.... Microsoft is due to release their April updates this coming Tuesday (April 11th.) Advance bulletin is here. Four updates affecting Windows, one affecti…

This is a good idea.... let's say you want a linux install, but you're very particular. You'd like to have a certain setup out of the box, say a basic desktop with OpenOffice and Firefox/Thunderbird.…

I've made quite a bit of use out of the wikipedia in recent years. I know it has it's flaws (I've run across some first hand), but I've found typos in textbooks as well. However that doesn't mean tha…

This really could be used to encyrpt web traffic over any "hostile" network. Here's what I'm talking about. Laptop using wireless. Within our internal network we would LIKE all our web traffic to be …

I've just been sitting down with the laptop for a while (Dell Inspiron 8000) it's an older laptop by current standards I guess, but it does well for me. The inspiron 8000 has some "hotkeys" for volum…

I was doing a remote connect to a machine today and the "send ctrl-alt-del" for some reason didn't work to bring up the task manager, so I had to get to it another way. For those that never noticed (…

I really ought to find a way to alias "rm -f *" to "rm -i" IF the time is between 1 AM and 7 AM.... Last night I was working late (2:30AM or so when this happened). I had just made a few "refinements…

So, I've been looking back over my list of "scripts" that are pulling in audio from various news sources online for the onlineradiotv.com site. It's also got me doing a bit more spanish language list…

A while back I talked about Google Earth under Codeweavers wine almost working (or at least I think I mentioned it here, I KNOW I tried it...) Well, I tried with vanilla wine as well and couldn't get…

I haven't had much time to look into this, but one of the mailservers I administer is typically configured to relay through mail.lig.bellsouth.net, with mail.averyjparker.com as a fallback. Sometime …

F-secure has information on a fairly aggressive new email virus. Their name for it is VB.bi although it's aliases are.... W32.Blackmal.E@mm, WORM_GREW.A, W32/Nyxem-D, Email-Worm.Win32.VB.bi depending…

There are a lot of elements to a good disaster recovery strategy.... knowing where offsite backups are located, keeping the offsite backups fresh. Knowing where any ON-site backups are. Having a plan…

How many times have I had this kind of phone call.... "my computers not working"... "the light on the monitor is on, but there aren't any lights on the keyboard. everything seems connected, but there…

I've run into this in the last few days too. (In spite of the fact that it's an OLD update (April 13, 2004?) MS04-013.... I think on the last visit (and my first one to this machine) we had probably …

I ran into strange problems accessing a shared Novell Netware (5.0) folder. Everytime the folder was attempted to be accessed from multiple machines the window would freeze and if you waited long eno…

Last week sometime I was doing maintenance on an OLD Windows 95 machine (yes there are some still out there....) and noticed the Antivirus had not updated in a good while. They were using Grisoft's A…

Saw this today.... "Error while aging folder "Inbox" in store "Personal Folders". File access is denied. You do not have the permission required to access the file C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microso…

Well, in the article the other day about the Windows wireless problem/(feature that could be exploitable?) there was a mention that the default behaviour for Windows would be changed with the next se…

Dealing with text.... we've looked at a couple of basics on logging in and starting to use the command line and hopefully not feeling too helpless there... we've seen ways to navigate directories and…

Now that we've logged in and learned how to move from one directory to another (and find where we are if we get lost...) it's probably time to start learning how to find out about other commands. Wel…