Stephen Reese

Creating VMware VMDK files from DD images using Live View

While watching some Florida football today I decide to figure out how to mount/run a DD image in VMware Workstation. My image mounting skills were a little lacking so Google it was. I found a ton of great examples that seemed like they should work but the steps seemed …

How I got started in information technology

Every once in a while someone asks me how I got started in working in the information technology realm. Usually someone that is not in the industry or they are interested in working with computers as a career and are not really sure where to start. I do not think …

Finally migrated from Blogger to WordPress

I haven’t posted in a while because Blogger finally did away with their FTP/SCP publishing ability meaning if I wanted to continue using Google’s Blogger platform I would have to allow them to host my content for me. I don’t mind this except there are small …

Redirect Blogger URL using Mod Rewrite and shell scripting fu

Blogger is doing away with the option to host your blog via your own host and migrating everything to the cloud. I wanted to have the option to continue hosting my blog on my own server even though as of now I am still hosting with Blogger. The main concern …

A few tools that may help rid of malware

These tools may help rid a computer system of malware but be warned they can be very destructive to your system. In other words if you don’t know what you’re doing then backup what you can and take it to a professional. Ad-Aware - This seems to be a …

Setting up maildrop with Courier MTA

Setting up maildrop with Courier MTA Before I get into the maildrop here are a few notes to myself for setting up Courier. Before running ./configure you should add ssl bin directory to your path To receive local mail indifferent of caps touch {your/etc/courier/dir}locallowercase Account postmaster …

Migrating from Blogger to WordPress

Blogger is removing the functionality to host your own “Blogger” content by disabling the FTP/SFTP functionality from their system. I’m considering their hosting solution or migrating to a WordPress solution. If I stick with Google’s Blogger hosting then bandwidth should not ever be an issue as they …

God Mode - Give Windows users an easier way to destory their computers

Windows 7 and Vista (latter can be buggy) has an interesting feature that allows quick access to allow kinds of administrative tools. To create God Mode simply create a new folder on your desktop and name it the following: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} Now you will have a quicker way to change …

Google namebench helps find happy nameservers

I was recently checking name servers that I was using to resolve hosts on a network. After using tools such as ping, traceroute, and dig I decided to search around and found Google has a new tool called namebench. Intrigued I decided to give it a shot. There is support …

Problem with RAID volume larger then 2TB on Dell workstations

I ran into a interesting issue this weekend. I was setting up a RAID volume on a Optiplex and Precision workstations, which have three 1.5 Terabyte (TB) drives. I tried creating a single large RAID 5 volume but the Intel Matrix storage manger (8.5.2) would not set …

Python File Uploader

I recently had a need to upload large files to a server via HTTP. Most of the solutions required tweaking the web server or PHP. Instead, I found a Python script that would write the data in chunks so it could handle large files. I modified the script to include …

Trouble accessing Gmail or internal chat client

I have been in a couple of places which I needed to access my email and chat so here is a little fix to get around DNS fixes that redirect hosts to the localhost. Modify your hosts file to look like the following: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts 127 …

Facebook gets linked account support

Now you can logon to your Facebook account through several providers such as Google, Myspace and OpenId which IMO is great (I’m lazy). Just go to Settings, Account Settings and Linked Accounts. You can even pick multiple providers. One cool part is my openID provider VeriSign can be setup …

Installing Sun Java on Debian Lenny

The Sun Java JDK is available in the Debian Lenny non-free repository, therefore you must modify /etc/apt/sources.list: $ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list Add non-free to the Debian Lenny repositories: deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ lenny main non-freedeb-src http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ lenny main non-free …

Debian Backup Script

The script is located here. It can update the software repository, backup the file system, and send the backup to another machine via SSH. Feel free to try it out and let me know if you have any issues. Shell script to update Debian system via APT. Backup systems and …

A few simple computing tips

Here’s a short list of safe computing tips that may help you stay safe. \1. Passwords, use complex passwords and do not use the same password for MySpace/Facebook as you do for your banking website. This is an easy habit to get into so try to break the …

New RSS feed

Tinkering as usual I was check out my FeedBurner feeds for accuracy since I have heard through the grapevine that a number of users are having problems with incorrect feed statistics when using FeedBurner. My statistics seem to be fine (not like anyone subscribes anyhow :-). It was interesting that Google …

TrueCrypt on my Dell notebook

So I recently acquired a new notebook and I of course wanted the notebook to be secure. When I say secure I’m not just talking about preventing someone from exploiting the notebook from the wild but the problem of physical security with regards to someone stealing it. There are …

Using session-monitor to span ports as an aggregation tap

Like most I do not have the funds to purchase a $1000 port aggregation tap for my IDS to monitor traffic so instead I just used a 2950 Cisco Switch: ! interface FastEthernet0/1 switchport access vlan 100 duplex full ! interface FastEthernet0/2 switchport access vlan 100 duplex full ! interface FastEthernet0 …

Using metasploit to pwn MS06-067

In a graduate course I was taking, our professor wanted us to tool around with the Metasploit project. This tool makes quick work of exploiting vulnerabilities. After the client takes the opens the link, I ran ‘ipconfig’ to ensure I had remote connectivity. Here a shell that I ran ‘ipconfig …