Multi-Boot PE using Grub4Dos

Thanks to the sources below on how I completed this project of mine...
http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/ubuntu
http://www.themudcrab.com/acronis_grub4dos.php#tagInstall
http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/grub4dos#TOC-Part-1---Making-a-bootable-USB-pen-
http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/install-xp-from-an-iso
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub.html


Setup Prerequisites...
Setup environment: Windows
Items needed:

• usb-HDD (at least 80GB)
• Grub4DOS Installer (http://www.themudcrab.com/acronis_grub4dos.php#tagInstall)

HDD Setup Layout:
Note: This can be accomplished doing 1 partition where there will be less issues. But I prefer organizing my boot partition from my installer partition.

• Boot Partition = 16GB / FAT32
• Data Partition = rest of the space / NTFS

Start of Grub installation:

• After creating the partition on the HDD whether a whole or 2 partition like mine run the windows application grub_gui (see the above link themudcrab site)
• Use Whole disk (MBR)
• Then check the Don't search floppy option, leave all the other options unchecked.
• Click on Install
• After a successful write copy the grldr file to the root of the partition or your usb hdd
• Now create your menu.lst to create a menu for grub

How to Boot XP or BartPE
See below the sample menu entry to load ntldr
title  Boot BartPE       
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldr
map () (hd0)
map (hd0) ()
map --rehook
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr

How to Boot Win7/Vista or WinPE2+
See below the sample menu entry to load bootmgr
title  Boot WinPE/Vista/Win7
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /bootmgr
map () (hd0)
map (hd0) ()
map --rehook
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /bootmgr
chainloader /bootmgr


In the menu above my BartPE and WinPE2/3/Win7 data is also on the boot partition. Note that the ntldr and bootmgr are all in the root of the partition.

This is my birthday gift to you people! Happy birthday to me! :p

Multiple gateway in Windows

Ahoy! Been busy this past months and here I am again.

In this topic I experienced a problem where I have 2 NIC connected to different routers. One is I use for internet browsing (NIC1) and the other is for file sharing and other stuff (NIC2).

Now I need to use VPN to connect to NIC2 but the default gateway is on NIC1.Below is the current configuration...

NIC1 (default gateway)
IP = 192.168.10.50
Gateway = 192.168..10.1

NIC2
IP = 192.168.20.50
Gateway = 192.168..20.1

IP to connect from outside NIC2
192.168.1.20

Then from what I read from Microsoft Support it said that I need to add a static route to be able to route IP datagrams (whatever that is) to my specified destination.

To do that open command prompt and type...
route add 192.168.1.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.20.1

where: ROUTE ADD destination subnet MASK subnet mask my gateway

then try to ping to the IP that you want and it should respond. If it works then VPN and other application you wish to use can connect to that destination.


Happy tweaking!!!

Skydrive - The free MS Office cloud?

Merry Christmas people!!!

As I was searching for an alternative free Office cloud alternative for personal and business use I stumbled on my googling the M$ site "skydrive.live.com"

At first I thought it was only an evaluation but to my astonishment It is not! See the Wiki content... 

Windows Live SkyDrive, initially called Windows Live Folders, is a free-of-charge file hosting service that allows users to upload files to a cloud storage and then access them from a Web browser. It is part of Microsoft's Windows Live range of online services, and uses Windows Live ID to control access to files, allowing users to keep the files private, share them with contacts, or make the files public. Publicly-shared files do not require a Windows Live ID to access.

Any way could this be the upcoming rivalry for google Docs free cloud Office app?

We all know that Excel was their #1 product that has put up a good history and also there is a free beta use of Office 2011 though I did not download it and did not make effort to look how long the free use will be because I want to try only the cloud based application.

So far to my tests on IE8, Opera, Firefox and Chrome there are no problems encountered. Except for being slow because it loads a lot of features.

The free cloud service has a 25GB storage vs Google Docs 1GB Document storage and 10GB for other files. You can increase the Google Docs storage but for a price.

To me as of now the free Excel product is a big YES for me because most of my formula's are for Excel and only a minimum was supported in Google Docs. But I hope soon Google Docs can overcome this problem.

creating ssh keys for your users

User level: newbie

This is how to create ssh keys to all your users with "you" the one creating them in your account.

The reason I created this post is to make it clear that one user can create ssh keys to everyone.

This post was made possible by happy coders blog post SSH public key authentication (a.k.a "passwordless login") and svn+ssh: one ssh account, multiple subversion users.

To start:
create a keypair
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "john@yourcompany.com"

Do not enter a passphrase. Creating a passphrase defeats the goal of a passwordless login if you are not going to use ssh-agent. By default, the keypair would be stored in ~/.ssh/


Upload the public key to the remote machine
$ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub theuser@theserver.com:~/

Setup the public key on the remote machine
$ ssh theuser@theserver.com
$ mkdir ~/.ssh
$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
$ cat ~/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

The permissions are important, SSH would not read an authorized_keys file that is readable by other users and make sure the ".ssh" folder permission is 700 or it will not work.

If the SSH daemon is configured to allow public key authentication then there is nothing more to do. If not, make sure to do the following:

edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set the value shown below
PubkeyAuthentication yes
 AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys

XCloner Backup for WordPress

Searched for a Wordpress Backup plugin that can backup both database and WordPress files and here's the closest thing I could find that suits our needs...

Installation Phase:
- Download Xcloner Manager and extract
- Then place inside wp-content/plugins
- change owner and permission...
-- chown -R www-data:root xcloner-backup-and-restore
-- chmod -R 771 xcloner-backup-and-restore
- create a directory inside main wordpress directory
ex: mywpblog# mkdir administrator administrator/backups
- change owner...
-- chown -R www-data:root administrator/backups

Configuration Phase:
- Activate Xcloner in Plugins page
- open Xcloner link
- login as admin (both user and passw)
- open settings than set the "Backup Store Path" as...
/var/www/mywpblog/wp-content/plugins/xcloner-backup-and-restore/restore
(or to what path you like)

To Backup! Or not to backup! Let me count the ways! ;p
- open Generate Backup link
- most of the default settings are what you really needed so no need to tweak it more, unless you need other tweaks just do so.
- On "Backup Comments" you may put your comments (do I need to elaborate?)
- click "Continue" to proceed with the backup
- if no error occured let's continue to "View Backups"

Restoring Backup to a different location:
- go into the XCloner 'View Backups' area
- download the backup tar file you wish to restore
- after you have selected your backup click on the 'Clone it' button
- Xcloner will put the php scripts in the ftp (TAR.php & Xcloner.php)
- put the backup tar and the 2 php scripts in the target server
- create a directory for the wordpress extraction on the new server (ex mywpblog)
- open XCloner.php in the browser and fill up the necessary details. Make sure the target for extraction is in the created directory
- This process will extract the data from tar first then dump the database.
- After that the site can now be used.

Problems encountered:
- the images are not extracted properly. Manually extracted the tar file and all is good

Rename eth devices in Ubuntu

Been swapping PC units recently (because of hardware failure) and noticed that it's kinda annoying trying to remember the new eth numbering everytime the hardware changes. Did a little research on how to rename the eth to a better name.

First open the config file using vim (my preferred editor or you may use your own)
# vim  /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Then you should see a sample below

# PCI device 0x10de:0x03ef (forcedeth)

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:24:1d:61:50:1f", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth20"

 I colored the sample text above green to indicate that it is the one that I wish to change. Note that if the old config lines are not to be used anymore feel free to delete them. Don't worry because upon reboot the system should auto-detect them again if the need arises.

Now the new name I like is displayed below...

# PCI device 0x10de:0x03ef (forcedeth)

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:24:1d:61:50:1f", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="OptimusPrime"

Now I changed the /etc/network/interfaces to match the new name above.
auto OptimusPrime
iface OptimusPrime inet static
address 192.168.1.10
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1

or if you like dhcp...

auto OptimusPrime
iface OptimusPrime inet dhcp


Reboot and hope it works!!! (just kidding)

Adobe Flash not detected in Firefox

I just installed the Firefox 5 tar file from Mozilla and extracted it to /opt directory and everything loaded fine but the Adobe Flash is not seen though it is loading in the other browser.

My OS is a 64 bit Ubuntu Karmic and found out that Firefox did not use the old flash plugin so I did a little research and this is what I found...

The old plugins in my system is found in /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ but the downloaded firefox does not look there instead it looks in the...
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

so I just symlinked the flash plugin from /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ and it just worked!