Update for my "IPTABLES for transparent Squid"

Ahoy! On my old post on TRANSPARENT SQUID there is an existing problem where https or port 443 can get through because SQUID does not cache SSL. Try visitng https://www.google.com from my old configuration and see that it can pass thru.

Here on my post I added this config from my previous post to block certain IP range or non-internet users group. Place the rule below the "DNAT port 80 request comming from LAN systems to squid 3128 ($SQUID_PORT) aka transparent proxy".

# Sample of IP range to be blocked
$ipt -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $LAN -m iprange --src-range 192.168.1.200-192.168.1.250 -p tcp --dport 443 -j DNAT --to 192.168.1.1:3128
$ipt -A FORWARD -p tcp -i $LAN -m iprange --src-range 192.168.1.200-192.168.1.250 --dport 443 -j REJECT

After this all https request from the IP range declared above will be rejected.

Note that If a certain application needs to connect to an SSL connection but the user is in the blocked list you will need to manually hand code the proxy IP to the client PC application and add to the SQUID rules the url that needs to be given access. This way the server will be the one giving SSL connection thru proxy and we can retain the transparent proxy configuration.

Reset NIC in Win7

I posted this because sometimes the NIC/LAN card does not work out of the box. The problem that I encountered is that Win7 says that there are no Internet connection on the network, though all are fine.
After a restart (disable and enable) of the NIC the Internet starts working.

I would like to do this automatically so I created a batch file and I name it "lanreset.bat". Below are the contents...

@echo off
wmic path win32_networkadapter where NetConnectionID="LAN" call disable
wmic path win32_networkadapter where NetConnectionID="LAN" call enable

Just replace the blue colored text with the name of the NIC.
Put it in the Task Scheduler where it would run in on startup so that it would execute.

autoDial script for Windows

This is my personal script or batchfile because my connection is not that reliable or should I say the connection sometimes stops working. So I created this script from various sites to complete it.
Sorry I got lazy what sites are the sources but I just searched how to dial using command prompt.

This script runs in msdos shell and uses rasdial to control the dial up and there is an existing dial up account named Sun before creating this script. See the script I made below...

@echo off
:goagain

ping www.google.com | find "TTL"

if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto reconnect
if ERRORLEVEL 0 goto lineok

:reconnect
echo Disconnected
rasdial Sun /disconnect
rasdial Sun

:lineok
echo line ok
echo Waiting for 50 seconds before checking connection again...
PING 1.1.1.1 -n 50 -w 1000 >NUL
goto goagain

This script filename is autodial.bat

As the script goes the @echo off line hides the commands,
the  ping www.google.com | find "TTL" is to check if the connection gets a ping reply,

the rasdial [connection name] connects the internet
and adding /disconnect disconnects the internet.

the PING 1.1.1.1 -n 50 -w 1000 >NUL is the delay command where it will wait for 50 seconds before going to the next line.


Also this script goes on an endless loop so to stop the script just either close the command prompt window or press ctrl + c to cancel the script.


Hope this small script may help others in any way. Happy Holidays!!!

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