The VM host has a minimal text install of openSuSE so I use the vm-install command to create my VMs quickly and easily. This has always worked fine for openSuSE VMs but I using the ‘Other Operating System’ vm-install just kept throwing “Error: The installation source is unusable”.

After trying a few of the other operating system options, I eventually found that choosing “Windows XP, 2003 (x64)” allowed the iso image of the install CD to boot the VM. (I’m installing Lucid Server amd64, for i386 version I would suggest the option “Windows XP, 2000, 2003″ although this has not been tested).

During installation, the VM is running in HVM Full Virtualisation mode, although once the installation has completed I modified the config file in order to boot the VM in paravirtualised mode.

Set up your public key by entering ssh-keygen in a terminal. Enter ssh-copy-id user@host (entering the appropriate user and hostnames) and you can then log in to the remote server using ssh user@host without having to enter your password. Both quick and easy!

3gstats v1.1 gives continuous mode, signal strength, uptime, speed and total data transferred.
3gmode v1.0 lets you switch between 2G and 3G only modes or set preference to one with the other as a fallback.

Instructions for 3gstats:
Download tar.gz file
tar -zxvf 3gstats-1.1.tar.gz
cd 3gstats
sh make.sh
chmod +x 3gstats

To run use ./3gstats

Instructions for 3gmode
Download tar.gz file
tar -zxvf 3gmode-1.0.tar.gz
cd 3gmode
chmod +x 3gmode

To see usage use ./3gmode

(For the purposes of Google):
Error: Attempt to configure DHCP Server failed with error code 0×80070005. Access is denied

Legacy, sorry, ‘cherished’ software requires that XP be installed but the DL hardware is required for datacentre installation and high availability (1U chassis, redundant power supplies, redundant disks).

The stock XP SP3 CD couldn’t see the SmartArray P400i SAS controller so could not find the partition to install on.

After a failed manual attempt to slipstream the drivers into a remastered XP install CD I came across a utility called nLite that automates the whole process.

I sourced a driver, used nLite to slipstream it into an image of the XP install CD, burned the CD, whacked it in and installed without problems.

I identified the exploit, removed Roundcube, emailed the details to Bytemark and they promptly re-instated my network connectivity. Fair play to Bytemark for responding quickly - and on a Saturday too.

It would seem that ufw executes rules in the order they are entered.  Because the newly added block rules come after the allow rules, the allows get executed first.

The solution: a simple shell script that deletes and re-adds the allow rules

#!/bin/bash
ufw delete allow 80/tcp
ufw delete allow ssh
ufw delete allow smtp
ufw delete allow imap
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow ssh
ufw allow smtp
ufw allow imap

I saved it as ufw-update and made it excutable:

chmod a+x ufw-update

Now after everytime I add more block rules I just do ./ufw-update and the allow rules are removed and re-added after the block rules. Voila!

It’s a simple interface to the powerful iptables package and really easy to use.  I installed on Ubuntu Server using:

apt-get install ufw

Deny everything by default:

ufw default deny

Block the offending IP addresses:

ufw deny from 194.8.74.0/23
ufw deny from 94.229.65.173
ufw deny from 69.162.73.178
ufw deny from 218.237.55.219
ufw deny from 211.192.64.203
ufw deny from 218.249.60.87
ufw deny from 64.183.108.76

Let my services through:

ufw allow http
ufw allow ssh
ufw allow smtp
ufw allow imap

Enable ufw:

ufw enable

Bingo! No more spam.  No more username attacks in my auth.log.

#!/bin/bash
chvt 1
echo -n 100 > /proc/acpi/video/NVID/LCD/brightness
chvt 7

Copy and paste this into something like brightness.sh, then make it executable by entering chmod a+x brightness.sh into a terminal then run the script as root by entering sudo sh brightness.sh.