Here is how to increment it automatically with every build.

• click first on target and then on build phases
• click on the plus button in the lower right corner and chose user script
• now in script field write

buildNumber=$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c “Print CFBundleVersion” ${INFOPLIST_FILE})

buildNumber=$(($buildNumber + 1))

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c “Set :CFBundleVersion $buildNumber” ${INFOPLIST_FILE}

Now every time when you build your project build number will increase. Of course you can always change it manually and it will continue increasing like it should.

Here is small explanation what this script do:

1. buildNumber is shell variable where we will store build number from XCode. To be able to read it from Project-Info.plist file we need to use small tool from Apple, called PlistBuddy. It’s included by default but it’s not in the path and that means that we need to specify full path to it, in our case /usr/libexec. We need to specify command sent to PlistBuddy and file on which that command will be performed, in our case command is Print CFBundleVersion which is property of build number in XCode written in our Project-Info.plist file and last argument is file name which we get from variable INFOPLIST_FILE.
2. here we increase value of buildNumber, same like int++ but shell is a bit different so we need to write it like this for XCode to be able to run it
3. here we run PlistBuddy with command Set where we say to it what to set and where, in our case we use CFBundleVersion increased by one and we are storing it to our Project-Info.plist file

To solve this problem there is a simple solution.

Delete application from testing device and then let the XCode install it again. 

Because of something known only to Apple, XCode is treating installed application as application installed from App Store and it won’t allow it to register with StoreKit framework properly and that’s the reason why Invalid product id is occurring.

I have just lost a whole day waiting In-App Purchase to become valid instead of just deleting app from iPhone and installing it again. I have tested to create new In-App Purchase in iTunes connect and it was directly recognized by StoreKit and it worked directly out of the box.

Procedure is simple:

• install backup server on another machine
• configure backup location
• stop the service
• copy all files from old server to new server in configured backup location
• copy C:\Document and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Acronis\Backup server dir to another server overwriting the another one
• start the service
• check if everything is ok with Management Console

I have discovered that it can be even easier to distribute apps to beta testers then the procedure which I have described in my first post.

Simplified procedure:

1. Open XCode (version 3.2.x) and go to organizer
2. Refresh profiles so that XCode can download Development Profile which is now automatically created within XCode if you don’t have it
3. You don’t need distribution or AdHoc profile any more, standard development profile works as well
4. You don’t need entitlements any more
5. Edit release configuration to be sure that it’s signed with developer profile
6. Set app destination platform to device, not simulator
7. Build and archive
8. Open XCode organizer and continue with the rest of the steps described in my first post which includes saving .ipa file to the disk and creating web dir with Beta Builder

Now I have found solution.

There is experimental extension called Always Ask which solves this problem with simple popup asking you if you want to close Firefox or not.

Works like a charm.

Here is the link to it.



This application is really must have for all developers, but I have few things that I need for it to be perfect for my use.

It lacks sync between more than one Mac and I’m working on 4 different Macs, so I would like to have same code snippets everywhere without importing of every snippet separately, and you cannot export whole lib, only one code snippet at a time.

So I started looking into it to see if I can sync it in some way without too much hassle and work and I have founded way to do it.

I’m big fan of Dropbox so why not use it here.

Here are steps required to have CodeBox synced over more than one Macs:

• Create one folder in your Dropbox folder, I have name it CodeBox
• Now quit CodeBox on one Mac (the one with more snippets)
• Start Terminal and execute following commands
  1. cd “Library/Application Support”
  2. cp com.shpakovski.mac.codebox/* ~/Dropbox/CodeBox (here you will replace amar with your username)
  3. now we will delete folder and create symlink
  4. rm -rf com.shpakovski.mac.codebox
  5. ln -s ~/Dropbox/CodeBox com.shpakovski.mac.codebox
  6. that’s it!!

So now you need to repeat steps above on another mac on which you want to sync CodeBox library to.

If you don’t have Dropbox account create it here. It’s free and you will receive 2GB of disk space.

Note 1: This is only temporary solution, I’m sure that Vadim will implement sync option in future updates.

Note 2: Remember, you need to quit CodeBox on other Macs to be able to sync properly, because CodeBox is reading Library files on startup and it won’t know that you had changed something on mac nr2 so it will save current changes over those which are the latest ones.

Note 3: This solution works for Snippets application as well, the only thing that differs is application folder in Application Support.

Note 4: I have corrected command for creating of a symbolic link and edited rest of the commands. I don’t know how did I get L there. Thank you Dalton for pointing that out.

But (there is always at least one but) deleting of the mailboxes was including automatically deleting of user accounts on domain so in other words no one could log in on the domain or their own computers connected to domain.

Exploring MSDN and Google for solutions I have learned yesterday that deletion of objects on AD is not meaning that they are deleted directly, it’s rather that they are moved to a side for a quite long time until being deleted. So as it means that they are not deleted, restore should be easy, and it was (thinking on all possible scenarios).

There is one program called ADRestore.net which you can find on this link.

On the link above you can download program and see it in action, so in the end I have succeeded to restore all accounts with help of it.

NOTE: Restoring of the objects does not mean that all of its properties and parameters will be restored with it, so you will need to review them and fix as needed, generate new passwords and so on.

NSLog(@”My view frame: %@”, NSStringFromCGRect(myView.frame));

After this run your app and in Debugger Console you will se output where values are written in x, y, width, height format.

My view frame: {{0, 0}, {320,421}}

How to edit it:

• open file
• select foreground or background layer and apply own colors
• select foreground layer and marquee tool
• right click on image and load selection named Wide selection
• press delete and then deselect selection
• change foreground layer opacity

Save image as image_name@2x.png for iPhone4 and resize it to 320×480 and save as image_name.png for iPhone usage.

A couple of images to see how it looks like in reality.

Here is download link: Colored UITableView background (649)

• Create simple Window-based Application with name TestApp.
• Click on File->New file and select Objective-C class with UIView subclass and name it MyView
• Now open MyView.m and edit initWithFrame part with this code

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame {
if ((self = [super initWithFrame:frame])) {
// Initialization code
[self setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]];
[self setAlpha:1];
[[self layer] setCornerRadius:8];
[[self layer] setMasksToBounds:NO];
[[self layer] setShadowColor:[UIColor blackColor].CGColor];
[[self layer] setShadowOpacity:1.0f];
[[self layer] setShadowRadius:6.0f];
[[self layer] setShadowOffset:CGSizeMake(0, 3)];
}
return self;
}

• Now add #import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h> line to your MyView.m
• Open TestAppAppDelegate.m and add #import “MyView.h” file
• Now in application didFinishLaunching add folowing code

MyView *roundedView = [[[MyView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100, 100, 100, 150)] autorelease];
[window addSubview:roundedView];

• Save and run and you should have rounded black view on the main window, now add other subviews or modify by your will

Here is TestApp.zip (547) ready for download.

The problem was that I didn’t received any .pcf file from admin, I got only group login and password (which I didn’t wrote down).

So after bit of searching on the disk I have found that Cisco VPN client is creating new .pcf file for every connection that you create in it. They are located in /private/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles directory and waiting to be exctracted. So to be able to obtain password from it do like this:

1. open file from that directory, file will have same name as Connection name in Cisco VPN Client
2. in the file find string enc_GroupPwd= and copy everything behind = sign
3. open this site and copy encrypted password there, click decode button and site will return decrypted group password
4. now you have password and you can create new connection on the another mac with details that you have on old one, host ip, group name, password, etc.

So after several hours of try and fail I have succeeded finally with distribution of Ad Hoc signed applications for beta testing via web. What does this mean? It means that now I have a way to distribute application without asking user to copy provisioning profile and application file to iTunes and then sync iPhone with it. Now, only thing that they need to do is to click on the link in e-mail, which will open website on device and there they can click to install application and profile on the iPhone.

Now I’m going to describe whole procedure for this and I will include some screenshots from iPhone and mac during the process.

• Start with XCode closed.
• The first step is to create distribution certificate for signing Ad Hoc provisioning profiles.
• Open Keychain Access from finder or from Applications -> Utilities
• Now in Keychain Access open Certificate Assistant – > Request a certificate from a certificate authority

Request certificate from certificate authority

• Fill e-mail address and Common Name and save it to disk

Certificate assistant

• Log in to iOS Provisioning Portal and upload certificate request on portal
• Refresh site after minute or two and then download certificate

Create distribution certificate

• When you download it double click on it to import it to Keychain Access
• Now you are ready for the next step. Open iOS Provisioning Portal – Provisioning profiles and create new profile
• Select Ad Hoc for distribution method, write profile name, select App ID for targeted application and select on which devices you are going to distribute application for test. Now click on Submit button.

Create iOS Ad Hoc distribution profile

• Again refresh site after couple of a seconds and download provisioning profile.
• Now double click on the provisioning profile to install it in XCode. XCode organiser will open and show provisioning profile in the list of profiles
• It’s time to prepare application for distribution.
• Open project and open project info.
• Select configurations tab, chose Release configuration, click on duplicate button and name it Ad Hoc or whatever you like

Duplicate release configuration

• Go back on Build tab and select Ad Hoc configuration
• Find Code Signing, double click on Entitlements value field and write Entitlements.plist there
• Now under Code Signing Identity check if right Provisioning profile is selected (the one that you have created and imported on the beginning)

Code signing

• Close project info
• Now under the Group & Files click on the Project name and add new file
• In file menu chose Code Signing and select Entitlements as file type, name it as Entitlements.plist and save under the root
• Open Entitlements.plist and under the root add one boolean value with name get-task-allow and leave it as unchecked (false)

Create entitlements.plist file under root

• Chose Ad Hoc configuration and Device instead simulator
• Open Build menu and select Build and Archive
• When the project build is done XCode Organizer will open automatically and show Project name with one archived build under it
• Click on that build and select share application
• Confirm identity as iPhone Distribution and profile that you have created last and select save to disk to save .ipa file
• Now in order to continue you need to downloade iOS Beta Builder by Hunter
• Open iOS Beta builder and select the .ipa file that you have saved in the previous step or drag and drop it on Beta Builder
• Beta Builder will fill out all fields for you except web address of the server where you will have files uploaded
• When you write URL click on Generate Deployment Files and choose destination directory
• Now when files are saved you can upload all files to some web server and give the link to the beta testers
• All they need to do now is to click on the link on iPhone and then in Safari to click on Install link to install application and provisioning profile

Download application

I hope that I have helped a bit with Ad Hoc profiles and distribution of applications for your beta testers.

All contacts were there but maybe 1% had real phone number, while others didn’t had any numbers at all.

So I have found that solution to fix this is to edit almost all contacts because fields were not correct. Mobile field for mobile phone number was written as MobilePhone but iPhone would not recognize it.

Then I have found one more odd thing. Even if contact has Mobile as mobile phone field it still doesn’t mean that it will show on iPhone properly. So solution was to change Mobile to something else, click anywhere so Gmail can save changes and then return to mobile and click again somewhere outside the Mobile field so that Gmail can save it correctly.

Now I have only 100 contacts left to edit.

Here is link to his blog post.

I have created one UIView and added one UIImageView to it and loaded it with Default.png image, but when starting the program whole view is moved up for 20px, it’s y reference is starting from 0 instead from 20, so here is how to fix it easily.

In application didFinishLaunching delegate add following code before [window makeKeyAndVisible]; and after [window addSubview:yourView];

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {

[window addSubview:yourView];
[yourView setFrame:CGRectMake(0, 20, 320, 460)]; // so you are creating frame which x starts on 0, y starts on 20px and with dimensions 320px x 460px
[window makeKeyAndVisible];

return YES;
}

The fix is very simple, just delete sf_sdf.dll file from C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor directory and start snort again.

Update of snort is very simple and it can be described in few simple steps which can be used for fresh install as well:

• download Snort 2.8.6 from the www.snort.org site
• download WinPcap 4.1.1 from the www.winpcap.org
• install both of them on the target machine
• download the latest community rules from www.snort.org (you need to register and log in to be able to download them)
• extract rules to C:\Snort overwriting existing files and open Snort.conf file in the etc map
• find line nr. 155 and replace it to this dynamicpreprocessor directory C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor
• then replace line 158 to this dynamicengine C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicengine\sf_engine.dll
• and then comment out line 161 if you don’t have dynamic rules #dynamicdetection directory /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules
• now when you are done if you are not using IPV6 delete sf_sdf.dll file from C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor to avoid this error
• start Snort to test it
• start Snort as service if test is OK

• 1x Atmega 168 or smaller chip with Arduino bootloader preprogrammed (the code compiled is only 4k)
• 1x 28-pin IC socket (so that you can use chip for other projects latter)
• 1x 16MhZ ceramic resonator
• 1x 16×2 lcd display, HD44780 compatible
• 1x 7805 5V voltage regulator
• 4x micro buttons
• 1x SFH615 optocouppler
• 2x 3mm led diodes (green for power and yellow for activity)
• 4x 220R resistors, 1x 10K resistor and 1x 1K resistor
• 2x trim potentiometers (4K7 and 10K)
• 3x male headers(6-pin, 3-pin and 2-pin)
• 3x ceramic capacitators(0.1 uF, 1uF, 10uF)
• 1x 3.5 mm female jack for connection to laser

Now this post wouldn’t be complete without Eagle schematic and board files. You can download them on the following link: Trigger schematics (442).

I don’t have schematics of the laser side because it’s simple. I’m leading 3 wires with 3.5mm audio cable, analog in, gnd and vcc(+5V). In the laser box I have laser which is connected directly to the vcc and gnd, one foto resistor that is giving to high value to analog in so I have one resistor before it connected to gnd.

So we have:

• GND wire is connected to laser gnd wire and to one side of let’s say 2M resistor which other side is connected to one leg of photo resistor
• VCC wire is connected to laser vcc wire
• Analog in wire connected to other leg of the photo resistor

It depends on which photo resistor you are using how big resistor value before it you have to use. Arduino is capable of reading analog in until value of 1024 and that’s reason why the big resistor value is needed, so you are testing which one do you need until the value of direct laser beam to the photo resistor is under 1024, mine is about 920.

The soldering was OK with only few places to be fixed because of strong acid mix, but nothing special.

Here are some pictures of the finished trigger.

P.S. This is final and last prototype of the version 1. The next one will be better, without trimpots, with 3-4 keys, lot of menus and few outputs instead of one.

Stay tuned!!

• removed triggering 3.5mm female connector, instead I have 3-pin connectors to connect wires on one or two flashes
• added 6 pin programming header so that I can program Atmega chip without removing it from the board every time
• added 3 pin jumper header for power selection (usb/external)

Here are two pictures of a fresh etched board, not perfect on the corners because of bad mixing of the acid but good enough for the first attempt.

P.S. Updated schema coming soon.

And here it is, description, schematics, video and sample pictures.

The idea has already been seen on the Internet. Arduino is controlling photo resistor on which laser beam is pointed. When resistance changes itself because of the drop that is cutting beam then Arduino is triggering Nikon camera after the amount of time specified with one trim capacitor which can be between 0 and 1023, but I have divided it with 2 so that I have better control of the delay. All information is displayed on 2×16 LCD display. Also to be able to take picture of drops colliding it’s necessary that speed of the drops be 10 drops/sec so I have implemented one button for that with proper code behind it.

I have also 4 buttons and 2 led diodes on the board. Buttons that I have are reset for resetting of the electronics, debug that is switching debug mode on and off, drops that is designed to count drops per second and ready button that is used when I’m taking pictures so that when drops are falling fast I don’t trigger camera every time when they are going down. Led diodes that I’m using are green for power and yellow for visual notification when the trigger is trigged.

Here is the final schematics that I’m using right now.

Nikon-Arduino trigger schema

For simplified solution with cables I’m using standard audio cables with 3.5mm stereo jacks on both sides, so I can use same cables for other purposes as well. I have also modified Nikon cable remote so that it has 3.5mm female stereo jack built in for simple use with trigger and without it.

Modified Nikon cable release

Here are few pictures of the whole setup.

Nikon Trigger

Of course code behind is in this NikonFastTrigger.pde (397) file available for download.

Simple instructions.

1. when the program is loaded it will display Ready on the second line
2. when drop breaks laser beam then instead of Ready on display will be Busy until you press Ready button
3. offten because I have laser box about 1m above the surface delay is needed between 150-220 ms

For drops counter I’m doing like this.

1. switch to drops counter with drops button
2. then I try to create drops stream with about 1 drop per second with help of the normal digital watch and by changing delay I set Arduino to recognize that as 1drop/sec
3. now the only thing left is to configure drops stream to 10 drops/second for colliding watterdrops

Here are couple of pictures captured with this setup and pictures of colliding drops are to come.

And here is the video from YouTube.

I tried to find service manual to see how am I going to assemble lens but without any success, at least not for free.

So finally when I have founded it and paid for it, I though why not have it here on blog so that everyone that needs it can get it for free.

So here are they, 2 files, service manual and parts list.

Enjoy.

• CANON PowerShot SD10, PowerShot SD750, Digital Elph, Digital Ixus 70, 75 Service Manual - NO PARTS LIST (2563)
• CANON PowerShot SD750 DIGITAL ELPH, DIGITAL IXUS 75, IXY DIGITAL 90 Parts List (1197)

Snort® is an open source network intrusion prevention and detection system (IDS/IPS) developed by Sourcefire. Combining the benefits of signature, protocol and anomaly-based inspection, Snort is the most widely deployed IDS/IPS technology worldwide.

Installation of Snort on Windows is pretty simple.

First, you need to download and install few things. For Snort to be able to act as sniffer and IDS it needs Windows Packet Capture Library which is WinPcap. The stable latest version on the site is 4.1.1 and you can download it here.

Now when we have WinPcap installed the next step will be to download Snort. The latest version for Windows is 2.8.5.1 and you can download it here. Installation shouldn’t be a problem, if you need IPv6 support and logging to Microsoft SQL or Oracle database then you need to select proper radio and check boxes and if don’t then just go next and next to the end and that’s it. Default installation directory is C:\Snort so remember it because it will be our working dir all the time.

So we have installed WinPcap and Snort but we are not finished with installation yet. We have one more thing to download and install. The Snort rules. These rules are those small files that tells Snort what it should search for in captured packages and how to identify them, as a threat, information disclosure or something else. For us to be able to download Snort rules we have to be registered on Snort site. Registration is free and rules are one month old for free users, for those who need the latest threats detected at the same moment when they are published to the community I suggest to buy VRT subscription so you will have the latest rules directly as they are announced. So now we will download snortrules-snapshot-2.8.tar.gz rules archive file.  When you open archive file you will get following structure:

Snort rules

Copy all four directories over those in C:\Snort replacing contents that already exists on the hard drive.

Now when we are done with easy part we need to configure Snort to run. Because these rules are written for unixoid systems we need to change some things in the main config file C:\Snort\etc\snort.conf so that Snort can start at all.

Here are the things that you need to edit to be able to run snort:

Find lines 269 and 270. These lines will not allow Snort to start, at least not on Windows because Snort detects the second one as double config detection line so we need to change this.

Change from this:

config detection: search-method ac-bnfa
config detection: max_queue_events 5

To this:

config detection: search-method ac-bnfa max_queue_events 5

Now, the next thing that we need to change is lines where we say to Snort where to find dynamic preprocessor files. On lines from 298 to 303 change this:

dynamicpreprocessor file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicpreprocessor/libsf_dce2_preproc.so
dynamicpreprocessor file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicpreprocessor/libsf_dns_preproc.so
dynamicpreprocessor file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicpreprocessor/libsf_ftptelnet_preproc.so
dynamicpreprocessor file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicpreprocessor/libsf_smtp_preproc.so
dynamicpreprocessor file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicpreprocessor/libsf_ssh_preproc.so
dynamicpreprocessor file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicpreprocessor/libsf_ssl_preproc.so

To this:

dynamicpreprocessor file C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor\sf_dce2.dll
dynamicpreprocessor file C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor\sf_dcerpc.dll
dynamicpreprocessor file C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor\sf_dns.dll
dynamicpreprocessor file C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor\sf_ftptelnet.dll
dynamicpreprocessor file C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor\sf_smtp.dll
dynamicpreprocessor file C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor\sf_ssh.dll
dynamicpreprocessor file C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicpreprocessor\sf_ssl.dll

Next thing to change is line 324 on which we have dynamic engine path, so change it from this:

dynamicengine /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicengine/libsf_engine.so

To this:

dynamicengine C:\Snort\lib\snort_dynamicengine\sf_engine.dll

I don’t know why, maybe some mistake, but lines bellow should be commented out by default, but they were not so we have to comment them out. Because we are not VRT subscriber and don’t have any dynamic detection files we need to coment lines from 339 to 354, so change this:

dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/bad-traffic.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/chat.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/dos.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/exploit.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/imap.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/misc.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/multimedia.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/netbios.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/nntp.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/p2p.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/smtp.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/sql.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/web-client.so
dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/web-misc.so

To this:

#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/bad-traffic.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/chat.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/dos.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/exploit.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/imap.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/misc.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/multimedia.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/netbios.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/nntp.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/p2p.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/smtp.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/sql.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/web-client.so
#dynamicdetection file /usr/local/lib/snort_dynamicrules/web-misc.so

Now we need to trim a bit SSH preprocessor to work on Windows as it is different from Linux one, so find line 753 and change this:

preprocessor ssh: server_ports { 22 } \
max_client_bytes 19600 \
max_encrypted_packets 20 \
disable_srvoverflow \
disable_protomismatch \
disable_badmsgdir

To this:

preprocessor ssh: server_ports { 22 } \
max_client_bytes 19600 \
max_encrypted_packets 20

Now we are good to go. We can test snort easily from the command line. So now go on Start->Run and type cmd following by enter key. Now in command prompt type following commands:

c: and then enter key

cd c:\snort\bin and then enter key

snort -v -c C:\snort\etc\snort.conf -l C:\snort\log -K ascii and then enter key

So now we have entered Snort directory and started Snort on command line. You will first see Snort starting and parsing config file snort.conf and then you will see lot of output when Snort start sniffing and controlling packages on the network. If it finds any package that is not regular network traffic it will save info about it in c:\Snort\Log\alert.ids file. Simple output of one captured packet looks like this:

[**] [1:254:7] DNS SPOOF query response with TTL of 1 min. and no authority [**]
[Classification: Potentially Bad Traffic] [Priority: 2]
12/22-12:19:12.577553 192.168.137.206:53 -> 192.168.137.10:55153
UDP TTL:128 TOS:0×0 ID:5399 IpLen:20 DgmLen:79
Len: 51

Now to explain what we have here. The first line says what type of attack is it, the second line says what classification is it and what priority does it have, and the last three lines are data about the attack, attacker IP, your IP, destination and source ports and so on.

snort /service /install -c C:\Snort\etc\snort.conf -l C:\Snort\log -K ascii

Because some of them doesn’t work on my HU I had first to build Arduino scanner to scan for those missing remote codes.

Although I’m sending codes as binaries it was easier for me to work with decimals on the serial console and then latter convert them to binary so I have wrote function for that as well.

Because the first part of signal is always the same there was not need to convert it at all, and it’s stored in variable iHello, so the part that is changed is the second part or 3 decimal numbers.

Now because there are 255*255*255 = 16 581 375 possible combinations I had to bring this to some reasonable number otherwise it would take very much time to find right codes so I have limited combinations a bit.

I took the lowest and the highest values from codes from link above for the first and the second decimals, and limited the third one to 2 possible numbers that I’m sending as finish 85 or 213.

Here are those codes that I have founded working on my HU:

1. 87  253   85 ( 01010111  11111101  01010101 ) – Pause
2. 107 247   85 ( 01101011  11110111  01010101 ) – Band/ta
3. 111  237   85 ( 01101111  11101101  01010101 ) – Defeat
4. 119 235   85 ( 01110111  11101011  01010101 ) – Power
5. 173 238 213 ( 10101101  11101110  11010101 ) – Mute
6. 183 219   85 ( 10101101  11101110  11010101 ) – Source
7. 187 218 213 ( 10111011  11011010  11010101 ) – Next Track
8. 93  250 213 ( 01011101  11111010  11010101 ) – Previous track
9. 219 214 213 ( 11011011  11010110  11010101 ) – Volume up
10. 109 246 213 ( 01101101  11110110  11010101 ) – Volume down
11. 171 239 85 ( 10101011  11101111  01010101 ) – Folder/memory up
12. 85 255 85   ( 01010101  11111111  01010101 ) – Folder/Memory down

Now because I have IR remote for my HU and defeat is not on it I assume that it’s possible to find even more codes for it but I didn’t those so I stopped here where I have everything for my first project.

Here are pictures of the interface that I have built for testing of codes. It consists of 5 buttons which have been assigned different functions and 3.5 mm female audio jack which I use for connection with HU. HU has the same 3.5 mm female jack on the back so I can use regular 3.5mm stereo cable for testing without any modifications on HU or Arduino board.

Here is the Arduino Alpine scanner (461) sketch file with all functions that I have used for scanning, saving and displaying codes on serial console.

Here are the instructions how to use this sketch to find codes.

1. First you need to erase eeprom with erase function to be sure that it’s clean on the start of scan.
2. Now comment out function for erase and uncomment function for saving combination on eeprom
3. Now you are ready for scan, so when you connect Arduino to your HU just press button 4 to start scan
4. When you see some change on HU you need to press button 4 to stop scan
5. Using buttons 1 and 3 you can go back or forward to find that combination that you discovered
6. When you find it you can verify it with button 2 which repeats it again
7. If that is combination that you are looking fore press button 5 to save it to eeprom
8. When you have found all combinations that you are interested of connect Arduino to computer and on serial console you will have all combinations that you have found, so copy and paste them in iFounded array
9. Comment out functions for saving, previous and next button and uncomment functions for import of combinations, sending of previous and next combinations
10. Now when you power up Arduino press button nr 5 to import combinations and cycle them with buttons 1 or 2 to confirm that you have right combinations saved

Now when I have all of the codes needed to control HU I can finish the first project and the post about it is coming soon.

Any comments are welcome.

1. Install MacPorts
2. In Terminal type sudo port selfupdate, to fetch the latest repository contents
3. Run sudo port install wine to install all things needed for Wine. You can ignore error at the end regarding Wine version.
4. Install Git in terminal sudo port install git-core
5. Fetch the lattest source from winehq with git,  git clone git://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git ~/wine-git
6. Enter to the ~/wine-git directory and run ./configure, ./make, ./make dep and ./make install commands

That’s it. Wine is now installed on your machine.

This brings me to the problem that I have lot of folders with lot of images without any order. This has begun to frustrate me, so I started to write program that will sort them based on exif in respective folders, but one night while reading DPreview forum I have founded link to one program that can do exactly what I want on the way I want.

The program is called DIM or Digital Image Mover. It’s exactly what it’s name says, image mover from one place to another. It doesn’t do anything more, just move/copy images from one place to another in the respective folders that are created by the date template that you provide.

Program is written in Java so it works on all platforms that have support for JRE – Java Runtime Enviroment and so far I have tested it on Mac OS and Windows without any problems.

It has support for all major raw files (NEF, CR2, CRW), jpeg, tiff, png and so on.

Here is a link to the site of the Alan Light who is author of the program, where you can find the latest version (4.0 at the moment), download it and send donation to author of the program.

Sepia effect and little bit contrast/sharpening was applied in post processing.

Door lock

Then I run ipconfig command that showed to me lot of Tunnel adapters that were disconnected and created automatically by Vista.

So to have painful installation of new cluster I have disabled IPV6 protocol totally.

Here is solution:

• start run with win key + r or by start menu
• regedit
• go to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters
• add new dword (32bit) value DisableComponents with value 1
• restart
• enjoy

First you open Internet Information Services in mmc (Microsoft Management Console) and with right click on it you go on Backup/Restore. Create new backup, name it with something familiar and set password on it.

Now when backup is done you will see it in the list of backups.

Next step would be to open directory C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\MetaBack and find there two files with extensions MD0 and SC0. Copy these two files to some media (network, usb, floppy, etc.) and transfer them to same directory on another server.

Restore process is the same like for a backup, take Backup/Restore from Internet Information Services in mmc (Microsoft Management Console) and in the list of backups you will see your backup as well. Click on it, take restore, confirm yes that existing configuration will be deleted and write password when asked.

Voila. Now you have two identical IIS servers.

You select files, press merge button and then you download merged file.

Easy, fast and w/o any need to buy/install other programs for doing the very same thing.

Link here and if you find this solution worthy there is Donate button on the page to support this project.

Luckily there is soultion.

Steve has wroten Facebook Purity Greasemonkey script for cleaning up Facebook from quiz and trivia, while Daniel has edited it not to block some applications as well. You need to have Greasemonkey Firefox add-on installed first to be able to use Greasemonkey scripts.

Here is Steve’s script and here is Daniel’s edited script.

Both are working like a charm and quizzes and trivia are blocked directly and only thing that you will see is one short message about blocked items like on picture bellow.

Clean Facebook

Update 2009-06-15:  Steve has asked Daniel to remove improved version of his script and he did it. Lame if you ask me, because his script blocks also some applications as well. Luckily I have a backup .

The program is called Mirror and is written by Dominik Jain and you can download it here. The latest version is 1.43.

It works very simple like it should, you enter source and destinations dir and that’s it. If you want only to test it w/o any actions taken just add -d (d for demonstration).

Of course it has possibility to enter file mask or regular expressions as well and it’s only 172kb in size.

On his site you can find few more tools and utils that he wrote.

Here is the backup link just in case Mirror 1.43 (35).

I have searched a bit to find if it is possible to have it on XP because Vista sucks but is’t only available for Tablet PCs.

Luckily there are free solutions and replacements on the Internet.

Program is called Gadwin PrintScreen and it’s freeware.

When you install it you get a small tray icon and it’s automatically activated with Print Screen key.

In program options you can configure where to save output files, what type of picture they are going to be, resizing options and so on.

You can download program on this link.

BEFORE you begin, restore your iPod Touch clean to it’s factory state.
As with every other tutorial you need the C++ redistributable and LIBusb.

1. Download unofficialsn0w 2.0 for Windows from here Download

2. Get the 2.2.1 iPod Touch Firmware HERE

3. Rename the 2.2.1 ipsw to OriginalFW, or OriginalFW.ipsw IF you have file extensions visible, and place it in /IPSW

4. Run IPSW.bat (It will take a while)

5.
a.Right click on the jb.ispw and either open with Winrar or 7.zip

b.Go into Firmware\all_flash\all_flash.n72ap.production\

c. Delete the LLB file.(optional since it will be replaced by the new one)

d. Replace (by dragging) with the LLB file that’s in the same folder as the jb.ipsw.

e. Exit, continue to step 6

6. Place your iPod Touch 2G into DFU mode, plug it in and run RUNME.exe

7. Shift + Restore to JB.ipsw in iTunes and your done!!!

Although I have done all that is written there, during flashing I would receive error and iPod would stay in recovery mode.

Then I have found one small program – QuickFreedom – Untethered GUI that has created firmware for me that I could flash latter with iTunes and jailbreak my iPod. So if you have problems with first solution try the program and also if you want to change boot logos you can do it with this program. For original firmware you can use one that you have downloaded from link above.

Some notes.

Note 1.

You will need libusb for first solution (and I think for second one as well) and you can download it here.

Note 2.

Entering DFU mode is not that simple as someone would say it is. Here are steps to enter it:

• Power off iPod.
• Press and hold power and home buttons.
• Ipod will start and then it will shut down again. When this happens release power button and hold home button for 15-20 seconds.
• You will have blank black screen and it means that you have entered in DFU mode.

The only thing that you need to do is uncomment proper part of the code which is strFileAs.

In my case I wanted to everything be formated as Firstname Lastname instead of reverse way that is default in outlook.

Press alt+f11 to open vb editor, paste the code, edit strFileAs and press F5 to run it. When it’s done you will have your contacs sorted and changed in your way.

P.S. removing comment in vb means removing sign ‘ in front of the line or text, so if you want to comment something write ‘ in front of the line. In this case you will comment out strFileAs = .FullName part if you don’t want to be Firstname Lastname format and uncomment some other strFileAs line that fits your needs.

Public Sub ChangeFileAs()
Dim objOL As Outlook.Application
Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace
Dim objContact As Outlook.ContactItem
Dim objItems As Outlook.Items
Dim objContactsFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim obj As Object
Dim strFirstName As String
Dim strLastName As String
Dim strFileAs As String

On Error Resume Next

Set objOL = CreateObject(“Outlook.Application”)
Set objNS = objOL.GetNamespace(“MAPI”)
Set objContactsFolder = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderContacts)
Set objItems = objContactsFolder.Items

For Each obj In objItems
‘Test for contact and not distribution list
If obj.Class = olContact Then
Set objContact = obj

With objContact
‘ Uncomment the  strFileAs line for the desired format

‘Lastname, Firstname (Company) format
‘ strFileAs = .FullNameAndCompany

‘Firstname Lastname format
strFileAs = .FullName

‘Lastname, Firstname format
‘ strFileAs = .LastNameAndFirstName

‘Company name only
‘ strFileAs = .CompanyName

‘Companyname (Lastname, Firstname)
‘ strFileAs = .CompanyAndFullName

.FileAs = strFileAs

.Save
End With
End If

Err.Clear
Next

Set objOL = Nothing
Set objNS = Nothing
Set obj = Nothing
Set objContact = Nothing
Set objItems = Nothing
Set objContactsFolder = Nothing
End Sub

Error that I was getting was PEER_DELETE-IKE_DELETE_UNSPECIFIED. I tried to find some with similar problem on Google but that wasn’t successful either.

So the only thing to do was to install Windows from scratch and begin from start again with elimination of software.

After a while I have found that new version of Thinkpad Fingerprint Software 5.8 was cause of my agony. It took me almost 2 days to find this error but reverting on older version 5.6 solved the problem.

I hope that this will help someone with similar problem like I had.

For making my Ubuntu server to recognise webdav as a file system I needed to install package davfs2.

After installation all I needed to do was to create one new directory on / and execute following command:

mount -t davfs http://your.server/your_username /mount_point

After that you will get prompt to enter username and password.

That’s it, now you have your webdav folder mounted.

1. open notepad
2. write this line in it Forfiles -p “c:\temp” -s -m *.log -d -14 -c “Cmd /C del @FILE”
3. save file and then change it extension from .txt to .bat

So here we have batch file created that will do following:

• find all .log files in c:\temp path
• older than 14 days
• and delete them

Here is small explanation of the command line:

• -p “full path” is used to specify exact path to the destination dir, it can be c:\ or c:\temp
• -s says to forfiles that it will go recursive into subdirs
• -m *.ext creates filter for files of the .ext extension, it can be *.* as well
• -d 7 says to forfiles to filter files from output above to match current date minus number of days
• -c “command” executes command on files that are returned from output of forfiles command
• cmd /c command is saying to cmd that is command prompt to execute command and terminate itself

Now to test this batch file you can delete or comment out command part so you will get output from forfiles only without deleting of the files. Also you can use move command instead of del to move logfiles to another location.

If everything works like it should open Start->Control panel->Scheduled tasks and create new task to executes every day or in any time frame that you want.

'Agent XPs' component is turned off as part of the security configuration for this server.

While trying different solutions from Microsoft, MSDN and different forums I have found one that worked for me. Open new query window, copy code below and hit F5 for executing. After this you can create plans.

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;

GO

RECONFIGURE;

GO

sp_configure 'Agent XPs', 1;

GO

RECONFIGURE

GO

In error logs there is message:

Running: ScheduleActionAction at: 7d8/8/19 b:c:2a
Complete: ScheduleActionAction at: 7d8/8/19 b:c:2b, returned true
Skipped: InstallASAction.11
Waiting for actions from remote setup(s)
Breaking wait state and aborting package due to cancel code received: 642
Remote setup(s) are ready
Notify package action is determined: 642
Error Code: 0x800700e9 (233)
Windows Error Text: No process is on the other end of the pipe.

Source File Name: remotemessagelib\overlappedpipelistener.cpp
Compiler Timestamp: Fri Jul 29 01:13:51 2005
Function Name: sqls::OverlappedPipeListener::writePipe
Source Line Number: 294

Fix for this error is simple. Log out any users on another node in cluster and that’s it. So simple.

Note: You can copy/paste all commands written here although they are not inline, they will be when you paste them to shell or file.

For this I needed to have:

• Fully functional Linux machine ( I had already installed Ubuntu 8.04 server )
• Postfix – default installation will do
• Mail Scanner – free package that you can get on MailScanner home page
• SpamAssassin – free antispam solution
• Clam AV – free antivirus

Before of installing anything we will fetch the latest list of packages from Ubuntu repositories with command:

aptitude update

Now before installation of a Mail Scanner we need to install some packages with command:

aptitude install libconvert-tnef-perl libdbd-sqlite3-perl libfilesys-df-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl libmime-perl libnet-cidr-perl libsys-syslog-perl libio-stringy-perl libfile-temp-perl libole-storage-lite-perl libarchive-zip-perl postfix clamav clamav-daemon libsys-hostname-long-perl libnet-cidr-lite-perl spamassassin

Answer with Y when asked to install dependencies for these packages. During the installation of postfix you will get simple menu in which you need to select Internet site and write your full host name with domain.

Because whole configuration of Postfix is being done via main.cf and master.cf files we need to change some values in them. Open main.cf and add/edit following lines to look like this:

myhostname = ubuntu.sp.local
mydomain = sp.local
myorigin = $mydomain
inet_interfaces = all
mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain $mydomain
mynetwork_style = host
relay_domains = lab.net
transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport
append_at_myorigin = no
local_recipient_maps =
header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/header_checks

Now open /etc/postfix/transport and add your forwarding domains in it. For multiple domains go to new row by same principle.

sp.local smtp:[192.168.1.5]

This ip 192.168.1.5 is IP of my Exchange server, not of my Linux machine and sp.local is the name of my domain, replace IP and domain name with yours. After this editing we need to create hash of the transport file and to restart Postfix.

postmap /etc/postfix/transport
/etc/init.d/postfix restart

Now you can control if Postfix is working like it should and if it transports mail. If everything works stop it so that we can configure other options in it and because it needs to be started after MailScanner.

/etc/init.d/postfix stop

Next step would be to unpack and install the latest version of Mail Scanner because Ubuntu 8.04 still doesn’t have the latest version in the repositories. You can get the latest version of Mail Scanner here. Because we will compile it we need .tar.gz version.

wget http://mailscanner.info/files/4/tar/MailScanner-install-4.71.10-1.tar.gz
tar zxvf MailScanner-install-4.71.10-1.tar.gz
cd MailScanner-install-4.71.10
./install.sh

You will see lot of output when you run ./install.sh because it will check which Perl modules do you have installed and install those that are missing, but as installation says:

Do not worry too much about errors from the next command.
It is quite likely that some of the Perl modules are
already installed on your system.

When install.sh is done you will get message to enter some lines in crontab to automatize jobs. Type crontab -e and enter following lines in crontab (:w to write and exit if you are using Vi editor ctrl+x for Pico).

37 5 * * * /opt/MailScanner/bin/update_phishing_sites
07 * * * * /opt/MailScanner/bin/update_bad_phishing_sites
58 23 * * * /opt/MailScanner/bin/clean.quarantine
42 * * * * /opt/MailScanner/bin/update_virus_scanners
3,23,43 * * * * /opt/MailScanner/bin/check_mailscanner

Now we need to edit /etc/default/spamassassin file and to enable SpamAssassin daemon. Open this file with editor and change these lines:

ENABLED=0 to ENABLED=1
CRON=0 to CRON=1

Now we have enabled SpamAssassin as a daemon and enabled it to update daily via cron. It’s time to start it for the first time.

/etc/init.d/spamassassin start

Next step would be to edit MailScanner.conf. Find following lines and edit them to look like this:

Run As User = postfix
Run As Group = postfix
MTA = postfix
Incoming Queue Dir = /var/spool/postfix/hold
Outgoing Queue Dir = /var/spool/postfix/incoming
Virus Scanners = clamav
Spam List = SBL+XBL
SpamAssassin User State Dir = /var/spool/MailScanner/spamassassin

Now we will run MailScanner with command:

/opt/MailScanner/bin/check_mailscanner

It will automatically go to background. Now we need to tell Postfix to wait with forwarding of mails while they are checked against spam and antivirus definitions. We will need to edit file /etc/postfix/header_checks and to add following line because without it nothing will work.

/^Received:/ HOLD

Now we need to restart Postfix with command:

/etc/init.d/postfix start

I have got interesting output when I once killed MailScanner process that really make me laugh.

11818 ? Ss 0:00 MailScanner: killing children, bwahaha!
11819 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
11862 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
11905 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
11948 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
11991 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
12038 ? Ss 0:00 MailScanner: killing children, bwahaha!
12039 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
12083 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
12126 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
12169 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>
12212 ? Z 0:01 [MailScanner] <defunct>

LOL, they have a good sense of humor.

So if everything is working correctly you should receive now mails with small footer text:

–
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

You can control message delivery with command:

tail -f /var/log/syslog

There you will see scrolling text like:

Sep 11 10:14:14 ubuntu postfix/smtpd[13220]: connect from web54408.mail.yahoo.com[206.190.49.138]
Sep 11 10:14:14 ubuntu postfix/smtpd[13220]: CE433E643: client=web54408.mail.yahoo.com[206.190.49.138]
Sep 11 10:14:15 ubuntu postfix/cleanup[13222]: CE433E643: hold: header Received: from web54408.mail.yahoo.com (web54408.mail.yahoo.com [206.190.49.138])??by ubuntu.sp.local (Postfix) with SMTP id CE433E643??for <mymail@mydomain>; Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:14:14 -0400 (EDT) from web54408.mail.yahoo.com[206.190.49.138]; from=<my_yahoo_mail@yahoo.com> to=<mymail@mydomain.com> proto=SMTP helo=<web54408.mail.yahoo.com>
Sep 11 10:14:15 ubuntu postfix/cleanup[13222]: CE433E643: message-id=<225121.37413.qm@web54408.mail.yahoo.com>
Sep 11 10:14:15 ubuntu postfix/smtpd[13220]: disconnect from web54408.mail.yahoo.com[206.190.49.138]
Sep 11 10:14:15 ubuntu MailScanner[13211]: New Batch: Scanning 1 messages, 2392 bytes
Sep 11 10:14:16 ubuntu MailScanner[13211]: Virus and Content Scanning: Starting
Sep 11 10:14:20 ubuntu MailScanner[13211]: Requeue: CE433E643.352A5 to 424A5E650
Sep 11 10:14:20 ubuntu postfix/qmgr[13003]: 424A5E650: from=<my_yahoo_mail@yahoo.com>, size=1712, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Sep 11 10:14:20 ubuntu postfix/smtp[13245]: 424A5E650: to=<mymail@mydomain.com>, relay=192.168.1.5[192.168.1.5]:25, delay=5.6, delays=5.5/0.01/0/0.15, dsn=2.6.0, status=sent (250 2.6.0 <225121.37413.qm@web54408.mail.yahoo.com> Queued mail for delivery)
Sep 11 10:14:20 ubuntu postfix/qmgr[13003]: 424A5E650: removed
Sep 11 10:14:20 ubuntu MailScanner[13211]: Uninfected: Delivered 1 messages

This means that MailScanner is scanning messages against spam and viruses.

Now the latest step would be to create RC script to start MailScanner on boot and before Postfix. Here you can read/download file mailscanner.txt file which you will use to create new /etc/init.d/mailscanner file.

This script is slightly modified original init script for MailScanner from Ubuntu. Next step would be to change permissions to the file and to create symlinks with commands:

chmod 755 /etc/init.d/mailscanner
cd /etc/rc0.d/
ln -s ../init.d/mailscanner K20mailscanner

cd /etc/rc1.d/
ln -s ../init.d/mailscanner K20mailscanner

cd /etc/rc2.d/
ln -s ../init.d/mailscanner S20mailscanner

cd /etc/rc3.d/
ln -s ../init.d/mailscanner S20mailscanner

cd /etc/rc4.d/
ln -s ../init.d/mailscanner S20mailscanner

cd /etc/rc5.d/
ln -s ../init.d/mailscanner S20mailscanner

cd /etc/rc6.d/
ln -s ../init.d/mailscanner K20mailscanner

So now we need to test everything with commands:

/etc/init.d/postfix stop
/etc/init.d/mailscanner start
/etc/init.d/postfix start

Notes:

If SpamAssassin doesn’t detect some of your messages as spam although they are spam you can easy manually learn it to detect that and other similar messages as spam. Follow next few steps:

1. Find that message and save it to text file including headers and content
2. Transfer file to your linux machine
3. From the directory where you have transfered file run command: spamassassin –spam < your_text_file

Things that I missed in Desktops were:

• you couln’t move opened programs between desktops
• Firefox and Winamp (possible some other programs too) wouldn’t work on other desktop if they are allready opened on one
• desktop backgrounds would disapeer

New program that I found is called Vista/XP virtual desktop manager. Some of the options that it provide are:

• Full screen desktop/window manager/preview with full drag and drop managing
• Desktop switch indicator
• An infinite number of desktops
• Watch the windows move in real time as you drag them around in the window manager
• Multiple monitor support
• Window menus
• Tray icons for each desktop
• Per-desktop backgrounds
• Configurable colors, fade speeds, hotkeys, etc.
• Uses Vista’s live thumbnails
• XP support
• And much more!

You can find more info about program and download it on this link.

Here are some screenshoots.

Because lately I (among other users) have begun to receive large number of spam on e-mail server of the company where I work, I have decided to implement SpamAssassin which is primary made for Linux.

I have searched little bit on the net how to do it and found ESA Sink written by Christopher G. Lewis. It works on the principle that SpamAssasin is working in serial mode (it scans one message at a time) and ESA Sink take incoming message from Exchange, outputs it to file, run that file through SpamAssasin and returns it to Exchange if it is OK.

Installation and configuration of everything is not that much complicated. It can be divided in following steps:

1. Download and install the latest version of Active Perl from Active State
2. Download NMake from Microsoft and after extracting move files to c:\perl\bin
3. Download ESA Sink from Chris’s site
4. After installation of ESA Sink you will get ExchangeSpamassassin.ini file opened
5. Check config file values, change if necessary, I have changed MaxMsgSizeKB from -1 to 2048 = 2MB and leave it opened for later as well as installation
6. Now start command prompt, Start->Run->Cmd and enter ppm to start Perl Package Manager
7. If you receive message that ppm is not recognizable type set path=%path%;c:\perl\bin\ and then ppm
8. Now in PPM press Ctrl+1 to see list of available perl modules for installation
9. Type Net-Dns in search field and when you get this package in list click with right mouse button on it and select install
10. Now we will do same thing for IO-Socket-INET6, IP-Country and Mail-SPF
11. Now press Ctrl+Enter to install these packages and when it is done you can close PPM
12. Download the latest version of SpamAssassin and unzip it to c:\Mail-SpamAssassin-3.2.5 (3.2.5=current version that you are downloading, in my case 3.2.5)
13. In the command prompt now type cd c:\Mail-SpamAssassin-3.2.5
14. Type following command: perl makefile.pl and answer questions before compiling
15. Now we need to run nmake, so just type nmake /i (/i means that we want nmake to compile application ignoring errors)
16. After compiling we need to run nmake /i install to install compiled files
17. Unset read-only attribute from c:\perl\site\bin\spamassassin.bat file
18. Now to test SpamAssassin we will enter in command prompt to directory C:\Mail-SpamAssassin-3.2.5\t\data\spam and execute command spamassassin -D < 001
19. If you see lot of text on your command prompt it means that SpamAssassin works like it should and on the end of output you should find scoring for content of file 001
20. Now we will return to .ini file from ESA setup and change line SpamAssassin_Batch_File to points to the location of our spamassassin.bat file which is c:\perl\site\bin\spamassassin.bat
21. Save and close file and finish the ESA installation
22. At the end of the installation you will leave checkbox to run ESA install script and click Finish button
23. Small command prompt window will come and leave as soon as ESA is installed
24. Now to see if it is working properly you can check C:\ESA\Ham or C:\ESA\Spam directories for files and you can send e-mail to yourself as well, if everything works you should find SpamAssassin information in header of the e-mail
25. To be sure that you don’t have any errors you can check C:\ESA\Log directory in which you should find log file with errors

This configuration works OK on servers that don’t receive more than 1500-2000 e-mail per day, but I wouldn’t recommend it for higher number of e-mails without very strong machine, because in this configuration SpamAssassin works in serial mode, it process one object at a time and this includes downloading of e-mail to file, control against filters, control against URBL lists and then if everything is ok returning it to server for delivery.

For me it was simple test to see if it will work for us, it didn’t worked because of large number of e-mails that we receive (10 000+ per day) so I will go on solution to create Linux SpamAssassin gateway.

Note: I would recomend creating of small .bat script that will delete .out files older than 7 days to avoid running out of disk on your system disk

So procedure would look like this:

• find wpa.dbl file and save it to some external media (usb disk, floppy, cd, etc.)
• reinstall Windows
• after reinstallation skip registration and activation
• restart pc and on boot pres F8 to enter menu where you can select safe mode
• in safe mode rename existing wpa.dbl file to wpa.dbl.backup and copy old one
• restart
• VOILA!!

So procedure is very simple and if you create your own installation cd with help of Nlite you can include this file too and skip activation after reinstallation.

Note: This file that you have saved can be used only on the PC that it comes from, on others it won’t work.

[Online Tech Tips]

Program is easy to use, offers many things for both amateur and professional use, can save and import many formats and most important it’s free.

Here are some of the features listed on home page of the NCH Software who are creator of the WavePad:

Features

• Sound editing functions include cut, copy, paste, delete, insert, silence, autotrim and more.
• Audio effects include, amplify, normalize, equaliser, envelope, reverb, echo, reverse, sample rate conversion and more.
• Full featured Mp3 editing software
• Supports a number of other file formats including wav (multiple codecs) vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and many more.
• Batch processing supports up to 32000 files allowing you to apply effects and/or convert your files as a single function.
• Tools include spectral analysis (FFT) and speech synthesis (text-to-speech).
• Recorder supports autotrim and voice activated recording and more.
• Audio restoration features including noise reduction and click pop removal.
• Supports sample rates from 6000 to 96000Hz, stereo or mono, 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits.
• Includes its own CD ripper with ‘ultrafast ‘rip mode and cddb music database lookup.
• Works directly with MixPad multi-track audio mixing software.
• Links directly to the Express Burn CD Recorder to burn your sound files to CD.
• Edit tracks for the Zulu DJ software.
• Easy to use interface will get you started editing in just minutes.

Typical Editing Applications

• Software audio editing for studios and professional journalists.
• Edit sound files to broadcast over the internet with the BroadWave Streaming Audio Server
• Normalizing the level of audio files during mastering before buring to CD.
• Editing mp3 files for your iPod, PSP or other portable device.
• As a music editor (includes ringtones creator formats).
• Music editing and recording to produce mp3 files.
• Voice editing for multimedia productions.
• Restoration of audio files including removing excess noise such as hiss and hums.

You can download program from NCH site.

WavePad Sound Editor

But there is one negative thing and that’s memory consumption.

Firefox is known as a big memory eater.

Solution is here and it’s called Firefox ultimate optimizer 2009.

It decrease Firefox memory consumption from 180mb and more to just few mbs.

Here are two pictures of my taskbar and memory consumption of Firefox before and after running optimizer.

You can download it here or visit home page(page is on Spanish) find the new version here.

Before optimizer

After optimizer

Updated on 2009-09-15: old page is dead, so new program link is here.

]]> http://blog.amarkulo.com/firefox-ultimate-optimizer/feed 1 http://blog.amarkulo.com/virtual-desktop http://blog.amarkulo.com/virtual-desktop#comments Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:26:18 +0000 amar http://dzo.blogsite.org/?p=88 Continue reading →]]> Sysinternals, company that was started by two programmers and latter bought by Microsoft, had always good freeware tools for administration of windows. Best thing was that they were freeware.

Yesterday they have published a new tool with symbolic name Desktops.

This tool allows you to have up to 4 virtual desktops with separate systrays and programs on them. Even alt+tab combination doesn’t take programs from another virtual desktops so if you have runned program on one virtual desktop you won’t get it with alt+tab on another one.

Best of all, you can guess, it’s free, with size of only 62kb and you can get it here.

You can view them by clicking on page Gallery on right side or here.

Everything went ok, backup, upgrade procedure and so on.

Suddenly I have realized that none of the links that are permalinks doesn’t work.

I have tried all possible things that I could remember how to fix it including reconfiguration of Apache and different .htaccess files.

After some time when any of these things didn’t work I got idea to delete all files and install WordPress again with old database.

Directly after I deleted files and copied new ones, permalinks started to work.

Only one thing was different between new and old installations and that were plugins.

So next step was to copy all plugins back and see if everything works or error would come back with them too.

Plugins copied, error present, so next step was to disable plugins one by one and find the one that is causing this error.

Finaly, I have found that WPG2 plugin was cause of this error and that easiest fix for rewrite problem is to disable plugin and then to activate it again.

After this everything worked like it should, all plugins that I had, permalinks and I had the latest version of WordPress installed.

This can be really annoying when you work on servers.

Luckily instead of search-and-destroy-process action there is one FREE program that can unlock file for you and delete it or delete it after reboot.

Program is called Unlocker and it was written by Cedrick Collomb, it’s free and you can download it on this page.