Shaun Mallette's Blog

How to watch the BBC outside of the UK (Updated version)

2011-08-01T22:35:00.005-05:00

This is an update to an older post. The main difference is the UK exit nodes have been updated to ones that are currently working and are faster. This is a step by step instructions done on Ubuntu so any Debian flavor system shall work as well.

Step 1:

If you don't know which codename of Ubuntu that you are using type:
lsb_release -c

Then add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org distribution main

Replace the word distribution with the codename (i.e. lucid,maverick)

Then add the gpg key used to sign the packages by running the following commands as root at your command prompt:

gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv 886DDD89
gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add -

Now refresh your sources and install Tor by running the following commands at your command prompt:

apt-get update
apt-get install tor tor-geoipdb

Step 2:

Polipo gets installed with the command above at the time of this writing. Polipo is a caching web proxy that does http pipelining well, so it's well-suited for Tor's latencies.

After polipo is installed you will need to change the script to work with tor.

Backup the original polipo config

cp /etc/polipo/config /etc/polipo/config.backup

Then edit the config file

nano /etc/polipo/config

Delete the script that is in there and replace with This

Step 3:

For this to work with tor you need an exit that has an UK ip address. To do this:

nano /etc/tor/torrc

And add the following at the top and save.

ExitNodes $B3C940F41C692FEBE7838D608BFF6114F936C3C6, $83F62F50DB1E5E4B6A6B58D9F970E40F26689911, $38B6A42E84BC86A0D217D3CF30EFFEC2678DBA17
StrictExitNodes 1

Finally Step:

Install the Tor Button for Firefox and restart.

FYI You have to restart Polipo and Tor by doing ie. /etc/init.d/polipo restart or service polipo restart To allow flash to play you need to go into Firefox's preference -> security settings and uncheck disable plugins during Tor's usage.

Thanks to the Tor Project and John Lewis for the UK exit node information.

How to watch the BBC outside of the UK (Old see updated version)

2011-03-18T22:35:00.003-05:00

I despise restrictions on content. I believe that information shouldn't be restricted to location. I will walk you step by step so you can achieve the same, the instructions will be done on an Ubuntu system.

Step 1:

If you don't know which codename of Ubuntu that you are using type:
lsb_release -c

Then add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org distribution main

Replace the word distribution with the codename (i.e. lucid,maverick)

Then add the gpg key used to sign the packages by running the following commands as root at your command prompt:

gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv 886DDD89
gpg --export A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89 | sudo apt-key add -

Now refresh your sources and install Tor by running the following commands at your command prompt:

apt-get update
apt-get install tor tor-geoipdb

Step 2:

The next step is to set up web browsing. Start by installing Polipo. Polipo is a caching web proxy that does http pipelining well, so it's well-suited for Tor's latencies.

apt-get install polipo

After polipo is installed you will need to change the script to work with tor.

nano /etc/polipo/config

Delete the script that is in there and replace with This

Step 3:

For this to work with tor you need an exit that has an UK ip address. To do this:

nano /etc/tor/torrc

And add the following at the bottom and save.

ExitNodes PDQVPNUK1, PDQVPNUK2, st0nerhenge
StrictExitNodes 1

Finally Step:

Install the Tor Button for Firefox and restart.

Thanks to the tor project and where ever I found the UK exit node information.

How To Restore Grub2 In Debian Based Systems

2011-02-19T13:27:00.000-06:00

Sometimes we get curious or need curtain features and install other systems on our computers. The problem that we run into is that it will trash the way we boot them. It is ever easy to get Grub2 to back to the state it was.

You will need a LIVE cd if you are going to recover Grub2. I will be using an Ubuntu disk for this step by step tutorial. Open up terminal and continue by entering :

$sudo fdisk -l

This will show your partition table.Here is my table to understand it better :

/dev/sda1 29 8369 66999082+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 8370 13995 45190845 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 13996 14593 4803435 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 13996 14593 4803403+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Now i will mount Linux (sda1 here), Yours could be different it depends on where your boot partition for Linux was.)

$sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
$sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
$sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc

Now chroot into the enviroment we made :

sudo chroot /mnt

After chrooting, you will not have to use sudo anymore as you will be root(you can tell by #).

You may want to edit /etc/default/grub file to fit your system (timeout options etc) just upadte grub if you do.

#nano -w /etc/default/grub

Now install/recover Grub2 via :

#grub-install /dev/sda

You can use reconfirm by using:

#grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

Now you can exit the chroot, umount the system and reboot your box :

#exit
$sudo umount /mnt/dev
$sudo umount /mnt/proc
$sudo umount /mnt
$sudo reboot

That is it and you are back in business.

Stuxnet Virus Worm - Cyber Attack False Flag by Iran

2010-11-03T15:47:00.007-05:00

I got this from Study4cyberwar. This site is dedicated to cyberwar information. They have some good information to keep you updated.

Using ClamAV to Protect Your Windows Clients

2010-06-20T16:09:00.004-05:00

ClamAV can scan incoming emails and you also can configure Squid web proxy to use ClamAV as well. One of the coolest options is that Samba can be configured to use ClamAv to scan files when they are accessed. Note: Using ClamAV on your Linux servers to sanitize oncoming data to filter email and HTTP traffic won't make you completely safe so I advise to still have a local anti-virus program installed on those Windows PC. Most distros have ClamAV in the repository except for RHEL and CentOS so if you have them installed just search the web for the RPMs. ClamAV supports a server mode making it avaiable to other available systems on the network. With this feature you can have one centralized ClamAV server that is kept up to date and has some horsepower to be used by other machines, such as an email server to scan for viruses without bogging down your email server.
To get started install claman-scanner-sysvinit package on Fedora or Clamav-daemon on Debian based systems. On Fedora the clamd conf file (/etc/clamd.d/scan.conf) will need to be edited by uncommenting the TCPScoket and TCPAddr lines.
One of the important things that has to be done is updating the signatures of the antivirus. The majority of antivirus scanners rely on signatures to detect viruses; very few scanners implement heuristic or behavior-based monitoring which I believe to be the better choice. To update ClamAv with the up to date signatures install the clamav-update package on Fedora or the clamav-freshclam on Debian. The configure file in /etc/clamav/freshclam.conf is used for updating info. Then you can add freshclam to a cronjob so it can run regularly and notify you of the results:

0 * * * * /usr/bin/freshclam | mail -s "freshclam update info" admin@localhost.org

Note: To make sure clamd has the most up to date signatures you need to configure freshclam to send a "RELOAD" command to it.
Fedora: NotifyClamd /etc/clamd.d/scan.conf
Debian: NotifyClamd /etc/clamav/clamd.conf

Getting email protection is simple as installing clamsmtp,it will act as a proxy and filter email. In todays world one of the most popular techniques for creating botnets is by what is called "drive-by" downloads. That is where an attacker inserts malicious content into a web page and then infects several hundred or thousands Windows clients that are then compromised and taken over; the answer to that is to use Squid web proxy and install c-icap; basically ICAP is like Milter for Sendmail, in that it allows the offload of antivirus processing to a different server.

Now we move on to Samba protection. What happens when someone brings a removable media with a virus onboard, and it copies itself onto the file server in hoping to infecting others? The samba-vscan module adds on-access scanning for Samba. The minute a file with a virus is accessed it should be detected and block access to the file. Samba-vscan is not in Debain so you can get it at Open Anti-Virus.org

Controlling login attempts with PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module)

2010-05-12T21:33:00.000-05:00

It is generally a good and sensible practice to lock out a user after a number of failed login attempts, with some exceptions. You don't want to give an intruder unlimited attempts, but you don't want clumsy users pestering you all the time for login resets. And users who wish to play practical jokes locking out other users by trying to su to a different user's account, and failing on purpose.

On Debian, add this line to /etc/pam.d/common-auth:

auth required pam_tally.so onerr=fail no_magic_root

And this line to /etc/pam.d/common-account:

account required pam_tally.so onerr=fail deny=3 reset no_magic_root

On Red Hat, add the above two lines to /etc/pam.d/system-auth. This gives users three chances to log in, then locks them out if they fail. The no_magic_root option is very important -- this prevents the root user from being locked out. In this era of great bootable rescue disks like Knoppix, that's nowhere near the catastrophe it used to be.

When the offending user has sufficiently soothed your upset sensibilities, restore access this way:

# pam_tally --user doofusfred --reset=0
user doofusfred (1006) had 29

It even tattles on how many times the user tried to login.

Working with User and Group Management

2010-05-12T09:49:00.000-05:00

Group Commands

Group definitions reside in the /etc/group file. A standard Linux /etc/group file contains the following information: groupname:x:groupid:user list.

The “x” in the group definition file is a deprecated placeholder for a group password.

To find out which groups you belong to, type groups at a command prompt.

$ groups
khess rdpusers
By default on most Linux systems, when an administrator creates a new user account, the system automatically creates a group account with the same name as the user account. An SA can specify a group when he creates the account but the group must already exist.

Here are two illustrative examples:

# useradd fred

# grep fred /etc/passwd
fred:x:504:506::/home/fred:/bin/bash

# grep fred /etc/group
fred:x:506:
# useradd -g 100 -c "Bob Alobdob" bob

# grep bob /etc/passwd
bob:x:505:100:Bob Alobdob:/home/bob:/bin/bash

# grep bob /etc/group
#
Why did the system return no response when you typed in grep bob /etc/group? It’s because the users group is Bob’s primary group. If users were a secondary group, Bob’s username would appear in the list. For example, create a new user with rpdusers (Group ID 504) as a secondary group.

# useradd -G 504 -c "Jon Shmon" john

# grep john /etc/passwd
john:x:506:507:Jon Shmon:/home/john:/bin/bash

# grep john /etc/group
rdpusers:x:504:khess,john
john:x:507:
A group must exist before you assign users to it. The groupadd command creates new groups with a specific Group ID (GID) and name.

# groupadd -g 1040 accounting

# grep 1040 /etc/group

accounting:x:1040:
You may also create a new group with just a group name and the system will assign a GID for you with the command, # groupadd groupname.

The groupmod command allows you to change the group name but the SA will have to change any files associated with the old group manually.

# groupmod -n accounting beancounters
# grep 1040 /etc/group
beancounters:x:1040:
Note: Don’t confuse chgrp (changes group permissions) with groupmod (changes the name of a group).

You can remove a group with the groupdel command.

# groupdel beancounters
If you prefer to edit configuration files directly, although you shouldn’t, the vigr command edits the /etc/group file in a safe manner by setting locks so that only one administrator at a time can edit the file.

Administrators rely heavily on the “group” commands for group administration, user administration and in scripting those functions for automated solutions.

User Commands

I call this collection of utilities the “user” commands because their functionality centers on user administration and not on action taken by the users themselves. Even if a user knows the location of these commands (/usr/sbin), they still can’t issue them without root privilege.

For example, a clever user on your system tries to issue useradd and vipw.

$ /usr/sbin/useradd steve
useradd: Only root may add a user or group to the system.

$ /usr/sbin/vipw
vipw: Couldn't lock file: Permission denied
vipw: /etc/passwd is unchanged
The User commands have their Group analogs; you add a new user with useradd, modify a user account with usermod and delete a user account with userdel. And you edit the /etc/passwd file directly with vipw. You’ve already seen the useradd command in action in the Group Commands discussion.

The usermod allows Admins to alter any user account attribute including the user’s real name (comment field), home directory name, account expiration date, disabling functionality, group add and change, login name, account locking and unlocking, alter the user’s shell and more.

# grep khess /etc/passwd
khess:x:500:500:Kenneth Hess:/home/khess:/bin/bash

# usermod -c "Ken Hess" khess

# grep khess /etc/passwd
khess:x:500:500:Ken Hess:/home/khess:/bin/bash
The usermod command requires some restraint and careful typing when issuing commands that can make a user account unusable. Let’s say that Bob Alobdob, from an example in the Group discussion, wants his login name and home directory changed to robert.

# usermod -d "/home/robert" -m -l robert bob

# grep robert /etc/passwd
robert:x:505:100:Bob Alobdob:/home/robert:/bin/bash
Notice how I explicitly entered “/home/robert” in the command? If you don’t specify the whole path, Robert won’t have a home directory nor will its contents exist anymore. The command, as shown, changes his current home directory from /home/bob to /home/robert, his login from bob to robert and the -m moves the contents of his “bob” home directory to his “robert” home directory. User permissions change to robert as well for all files in his home directory.

Note: You cannot change the login name of a currently logged in user.

The userdel command’s function might seem obvious to you but you might surprise yourself after issuing the command to find that the user’s home directory is still intact.

Why would any programmer allow that directory to remain as clutter on your home filesystem? This is actually a failsafe mechanism and you should thank the thoughtful programmer who maintains userdel.

What if two user names only differ by a single letter and you removed the wrong one? The incorrectly deleted user’s home directory and files were wiped from the system with a slip of your finger. With the failsafe mechanism in place, you have to manually remove the home directory and hopefully you would catch your error before doing so.

Reset the MySQL root password on Ubuntu/Debian Linux

2010-04-24T21:11:00.000-05:00

How to change the MySQL root password. Enter the following lines in your terminal.

Stop the MySQL Server.
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop

Start the mysqld configuration.
sudo mysqld --skip-grant-tables &

Login to MySQL as root.
mysql -u root mysql

Replace YOURNEWPASSWORD with your new password!
UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('YOURNEWPASSWORD') WHERE User='root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit;

Preventing SSH Attacks With DenyHosts

2010-04-11T11:59:00.002-05:00

SSH is a great way to remotely administer a server. However, it still has a number of issues when you open it up to the world. The server and client communications are secure but that doesn’t mean the hosts involved are. Opening an SSH service to the world allows for brute force attacks and means that the carbon interface is still the weakest link.
There are some very simple steps you can take to really harden remote access over SSH, especially if you can’t simply tie the service down to a limited number of source ports.

First things first, sshd_config. In Ubuntu this is usually found in /etc/ssh and can be used to configure a great number of features. The simplest ones to deal with are always the best. Restricting the users who can login via SSH is a first principle. This can be done in one of two ways, by user or by group. AllowGroups allows any user in this group authenticated access to the server via SSH. A more fine grained approach is to use the AllowUsers option.

Another easy win is by moving the listen port from 22 to some other randomly assigned port. This reduces the likelihood of a scan showing SSHD running.

Other steps you might want to take include disabling root access, disable password authentication and using keys only.

sudo apt-get install denyhosts

DenyHosts is a python script intended to be run by Linux system administrators to help thwart SSH server attacks (also known as dictionary based attacks and brute force attacks).

Denyhosts acts as a dynamic blocker for SSH and other services. It relies on the /etc/hosts.deny and hosts.allow. It dynamically builds a list of hosts that repeatedly connect to your server. By default the service will block connections from IP sources that are repeated attempting to connect and access your host. The denyhosts process is configured in /etc/denyhosts.conf

Once you’ve put these steps in place you can rest assured the SSH on a public facing host is much more secure.

Working with Debian packages from the Command Line.

2010-02-20T15:59:00.003-06:00

Here is a few command line entries that I use almost daily.

apt-cache search (packagename)will produce the following:

chicagonpg@Quadzilla ~ $ apt-cache search gftp
gftp-common - shared files for other gFTP packages
gftp-gtk - X/GTK+ FTP client
gftp - X/GTK+ FTP client
gftp-text - colored FTP client using GLib

Then to install just sudo apt-get install gftp-gtk (gtk is the gnome gui app)

Once installed you can check what version you have by doing:

gftp-gtk --version

chicagonpg@Quadzilla ~ $ gftp-gtk --version
gFTP 2.0.19

I have version 2.0.19

To check if you have a certain application installed on your system
use dpkg -s

chicagonpg@Quadzilla ~ $ dpkg -s vlc
Package: vlc
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: video
Installed-Size: 3912
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers
Architecture: amd64
Version: 1.0.2-1ubuntu2.1
Replaces: vlc-nox (<< 0.9.2-1)Provides: mp3-decoderDepends: vlc-nox (= 1.0.2-1ubuntu2.1), libaa1 (>= 1.4p5), libc6 (>= 2.8), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2), libfreetype6 (>= 2.2.1), libfribidi0 (>= 0.10.9), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libgl1-mesa-glx | libgl1, libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.8.0), libnotify1 (>= 0.4.5), libnotify1-gtk2.10, libqtcore4 (>= 4.5.1), libqtgui4 (>= 4.5.1), libsdl-image1.2 (>= 1.2.5), libsdl1.2debian (>= 1.2.10-1), libstdc++6 (>= 4.2.1), libtar, libvlccore2 (>= 1.0.0~rc1), libx11-6, libx264-67 (>= 1:0.svn20090502), libxcb-keysyms1 (>= 0.3.6), libxcb1, libxext6, libxinerama1, libxv1, libxxf86vm1, zlib1g (>= 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg), ttf-dejavu-core
Recommends: vlc-plugin-pulse (= 1.0.2-1ubuntu2.1)
Suggests: mozilla-plugin-vlc, videolan-doc
Conflicts: vlc-nox (<< 0.9.2-1)Description: multimedia player and streamer VLC is the VideoLAN project's media player. It plays MPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, MOV, WMV, QuickTime, mp3, Ogg/Vorbis files, DVDs, VCDs, and multimedia streams from various network sources. . VLC can also be used as a streaming server that duplicates the stream it reads and multicasts them through the network to other clients, or serves them through HTTP. . VLC has support for on-the-fly transcoding of audio and video formats, either for broadcasting purposes or for movie format transformations. Support for most output methods is provided by this package, but features can be added by installing additional audio plugins (vlc-plugin-pulse, vlc-plugin-sdl) or video plugins (vlc-plugin-sdl, vlc-plugin-ggi, vlc-plugin-svgalib). There is also a web browser plugin in the mozilla-plugin-vlc package.Homepage: http://www.videolan.org/vlcOriginal-Maintainer: Debian multimedia packages maintainers

As you can see the status is installed but it also gives you some good information on the package as well.

Recover Forgotten Ubuntu Password without reinstalling

2009-12-27T21:16:00.000-06:00

If you forgot you password for your ubuntu system you can recover using the following steps

Turn your computer on.

Press ESC at the grub prompt.

Press e for edit.

Highlight the line that begins kernel ………, press e

Go to the very end of the line, add rw init=/bin/bash

press enter, then press b to boot your system.

Your system will boot up to a passwordless root shell.

Type in passwd username

Set your password.

Type in reboot

If this doesnt work you can alternatively try this:

Turn on your computer, and as soon as you the Press Esc to enter grub message, press the escape key.

Select the option that says (recovery mode).

Your PC will boot into a shell. Once you get a command prompt, type "passwd username" where the username is your username.

Enter a new password when prompted, and again when prompted again

Type reboot to reboot your system

Another way is to boot into the system via a live cd open up Applications->Accessories->Terminal
then mount your ubuntu drive if its on /dev/sda1 do this:

mount /dev/sda1/ /media/sda1

Then we chroot into the system:

chroot /media/sda1

passwd user

Now change the password, and reboot your box!

Ref http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/

How to install OpenSSH in Ubuntu to connect to another computer

2009-12-15T00:02:00.007-06:00

OpenSSH encrypts all traffic including passwords to effectively eliminate connection hijacking or eavesdropping on the traffic. SSH was designed as a replacement for Telnet,rlogin and rsh, which send information, notably passwords in plaintext leaving them open for interception. OpenSSH provides secure tunneling capabilities and several authentication methods, and supports all SSH protocol versions.
This will all be done in Terminal.

Type the following two commands to install both ssh client and server:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client

You can do the same for the other pc or just install openssh-server if the pc is just going to be a server.
To log in you would do the following:

ssh yourusername@remotepc (ex. ssh bob@192.168.1.1) if the two computers have the same username you can just do ssh 192.168.1.1
you will see a message like this
Host key not found from database.Key fingerprint:xezop-fomas-lifot-pisoc-zyvik-hutoz-bafaf-zapyc-lubev-riked-dexax
You can get a public key's fingerprint by running% ssh-keygen2 -F publickey.pub on the keyfile.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)

Type yes and it will add the RSA key this will only happen once, that is it. By default OpenSSH will be listening on port 22 but I would change that to a port of your choice for security since a network port scanner like Nmap can be ran by intrudes.
The configuration file is in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
we can use gedit to modify this:
sudo gedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config you will see #Port 22 remove the # and change the port number to something like 3787, now save the changes.
Now since we changed the port number the command to use ssh will be ssh -p222 192.168.1.1 (-p tells ssh what port to use)
Other commands that can be used if needed are:
To stop server:
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh stop

To start server:
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh stop

To restart server:
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart
SSH is one of my favorite programs. I would advise to look at the man pages by typing man ssh to view all the options.

Reclaim Disk Space

2009-12-03T17:52:00.005-06:00

Filling a partition to 100% can have an unpleasant effect on your system. When services and other programs cannot write to their log files, or cannot save data in /var, you could be in trouble. These programs won't be able to save their data, and typically quit out (or, in some extreme cases, crash dramatically!). To avoid this, the ext2,ext3 and ext4 filesystems reserve 5% of their capacity for only root processes to use. This is a good idea, but 5% is a lot on large drives - for instance, it's 25GB on a 500GB drive. Also, there is no need to reserve any space on a filesystem not used for root files, such as /home.

The good news is that not only is this 5% not hardcoded into the filesystem, it can be changed on the fly without disturbing the your data and files. Tune2fs is used to tune various parameters of an ext2,ext3 and the new ext4 filesystem. It can be used to change the volume label or the number of mounts between forced execution of fsck and a host of other, more esoteric settings, but the options we are interested in here are -m and -r. The former changes the percentage of filesystem blocks reserved for the root user, while the latter uses an absolute number of blocks.

Example: tune2fs -m 2 /dev/sda1

reduces the reserved area to 2% of the filesystem, which may be more appropriate for if you have a large / or /var filesystem. If you're using a drive of 500GB or larger, this is the best option.

This line of code:

tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sda1

sets the filesystem to have no reserved blocks, a good setting for /home that doesn't need a reserved area for the superuser.

GNU? Linux? Oh, Ubuntu!!!

2009-05-27T18:06:00.001-05:00

In the open source community we forget sometimes that non-techie individuals or Windows tech people don't understand what we are talking about. An example is just in this title GNU which is a recursive acronym for GNU's not Unix. Living in the FLOSS(Free Libre Open Source Software) community, we are generally limited to a small social group which really isn't that small since their are millions of users around the world. I decided to write about this in my blog due to a conversation I had with two individuals. I was at a cafeteria when I was approached with comments reference my EEEPC. Since I'm a Linux advocate I assured to let them know that is was running Linux. I just assumed that people would know the word Linux, but now that I look back in time even I didn't know what it was before I ran it. They saw my wallpaper that had an Ubuntu logo on it with the words Ubuntu and they pointed to it and said I know what that is. You see in my community it all makes sense because I know my community but to others it is just odd. Their are just to many names for Linux. People are use to one name systems like Windows or Mac. Do we call the system by what the Free Software Foundation calls it GNU/Linux or just Linux. To get to the bottom of it the name Linux really means the heart of the system the kernel, in return we use that as the name. Linux has many distributions Ubuntu,Fedora,OpenSuse,Debian,Slackware just to name a few. Now with Ubuntu standing out in the public eye it is used to define Linux which really isn't fair to the rest of the distributions. I know that people will not comprehend entirely which is ok but we need not to scare some people off by name confusion. Maybe by using the word Linux after the distributions name will help like Ubuntu Linux, Fedora Linux. Well, anyway that is my thoughts for this post.

Media Center Update

2009-05-11T20:51:00.005-05:00

Installed Ubuntu 9.04 64bit,Mythtv and XBMC on my media center. The stats of the media center are as follows:
Thermaltake Tenor case
ECS KN1SLI 939 board
Nvidia 9600GT
Hauppague HVR 1800
750GB Seagate
Asus DVD
2 GB RAM
Most of my movies are on this box which is very convenient,
my music collection is on my Quadcore desktop box which
I just SSH into to access which saves space on the hard drive.
Can't wait for my next project.

New Server Setup

2009-04-15T17:46:00.000-05:00

I have been running an Ubuntu server for a while now. It comes time to try something different. CentOS 5.3 was just release not to long ago and this will be my new adventure. I have worked with a Red Hat server prior and since CentOS is basically the same thing I will be familiar with it. The new server will feature Apache of course with MySQL and Drupal.