travstatesmen

Thanks again velma, and Saint_Michael for helping me understand this. My concern, as I said to SM in the Shoutbox, is that there was talk on the forums about a possible cutoff date for when accounts would need to be transferred across to the new system, but the "front-end rules and regulations" are not in place yet so anyone who goes across to the new system is currently having to accept the old rules, which are plainly not meant for a "free" web hosting service. Sorry to be so anal about this, but the way that your current Xisto - Web Hosting TOS is worded means that you have the right to purse me for payment for my free web hosting, and that is not something that I am willing to sign my name to. I would rather wait until the new TOS is written before I change from the current Xisto hosting to the Xisto - Web Hosting plan with Credit System v3.0. As I said to SM on the Shoutbox, if I miss out on a few MyCents on the way, so be it.

Thanks for the replies, OpaQue and velma. Also, Saint_Michael replied to me on the Shoutbox, giving further information. I am puzzled about a couple of things though. Firstly... Now, the first post in this thread lists a link to https://support.xisto.com/ which, in turn, lists a link where we can Register, as recommended in the post by OpaQue. When I click on the Register link, I am confronted with a form, as below... ...which clearly shows that the personal details, including telephone number, are required in order to register. There was no such requirement for all these details when I registered on Xisto using this form. Secondly... This sounds similar to what Saint_Michael was trying to explain to me. However, in order to register using the Register link that I mentioned above, I also have to accept the Xisto - Web Hosting TOS. I have not as yet seen any other "DIFFERENT CUSTOMIZED rules" that only apply to MyCents users. I am keen to see this resolved, but I will not be accepting the current Xisto - Web Hosting TOS, as it is not as good, in my opinion, as the current TOS and AUP that I accepted for Xisto membership.

Hmm, I am not too happy with the new offer, to be honest. Firstly, when I signed up to Xisto there was no requirement to give out my personal details. Now, under the new Xisto - Web Hosting billing account they are demanding full disclosure of personal details, including my physical address and telephone number. I see no need for such details to be given for what is touted as a free hosting account. Speaking of which, I hardly think that this new scheme is really free at all. Sure, you can earn virtual cents and real American Dollars by posting in the forums, but I see in the Terms and Conditions for Xisto - Web Hosting that there are such clauses as: ?1.3 Default and Cure, ?1.4 Charges, ?1.5 Payment, and ?8.3 Choice of Law and Forum, ?8.7 No Waiver, ?8.9 Survival etc which all pertain to payment issues, and thus the services offered are no longer free. What I am seeing is that, if we fail to post on the forums to keep our hosting account going, then not only will our account be suspend (as it would have been under the old Credit System 2.0) but also we could still be liable for outstanding payment, and I'm sure that if such occurs, then they won't be seeking MyCents to pay the outstanding amount, but will be looking for real Dollars. The provisions under ?8.3 and ? 8.9, for instance, I'm sure would not be able to be negotiated with a payment in MyCents. I don't think the Federal or State courts located in California, for instance, would accept MyCents should negotiations break down and parties end up in court. If you compare the Xisto TOS and AUP with the Xisto - Web Hosting Terms and Conditions you will see some glaring inconsistencies. For instance... Xisto: Xisto.com reserves the right to amend its policies at any time. All accounts are required to comply with any changes made to these policies. Notification of any major changes to the policies will be emailed to all account holders. Xisto - Web Hosting: Xisto - Web Hosting reserves the right to add, delete, or modify any provision of its Terms and Condition, Acceptable Usage Policy at any time without notice. Xisto: All the accounts which are inactive over a period of time as decided by Xisto in its sole discreation would be terminated without notice. Hosting Account Holders who do not have any approved extension period and are inactive over a period of 30 days would be terminated without notice. Xisto - Web Hosting: All provisions of this Agreement relating to your warranties, intellectual property rights, limitation and exclusion of liability, your indemnification obligations and payment obligations shall survive the termination or expiration of this Agreement. I am sure there are other examples if I look hard enough. In a nutshell, they can now change the rules on us without letting us know, and if we don't meet the new ammended criteria (that we were not notified about) and end up defaulting on their new terms of use, then not only will they suspend our accounts but they will pursue us to the grave for payments owing. No, this is no longer free hosting. I'm sorry, but it is time for me to move on. I'm heading off to find a free hosting site, and one that doesn't unnecessarily demand personal contact information. I'm surprised that the application form for Xisto - Web Hosting doesn't include a place for you to put in your Social Security number.

Well, at one stage there I was reinstalling Windows on a daily basis. I have a home network of quite a few computers, as I use it as a testbed for work. Somebody in this thread mentioned the magazine disks that contain shovelware (they just shovel it onto a CD). To be honest, the junk that Microsoft sends out as Beta software is often just as bad as those. I remember a particular program called Microsoft Voice (the M$ answer to Dragon Dictate), I don't think it ever made it past Beta stage, and it crashed my network big time! But as to how to reinstall, I do things differently. Sure, I used to use Norton Ghost, ages ago, even before it got its shiney new grey and blue interface (yeah, its gone fully Windows GUI now, but it used to be grey/blue, and even before that it was command-line only). I used it before Symantec bought it, before it was called Norton Ghost, and used to just be called Ghost. More recently I make use of RIS, the Remote Installation Services provided as part of the Microsoft Intellimirror technologies. I have a copy of the installation CABs for the workstation operating systems sitting on my server, and using a network card that has both WOL and BOOTP capabilities, I can get the server to wake up a workstation on my network by sending a UDP datagram addressed to the MAC address of the client, and when the workstation boots up, it uses BOOTP to obtain a DHCP packet from my DHCP server and can then use RIS to download the OS from the server. This is how I populate a new workstation, even if it doesn't already have an OS installed. All I need to know is the MAC address of the Ethernet NIC, and that is usually written on a sticky label on the NIC itself. Using RIS I can reinstall my workstations as often as I like, sometimes even more than once daily! The installation procedure is fully automated, with an unattended install script, and once the OS is installed, I use another Intellimirror technology called Software Installation and Management (SIM) to push the applications onto the workstation depending on who I first log onto the workstation as. I have published groups of software configurations on my server, and using Group Policy Objects, the server is able to determine which group of software is meant to be installed on a workstation depending on which user is logged on at the workstation. I have a different username for different groups of applications. If I want a workstation to be specialized for programming, and have Microsoft Visual Studio on it, I just log onto the workstation with that user, and it automatically gets that software installed from the server. Of course, all of this is history at the moment for me, as I have trashed my Windows 2000 server computer for now. I'm currently playing with Linux, and trying to establish a similar network environment under Linux. It's a bit of a steep learning curve for me though! Linux is quite different to Windows. SP2 for Windows 2000 Server? We're up to SP4 these days matey, plus there's a new rolled-up update package somewhere too, which contains a lot of the post-SP4 updates all in one package.

This is possible. I remember from my early networking days, we used to make a "crossover cable" by swapping over a couple of wires before crimping the RJ45 plugs on, and this allowed for two computers to be tethered without the need for a hub or router. Have a look at this wikipedia entry for how to make one yourself, or you can buy a crossover adapter, which is a short length of CAT5 with one male and one female RJ45 on the ends, and the crossover is done on this, so you can just add the crossover adapter to any normal CAT5/CAT6 cable to turn it into a crossover cable. Have a look at these nifty small loopback adaptors from ThinkGeek that don't use any length of CAT5 cable, they're just a male and female RJ45 end in a single unit. You can even keep one on your keychain! Nifty! For a really secure home network, you could possibly put two PCI network cards into each computer and run these crossover cables between them all in a series, forming a loop, which is called "daisy-chaining". The computer on the left would plug in to the first network card, then the second network card would be plugged into the computer on the right, and so on right around the loop. Then you could use routing to forward the Ethernet packets between the two network cards, and could even implement such cool security features as NAT and a firewall between each network card, making each crossover cable be its own subnet. Sorry, I'm getting a little carried away here, but it is a use for crossover cables, and a way to have multiple computers in a network without a hub or router device. Normally a crossover cable will only connect two computers with a single network card in each computer. This has brought back some memories, I tell you! It reminded me of when I used to sit at my old workshop desk making null-modem cables (also called Fast Link cables, FastLynx cables, or LapLink cables), and connecting two computers together with them, plugging into the parallel ports (the big DB25 plug where the old-style printers used to plug in). Then we would use a piece of software called "FastLynx" to transfer data between the two computers over the null-modem cable. This was before Windows 95 came out. FastLynx couldn't handle the long filenames natively, and you had to do something extra to resolve the LFN data.

That is awesome! Thanks for the quick reply truefusion. I put the question up on the KDE forums as well, but you were the first to reply to me. I will get on to reading through it all and then implementing it, and I'll let you know how I got on. I will probably look at getting more of my support infrastructure in place first, such as setting up a local DNS server and a local FTP server, as I would like the sources.list files on my clients to point to an ftp site on my network rather than a local file. I still have a lot of learning and implementing to do before I can say that my GNU/Linux installation is equal to or better than my old Windows 2000 Server-based home network, but I'm getting there slowly.

I really like the software distribution model that GNU/Linux uses. The whole idea of a universal updater for all software, whether it be the operating system itself or the applications, can all be centrally administered and updated through programs like Adept Updater. Adept just checks automatically for new updates for all software that you have installed and lets you know if a particular program has an update. You can then choose to apply the selected updates and it will download and install the updates for you. Brilliant! But here is my question. If I have a lot of computers on a LAN all running the same version of the same GNU/Linux distro and with the same GUI interface, can I get them to look at a local source first for updates? For instance, I would like to have one machine (the LAN source) downloading the common updates with Adept, and then making the downloaded packages available for other computers (the LAN clients) on the LAN to download the updates locally from, rather than each machine using my Internet bandwidth to download the same updates. Then, for anything else that is not available from the LAN source the workstations can access the Internet directly to download their own needs. Different hardware configurations, for instance, would require different driver downloads. I would imagine that for such a thing to work smoothly there would need to be a schedule maintained, so that the LAN source would perform its own download first, and then the other LAN clients would poll the LAN source for updates, otherwise the LAN clients would not find the necessary updates available on the LAN source. Does anybody know if this is possible to configure under Kubuntu (Ubuntu v8.04 with KDE v3.5.9) and using Adept Updater v2.1 Cruiser?

As some of you may remember, I have been (albeit rather slowly) undertaking a course of online study into the field of Cyberpsychology. I have recently been looking at the whole issue of online presence and identity, and I would like to get some input from others on this issue. I have been online in one form or another for quite a long time now. In fact, I would probably first have "gotten connected" back in the late 1970's, although that was with BBS's and FidoNet. I think my first exposure to the Internet for real was when I was working for Telecom New Zealand back in the mid 1980's and they rolled out an internal network called "Myriad" which, for us, ran on the sole Intel 286-based computer in the office at the time and was connected through a gateway to the global Internet. Back then, I was known online as "Wampus", and I was quite active in various online communities, including many usenet groups. There is nothing left of Myriad now. A Google search for it doesn't reveal anything, no matter what keywords I try. (If anyone has better luck at searching for it than I did, please let me know). "Wampus" died along with Myriad. Then there came a time in my online life that I am not too proud of now, and I never reveal what my online identities were back in the late 80's to mid 90's. Suffice to say that I am well acquainted with particular online communities that even today are legendary names among the 1337. But I have lost contact with those whom I knew back then. Many of them are either still in prison, or have gone on to form the backbone of the world's cybercrime prevention and computer forensics community, putting their skills that were once used for nefarious purposes to a much better use. To cover my past online indiscretions, I have gone on to create a string of throw-away identities, normally only lasting no more than 12 months each. At first I used to be fanatical about using random proxies to assist in obfuscating my identity. These days I am a lot less paranoid: there are many more people online in New Zealand now that there were back in the 80's; and also, I have changed ISPs so many times now that even I couldn't trace myself by IP address any more! I have been active in a wide variety of online communities since the turn of the millennium, with all sorts of different things holding my interest for diverse time spans. The counter-exploit brigade still pulls me back time and again as it is my online "roots", so-to-speak, but I never go back as the same identity that I was on a previous visit. I try to avoid Usenet, IRC, and anything that is going to tie me up too much these days. My wife already says that I spend too much time on the Internet, so IRC would not be a good place for me to hang out these days. But my favorite haunts are online communities, such as we have here on Xisto. I have met some really interesting people in my time here so far. I flitter around the Internet like a ghost, hither and thither, taking on a different appearance each time. I have even been introduced to myself once! That was a scream! On one Philosophical website I was known as Episteme1 and an acquaintance there, Aristotle1, wanted me to meet a friend of theirs on another Philosophical website that they were on under a different nick. It was then that I found out that I knew this person's other nick as well, and the person that they wanted me to meet was someone known as Phronesis1 which was my my nick on the second Philosophical website! So I had to dutifully make a post introducing myself to myself. I never did let on who I was! It was really quite funny. Using such tools as KeePass Password Safe, I am able to easily keep track of all of my online identities, including usernames, passwords, and related URLs. One thing that I found rather annoying at first though is this incessant need that webmasters seem to have of ensuring activity from their users. Why do webmasters always do that? If I do not visit their site for a certain period of time then they will delete my account for inactivity. For instance, how long does an MSN email account last if you don't log in regularly? The explanation is given that deleting inactive accounts makes room in their database for more active users. But what about someone such as our Saint_Michael, for instance, who has given his time and contributed to the Xisto forums for over four years now, and who must have posts in just about every sub forum on the board, if not in every thread. Should such an identity not be immortalized, at least for the lifetime of the online service itself? As I say, this used to annoy the heck out of me at first, but now I just roll with it. Creating online identities has become second-nature to me now. While some people say that finding a suitable unique nick these days is getting harder due to the increasing Online population, I still think that identifying yourself is only limited by your imagination. Making use of disposable online identities is much easier, I think, than trying to identify yourself as yourself. It is also much safer with the proliferation of online identity thefts being reported these days. There are moves afoot to standardize the way that we identify ourselves online. Microsoft's Passport was one such early innovation, and the concept has been extended as the Microsoft Live ID. Also, there is OpenID, which is another such unified online identification methodology. Back in 2005, Microsoft released a document entitled Microsoft’s Vision for an Identity Metasystem which outlined what they had learned from developing their Passport service and how they would like to implement such technology in the future. Should such a Metasystem be introduced, and together with the tinfoil hat brigade's view of a future iPatriot Act, (which presumably will steamroll over Online civil liberties just as the Patriot Act did in the real world), there is the potential for enforced real-name identification of all Internet users. Imagine having to supply your Social Security Number every time you go online! I could go on, but I'll open this up to further discussion. How do you manage your online identity? Who are you online? [hr=noshade] 1 Names have been changed to protect the innocent. [/hr]

I used to be a Microsoft OEM System Builder, and a Microsoft VAR, selling both the Microsoft RBP and MOLP licenses. I am an MCP and an MCT, having lectured in both CompTIA A+ Certification and Microsoft Windows desktop operating systems. I have been using Microsoft Windows since Win3.0 and have installed and used every version of both Windows and Windows NT since then (only minimally with Windows Millennium, and no experience yet with Vista). I am currently not working in the computer industry per se. I am working for a large multinational corporation in a service industry. This is like an overseas experience for me! I'm working as an end-user instead of as an administrator. I am doing this purposefully in order to gain experience as an end-user in a corporate network environment. I am gaining useful insights into the problems experienced by corporate end-users. I have access to IP telephony, online helpdesk, an intranet, Exchange Server, Proxy Server, roaming profiles, group policies, SIM, and I daily use applications delivered through Terminal Services / Citrix. Much of this type of technology I have installed and administered in the past, but this is the first time that I have used much of it as an end-user in a production environment. I am learning what some of the hassles are that end-users face, so that when I later rejoin the ranks of the administrators I will be more understanding of my users. This is something that I have done for myself, to advance my own career. I have been looking at Linux for quite some time now, dipping my toe into the water every now and then. As you can see from the explanation above, I am very conscientious about advancing my career in the computer industry, and I happen to believe that experience with GNU/Linux will also help me in the future. I have finally "taken the bull by the horns" and started converting my home computer network to GNU/Linux in an effort to achieve this. This is just another string to my bow, and something that I am doing to advance myself. I am not likely to rush out and become a Linux convert, never to touch a Windows computer again. I am balancing my Windows and Linux experience in the hope that having knowledge of each will be beneficial. I have also done some Novell Netware work, and I treat that experience exactly the same way. By contrast, I don't expect my future work in the computer industry to bring me much into contact with the Mac OS, so I have stayed well clear of it.

I now have two of my home network computers running Ubuntu! The second one is dual-booting with Windows XP. I have successfully gotten my 500GB external USB hard drive to work, but I had to temporarily put it back on the WinXP machine as the last time I used it I didn't "safely remove" it and GNU/Linux complained about that. Apparently there is a way to overcome this problem in GNU/Linux from the Command Console, but I'm not confident enough with that yet. So I put the external drive back on the WinXP machine, turned it on, and then safely removed it. When I put it back on the Ubuntu machine it worked perfectly. My next task is to take control of my Samba network neighborhood. I want all of my machines, whether they are running Windows or GNU/Linux, to all be in the same workgroup. Eventually, they will be in the same domain instead of a workgroup, and will be using LDAP for authentication. I may even start looking into RADIUS for authentication, but that will come a lot later on. Centralized authentication, centralized logon, and roaming profiles has been something that I am used to under Windows 2000 Server, and I want to see if I can get similar functionality under GNU/Linux. Anybody want to give some advice on how best to achieve this? I'm really enjoying delving into GNU/Linux now. I spent the day yesterday building a useful set of Internet bookmarks of sites that contain information to help me. I will be taking one of those online training courses soon to give me a head start with learning GNU/Linux. Oh, by the way, if you're wondering why I keep referring to "GNU/Linux", have a look at this website.

I hate to wade into this discussion again, as I know that Saint_Michael has adequately address this problem in a submission for Suggestions For Version 3 Of The Credit System. However, I do find it ironic, as with freeflashclocks example here, that it not only applies to first-time hosting accounts, but also to those who upgrade from the Hosting 1 package to Hosting 2. One thing that someone explained to me at the time that I first encountered this problem was, as galexcd said, "non-hosted credits are not worth as much as hosted credits because when you are hosted your credits go down one per day, so it is much harder to collect credits". But in the example here that was not the issue, as freeflashclocks had worked hard to earn those credits while being hosted, so this statement doesn't apply. I do hope that they get this sorted out soon. Any such fix won't affect me, or freeflashclocks, or anyone else who has been duped by this already, but I'm sure that people (both Xisto staff and member volunteers) are getting tired of answering for this problem.

I only have two tutorials published on the Xisto forums, and both are about subjects that I have at least a couple of years of experience with and could answer questions about them if asked. I wouldn't presume to write a tutorial about networking with Linux after only two or three days of playing with it. I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there with much more experience than I have in this field, so I will gladly leave the cultivation of Credits for publishing such a tutorial to someone else. I wouldn't want the responsibility of putting you or anyone else wrong!

I haven't seen this movie yet, not even the first one, but I am intrigued by the concept that you have outlined in this thread, adriantc. The current turbulent times in the American financial market no doubt make postulating on such a theory to be very opportune. Tonight on television here in New Zealand we saw an article about the major supermarkets of Australasia, including Coles and Woolworths, and how they are freezing out competition, even to the detriment of their own suppliers, by demanding ever higher profits. I remember how this worked when I was still working in the computer industry: as a retailer myself, I could buy, for instance, an HP inkjet printer cartridge cheaper by going to a large retailer than I could by going to a wholesaler. It is all about the economies of scale. If a large retailer, such as *BLEEP* Smith Electronics here in Australasia, or, for instance, Circuit City in the USA, buys up 1,000 units or whatever, they get a better price per unit than I would if I am only buying 100 units. Therefore I can take advantage of the better margin that the wholesale gives to Circuit City by buying from them rather than buying direct from the wholesaler. And it is all money in the back pocket of big business. Eventually supply lines get so tied up that the large retailers demand such a lot of stock that the wholesaler cannot supply anybody else other than the large retailers and there is no stock left over for the smaller competitors. This is what the television show tonight was talking about, how the primary producers, fresh fruit and vegetables, are getting so tied up with the large food chains that they cannot extract themselves. Eventually the large retailers are re-branding the manufacturer's goods with their own brand names and selling and selling the same goods cheaper (at retail rates) than the wholesalers are prepared to sell to anyone else. And yet it is apparently not anti-competitive! I think in light of such problems with capitalism there must be a better solution. I will be interested to see this documentary and see what they have to say.

Thanks for the input, truefusion. You may well be right about the amount of RAM that I am consuming using the full KDE environment. I haven't even worked out simple things like how to see the amount of free and committed RAM yet, so I still have a lot to learn. When it stops running because I filled up the RAM then I may well consider your suggestion. In the meantime, I got everything back under control last night. I reinstalled Ubuntu v8.4 LTS Server Edition from scratch, and reinstalled Kubuntu, the KDE Desktop for Ubuntu. Nothing stopped half way through this time and it all seems to be working. I managed to get a driver working for my Riva TNT2 graphics card, so now I am not stuck on 800x600 resolution any more. My current struggle is trying to set a static IP address. This machine is going to be a server on my network, so I can not very well have it getting a new dynamic IP address every time the lease expires or every time that I reboot. However, while the networking seems to work quite fine with a DHCP packet, whenever I assign a static IP address I can no longer connect to the Internet. I have specified my default gateway and DNS servers manually, exactly as they appear in the DHCP packet, I have the IP address set well outside of the DHCP scope so that I don't cause an addressing conflict, but I cannot reach the Internet with a static IP address specified, only when I have the DHCP client enabled. Any ideas? This is key to me making further use of Linux as a server platform. As for apps, I have a copy of KeePassX installed now, which is the Linux port of my favorite free password manager. An absolute essential as far as I am concerned! I have also added some system tools using Adept Manager. I quite like the software distribution idea within Linux, and it definitely beats the Windows software distribution model. I have added apps to help me manage the network services that I intend to run from this box, including the DNS and DHCP servers, the print server, etc. I can see and access the shares on my Windows-based computers, but I am currently in a different workgroup to them, and haven't yet worked out how to change my workgroup under Ubuntu. Any advice? By the end of this I would like to be able to see all the computers in my network, irrespective of platform, all together from any other computer in the network. I would also like to have them all hanging off the same local DNS server, so that I can ping them all using a FQDN that is resolved by the local DNS server on the Ubuntu machine. Currently all of the Windows-based machines on my network get a DHCP packet from my WiFi router, and they can all browse the Internet happily. I have added the (intended) IP address of the Ubuntu machine as a third DNS server in the DHCP packets that the WiFi router sends, in preparation for this change. I have a multiple NAT router configuration on my network, with many NAT routers in series cascading, as per the example from Gibson Research. I don't think that this configuration will hamper my intended plans, as all NAT activity is translated at the NAT router and is transparent for the clients. I don't need to do anything special to the NAT clients to make them NAT clients other than point them to their local NAT router as the default gateway and say "go for it"! Then on the WAN side of that NAT router it points to the LAN side of the next NAT router in the series as well, and it all happens transparently to the client. Eventually the final NAT router in the series, my ADSL router, spits everything out onto the Internet via my ISP's default gateway, and the internal network is fairly well protected. I do not normally use a proxy, but have been known to occasionally. This gives a brief overview of my network, to aid in advising me on how to overcome any problems that I encounter with my Ubuntu networking. Again, thanks to anyone who offers any advice and suggestions for this project.

Thanks for that input Saint_Michael. Since my last posting I have added the extra 128MB of SD-RAM to the machine, giving me 256MB of system memory. My motherboard doesn't support anything more than 1GB of RAM, and I believe that the best that I can get is two 512MB SD-RAM modules, and they would cost an arm and a leg these days! I have also removed the 20GB drive that has Win2K Pro installed on it and replaced it with the 40GB drive. That was one of the drives that was previously in my old Win2K Server computer, which had a Dynamic partition that had to be destroyed. Fortunately I was able to recover all the data from it first, and have it now stored on my external 500GB drive instead. With the Linux Server system now prepared, I have started installing Ubuntu v8.4 LTS Server Edition. I spent time verifying the system memory and verifying the distro CD first, just to make sure that everything was properly prepared for this, then I began the installation. You were right about the partitioning utility, Saint_Michael. One of the options for partitioning my drive with Ubuntu was to set up an LVM which I chose. I have no idea yet what it does, but I am assuming that it allows me to dynamically repartition my drive on the fly. Still nervous about that from my experience with Windows Dynamic Partitions, but I'll see how it goes. During the installation procedure I selected to install all of the Server services, including DNS, LAMP, Print Server, and File Server options. It will be interesting to get this system to talk via USB to my Brother HL-1430 laser printer and share it on the network for my Win2K / XP clients to print to. I'd also like to see how Ubuntu handles my external, USB-based 500GB hard drive. The installation appears to be complete, and I'm staring at what looks like a DOS prompt of sorts, in form of username@host~$ and I guess this is where it all begins. While I am familiar with DOS and some Linux commands, I prefer the familiarity of a GUI that uses a mouse pointer. I recall from my limited past experience with Linux the names GNOME and KDE, and I guess I need to find out how to start the GUI for this Linux installation. Any suggestions? Help! Does anyone know how to start the GUI for Ubuntu? I'm stuck at the DOS-like prompt! Okay, panic is over, I have found the answer to that problem on The (k)ubuntu Community website, which tells me that the Server Edition of Ubuntu v8.4 LTS does not install a desktop by default, so to add one I have to use one of the following commands from the DOS-like prompt: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop (for the GNOME desktop interface), or sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop (for the KDE desktop interface) So, I have decided to use KDE, and it is currently extracting the files. Despite me putting the distro CD back into the drive, it looks like it is accessing a website via my ADSL connection to install this package, which is quite impressive considering that I haven't done anything to configure the LAN setup yet other than what was done during the installation procedure. I haven't even specified a TCP/IP address yet! It must have grabbed a DHCP package all by itself. Smart Linux! I like it so far. Things didn't go as well as I thought they would. Half-way through the installation of KDE (I think it was up to extracting the ttf font files) it suddenly decided that I had a "Read-Only File System" and would go no further. Now whenever I try to boot the Ubuntu Linux server, it comes up with messages saying that the "root contains a file system with errors, check forced", and that "Inodes that were part of a corrupted link list found", and that there is "UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY" because "fsck died with exit status 4". Damn! I don't know what half of this means, but I guess from my windows experience that this means that there are some lost clusters and that scandisk could not fix them in non-interactive mode. My guess anyway. It then puts me into a sort of "Safe Mode" with the DOS-like prompt having changed from username@host~$ to now being root@host~# and I guess that the hash mark on the end of the prompt is somehow important. It says that I can exit this safe-mode by using CTRL+D, and when I do it just reboots the machine and I get the same messages over and over again. Looks like I have successfully killed my first installation of Ubuntu in under 1 hour, just by trying to install the GUI. Not a great start! Any help or advice offered would be great. As you can see, I'm not doing too well! Now my choice is to try to recover from the aborted installation of KDE or start again from scratch, reinstalling Ubuntu from the distro CD. For now I will go with the first option. I did as suggested and ran fsck from the DOS-like prompt, fixing all the problems that this utility found along the way and then rebooted (also, I found out along the way that CTRL+ALT+DEL, the three-fingered salute, doesn't reboot a Linux installation). I am now back at the DOS-like prompt and have logged in again as my username. I decided to try re-doing the KDE installation using the command sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop as I found earlier on the The (k)ubuntu Community website. However, this time it recognized that a previous installation had failed, and demanded that I run manually the command dpkg --configure -a to correct the problem. When I tried to do that it complained that I needed "superuser privileges" to run that command. I guess this is where I have to change from my username to the "root" user. Any idea how to do that? The second option, to reinstall Ubuntu from scatch, is looking more and more inviting! I have now been using Linux for about 3 hours, and have not seen anything other than a gross DOS-like prompt. This is why I kept on dabbling with Linux in the past but never getting into it properly. I am starting to hunt for my original Windows 2000 Server installation CD. At least I know with Windows that I can get a GUI interface within about 30-45 minutes! I have fixed it! I booted from the distro CD and used the recovery option to "Rescue a broken system". When I got to the shell prompt I entered the command dpkg --configure -a and it seemed to finish doing the extraction and installation of the KDE desktop and applications, including those pesky ttf font files. Then I started the GUI using startx, and I am now looking at my first Linux desktop since I played with CorelLinux about three years ago. Time to go playing! I want to find out how to have KDE start automatically when I boot the server, and also start configuring some of my hardware. Any further advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Latest update: I'm back to the start, reinstalling Ubuntu from scratch! It turns out that the first aborted installation of KDE somehow knocked out all sorts of things, most of all the network settings. All sorts of network related services were not running any more and with my lack of knowledge about Linux network configuration as yet, I decided that it would be faster for me to just reinstall it all from scratch rather than try to fix the problems. The OS is installing now, and I should soon be back at that now familiar DOS-like prompt, ready to have another go with KDE.

Hey there folks, it's about time that I got into Linux! I see a lot of Linux people here on Xisto and I've always been fascinated by it, but have never successfully installed it, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to test the waters and have a go at getting it running on one of my machines, with YOUR help. This is a fun way to post some quality, meaningful posts on the Xisto forums while sharing your experience and helping someone out. Interested? I'd love to have you participate in this little project. Feel free to join in. In the past I have toyed with Linux a bit. I remember as a Corel reseller, I was once given a Corel Linux CD at a trade show and I dutifully installed it and had a brief play around, then promptly lost the CD in a stack of other trade show goodies. One of my papers at varsity was in Linux, but that was more of an introduction to the operating system and didn't involve us in actually installing or configuring the OS, but just using it. I didn't really benefit much from that. I guess you could say that I have been on the fringes of Linux, dipping my toe in the water every now and then but shying away. Now I am ready to take the plunge! The Linux Distro First of all, I solved the initially tricky situation of opening that nasty can of worms of "which distro is best" by making a snap decision of my own, without benefiting from the wisdom of others. I guess that with Linux being freee, I can freely choose which distro to use and can be free to make a wrong decision at first and try again. I know how to FDISK my drive and start again, and it's not like I'm using this for a mission-critical system! This project is just something for me to do, something for me to learn with, and is intended to be fun. So, I have chosen to use Ubuntu v8.4 LTS Server Edition (codenamed "Hardy Heron") as my distro, and I have downloaded it and burned it to a CD-R disc, ready to be installed. The Hardware My home computer network is comprised of a variety of different systems, mostly Pentium III tower systems, along with my wife's laptop and my trusty smartphone running Windows Mobile 5. Everything is connected using either Ethernet cables or WiFi. I have selected a system to install Linux on. It currently has Windows 2000 Professional on it, and I'd like to keep that installation working, so the Linux installation will either be a dual-booting system or I'll temporarily disconnect the Win2K drive and run Linux by itself on a spare hard drive. I have earmarked a 40GB hard drive for this project. These are the specs of the system that I will be using.... 800MHz Intel Pentium III VIA VT82C692BX motherboard 128MB SD-RAM 40GB IDE Hard Drive 64MB Nvidia Riva TNT2 graphics card Realtek RTL8139 PCI network adaptor The Ubuntu v8.4 LTS Server Edition distro requires a minimum of 128MB of RAM to install, so this system only just meets the requirements. I have a spare 128MB SD-RAM module kicking around somewhere if I need it. Objectives So, why did I chose the server operating system? I have recently trashed my old Windows 2000 Server installation, removing Active Directory, DNS, and other core networking technologies from my network, and am running a fairly plain peer-to-peer LAN at home at the moment. I was thinking of installing Win2K3 Server, but haven't got the money to buy CALs for all my workstations at the moment. This is why I thought I might try playing with Linux and seeing if I could get a decent domain controller set up for free. I would like my Linux installation to, obviously, be able to communicate via the LAN card with the other workstations on the home network. This includes browsing the Internet through the Ethernet connection to my WiFi router, then out to my ADSL modem, and out to the Internet. I would also like to have LDAP and domain login authentication for my assorted Win2K and WinXP workstations. This would be a good start. I would also like to get VPN access and set up a terminal server (such as VNC) so that I can remotely administer the server. If this all goes well, I may well migrate more of my workstations over to Linux installations also. So, I have an installation CD and I have the hardware. All I need to do is get the 40GB hard drive into the system, and maybe throw that extra RAM in at the same time, and I'll be all set to get started. Any advice on where to go from there? Shall we start with the decision of whether or not to dual-boot with my existing Win2K Pro installation, and also what partitions I should create? I'm open to your advice and suggestions.

I think perhaps you are expecting a bit much there, DeM0nFiRe. Most people who make and run Private Servers are those with a little bit of knowledge, but not enough knowledge. That is why they think that they are very clever when they can pirate a game and turn it into something else, to give it more power, to make it do things that it was not originally intended to do. They don't have the ability or the skills to create something unique, they only have the ability to copy and tweak something that is already made. Most of them couldn't write a single line of code in C#.NET or even in C so I do not know why they think that their pirating abilities make them worthy to post in threads about Game Development when what they do is not Game Development at all, but is more like Game Devolvement.

Glad to know that it is not just me! I had just started using the Firefox search plugin for Xisto, and the first time that I used it the forums came up as "Open Discussion", whereas a minute before I installed it, they weren't like that at all. Uninstalling the search plugin seemed to make no difference to me, and it still showed as "Open Discussion". I hadn't visited the Xisto forums until just now, so I don't know if the current "Free Web Hosting" moniker is the same as it was before. Anybody know if Xisto changed as well? Is this a sign that the free web hosting part of Xisto is being phased out? Or are we no longer going to be required to post on the forums to support our hosting? Or is it a marketing move, to encourage more non-hosted people to participate on the Xisto forums without being worried about hosting issues? OpaQue, are you out there?

Wow, you dragged this one out of the depths, minimcmonkey! The previous post to yours was posted on Aug 5 2005. That's practically graveyard robbing! Up until recently I had a Windows 2000 domain on my home computer network and it was set up with a Remote Network Installation Services (RNIS) server so that computers that have the ability to boot from the network card using the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) can have their Operating System installed across the network. Then there was the Software Installation and Management (SIM) services that allowed for applications to be "pushed" onto the client computer depending on which user logged on. These are features of Microsoft IntelliMirror, and requires a raft of new skills, such as: slipstreaming updates into your i386 CAB source files creating *.msi installation packages using WinINSTALL LE or a similar repackaging program using Group Policy Objects to determine which users or groups are to have what software installed roaming profiles that follow users from one computer to another on the network This is something that I set up at home as a place to practice and hone my skills for use at work. Previously I used to make extensive use of Norton Ghost and multicasting of Ghost images on the network. RNIS and SIM are definitely much better than using Norton Ghost, and they are the technologies recommended by Microsoft for deploying operating systems and applications across the network on multiple computers. I never had a Systems Management Server installation, and I'd be keen to hear from anyone with experience with SMS.

You're so right, Saitunes, we heard about the Santa Claus thing over here in good old NZ, too.As for the "Baa, baa, rainbow sheep" thing, that reminds me of one time when I was a kid in the early seventies, and somebody successfully banned "Little Black Sambo" dolls, citing racism. Now I know a thing or two about developmental psychology, and let me tell you, a kid in those unsophisticated times who was still young enough to play with Little Black Sambo, wasn't anywhere near old enough to understand racism - until, that is, some jerks came along and started debating the issue and took their toys away. What I'm saying is, raising these issues with such stupid campaigns can often put ideas into minds not yet mature enough to handle them, instead of letting kids be kids. That's a major downside of political correctness, in my view.PS: I just had a thought - surely if Santa has to say, "He, he, he", couldn't that be seen as being demeaning to MEN? (Shouldn't he have to say, "She, she, she?"). Over and out,Radiochick.

Thanks for the feedback -Sky-. The tutorial is not finished yet though. There are still other places where auto-starting programs like to hide in Windows, and I'll be digging them out in the next exciting episode! As for your question, I assume that you are running Windows XP, right? You can make any user account have administrative privileges. I tend to only have two accounts on each Windows XP computer that have full Administrative privileges: the administrator account (renamed for security), and a back door account (in case I cannot access the main administrator account). Normally I use a "limited user" account for daily activities on the computer, such as surfing the Net. This helps to reduce the possibility of virus and trojan click-by attacks. If you are using the Windows XP style interface (as opposed to the Windows Classic view, which looks more like Windows 2000) then you can access the User Accounts settings to change your user privileges just by clicking on your own user icon at the very top of the Start Menu. But with the Classic View enabled, you would need to use the Control Panel to access User Accounts settings instead. On the top menu bar of the User Accounts dialog box, click the "Home" button to get access to the full power of the User Accounts settings. I think that from there you should be able to find your way to answering your own question about getting the Administrator username onto the Welcome screen. Hope this helps!

Forbez, why would you wish such a punishment on Saint_Michael, for him to be given adminship? Such cruelty! What did he ever do against you that you should wish that upon him?

1. Introduction Many of the tips and tricks listed in this tutorial will work on a variety of Windows-based operating systems. However, the examples are taken from Windows XP as that is the OS that I am running at the moment. I have started this tutorial off with the standard Microsoft warning about editing the Windows registry, as found in many Microsoft Knowledgebase articles that include instructions for making tweaks to the Windows Registry. Despite the warnings, I surf the registry like most people surf the Internet. Since I first learned how to access the registry under Windows 95, I have considered it my personal playground. This tutorial draws on some of that experience. It also comes from my experience in cleaning up customers computers, particularly when they bring a system in saying that it is "running slow and needs more memory". Most of the time I have found that the extra memory was not necessary at all, but a good clean out was all that was required to get the customer's computer running a lot faster. 2. Acknowledgements The tips and tricks outlined in this tutorial are the techniques that I employ for all of my own computers, and the knowledge has been gained from a variety of sources over the years, including too many sources to quote accurately, and too many people to acknowledge properly. The words of this tutorial are my own, but the knowledge behind it I cannot claim as my unique work. 3. Disclaimer While I personally employ the techniques described in this tutorial on all of my own computers, I accept no responsibility if the same tips and tricks do not work for you, or if they cause unexpected or unwanted results. You are best advised to experiment for yourself on a non-essential or test computer first. I have been using these same techniques for many years now and have never experienced any negative results. 4. Summary This tutorial will show you how to reclaim control over your Windows-based PC, using a variety of techniques to fight back against default software that may have been installed on your computer by the manufacturer, to fight back against software that tries to install itself without your express permission, to fight back against remote or automated changes being made to your software or settings, and finally to put protection in place to ensure that such changes cannot and do not occur again. These techniques will mostly involve manual editing of system settings, including manual editing of the Windows registry, or in certain circumstances making use of freeware/shareware software. I tend to promote the concept of making changes manually however, as my experience has led me to believe that many automated system management tools bring with them more problems than they fix. For instance, see this example of a program called Registry Cleaner 2.5, and how it is a malware program itself. There are plenty more examples of this type of thing. The only way that I have found to protect from such threats is to not use these type of programs, and to edit the Windows registry yourself manually. 5. Preparation Before you begin to reclaim control over your Windows-based PC, there are some things that you need to check first... To complete the tasks outlined below, you will need to ensure that you are logged onto your computer with full administrative privileges. You need to backup your Windows registry as per the information provided above. (See the Microsoft KB article 322756, How to back up and restore the registry in Windows) If you are using Windows XP, you should create a System Restore Point. (See the Microsoft KB article 948247, How to set a system restore point in Windows XP). Finally, it is a good idea to back up all your personal data, (See the Microsoft KB article 308422, How to use the Backup utility that is included in Windows XP to back up files and folders). You also need to have a basic understanding of how Windows works. For the purposes of this tutorial I will explain only specific concepts that I think are important to know in order to complete the tasks involved in reclaiming control of your Windows-based PC. One main concept to grasp is the difference between the Computer settings and the User settings. This applies to both the Windows registry and the Start Menu and Desktop. Certain settings load when the computer is started up, whereas other settings load only when the user logs in. In the Windows registry, the main hive that loads when Windows starts up is called HKEY Local Machine (HKLM). When a user logs in to Windows, the hive that loads at that time is called HKEY Current User (HKCU). With the Start Menu and Desktop settings, when Windows starts, the items located in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\ are loaded irrespective of which user is logged on. When a user logs in, the settings for C:\Documents and Settings\username are then loaded as well, for that particular user. The next thing that I recommend is preparing the Start Menu for the changes that will be made. Reclaiming control over your Windows-based PC involves not only preventing programs from running that you didn't ask for, but also being able to run those programs when you want them to. You are in control, not the computer! I tend to make these changes on the .\All Users\ part of the Start Menu, so that the new shortcuts we create as part of the following tasks will be accessible by anybody who uses the computer. TASK 5.1 Preparing the Start Menu Right-click on the Start button and select Explore All Users from the context menu. In the right-hand pane, on the same level as the .\Programs\ folder, create a new folder called "Defaults". Double-click the new .\Defaults\ folder, and create three new folders under it, named "Desktop", "Registry", and "Start Menu" You should end up with something resembling the example below... 6. The System Tray Look at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen, where the clock is. This area, if you didn't know already, is called the System Tray. It contains icons for some of the software and services that are currently running on your computer. I trust that those reading this tutorial already know the difference between "installed" and "running". Many of my customers in the past didn't even understand that concept, so I cannot assume too much prior knowledge on the part of the reader, so please forgive me if this seems a little elementary for some people. There may be a small left-facing arrow within a circle. If so, press it. This reveals any other hidden System Tray icons. How many do you have there? Do you know what all of them are for? Do you know where they all came from? Some will be for devices, such as the volume control for your speakers, some will be monitoring services, such as Windows Live Update, which keeps your computer updated with the latest patches. Some will be protection programs, such as your antivirus or firewall software. All these things are running in the background on your computer before you even start any other application, such as playing a game, opening your Internet browser, or creating a document in Microsoft Word. All those icons in the System Tray represent memory being used up. Do you really need them all? As an example, one thing that is commonly in System Trays is the Quicktime Tray Icon, which allows for quick viewing of Apple QuickTime movies on webpages. Now, tell me, how often do you actually view Apple Quicktime movies on webpages? Is there a particular reason that it needs to be running in the background all the time on your computer? No? Then why leave it there? It is just consuming system memory. If you want to use it then you should be able to still make use of it, but it doesn't need to load up every time you switch the computer on, surely! So, let us reclaim control over the System Tray! The question to ask ourselves at this point is, if these System Tray icons are running in the background, what is it that starts them running, and how does Windows know to start them? There are several places that Windows looks to find programs that need to be auto-started. The common places are the Startup folder on the Start Menu (both for the current user and for All Users), the Windows Registry (again for both the Computer and the User), and the Services applet. To find out what is being run from where, we need to check each location. There are some built-in Windows tools that are useful for this, such as MSCONFIG.EXE, but as I stated before, I like to do things manually. The object of this tutorial is to give you more control, after all! 7. Hidden Processes The System Tray is a useful visual reminder of what is currently running in the background of your computer, but it doesn't show everything. Not all background processes have a Tray icon, and it is useful to know what is actually running on your computer before you start reclaiming control. For this step I make a concession and use a powerful, free, third-party utility program called Process Explorer, which is made by SysInternals. It is such good software that Microsoft bought the company, as they do. Have a look at this Microsoft TechNet page for more information. You can download a free copy of Process Explorer (do it quick before Micro$oft starts charging for it) from here. This program can be configured to replace the Windows Task Manager that comes up when you press CTRL-ALT-DEL on your keyboard, and gives a lot more information about currently running processes, including file handles, than Task Manager did. It also provides a link to a Google search for each process that is listed, so that you can get the low-down about each process. 8. The Windows Registry The first place that I go to, to seek out auto-starting programs is generally the Windows registry. As previously explained, there are two parts to consider in this: the Computer and the User. Most auto-starting programs and services like to be run from the Computer side, so that they will load irrespective of which user is logged in. So we will start there first. To start the Registry Editor, use Start > Run... and then type regedit and click OK. This brings up with Registry editor, normally displaying the last registry key that you viewed. You can scroll back up to the top of the list, or just use the CTRL+Home keyboard shortcut to return to the top of the list. Now, navigate through the following folders to get to the place where programs are commonly auto-started from: HKEY Local Machine \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Run and this will bring up a list like the example below... TASK 8.1 Carefully identify your target Just like with deer hunting, you don't want to fire off a round without carefully identifying your target first! All of the previous warnings about the dangers of editing your registry come into play at this point. Make sure you have backed up the registry before proceeding any further. We can't just rip everything out of the registry's Run key. What about your antivirus program? What about your firewall? You will no doubt want those to keep running automatically, won't you? Google each entry in the Run key list to make sure that you know what it is, what it does, and why it is there. Some items may also have a component part in the User settings, which we will get to later. Some items, such as C:\WINDOWS\system32\ctfmon.exe are benign and are quite okay to leave running in the background. Be aware that some malware can masquerade as real filenames. For instance, why would NOTEPAD.EXE be in your Run key if Notepad doesn't auto-start? Use Windows Explorer if necessary to display the executable file, and then check the properties of the file, including the last modified date and the Company details on the Version tab. TASK 8.2 Create a Shortcut Rather than just deleting the items from our Run key, we are going to create a shortcut to them in the Start Menu, so that you can run them manually when you want to. This is the essence of reclaiming control of your Windows-based PC. If you want it to run, then you will tell it to run! Remember, you're in charge now, not the computer! Before you start this task, you should still have Windows Explorer open, and showing the three new folders that we created earlier, under C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Defaults\. You should also have the Run key list visible as above. Arrange the screen as you feel comfortable, either by tiling the windows side-by-side, or making use of the ALT+TAB keyboard shortcut to switch between the two windows. In Registry Editor, double-click on the first Run list entry that you intend to take control of. Highlight and copy the Value Data information. In Windows Explorer, right-click in the .\Registry\ folder and create a new Shortcut. Paste the link from the Run key's Value Data into the new Shortcut's "location of the item" textbox. Make sure that the full pathname is enclosed in quote marks, then click the "Next" button. In Registry Editor, highlight and copy the Value Name information. In Windows Explorer, paste the Run key's Value Name into the new Shortcut's "name for this shortcut" textbox, and click the "Finish" button. You have now created a shortcut to run the Run key item manually from your Start Menu. You can now safely delete the item from your Windows Registry's Run list. Follow the same steps above for all of the Run key items that you intend to reclaim control of. TASK 8.3 The User settings Once the Computer settings have been cleaned up, it is time to move on to the User settings, and to do the same thing there. Navigate through the following folders in the Registry Editor to get to the next place where programs are commonly auto-started from: HKEY Current User \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Run. Now proceed with the instructions for tasks 8.1 and 8.2 above, to carefully identify the keys, to create shortcuts in the Start Menu for them, and then to delete the Run key items. 9. Results so far Having followed the steps of the above tasks, you probably won't notice too much difference just yet in the number of icons showing in your System Tray, or in the list of running processes found by Process Explorer. In order to see the effect of the changes that you have made, you will need to reboot your computer first. Remember, you are looking for less icons in the System Tray! If there is anything that you need to run, you can do so manually from your new list at the top of the Start Menu. If you find it necessary to have something starting automatically after all, you can recreate the registry key for the item from the information that you have saved in the shortcut for that item. 10. Next steps This concludes Part 1 of this tutorial. The next part will cover reclaiming control of software and services that do not start from the Windows registry, and also of reclaiming control over the Start Menu and the Desktop items.

Well, to one of the longest serving members here, from one of the newest of the n00bs, congratulations Saint_Michael on attaining (or should I say "surviving") four years here on Xisto. You obviously have a very impressive history and list of accomplishments on the site. It is a credit to you. I tend to jump around quite a bit, as I enjoy experiencing new things. I don't know if I will be here to see your eighth anniversary, as some other new thing may have taken my fancy by then, but it is good to see people such as yourself, who are like the backbone of a community such as this. Your knowledge and experience you seem to freely share, (unlike your horde of Credits ) and I have availed myself of that knowledge and experience several times already in my short time here so far. Good on you for this achievement! My present to you comes in an appropriate form: you giving me of your knowledge and experience, without even knowing it! I have just transfered some Credits to you, the first time that I have ever done so here on Xisto. You have gained some Credits, and I have gained the experience of being able to do so. Thanks!

This is a test to see what image sizes are accepted on the Xisto forums without the auto-resizer script kicking in. The first image is a 500 x 500 pixels size. Next up is a 700 x 300 pixels size image. And now a 900 x 100 pixels image. Okay, now let's try a 600 x 400 pixels image. Hmm, interesting. What about 600 x 500 pixels? Okay, good, now how about 650 x 650 pixels? Nope, too much. Let's try 650 x 500 pixels. Ah, the old 640 trick! Let's try 640x500 instead... Okay, maximum width found as 640 pixels. Lets go for the height, starting at 800 pixels... Yep yep, now lets take it out to 1200 pixels in height... That should be more than enough for my needs. If anyone else wants to add to this thread and try some different sizes, go right ahead.