Well, lately I have had some major revelations in my life, both spiritually and mentally and part of these changes involve my commit to doing good for others. I am currently working on a project called http://parentalfiltering.com/ which will involve keeping children safe on the Internet. The site is nowhere near complete but I am looking for volunteers who know about this type of software who would like to contribute. I will freely promote both open source and paid products here.  If you have anything to contribute to this site please email me at dustin[at]larmeir.com.

Hello everyone, I plan on releasing some scripts I use soon that will get a lamp stack up and running in CentOS/Redhat with the latest versions of Apache and PHP. This is something I will be placing on a permanent link on my site and keeping updated with the new releases. I may also do Nginx with php fast cgi as time permits. Stay Tuned……

Hello everyone! Today I am going to run through a basic IIS 7 installation on Windows 2008. The same steps apply for r2 just in case you were wondering and this is geared mainly towards showing new people how to get the server portion installed.

Step 1. Go to start –> Administrative Tools –>Server Manager

Step 2. Click on –> Roles –> Add Roles

Step 3. Click –> Next

Step 4. Select –> WebServer IIS

Step 5. Click –> Add Required Features

Step 6. Click –>Next

Step 7. Click –> Next

Step 8. Select desired role services based on your needs then click –> Next

Step 9. Click –> Install

Step 10. You should recieve an Installation Succeeded confirmation. Click –> Close

 Step 11. The wbserver IIS role should now be showing in the server manager.

Step 12. To test everything is working click  –>Start –> Administrative Tools –> Internet Information Services Manager

Step 13. Expand –> Sites

Step 14. Click on –> Default Web Site

Step 15. Click on –> Browse *:80 (http)

Final. Everything should be working!

 This will get you going enough to setup virtual hosts and to do more advanced configurations.

Yes, I know I am a Linux guy but my job demands I have some MS Windows knowledge too. The fastest way to brush up on your Windows skills would be to get a evaluation copy of the Windows version you wish to learn. The latest version being Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 r2. Evaluations are free to download from Microsoft and you can get 2008 and 2008 r2 here:

Windows 2008 download

Windows 2008 r2

For windows 2008 you can download without any sign up, for 2008 r2 you have to enter in some info ( not that big of a deal) The coolest thing though is the activation rearm feature that gives you more time to do an eval. Info about this can be found below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948472

You can rearm your windows 2008 eval up to 3 times to extend your eval time. Here is what the KB says directly:

“Evaluating Windows Server 2008 software does not require product activation. Any edition of Windows Server 2008 may be installed without activation, and it may be evaluated for 60 days. Additionally, the 60-day evaluation period may be reset (re-armed) three times. This action extends the original 60-day evaluation period by up to 180 days for a total possible evaluation time of 240 days.

Note In the Windows Server 2008 Evaluation DVD package, there is a 120-day initial evaluation period. You can extend the evaluation period to 240 days. To extend the initial evaluation and testing period, follow the steps in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article.”

They also provide a script that will do this for you automatically in the aforementioned KB that is executed by a simple scheduled task. I hope this helps out someone who wants to learn about Windows server platforms..

On a personal note I believe that Windows and Linux both have a place in the server room and as long as they are both being used by companies I will need to know both.  Sometimes I will feature some windows stuff here too although Linux is my personal server platform of choice.

I found instructions on how to fix the defective hp tx1000 series laptop’s gpu issues caused by overheating. I decided to try it by myself and it works great. My video is not all that great but it gets the point across. Since this was such a widespread issue this was the last HP laptop I’ll ever buy…

Password strength is incredibly important! Having worked in the Tech industry for years I have seen so many servers get rooted, hacked and owned simply by a bruteforce attack or password guess. Realistically this should not be a problem but many people feel that passwords such as “password”  “hellokitty” or whatever is strong enough. Generally as a guideline you will want a mixed lower case, upper case, alpha numeric passwords with special characters. An example of such a password is below:

U$34r341P4$$W0rdN00b13t!!

The key characteristics of a strong password are in this password above and this can be used as a guideline. Yes they are harder to remember but almost impossible to guess through a brute force. An example of what ignorance about password strength can do is in this article below:

http://news.techworld.com/security/3210769/users-on-hacked-site-used-trivial-passwords/?olo=rss

290,000 accounts were hijacked on this website. If that doesn’t hit home I don’t know what will. Keeping a strong password not only keeps you safe but also keeps others safe from you.  In case you want a autgenerated password, you can use something like this: http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/ – this will do it for you