Category: Linux

I will post my Linux experience here. Also any How To’s I create.

Linux Mounting Partitions

Blake

Most Linux distribution include auto mounting for different file system types. Specific distributions, you need to mound some file systems your self. The following commands will allow you to mount different file system types.

To list all partitions attached to the system, use the following commands.

fdisk -l

First thing, create a mount point for this new file system.

mkdir /media/drive

You can create this folder anywhere on the system. Most distributions mount all drives to /media.

Mounting FAT or FAT32:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/drive/

Mounting NTFS:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/drive/

Un-mounting the drive:

umount /media/drive/

Backtrack 5 MAC Changing

Blake

I have been playing with backtrack5 lately and there was one little issue I was starting to get irritated by. When spoofing your MAC address you were required to run all these commands to take the interface down. First is to stop airmon-ng then to take the interface down. The following script is going to do the following:

Note: Before running this script run ifconfig and find the device name for your wifi card. In my case is is wlan0. If your’s is different then change wlan0 to you device name.

  1. Shut down airmon-ng
  2. Shut down interface
  3. Change the MAC to 00:11:22:33:44:55
  4. Start interface
  5. Start airmon-ng
After the script is complete it will print the new MAC.
#!/bin/bash
echo "Shutting down wlan0..."
airmon-ng stop wlan0 > /dev/null
ifconfig wlan0 down > /dev/null
maccchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 wlan0 > /dev/null
echo "Starting wlan0"
airmon-ng start wlan0 > /dev/null
string=`macchanger -s wlan0`
echo "Changed MAC to: ${string:13}"

If you have any problem, drop me a line at info@blakemiller.ca

Synergy with Ubuntu & Windows

Blake

Synergy let you share a single mouse and keyboard across multiple computers. In the following example, thewall is going to have our server and laptopnew is going to be our second computer. thewall, is to the right of laptopnew. thewall is also our linux box running Linux Mint (gnome). laptopnew is running Windows 7 x64.

First thing we need to do is install Synergy on our two machines. On the linux box run:

sudo aptitude install synergy

Next we need to install Synergy on our second computer. The version of Synergy in the Ubuntu repos is version 1.3 so we need to install that version. Click here for the download list.

Once you have it installed on both machines we need to create our configuration file. The following is an example of my configuration file.

gedit ~/.synergy

Configuration file:

section: screens
thewall:
laptopnew:
end

section: aliases
laptopnew:
192.168.1.24
end

section: links
thewall:
left = laptopnew
laptopnew:
right = thewall
end

section: options
screenSaverSync = false

end

For this to work correctly you must use the hostnames of both machines. Now we can open a terminal and run:

synergys

This will start the server; next we want to hit the start button on the client. You should now be able to move your mouse between the two computers! Synergy also allows you to copy and paste (text only) between the machines.

To get the synergy server to run on startup we can just add it to the gnome startup. Menu -> Preferences -> Start Up Applications.

The next time you reboot Synergy should start automatically. That concludes this tutorial, if you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Mounting Windows Share using smbfs in Kubuntu

Blake

On my new Kubuntu box, I wanted to mount my “My Documents” folder that resides on a Windows Server 2003 R2 box. I have always had problems mounting folders due to the nature of Active Directory.

In KDE you can easily mount a share using the built in wizard, but I wanted to mount it as folder so I could access it using command line. First thing to do is install smbfs.

sudo aptitude install smbfs

Next thing we want to do here is make a folder to mount this remote location. I’m going to make it in the /media folder.

sudo mkdir "/media/My Documents"

The quotes are there to allow spaces in the directory name.

After that is this interesting line. If the share your connecting to  has any spaces in the name, you will need to put that option in quotes. Here is my complete line.

sudo mount -t smbfs -o username=blake,password=PASSWORDHERE "//server/UserData/blake/My Documents" "/media/My Documents"

I have made this into a script so I can easily run it when I need to connect.

I hope this has helped you getting your Linux box talking to your Active Directory protected share.

New Laptop #2

Blake

Well for those of you I don’t talk to on a regular bases here is a little update:

I have graduated from Canadore College and received my “Computer System Technology – Networking Program”. So that’s it, I’m done. Not so much. I have deiced to go back for another 3 years for the “Computer Programmer Analyst”. So this now brings me to the reason for this post, I got a new laptop. 🙂

I knew my old Dell 640m just wasn’t going to cut it for the new program. So I order my self a Dell Studio XPS. Here are the specs:

  • Intel® CoreTM i5 540M (2.53GHz/3MB cache)
  • Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-Bit
  • 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3
  • ATI HD5730 Mobility RadeonTM
  • 15.6 inch display (1920×1080)
  • 500GB5 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
  • 8X DVD+/-RW Slot-load Drive
  • 6 Cell Battery
  • 2.0MP Integrated Webcam
  • 802.11n

Doing the comparison to my old one, this is quite the beast.

The new one doesn’t excite me as much as the old one does. I plan on running Kubuntu on the old one, and get to enjoy having a real web test server again. Also want to play with some of the new KDE environment stuff as its been a few years since I have used it.
If you have ideas of things I should post please comment below!