Reviews

Backtrack Linux 5r1 Installation

I’ve been using Backtrack since the vesion 4 beta. This new version has a ton of updated and new packages.
If you are not familiar with Backtrack, it is a “penetration testing” version of Ubuntu.  Definitely not for the casual user as a GUI login is not enabled and the default user is “root”. I install Backtack in a dual-boot configuration with XP on my laptop.  These are some tweaks I have to do:

• Install wireless drivers.  Intel IPW2200.
• Enable the kdm login.
• Allow the Chrome Browser to run as “root”.

Installing the wireless drivers was incredibly easy.  First download the firmware from Sourceforge into the /lib/firmware folder.  Version 3.1 is the latest as of the time of this post.  Then execute these commands:

tar -xzf ipw2200-fw-3.1.tgz
modprobe -r ipw2200
modprobe ipw2200

And that’s it, should be up and running.  Backtrack uses Wicd for network management.

Next is the kdm GUI login.

Start by editing /etc/init/kdm.conf, remove or comment out the following section:

if [ -n "$UPSTART_EVENTS" ]
then
[ ! -f /etc/X11/default-display-manager -o "$(cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager 2>/dev/null)" = "/usr/bin/kdm" ] || { stop; exit 0; }
# Check kernel command-line for inhibitors
for ARG in $(cat /proc/cmdline)
do
case "${ARG}" in
text|-s|s|S|single)
plymouth quit || : # We have the ball here
exit 0
;;
esac
done
fi

Reboot and you should see the GUI login.

Allow Chrome Browser to run as “root”.

After downloading the appropriate package run this command in the folder you saved Chrome into:

dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb

Now you must add an unprivelged user.  This can be done with the command line or you can add the package kuser with the command “apt-get install kuser”.  Once that is done create a folder for that user. Then right click on the desktop of the root user and select Create New, Link to Application.  Now select the Application tab and the Command text box.  Click on Browse and navigate to /opt/google/chome and select the Chome application.  After returning to the Command text box enter this after the text:

%U --user-data-dir="/home/user/folder"

Use the user and folder you created.  You can edit the icon and change the name if you wish.

That’s the extent of the tweaks.  Happy testing.

##Update##

I had some trouble with shutting down with kdm enabled.   Here’s the fix for that little feature.  Get into Settings, System Settings then Login Screen.  Navigate to the Shutdown tab and click on the text box next to “Halt”.  Enter the following text: /sbin/shutdown -h now.

In the “Reboot” text box you should have /sbin/reboot as that seems to work ok.  You can enter /sbin/shutdown -r now if you have trouble.

##########

Upgrading Joomla

As with most reviews of software or hardware, it is customary to start of with some good points of the subject under review. This is certainly not the case with the Joomla Upgrader “jUpgrade”.

First of all, one must download a certain extension, jUpgrade. Getting it into the installation took a bit of work with permissions. Two different settings, ftp=off, and set /tmp to 777. Next we enable the MooTools Upgrade plugin. So far so good, now the fun starts.

Apparently, testing this little tool is only accomplished in one browser, Firefox. Don’t bother with chrome, it won’t work at all. At least with IE8, it actually started before stopping at the half-way mark. Next we have to actually MOVE the previous installation out off the root directory because the jUpdater has made it’s OWN directory OWNED by apache. This is problematic. And one of the things about the server adding and moving files that I can’t stand. The new folders and files have to be owned by the ftp user in order to have any chance of changing or moving them.

What a failure. One browser worked, ftp didn’t.

The only cure was to ssh into the server and rm -rf jupgrade. The last time I had to do this was with Drupal.

Too bad. This isn’t even a good try. Take an example from wordpress.

ugh, back to Ustream

Due to the fact that Livestream has a huge memory leak in their web broadcaster and the Procaster desktop application, I have switched back to the Ustream broadcaster. It’s unfortunate that Livestream has not answered any forum posts to even acknowledge it. I hope they get this fixed in the near future as, as you all know, I just can’t stand Ustream, but their broadcaster is much more stable.

UGH!!

Dumped Ustream for Mogulus aka Livestream

With the recent “improvements” offered by UstreamTV, myself and many others have been looking for something that has the communities best interests in mind.  With that being said, I think you can see that I have chosen Mogulus, now known as Livestream.

My main concern is that UstreamTV has taken to making their site LESS friendly.  We used to be able to host our chat on a third party server, not anymore.  And recently, we couldn’t even add html to OUR page for a third party chat.

Livestream allows the broadcaster many more options to customize their page and the video viewer.  I haven’t tried the desktop broadcaster as of yet, but the control I have over the stream and page is easy to use and much more intuitive than UstreamTV can ever hope to have.

Instead of bringing people together UstreamTV, you pulled them apart.  I hope you are proud of your fresh new pile of shit.

The fresh new UstreamTV

Apparently, the “fresh new ustream” isn’t all that fresh. It smells like a big pile of shit that any competent developer would be embarrassed to implement. I mean really, what were those people thinking?

About the only thing that was done correctly was cleaning up the front page. But the lack of testing and a resource for any documentation for the “new look” is abysmal. The release of this mess was not thought out AT ALL. Merely tossing it up on the web for all to scoff at seems to be the order of the day. Remember the Facebook remodel? I thought you did. But the devs at ustream didn’t.

The comments on the blog post are overwhelmingly against the “fresh new”. The forum posts are similar.

Since the shit was shoved down the throats of the Ustream users, there has not been a peep from anyone of consequence. I can only hope that they have taken the comments to heart and are working to reverse this trend of releasing untested and unwanted web crapplications to the public.

I’m not going into what’s broken because the list is too long.  Please sign the petition to get Ustream to back out of this silliness.

Get the message UstreamTV, you fucked up.

Note: The API is broken. LOLOLOLOL MORONS!!!!

WordPress 2.7

The latest release of WordPress 2.7 really should be 3.0. The changes to the dashboard alone would warrant a major release, IMHO. With the amount of plugin breakage, I don’t know why the plugin developers have not as of yet, released new versions of their plugins. The betas and RC’s have been out long enough for them to either issue a warning or an update.

The good thing is Chris Pirillo’s Wicketpixie Social Media Theme is unaffected, so far.

Breakage:

WPtouch iPhone theme
CSS greyscape
Ozh Admin Management Menus
WP ustream

Thanks for the headsup people. All in all, a nice update. As the dashboard now has a drag and drop arrangement and the ability to remove anything you don’t need to have on it. In fact, even the post page has it. Nice touch. Again, the plugin people need to update their plugins to take advantage of this. I still haven’t seen a way to remove the drafts that are auto saved. Since the database is where they are stored, I really would like an easy way to remove them in bulk. If you know, if, where this ability is, let me know.

Update: The WicketPixie Theme Faves and Sources no longer work.  It’s reading the db tables, just won’t write to them.  Weird.

ftp Clients

For the longest while, I have been using SmartFTP for my ftp needs. It recently went to a pay-me status. I was quite upset with that. But after having had to search for another ftp client, I can see why. There is not another client with the features of SmartFTP. It’s multiple connection windows and widows explorer type interface make it unique among the ftp clients.

I tried many of the free ftp clients, and I can say, why do most you bother trying to make one? Filezilla kicks all your butts. For one reason or another, most of the others just SUCK. Plain and simple. I will not get into names, but there are some that actually DO NOT work in a stock configuration. Having to restart a transaction because of a silly error is just unfathomable to me. Add on several errors, and it’s really bad. I tried one that would CONSTANTLY steal focus from my other work. Tweak UI handled that little problem as I didn’t see anyway in the client itself to disable that “feature”.

I almost paid the price to purchase SmartFTP, but since I found Filezilla. I think I will be alright until I have enough money to pay the SmartFTP extortion fee. And that’s all it really is. They could have a free version, with a lot less features, but they don’t. So I will stick with free for now.

What do you use?

Flash Media Encoder

For those of us the broadcast on Ustream TV, we now have the option to use Adobe’s Flash Media Encoder. I’m using version 2.5 at the moment. It gives the broadcaster more fine tune control of the stream than the Ustream broadcast console. My biggest tweak about it is that the stream must be stopped to make any changes to the settings. Other than that, it works nicely.

I did have some trouble with the “Timecode” option when I was messing around with it. In the docs it says you can’t enable it unless the video source has timecode abilities. This was not the case. As I was able to select the Timecode option. After that, I could not remove the option and the encoder would stop with an error. I tried reinstalling FME, to no avail. I finally remove the setup.xml file after removing FME and the next installation reset it back to the original configuration.

It would be helpful to at least be able to adjust the audio volume on the fly. Because, when using FME, all of the options are grayed out on the Ustream broadcast console. I did see that I can control my TV tuner card from within the FME, a pleasant surprise, as the Asus My Cinema hardly works outside it’s own software suite.

FME can also record in .flv locally, a nice touch when Ustream takes a shit. I see that version 3.0 is coming soon. I must give it a whirl when it’s available.

Update:

The FME really lags my TV tuner horribly, and it’s kind of unstable as it disconnects constantly, although it’s probably a Ustream problem. So, unless I’m recording, I’m not using it.

VirtualBox by Sun

One of my favorite free apps is by far, Virtual Box by Sun MIcrosystems. While it may not work for every OS on the planet. It’s sufficient for 99% of users. If you’re curious about using linux, or need a development environment without the expense and footprint of another computer in the house, VirtualBox is for you. Many of my friends in the malware prevention universe use some sort of VM. Unless they get VMWare for free, their choice is VirtualBox.

A list of compatible OS’s is found here.

What you will need to run this is atleast 2 gigs of RAM and a lot of hard drive space. As each virtual machine needs it’s own virtual partition. With RAM and hard drive prices low, this should not hinder anyone from using VirtualBox.

The control panel is intuitive, and VirtualBox can install the OS from a disk or the .iso on the hard drive. This feature is one of my favorites. You can setup the virtual machine with many permissions to use your computers hardware or not. The most trouble I’ve had is with the virtual network adapters. Windows server in particular needed some experimentation to find the right driver.

All in all, free is good and VirtualBox allows so much to be done, I’m surprised it’s still free.

muvee Reveal

I was looking for a decent, easy to use movie making software yesterday, when Chris Pirillo mentioned the muvee movie making software. So I downloaded the 15 day trial and installed it.

It is very easy to use. The process is straight-forward and intuitive. With only three steps, how could it be difficult? Select clip, select from pre-loaded templates, add music and you’re done with the hard part. After that, all that is needed is to add the intro, titles, credits and file name.

This is when my problem started. I was using an HD video for the test. When trying to save the movie, the conversion would either, not start, or stop during the save process. This would effectively lock-up muvee. I had to kill it through Task Manager. Since I would be using a lot of HD video, I am declining to purchase muvee at this time.

There is only one more day for the half-price offer. I will still decline.