An old computer these days is no longer a completely useless system. In fact, even though I might upgrade my main computer every couple of years, I usually take ten to fifteen years before I completely remove it from my home network and send it to that great LAN in the sky!

Here are ten twelve uses that I have discovered for that more “experienced” computer system!

And once you have read through the article and decided which exciting project you want to do, make sure you let us know by voting in the poll!

Read the rest of the story…

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/09/17/put-that-old-computer-to-good-use/trackback/

It is always important to know what is going on in your network. And, from time to time, you should perform a simple audit of your network just to determine what is exactly happening.

This is something that I do on a regular basis using an inexpensive network auditor that I built.  (Actually, all I did was install a custom Linux distribution designed for security.)

What You Need

Here are all the tools that you need

• An old laptop (if you want it to be portable) or desktop
• BackTrack Linux Distribution

It’s pretty easy to find a computer that will work and BackTrack is available for free as an ISO.  This is something that probably everyone could do with what they have available.

Build The Analyzer

The steps involved to build the analyzer are pretty simple.

1. Download the ISO.
2. Burn the ISO to CD.
3. Boot the computer from the CD.
4. Log into the BackTrack system with username root and password toor.
5. Create partitions on the hard drive (Be aware that this will destroy the hard drive so make sure that the drive has no needed data.) using fdisk.
6. Write the file system using mke2fs.
7. Mount the devices using mount.
8. Run the GUI installer (K → System → Backtrack Installer).
9. Click Install.
10. Wait for the installation to complete (There is a long pause at about 80% so please be patient.).
11. Remove the CD and reboot to the new system.

If you are looking for a more complete step by step document, there is one available.

Explore

There is a lot to discover in BackTracks.  Dig through the system and see what you can find, both on the system and in your network.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/09/07/build-an-inexpensive-network-security-auditor/trackback/

I have recently become convinced that the way home wireless network access (or WiFi) has been designed is fundamentally flawed. And the worst part of it is that I understand why the manufacturers of home networking equipment have done it this way!

I believe that there is a better way to set up a home wireless network that will allow you to keep your home systems safe while providing WiFi users with what they primarily want, the Internet.

There are three parts to this post:

1. The fundamental flaws with the present WiFi design
2. A better WiFi design
3. Advanced configurations

Read the rest of the story…

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/06/08/a-more-secure-home-wifi-design/trackback/

It takes a special kind of person to look at an everyday object and ask, “I wonder if I could run Linux on that?” This is exactly what the people of the OpenWrt project did and the results are really impressive.

What the OpenWrt project does is take a regular old wireless router (Wrt) and replace the standard firmware operating system with an open source Linux operating system. And, since this is open source, you can now play away to your heart’s content and fine tune the system all you want.

This is not a project for those of you who do not want to get your hands dirty. Rather, if you are looking for a way to both learn Linux and also develop a better understanding of embedded systems, this may be a great choice for you.

One of the really cool things that you can do with this project is extend the capabilities of the system so that it can do things that it was never originally intended to do. Some examples include:

• Set up OpenVPN
• USB Storage Server
• Mobile WiFi Access Point
• Samba
• VNC Repeater
• MP3 Player

I really wish that I had more time to work on my copy of this project (I’m using a Linksys WRT54G that I got for under $100). I have even found sites where you can fire up your soldering gun and do some pretty cool customizing such as:

• Add a serial port
• Add a temperature sensor
• Increase RAM

So, if you want to pimp out your wireless router, this may be a perfect project for you!

Important Links

• Homepage
• Documentation
• Forum
• Supported Devices
• Installation
• Add-On Packages
• Release Notes
• Downloads
• Tutorials (Third Party)
• Customizing

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/05/28/high-end-router-low-end-hardware/trackback/

DCoT’s favorite free…uh…NAS, FreeNAS, has released a new beta version - 0.684b. Here is what the website has to say about it:

Notes:

Here is the 0.684b.Lot’s of changes: Disk encryptions, iSCSI-target, swap, etc.. (check the change log for all details).

Important notice: The ‘lnc’ network card driver is replaced by ‘le’ driver. If you are using ‘lnc’ as interface LAN, plug a keyboard/monitor on your screen before upgrading FreeNAS.

LDAP doesn’t works: If you known how to configure LDAP client for authenticate all services, your help is welcome

MD5 Checksum:
FreeNAS-0.684b.iso = be63bd55c36201e0e73425ffcc05659d
FreeNAS-generic-pc-0.684b.img = 192475269c0ca6ef84bcfa6a8103e154

Changes:
Majors changes:
- Add disk encryption with geli
- Add iSCSI-Target: Permit to create specials files that simulate iSCSI target disk.
- Add swap feature: Permit to create a file on a mount point for memory swap purpose
- Add powerd/cpufreq system power control utility
- NTFS: Replace ntfs FreeBSD module with ntfs-3g: read/write support for NTFS
- Added growfs tools (usable from the CLI only)
- Add EXT2 filesystem creation support
- Add option for upgrading FreeNAS from CDROM (this can be used as recovery mode too).
- Multilanguage: Update languages files and add Japanese (Thanks to Hiroyuki Seino) and Russian (Thanks Ahmetov Shamil)
- Force only one UFS type: EFI GPT Partition with Softupdates, and permit to select percent of free disk space to kept (between 8 and 1)

Minors changes:
- RSYNC: Permit to configure multiple RSYNC local/client
- RSYNC: Add description attribute to RSYNC tasks
- SSH: Permit to enable SSH TCP forwarding (SSH tunneling)
- NFS: Permit to add more than one networks for NFS
- iSCSI: Upgrade iSCSI initiator to 2.0.1
- FTP: Add ‘Resume’ mode. Fix bug in enabling ‘FXP’ and ‘NAT mode’.
- FTP: Add ‘connected users list’ information page
- Samba: Try to improve samba performance by adding ‘large readwrite = no’ in smb.conf
(see http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba_Troubleshooting)
- Samba: Add dos charset CP866 (Russian)
- Little index page improvement : % used of TOTAL size display. Paul Wheels patch
- Permit to configure the system time: Paul Wheels patch
- Add hardware sensors information page
- Add syslog message for RSYNC local/remote synchronization
- Geom mirror: Change default algorithm to round robin
(http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2005/11/10/FreeBSD_Basics.html)
- Now it is possible to store the configuration on floppy disk and USB stick when booting FreeNAS from CD.
- Permit to select if a user is in the administrator group (wheel) or not
- Add WebGUI page (System/Advanced/Startup) to add/edit/delete commands executed pre or post system initialization (booting).

Bug fixs:
- Fix UPnP WebGUI bug
- Fix bug in user & groups WebGUI.
- FTP: Fixed: Deletion of files uploaded and owned by user was not able.
- FTP: Fixed PAM error (using MS AD account for example)
- FTP: Disable root login by default. Can be enabled via WebGUI.
- Fix DHCP problem
- Try to prevent “acd0: FAILURE READ_BIG ERROR” during install from CDROM (thanks to fortinde@isers.sourceforge.net)
- Modify FreeNAS make.sh build script for supporting AMD64 FreeBSD now…

Underlying changes:
- Use the FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE (production) for FreeNAS base
- Upgrade twa kernel driver (e.g. 3ware 9650SE Series Raid S-ATA II PCIe)
- Try to improve performance on VM machine: http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/vmware.html
Replace ethernet ‘lnc’ drivers with ‘le’ driver (WARNING: NEED CONFIGURATION CHANGE AFTER UPGRADE)
Reduce Kernel’s timer frequency to 100HZ
- Samba: Upgrade Samba to 3.0.24
- Remove the tools ‘beep’
- Upgrade PHP to 5.2.1
- Upgrade ushare to 0.9.10 (should now support xbox)

Known bug in the 0.684b:
- Using iSCSI-target can cause problem for stopping/restarting FreeNAS
- French character not correclty displayed
- When pressing Ctrl+halt+del key, the rc.shutdown script generate an error

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/03/30/freenas-beta-0684b-released/trackback/