Geek Projects – Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, DNS A Linux Sysadmin

Here’s how to install and start up an UltraVNC server from within an RDP session. This has been tested with UltraVNC 1.0.8 and a remote desktop session into a Windows XP Professional SP3 installation, but should work in other Windows / UltraVNC combinations as well.

1. RDP into the target system, and install UltraVNC. Be sure to select the checkboxes for registering VNC as a service, and starting up the service at boot time.
2. Set a VNC password for the currently logged in user by starting up the VNC server (Start > All Programs > UltraVNC > UltraVNC Server > Start UltraVNC Service), then entering a password when prompted
3. Open up Regedit (Start > Run > regedit)
4. Copy the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ORL\WinVNC3\Password entry’s current value
5. Create a new binary value entry located at “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORL\WinVNC3\Default\Password”. Paste in the value you copied in the previous step to this new entry’s value
6. Reboot

That’s it! It may be possible to get VNC going without the reboot, but this is the combination that got a working installation going for me.

Here are the settings that I used to get a Linksys PAP2T-NA working with Gizmo:

1. Browse to the PAP2T-NA’s web page, for example http://192.168.111.100
2. Click the PAP2T-NA’s “Admin Login” link
3. Click on the “Line 1” tab
4. Fill in the following three values, and hit submit:
   1. Proxy: proxy01.sipphone.com
   2. Display Name: Your Name
   3. User ID: Your Gizmo SIP number, for example 17471234567
   4. Password: Your Gizmo password
5. Click the “Save Settings” button

That’s it! Your Linksys PAP2T-NA is now configured to use your Gizmo account.

Windows XP Professional offers a Remember my password checkbox when mapping to a network drive, or other password protected network resource.
Unfortunately, once you’ve set a password, the Remember my password box disappears, so future username or password changes can result in repeated password prompts. Here’s how to clear your previously set username and password, and get the Remember my password checkbox back:

1. Click Start -> Run
2. Type in control userpasswords2, and press Enter
3. Click on the Advanced tab
4. Click the Manage Passwords button
5. Select the server for which you wish to delete existing settings, then click the Remove button
6. Click Close
7. Click OK
8. Logout of Windows XP, then back in
9. Connect to the password protected server. You should now be prompted for your username and password, along with the previously missing Remember my password checkbox

The above may work in other version of Windows, but I haven’t tested this out. Please post a comment if you’ve been able to use this procedure to get the Remember my password box back under your Windows version!

Here’s a guide to setting up a FreeBSD server to relay emails for a set of IP addresses and/or hostnames. Be very careful to only enable relaying for trusted machines. Ideally, you’d setup your FreeBSD sendmail server to require authentication.

1. Enable sendmail on your FreeBSD server by adding the following line to the /etc/rc.conf file:

sendmail_enable="YES"

2. Start sendmail using FreeBSD’s rc.d system.

/etc/rc.d/sendmail start

3. Add the IP address or IP addresses that you’d like sendmail to relay mail for to the /etc/mail/access file. For example, the following lines enable relaying for all emails coming from 10.0.2.1, and any IP address starting with 192.168.0.

10.0.2.1 RELAY
192.168.0 RELAY

4. cd to your FreeBSD server’s /etc/mail directory, and run make to apply your changes to sendmail.

cd /etc/mail
make

One of my customers recently had a Canon ImageRunner 5075 coper/printer/fax unit installed in their office. Everything seemed to be working until someone tried to print a document in Microsoft Word 97. It seems that Microsoft Word 97 didn’t like the new printer. It would crash every time someone went to File -> Print, and selected the Canon printer, but strangely enough, it printed just fine if the Canon IR 5075 was set as the default, and they just clicked on the Print icon.

None of the other printers caused Microsoft Word 97, or any of the other Microsoft Office 97 apps to crash. As a workaround while I tracked down the problem, I asked them to print their word documents as PDFs, then print the PDFs to the Canon ImageRunner 5075.

Needless to say, that kludge wasn’t a good long term solution for the printing problems.What I found was that Microsoft Word 97, and the rest of Microsoft Office 97 for that matter didn’t like Canon’s UFR (Ultra Fast Rendering) drivers. I found a PCL 6 driver for the ImageRunner 5075 on Canon’s website, switched to it, and the crashes ceased.

Once thing that I’ve missed since switching from Apple’s Mail to Mozilla’s Thunderbird, is the way that Mail includes the time and date that the message being replied to was received. Thunderbird does not do this by default, but it’s to make it.

1. Go to the Preferences window.
   • In Linux: Edit -> Preferences
   • In Windows: Tools -> Options
   • In Mac OS X: Thunderbird -> Preferences
2. Click on the Advanced button.



3. Click on the Config Editor… button.



4. Type mailnews.reply_header_type into the Filter: box.
5. Double-click on mailnews.reply_header_type, enter the number 3 as the new value, and click OK.