Website Analytics

I must say we have a geeky community here. It is always interesting to look at analytics and see what type of people look at the site.

Getting WepCrackGUI installed on Ubuntu 13.04 & 14.04

WebCrackGUI is an easy scripted way to run attacks on WEP and a simple way of grabbing handshake from a WPA network. Though WepCrack does not install always easily.
*updated 11/.2/14*

Setting up Security Camera with Webcam on Ubuntu

Ever wonder what to do with your old webcams in your house. I mean you don't use them anymore right? You have a smartphone for that now.  Well how about turning them into a surveillance system?

Network security auditing - Subterfuge

For a long time there has been problems with security flaws in consumer grade routers for middle man attacks.  

Benchmarking Pyrit and oclHashcat-plus

Recently set up Hashcat to do a little benchmarking with it on my single GPU machine. This has Ubuntu 13.04 and  is running a HD 7970 Ghz GPU.

Pyrit benchmark on new computer build

As I recently build a new desktop as you can find the specs of here. Though now we can see some of the benchmarks with this computer build.

Flash Blue People Bug Linux Fix

For those that are using Linux they may have noticed that if your using the flash player from adobe that you have blue people. Well there is a problem with flash that causes the hardware acceleration in flash to mess  up.

Installing Aircrack-ng on Ubuntu 12.04

The recent ubuntu 12.04 cut out aircrack-ng from their repository. So here is an easy step by step guild to get it installed again

Setting Up RT-N56U AiDisk and Connecting on Ubuntu

I recently got a RT-N56U router for my house. One of the reasons why I wanted to get this router is the ability to have 2 hard drives plugged in were most of the others only had one usb port. I am running Ubuntu 11.10 using Ubuntu Classic environment.

so once you plug the hard drives into the router they should automatically show up in your settings menu and the hard drive creates a folder called shared which it populates with a few other folders for you.

Though by default Ubuntu does not allow you to connect to it because of the authentication that the router uses. Sense it is an old authentication method it does provide a potential exploit for a MITM attack for it. Though if your not to worried about that. For instance you only use your computer on your home network and what not not on business network. Then you should be fine.

we will need to add some text to your samba configuration file to allow it to connect to the drives.
add the following code to the samba configuration by doing this in terminal


sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf


Then add this to the end of the file


#adding this to support router share
; client lanman auth = Yes


Now after you save that all we need to do is restart the samba so that loads the new configurations that we put in.


sudo restart smbd


This should allow you to connect to your network drives now.

if you go to your network drives in Nautilus

open up a folder and hit ctr + L this will allow you to type in the location
type in

smb://workgroup/


your hard drives should be under RT-N56U though this can be changed if you rename it on your router.

Though this should set it all up for you.

Hope you enjoy.
- Local Tech Repair Admin

Chrome Flash on Ubuntu Problems

If your like me I had problems with my flash playing videos on places like amazon and what not with the default flash player on Ubuntu. I had tried to install the flash player to see if that changed anything and it did not. Well here is a way to see if the amount of flash players you have on ubuntu is conflicting with it running properly.


Lets first make sure you have a proper flash installed on your computer.
Download here

once you download the right flash player for your computer. for me it would be APT for ubuntu and I am running a 64bit.
after you install that you will need to make sure that your browser does not have others conflicting with it.
Restart your browser to load the new plugin that you installed.

after that go to this link

Chrome://plugins

on the right side click details
then go to the bottom of the page to the Shockwave Flash for me I had 3 different flash players installed on my machine which where having conflicts with each other. Not making sites like youtube, amazon, or really any other flash website.

we want to disable all the other flash plugins beside the highest

for me it is. The default for the chrome 19 dev is not the newest.

Version: 11.1 r102
Location: /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so


this should fix any problems your having playing flash on different websites. try now to go to youtube and play a video. it should be playing now.

I hope this helps you enjoy the web more.
Local Tech Repair Admin

Why Ubuntu Unity Fails

I generally like new things and new designs. Though I am going to point some reasons why I personally think Unity environment for ubuntu fails to provide.

Unity is an ok environment in it self with some nice simple menus that would be nice on a tablet. Though in a pc where finding your many applications and organizing them is critical for productivity I think unity does a very bad job. Not only that how it handles multI window computing it also fails.

Just some basic observations for how little I have used the unity theme with default settings and no customization.

1. unity bar does not minimize!!!! This is Honorable if I am using firefox and want to minimize it my natural reaction is to go and click on the icon to minimize it. This may be because I used AWN dock on my Gnome or even seeing mac os dock work. It just makes me think that it should work that way. So because of this it makes me move into my second point.

2. this requires me to go up to the menu which is by default hidden on the top bar for some reason. Which requires me to move my mouse up to the top then wait for it to re appear then click the minimize. The fact alone that it is hidden slows my general productivity of the computer down as I use the menu bar on my applications to do different things. For example while I am in firefox I accidentally close a tab I wanted open (I do a lot) I need to go up to history and then open it. Sense my eyes move faster then my mouse does I naturally look for where the history is located and sense it is hidden I have to go up and wait then move my mouse. This often causes me to do a lot of right angles instead of going straight for it.

3. The application launcher is hard to find applications. Though this may be because I am used to the gnome structure and I am not very fond of windows metro style like unity is. Unity requires me to search for the application I want to use. This in turn makes me move from my mouse to the keyboard which takes time and is frustrating to have to do.

4. Lack of easy ability to change the top menu bar. In Gnome I was able to easily move around my widgets in the menu bar and add new ones. Though now I do not have a easy point and click method to change the bar.

Unity did do some very nice things though for someone that uses a computer for productivity and likes using a lot of applications it makes it hard for me to get my work done. not to mention when installing it unity does not have all the gnome applications that I am used to using. I had to download an alternative terminal sense I have just been happy in the past with the gnome one.

What do you fine good or bad about the new Unity environment?

Local Tech Repair Admin

Virus scanner for Ubuntu - BitDefender

I am not on of the people out there that will tell any linux users that they are free from viruses as linux grows the chances of viruses grow with it. It is true that there are worms, viruses, and more out there for linux already though the number is still well below that of windows.

After years of not having an antivirus on my linux machines I have decided to go with one that would support my 64bit needs. That alone cuts out many of the competition by default. Those like AVG, Avast, mcafee, and etc. and i did not want to use clamav for some reason I felt like expanding my horizon. After seeing how well bitdefender has done in the windows arena for all the current versions of windows it seemed right to go with it for linux. They have a free home use only version for linux and it is updated by repository.

BitDefender repositories are located here
http://download.bitdefender.com/repos/

With this in hand you can install the repositories to your ubuntu machine.
download the virus scanner GUI which is what I like and then go at it.

BitDefender has a very simple and nice looking GUI to use on linux which is not always the cause but becoming more so now that linux is becoming more popular.
BitDefender comes with a 30 day free trial and requiring you to request another free key to renew it for another 365 days.

For what it is worth in protection and security it is not bad to have a little extra protection even if the likely hood of getting a virus on linux is very small. it is always better safe than sorry.

I hope you try BitDefender out for linux and share your thoughts.
Local Tech Repair Admin

Ubuntu Defragmentation - Defrager for Ubuntu

There are talk about why linux does not need to be defragged like some older windows file-system types did. Though those that do not think that linux is that great and still needs to be defragmented then there is still hope for you.

It was hard for me to think that my system did not need to be defraged sense I use my system a lot and am always running out of space and deleting things and then downloading more till I have no room left and then doing it all over again. So I decided to see if my system truly did not need to be defragmented like a lot of people say linux does not need to be for ext3 and ext4 filesystem types. So I went on a search for a defrager for linux because there was non in the package managers.

What I found was a very simplistic but functioning defrager called defragfs. So I downloaded it and checked it out. If you want to all you need to do for ubuntu is extract the perl script from the zip file to your home directory or your desktop. Now we just open our terminal and then cd to the directory we put it. So for me I extracted it to my desktop at ~/Desktop then I simply started the script with this command.

Sudo perl ./defragfs /

For those that want to know what this does. The sudo gives the command I am going to type administrator privileges then the perl command tells the file I will be loading is a perl script. the ./defragfs starts the script and the / tells what directory to start in.

So to my surprise the only fragmented files I could find is torrents and I did not even need to run the defrager. my fragmentation rate was ~0.7% so less than 1% I personally think that is amazing seeing that i am repairing a windows computer right now that has an 22% fragmentation on a NTFS drive.

If you want to know why linux does not need to be defraged in more explenation I found a good article here.

I hope you all try this out for your self and see for the fun of it if you have a high fragmentation rate or not. I would love to see if anyone has a higher fragmentatino rate than me.

Thanks for reading,
Local Tech Repair Admin

Online File Backup - Business

Businesses need a good disaster recovery plan and in that is data backup. I use this when I was in school to make sure my research papers did not get lost because if I had lost a 25 page research paper it would kill my grade and make me loss a lot of money. So how can a company effectively keep their data backed up at the minimal cost.

There are now many different online backup solutions for businesses and home users out there today. But they all cost different and offer different features. And some do it by strictly amount of space and some do both amount and computers.

Dropbox is one of these services that offer backup service. Their pricing is based on amount of space. I personally have never used the service so I do not know if they allow you have more than one computer on the account.
*update*
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/06/21/dropbox-lets-anyone-log-in-as-anyone/
Dropbox has had a major security mixup so if you been using dropbox your data may have been compromised
*update*


Another well known company in my area is Carbonite backup. This is for small businesses if they are dealing with lots of documents or needing lots of space. Their Business plan allows as many computers as they need on the plan starts at $230 a year for 250GB which is by far cheaper per GB than Dropbox is. But their house hold plans limit you to only 1 computer and cost a lot.

The solution I personaly use is an Open source one that comes with Ubuntu called Ubuntu One. They are like dropbox, they give you the first 2 GB free, but they allow as many computers as you need on the plan. You buy size of space type of plans. In comparison to drop box Ubuntu One is half the cost and they are nicer as you can just add 20GB more if you need more and if you need more than 22GB then you can add another 20 GB. They also allow you to buy their MP3's from their store and they don't count it as space against you the same thing that Amazon adopted after they did it and then Apple with their iCloud.

So for a small business that does not need that much space but just enough to backup their small database files, word documents, spreadsheets, and what not the best choice I see for the cheapest price is Ubuntu One not only is it cheaper but your supporting the Open Source community when you do use their service and spreading the knowledge of Ubuntu.

I hope you try out Ubuntu One it is available for Windows and Ubuntu and mobile phones. Hope you go out and start your free 2 GB plan to give it a try. *update*
Ubuntu One now gives you 5 GB free
*update*

Local Tech Admin

Learning to Type - Software

Learning to touch type is one of the most effective skills that a child or worker can learn these days. Sense I have been learning a new keyboard layout called Dvorak I have been trying out a few different websites and open source software in my learning methods.

One of the programs that I have been trying out is one called Klavaro
It not the most graphical typing application but it works very well. They have builds for linux and windows. They support multiple keyboard layouts and different languages in each they support layouts that you want to build our self. It also supports graphing your progress. So you can see the progress of how well your learning and how accurate your doing. they give you words per minute and characters per second which is fun just seeing how well you do compared to the past. If your teaching a class this is an easy one for people to use.

the next would be dvorak7min this is a linux only program. The home screen gives you 29 different tests that work you through learning the whole keyboard in what I think is a very effective way. You don't have to be using a dvorak keyboard to use this program but it may confuze you if you have the keyboard layout above the text which I would just hide anyways. though one thing I like about this one is it does not allow you to make mistakes you must press the letter before it goes on to the next letter. so for instance if the line said 'ahha' and you you typed ahaa it would stop at ahh till you typed the h. the program also keeps Words per second, words per minute, misses, seconds, and your % ratio of misses to characters. I personally prefer this program because it is simple just black and white, or what ever terminal color you have.

Another good typing for Dvorak learning is
http://www.powertyping.com/dvorak/typing.html
they have a nice simple site and will grade you on how fast you type and you can keep trying till you beat your self and move at your own pace.


The nicest online typing to learn I would have to say is
http://www.keyhero.com/typing-tests-wpm/
it is very graphically pleasing to look at and they give you paragraphs from literature to type out. Though this may not be the very best for those that are starting out but it is a great place if your teaching a class and your wanting to use something that is random and use it for a test taker. It graphs the users progress and does not require you to register to use it. Though you need to register if you want your progresses saved from one visit to the next. This also does not matter which keyboard layout you may be using whether it be dvorak, qwerty, or colemak your system will translate it all for the website.


I hope this helps people learn typing and know that you don't have to spend a lot to get good free resources.

Parents teach your kids colemak or dvorak!
Local Tech Repair

Data Transfer

Many people will go to a computer repair shop to get their computer's data transferred to their new computer. Though even the average person can easily transfer their old data, pictures, documents, music, and etc. to their new desktop or laptop easily.

You don't need a big hard drive to transfer the information or even lots of dvds or cds but just the hard drive with the old information on it and the new comuter and a cheap little device.
that device is Cables To Go 30504 USB 2.0 to IDE or Serial ATA Drive Adapter (Black)

I personally use this device at work when ever we do a reinstall or need to do a data transfer from one computer to another. The only difference between you doing it your self and having a computer repair company doing it for you is that a computer repair company may charge you +$100 to do it and can do it for only 20 if you buy it your self and just take the hard drive out of the old computer and plug it in.

When using a device like that always remember to unplug everything first. Then take the old hard drive out from the computer. Now turn on the new computer into windows or which ever operating system your using. then plugin the usb transfer device and then plug the old hard drive to the usb transfer device then plugin the power to the hard drive. Depending on if it is a sata or ide drive they will be powered differently so make sure you put the right power adapter on the data transfer usb. It will take a little bit of time for windows to recognize that the hard drive is there but after it does it will look like another drive on windows just like and external drive does.

If your wanting your old drive to be a external drive I would not suggest using that transfer device to do that which you can do. but buy and external enclosure. If the old hard drive is an old laptop drive then you will want to use 2.5" USB 2.0 SATA Hard Drive HDD Case Enclosure
or
USB 2.0 External 2.5" IDE HDD Enclosure Case Blue For Laptop

sata does not have pins but the connector looks more like what a USB connector looks like where IDE (old hard drives) use pin configuration like in the picture for the device.

for desktop hard drives they are probably the larger 3.5 in drives
Vantec NexStar CX NST-300S2-BK 3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure (Black)

or
3.5" IDE HDD Enclosure, Black



the transfer device will work on everything where enclosures are specific to the drive type.

Hope this helps get your data transferred
Local Tech Repair Admin

also check out
Data Recovery

Ubuntu 11.04 Crash startup after upgrade or update Nvidia drivers

Recently I upgraded my ubuntu 10.10 laptop with Nvidia drivers to 11.04 ubuntu while upgrading the installer did not really look kindly that I had custom drivers for my GPU. Sense I use nvidia's drivers and not the distributions drivers because I use CUDA on my laptop it just crashes when ever I upgrade or update the kernel for Ubuntu. Though this does make sense because Nvidia does tell us in their documentation that we needed to rebuild the drivers for each kernel that we install. So I will help you walk through how to fix this problem with out having to do a reinstall.

as I stated in my installing cuda on ubuntu 10.10 article we will do some of the same things. To find that article follow this link
http://localtechrepair.blogspot.com/2011/02/installing-cuda-on-ubuntu-1010.html

So the very first thing we can do is just check over some basic things to make sure it is your drivers. Start the computer and go in to the recovery console. Once that is boot up you can go down to drop to shell with networking. Make sure your computer is connected to the internet my wire.

Once your in shell then you will need to connect to the internet.
commands:
sudo dhclient eth0

We then will need to do a few more other things. we are going to make sure that the upgrade did finish properly.
commands:
sudo -i
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get check

What this does is makes apt update is records to make sure it has the newest packages in the system. Then it will do is make sure the upgrade is finished or if there is anything wrong it will install more. The third thing is it will make sure there are no broken packages on the system.

After that we should reboot and test if that fixed the problem if it still has not fixed it which it won't if it is a video driver problem. But it is always good to make sure everything is up to date. We will need install the drivers for nvidia for our kernel. So when you reboot go to the recovery console again and then make sure the system is ready for installing the drivers.

(If you do not have the drivers you will need to download them
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us
I used the beta drivers version 275.09)

step 1
sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
step 2
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf
then add:
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
blacklist nvidia-173
blacklist nvidia-96
blacklist nvidia-current
blacklist nvidiafb

Step 3
telinit 3
step 4
sudo -i

step 5
cd to location of the drivers aka .run file
step 6 (ls will show you files)
./then_the_driver_name.run
step 7
Reboot

Doing all these steps will make sure that that the nvidia drivers are installed and that there are no conflicts with other drivers on the system. When installing the nvidia drivers I would recommend that you say yes for everything that it asks.

This is a basic repair of the nvidia drivers after an update of the kernel or a system upgrade. Sense if you use Nvidia's drivers from their site they do not auto recompile for each new kernel which requires you to build them each time.

I hope this helps,
local tech repair admin

Ubuntu Music fans - Drum Machine

For those that are looking to switch from windows to Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution and worried about if you will still be able to use your computer as a drum machine. Sense ubuntu does not natively run windows applications and a lot of software out there that you may buy does not run on linux.

Though linux has many different music programs out there and even distributions that are completely designed around music and video production like studio ubuntu. Though one easy program for making drum beats and what not is Hydrogen drum machine. Hydrogen is a great and easy to start and pick up.

Hydrogen is a GUI built program so you don't need to worry about command line program for making beats. Some of the features that they have are:
Pattern-based sequencer, with unlimited number of patterns and ability to chain patterns into a song.

Up to 192 ticks per pattern with individual level per event and variable pattern length.
Unlimited instrument tracks with volume, mute, solo, pan capabilities.
Multi layer support for instruments (up to 16 samples for each instrument).
Sample Editor, with basic cut and loop functions. (NEW)
Time-stretch and pitch functions via rubberband cli. Require the rubberband-cli package. (NEW)
Play-lists with scripting function. (NEW)
Advanced tab-tempo. (NEW)
Director Window with a visual metronome and song position tags. (NEW)
Time-line with variable tempo. (NEW)
Single and stacked pattern mode. (NEW)
Export/Import single patterns into song projects. (NEW)
Midi learning via Shift+MouseClick on many gui-cotrollers combined with a midi settings editor. (NEW)
Ability to import/export song files.
Unique human velocity, human time, pitch and swing functions.
Multiple patterns playing at once.


If your looking for a easy to use free drum machine don't worry linux has you covered with hydrogen.

I highly encourage that program as it is simple and is easy for even someone that does not know much about music to even use.

thanks,
local tech repair admin

Windows 7 Starter vs Ubuntu 11.04 Netbook

So recently I was working on setting up a netbook for dual booting both windows 7 starter and ubuntu 11.04 and noticed a large performance difference...

The youth pastor that I was setting up the netbook for wanted windows to run faster and windows out of the box was running around 650 MB out of its 1GB ddr3 ram which was slowing the computer down when ever he tried to do anything on the computer. With doing a little tuning up of the computer and turning things off of start up I was able to get that down to 450 to 550 at resting which was half of the memory on the computer.

On the other hand when i got ubuntu 11.04 installed and booted up it was running fast. The resting rate for the ram was ~175mb this is over half of what windows was at resting hart rate with out doing any tuning. Not only was the resting rate better than windows 7 starter but i tested to see how well the ubuntu side held up compared to the windows side. I was able to run firefox with over 4 tabs open one of them being pandora running and another one being youtube running and a few others. Also on top of that I had libre office running a presentation, hydrogen (drum beat mixer) running a beat, and libre word processor open. All this was around ~400 MB of ram that it was using with out any glitches or freezes in the process. Sense the person I was setting up this computer for was a youth pastor I figured it needed to be able to hold up to that amount of work. Which the computer was able to do well. The computer had a N570 processor in it also.

We had to upgrade the ram to a 2 GB ddr3 stick so that windows 7 starter could function the same as the ubuntu 11.04 side did.

Just this basic use test showed how well done ubuntu 11.04 is built and how much faster it is than windows 7 starter.

Thanks for reading,
local tech repair admin

Comparison between ipad 2 and netbook check out this link
http://localtechrepair.blogspot.com/2011/04/ipad-2-vs-netbook.html

Ipad 2 vs Netbook

I recently been asked which would be better to get for a youth pastor. An iPad 2 by Apple or a netbook computer? This is a very interesting cause as iPads are becoming very popular for business to think that iPads are the way to go right? well I personally think that a Netbook still out performs a iPad anyday. Lets look at why I think this

Lets first look at the positives for having an iPad 2

Advantages:
portable
good battery life ~10 hours
cheap apps
touch screen
"coolness" factor
some business apps (like keynote)
and its made by apple


Now the with all that it comes to around ~$615 price tag for all that for the lowest end model.
now lets look at some of the internals of the iPad.
It runs at ~.9 ghz slightly under that, which is 2 cores. It can run 2 threads which is not unusual for non Intel processors. And a half a gb of ram. They state that it is 16gb of ram on their site because they can because the hard drive they use is the ram.



now that we have covered iPads lets go on the other perspective on what businesses need.

A business person needs portable and powerful devices, they need cheap priced devices, and they need them to work and last long while using them.

Netbooks Advantages:
cheaper than iPads
have physical keyboard - though small
ability to install actual applications not built for iPads or mobile devices
more powerful
up to 2-4gb of ram
high end processors
cheaper repair costs
USB ports
SD card readers
possibly a VGA out

so this is what i suggested to my friend that was debating between the ipad 2 and a netbook

first of all I told him that he probably wants something that will allow him to do his work fast. He will be using his device for presentations, writing sermons, and other things.
he needs something that he can multi task on and not to mention use Flash on.

I suggested that he get a Atom n550 or a N570 preferably the later.

Here is one of the computers I showed him for his needs that would out perform an ipad and also have much more memory.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004SUO0SQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httplocaltech-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=B004SUO0SQ

You can check out Netbooks Here

so the Asus eee pc
was only ~$330
then you can get a mini mouse for it costing around ~$10
portable keyboard for ~$60
and a 22 monitor for 150
external dvd drive for 33
upgrade ram for ~25

all this adding up to ~608

this is still less than a ipad but you get much more.

when your at home your able to have your stuff connected to your netbook and be able to do heavy processing with your netbook and making it act like a normal desktop computer. But also allowing you to take your netbook on the go and having portability of the netbook.

if your really wanting a touch screen there is always like Asus T101MT-BU37-BK
which is a touch screen netbook and the processor of the N570.

I also suggested that he look in to Ubuntu netbook remix. which with their next release will have multi touch capabilities.

If you have any questions or comments about the netbook vs ipad let us know in comments.
tell us your favorite business apps for the ipad 2 also.

thanks,
local tech repair admin

For a comparison between windows 7 starter and Ubuntu 11.04 check out this link
http://localtechrepair.blogspot.com/2011/05/windows-7-starter-vs-ubuntu-1104.html