This is quite a handy tip.  I know where I put everything on my Windows machine, and the Library view mostly just gets in the way.

The reader told me that while reconfiguring the navigation pane so that Libraries were not as prominent was a good trick, but what he really wanted to be able to do was to remove Libraries altogether. After a bit of investigation, I discovered that it is possible to remove Libraries from Windows Explorer with a couple of Registry tweaks.

In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, I’ll show you how to remove Libraries from the navigation pane in Windows 7’s Windows Explorer by editing the registry.

via Remove Libraries from Windows Explorer in Windows 7 | Microsoft Windows | TechRepublic.com.

I recently built an XP virtual machine with IE 6 for a client, perhaps I’ll suggest this as an alternative.  We’ll just need to validate that IE6 on Linux renders web pages identically to a Windows installation.

Ever fancied running Internet Explorer 7 (or even earlier versions) on your Linux machine but didn’t find an easy way of doing it – admit it, wine doesn’t work that smoothly – IEs4Linux is the solution for you, check it out, or the complete guide.

via SecuriTeam Blogs » IE7 on Linux.

With increasing minimum requirements in SSL security, many — if not all — SSL certificate issuers are requiring that 2048-bit CSRs be used to generate new certificates.

If your website on an IIS server is already using a certificate, there is no way to generate a new cert with any options changed from the current cert.  In order to generate a new CSR with 2048-bit encryption to replace your current 1024-bit cert, you need to either remove the server’s current cert (rendering the site insecure), or create a new website and generate the CSR from it.

Microsoft Support has an article describing the section option.

This article describes how you can create a new certificate signing request (CSR) or generate a renewal request without having to remove the existing certificate from your Web site.

via How To Renew or Create New Certificate Signing Request While Another Certificate Is Currently Installed.

I’ve been a fan of O’Reilly’s Windows Annoyances books since Win95, and the annoyances.org website is chock-full of excellent tips for tuning the annoyances out of Windows.  (Short of wiping and loading UNIX, of course.)

In this particular instance, I got sick of how Windows Volume Control beeps so very loudly in my earbuds when the Master Volume slider is adjusted.  Happily, it is easy to completely disable that feature!  Note: I skipped right from Step 5 to Step 10, and now I can adjust the volume on my Dell Mini without going deaf.

By following the following steps, you can turn off the beep without having to reboot. The steps are:

1. Right-click on My Computer
2. On the Hardware tab, click on [Device Manager]
3. On the “View” menu, select “Show hidden devices”
4. Under “Non-Plug and Play Drivers”, right-click “Beep”
5. Click “Disable”
6. Answer [Yes] when asked if you really want to disable it 7. Answer [No] when asked if you want to reboot
8. Right-click “Beep” again.
9. Click “Properties”
10. On the “Driver” tab, set the Startup type to Disabled
11. Click [Stop] 12. Click [OK]
13. Answer [No] when asked if you want to reboot

via Annoyances.org – Stop beep in volume control Windows XP Discussion Forum.

Coincidentally, this morning I was doing the exact same thing as this fellow.  I had installed 9.10 on a Dell GX620 with an nVidia 6600, and needed to stop X in order to compile and install the driver.

I had already downloaded the Linux installable from nVidia, and found this excellent tip for getting in and out of the GUI:

To stop gdm from virtual console (after going to virtual console by giving Ctrl + Alt + F1):

sudo service gdm stop

To start after installing nvidia drivers or whatever we did in console, to start it is as simple as stopping

sudo service gdm start

via My experiments with Linux: New way to stop or start gdm/X server in Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 using service command.

<ctrl-alt-f1> drops you to a console login, but gdm and X are still running in the background, and nVidia drivers will not load until gdm is stopped.

Restarting gdm will bring you back into your Gnome X session.  Alternatively, if you were just doing some work at the console and want to return to your X session without restarting gdm (which closes all your windows and programs, etc), just press <ctrl-alt-f7> to return from the console.

This build took a lot of headscratching and research, as I couldn’t easily find any single resource describing how to do the build, and KeePassX requires quite a bit of pre-work before it will build.

Starting from a fresh CD install of 2009.06

Hit http://www.keepassx.org/downloads to download the current source code tarball. I got 0.4.3.

Unzip it to /usr/src

cd /usr/src/keepassx-0.4.3

cat INSTALL to read the amazingly terse installation instructions:

Installation instructions for *nix:
———————————–
qmake-qt4 / qmake

You have to use qmake of Qt >= 4.3.0, depending on your distro it is called qmake or qmake-qt4.
By default KeePassX is installed to /usr, you can change that by adding PREFIX=[PATH] to the qmake command.
You can also add DEBUG=1 to build KeePassX with debug symbols.
2. make
3. make install

Qt didn’t come in the default 2009.06 install, but is available packaged from the Bionicmutton repository:

sudo pkg set-authority -O http://solaris.bionicmutton.org:10002/ Bionicmutton

I then attempted to install the Qt package, but it required SUNWdbus@0.5.11,5.11-0.132.  This was available through the Package Manager, by clicking Refresh to get the list of newest packages available, then Updating everything.

Upon reboot, I was hit by two bugs.  They combine to make X somewhat unstable, and Xterms nearly unusable.

http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=13437

Could not update ICEauthority file /.ICEauthority
There is a problem with the configuration server.
(/usr/lib/gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256)

To fix it, you must give gdm a real home directory in the passwd file

sudo vi /etc/passwd

find the line

gdm:x:50:50:GDM Reserved UID:/:

Change it to:

gdm:x:50:50:GDM Reserved UID:/var/lib/gdm:

http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=12380

Xterm text is all wacky; carriage returns without line feeds produces text all over the screen and makes everything hard to read. Text typed at the command prompt often isn’t echoed, so I had  to type very carefully with no typos because I could not see what I was typing.  The solution is to fix permissions on /dev/ptmx and add a line to /etc/minor_perm:

sudo chmod 666 /dev/ptmx

vi  /etc/minor_perm

(add the line) clone:ptmx 0666 root sys

With everything working, I was able to install Qt from repository:

sudo pkg install qt@4.6.2-6

Set up the environment for compiling:

PATH=$PATH:/opt/foss/qt4/bin:/usr/local/bin:usr/css/bin;export PATH
CXX=/usr/bin/g++
CC=/usr/bin/gcc
cc=/usr/bin/gcc
QMAKESPEC=solaris-cc; export QMAKESPEC
qmake
make

And unfortunately, make crashes with

make[1]: CC: Command not found

Tried adding a symbolic link from CC to gcc:

ln -s ../../sfw/bin/gcc /usr/gnu/bin/CC

And the error changed to:

CC: ccfe: No such file or directory
CC: ccfe: No such file or directory
CC: ccfe: No such file or directory
CC: ++boolflag:sunwcch=false: No such file or directory
CC: unrecognized option `-template=geninlinefuncs’
CC: unrecognized option `-Qoption’
CC: unrecognized option `-Qoption’
CC: unrecognized option `-Qoption’
CC: -library=no%Cstd: linker input file unused because linking not done
CC: -library=Crun: linker input file unused because linking not done
CC: -library=no%Cstd: linker input file unused because linking not done
CC: -library=Crun: linker input file unused because linking not done
CC: -lstdcxx4: linker input file unused because linking not done
CC: language annotate=no not recognized
CC: lib/HelperX11.cpp: linker input file unused because linking not done
gmake[1]: *** [../build/HelperX11.o] Error 1
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/share/src/keepassx-0.4.3/src’
gmake: *** [sub-src-make_default] Error 2

And so here I am stuck.  I’ve discovered another fellow has an unresolved error building KeePassX on Opensolaris, with an unanswered post from Oct 2009 on the boards.

Since I use KeePass constantly at work, I needed to get this going.  After two days of futzing around trying to get it to build, I was getting a bit frustrated.  So I weighed my options:

• Reload my PC with Ubuntu.  KeePass installs happily via apt on Ubuntu.
• Create a VM in which to run KeePass.  In any case, if I switched back to Ubuntu, I’d create an OpenSolaris VM and keep working on getting KeePassX to compile.
• Install KeePass for Windows, in Wine, on my OpenSolaris machine.

For now, I’ve decided to run KeePass for Windows in Wine.  It was a cinch!

1. Download Classic Edition from http://keepass.info/download.html.  I saved it to the desktop.
2. I had already installed Wine via Package Manager
3. Right-click the KeePass installation executable, Open with Wine Windows Program Loader
4. Run through the installation steps
5. Done!

Wow, that was easy.  However, it runs with the oddity that the actual data columns for the Password and URL fields are swapped underneath the title column headers.  Also, double-clicking a field copies it to memory, but clicking the middle mouse button does not paste it — I must right-click and paste.  Both <shift-insert> and the middle mouse button paste the last bit of text copied by mouse highlight, rather than the KeePass password entries.

References:

• https://www.cboyer.net/2007/12/qt-and-keepassx-again/ KeePassX 0.2.2, 06 Dec 07
• http://www.keepassx.org/howto/setup/inst_source_tar
• http://keepass.info/download.html

Getting Flash to work with Firefox on OpenSolaris was fairly simple.

NOTE – this installs the plugin for all users.

1. First, download the Flash plugin package from Adobe – Adobe Flash Player.
2. I prefer to unzip anything I’m about to install to /usr/src
   cd /usr/src
3. Unpack the plugin
   sudo tar zxvf /path/to/flash_player_10_solaris_x86.tar.bz2
4. Find the Firefox plugins directory
   find / -name plugins
5. Copy the Flash library to that directory
   sudo cp flash_player_10_solaris_r45_2_x86/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
6. Restart Firefox, and verify that Flash works.

While trying to install AdBlock Plus on Firefox 3.1, I encountered an error similar to this guy:

Firefox: Firefox could not install the file at ‘URL’ because: Signing could not be verified.

I was able to follow those steps, but with a bit of variation:

1. Made a temp folder
   mkdir /tmp/adblock
2. Get the extention (I copied the URL from the failed install error message):
   wget https://addons.mozilla.org/downloads/file/74835/adblock_plus-1.1.3-fx+sm+tb+fn.xpi?src=api --no-check-certificate
3. Unzip the package:
   unzip adblock_plus-1.1.3-fx+sm+tb+fn.xpi
4. The first bit of output showed the RSA file he looks for in Step 5:
   Archive:  adblock_plus-1.1.3-fx+sm+tb+fn.xpi
inflating: META-INF/zigbert.rsa
5. Search for the Certificate Authority info:
   mikes@nerdherd-opensol:/tmp/adblock$ strings ./META-INF/zigbert.rsa | egrep -i "sign|cert"
"Secure Digital Certificate Signing1806
$StartCom Verified Certificate Member1
"Secure Digital Certificate Signing1)0'
StartCom Certification Authority
Limited Liability, read the section *Legal Limitations* of the StartCom Certification Authority Policy available at http://www.startssl.com/policy.pdf0c
4http://www.startssl.com/certs/sub.class2.code.ca.crt0#
"Secure Digital Certificate Signing1)0'
StartCom Certification Authority0
"Secure Digital Certificate Signing1806
"Secure Digital Certificate Signing1)0'
StartCom Certification Authority
&http://cert.startcom.org/sfsca-crl.crl0'
#http://cert.startcom.org/policy.pdf05
)http://cert.startcom.org/intermediate.pdf0
AStartCom Class 2 Primary Intermediate Object Signing Certificates0
"Secure Digital Certificate Signing1806
6. Unlike his Step 7, in Firefox / Preferences / Advanced / Encryption / View Certificates / Authorities, that cert wasn’t listed.  So I imported it.
7. Click the Import button on the Authorities tab.  Browse to the /tmp/adblock/META-INF folder created when AdBlock was unzipped.
8. Change the file type selector from Certificate Files to All Files; select zigbert.rsa; click Open.
9. Check the box, “This certificate can identify software makers.”
10. Click OK until enough dialog boxes are closed that you can re-try the AdBlock Plus install.

It then installed without issue.  Restart Firefox to enable the add-on.

After a constantly recurring conflict between Ubuntu and my desktop’s nVidia card, I decided to switch operating systems.  OpenSolaris has nice, built-in support for nVidia, so I decided to give it a try. I used Solaris for close to a decade at Cisco, and it’s still one of my favorite OSs.

First, I went to sun.com, was shocked to be redirected to oracle.com, found the Download page, got the x86 ISO, and burned it to CD.  It’s a Live CD, meaning you can boot from it and run the OS “on” your machine without actually installing it to your hard disk.

Running the Live CD, I was able to confirm that OpenSolaris recognized all my PC’s hardware: the network worked, and video was good.  Nice!  I rebooted into Ubuntu, copied all my files onto a USB stick, and then proceeded with the install.

Now, I’m back to getting everything reinstalled and my environment back how I like it.

First up: A Windows administrator needs to be able to remote to Windows servers!  This requires the rdesktop package, which is not installed by default.

To Install VNC client and rdesktop Client with IPS under OpenSolaris

# pkg install SUNWvncviewer
# pkg install SUNWrdesktop

To Run Microsoft Remote Desktop Client
# rdesktop <hostname_or_IP_address>

via Microsoft Remote Desktop and vncviewer for OpenSolaris : JB French OpenSolaris User.

I wrote a script called rdesk to connect to various Windows and VMware hosts:

#!/bin/bash

host=$1
resolution='1162x768'

case $host in
201 | 211 | 212 | 213 | 216)
hostname=192.168.249.$host
user=administrator
;;

101 | 102)
#VMware Remote Console Information:
#Usage: vmware-console <flags> [[user@]host:]vm
#where <flags> are:
#-h host        connect to HOST
#-P port        port on HOST
#-u user        connect as USER
#-p password    password for USER@HOST
#-c vm        name of virtual machine to connect to
#-v           print program version
vmware-console -h 10.5.10.$host -u root -p
exit
;;

*)
hostname=$host
domain='-d OURDOMAIN'
user=me

esac

rdesktop $domain -u $user -p $pass -g $resolution -r clipboard:PRIMARYCLIPBOARD -T $hostname $hostname

This allows me to run ‘rdesk hostname‘ or ‘rdesk ip‘ and open a rdesktop window to that machine, asking for a password.

Next step: installing KeePassX

For the hardcore X11-style mouse & window lovers:

X11 is better for fingers.

Copy with mouse.

Paste with mouse.

Focus without clicks.

Raise and lower windows.

So called X-Mouse.

One and only… True X-Mouse Gizmo.

It seems to work pretty good!  Now my XP behaves how I expect it to after spending so much time in X.

via True X-Mouse Gizmo for Windows.