LinuxReaders

In Previous posts we have covered creating usb boot for fedora & ubuntu.

Apart from unetbootin, you can use UltraISO to create usb boot.

Following is the easy procedure to create bootable usb.

1) Connect USB device & select it int UltraISO.

2) Select Live CD iso image.

3) Click on Bootable from menu, choose Write Disk Image.

From here you can format your USB drive & start writing image by clicking on Write.

Windows Admin can use this tool to write Windows 7 bootable usb (I have not tested on Vista).

And the best part is that, ultraiso supports usb writing in trial version.

If you are using Ubuntu & XP dual boot, & if at all you are planing to upgrade / have upgraded to Win7, this post may be helpful for you.

When you upgrade to Win7, due to Win’s unsocial behaviour to coexists with other OS, grub boot loader is lost.
Here we assume, when you installed xp partition was fat32. Later system upgraded to windows 7 with ntfs filesystem.

Due to MBR overwritten grub is missing, follow this link to recover.

Now on booting you’ll find XP in boot option instead of Win7. If you try booting with XP option, you’ll get error.
To fix it
goto ubuntu recovery mode

in recovery menu
select grub (Update grub bootloader)

reboot the system. All should be fixed.

Uptill XP, it was ok with windows overwrite MBR, but same behaviour with Win7 is bit annoying. Atleast now MS should respect other OS and should learn to coexist.

Most of the linux admins have used squid over linux.
This is one of the best proxy available.

One of my windows admin friend asked me to suggest free proxy available over windows, which has all the feature as Squid.
For testing purpose I configured squid over windows. This was easy task as win compiled versions are available.

Following is the guide for Win admins to configure Squid over Windows.

Download squid for windows from http://squid.acmeconsulting.it/

Extract it as c:\squid
rename configuration files
cd c:\squid\etc
rename squid.conf.default squid.conf
rename mime.conf.default mime.conf
rename cachemgr.conf.default cachemgr.conf

Create swap directories
cd c:\squid\sbin
squid -z

Register service
squid -i -f c:/squid/etc/squid.conf -n squid

To remove service
squid -r -n squid

For squid.conf configuration details refer my previous post

Refer

Often one needs to create PDF of their reports OR image file.
I prefer openoffice for all kind of pdf generation.

For webpages you have firefox plugins

But when your windows users demands to make pdf of their backoffice application
Image printer could be the best fit.

You can download freeware imagepriner

After installation you’ll find below image on your desktop.

This is for the configuration, this lets you select file store location & file type.

Windows
I wouldn’t have wrote this post if my software team was open to install latest version of apache_openssl.

One of our apache server is running on windows. During installation admin got apache-2.2.10_no_ssl installed. For some reason we chose to host web over SSL & not willing to update Apache version. Latest version with ssl support was easiest option, still I am told to use same version.
I am told to use self signed cert as this is for branch communication.
Following is the easiest way i found to integrate ssl support.

Gather supporting exe, dlls & conf

Copy required files (mentioned below) from same version of apache with openssl support.
From here you can download old version of apache.
e.g  I am using apache-2.2.10_no_ssl, I need to extract below files from apache-2.2.10_openssl installation.

copy following files from apache_openssl installed folder to apache_no_ssl (basically you need separate machine for apache_openssl installation.)

bin\libeay32.dll
bin\ssleay32.dll
bin\abs.exe
bin\openssl.exe
conf\openssl.cnf

Apache configuration
In httpd.conf uncomment following lines.

LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so
Include conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf

Changes in httpd-ssl.conf

SSLCertificateFile "C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/conf/server.cert"
change DocumentRoot "c:\YOUR_WEBSITE"

Generate Self Signed Certificate Source
Run following commands from apache 2.2 folder.

cd conf
..\bin\openssl req -config openssl.cnf -new -out server.csr
..\bin\openssl rsa -in privkey.pem -out server.key
..\bin\openssl x509 -in server.csr -out server.cert -req -signkey server.key -days 365

Restart apache and verify working https.

Linux

yum install mod_ssl
service httpd reload / restart

When I started this post, had no intention to include Linux mod_ssl installation, though included if by chance I encourage windows admin to support Linux too. Have seen few win admins who prefers windows only.