Ruben’s Blog

There are times when you just need to create a user that does not require a password. I have young kids and I trust them but they don’t know the concept of security and just know how to login and play.
In XP, creating a user with a blank password is as easy as clicking the ‘Remove my password’ in User Accounts. In Ubuntu, however, there are no remove passwords that you can find. Although, it is not evident, creating a user with a blank password is not that difficult but does require that you do know how to use the terminal.
Anyway, to create a user with a blank password in Ubuntu Hardy, do the following.

1. Go to System -> Administration -> User and Groups
2. Create a new user include a new password, this does not really matter so just create anything that comes to mind.
3. Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal)
4. Type su and enter your root password (this will switch you to the root user)
5. Type gedit /etc/shadow (you can use your favorite editor if you don’t like gedit)
6. Look for the line containing your new user
7. newuser:$1$5druSp26$nVpXn5EVk73sWzZlhLuXNB1:13996:0:99999:7:::
8. Replace the highlighted text with U6aMy0wojraho
9. newuser:U6aMy0wojraho:13996:0:99999:7:::
10. Save the file
11. That’s it, the user now contains a blank password. You can now login without the password. Enjoy!

500+ horse power CTS-V taken out by budget Civic hatchback

Cars and motorcycle videos

McCain and Palin do their best Benny Lava impression to sway voters in November. Obviously a parody of the greatest Bollywood song/video ever–Kalluri Vaanil. This is for you, Prabhu Deva!

Step 1. You will need to find the following info about the network
1. Available IP Address
2. Network Netmask
3. Broadcast IP
4. Default Gateway

Step 2. Open /etc/network/interfaces:

$ sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces

Once there, we must find the network interface to be configured from a dynamic IP address to a static one. In this case it will be eth0:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp


In the above example we can see that the interface eth0 is configured for dhcp (dynamic address). To change to static IP address configuration we must set the following:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
nerwork 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.254


Finally, we need to restart the networking services:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Set OpenDNS as your DNS server

Step 1. Open the resolv.conf file

sudo vim /etc/resolv.conf

Once Open comment out whatever name server is already there. More than likely these are DNS Servers provided to you by your ISP, and are thus worthless.  After commenting out the old DNS server address, append the following two lines of text.

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

Now just save and quit, you are done.

I found this on Mexpolk’s Howtos

Step 1

First, you need to create an account with DynDNS to do so follow this howto: https://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/howto.html.

Step 2

First we’ll install ssh and ssh-socket so we can send our DynDNS user and password encrypted instead clear text:

$ sudo apt-get install ssh libio-socket-ssl-perl

Step 3

Install ddclient:

$ sudo apt-get install ddclient

Step 4

The installation will prompt you some questions. For the first one it ask for your dynamic DNS provider, select www.dyndns.com:

Then, put your fully qualified domain name(s):

Now, your DynDNS requistered username and password:

And finally, type “web” as the DynDNS interface to use:

Ok, so long we’ve finished installing ddclient but there’s still more work to do in order to get it working properly.

Step 5

We, need to change the ddclient configuration file (/etc/ddclient.conf) in order to use ssh to send the username and password, and to properly check the IP adrress. From the command line open ddclient configuration:

$ sudo vim /etc/ddclient.conf

This will open up the configuration file. We will be changing “use=if, if=web” in Step 6


# Configuration file for ddclient generated by debconf
#
# /etc/ddclient.conf

pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
protocol=dyndns2
use=if, if=web
server=members.dyndns.org
login=username
password=’password‘
your-host-name.dyndns.org

Step 6

We need to change the configuration so ddclient get our public IP address properly, and to send our username and password over ssh.

DynDNS has a web interface to get your public IP address, this is equivalent to manually invoking http://checkip.dyndns.com/. But we need to properly configure this interface, so change the line use=if, if=web for the following:

use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.com/, web-skip='IP Address'

Second, add to your configuration file just below the initial comments the following:

ssl=yes
daemon=300


The above two lines tells ddclient to use ssl for its connection and to update your public IP address every 5 minutes (specified in seconds).

Step 7

Now, we must make sure that ddclient is set to run as a deamon. Edit /etc/default/ddclient:

$ sudo vim /etc/default/ddclient

And make sure that:


# Configuration for ddclient scripts
# generated from debconf on Tue Jan 29 20:23:32 CST 2008
#
# /etc/default/ddclient

# Set to “true” if ddclient should be run every time a new ppp connection is
# established. This might be useful, if you are using dial-on-demand
run_ipup=”false”

# Set to “true” if ddclient should run in daemon mode
run_daemon=”true”

# Set the time interval between the updates of the dynamic DNS name in seconds.
# This option only takes effect if the ddclient runs in daemon mode.
daemon_interval=”300″

Step 8

Finally, restart your ddclient and if no error is printed you’re good to go:
sudo /etc/init.d/ddclient restart

Port Forwarding

In order to deliver services on the net, you must open the corresponding ports for the services that your computer/server will provide, this is called Port Forwarding. Unfortunately this howto does not cover that topic. To do so you can visit http://www.portforward.com/routers.htm, where you can read how to port forwarding for your specific model of modem/router.