1 – Go to START>ControlPanel>System
2 – Click on the “Hardware” tab then “Device Manager”
3 – Click on “Network Adapters” (to expand it) and then select the Wireless card (in my case the Intel Pro 3945ABG)
4 – Right Click on the wireless card and select uninstall from the pop-up menu.
5 – After uninstalling click on Action>Scan for Harware Changes and your device will be found and reinstalled
6 – Restart your computer and it should all work.

Intel Pro 3945ABG, Thinkpad, Windows update, T60, Wireless

Technorati Tags: ipod touch, MAC Address, ipod networking

To make it work you need to install the following:

On Suse Linux (Using Gnome)

1 – Use the Software Management, search for VPNC, PPTP, SMPPD, NetworkManager and install them all

2 – Then download the NetworkManager-pptp from software.opensuse.org – you can select the desired version of the OS.

3 – Restart the NetworkManager and then create your PPTP VPN Tunel

Using KDE

1 – Use YAST, search for VPNC, PPTP, SMPPD, KVPNC and install them all

2 – Run KVPNC and create a profile in order to connect

On Debian based distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Kurumin)

Using Gnome

1 – sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome network-manager-pptp

2 – launch or restart the Network Manager

Using KDE

1 – apt-get install KVPNC

2 – launch KVPNC and create a profile in order to connect

If you have problems connecting, check your firewall, I had problems specially with Firestarter on my Kurumin Linux (Debian based Brazilian distro)

Technorati Tags: vpn, pptp, linux, networking, kvpnc

I have been reading about Nagios for a while and so decided to give it a go. I haven’t put it to full production yet but the trial has already impressed me.

Some of the many features of Nagios include: (extracted from Nagios Documentation)

• Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING, etc.)
• Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, etc.)
• Simple plugin design that allows users to easily develop their own service checks
• Parallelized service checks
• Ability to define network host hierarchy using “parent” hosts, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that are unreachable
• Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or user-defined method)
• Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
• Automatic log file rotation
• Support for implementing redundant monitoring hosts
• Optional web interface for viewing current network status, notification and problem history, log file, etc.

Windows hosts will be monitored via a client (NSClient++) installed on the host which talks to the Nagios server. Network devices like managed switches can be monitored to different degrees depending on it’s model and maker. Linksys seems to provide more info to Nagios than Netgear but that is not set in stone, it’s just something I experienced on my tests and haven’t inspected any further.

Nagios has a nice web front end but lacks an Admin interface, all settings have to be done manually on raw text files so if you come from a Windows background you will scream. To compensate that, Nagios seems to be the best documented OpenSource system I’ve come across. All the documentation is available on its website and also on you Nagios web interface.

Installation is very easy and very well documented. I’ve installed it so far under OpenSuse 10.1 and under a Debian based distro, both went really well.

If you are interested in implementing Nagios I would recommend this book:

Building a Monitoring Infrastructure with Nagios
by David Josephesen

Looking through all the administration options to find it was unsuccessful and it was definately not as obvious to find as I hoped. After trawling through the Ubuntu Forums and reading about 9 threads I found you simply need to go to Terminal (which is located under Applications>Accessories) and then type in ifconfig and press enter, and you will get a list of your hardware address for your network card.

Untangle has all a small network needs to cope with today’s demands, it can work as a Gateway/Router, DHCP server, SPAM Filtre, Virus Filtre, VPN server, Web Content Filtre and more.
Untangle is based on the Debian Linux and comes ready to install, including OS. The user interface is designed to look like a server rack with a RHS menu for administration. Remote administration is done via a Java Application launched from the servers IP address over HTTPS. There’s an OpenSource version which comes with all the above and there’s a Pro version (Paid) which includes all the above plus Live Tech Support and Active Directory Connector.

Requirements: (minimum)
- Network Cards – 2 up to 3 (LAN / WAN / DMZ)
- Processor – 1.0GHz
- RAM 512MB
- HD 20 GB

Installation:
- download and burn the CD ISO
- Boot from CD and install

Post Installation:
- Your system will not have any of the features pre-installed so you have the convenience of choosing which applications you want to use, this can be done remotely once you have enabled remote access on the admin area.
- To access your server remotely just go to HTTPS://your-server-ip and it will launch a small java application where you can remotely control your new Untangle Server.

Using Remote Desktop Connection to access a remote computer whilst away has been around for a bit, but what if you want to connect to a Mac from a PC or vice versa – or want to access your Windows/Mac machine from Linux?

I came across a bit of software recently that seems to seamlessly allow either a Mac or PC (be it Linux or Windows) to access the remote computer.

LogMeIn comes in a bewildering number of flavours, but the one that interested me (naturally!) was the free version. Although lacking some features that the paid for version has (remote printing etc) the free version seems be an excellent choice for general all-round use. Simple to install, I will let you know if I come across any problems, but so far so good.

The Mac version is a bit tricky to find, but a ‘preview’ version is available here:

https://secure.logmein.com/products/mac

The developers say:

Can I use a Mac OSX computer to control a LogMeIn computer?

You can use a Mac to access a computer via LogMeIn, as long as the Mac is running OSX.

If you are running 10.4 or higher, we have a plug-in that will allow you to control a PC or a Mac. You will be prompted to install this plug-in automatically when you first connect to the PC. There are some known issues when using Firefox initially, so please use the Safari browser when installing the plug-in.

Currently, support for older versions of OSX (10.3 and older) is limited to using LogMeIn in Java mode. In order to do this, the OSX machine being used to control the LogMeIn machine will need the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). You will also need to
use the Mozilla Firefox browser.

More information available here:

https://secure.logmein.com/products/free/

Here is the list of VPN Ports from my desk:

Ports Needed for PPTP VPN

- TCP Port 1723
- UDP Port 500

Ports Needed for L2TP VPN

- TCP Port 1701
- UDP Port 500

Ports Needed for IPSec/ESP

- UDP Port 500

It’s proven to be a pretty useful list for me while setting up Virtual Private Networking, so hopefully it will be helpful for you as well…

Technorati Tags: VPN, L2TP, IPSec/ESP, PPTP, QoS, Firewall

After a lot of stuggles and trying to pair the devices in different ways, I found the following information on the blackberry website. It appears that you cannot use 3rd party bluetooth software such as the thinkpads have. You have to use the default Windows (at least SP2 on XP) bluetooth drivers. How you can easily tell if you are using 3rd party software is if you go to ‘My Computer’ and it says ‘My Bluetooth Places’ then it needs to be uninstalled.  It is recommended that you see your computer’s manufacturers instructions on how to do this properly.

It is a bit of a pain that it does not just work with any 3rd party drivers – but such is life in the windows framework!

Check out the details at the cunningly titled www.mcdwireless.com