Root Access

Ariane

00:03

@Hennes Where do I put it?

OH that little tricky software

I go back to it after like half an hour to check its progress

"lolol, insert next media and press ok"

Hennes? Where do I put the file?

@Hennes Issue. "tools" folder appears to be empty,

Hennes

In that case I can unloads it.

vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/introduction.shtml seems to agree with me, but it might only come with certain versions of windows

Uploaded to stack.nl/~hennes/sysprep_from_XP_SP3.rar

Ariane

Wa

Wait a sec.

ruda.almeida

@Hennes Meh, 80 pounds? I bet I can get one for U$10 on deal extreme.

Ok, a very cheap knockoff. But again, 80 pounds?

Ariane

On your page, look at the Windows Xp SP2 release 2. Maybe I should download the file they say?

Hennes

@ruda.almeida 80 pounds for what?

ruda.almeida

00:18

@Hennes Oh, 20 pounds. Misread that. Must be lack of sleep. Forget that

Ariane

@ruda 80 pounds is probably underweight. (ahaha such quality humour.)

Hennes

20 pounds was enough for one with a fresh Lion bat. :)

@ariane if you can download it somewhere else: fine. I just had the SP3 CD and ripped it from there

Ariane

@Hennes I'm just worrying about if your link is compatible with my installation. We don't have the CDs and it's not the same file, after all.

The paragraph says something about that but I don't really understand it.

ruda.almeida

@Ariane Joke failed: metric system incompatibility: (a)bort, (r)etry, (f)ail?

Ariane

@ruda exit -throughbackdoor

Hennes

00:21

(a)bort, (r)etry, (f)ail? (c) Continue (c) convert

ruda.almeida

(a)bort, (r)etry, (f)eel old for getting DOS references correctly

Hennes

Ariane I really suspect they are backways compatible, but it it fails then you now already have a backup

--- local -- disk --- from image should restore the VM to the state it is in now

Ariane

I wish the US would change their outdated measurements already. As Canadians we're constantly affected by them, and much stuff that comes from there is in American units. Square feet, pounds, ovens in °F, food chains selling stuff in ounces... >.<" 'Comes with a 16-ounce drink.' - 'WHAT THE HECK IS AN OUNCE?!'

Hennes

heh.

Ariane

Even Beautypedia has ounces all around, and it's really irritating.

Hennes

00:24

I am more bothered by 'a cup`

Ariane

You don't have the lettered cups in underwear?

Hennes

How much is a cup? And why is a US cup not the same size as a UK cup ?

Aye. Underwear is standarised.

But cooking cups are not

At least, not across countries

Ariane

Aaah

Hennes

Same with teaspoons.

Ariane

I thought a cup was always 250 mL, which conveniently fits with the American cup, 12(?) ounces, which is "close to 250 mL", and that it was true everywhere.

Hennes

00:25

Which is why I prefer cooking instuctions in grams and ml

ruda.almeida

@Hennes Here we use the metric system. You find lots of "cups", "glasses" and "spoonfuls" in recipes, but this is not because of non-metric standards, just people being unreasonably vague

Ariane

@ruda But don't those "traditional" measurement units have exact metric equivalences? Cup = 250 mL, tablespoon = 30 mL (I think), teaspoon = half a tablespoon. Or are a French cup, an American cup and a British cup different?

Well, French cup might not be very common, because every French (from France) recipe I see is in grams, which makes me sad, because I don't have a cooking scale.

ruda.almeida

@Ariane To the first half of your question, in many countries they do. Here in Brazil however there's the coffee spoon, the soup spoon, the dessert spoon, the different spoons have standard sizes. In recipes, people either specify the spoons, or put "a spoonful". OF WHICH SIZE GODDAMNIT? Also, you say "a soup spoon", but there's different quantities you can fit on a same spoon...

grams and ml are the way to go

Ariane

@ruda Hmm... If it helps you any, "a spoonful" means it doesn't matter and you can be as vague as it says. Also, coffee spoons,dessert spoons and teaspoons should be the same (half a tablespoon, which I think is 15 mL). Also, soup spoons are the same as tablespoons, which is 30 mL (I think).

I know because most recipes I see have the traditional measurement and then milliliters between parentheses. They say, for example, 1 tbspn (30 mL) sugar.

ruda.almeida

Well to be honest I don't care, I'm just randomly ranting on the internet and that's kinda stupid. I don't even cook. (I should cook for my wife-girlfriend, even bought an app for recipes with videos and stuff, I just don't cook...) sadface .__.

Ariane

00:37

Also, you're not supposed to measure "a soup spoon" with an actual soup spoon, since spoons vary a lot. Well, you can, but if it's an ingredient you need to be precise with, you'll probably be wrong. You need to use a measuring spoon that says "one tablespoon".

Since the backup creation is taking forever, I'm going to try another browser game, which requires me to install Java Runtime Environment. Could one of you remind me of the Java vulnerability and how to get around it? I heard it's pretty bad, but I wasn't really listening because I didn,t have Java.

ruda.almeida

A browser game that requires JAVA?! I thougt most browser games required flash, can't think of one requiring Java.

Ariane

Well, some of them do.

It isn't the first I've tried.

ruda.almeida

Actually I found 1 site for online emulation of nes/snes/etc, java-based. Made me skip them.

And I hate them for it

The only thing I have java for is my banking site

Ariane

Banking site? If you ask me, that's much weirder than a game. xD

Anyway, about my question..?

ruda.almeida

I can't visit my bank at work because I use ubuntu and I can't install Java on it (at least, not as easily as in Windows).

And I had a problem with my Java install that took me weeks to fix, so, it meant weeks with having to actually go to the physical bank . Ack.

@Ariane How is it weird that I visit a banking site?

Ariane

00:41

What's weird is that the banking site uses Java. Seems very absurd to me. It's a damned Web page.

If it happened to me, I might change banks just because of the crappy website.

ruda.almeida

@Ariane Well, the biggest banks here use java-based authentication. And they are really big, country-wide banks.

Ariane

Weird. PHP wasn't cool enough for them?

Hennes

"I wonder… Could it be that Northern Europeans never developed belly-dancing because coughing is better exercise for abdominal muscles?"

Ariane

I believe it's because belly dancing is silly. Accessorily, Church.

ruda.almeida

@Ariane The 2 banks I'm a client of, they use Java on a single page: the login page. It flashes for about a second, authenticates you, then goes away. But you can't login without java

Ariane

00:44

@ruda why?

ruda.almeida

23

A: Does overlaying the mouse on a virtual numeric keyboard really protect against keyloggers?

These kinds of password entry systems are only good as long as the attackers do not adapt. It is a play in several acts: Bank Web sites use passwords which are entered the traditional way, with a keyboard. Key loggers appear, and harvest key strokes. After some cases of actual bank password the...

From the answer: "This is an arms race. The attackers force the banks to apply more convoluted password entry methods. The banks train attackers into defeating increasingly "secure" password entry methods. Simultaneously, banks try to train their customers into dealing with more complex password entry methods. In the long term, my bet is that attackers will evolve faster than customers; the banks fight a losing battle." That's the why.

Ariane

@ruda But I can very well see this be done in normal Web coding.

ruda.almeida

I don't mean the use Java to overlay the mouse on a virtual keyboard. They use java to perform some weird identity checking that just overcomplicates things for the user. For instance, I have to click "ok" on a Chrome alert bar, then click OK on a java applet popup.

Wonder if it confuses the average non-tech-savvy user [/sarcasm]

Ariane

But that's awfully non-standard.

Though it's nice to see they're making efforts for security. Banks here are more like "well, customers have to be careful".

ruda.almeida

Well, one of the banks skip the java checking if you visit from an iPad; and there's a firefox plugin to mimic the user-agent, so much for security (at least on this one bank) ;-)

Hey @Hennes @JourneymanGeek ever used FreeNAS or something similar?

Journeyman Geek

00:52

no, not yet

Hennes

Nope. Nor ZFS (though IIRC that is the default for FreeNAS installs)

Journeyman Geek

sadly, my fileserver is my windows XP rig

ruda.almeida

I'm strongly considering a fileserver for my home.

I only worry because HDs are a bit expensive over here

Hennes

ruda: first think what you want to use it for. Just as a NAS/FS?

Or also as server, totrents, firewall, etc etc

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: yeah, prices are dropping but not back to pre-flood levels

@ruda.almeida: what sort of hardware do you have in mind?

Ariane

00:55

@Journey Pre-flood levels?

Hennes

HDD manufacturing is (was) mostly concentratated in a few places

ruda.almeida

@Hennes Well, actually I want to have one emulator station, on gaming station, one download server, one file server, one working station, one laptop PC and one serious gaming station. Oh, and a media center. And my 2 android phones and 1 android tablet.

But the file server is kinda urgent.

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: Hard drive prices bottomed out before there was a big flood in thailand, where a lot of HDD manufacturing was

Hennes

2011 Thailand floods

Severe flooding occurred during the 2011 monsoon season in Thailand. Beginning at the end of July triggered by the landfall of Tropical Storm Nock-ten, flooding soon spread through the provinces of Northern, Northeastern and Central Thailand along the Mekong and Chao Phraya river basins. In October floodwaters reached the mouth of the Chao Phraya and inundated parts of the capital city of Bangkok. Flooding persisted in some areas until mid-January 2012, and resulted in a total of 815 deaths (with 3 missing) and 13.6 million people affected. Sixty-five of Thailand's 77 provinces were de...

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: you could probably do most of that with three boxen ;p

my workstation and my gaming station are the same box.

Ariane

00:57

@Journey Ooooh, thaaaat, I'd heard of it a little. And what are pre-flood levels?

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: let me give you an example

ruda.almeida

@JourneymanGeek I know, they don't have to be separate servers. I haven't yet decided much about the setup,

Hennes

The price levels of harddrives before the flood

Journeyman Geek

I could buy a 500 gb hard drive for 50 dollars at the cheapest

it went up to 150

now its at around 75

(yes, bigger drives are the sweetspot, but you get the idea ;p)

Ariane

@Hennes thanks, but I had figured out the grammar. I was looking for something more concrete. :p

ruda.almeida

00:58

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: I'd go for a medium-low end windows box running proper linux, then use that for routing, fileserver and download

ruda.almeida

Image circa Nov 2011

Ariane

Oh, thanks.

Journeyman Geek

maybe a core i5 right down to a pentium

ruda.almeida

@JourneymanGeek Why routing? Why not let a generic wifi router connected to the ISP be the network router? And from there distrubute the cabled and/or wifi internet connection?

Journeyman Geek

01:00

@ruda.almeida: two reasons, fileserver will be running anyway, one less system

secondly you have the option of a dedicated wired link to the system

ruda.almeida

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, but I need the standalone router with multiple ethernet ports in order to connect the wired PCs -- much cheaper than a PC with multiple ethernet ports. If it's got a wifi antenna, that's better.

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: lots of modern desktop boards have wifi built in

ruda.almeida

I don't understand what "a dedicated wired link to the system" means.

Journeyman Geek

and you can just get a switch

let me break out ASCII flow ;p

Ariane

@ruda You could take a look at the FX-8150 processor from AMD. It's evaluated to having one of the best price-to-quality rates.

ruda.almeida

01:05

@JourneymanGeek Well, a switch is about, let me see, $25 for a 4port switch, $55 for a dlink 802.11g + 4 ethernet ports

so $55 is much cheaper than a PC, and 4 pourts more

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: a pentium would do for this

pastebin.com/kVrB04tD -> the two layouts

and they're cheap and have great power to performance ratios

ruda.almeida

@Ariane U$500 for a processor? That's R$ 1000, or almost half of my salary. That's what I paid for an entire 10 inch android tablet. FOR A SINGLE PROCESSOR? No thanks.

Journeyman Geek

and the idea being that you have the fileserver on anyway

Ariane

@ruda Nope, I think you're looking at the wrong one. Mine cost less than 200.

Journeyman Geek

might as well make use of it

@Ariane: indian money ;p

hm, maybe not

ruda.almeida

01:09

@JourneymanGeek Brazilian. There are import costs, shipping costs, taxes costs, taxes over taxes, etc etc etc.

Journeyman Geek

what's a R$? I've seen Rs, and the new wierd ₹

ahh

my bad

Reals?

also exchange rates

ruda.almeida

Here's an article (in portuguse) from 2009 saying how is cheaper to buy a plane ticket Brazil/US, buy the special edition of Rock Band, buy the ticket back, than buying it on the stores. jogos.uol.com.br/ultnot/multi/2009/09/11/ult530u7241.jhtm

Ariane

@ruda you did say U$500 right? As in 500 US $ ? Nope, wrong one. The one I'm talking about is less than 200 US $.

@ruda newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103960 That's in Canadian dollars, and the values of Canadian and US dollars are really close.

Journeyman Geek

/me spent about 500 sgd on his core i7 and motherboard >_>

ruda.almeida

@JourneymanGeek WOW.

Ariane

01:12

@JourneymanGeek Uhm, what's a SGD?

Journeyman Geek

(though, my case was expensive)

singapore dollar

ruda.almeida

/me just googled "brl 500 sgd" ;-)

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: mobo/processor combos are cheap here ;p

Ariane

@Journeyman Sounds like a fair price. o:

Journeyman Geek

though its silightly annoying. had my eyes on a little via board, then realised it was probably cheaper for me to get an AMD or intel system

ruda.almeida

01:13

A friend of mine says there's a cheap itx or mini-itx or soldered mobo-processor, or atom processor... well, some sort of combo, it's cheap. And, for just a download and file server, might suffice. I hope.

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: mini itx tends to be cheap. I haven't really seen too many soldered mobo/processor combos that were worth it

Ariane

About what I paid for my motherboard and processor, and I think yours are of superior quality.

Journeyman Geek

AMD hudsons are worth looking for

@Ariane: total cost of my system is about 1.5K I think ;p

Ariane

@JourneymanGeek Ouch. Mine is just a bit over 1000.

ruda.almeida

@JourneymanGeek If I recall correctly, this soldered combo is from Asus, so probably not that bad quality, and it's just for fileserver and download.

Journeyman Geek

01:15

counting in the part I got for free.

Ariane

And I do believe I got pretty good parts for it. So. Yeah. Golden PC. XD

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: 2 hard drives, gforce 660, 16gb of ram

ruda.almeida

My work station and gaming station, on the other hand... The kind of setup I want... My pocket weeps blood when I think of the specs. And optimally I wanted 2 different machines.

Journeyman Geek

I want to add a big storage drive

Ariane

@JourneymanGeek o: I have a small SSD, 1 TB HDD, 750 W top quality PSU, 16 GB RAM... Yeah, yours is more expensive but not sure where.

Journeyman Geek

01:17

@ruda.almeida: XD. I 'make' 300 bucks a month

@Ariane: conversion rates ;p

and I probably slightly overestimated the cost.

620W PSU, got a seasonic m12II

hmm, case maybe?

Ariane

Well, I say "I have", but it's more like "I will have once I receive the PSU that I need to put the parts in because I neglected to calculate that my old PSU wouldn't be enough"é

Journeyman Geek

lol

I suspect my PSU has a fair amount of headroom

Ariane

My case is pretty cheap.

Journeyman Geek

I have a cosair 600T

Ariane

Oh I know

ruda.almeida

01:19

@JourneymanGeek I've been employed for just 4 months and already bought a 10" tablet and I'm really divided into paying for a webdev course or buying cool and expensive hardware

Ariane

I got a good deal on my parts.

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: spent about a year saving

Ariane

There was uhm. Boxing week sale. I think I saved maybe 200 $ total.

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: I've been working on cheap cases for ages

Its nice to work on something the size of a third world village ;p

Ariane

@Journey I dislike large stuff. My best friend had advised me to buy a more expensive Cooler Master HUGE case, but 1. it was ugly and 2. it was huge

So I got this.

Journeyman Geek

01:20

/me does have a spare perx case.

Ariane

thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001841

Does the job fine.

Journeyman Geek

@Ariane: I open up my system a LOT

ruda.almeida

I think I can spend a year saving for the non-urgent stuff, but the filewerver is kinda urgent. I got just a half-filled 200GB HDD on my laptop (my only current working PC), a filled 160GB external HDD, 3 filled 8GB flash drives, a few external HDDs that I don't even remember whats on them, and lots of recorded DVDs.

Journeyman Geek

XD

ruda.almeida

Lots and lots and lots and I lose 2 hours whenever I have to find anything on them.

Journeyman Geek

01:22

@ruda.almeida: as someone whose last pc was a dumpster rescue.. I have to ask, got any old hardware lying around? ;p

Hennes

Just one note: Storing things on a fileserver is great, but if you only store it there without backups then bad things might happen

Journeyman Geek

and blah, now I am tempted to plot to convert the old PIV into a fileserver ;p

Ariane

@ruda I love how your priorities are centered around computers. xD While I changed my computer because I was getting "insufficient memory" errors, I'm wondering if I'll be able to afford clothes and surgery. xD

Journeyman Geek

surgery?

ruda.almeida

@JourneymanGeek I did, but it was SO old it was uncompatible with anything, such as 6-8 years mobos, and quite old stuff, I just threw most of it on the garbage =/

Journeyman Geek

01:23

@ruda.almeida: nuuu

6-8 years is still new enough to temporarily use ;p

ruda.almeida

@JourneymanGeek I think I still have 2 still-in-the-box DDRII RAM modules, 2gb each

@JourneymanGeek Maybe it was more than 8 years. There was even a slot-type pentium II mobo

Journeyman Geek

loooooool

slot type pentium is a lot older than 8 years

ruda.almeida

Hehe.

Ariane

@Journey Yeah... I've got my wisdom teeth that HURT, and another non-covered surgery that I really need but isn't covered (and I don't really want to talk about it to everyone).

Journeyman Geek

ahh, k

np

Hennes

01:24

Hmm, I have thrown those away (Asus P2B-Dual board with a pair of celeron 366s in a slot and the same with a pair of celeron-466's)

Journeyman Geek

If its a core 2 or newer, then its reasonably compatible with newer stuff

we had a pIV 1.6 in storage

damned thing mysteriously stopped booting tho

ruda.almeida

The excuses I had for keeping reeeealy old and uncompatible stuff around was "hey, I occasinally freelance as tech support, so let's keep it for testing". But I recently said f#@$ tech support, so why to keep trash around?

stevestreza.com/2012/09/30/freenas-build

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: my parents have a love/hate relationship with my love of tech

I kept old stuff around cause I couldn't buy new stuff for a while ;p

@ruda.almeida: update that to newer stuff - there's ivy ridges as cheap as 42 dollars US engadget.com/2013/01/22/intel-ivy-bridge-budget and that's what I'd do

I'd consider cheaping out on the ram tho

16gb is a LOT, even for a gaming rig

ruda.almeida

@JourneymanGeek My relatives think I'm free tech support. Well, I don't mind most of the time, what I mind is they never seem to try to learn from their mistakes and make the mistakes all over again, just because "Hey, if Rudá will fix it for free, why should I spend my time learning on how not to f@#$ it up"?

Journeyman Geek

lol

@ruda.almeida: I was tech support for my dad's small engineering firm

they just didn't see fit to put me on the payroll

ruda.almeida

01:30

Are you sitting down? My dad had this laptop for over 2 years, one day I minimize Word and he yells at me for closing his work. 2 YEARS!!!!!

Journeyman Geek

lol

mine are not too bad

ruda.almeida

To this very day I suggest him a basic introdutory PC course.

Journeyman Geek

lol

ruda.almeida

He's quite succesful, however, at getting malware at his PC

Journeyman Geek

XDXDXD

so, he knows just enough to be dangerous?

I just take away admin rights if anyone gets malware ;p

ruda.almeida

01:31

Not exactly. I guess he just clicks "OK" at anything at the screen. If it is a malware popup, the malware suceeds.

Journeyman Geek

(geeze. I AM the bosses kid, and I don't get paid enough for this shit ;p)

got mine trained to NO DON'T TOUCH IT. CALL GEEK. NOW.

which seems to work

ruda.almeida

My 87y granma is my 2nd fixed tech support client, but she is much easier to deal, I got logmein on her PC and I remote into it to fix stuff, usually it's the avast license screen.

Journeyman Geek

XD

I've got chrome remote now on most systems

haven't had an incident in ages. Its getting boring ;p

ruda.almeida

Damn, I have to go. Finally got my girlfriend into watching Big Bang theory, now she loves it (she says I'm just like leonard, not sure if flattering or annoying, lol), so anyway I have to go or she kills me, she's been calling me for 15min

Journeyman Geek

XD

Yes! Do so!

ruda.almeida

01:34

Bye

Journeyman Geek

bye!

Ariane

@Hennes DONE!

Hennes

yay. How large is it?

Ariane

Gonna boot to Xp to see.

Hennes

And just in time, I was already closing programs

Ariane

01:38

Lol

Remember? This was the preliminary backup for checking. XD

Journeyman Geek

XD

Hennes

For checking and in case syspreop messes up.

I am actually hoping it used less than half the space.

But that is unlikely.

Ariane

Total files are only 8.65 GB

Hennes

Just over half full on your second disk?

Well, you can delete the ghost files (or move them out of the VM to be deleted later)

Ariane

Less than half

Oh wait

No a bit more than half

Hennes

01:45

But the good news is, the finalimage will fit on your larger USB drive.

(when transporting it)

Ariane

Mhm

So

Move this outta the VM eh? All rightie

Hennes

move or delete. It was just a practice run, but it is a valid backup.

Ariane

Crap

I removed the host additions, thus the shared folder died.

aw well

Delete it is

So, what now?

Hennes

locate the syprep files. (3 of them are needed), copy them to the windows XP C: drive

run the sysprep program and tick the 'generalise' box

Ariane

Question! How do Ido that now that the shared folder is dead?

Hennes

01:49

The program will run, delete some files, and the PC needs to shutdown (Not reboot)

then make a new ghost

Whenever the PC next boots it will start a mini setup, ask for the computer name and rediscover all hardware. It will have forgotten about the VMs hardware

Ariane

??

Oh

I know how I'll send the files over

I'll just redownload them to the VM

Hennes

That works.

Ariane

Can you give me the link again?

Hennes

stack.nl/~hennes/sysprep_from_XP_SP3.rar

Or did you means the MS link ?

Ariane

the download you gave me for the thingie

deployment thingie

Hennes

01:52

Can you unrar them, or should I unpack and zip them?

Ariane

Would be best, if you could, yeah

Whee, I'm here twice~

Journeyman Geek

lol

@Ariane: I actually switch between multiple computers running this

which is one reason I ended up a channel owner ;p

SE chat is pretty awesome

Hennes

Zipped version at stack.nl/~hennes/sysprep.zip

Ariane

Thanks a ton.

@Hennes A folder directly in C:\ named "ca8c381f7f440b4b6d5d82"... What is it?

Hennes

Probably servicepack installation files (but that is just a guess)

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