FreeNAS is an embedded open source NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution based on FreeBSD, supporting the following protocols: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target) and UPnP.  FreeNAS supports additional services such as a Bittorent client, UPnP server, iTunes/DAAP server, and network bandwitdh measurement.  Take a look at the complete featurelist on the official website.

http://www.freenas.org/

I previously illustrated how to install BackTrack on your harddrive.  I found the following guide illustrating in detail how to setup a dual boot configuration with BackTrack and Windows.

Lst week I wanted to install OpenOffice in BackTrack 3.  I found a guide on the Remote Exploit forums and thought I might share it::

Download OpenOffice in tar.gz format from here

Extract the tar.gz file: tar -xzvf OOo_x.x.x_LinuxIntel_install_en-US.tar.gz

Change the working directory to OOG680_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9238/RPMS

rpm2tgz *.rpm”

installpkg *.tgz”

cd /opt/openoffice.orgx.x/program/”

./soffice

To create a menu in kde:
right click and chose “edit menu”
name : office
command : ‘/opt/openoffice.org2.3/program/soffice’ #use string ‘ ok
work path : /opt/openoffice.org2.3/program
finish

Source: http://forums.remote-exploit.org/showthread.php?t=16328

I have been trying alot of different solutions lately to run an SSH server on my Windows PC at home. One of the requirements was that it had to be a free solution. I came to the conclusion after trying a lot of different tools (which all turned out to have some issues) that the best solution is to stay with the trusted UNIX utilities and use Cygwin for setting up the SSH server.

Here’s an overview of how you install and configure the SSH server in Cygwin:

• Install Cygwin
• Be sure the openssh package is selected in the packages list
• After installing run the following command

$ ssh-host-config -y

• Output

Generating /etc/ssh_host_key
Generating /etc/ssh_host_rsa_key
Generating /etc/ssh_host_dsa_key
Generating /etc/ssh_config file
Privilege separation is set to yes by default since OpenSSH 3.3.
However, this requires a non-privileged account called ’sshd’.
For more info on privilege separation read /usr/share/doc/openssh/README.privsep
.

Should privilege separation be used? (yes/no) yes
Warning: The following function requires administrator privileges!
Should this script create a local user ’sshd’ on this machine? (yes/no) yes
Generating /etc/sshd_config file
Added ssh to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\services

Warning: The following functions require administrator privileges!

Do you want to install sshd as service?
(Say “no” if it’s already installed as service) (yes/no) yes
Which value should the environment variable CYGWIN have when
sshd starts? It’s recommended to set at least “ntsec” to be
able to change user context without password.
Default is “ntsec”. CYGWIN=tty

The service has been installed under LocalSystem account.
To start the service, call `net start sshd’ or `cygrunsrv -S sshd’.

Host configuration finished. Have fun!

• Installation is complete. Now run the SSH server:

$ net start sshd

• Output received:

The CYGWIN sshd service is starting.
The CYGWIN sshd service was started successfully.

• Test to see if it really works:

$ ssh 127.0.0.1

• Output received:

The authenticity of host ‘127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1)’ can’t be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 73:52:45:46:c5:ce:09:06:af:7d:c2:73:86:01:3e:c0.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added ‘127.0.0.1′ (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
Wouter Veugelen@127.0.0.1’s password:

Wouter Veugelen@veugelenw-pc ~
$ exit
logout
Connection to 127.0.0.1 closed.

• If you want your SSH connection to work through most firewalls, change the port it’s running on to 443 by editing sshd_config located in c:\cygwin\etc . Uncomment the port line and change it to Port 443

That’s it!

This week Backtrack 3 final was released. The first thing I wanted to do after downloading and running the Backtrack 3 vmware image, was installing Nessus. About a year ago at security4all a post was written to explain how to install Nessus on Backtrack 3 beta. While this did not work out for me on the final release, I did find some info on the remote-exploit forms which helped me out:

• Download the Nessus and NessusClient Fedora Core 8 RPM’s from the Nessus website (note: I tried it first with the Fedora Core 9 RPM’s and this did not work out for me)

• Convert them to TGZ :

rpm2tgz Nessus-3.2.x-fc8.i386.rpm

rpm2tgz NessusClient-3.2.x-fc8.i386.rpm

• Use the Slackware Package Tool to extract and install the packages from the current directory:

pkgtool

• Configure the application:

cd /opt/
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/nessus/sbin:/opt/nessus/bin:
cp /usr/lib/libssl.so /lib
cp /usr/lib/libcrypto.so /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libnessus.so.3 /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libnessusrx.so.0 /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libpcap-nessus.so.3 /lib
cd /lib
ln libssl.so libssl.so.6
ln libcrypto.so libcrypto.so.6

nano /etc/ld.so.conf
/opt/nessus/lib #add this line to the config file

ldconfig
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-mkcert
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-adduser

• Next update your plugins. Make use you registered at the Nessus website. Use the code they emailed to you below.

cd /opt/nessus/etc/nessus
nessus-fetch –register XXX-YYY-ZZZ-VVV

• Run the Nessus Server:

/opt/nessus/sbin/nessusd

• Launch the Client

/opt/nessus/bin/NessusClient

All credits to williamc for providing this guide.

Source: forums.remote-exploit.org

Some other changes I made to my backtrack installation to improve usability:

Automatically boot the GUI instead of the CLI interface:

• Change initlevel 3 to 4 in inittab

Automatically launch yakuake, the Quake like console application

Add a bash script in /home/.kde/Autostart

While (K)ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon has been released, and this edition includes the graphical desktop effects Compiz Fusion out of the box, here is a description how to install it on Kubuntu Feisty for those who haven’t upgraded yet.

- If you use a multi monitor setup, first verify that Xinerama is disabled. You should use Twinview instead.

- if you have an nvidia graphical card check if the following line is present in xorg.conf. if not, add it

Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “false”

- Remove any previous version of Compiz

sudo apt-get remove compiz-core desktop-effects

- Add the following source to /etc/apt/sources.list

# Treviño’s Ubuntu feisty EyeCandy Repository (GPG key: 81836EBF – DD800CD9)
# Many eyecandy 3D apps like Beryl, Compiz, Fusion and kiba-dock snapshots
# built using latest available (working) sources from git/svn/cvs.
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb feisty eyecandy
deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb feisty eyecandy

- Import the gpg keys from this apt source

gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 81836EBF

gpg --export --armor 81836EBF | sudo apt-key add -

-Install Compiz Fusion

sudo apt-get install compiz-kde compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-plugins-unofficial libcompizconfig-backend-kconfig

- Install the theme manager for Compiz Fusion. (This file is not yet released as an apt package, so you have to download it here and manually install it.

sudo dpkg -i fusion-icon_1.0-1.0_i386.deb

- Add the following line of code to automatically launch Compiz Fusion when your box boots

If you need more guidance, check this page

Some while ago I installed OSSec, the host-based Intrusion Detection System. The email notification functionality was not properly working however. Although sendmail is configured and running on my system I kept seeing the following error in /var/ossec/log/ossec.log

Here’s a checklist with some items to verify if you have this problem:

- Check that sendmail or postfix is installed (Duh)

- Verify the global ossec parameters in /var/ossec/etc/ossec.conf

- Verify that you have a valid domainname configured in /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts
I had the wouter-desktop hostname configured, and the – in the middle seems to cause some problems.

- Check /var/log/mail/mail.log to see possible sendmail or postfix errors.

- Check that your localhost is also configured for resolving local names in /etc/resolv.conf

- Check that your ISP is not blocking port 25 outbound. To fix this create a sendmail smarthost

After trying all solutions found on the web for configuring the internal wireless adapter of my Dell D600 laptop with integrated Broadcom BCM 4306, I simply have to conclude it is a no go at this time; on my laptop al least.

I tried:

- This bcm43xx-fwcutter solution and also this one

- the bcm43xx-firmware solution

- the bcm43xx-gtk-installer-0.1 solution

- The ndiswrapper solution

- to replace my BCM 4306 with another BCM 4306 card, and also with a BCM 4309 card

The device is listed with iwconfig and ifconfig, but when you scan for networks it just doesn’t find anything.

A short howto for installing vmware server in (K)ubuntu:

Edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

add the following line

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu feisty-commercial main

Run the apt-get update command

sudo apt-get update

Install VMWare server

sudo apt-get install vmware-server vmware-tools-kernel-modules

If that does not work for you, you might want to try this alternative method

If you are looking for a KDE application that fetches the tv schedule for you, take a look at Maxemum TV-Guide:

Maxemum TV-Guide is a KDE TV-guide. It is developed in C++, based on QT/KDE and uses XMLTV as it’s back end to grab listings. At present there are backends grabbing TV listings for Australia, Belgium and Luxemburg, Brazil, Britain and Ireland, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary and Romania, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, North America, Norway, Portugal, Reunion Island (France), South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

http://mtvg.sourceforge.net/

Have you ever wanted to spy see on what is going on in your home while you are away? Motion is a piece of open source software that acts as a motion detector. It enables you to set-up a webcam server that you can have all your cameras connected too, so you can view them remotely and also upload them to a remote server. Motion should run on most linux distributions but for this exercise the desktop version of Ubuntu linux is used.

Link

I finally managed to get Beryl working in Kubuntu Feisty. For some reason Beryl does not like a xinerama multimonitor setup. Here’s my howto for configuring a multi monitor setup with nvidia cards:

-install nvidia drivers

-verify they are working correctly with “glxinfo”

- disable xinerama, and enable twinview via “nvidia-settings” or by editing your xorg.conf:

Section “ServerFlags”
Option “Xinerama” “false”
Option “TwinView” “on”
Option “TwinViewOrientation” “Clone”
EndSection

- install Beryl: “sudo apt-get install beryl beryl-manager emerald-themes aquamarine”

- Reboot or reload Xorg by pressing ctrl-alt-backspace

- Launch Beryl with the “beryl” command

- If your title bar and min/max buttons are gone, launch “aquamarine –replace” or “emerald –replace”

- You can change the beryl settings by launching “beryl-manager”

I found this usefull tool for managing the up and download rate of my Internet connection: trickle

veugelenw@veugelenw-desktop:~$ trickle –help
Usage: trickle [-hvVs] [-d <rate>] [-u <rate>] [-w <length>] [-t <seconds>]
[-l <length>] [-n <path>] command …
-h Help (this)
-v Increase verbosity level
-V Print trickle version
-s Run trickle in standalone mode independent of trickled
-d <rate> Set maximum cumulative download rate to <rate> KB/s
-u <rate> Set maximum cumulative upload rate to <rate> KB/s
-w <length> Set window length to <length> KB
-t <seconds> Set default smoothing time to <seconds> s
-l <length> Set default smoothing length to <length> KB
-n <path> Use trickled socket name <path>
-L <ms> Set latency to <ms> milliseconds

“sudo apt-get install trickle”
or
http://monkey.org/~marius/pages/?page=trickle

LinuxMCE is a free, open source add-on to Ubuntu including a 10′ UI, complete whole-house media solution with pvr + distributed media, and the most advanced smarthome solution available. It is stable, easy to use, and requires no knowledge of Linux and only basic computer skills.

http://linuxmce.com/

Beryl and Compiz are 2 things you can install to enhance the visual effects in Linux.

On the Beryl Wiki is a guide available for installing Beryl on Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I have however not succeeded yet in successfully installing Beryl or Compiz on Kubuntu together with my Geforce 4 Ti 4200 nvidia driver…

Problems I had:

White screen after booting Kubuntu -> Solution: Reinstalling graphic card drivers
Kubuntu “system settings” display section gone -> No solution found

Direct rendering: no in glxinfo-> No solution found

Solution: Kubuntu Feisty Fawn reinstall from scratch…

Some links I found usefull while debugging:

KDE + Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) + COMPIZ
Install Beryl on Ubuntu Feisty with nVidia
Kubuntu Feisty in 3D (compiz) (Dutch)
Beryl & Official Compiz
Installing Xgl/Compiz (Nvidia) (Dutch)

edit: I found the sollution for my configuration. I documented it here