September 2006 Archives

I mentioned my friend Brenda, a fairly courageous computer user to begin with, was getting started with Ubuntu. In about 45 minutes on the phone one Saturday, we installed the operating system on a clean hard drive we had purchased for her the last time I visited.

She doesn't have the nice easy HughesNet device with an Ethernet interface yet, so she ran into problems setting up networking. We expect them to ship the new device any day now, she seems pretty excited.

I am not planning to do anything until I get the Hughes modem......I don't want to mess up the ubuntu! At some point I will go ahead and explore the dialup connection but right now I'll just keep everything just as it is.

John, this looks like it is going to have or can add everything I need...

Christian Seifert has investigated a series of on-going attempts to login to Unix servers on the Internet, and he has publish the report entitled Analyzing malicious SSH login attempts at Security Focus.

This caught my eye because I have recently seen evidence of this that I do not ordinarily see. Not only that but since I was on vacation, the person keeping an eye on things saw it too. There is nothing earth shattering about the techniques described in the report, but the analysis and narrative of the investigation was very interesting to me as a systems administrator.

I am working on a couple of small new things right now, but the one that actually interests me the the most at the moment is the conversion of a couple friends to Linux from Windows. This started with my wife's Windows computer going belly-up, and all I had was an old Dell with Ubuntu on it that I was playing around with.

I gave it to her to use, and she didn't complain. So I left it there. She uses Open Office Writer and Calc with no problem. She used Firefox on Windows, so that's no big deal. She barely notices the lack of an Exchange server now that she has migrated from Outlook to Evolution .

And believe me, I feel pretty silly now that I have my own private Exchange server. (At least she still uses the Windows file services there, and the HP network printer was no problem either.)

Now I am working with my friend Brenda long distance to get her computer in VA up and running, and connected to DirectWay, Hughes Net's residential offering. I'll let you know how that works out.

You may have noticed a little new life has been put into the Advisor Bits Regional Web Directory, and I just used the new Feeds.lite widget to put the last five listings on the front page. (At the top of the right column on the front page.)

Carol Hargis who also works with JSW4.NET has recently been adding new links to businesses and organizations in Chatham NY.