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Linux VMWare

Backtrack 4 Beta in Windows with VmWare Workstation

This is a tutorial on how to install and set up backtrack 4 beta using vmware.

Steps to log into Backtrack 4 beta:

  1. hit “play” button
  2. boot into backtrack 4 beta
  3. bt login: root
  4. password: toor
  5. startx

Steps for setting up your network card:

  • type in “/etc/init.d/networking start” before typing in “startx”

OR

  1. open terminal
  2. ifconfig eth0 up
  3. dhclient eth0
Categories
Linux

CamStudio – Free Streaming Video Software for Windows

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

Here are just a few ways you can use this software:
  • You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program
  • Or how about creating a set of videos answering your most frequently asked questions?
  • You can create video tutorials for school or college class
  • You can use it to record a recurring problem with your computer so you can show technical support people
  • You can use it to create video-based information products you can sell
  • You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you discover on your favourite software program, before you forget them

More on CamStudio | Download CamStudio

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Linux

FLV Player for Windows 7 and Vista – VLC media player

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player supporting most audio and video formats (H.264, Ogg, DivX, MKV, TS, MPEG-2, mp3, MPEG-4, aac, …) from files, physical media (DVDs, VCD, Audio-CD), TV capture cards and many network streaming protocols.

More info & download VLC Media Player.

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funny

Snowman – Snowwoman Snow Job (Blow Job)

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FFMPEG FFMPEG Examples

Use Google to find FREE music on the web

Use Google operators to find unprotected directories of audio files or files of type .mp3.

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Nickelback"

This will turn up several directory listings of Nickelback MP3’s. Replace “Nickelback” with the artist, genre or keyword of your liking.

Note: this is not intended to be used to download mp3’s illegally.

More:

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FFMPEG FFMPEG Examples WGET wget examples

Download mp3 (music) files with wget

wget -nd -r --no-parent -A.mp3 -A.wma http://www.domain.com/music/

Brief explanation of wget options:
-nd – don’t create directories
-r – recursively download
–no-parent – don’t ascend to the parent directory
-A – allows you to specify which types of accepted files should be downloaded. In this case, all files with the .wma and .mp3 file extension will be downloaded.

More:
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Linux Stop 7B

Bundling and Uploading an Amazon EC2 Windows AMI

Bundle the AMI
Log in to the Windows instance and customize it as desired.

In order to reduce the startup time, delete any temporary files on the instance using the Disk Cleanup tool, defragment your system using Disk Defragmenter, and zero out free space using sdelete -c C:.

On a computer where the API tools are installed, enter the following command:

ec2-bundle-instance <instance_id> -b <bucket_name> -p <bundle_name> -o <access_key_id> -w <secret_access_key>

<instance_id> is the name of the instance, <bucket_name> is the name of the bucket in which to store the AMI, and <bundle_name> is the common name for the files to store in Amazon S3.

Amazon EC2 shuts down the instance, saves it as an AMI so you can launch at any time in the future, then restarts it.

Example

ec2-bundle-instance i-69e8bc83 -b ami_images -p Web_Server_v3.5 -o W83UL9G462ZN7EAK -w S8QDx7zT6j5J2sM3fwG4v3=+=xq7sg5AeDzQ2rtZ4bW

Monitoring AMI Bundling
Bundling the AMI can take up to 30 minutes so be patient.  You can view the status with:

ec2-describe-bundle-tasks

Registering the AMI
Once the bundling is complete you must register the AMI, so Amazon EC2 can locate it and run instances based on it.

Note: If you make any changes to the source image stored in Amazon S3, you must re-register the image.

ec2-register ami_images/Web_Server_v3.5.manifest.xml

Amazon EC2 returns an AMI identifier, the value next to the IMAGE tag (ami-e597b4382 in the example) that you can use to run new instances with this new AMI.

More info

Categories
Linux

Installing Backtrack 4 beta on a USB – Video

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Hibernate Linux Windows 7

How to Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 7

The hibernate feature allows operating system to save and write the running state and contents of RAM as a file (c:hiberfil.sys) or partition to non-volatile storage such as a hard disk, before powering off the computer. Hibernation allows system to quickly restart and restore to the previous state when hibernation was invoked, instead of having to shut down, then restart applications.

In Windows 7, the hibernate option should be enabled by default, However, if you can’t find Hibernate option in the Start menu / power button, it can easily be enabled.  This works in Windows Vista, Windows 2008, 2003, etc.

How to Turn On or Enable Hibernate in Windows 7

  1. Open an elevated Command Prompt with administrator rights by typing cmd in Start / Search, and then hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter keyboard shortcut.  Or, select Run as Administrator from the cmd in search results or Start, Programs, Accessories, cmd.
  2. Type the following command, and hit Enter:

powercfg /hibernate on

The hibernate option should now be available in the Start menu, power button.

How to Turn Off and Disable Hibernate in Windows 7

  1. Open an elevated Command Prompt with administrator rights by typing cmd in Start / Search, and then hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter keyboard shortcut.  Or, select Run as Administrator from the cmd in search results or Start, Programs, Accessories, cmd.
  2. Type the following command, and hit Enter:

powercfg /hibernate off

Note: Windows does not support hibernation on system with 4GB or more RAM memory.

Related

Categories
Amazon Web Services AMI AWS EC2 AMI EC2 API ELB tools Linux SSH WGET Windows

Installing EC2 Command Line Tools on Windows

UPDATE (12-2016): See HowTo: Install AWS CLI on Both Windows and Linux for updated information on installing, configuring and using the AWS CLI unified tools.

NOTE: This tutorial contains information for both AMI and API command line tools along with ELB tools. Most users will need the API tools, some the ELB tools, and not many will need the AMI tools.

There are a number of GUI tools for working with Amazon EC2 services such as ElasticFox, RightScale and AWS Management Console.  However often you need to use the command line tools because you want to script a task, or access features that a GUI tool doesn’t provide.

There are several guides and tutorials on installing and configuring the command line tools on Linux, but not much for Windows.  So this aims to be THE GUIDE to setting up the EC2 API, ELB and EC2 AMI command line tools on Windows.

Prerequisite
The first requirement is to have Java 5 or later installed.  If you don’t already have it download and install from here.

AWS Command Line Tools Directory
I like to organize my programs a certain way so I installed the tools to c:adminaws.  You can install the tools wherever you like.  Note, this is where you may store your certificates, the services API files, etc.

Download Amazon command line tools
I used wget (for Windows) to download the files:

wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-api-tools.zip
wget http://ec2-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/ElasticLoadBalancing-2009-05-15.zip
wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-ami-tools.zip

Alternatively you could download one or both directly from your browser.  EC2 API Tools.  ELB Tools.  EC2 AMI Tools.

Unzip all three files. Each will unzip to separate directories, usually including the version number of the tool.  To simplify things I moved all files from their respective locations to the following directories:

c:adminawsec2-api-tools
c:adminawsec2-elb-tools
c:adminawsec2-ami-tools



Retrieve and Store AWS Certificates
Authentication to AWS uses a certificate and private key.  You will have to retrieve these files from AWS.

Logon to the AWS Console and scroll down to the X.509 area.  You may have to create a new certificate.  Once you do Amazon will provide you a Private Key File (pk-.pem) and a Certificate (cert-.pem).

KEEP THESE FILES PRIVATE.  Possession of these two files give you (or anyone else with them) access to your AWS account.

Configure Environment Variables
You need to configure your command line environment with a few environment variables. 

Method 1
This method is used to launch a command prompt with required settings.  These settings are available only for this session.  If you’d like to configure your system to have these settings available always and system-wide use method 2.

Create a batch file in c:adminaws called awsTools.bat.  Edit this file with the following text:

REM Path should contain binjava.exe
set JAVA_HOME=”C:Program Files (x86)javajre6″

REM Path to Primary Key and Certificate retrieved from AWS
set EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=C:AdminAWSpk-<Insert your key name here>.pem
set EC2_CERT=C:AdminAWScert-<Insert your key name here>.pem

REM Path to EC2 API, subfolders of bin and lib
set EC2_HOME=C:AdminAWSec2-api-tools
set PATH=%PATH%;%EC2_HOME%bin

REM Path to ELB API, subfolders of bin and lib
set AWS_ELB_HOME=C:AdminAWSec2-elb-tools
set PATH=%PATH%;%AWS_ELB_HOME%bin

REM Path to EC2 AMI, subfolders of bin and lib
set AWS_AMI_HOME=C:AdminAWSec2-ami-tools
set PATH=%PATH%;%AWS_AMI_HOME%bin

cls
cmd

Note: Make sure none of the path statements in this file end with a trailing slash.

Configure Environment Variables – Method 2
This method adds the necessary system variables to either your profile or system-wide and makes them available anytime you launch a command prompt.  Open the environment variables dialogue (right-click on My Computer, select System Properties, click Advanced tab, then Environment Variables button).  Add the following to either your user account or system variables section depending on your needs.

  • JAVA_HOME – C:Program Files (x86)javajre6
  • EC2_PRIVATE_KEY – C:AdminAWSpk-<Insert your key name here>.pem
  • EC2_CERT – C:AdminAWScert-<Insert your key name here>.pem
  • EC2_HOME – C:AdminAWSec2-api-tools
  • AWS_ELB_HOME – C:AdminAWSec2-elb-tools
  • AWS_AMI_HOME – C:AdminAWSec2-ami-tools
  • Add ;C:AdminAWSec2-api-toolsbin;C:AdminAWSec2-elb-toolsbin;C:AdminAWSec2-ami-toolsbin to your path

Explanation of System Variables

JAVA_HOME needs to be set to the appropriate path for your machine.

For example on my (64-bit Window 7) system java.exe is located at “C:Program Files (x86)javajre6binjava.exe” so I set JAVA_HOME to “C:Program Files (x86)javajre6”

EC2_Private_Key and EC2_Cert both are the location of the private key and certificate that you retrieved from the AWS website in the previous step.  You could rename the key and certificate for simplification.  If you have multiple AWS accounts all you need to do is modify these lines to switch between accounts.

EC2_HOME and AWS_ELB_HOME both point to the folders you unzipped the API into.  Both folders should have two subdirectories called bin and lib.  Bin will contain the cmd files of the different commands for that API.  You set the path variable to include these cmd files in your path so that you do not have to be in that directory to run them.

Now you only need to run the batch file to get a command line with the environmental variables set.  You also could permanently set these variables and have them available in any command window if you choose.  If you want to get fancy you could even put in the logic to set the paths based on the current directory of the batch file, and then put the folder on a thumb drive and carry it around.

Testing Your Setup
If you run awsTools.bat you should have a command prompt where you can run the EC2 tool.  A simple command to test is “ec2-describe-regions”:

c:adminaws>ec2-describe-regions

Results:
REGION  eu-west-1       ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
REGION  us-east-1       ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
REGION  us-west-1       ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com

If you receive an error running this command then you need to go back and verify your installation.

UPDATE: Recently I had to change my Amazon access credentials and created a new X.509 certificate.  When I tried to run any commands from the command line I received the message, “Client.AuthFailure: AWS was not able to validate the provided access credentials.”  So I just downloaded my new Private Key File (pk-.pem) and Certificate (cert-.pem) file replacing my existing ones, and, viola, I was back in action.

UPDATE (12-2016): See HowTo: Install AWS CLI on Both Windows and Linux for updated information on installing, configuring and using the AWS CLI unified tools.

Commands Documentation
Amazon documentation.

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