Ubuntu Geek: “Gufw is an easy, intuitive, way to manage your Linux firewall. It supports common tasks such as allowing or blocking pre-configured, common p2p, or individual ports port(s), and many others!”
If you’re the proactive type, you might want to keep tabs on the status of your hard disk’s health yourself rather than wait for Microsoft Windows Vista to recognize a problem.
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While not as common as they once were, file system and sector errors do occasionally occur in Microsoft Windows Vista. These types of errors can be the result of faulty hardware, power failures, or even software errors. In most cases, Vista will recognize hard disk problems and automatically schedule Check Disk to run the next time the computer is restarted.
However, if you’re the proactive type, you might want to keep tabs on the status of your hard disk’s health yourself rather than wait for Vista to recognize a problem. If so, you’ll be glad to know that you can use the GUI version of Check Disk to perform a hard disk analysis operation at any time. If during the analysis you discover problems, then you can use Check Disk to fix those problems.
In this edition of the Windows Vista Report, I’ll show you how to use the GUI version of Vista’s Check Disk tool to perform two hard disk analysis operations.
This blog post is also available in PDF format as a TechRepublic download.
While Check Disk is essentially a command-line tool, you don’t have to open a Command Prompt Window to run it. In fact you can launch it from within Computer. Once you have Computer open, simply right-click the hard disk that you want to check and select the Properties command from the context menu. When the Properties dialog box appears, select the Tools tab. Then, in the Error Checking panel, shown in Figure A, click the Check Now button.
When the UAC appears, you’ll need to respond appropriately. As soon as the UAC closes, you’ll see a Check Disk dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure B.
Typically, when you go to run Check Disk from the GUI, you select both the Automatically Fix File System Errors check box and the Scan For And Attempt Recovery Of Bad Sectors check box and click Start. When you do, the Check Disk GUI will schedule the DOS version to run at startup and prompt you to restart. Check Disk will then fix any problems it finds.
However, to run Check Disk in analysis mode, you’ll use other combinations of settings. Let’s take a closer look.
If you want to get a quick look at the state of your hard disk, clear both the check boxes and click Start. This method of running Check Disk is relatively quick and is completed in read-only mode, which means that it runs right from within the GUI interface. As it proceeds, you’ll see status messages appear in the center of the Check Disk dialog box that let you know what is happening at each stage of the operation, and, of course, the progress bar lets you know how long the operation will take, as shown in Figure C.
When the operation is complete, you’ll see a dialog box that contains a brief summary of the operation. However, if you click the See Details arrow, you’ll see a fairly detailed report of the operation, as shown in Figure D. As you can see, in this operation Check Disk goes through three stages as it examines your disk. (More on the stages in a moment.)
In addition to the report shown onscreen, Check Disk saves the report in the Application Event Log with a source code of Chkdsk and an Event ID of 26212, as shown in Figure E. The Event Log entry will contain the entire report as well as details about any changes that Check Disk made.
If you would like to perform a more thorough analysis of your hard disk, clear the Automatically Fix File System Errors check box and just select the Scan For And Attempt Recovery Of Bad Sectors check box, and then click Start.
Selecting just the Scan For And Attempt Recovery Of Bad Sectors check box will run this operation in read-only mode, which means that Check Disk will only scan for and identify bad sectors, it will not attempt to recover them. Read-only mode will also mean that Check Disk runs right from within the GUI interface, as shown in Figure F.
When the operation is complete, Check Disk will save the report in the Application Event Log as well as display the report in the dialog box, as shown in Figure G. As you can see, when performing a thorough analysis Check Disk goes through four of its five stages as it examines your disk.
When you run Check Disk in fix-and-recovery mode, it performs its operation in five stages — three major stages and two optional stages. However, when you run the basic analysis, Check Disk goes through only the three main stages. When you run the thorough analysis, Check Disk goes through the three main stages and the second optional stage.
(Note: My description of these stages is based on information culled from the Windows Vista Resource Kit.)
Now that you know how it works, are you likely to use the GUI version of Vista’s Check Disk tool to perform hard disk analysis operations? As always, if you have comments or information to share about this technique, please take a moment to drop by the Discussion area and let us hear from you.
Vincent Danen introduces two command-line programs, wall and mail, that allow you to send simple alerts and e-mail messages to users.
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The command line is a great environment for doing many things. It can be used to schedule commands, navigate directories, chain simple commands together to create complex commands, automate system monitoring, and more. The flexibility that the command line offers makes it worth investing the time into learning more about it, as its power far exceeds that of GUI operating environments.
CLI environments, especially with multi-user systems such as servers, provide a great way to communicate between users as well. Two tools in particular are of great value: wall, which will communicate messages on all active consoles, and mail, which will send e-mail via the command-line.
Wall is an interconsole “instant messenger” and is available on all Linux and UNIX systems. With it, you can broadcast alert messages, such as an impending system reboot or other maintenance process. Using wall is simple:
$ wall "just fooling around"
Broadcast message from vdanen (pts/16) (Mon Aug 4 20:47:03 2008):
just fooling around
Any user logged into the system will see the identical notice. The only exception is when a user has set their “message” flag off. For instance, to disable seeing these wall notices, use:
$ mesg n
$ mesg
is n
The mesg command takes exactly one of two arguments: y and n; if no argument is supplied, it shows the current message value.
Another useful tool is the mail command, which will send e-mail messages on the CLI. This can be used in conjunction with a command such as at to send reminder e-mails, or it can be used to send an alert when a task or command is complete. There are a few different providers of the mail command; some distributions use the mailx package, others use nail, others the original Berkely mail package. If mail doesn’t work as expected, read the mail(1) manpage. Most mail commands use the same syntax for the basics, however. To send an e-mail to an SMS relay to alert you of an upcoming meeting, use:
$ echo "20 minutes to meet with Sally." | /bin/mail -s "Meeting" sms@myhost.com
This will send an e-mail with the subject “Meeting” to sms@myhost.com; the body of the message will contain, “20 minutes to meet with Sally.” As has been illustrated, this can be used as a quick means of sending reminders, or it can be used to send the output of jobs when completed. The mail command takes standard input as the body of the message; other options can be used to specify CC and BCC recipients as well.
E-mail messages sent via mail are sent from the calling user on the system’s hostname; for instance, if the user account joe were sending this on the system foo.bar.org, then the e-mail would be seen to come from joe@foo.bar.org. Because of this, you may want to ensure proper message rules are in place that permit the relaying or reception of these addresses, or adjust the hostname of the computer accordingly.
Get the PDF version of this tip here.
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Vincent Danen introduces Linux file management alternatives, Gentoo, Krusader, and Midnight Commander. Here are the basics about each if you want to try something different.
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Many Linux users make use of the KDE or GNOME desktop environments and when it comes to file management, they don’t venture beyond using the environment-provided file management tools like Konqueror or Nautilus. Considering this is Linux, there are many other file management tools to choose from, some of which you may find preferable to the “defaults.”
One such file management tool is called Gentoo, not to be confused with the Linux distribution of the same name. Gentoo hasn’t been updated in a few years, but it is still a solid file manager. Some distributions include it, so it is just an apt-get or yum command away; for others that do not include it, all you need to build it from source are the GTK+ development files and libraries. The latter will be installed with any GNOME system. To build from source, it’s a ./configure; make; make install away from usability.
Gentoo is nice in that it is a GTK+-based application with a dual-paned file view, reminiscent of old tools like Total Commander or Norton Commander. It is extremely configurable with a powerful file recognition system that allows you to map what happens when you double-click a file type, select which icons belong to what types of files, etc.
For those who prefer using KDE, Krusader is another stellar file management tool. Like Gentoo, it is a dual-paned file management utility that is extremely customizable. The latest beta of Krusader is compatible with KDE4, whereas previous stable versions are written for KDE3. Some of Krusader’s notable features include impressive archive handling, advanced searching, an internal viewer/editor, file content comparisons and directory synchronization. It can also handle remote filesystems by using KIO slaves, which means it can mount SMB or FTP filesystems. Many distributions provide Krusader.
Finally, for those who want a file management tool very similar to Norton Commander and that operates on the CLI, Midnight Commander is the best choice. Midnight Commander is available for nearly all Linux distributions; the package may be named mc, which is also the name of the program. MC gives a dual-paned file view, each representing a different directory. When executed in a terminal under X, mouse clicks work, so if MC is your preference but you want to use it in a GUI, it’s still an option. Another nice feature of MC is that it still keeps a command-line open so you can use a combination of directory navigation and CLI commands, made even easier by using the tab key to switch active panes.
These are just three examples of many other file management, or “file commander” type programs available for Linux. Others include Tux Commander, XFE, and Gnome Commander. If the default file management tools don’t quite cut it, or if you prefer the dual-paned filesystem view, give one of these programs a try.
Get the PDF version of this tip here.
Vincent Danen is the Security Team Manager for Mandriva and lives in Canada. He has been writing about and developing on Linux for over 10 years.
Delivered each Tuesday, TechRepublic’s free Linux and Open Source newsletter provides tips, articles, and other resources to help you hone your Linux skills. Automatically sign up today!
Management shouldn’t simply ignore social networks because they might introduce some business risk. Rather, they should engage the right people to design an innovative solution, which provides additional business benefit while mitigating risk to an acceptable level.
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As I wrote in a previous post, using social networking technology (collaborative workspaces) to reach business objectives can be productive for the business and rewarding for employees. But like all business solutions, security managers must work with implementers and users to achieve a balance between usability and system assurance.
In this post, I look at functionality organizations might seek to implement in a collaborative workspace (CW) and a proposed acceptable use policy for using CWs in a health care organization.
Business requirements for a CW aren’t much different from those typically defined for any other process or solution. The following are requirements similar to those defined for a CW implemented by the Institute for Johns Hopkins Nursing (IJHN) Leadership Academy (IJHN Case Study):
CWs are not like an application database or department file shares. They are design around the principle of free, open exchange of ideas. However, the ability to share can also increase opportunities for data leakage, privacy concerns, or business liability issues. So before launching its first CW, an organization should consider the following:
The first step in consolidating these answers into a safe rollout of collaborative workspaces is writing a policy. The policy should address all the issues listed above. It should also include a clear statement about how the organization views CWs, their role, and management’s commitment to safe use.
I recently wrote a draft CW policy for a health care company. It reflects the unique culture of the organization, and management’s approach to dealing with security and privacy considerations. So it might not be an exact fit for your workplace, but it’s a good start.
Collaborative workspaces are driven by both the need for improved business productivity and how new entrants to the workforce share information, how they expect to communicate with each other. Organizations must address these issues by clearly defining how CWs will be used and how they will be managed.
Like all emerging technologies that change the way we work, management shouldn’t simply ignore CWs because they might introduce some business risk. Rather, they should engage the right people to design an innovative solution, which provides additional business benefit while mitigating risk to an acceptable level. Sound familiar?
