Author Archives: djlaube

Google Apps – Xerox Scan to Email

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Switched to Google Apps and now can’t get your Xerox printers to scan to email? It’s because Google’s servers require you to use SSL when sending email and the Xerox’s can’t send by SSL. To get it working, you’ve got two options (#2 is the far easier option):

1. You can use a program called Stunnel to accept the Xerox’s SMTP transfer and transmit it to Google via a secure connection. More info here.

2. Google actually accepts non-SSL SMTP connections on one of their servers, aspmx.l.google.com on port 25. Set the Xerox to send via that and set your username and password to a Google Apps account.

via Google Apps Xerox Scan to Email.

Enabling the Root Password in Ubuntu 11.10 (instead of using sudo)

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Thanks to the following site, I’m able to use the “root” login on Ubuntu 11.10.
http://www.debuntu.org/2006/04/24/34-ubuntu-default-root-password-or-the-sudo-way 

Copied below for local reference:

Root is created without predefined password, it does not have a password, but it does not have an empty password either, you just can’t login!!!

I actually like to be logged as root when I’ve got many this to do. I find sudo usefull when only one or two actio are to be done, but when doing administration task, typing sudo all the time just drive me cray :) .

One way to gain root prompt is to launch a shell as root. Therefore, using sudo you can type:

:~$ sudo sh
Password:
sh-3.1#

And there you are, you have a root shell.

If you want to be able to login as root, you need to define a password for root:

:~$ sudo passwd
Password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:

Now you can login as root with su.

 

How to Install Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 11.10

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Found this very helpful article on how to do this:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-gnome-shell-in-ubuntu-11-10-oneiric-ocelot.html

Copied for local reference below from the above site, which I also added to.

GNOME Shell is the defining technology of the GNOME 3 user experience. It provides core interface functions like switching to windows and launching applications. GNOME Shell takes advantage of the capabilities of modern graphics hardware and introduces innovative user interface concepts to provide a delightful and easy to use experience.

Install Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 11.10

 

Open the terminal and run the following command

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

This will complete the installation.

After it completes, issue the command: reboot
and the system will restart so you can follow the below. If you don’t get to the screen as shown below, you can have the system automatically start Gnome, by typing in the following command:

sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults -s gnome-shell

Also, here’s the basic commands to change the start up on your Ubuntu box to go to the Desktop and not the Terminal automatically. Here it is…

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install gdm
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Will take a while to install but worked for me..

Now when booting the system, if you want to login in to gnome shell desktop you need to select GNOME from the login Screen

Once you loggedin you should see similar to the following screen

You can improve your gnome shell desktop looks with nice themes

Installing themes

Once you have downloaded your theme extract them to their respective location.

Extract Gnome shell theme and GTK 3 theme to ~/.themes
Extract icon theme to ~/.icons
Extract custom font to ~/.fonts

Note: ~/ is a shorthand for your home folder. So ~/.themes is referring to the /home/username/.themes folder.

Making a Bootable USB Stick on an Apple Mac OS X from an ISO

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This quick how-to will show you how to make a bootable USB stick from a downloaded ISO file using an Apple Mac OS X.

Note: this procedure requires an .img file that you will be required to create from the .iso file you download.

TIP: Drag and Drop a file from Finder to Terminal to ‘paste’ the full path without typing and risking type errors.

  1. Download the desired file
  2. Open the Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/ or query Terminal in Spotlight)
  3. Convert the .iso file to .img using the convert option of hdiutil:
    hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o /path/to/target.img /path/to/source.iso)
  4. Note: OS X tends to put the .dmg ending on the output file automatically.
    Rename the file by typing:
    mv /path/to/target.img.dmg /path/to/target.img
  5. Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices
  6. Insert your flash media
  7. Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)
  8. Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)
  9. Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m (replace /path/to/downloaded.img with the path where the image file is located; for example, ./ubuntu.img or ./ubuntu.dmg).
    • Using /dev/rdisk instead of /dev/disk may be faster.
    • If you see the error dd: Invalid number '1m', you are using GNU dd. Use the same command but replace bs=1m with bs=1M.
    • If you see the error dd: /dev/diskN: Resource busy, make sure the disk is not in use. Start the ‘Disk Utility.app’ and unmount (don’t eject) the drive.
  11. Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes
  12. Now the USB stick is ready. Boot the device that you want from the USB stick.

Apple – OS X Lion 10.7.3 released with Safari 5.1.3, Wi-Fi bug fix

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The third update to OS X Lion, 10.7.3, has been released and is now available in Software Update. A list of some of 10.7.3′s fixes are below. Of potentially greatest interest is the fix that purports to “resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep” — I know both of my Macs have fallen prey to this bug several times under Lion, and it’s been a fairly widespread issue. Hopefully this bug has indeed been squashed once and for all.

The OS X Lion v10.7.3 Update includes Safari 5.1.3 and fixes that include:

Add Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian language support
Address issues when using smart cards to log into OS X
Address compatibility issues with Microsoft Windows file sharing
Address an issue printing Microsoft Word documents that use markup
Address a graphics performance issue after sleep on some earlier iMacs that use ATI graphics
Resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep
Address an issue that may prevent Safari from opening before joining a wireless network
Fix a potential issue authenticating to an SMB DFS share
Include RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras
OS X 10.7.3 is available via Software Update, or you can download it directly from Apple’s support site.

In case it’s useful, the 10.7.3 Combo Updater can be found here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1484

Microsoft – Official PST to Exchange Import Tool

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Microsoft has just announced they have released a tool that allow admins to automatically crawl users computers and import PST files into Exchange Online or Exchange 2010.

Download http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=28767

Thanks to the following blog for the info:
http://www.grouppolicy.biz/2012/01/out-now-official-pst-to-exchange-import-tool/

 

Lewan is now a Citrix Platinum Partner!

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Lewan joins a short list of 31 companies throughout the entire United States as a Citrix Platinum level partner! Congrats to our Enterprise System and Storage group for all of their hard work to make this possible!

Here’s a link to our company profile on the Citrix Partner website:
http://www.citrix.com/partners/locator/member/3061962

If you need assistance with Citrix or a virtualization solution, including virtual desktop, contact your Lewan Sales Executive to get started.

VMware vSphere 5 – No Jumbo frames on your Management Network!

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Found some very helpful information over on Duncan’s website Yellow Bricks.com regarding the management network and jumbo frames, on vSphere 5.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/01/20/no-jumbo-frames-on-your-management-network/

For our reference, I’ve copied the content below:
“Another thing to check if you experience this error is to see if you have jumbo frames enabled on the management network, since this interferes with HA communication.”

This is document here in a note: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2006729

To make it crystal clear: disable jumbo frames on your management network with vSphere 5.0 as there’s a problem with it! This problem is currently being investigated by the HA engineering team and will hopefully be resolved.

Microsoft Office 365 – How-to Reset All User Passwords

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Obviously this isn’t something that you would do a lot, but in case you need to know how, here’s how you can reset all user passwords in a Microsoft Office 365 environment:

Help on accessing Office 365 powershell:
http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/Office365-enterprises/hh124998.aspx

Once your connected run the following commands:
Import-Module msonline

Connect-MsolService -cred $cred

Get-Command -Module msonline

Get-msoluser |set-msoluserpassword -newpassword “password” -forcechangepassword $false

That’s it! :-)

Microsoft Excel – Rounding Numbers to Nearest Whole Number

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I needed to round up a number in Excel to the nearest whole number. I found this helpful article that discusses rounding numbers:
http://www.ozgrid.com/Excel/excel-rounding.htm

But I also needed to round up the number, which was generated by a formula. So here’s the formula that worked:
=ROUNDUP(SUM(Input!D65:F65)/100,0)
This formula will round up the result of the SUM calculation.
The ,0 following the SUM calculation is part of the ROUNDUP formula.