Technology Facts

On torrents sites cd images are available in many different format. The .mdf/.mds is one of those formats. To extract the .iso image from .mdf/.mds formatted files you need to have a specialized utility. Daemon Tools is one such freeware utility.

Basically Daemon Tools is a virtual cd drive program. You can use Daemon Tools virtual cd program to mount .mdf/.mds formatted file and directly run cd from this virtual cd drive.

You may download Daemon Tools utility clicking on this link.

Webmin is a web based interface for system administration for Linux. It is very convenient for system administration of commonly used services like Apache, DNS , SMTP, file sharing etc. Webmin consists of simple webserver and a number of CGI programs written in perl language. Hence before installing Webmin we have to prepare Ubuntu by installing perl and its associated libraries. To install the required perl packages, type the following command in the terminal,

sudo apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl

after installing required perl packages download Webmin package with following command,

wget -c http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.441_all.deb

Next install this downloaded package of Webmin with following command,

sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.441_all.deb

Now you can start using Webmin by typing a following URL in your web browser,

https://localhost:10000

Sometime blogger likes to remove the Navbar from the blogger blog. But if you are not using FTP to post to the blog it is actually against TOS of blogger.com. So make sure that you are not violating TOS before removing the NAvbar. To remove the Navbar, log on to your blogger account. Next select Layout from the dashboard and Edit HTML tab. Now add following code to your blogger template,

#navbar-iframe {
display: none !important;
}

The newly added code to the blogger template is shown in a RED font. After modifying the template code do not forget to save the template. Now next time when you will view your blog, you will not see the Navbar.

On a dual or multi boot system when you install Windows XP again it overwrites Grub boot loader with its own boot loader. To restore Grub follow the steps as described below,

1. Start your computer and boot with Ubuntu Live CD. Once Ubuntu Linux is loaded, open terminal and type sudo grub at the prompt.
2. Now prompt will change to grub>
3. Next type find /boot/grub/stage1 at the grub> prompt and press enter.
4. The location of grub on different partitions will be shown as a result of find /boot/grub/stage1 command.
5. Select the partition on which your Grub is located e.g. my grub loader for Ubuntu on first hard disk on partition 2 was shown as (hd0,1).
6. Next choose this partition as root partition by typing root (hdd, partition No.), e.g. in my case I typed root(hd0,2) at the command prompt.
7. Now to restore Master Boot Record type setup (hdd) at the command prompt e.g. in my case I typed setup (hd0).
8. Once the MBR is installed on the hard disk, you can exit grub> prompt by typing quit and pressing enter.

Next reboot the computer without Ubuntu Live CD and you will get your usual Grub Menu.

There are many people who download cd/ DVD images from the internet, or have CD/DVD images on their hard disks. Here is one program called MagicDisc which is must for them. MagicDisc allows you to use almost all CD/DVD image without burning them onto CD or DVD in order to easily access your favorite games, music, or software programs. It works like a real CD/DVD-ROM. You can run programs, play games, or listen to music from your virtual CD-ROM. Allowing you to run your game images at over 200x faster than from a conventional CD/DVD-ROM.

Following CD/DVD formats are supported by Magic Disc:-

• BIN (CDRWin)
• IMA/IMG (Generic disk images)
• CIF (Easy CD Creator)
• NRG (Nero - Burning ROM)
• IMG/CCD (CloneCD)
• MDF/MDS (Fantom CD)
• VCD (Farstone Virtual Drive)
• VaporCD (Noum Vapor CDROM)
• P01/MD1/XA (Gear)
• VC4/000 (Virtual CD)
• VDI (Virtuo CD Manager)
• C2D (WinOnCD)
• BWI/BWT (BlinkWrite)
• CDI (DiscJuggler)
• TAO/DAO (Duplicator)
• PDI (Instant Copy)

To download MagicDisc click on this link.

When your are on vacation or away from the computers & Internet and not checking and answering your emails, you can let the people know you are away by setting an auto responder in Gmail. It is a very convenient feature to use. It is basically like putting Not At Home sign on your door when you are away from home. Vacation responder feature sends automated reply to incoming mail.

To use this facility log on to your Gmail account. Then click on Settings. Under Settings tab select General tab. Locate Vacation responder on the General tab.

Once you have located Vacation responder on the general tab, to activate vacation responder feature select the option Vacation responder on using the radio button. Now type the subject and message in the text boxes provided. You can also reply to only those people who are in your address book and avoid replying to news letters by checking the check box Only send a response to people in my contact. That's all. Now whenever you will get a mail, automatic reply will be sent. To switch off vacation responder facility simply select the option Vacation Responder off using the radio button under Settings->General->Vacation responder.

I have a dual boot computer with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. Sometimes I work in Windows XP and sometimes in Ubuntu. When I am working in Ubuntu I can easily access the windows partition from Ubuntu. In contrast to working in Ubuntu when I used to work in Windows XP I was not able to access my ext3 based Ubuntu Linux partitions which caused a lot of inconvenience. Then I came to know about the utility called EXT2FSD which allows you to mount ext3 partitions.  I downloaded the latest version of this utility and installed it under Windows XP.  The version of EXT2FSD I am using is 0.46a. Although the support for journalizing file system is still under development, in this version of Ext2FSD ext3 journal check and replay is implemented. 

EXT2FSD works as a windows driver for ext3 based Linux partitions. Using this utility you can easily mount ext2/ext3 based Linux  partitions under Windows. Ext2FSD also allows to allocate drive letters to the mounted ext2/ext3 based partitions. When these Linux partitions are mounted under Windows you can access these partitions from My Computer as any other drive. You can read as well as write to these partitions.

To go to the download page of EXT2FSD click on this link.

When you want to design and promote a new website, you need to find out the keywords that can generate maximum traffic from the search engines. For this you are interested in the most profitable keywords for your niche. Manual research for keywords by analyzing each keyword by going to wordtracker and then to the search engine to estimate traffic can be quite time consuming. You can avoid this by using automatic keyword research tools specially developed for keyword research. Most of these keyword research tools are quite expensive. Therefore if you need a keyword research tool to find a profitable niche which is free and easy to use then here is one such tool called Keyword Buzz which can be downloaded for free and is quite easy to use.

Special features of Keyword Buzz:-

1. With Keyword Buzz you can find profitable keywords for your niche or any other niche
2. You can analyze your competition in three major search engines
3. You can find low competition keywords for high search engine placement.

With keyword Buzz you can find out how many searches are being done daily for a particular keyword. Keyword Buzz also shows you how many results are available in Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines for this particular keyword. This is how you can estimate supply and demand for any keyword which is very important when analyzing keywords for a profitable niche.

To go to download page of Keyword Buzz click on this link.

If you are a programmer, developer or a person just learning to program in C and C++ you would require the compilers for C and C++. It's very easy to install compilers for C and C ++ on Ubuntu Linux. Just type the following command,

sudo aptitude install build-essential

As you are using sudo command you will be asked to enter your password. So just enter your user account password and C & C++ compilers will be installed.

To invoke C compiler you have to use cc or gcc command from the command prompt and to invoke C++ compiler you have to use g++ command.

These days many PCs and Laptops like EEE PC come with pre-installed Linux Operating system.  Many people just use these Linux based computers for browsing the web, sending  & receiving email and for messenger based chats. Most of these computers are single user, stand alone computers.  Linux based computer can be made more secure defining who can access it and who cannot. This basic security hack works even when you are not behind a firewall.

To make your Linux based computers more secure all you have to do is to edit the files which allow and deny the access to the local computer from remote computer. These files are /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny. In /etc/hosts.allow you can define which host i.e.  computer has permission to access which service on the local machine. In /etc/host.deny you can define which services on the local host (machine) are denied to which remote host. This is a very basic form of security . By editing just these two files and by adding the lines as shown below you can make you Linux box more secure. Just follow the following procedure to make your standalone Linux box more secure.

1. Login as a root user.
2. Edit file /etc/hosts.allow and add following line to it:- ALL:127.0.0.1
3. Now save /etc/hosts.allow and open /etc/hosts.deny for editing.
4. Add following line to /etc/hosts.deny :- ALL:ALL

There are times you  would like to browse the web without leaving a trace on your computer, so that others spying on you would not know anything about the places on Internet you were visiting. In other words what  you would like to do is to browse the web in privacy, This can be feature can be added to Firefox web browser by installing a special addon called Stealther. What Stealther does is disable the following:-

• cookies
• Browsing history
• Browsing history in the address bar
• Disk cache
• History of downloaded files
• Information saved about forms
• Sending ReferrerHeader
• Recently closed Tab list

These option gets cleared only when you are browsing privately. In other words the information saved before your private session remains unaffected.
This add-on works with Firefox browser versions 1 to 3.
To go to the download page of the Stealther download page, click on this link.

If you would like to protect your Microsoft Word documents with a password, this blog post will show you how to it. Basically you will be able to add a password protection for document opening and document modifying. Follow the following procedure to protect your document in Microsoft  Word.

1. Create or open your existing document in Microsoft Word. Next click on Save As menu item from File menu. A box with title Save As will open as shown in in the snapshot. Enter a file name for your document in text field provided.                                                                     
2. Next in top right of this box click on Tools and select on click on Security Options from the list as shown.
3. Now the box with title Security will open as shown in the following snapshot. Type the password to open and password to modify in the textfields provided. After entering this information click on OK.
4. A box will pop up asking you to confirm the password to open the document  Type the password to open the document in the text field and click on OK.                                           
5. Now again a confirm password box will pop up asking you to confirm password for modifying the document. Enter the password in the text field provide and click on OK.                                       
6. Next you will be back to file Save As box. Click  on Save.                                         

Now your document will be password protected.You will require  passwords to open and modify the document. Although your document is now password protected, remember that this measure of security is limited as there are many programs on the net to crack the passwords.

There are many people who would like to install and use Linux operating system. But these people find the installation process very difficult. Many a times replacing your old windows operating system is also out of question.  This is the main reason why people are scared to wipe out windows completely and try out Linux. What these people would like instead is an application which can be installed as a normal windows operation and could be uninstalled easily should the need arise.  To satisfy the needs of those who find it difficult to install Linux, there is new utility called Wubi.

Wubi runs as a windows application allowing you to install Linux. You just need to choose few options and then you are through. First Select the drive on which you want to install Ubuntu (there is no need to repartition your hard disk). Then select the the installation size. Yo also have a choice of installing from different flavors of Ubuntu viz. Ubuntu,Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Mythbuntu.  You have a choice of language selection. English is the default language. Then you have to enter a username and password of your choice for the Ubuntu Linux. After the installation is complete you get an option to boot into your Ubuntu Linux by selecting an option in your windows boot menu.

To run Wubi effectively you need 256 MB of RAM, 5 GB harddisk space. Wubi runs on following platforms:- Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista

Wubi just like Ubuntu costs absolutely nothing and is free from spyware and malware. You may download Wubi from the following download link.

To go to the download page of Wubi click on this link.

In  UNIX & Linux, there is a superuser account named root. This is equivalent of Administrator in Windows. The superuser  has privileges to do anything and everything, and thus  using this superuser status to do daily can be dangerous. As root you could type a command incorrectly and destroy the system e.g rm -f  * .  Because of this reason it is better to do day to day work, as a normal user with limited privileges and use a special command sudo to run the task which require superuser privileges.

While installing Ubuntu, the installation program doesn't ask for the root account and by default the root account password is locked. Due to this reason you can not login as root directly or use the substitute user su command. However it is possible to run the tasks that require superuser privileges with sudo command as the the root account still exists physically. This allows normal user to run the certain tasks that require root privileges without knowing the root password. Sudo commands also needs a password which is your normal user account password and not the root password.

But some  system administrators  feel  that they should always have a proper access to the super user account. They feel uncomfortable if they do not have proper access to the root account.

You can enable the root account password by using sudo. All one needs to do is to log on to Ubuntu as normal user and give the following command,

sudo passwd

At first you will be asked for your normal user password and then the new password for the root account. After typing the new root account password your root account password gets activated. Now with this new root account password you can directly log on to Ubuntu as a root user and become a superuser.