Monthly Archives: October 2008

Installing Tor in Ubuntu Hardy

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before i show you how to install tor in ubuntu hardy, i am going to explain a little bit what exactly tor is.

Tor is a software project that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Retrieved from torproject.org

So if you want more information go and visit torproject.org and you will be able to answer all your questions.  so now lets go and install tor in ubuntu.

Steps:

  1. Open your “Terminal” and type “sudo apt-get install tor”
  2. after tor is installed now you will need to install privoxy.  for that you will need to go to this page and download you system architecture version (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118&package_id=35042&release_id=627607).  in my case is privoxy_3.0.10-1_i386.deb.after having both programs install now is all about configuration of just one of them ;).
  3. now, on your “Terminal” make a copy of the configuration file from privoxy folder. in my case would be “sudo cp /etc/privoxy/config /etc/privoxy/config-backup”
  4. make a new file with “sudo nano /etc/privoxy/config”
  5. paste the following information:
    ”
    # Generally, this file goes in /etc/privoxy/config
    #
    # Tor listens as a SOCKS4a proxy here:
    forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
    confdir /etc/privoxy
    logdir /var/log/privoxy
    actionsfile standard # Internal purpose, recommended
    actionsfile default # Main actions file
    actionsfile user # User customizations
    filterfile default.filter

    # Don’t log interesting things, only startup messages, warnings and errors
    #logfile logfile
    #jarfile jarfile
    #debug 0 # show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
    debug 4096 # Startup banner and warnings
    debug 8192 # Errors – *we highly recommended enabling this*

    user-manual /usr/share/doc/privoxy/user-manual
    listen-address 127.0.0.1:8118
    toggle 1
    enable-remote-toggle 0
    enable-edit-actions 0
    enable-remote-http-toggle 0
    buffer-limit 4096
    ”
    Retrieve from https://wiki.torproject.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/PrivoxyConfig

  6. exit out from the program (nano NOT terminal) and save it.
  7. go to this site to install the tor plug in for firefox.  Tor Plug in.
  8. after firefox is restarted click on the “Tor Disabled” button in the bottom to enable it, and to check that it works properly go to check tor installation.

if it works, congrats.  if it doesn’t sorry.  go back and check this tutorial or go to tor website to get support.

Blackberry and Exchange without Blackberry Enterprise Server

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since february i’ve been a blackberry user.  i really like my black berry pearl 8130, but the only thing that i don’t like at all is the memory.  it is alright, i could live resetting my blackberry so my phone log will not be deleted.  well anyways, sinse i got the blackberry i’ve all my email being send to my blackberry.  now, i am working at this new company and i just configure microsoft exhange.  so guess what?! i would need a blackberry enterprise in order for me to sync my blackberry with an exchange server.  i don’t think that my company would like to pay $2,000 for a blackberry server that will sync my blackberry and theirs.

i started to do some research and i found this web How to set up a Blackberry with Exchange (without using Blackberry Enterprise server) and i tested it but it didn’t work. but, i found a way that you can configure your blackberry and exchange for free and be able to send and receive emails to your blackberry.  it is really easy to do and all you need is to do some research about your phone provider.

Steps:

  1. go to google.com and search for “blackberry webmail sprint”
    just change sprint for your phone provider ex. verizon, alltell, etc.
  2. now you will have bunch of search queries. click on the one that is related to your phone provider in my case is http://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=sprint
  3. login with your user name and password
    if you don’t have. create one.
  4. after you login, click on “Set Up Account”
  5. put your email address and password that you want to setup
  6. then, click next
    wait patiently… until is done TRYING to setup your account
  7. now, click on “I will provide the settings to add this email account.” THEN click “Next”
  8. select either, “This is my personal email account.” OR “This is my work email account.”
    in my case is work email
  9. now this is the part that is tricky. the way i did it was selecting “Outlook® Web Access”.  the reason why i chose that is because my URL of the company is not going to change. so select that one and then click “Next”
  10. now input, the exchange URL, user name, password, email address and mailbox name.  in Exchange, the user name and mailbox name are going to be the same. but, of course this depends on how your Exchange server is setup. in order words, ask your server administrator ;).
  11. then, click “Next”, and congrats you are done ;).

after setting up your blackberry you should receive an emails saying that your blackberry has been compleate configure and you should be receiving emails like in 20 min.  if this didn’t happen, go back and READ CAREFULLY.

Missing HAL.DLL

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last night i was restarting my company’s server (sbs 2003) because i moved couple of big files around and a lot of going on with exchange server.  well, i restarted and 1hr after i could not login remotely.  this morning when i came in i saw this error message on my company’s server screen:

“Winows <<root>>\System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt: Please re-install a copy of the above file.”

also could appear like:

“Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file.”
“Cannot find \Windows\System32\hal.dll”
“Cannot find hal.dll”

i was like, “Ok, easy fix.”  when i started researching about this problem things got a little bit hairy and ugly :(.  i spend half day trying to fix this problem and i finally got it fix.

first of all, i would like to explain to you what hal.dll does.  hal mean Hardware Abstraction Layer and it is responsable of loading the hardware and other drivers on the computer.  what causes this file to either be missed or corupt it could be hardware problems.  also, missing boot.ini or damage hard drive.

so in order for me to fix this i followed these two steps:
Option 1:

Boot from your CD and follow the directions to start Recovery Console. Then:

Attrib -H -R -S C:\Boot.ini
DEL C:\Boot.ini
BootCfg /Rebuild
Fixboot

Option 2:

Boot from your CD and follow the directions below to start Recovery Console.

Insert the Setup compact disc (CD) and restart the computer. If prompted, select any options required to boot from the CD.
When the text-based part of Setup begins, follow the prompts; choose the repair or recover option by pressing R.

If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot system, choose the installation that you need to access from the Recovery Console.
When prompted, type the Administrator password. (if you didn’t create one try pressing enter).

At the system prompt, type Recovery Console commands; type help for a list of commands, or help commandname for help on a specific command.

Most likely you will need to expand the file from the CD. The command would be expand d:\i386\hal.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll. Substitute d: for the drive letter of your CD. Once you have expanded the file type “exit” to exit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.

Retrieved from http://kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm

and it did not work at all.  so i decided to do some more research.  after an hour of research i found out that this problem is some thing that could corrupt my OS if is not done the right way.  so in order for me to fix this problem i decided to repair windows.  if you want to this step you are running the risks of loosing any special data if the setup installation gets corrupts.

Steps:

  1. boot up your OS CD
  2. select install windows
  3. select reinstall windows
  4. then fill out the requested information and then your computer should be back and running like this never happened

if these steps are not well explained you could visit this site and perform those steps one by one at http://pcsupport.about.com/od/operatingsystems/ss/instxprepair1.htm.

Fix NTFS Hard Drive

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so the other day my friend lend me his external hard drive so i could import some big files that he had on it.  apparently he didn’t click on safe remove drive under windows and he disconnected the hard drive just like that.  i say this because when ever i was trying to open the hard drive windows was saying that the drive still being used by another application.  i couldn’t started in windows for nothing.

so i decided to move do the same thing in linux (ubuntu).  apparently i was receiving the same error.  after 30 minutes of trying i was getting tired and i was about to return his drive back and make him eject safely his hard drive.  well… before doing that i thought… mmmnnn i wonde if there any free app that i could use in linux in order to fix this problem.  guess what? YES, there is.

this app is called ntfs fix, and what it does is, fixes your ntfs drive.  i installed in ubuntu using the following command:
$ sudo apt-get install ntfsfix
then after installing this app all i had to do was running the following commands:
$ sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdc1
$ sudo ntfs /dev/sdc1
where sdc1 is the external hard drive.  then i mounted the drive and it load like a baby.  well, i hope that this helps 😉

How to Reset your Blackberry Pearl

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the other day i was having problems with my blackberry pearl 8130 so i decided to wipe every off and start from scratch.  first thing that i did was download all the apps that i had installed.  i really do not remember names well enough so i wrote them all down on a piece of paper.  then i backed up my contacts and calendar appointments using “Desktop Manager” and then NEW BB boy.  then if you are sure 😉 follow the following steps:

  1. Backup your bb using “Desktop Manager”
    Disconnect the device from your computer and do the following..
  2. Goto “Options”
  3. then “Security Options”
  4. then “General Settings”
  5. then hit menu key
  6. then “Wipe Handheld”
  7. now you will be prompt to type the word “blackberry”
  8. confirm, and you are done

now all you have to do is to wait until the blackberry restart it self and now you will have a blackberry like the first time you got it. good luck.