Google 2 factor authentication

To those of you who may like or not like Google I have to admit this is an awesome thing they have created.

Their 2step or 2factor authentication. Having decided to set  it up they have one use codes you can use to gain access when you do not have cell or smartphone function. You can create secure machines. And you can re-sync key devices easily.

I had known about it for some time but never really delved into it. So today I did after reading about Mat Honan's experience with getting his apple/amazon accounts compromised. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking

Bad things happened to him. And this made me think about how many services I use from Google. How many accounts link back to it? And what that would really mean.

Well I'm done; time to enable the enhanced security. But not blindly. I have worked with Blizzards mobile authenticator, as well as Star Wars Knights of the old republic.

Both of these companies have mobile authentication. But I have to say it works but is not the best experience.

Doing some research I found this article: http://cadince.com/3-ways-to-move-google-authenticator/

It’s awesome! The Google authenticator has a key code, this key can be saved and re-used so when freaks like me decide to do something less than kosher to their digital device you can reset and move forward without issue.

This is in addition to the one use codes you can enable/print to keep in your wallet or in your safe at home or wherever. Wonderful!

So if you have Google accounts, and there is ANYTHING in those accounts you could not afford to lose, then your path should lead you to question your overall account security.

https://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1066447

Think about where your data is, and how people can get to it.

Sfc (System File Checker)

ok There are times when things get horribly weird with windows. you have a broken or missing DLL handful of other issues can come to mind.

End result you need to replace a DLL with a good version.

Do not download one, save your self the hack of grabbing of the install media. use sfc and it can do all of that in one go.

Tim Fisher posted this on pcsupport.about.com and i really dont need to retype it all. so take a look and enjoy!

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termss/p/sfc-command-system-file-checker.htm

Here is an excerpt of the text just inc case the link breaks.



Sfc (System File Checker)
By Tim Fisher, About.com Guide


What is the Sfc Command?:

The sfc command is a Command Prompt command that can be used to verify and replace important Windows system files.

System File Checker is a very useful tool to use when you suspect issues with protected Windows files like many DLL files.

Sfc Command Syntax:

sfc [/scannow] [/verifyonly] [/scanfile=file] [/verifyfile=file] [/offwindir=win] [/offbootdir=boot] [/?]

Tip: See How To Read Command Syntax if you're not sure how to interpret the sfc command syntax above.

/scannow = This option instructs sfc to scan all protected operating system files and repair as necessary.

/verifyonly = This sfc command option is the same as /scannow but without repairing.

/scanfile=file = This sfc option is the same as /scannow but the scan and repair is only for the specified file.

/offwindir=win = Used with other sfc options to define the Windows directory (win) when using sfc offline.

/offbootdir=boot = Similar to /offwindir, this sfc option is used to define the boot directory (boot).

[/?] = Use the help switch with the sfc command to show detailed help about the command's several options.

Tip: You can save the output of the sfc command to a file using a redirection operator. See How To Redirect Command Output to a File for instructions or check out Command Prompt Tricks for more tips like this.

Sfc Command Examples:

sfc /scannow
In the above example, the System File Checker utility is used to scan and then automatically replace any corrupt or missing system files. The /scannow option is the most commonly used switch for the sfc command.

See How To Use SFC /Scannow to Repair Protected Windows Operating System Files for more information on using the sfc command in this way.

sfc /scanfile=c:\windows\system32\ieframe.dll
Here, the sfc command is used to scan ieframe.dll and then repair it if an issue is found.

sfc /verifyonly
Using the sfc command with the /verifyonly option, System File Checker will scan all protected files and report any issues but no changes are made.

Important: You may need access to your original Windows DVD or CD to allow file repairs.

Sfc Command Availability:

The sfc command is available from within the Command Prompt in most Windows operating systems including Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000.

System File Checker is part of Windows Resource Protection in Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista and is sometimes referred to as Windows Resource Checker in those operating systems.

System File Checker is part of Windows File Protection in Windows XP and Windows 2000.

Important: The sfc command can only be run from the Command Prompt when opened as an administrator. See How To Open an Elevated Command Prompt for information on doing that.

Note: The availability of sfc command switches may differ somewhat from operating system to operating system.

Sfc Related Commands:

The sfc command is often used with many other Command Prompt commands.

Many troubleshooting steps advise the use of the sfc command.

Some Secrets to my google-FU

Here are some of the secrets to my Google-FU

• Phrase search ("")
  By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.
• Search within a specific website (site:)
  Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [ iraq site:nytimes.com ] will return pages about Iraq but only from nytimes.com. The simpler queries [ iraq nytimes.com ] or [ iraq New York Times ] will usually be just as good, though they might return results from other sites that mention the New York Times. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.
• Terms you want to exclude (-)
  Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query[ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words 'anti-virus' but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the - sign in front of all of them, for example[ jaguar -cars -football -os ]. The - sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the 'site:' operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.
• Fill in the blanks (*)
  The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google's products (go to next page and next page -- we have many products). The query[ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.
• Search exactly as is (+)
  Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.
• The OR operator
  Google's default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow eitherone of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS). For example, [ San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005 ] will give you results about either one of these years, whereas [ San Francisco Giants 2004 2005 ] (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)
• The date range syntax is as simple as typing daterange:startdate-enddate. The catch is that the date must be expressed as a Julian date (see below). So, for example, July 8, 2002, is Julian date 2452463.5 and May 22, 1968, is 2439998.5. Furthermore, Google isn't fond of decimals in its date range queries; use only integers: 2452463 or 2452464 (depending on whether you prefer to round up or down)
• Visit the Google Guide Advanced Operator Quick Reference and look for special operators of the formoperator:value.
• Fill in Google’s Advanced Search form. Then look at the search box on the results page; you may see that Google has added search operators to your query. For instance, if you fill in the Advanced Search page, asking Google to “find results with all of the words” [ detect plagiarism ] and to “return results where my terms occur: in the title of the page” your results page should look like the one shown here. Notice the allintitle: search operator that Google added before your query:
• http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
• http://www.googleguide.com/print/adv_op_ref.pdf

Clean up Windows Update cache after Update issues

I ran into some trouble recently where the windows updates would keep coming back. same update after it was being applied (successfully from what was being reported)


Solution was simple to clear the cached updates and let it start over. had to look this up however.

1. open your command prompt (Start -> Run -> type cmd and then OK)
2. type "net stop wuauserv" at the prompt
3. type "cd /d %windir%"
4. Type "rd /s SoftwareDistribution"
5. type "net start wuauserv" to restart your windows updates.

TheOpenDisc

Some out there are horribly intimidated by Linux, there are a number of things to make it easy, however these guys have taken the Next step on that. What i have heard of this is that finding programs to replace/supplant what they already had found is often the reason people are most afraid of making the switch. Here is an answer to this.


http://www.theopendisc.com/


OpenDisc is a high quality collection of open source software (OSS) for the Microsoft Windows operating system.
The two main goals of the project are:
To provide a free alternative to costly software, with equal or often better quality equivalents to proprietary, shareware or freeware software for Microsoft Windows.
To educate users of Linux as an operating system for home, business and educational use.
The majority of programs featured on OpenDisc are also available on Linux.


In addition there is OpenEducationDisc


The OpenEducationDisc is a modification of the OpenDisc format by Teachers and Computer Specialists with a passion for education. The purpose of it is to provide students with the software that they need to complete school work at home. Most students don’t have jobs and it is unfair to ask for them or a parent/guardian to buy expensive software to get the best out of their education. Hence everything is free and we encourage you to make copies of this CD and lend it to you friends.

Linux power management

Linux has always been a lightweight operating system, and you can manually do a great number of things to dial in your settings, however when someone does allot of that work for you, and is willing to share I'm all for that. I have seen this nearly triple my beast of a laptop before.


http://www.jupiterapplet.org/


Jupiter is a light weight power and hardware control applet for Linux.  It is designed to improve battery life of a portable Linux computer by integrating with the operating system and changing parameters of the computer based on battery or powered connection.

Additionally, Jupiter provides quick access to some of the commonly needed hardware controls like screen output and resolution, WIFI, and bluetooth.

If you use Linux on a portable computer, let Jupiter take the effort out of going mobile.

Doing rude horrible and wonderful things to your disk partitions!

I will talk about a couple of Opensource tools i like here. One is Clonezilla. a great tool for disk to disk or disk to image cloning.


The other is Gparted, another wonderful tool that will do disk partition alteration and and editing.


This is a collection of information about Clonezilla.


What is Clonezilla:


Clonezilla is an open-source suite of cloning tools developed by Taiwan's National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) software lab under the GPL that works impeccably with Linux distributions. Clonezilla boasts high-performance cloning, simplified deployment and support for a multitude of system types (Windows, Linux and VMware), all of which make it a worthy competitor to its commercial counterparts.


This essentially means we have a tool that can replace an expensive purchase of Acronis True Image or Symantec's Ghost.


This matters, not just because it is platform agnostic, but it usually can talk to any Raid Controller that Linux can see and use (which is a large number) and it is free.


Supported Filesystems : (1) ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs of GNU/Linux, (2) FAT, NTFS of MS Windows, (3) HFS+ of Mac OS, (4) UFS of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, and (5) VMFS of VMWare ESX. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows, Intel-based Mac OS, and FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, no matter it's 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.


Image repository locations: NFS, SSH, SMB (Samba/Windows share), or Local Device (drive)


Local Live CD or network server compatible


Fast, i have seen full computer images (windows 7 with software) dropped from USB and Network locations to disk in 10 minuets.


But thats enough of an introduction have some hard links.


http://clonezilla.org/ - Main Website
http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php - Initial Live CD page, good information here.
http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php - Downloads page, you can get the latest version here
I strongly recommend the Alternative Stable Release, it is Ubuntu based and has the broadest hardware support
http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live-doc.php - documentation, how-to's etc. they are in order with pictures
http://clonezilla.org/general-live-use.php - useful, good intro on booting and getting ready to go.
Articles that i find regarding Clonezilla that i will be shareing over time.


http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10884 - Article from the Linux Journal






Gparted LiveCD - Opensource Disk partition manager!


http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php


If you have ever run across a need to alter the structure of a disk layout. perhaps you had multiple partitions that need to be combined. maybe you are looking to change your hard drive without reinstalling and need to adjust things. I have used this before, the exception to what I can access is definitely a Microsoft dynamic volume. it cannot alter that type of disk.


GPartEd stands for: Gnome Partition Editor


GParted is a free partition editor for graphically managing your disk partitions.


GParted is useful for tasks such as: creating space for new operating systems, restructuring disk space to separate user and operating system data, and copying partitions to enable upgrading to a larger hard disk drive.


Your hard disk drive or USB flash drive can be subdivided into one or more partitions. GParted enables you to reorganize your disk partitions while preserving the contents of these partitions.


Features


Create partition tables (e.g., msdos, gpt)
Perform actions with partitions such as: 


create or delete
resize or move
check
label
copy and paste
Manipulate file systems such as:
btrfs
ext2 / ext3 / ext4
fat16 / fat32
hfs / hfs+
linux-swap
ntfs
reiserfs / reiser4
ufs
xfs
For specific actions supported see detailed features.
Enable and disable partition flags (e.g., boot, hidden)
Align partitions to mebibyte (MiB) or cylinder boundaries
Attempt data rescue from lost partitions
Supports hardware RAID, motherboard BIOS RAID, and Linux software RAID.
Supports all sector sizes (e.g., 512, 1024, 2048, 4096 byte sectors)