So you inherit a box running linux and you have no idea which flavor of linux it is. How do you find out?

If all you need the kernel version you can try
uname -a

This outputs something like this

Linux localhost.localdomain 2.4.20-31.9 #1 Tue Apr 13 18:04:23 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

If you need the actual distro name you can try
cat /etc/*release

In Ubuntu it shows up as

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=jaunty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION=”Ubuntu 9.04″

Or even
cat /etc/issue

which spits out the following on Ubuntu

Ubuntu 9.04 \n \l

You can combine all three to get the following
uname -a && cat /etc/*release && cat /etc/issue

Active Directory doesn’t let you edit the Dial-up of VPN access policies for multiple users at once through the GUI. You have to edit this setting one at a time for each user. This can be painstaking if you a lot of users. Luckily there is a VB script available like for almost everything else in AD.

Dim aConnection, aCommand, aResult, strLDAPPath, user, objUser
Const ADS_PROPERTY_CLEAR = 1
strLDAPPath = InputBox("Please enter the LDAP path of the OU:")
WScript.Echo strLDAPPath
Set aConnection = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Set aCommand = CreateObject("ADODB.Command")
aConnection.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
aConnection.Open
aCommand.ActiveConnection = aConnection
aCommand.CommandText=";(&(objectCategory=Person)(objectClass=User));distinguishedName;subTree"
Set aResult = aCommand.Execute()
Do While Not aResult.EOF
strDN = aResult.Fields("distinguishedName")
WScript.Echo strDN
Set objUser = GetObject("LDAP://" & strDN)
' Comment the following line to manage connection through Remote Access Policy
objUser.Put "msNPAllowDialin", FALSE
' Uncomment the following line to manage connection through Remote Access Policy
' objUser.PutEx ADS_PROPERTY_CLEAR, "msNPAllowDialin", 0
objUser.SetInfo
aResult.MoveNext
Loop

This script will update the access settings for a group of users in a particular OU. Once you run the script, a dialog box will ask you for this OU. Once this is set all users in that OU will be updated.

The AD property this script modifies is ‘msNPAllowDialin’. This property is accepts boolean values. So the three options are

To manage access via the Remote Access Policy, comment out the

objUser.Put "msNPAllowDialin", FALSE

and uncomment the

' objUser.PutEx ADS_PROPERTY_CLEAR, "msNPAllowDialin", 0

line.

SNMP is not installed by default on Open Solaris but really easy to set up. You don’t need to compile it from source as some would suggest.

All you’ll need is to install the SUNWsmmgr package.
pkg install SUNWsmmgr
All of the config files, including snmpd.conf are in /etc/sma/snmp.

The service to enable snmp is called sma.
svcadm enable svc:/application/management/sma:default

To install utilities like snmpwalk and snmpget, you can install the SUNWsmcmd package.

In order to install Virtual Box Additions on your newly install Ubuntu virtual machine, you will need to fulfill the following dependencies.

Install dkms and the GNU C Compiler using the following command:

sudo apt-get install dkms gcc

Install the build and header files for Ubuntu using the following command:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

$(uname -r) in the above command just passes your kernel version to apt-get

The officially supported method of detecting the presence of the .NET Framework 2.0 is to check the following registry key/value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Net Framework Setup\NDP\v2.0.50727]
Install = 1 (REG_DWORD)