Wifi Speed Boost

"Wireless LAN or wi-fi kit is getting everywhere these days.

And you’ll likely find that like most folks, your wireless surfing has slowed of recent especially if you’ve had it running a while.

The likelihood is that if you live in a densely populated area or you’ve made internal changes to your living space then either or both these (and more) could impact on your wireless surfing speed.

So what can you do?"

source:
http://www.churchtechy.com/2010/06/wifi-speed-boost/

Greg's obsession de' jour
In my efforts to add the words "wireless savvy" to my network admin resume, I've been reading books and web pages on radio propagation, antenna theory and design, and building wireless networks with 802.11 (WiFi). One of the first things that got me excited was the Pringles Can Antenna.  Published on the internet and in a fine book by Rob Flickenger, the net admin for O'Reilly, this design for a do-it-yourself, VERY inexpensive antenna made from a recycled junkfood container is as cool as the other side of the pillow.  It seems that everyone is building and using these.  The various community wireless network groups all talk about them and folks are reporting that they do the job.


source:
http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/has.html

Installing Ethernet Jack for home network

"The home network is extended to the basement game room by running Cat 5e cable and installing a new Ethernet jack. A “wired” network connection was needed at this location due to a weak WiFi (wireless) LAN signal. This was a “high priority” according to my teenage son for better Xbox Liveperformance."
http://www.handymanhowto.com/2009/01/19/how-to-install-an-ethernet-jack-for-a-home-network/

Must Document the Process of Church Operations

Need to create documentation for Sound, Visual Aid, Video Recording, DVD / CD Rendering, and powering up the sound plus putting away equipment.
[IN PROGRESS]

Currently Researching New Technologies for an Infrastructure Refresh

[IN PROGRESS]


Microsoft Open Charity License


Dell Outlets

April 2011 Proposed equipment to get in specified budget
May 2011 Gather materials and man power
June 2011 Implementation and training
July 2011 Due date equipment must be refreshed


Update 4-22-2011

[IP] Use available resources and still research possible technology needs in the future.

[IP] Refreshing only the Sunday Plus machine used on Sunday mornings

Working on three machines!

Sunday Plus Machine In Production

Requires divine intervention to keep it running and will be decommissioned for testing

[x] has wifi capabilities, but must be disabled in order to keep machine from freezing

[  ] add more ram, requires disable another unused dell machine  Probably at max capacity of ram

[x] two dual head graphic card

[x] msoffice is required!

[x] sunday plus is required!
[ip] created a list of all files that need to be transfered

[  ] transfer files via network Use Sneaker Net and Zip Drives to Transfer Files

[  ] move devices and routers

Sunday Plus PC Dell, Machine Refresh One
This machine use to be the Dell Desktop Children's Church Sunday Plus Machine


[x] machine is placed in the storage room and ready for files to be copied
[x] two dual head graphic card
[x] msoffice is required!
[x] sunday plus is required!
[  ] add more ram, requires disable another unused dell machine
[  ] transfer wifi card from production machine to this desktop
[  ] transfer files via network Use Sneaker Net and Zip Drives to Transfer Files
[  ] move devices and routers

NOTE: IT IS POSSIBLE TO CLONE THE "MACHINE REFRESH ONE" ONTO THE "MACHINE BACKUP TWO" WHICH REQUIRES CLONING SOFTWARE AND EXTRA HARD DISK

Sunday Plus PC Dell, Machine Backup Two
This machine was obtained from storage from 3rd building

[  ] add more ram, requires disable another unused dell machine

[IP] two dual head graphic card

[  ] msoffice is required!

[  ] sunday plus is required!

[  ] transfer files via network

[  ] move devices and routers

5-6-211 Update:
The Sunday Plus company called Grass Roots closed its doors:  http://www.sundayplus.com/
5-14-2011 Update:
Place where I can get support for Sunday Plus: http://www.churchmedia.net/forums/sundayplus-freepath/

How to capture computer screen for training

http://camstudio.org/
Open Source - Free Streaming Video Software

Purpose of computer lab

I am revisiting the reason why I wanted to help build and maintain this computer network for the church. It is meant to be an out reach program and I cannot handle it alone. "In life, we are given a talent and we are meant to share it with other people."

The network will:

Service the community with internet access for job searches
Service the children in school to work on their homework
Provide computer technical support to other offices and ministries on the church campus.

Limitations:

Restrictions will be enforced on what type of websites they can access
The Computer Lab is not a place to do a start up business, but it can be a place of learning

Update 4-22-2011:


Supporting Operations:

This project also supports the operations part of the organization.  Some of the issues that have to be addressed is documentation, knowledge transfer, training, and finding willing people to help.

No Internet Connectivity Network

INCIDENT REPORT PER SP34RS
5-5-2010
8:00 PM, reported no internet connectivity since noon on Monday. Restarted routers and still no connection. Need to stop by in the morning to more checking.

Teaching Computer Programming in a 3D environment

Alice.Org


"Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

In Alice's interactive interface, students drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production oriented programming language, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course."

Upgrading your computers components

"It is commonly assumed by many struggling to keep up with technology that a computer has reached obsolescence the day it is purchased. However, while year-old or even five-year-old computers may not be able to run the latest feature-ridden applications, they can be perfectly adequate for working on a network, browsing the Internet, producing documents, and doing other nonprofit work. Sometimes, those older computers can perform even better with the right adjustments.

Upgrading your computer's RAM, hard drive, network card, or other hardware can be a cost-effective way to improve the technology available to your organization and increase productivity when your budget is tight. While it is always nicer to be able to purchase the fastest computers on the market, sometimes it may not be necessary. Here are some guidelines for deciding when to upgrade."

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/hardware/page4789.cfm

hard drive crash - LOADING PBR FOR DESCRIPTOR 2 DONE disk error occured

This blog entry is to document the steps to retrieve data from a crashed hard drive. The data contained within is important to the church operations and ministries. There is no rush to obtain the data because they had previous files backed up available elsewhere. This is the timeline of events about this hard drive crash.

Please note, I am using two Dell PC from church. First Dell PC is from children's church that was recovered. After testing, it does not boot properly and currently using it as parts. Second Dell PC is from church clerk office which had a hard drive failure due a pressumed power spike. Hard drive prevents computer from booting properly and must be replaced.

So, the solution is to take the First Dell PC working parts and place it in the Second Dell PC by replacing the hard drive and adding a duel head graphic card. Please see solution section for results.

Steps taken to repair:
5-29-09
Hard drive occured

8-16-09
Finally, some time to preform IDE diagnostic test (press F-12 on Dell Dimension 3000) .
Unable to boot into hard drive using Bart PE.
Used Bart PE to test the networking capabilites of computer
Replacing hard drive with First Dell PC into Second Dell PC *crosses fingers*
Identical machines should have little complaints of hardware compatibility

8-22-09
Swapped hard drive with working operating system works.
Adding dual head graphic card.
Testing environment before refreshing of Sunday Plus machine in production.


Details of computer:
Dell Dimension 3000

Solution:
Back up files on hard drive using BartPE (unable to boot hard disk)
Replace hard drive with working one

Resources:

Bart PE
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-support/windows-xp-support/394177-loading-pbr-descriptor-2-done-disk-read-error-occurred.html

http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/405443-loading-pbr-descriptor-2-done.html

Printer drivers can be found here

http://www.panasonic.com.au/support/downloads/file_type_results.cfm?fileTypeID=1&productCategoryID=28&productID=390

fixing sshd

fixing sshd
source:
link

"
Delete you current sshd_config file and replace it with the below, then run
killall -HUP sshd


# $OpenBSD: sshd_config,v 1.68 2003/12/29 16:39:50 millert Exp $

# This is the sshd server system-wide configuration file. See
# sshd_config(5) for more information.

# This sshd was compiled with PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

# The strategy used for options in the default sshd_config shipped with
# OpenSSH is to specify options with their default value where
# possible, but leave them commented. Uncommented options change a
# default value.

#Port 22
Protocol 2
#AddressFamily any
#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0
#ListenAddress ::

# HostKey for protocol version 1
#HostKey /etc/ssh_host_key
# HostKeys for protocol version 2
#HostKey /etc/ssh_host_rsa_key
#HostKey /etc/ssh_host_dsa_key

# Lifetime and size of ephemeral version 1 server key
#KeyRegenerationInterval 1h
#ServerKeyBits 768

# Logging
#obsoletes QuietMode and FascistLogging
SyslogFacility AUTHPRIV
#LogLevel INFO

# Authentication:

#LoginGraceTime 2m
#PermitRootLogin yes
#StrictModes yes
#MaxAuthTries 6

#RSAAuthentication yes
#PubkeyAuthentication yes
#AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys

# For this to work you will also need host keys in /etc/ssh_known_hosts
#RhostsRSAAuthentication no
# similar for protocol version 2
#HostbasedAuthentication no
# Change to yes if you don't trust ~/.ssh/known_hosts for
# RhostsRSAAuthentication and HostbasedAuthentication
#IgnoreUserKnownHosts no
# Don't read the user's ~/.rhosts and ~/.shosts files
#IgnoreRhosts yes

# To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here!
#PasswordAuthentication yes
#PermitEmptyPasswords no

# SACL options
#SACLSupport yes

# Change to no to disable s/key passwords
#ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes

# Kerberos options
#KerberosAuthentication no
#KerberosOrLocalPasswd yes
#KerberosTicketCleanup yes
#KerberosGetAFSToken no

# GSSAPI options
#GSSAPIStrictAcceptorCheck yes
#GSSAPIKeyExchange yes

# GSSAPI options
#GSSAPIAuthentication no
#GSSAPICleanupCredentials yes

# Set this to 'yes' to enable PAM authentication (via challenge-response)
# and session processing. Depending on your PAM configuration, this may
# bypass the setting of 'PasswordAuthentication' and 'PermitEmptyPasswords'
#UsePAM yes

#AllowTcpForwarding yes
#GatewayPorts no
#X11Forwarding no
#X11DisplayOffset 10
#X11UseLocalhost yes
#PrintMotd yes
#PrintLastLog yes
#TCPKeepAlive yes
#UseLogin no
#UsePrivilegeSeparation yes
#PermitUserEnvironment no
#Compression delayed
#ClientAliveInterval 0
#ClientAliveCountMax 3
#UseDNS yes
#PidFile /var/run/sshd.pid
#MaxStartups 10
#PermitTunnel no

# no default banner path
#Banner /some/path

# override default of no subsystems
Subsystem sftp /usr/libexec/sftp-server

# Example of overriding settings on a per-user basis
#Match User anoncvs
# X11Forwarding no
# AllowTcpForwarding no
# ForceCommand cvs server
"

Controlling Web Access with squid

"Password Authentication Using NCSA
You can configure Squid to prompt users for a username and password. Squid comes with a program called ncsa_auth that reads any NCSA-compliant encrypted password file. You can use the htpasswd program that comes installed with Apache to create your passwords. Follow the link on how it's done."

Source:
the link

SMTP, Unix, Database, and web design

Need to come up with a way to allow SMTP outbound mail but still prevent someone from sending out SPAM. Need someone with Unix, database and web design experience for a project.

What kind of project am I looking for?

Remodeling Tasks

__ Replace shorter wooden desks with longer ones

__ Screw Power Strips below Desks

__ Visit computer lab twice a week

__ Sliders or wheels

__ Free up space where board is

__ set up work area

Internet Access

All the computers must access the proxy server to gain internet access. The Proxy Server MUST be on, too. If a browser does not have Internet access, the user must do the following:

1. Open Internet Explorer
2. On the Menu Bar Click Tools, Internet Options.















3. From Internet Options, a tabbed menu will show up.
4. Select the Connection Tab and click on the LAN Settings Button.



















5. The LAN Settings window will show up.
6. Check off the Proxy Server box.
7. Enter the address and port to the proxy server.
It should be written on the board in the room.
















8. Click OK and your browser will gain internet access.

Things I have noticed

Implementing Security Logging feature to keep track of users ONLINE. In Progress . . .

The current working printer needs both colored with blank and white ink for it to work properly.

People tend to bunch up on the newer machines so I need to spread them out more evenly.

Add two tables to the side walls to help protect dthe cat 5 wiring. Move a computer to them if the wiring permits.

Find a way to repair the laser jet printer for the computer lab. I am sure there are shops to charge a fee for repairing them.

Cleaning screens, mouse, keyboard, desk, carpets are a must.

Setting static IPs for other PCs.

Set up schedule maintainence times at least once a week

Create also a task list

Review pc lab notebook you are compiling.

Also, make a list of passwords for the BOSS's needs if I had to hand control over to someone else.

Schedule lab hours to reflect my work and study hours?

Use the computer lab to do all your internet studying?

From 8am to 12pm, I should set aside time to work on it, but the people that want to use it only come out during the evening times.

Post these ideas on my network project blog

Proxy server used to filter websites visited

The problem with this is the machine running the proxy server software is old and tends to crash alot. The solution would be to update the hardware and place the proxy server software on a newer machine.

A Small Room with A Big Project

Ok, I must document every equipment, serial number, and steps to get a computer lab built. Who can help me do so? Do I need to look into any type of 'legal matter?' Wait, google is my friend and time to use it.

Here are some links that I found that might be of help to me in the future if I need to organize and document this project.

Grant-writing tools for non-profit organizations
http://www.npguides.org/guide/grant2.htm

COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS:
http://fdncenter.org/learn/topical/software.html

Site Renovation

I haven't posted in a while, but here it goes. The temporary lab I set up was dismantled because the room that housed it was being painted. New carpeting is coming in as well so all the PCs that were gather have to be moved from one room to the next. The only time I have set aside for it is probably all day Friday, but with finals around the corner, I will not be starting on it until March 20, 2005.