EzDevInfo.com

How do I give myself admin rights to a sql server instance, having forgotten the sa password?

I have lost all passwords for a SQL Server instance, how do I give myself admin access again?

How do I take control of a Drupal installation on my web space without the admin credentials?

Someone set up a website for me recently, using Drupal, and before I could get his admin credentials, I lost contact with him. Seeing as it's my web space, I do have access to the files and the database (which I have downloaded), however I can't get into the Drupal configuration.

Is there any way I can take over this Drupal installation or do I have to do a reinstall?

Setting permissions for specific user and groups in Linux

How can I grant permission for files to a specific user or a specific group?

We have three groups: "g12" ("u1" and "u2), "g34" and "g56".

• g12 - should only read the file.

• g34 - should write and read it.

• g56 - should have all permissions (rwx).

And others should not access the file at all.

How can I change the defaults for new accounts in Mac OS X?

Basically, I want change the skeleton of the OS X user account, in order to do the following with every new user that I create on this local machine:

• A custom set of Dock icons
• Some data already in their Documents folder
• Some aliases on the desktop to some remote resources (smb, mainly)
• Screen saver and lock settings set up.

I don't need any of these to be locked down by policy, I just want to configure a few of them for easier access. There's a possibility of having an OS X directory server at some point, but I can't rely on it being possible/available.

Remote access to BIOS?

I have a home server running headless (i.e. without a monitor), using ssh for remote access.

This works fine most of the time, but I still need a graphics card and still need to drag out a monitor whenever I have to access BIOS, (re-)install the OS and similar.

I know that there are business servers that let you control everything remotely (over Ethernet), including power up and BIOS access.

Is this type of functionality available for "prosumer" class hardware? If so, where does it sit - should I look for motherboard support, a PCI-e card or an external device?

And does this type of functionality have a name, so I know what to google for?

Now who's using my COM port?

I am trying to figure out who's locking my COM port. Tried to search but could not find a way to figure that out. I am using XP.

Was wondering if 'Process Explorer' utility provides something for the same but could not find something helping.

Is there a command that shows up all the applications tied up to specific COM ports on the system?

Thanks

What are reasons to disallow ICMP on my server?

An EC2 Instance has ICMP services disabled by default. While it's not totally clear to me why, I think it's because it could be a potential security risk. At the moment I'm enabling Echo Responses only when I'm restarting the server so I can see if it's up and running, but once it came online I'm disabling it again. Is it necessary? What are reasons to disable ICMP in general?

Remove password of user on OSX

As much as I would like to figure out the problem, at this point too much time has been invested in deleting a stupid key when I already had a solution (the command line creation) that works. I'm going to delete the user and run the commands that I need. It would still be wonderful to have an answer, but I don't think that is going to happen.

I have a network of slaves attached to buildbot, each with a buildbot user account. I'd like their accounts to not have passwords (read: not an empty password). I did this successfully on one of the boxes as a great consequence of remotely creating the user and not setting the password in the procedure.

Two other OSX machines that I set up through the GUI do have passwords, and I'm wondering if there is a way to remove the password without leaving it empty. I looked through a bit of the documentation for dscl and passwd, but they don't have the options I'm looking for. I could set them to be some random string of numbers. Would that be just as effective? Is my description equivalent to having an empty password and locking the account (as in this disscussion for linux)? If so, how do I lock an OSX account?

The second part of my question is in regard to the way that I originally created the users. Below are the commands and they seem to work fine but I wonder if I'm missing some important setting --the buildslave did start and execute jobs though.

sudo dscl . -create /Users/buildbot
sudo dscl . -create /Users/buildbot UserShell /bin/bash
sudo dscl . -create /Users/buildbot RealName "BuildBot"
sudo dscl . -create /Users/buildbot UniqueID <ID>
sudo dscl . -create /Users/buildbot PrimaryGroupID 61
sudo dscl . -create /Users/buildbot NFSHomeDirectory /Users/buildbot
sudo mkdir /Users/buildbot
sudo chown buildbot /Users/buildbot

EDIT: For the machines that already had accounts w/ passwords created through the System Preferences, the commands suggested by Dan Black do not actually delete the Password key,

sudo dscl . -delete /Users/buildbot Password
sudo dscl . -read /Users/buildbot Password

The output to the second command is,

Password: *******

Continuing as if the password was deleted, I run

sudo dscl . -create /Users/buildbot Password '*'
su buildbot

And the previous password accesses the account. This is on OSX 10.5.8 and 10.6.8.

sudo dscl . -change /Users/buildbot Password 'OLDPASS' '*'
su buildbot

This also does not change the password, and OLDPASS can switch users when asked for the password.

Here is the complete key-value pair output for the user i'm having trouble with --created through sys-preferences. To clarify an inconsistency, this machine uses user 'developer' not 'buildbot', but the previous commands were all done the same just with the obvious replacement

Amoy:~ lyn$ sudo dscl . -read /Users/developer
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_hint: developer
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_jpegphoto: developer
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_LinkedIdentity: developer
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_passwd: developer
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_picture: developer
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_realname: developer
dsAttrTypeNative:_writers_UserCertificate: developer
AppleMetaNodeLocation: /Local/Default
AuthenticationAuthority: ;ShadowHash; ;Kerberosv5;;developer@LKDC:SHA1.08FF6FDC52096FD6C53DEDEE75A2F9315F964B22;LKDC:SHA1.08FF6FDC52096FD6C53DEDEE75A2F9315F964B22;
AuthenticationHint:
 developer for auto testing
GeneratedUID: BF95A834-A7F1-4DDD-8DFB-6B80B8120CA7
NFSHomeDirectory: /Users/developer
Password: ********
Picture:
 /Library/User Pictures/Fun/Flippers.tif
PrimaryGroupID: 20
RealName: Developer
RecordName: developer
RecordType: dsRecTypeStandard:Users
UniqueID: 512
UserShell: /bin/bash

how to view command history of another user in linux?

Can anybody show me how to view command history of another user? I am an admin on my machine. I can see normal history by viewing /home/user_name/.bash_history but i can't see commands of that "user_name" when they were doing sudo.

Is there a way to view all command executed by one user?

Thanks,

Sean

How to enable remote access for another account on Mac remotely via SSH?

I have admin rights at a remote Mac computer. I can access it via SSH. The Mac has another user account, which doesn't have remote access. How can I remotely (via SSH) enable remote access for the other account?

How to monitor bandwidth use of each device on wifi network

I have in my home a standard Comcast cable internet connection. I have it going from the wall to a cable modem, and from the modem to a late-series Linksys router, which provides wired and wireless networking. The vast majority of the users are wireless connections. For day-to-day tasks, this connection is fully sufficient for all my needs.

However, on regular occassions, we have social gatherings that involve many people bringing laptops and other PCs and using the network and internet simultaneously, frequently for gaming. I have no administrative oversight over these machines; they have been known to be riddled with spyware and/or bloatware or be running torrents, legal or otherwise. The only reason I care is that on a regular basis, one of the machines will flatline my internet bandwith, and consume it all in order to upload/download/spam people/whatever. When this happens, the latency of the connections for gaming and the like becomes unacceptable, and everyone suffers.

My question is: Is there a system I can set up whereby I can easily monitor the various systems connected to my wireless connection, see how much bandwith each one is using, and for what ends? That way, at a glance, I can spot the offending machine and kick it from the connection, without having to go from machine to machine, checking each one's "bandwith used" properties manually, and dealing with the owner's indignant protests all the while. I understand this will likely involve 3rd-party software and/or hardware; my issue is I don't even know where to begin.

How to interpret the output of ipconfig/all?

I am shaky on network setting up concepts.

When I do ipconfig/all on my machine, I get:

I need to set up a basic home network and want to understand these basic things and what is going on.

I want to understand the output of ipconfig and what different things mean.

In particular:

what are these diffferent physical address? their purpose?

There are more than one adapter : ethernet adapter and PPP adapter. Can more than one be active simultaneously? If more than 1 is active simultaneously, system will have only 1 IP address, right?

Cannot do sudo: "/etc/sudoers is mode 0740, should be 0440"

I have a problem:

I don't have a root password on my mac. I just have an Admin account, which can do stuff using sudo. Now, I wanted to add my normal user to the /etc/sudoers file as well. Since it did not let me write to that file (even writing using sudo), I did this:

sudo chmod u+w /etc/sudoers

That worked. But since then I can't do any sudo command anymore on my system. It complains that /etc/sudoers has the wrong mode:

$ sudo touch /etc/sudoers 
sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0740, should be 0440
Segmentation fault

It sounds like a bad joke, because now I can't even change the mode back to 0440:

$ sudo chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers 
sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0740, should be 0440
Segmentation fault

Is there any way to fix this situation? I need to get my sudo abilities back.

Can I create an admin privilege for just one application?

A university tries to run our software, but their users don't have admin rights.

However our software requires admin rights to run.

Is there a way to have their system admin create a privilege, just for our software or would this cause a (major) security loophole for their system?

Any other (reasonable) workarounds are welcome too, but changing our software is (sadly) out of the question. This problem occurs in both Windows XP and Vista.

Why insist on rolling out an MSI package?

I have created a program in Autohotkey, which creates a few shortcut keys that a whole company with 400 people wants to have installed permanently. The way I imagine the program to work is that a shortcut to the program is added to the Start menu under the Startup folder, so it is automatically and transparently started when the computer is started. The program will keep running all day.

I am a freelancer with no access to the IT department, but indirectly I have seen emails that they insist on that I have to create an MSI file in order to roll the program out onto all these computers. The first issue I have with creating an MSI package is that I do not know how an MSI file can be created based on an .EXE file. The second is that they say that it is very costly for them to create such a file (I believe that means that it costs something like 20.000$ to get it done), therefore they do not want to make frequent updates, while I believe it is essential to be able to quickly adjust the program to new needs and fix bugs.

On Wednesday, I will have a meeting with them, and I would therefore like to know what kind of arguments they might have for using MSI packages, and why they could not simply create a shortcut to my .EXE file on all these computers (this should not be too hard, should it?). The shortcut should point to the .EXE file, which is located on a file-server so one can simply replace it to update the program (the computers always have access to the file-servers, meaning that there are no laptops).

What could their arguments be?