Terminally Incoherent

Here are some of the more obscure, and yet extremely useful windows commands every administrator should know about. This is by no means an exhaustive list. These are simply windows utilities that I would feel naked without. Most of these are not present in XP home so I tend to carry them on a thumb drive or a CD when I plan to troubleshoot some windows installation.

Yes, the beautiful thing about these files is the fact that you can copy them from a XP pro box to an XP home box and they will still work. After all this is the same OS, only one is crippled more than the other.

I will go in alphabetical order:

cacls - my favorite windows command line tool ever. It allows you to set and fine tune access permissions on files. For example, this is the only way you can assign selective read/write permissions on per-user basis on XP home.

driverquery - displays a list of drivers installed on your system. Very informative, especially with the /v option. (not in XP Home)

getmac - gives you the mac address. Yes, you can always use ipconfig /all but why should you? (not in XP Home)

openfiles - lists all the files that are currently open on this system. It also allows you to terminate connections to files. Imagine this scenario - some jackass opens a very important file on a network share, and then leaves for lunch. He locks down his machine, closes his office and takes the only key. Meanwhile 3 other people need write access to that file, and they are getting pissed off. Openfiles to the rescue. (not in XP Home)

reg - command line utility to add and delete registry keys. This is an awesome tool for scripting. It allows you to query, add, delete, unload, import and export registry keys. It sure beats regedit if you know what you want to do and you want to do it quickly.

sfc - scans and replaces damaged protected windows files. This is essentially your first line of defense. After you remove malicious shit from the system, it is always a good idea to run sfc to make sure the core system files are intact.

systeminfo - provides exhaustive system information. I love this little tool because it produces a truckload of information that is not readily available anywhere else. It will tell you your CPU speed, original windows installation date, current uptime, all the hot-fixes and windows updates installed, as well as vendor specific information that you may find useful. (not in XP Home)

tasklist - equivalent of usinx ps command. It lists all the running processes on this machine. Much more convenient than the task manager if you ask me.

taskkill - a complement of tasklist with a very self explanatory name. You can use it to kill running processes from the command line.

If you want to study evolution, you can no longer do that on a federal education grant for low-income college students. If this is a mistake then it is very damn convenient, considering how our president is a strong supporter of teaching creationism in schools. It’s not like these things change all that much from one year to another. I find it hard to believe that any major could simply accidentally disappear from the list without any justification.

I would really want to know who is responsible for this - who ordered it, who approve it, and who executed it. It’s a damn shame that one person’s religious bias may have may have messed up another person’s chances of getting a college grant.

Remember kids, creationism is paganism.

I just want to kill and explode shit today, but I either finished, or got violently sick of all the games in my house that would allow me to do that…

author unknown - please claim it

I need recommendations for good games. Must be entertaining, and if possible have decent storyline. Oh, and fuck the RTS. Recommendations go!

Nikto is an awesome perl script which will test your web server for vulnerabilities. For example, it will tell you if you have any gaping holes in your configuration that would allow attackers to run known exploits. It will also show you interesting things that could potentially be used as attack points. Once you run it on your server, you get a nice readable list of warnings and red flags.

Next step of course is to sit your ass down, log into the server and figure out what triggered nikto, and how (if possible) to disable it. The less results you get from a scan, the better off you are, because the bad guys will essentially use the same exact tool to compose their hit list.

Passing Nikto scans of course does not make you safe. But it may make you safeer by exposing big security holes you might have missed.

I would say that it should be the second tool in your security testing toolbox next to the good old nmap.

Dear Internets,

Pluto is not a planet anymore. Get over it.

We have 8 planets now, and it doesn’t really change anything. All we need to do is to put a footnote in the new books and encyclopedias stating that Pluto is technically a dwarf planet as of August 2006. That’s it. All of the people getting upset by this are just silly.

Here is why we needed this change: every time someone discovers a new cool looking object in the Kuipers Belt some jackass immediately claims it should be classified as a planet because it is bigger/almost as big as Pluto. Media picks it up and for a month or two we are treated to stories about the “10^th planet” or whatnot. Scientists try to clarify this, other people try to dispute them and the public gets confused. All because no one can provide a clear cut definition of the word planet that would include Pluto but not other Kuiper’s Belt objects.

Now we have a good definition, and Pluto does not make the cut, so fuck it. If that upsets your fragile romanticized conception of what the solar system should be, then tough shit.

Thank you for your time.