Windows 7 Default User Profiles

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that default user profiles can only be altered as part of a sysprep process. In the past (Vista and earlier) from within computer properties you could simply copy a profile configured as desired to become the default profile. With Windows 7 this can only be done through the use of Sysprep. In order to perform this successfully the following needs to be performed.

1. Create a user profile and configure the profile as desired
2. Grant this user account admin permissions so that sysprep can be performed.
3. Clear the contents of the c:\windows\panther and c:\windows\system32\sysprep\panther folder
4. Copy a sysprep.xml file with the copy profile option set to c:\windows\system32\sysprep. A sample of which is shown in the image below

5. While logged on as the user with the profile to be copied, execute
   sysprep /generalize /unattend:c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.xml

Sysprep will then run and copy the current user profile as the default user profile.

Setting up a tftp server under Ubuntu 9.1

Perform the following steps to setup a tftpd server under ubuntu 9.1

1. Run: sudo apt-get install atftpd
2. Sudo edit /etc/default/atftpd to read
   USE_INETD=false
   OPTIONS="--daemon --port 69 --tftpd-timeout 300 --retry-timeout 5 --mcast-port 1758 --mcast-addr 239.239.239.0-255 --mcast-ttl 1 --maxthread 100 --verbose=5 /tftpboot
3. Create the /tftpboot folder by executing sudo mkdir /tftpboot
4. Change so that all users can edit/modify files in this folder by executing: sudo chmod -R +777 /tftpboot
5. Change the ownership to nobody by executing: sudo chown -R nobody /tftpboot
6. Secure who can access this tftp server by editing the hosts.allow file in /etc and adding:
   in.tftpd :
   

That it....

Installing Amazon MP3 Downloader under 64bit Linux

Great! I want to buy and download MP3's from Amazon. Poop! I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 64bit, but there's only a 32bit debian package available. Well here's how you fix that...

1. Download the 9.04 32 bit debian installer from Amazon. Currently located here.
2. Once downloaded, force the installation of the product using the command: sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture amazonmp3.deb
3. Now go grab a program called getlibs. This is a script that will download missing libraries for an installed package. Currently you can get this tool here.
4. Finally run sudo getlibs /usr/bin/amazonmp3 from a terminal session

You're good to go....

Make a bootable clonezilla USB drive

Clonezilla is a free opensource disk imaging tool. In order to make a bootable USB drive for this product, follow these steps:

1. Download the product from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/clonezilla/files/clonezilla_live_stable/clonezilla-live-1.2.3-27.iso/download
2. extract the contents of the ISO to a USB drive.
3. From the utils/linux directory run bash ./makeboot.sh under an administrator account
4. Change directory to the root of the usb drive (most likely mounted under /mount/(USB name)
5. execute cp isolinux/isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg
6. execute cp isolinux/vesamenu.c32 isolinux/ocswp.png .

You should now have a bootable clonezilla USB drive