Retroarch does not recognise my controller

Despite have autoconfig setup for input device, the Retroarch snap on Ubuntu 18.04 would not work with my cheap PS3 like controller.

Turns out this is a disconnect between the snap and USB gamepad\joystick support:
https://forums.libretro.com/t/retroarch-does-not-recognize-my-usb-controller-solved/16985

You need to connect the controls to the snap using:

• sudo snap connect retroarch:raw-usb
• sudo snap connect retroarch:joystick

Thanks hunterk!

Windows 10 unable to access SYSVOL and NETLOGON on 2008 R2 Domain Controllers

I found some help here:

• https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1389891-windows-10-and-sysvol-netlogon
• https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/f4d77de7-17df-4463-b751-d1892829e7ab/windows-10-cannot-be-access-sysvol-amp-netlogon-folder-on-the-server-2012-r2?forum=win10itprogeneral

Looks like the SMB security needs to be weakened to allow Windows 10 to access these shares.

Enable the following policy:

• Computer -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> Network Provider -> Hardened UNC Paths

You can either put the following in "Show Values":

• \\*\NETLOGON    RequireMutualAuthentication=0,RequireIntegrity=0,RequirePrivacy=0
• \\*\SYSVOL    RequireMutualAuthentication=0,RequireIntegrity=0,RequirePrivacy=0

Or put an entry for each DC:

• \\DCNAME    RequireMutualAuthentication=0,RequireIntegrity=0,RequirePrivacy=0

Linux Mint 19.1 as guest on Virtualbox 60

Same steps as this post, but no need to add repos:
https://blog.thefoleyhouse.co.uk/2018/10/ubuntu-1804-bionic-beaver-as-virtualbox.html

Essentially:

• sudo apt update
• sudo apt install virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-dkms dkms linux-headers-generic build essential

Geo-location with Wireshark and Geolite2

Turns out Wireshark has built in ASN, City and Country geo-location using Geoip products. You can purchase a (presumably) more accurate version, or use the free version from here:
https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/

More details on the Wireshark Wiki (GeoIP link appears broken):
https://wiki.wireshark.org/HowToUseGeoIP

You can get endpoint statistics:

And in capture:

Move Windows 10 notifications to top of screen

Chrome seems to alert on everything it has now and the notifications\toasts were covering access to items in the system tray that I sometimes needed to exit on login to Windows.

Creating the following registry with a value of 0 will move the toasts to the top of the screen instead:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
    DWORD DisplayToastAtBottom 0x000000000 (0)

Thanks to Winaero:
https://winaero.com/blog/move-notification-toasts-to-top-or-bottom-of-the-screen-in-windows-10/

Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver ntp inactive dead

Having installed ntp services on Ubuntu 18.04, we had to manually start manually on any reboot  using:

               sudo service start ntp

It turns out that in Ubuntu 18.04, systemd has an in-built timesync service that fires on boot called systemd-timesyncd. I believe this service was clashing with ntp and causing ntp to fail to start.

I’ve carried out the following to disable systemd-timesyncd on all three time servers, and to replace it with ntp:

sudo systemctl stop systemd-timesyncd

sudo systemctl disable systemd-timesyncd

sudo systemctl status systemd-timesyncd

sudo systemctl enable ntp

suso systemctl start ntp

sudo systemctl status ntp

All timeservers now appear to start ntp correctly.

Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver as Virtualbox Guest

Virtualbox guest utilities are available in the 'Multiverse' repo.
Testing on server gives the following in /etc/apt/sources.list after initial install:

• deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main
• deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main
• deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates main

You may be using a different ftp/http location, but just adding 'multiverse' to each line should achieve the same result. I ended up with:

• deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main multiverse
• deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main multiverse
• deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates main multiverse

I then ran the following commands to update and install the required modules:

• sudo apt update
• sudo apt install virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-dkms dkms linux-headers-generic build essential

Unable to run Etherape on Ubuntu 18.04

Etherape would not start as a root or non-root user on Ubuntu 18.04 with the error message:

GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid cast from ‘GtkLabel’ to ‘GnomeCanvas’

I found the answer as to why on the Parrot security forums:
https://community.parrotsec.org/t/etherape-not-working-since-last-update/813/5
This missing library was added with the command:

sudo apt-get install libgnomeui-0

How to generate a Battery Report in Windows 10

Useful post on how to generate a battery report in Windows 10:
powercfg /batteryreport /output c:\Temp\Battery_Report.html

See the post here:
https://www.windowscentral.com/generate-battery-report-windows-10

Parrot 4 will not start LDM in Virtualbox

It seems that Parrot 4.0.1 does not contain a version of Virtualbox tools compatible with kernel 4.16. As a consequence, X will not start due to the lack of supported Kernel modules.

The fix, to install modules from the VirtualBox ISO, is detailed by Pavel at the following link:

Failed to start light display manager? - Community - Parrot Community:



When you obtain the failure message about lightdm, simply press ALT+F1 and log in there. then:

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade
• sudo apt-get install build-essential module-assistant
• sudo m-a prepare

Insert Guest Additions ISO

• mount /media/cdrom
• sudo sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Reboot

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How to install selfhosted Speedtest | Freedif

How to install selfhosted Speedtest | Freedif:



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Not So Pretty: What You Need to Know About E-Fail and the PGP Flaw | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Not So Pretty: What You Need to Know About E-Fail and the PGP Flaw | Electronic Frontier Foundation:



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You'll need a new app to open this ms-windows-store - Windows 10

You'll need a new app to open this ms-windows-store - Windows 10: "Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}"



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How to install VirtualBox Guest Additions in a Debian virtual machine - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

How to install VirtualBox Guest Additions in a Debian virtual machine - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange:

For Debian 9, enable backports with contrib repository to /etc/apt/sources.list

• deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main contrib

Then update and install:

• sudo apt update
• sudo apt install virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-dkms dkms linux-headers-amd64 build-essential

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Script to create multiple VM clones

I need a script to create several hundred VM's to load test a new VMWare cluster.
I have found this.

http://www.virtualclouds.co.za/?p=1239

Disable USB power saving for booting from USB

Having issues booting from USB connected SSD and disabling this in the Linux Kernal seems to solve the issues of the disk becoming unavailable.
Edit /etc/default/grub and change the following line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash usbcore.autosuspend=-1"

Update the config with: sudo update-grub

Reboot

Thanks to this post.

Chromium Hardware Acceleration Issues on Mint 18,2

I'm currently testing Mint18.2 and have run into a number of issues with Chrome. It initially started with corruption issues in Youtube.
After investigation I discovered that the hardware acceleration had been disabled. By adding the following switches to the 'exec' lines in /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome I was able to force all the acceleration options on:

• --enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers
• --enable-zero-copy
• --disable-gpu-driver-bug-workarounds
• --ignore-gpu-blacklist
• --enable-gpu-rasterization
• --enable-checker-imaging

I added these to the file by editing it with root (sudo) options. I suspect the file will be overwritten on update. There seems to be an environment variable for chromium which allows you to set command line options to pass to chromium without editing files, but I can't tell if this works for Chrome yet.

Unable to update Skype because of GPG error

Recently installed NHSbuntu on an SSD and added Skype but kept getting the following error when trying to run 'apt update':

W: GPG error: https://repo.skype.com/deb stable InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 1F3045A5DF7587C3


Thanks to QwertyChouskie over at this thread for the answer:
'curl https://repo.skype.com/data/SKYPE-GPG-KEY | sudo apt-key add -'

June 2017 security update release – MSRC

Yet another set of security updates beyond Windows 7.

June 2017 security update release – MSRC:



Advisory is 4025685:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4025687/microsoft-security-advisory-4025685-guidance-for-older-platforms



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Bug #1587975 “packagekitd eats all the CPU” : Bugs : AppCenter

Bug #1587975 “packagekitd eats all the CPU” : Bugs : AppCenter:



Elementary OS problems with packagekitd using all CPU after installation of Skype.

Seems that the Skype repo doesn't add the GPG key properly.



I only had to run these lines:

curl https://repo.skype.com/data/SKYPE-GPG-KEY | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt update



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