Alexander’s Blog

If your laptop is stolen, it sure would be nice to be able to track it. Well, the researchers at the University of Washington (UW) along with the researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed an open source software package, called Adeona (the Roman goddess of safe returns) to do exactly that. It uses state-of-the-art cryptography so you, the owner of the laptop, will be only person who can track your stolen laptop. If you are wondering about the cost of such valuable software, worry not….it’s FREE.

Adeona uses the Internet as a homing beacon by occasionally sending the laptop’s IP address and related information to OpenDHT, a free online storage network. By using the IP address, you can get a general idea where the laptop might be located. The tool works on laptops and desktops running Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

If you are using Macintosh you would like this tool even better because Adeona will use the computer’s internal camera to take a photo and send it to the server. The photo, along with the general location of your stolen laptop, could be valuable for law enforcement authorities to help you track your laptop.easy

The program is very easy to install and takes only 3.8MB on a Windows computer. The software consists of Adeona Client, which periodically sends private updates regarding your laptop to a remote storage location on the Internet. The Adeona Recovery Tools is the component that helps you retrieve the updates that were sent by your laptop. Of course, you want to install both the components. You will be prompted to provide a password. This password will ensure that only you will be able to reteive the information about the laptop.

Once you have installed the product, make sure that you back up the file created by the setup program on your desktop. The file is called adeona-retrievecredentials.ost and it contains the location-finding credentials of your laptop.

NOTE: Unfortunately, the extension .ost will confuse some people because it is used by Microsoft’s Outlook as an offline storage file. To read the contents of the file do not double-click it, instead you can open it in Notepad to read the content.

Here’s the message you will see at the completion of installation.

To retrieve a lost or stolen laptop you execute the Run Adeona Recovery tool from the Start menu. You will be prompted to enter your password. You may have to wait an hour before you do a retrieval after you install the software on your computer. In my evaluation of the software, I was able to get the location information relatively quickly, within 20 minutes or so after the installation. The retrieved location information will look something like this. I am using fake IP addresses in the example.

Retrieved location information:
update time: 10/03/2008,10:38 (PDT)
internal ip: 10.5.15.20
external ip: 192.168.9.8
access point: (n/a)
Nearby routers:
1 0.000ms 10.5.15.1 (MYROUTER)
===============================
Press any key to continue . . .

You can use one of the several free tools to look up the IP address information, such as IPLookup.

Check out this link for more details. You can download the tool at http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/.

In case you are not familiar with this tool, this is worth checking out. The Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer reads an Active Directory configuration using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and then automatically generates a Visio diagram of your Active Directory and/or your Exchange 200x Server topology. The diagrams include domains, sites, servers, administrative groups, routing groups and connectors and can be changed manually in Visio if needed.

The tool works on Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista. You can download the tool here.

If you’ve configured your SharePoint site with a specific URL (host header), e.g. http://webportal and then later decided that you want to change it to another URL, such as sharepoint.seattlepro.com, you can use the Alternate Access Mapping feature of Microsoft Office SharePoint  Server (MOSS) 2007. Here’s how.

1. Start SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.

2. Click on the Operations tab.

3. Under Global Configuration section click on Alternate access mappings.

4. Click on Show All in the upper right-hand corner and then click on Change Alternate Access Mapping Collection.

5. From Select An Alternate Access Mapping Collection window, click the URL that you would like to change, e.g. http://webportal.

6. Click Edit Public URLs.

7. Change the URL listed in the Default box to the one you want. For example, change it from http://webportal to http://sharepoint.seattlepro.com.

8. Click Save.

9. The next step is to update the information in Internet Information Services (IIS). Start IIS Manager. In our example, we will assume you are running IIS 7.

10. Highlight the Web site whose URL you want to change.

11. In the Actions pane click Bindings (or right-click the Web site and select Edit Bindings).

12. Highlight the entry in the Edit Site Binding window and then click Edit.

13. In the Host Name box enter the new URL that you would like to use. For example, sharepoint.seattlepro.com.

14. Click OK, then click Close.

15. Go to the command prompt and run iisreset to restart Internet services.

16. You should now be able to use the new host header and access the site with the new URL (e.g. http://sharepoint.seattlepro.com).

NOTE: If your Web site needs to be accessible from the Internet and you are using Microsoft ISA Server, or another firewall, you need to make sure that you update the DNS server and the ISA Server rule that allows you to access the Web site from the external network. For example, you need to add a host record for sharepoint.seattlepro.com in a DNS server that is accessible from the Internet and add the URL sharepoint.seattlepro.com on the Public Name tab of the ISA Server rule that is publishing the Web site.

Using Alernate Access Mapping to Configure a Different URL for Internal Use

If you want to use a different URL for the intranet site internally (e.g. http//intranet), you can add that URL in step 6. On the Alternate Access Mappings page, instead of clicking on Edit Public URLs, click on the link Add Internal URLs. In the Add Internal URL box type the URL that you want to add, e.g. http://intranet, then click Save. You still need to go to IIS Manager and in step 13 add a Site Binding for intranet. Your site bindings will look like this.  Notice that you don’t need to type http:// in the Host Name box. Simply type the host header that you want to use (in our case its intranet).

Make sure you don’t forget step 15 after modifying the bindings. That’s it. Now your users can access the intranet site internally by typing http://intranet and externally by typing http://intranet.seattlepro.com.

This is one of many examples of how Alternate Access Mappings can be used in MOSS 2007. It demonstrates how the end user may type a different URL to access the site then the URL that is received by the Internet Information Services (IIS). With Alternate Access Mapping you can also associate multiple internal URLs with a single public URL, using one of 5 different authentication zones: Default, Intranet, Internet, Custom, and Extranet.

The power management settings in Windows Vista can be centrally managed via Group Policy. However, natively the power management settings (monitor power management, system standby, and hibernate) in Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 cannot be centrally managed through Group Policies.

Energy Star offers a free tool to network administrators that you might want to check out. It’s called EZ GPO and doesn’t have any licensing fees. EZ GPO will allow you to centrally manage your Windows XP/2000 client workstations through Group Policy.

According to the Energy Star Web site, here’s how EZ GPO works.

• - Uses an automated installer
• - Contains one binary application that runs as a service and one that runs on login under each user’s account
• - Reads the desired power management settings that are set using GPOs in integer and string value format
• - Allows changes to power management settings using Microsoft’s core Application Programming Interface
• - Intelligently selects only capable computers when activating “system standby.” (Computers generally capable of using system standby reliably run Windows 2000 or XP with Pentium 4 chip sets capable of S3 standby mode.)

You can download EZ GPO here.

Also check out EZ GPO Installation Instructions and FAQs.

In case you are wondering about Energy Star. It is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. It’s purpose is to save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Solution Accelerator is an agentless tool that will find computers on a network and perform a detailed inventory of the computers using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, or the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Using the inventory data, the tool will assess and report whether computers can run Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Application Virtualization (SoftGrid), and Windows Server 2008. This includes assessment of device driver availability and recommendations for hardware upgrades that may be required.

System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows Vista Service Pack 1; Windows XP Professional Edition

Hardware Requirements:

• 1.6-GHz or faster processor minimum
• 1.5 GB of RAM minimum (2.0GB for Windows Vista)
• 1 GB of available hard-disk space required
• 10/100 Mbps network adapter required

Software Requirements:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition for storing inventory and assessment data. Microsoft Word 2003 SP2 or Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Excel 2003 SP2 or Microsoft Excel 2007 for generating reports.

CPU Architecture:

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator can only be installed on 32-Bit versions of any of the supported operating systems.

Click here to download this free tool.