systemd0wn

First off, thanks for everyones help thus far. I'm still having issues with the xorg.conf being re-written every time i boot. So... For instance. 1) boot thumb drive. 2) type 'startx' 3) fail 4) manually config xorg.conf and save 5) startx 6) x starts fine. At this point i can double check xorg.conf and the changes i applied in step 4 are still there. HOWEVER, if i reboot I have to go through the same steps i mentioned above... When I look in the '/etc/X11/' folder I see a ton of 'xorg.conf' files but they all have a date and time stamp at the end of the file name. Ugh. It gets old editing the xorg.conf every time i want to boot backtrack. Anyone have ideas?

I agree with VaKo, you could be using a much better method for pushing terminal services. There are a lot of options for this, start with what he recommended. Psycosis, Overhead for ESXi is pretty complicated. you can checkout: http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vi_pages/vi_pubs_35.html Checkout Resource Management Guide. It mainly talks about giving resources to virtual machines but it also touches on depending on how many processors you give that VM, how much ram you dedicate to it will factor into how much overhead ESXi is going to take. Like i said if you want to get down to the nitty gritty of resource management in VMWare you'll have to do a lot of reading.

Your hardware requirements are dictated by what applications you think your users are going to run. Think of your virtual machines as real computers. For instance if you plan on having them run Adobe Photoshop CS4 this may not meet your needs. On the other hand if they will just be doing some word processing and web surfing you should be fine. ESXi licensing isn't to tough. You get a license depending on what features you want (if you want hot migration etc) and how many VMs you are going to run. Once you get into running multiple ESXi servers you will want to install the licensing server so that you can manage it all from one place. Also the ESXi servers will depend on this to run (remember this is only if you have multiple ESXi servers, and don't confuse this with virtual machines). Standard operating system licensing applies for each VM. Soooo. If you had 2 Windows 2003 servers, 1 Windows XP Pro, and 2 Ubuntu Servers... You would need to purchase 2 server 2003 licenses, 1 windows XP license, and 0 ubuntu licenses (i love open source). There is a little overhead for the ESXi Kernel and you can find all of that on VMWares site. Ughhh. I'm trying to remember off the top of my (drunk) head and i wana say it will never be more than 256mb? Something like that... Anyway it isn't much. have fun, experiment and push your new server to the limits. getting a good performance baseline is the only way you are going to know for certain what kind of hardware resources you are going to need.

c0r, you can always use kismet as a IDS. Provides stateful and stateless intrusion detection on layers 2 and 3. Kismet can send information to snort for further analysis as well. It's free, open source and has a huge user base for support. Anyway checkout section 12 in their documentation. http://www.kismetwireless.net/documentation.shtml Hope this helps.

A quick thought. I was reading some posts on here and saw Barry and his avatar, you know, the Devil with his sweet WiFi enabled pitch fork. lol. Anyway, I realized it all felt so familiar so I went to netstumbler.org (where i haven't been in a long time) and realized OH MAN. I used to read Barrys posts all the time! It's kind of fun for me years later to run into someone on IRC or see a post of theirs on the forum. Anyone else have this happen to them? I know, I know, it makes me sound old. I'm really not though, I promise.

d4rkfe4r, if you're going to do ONE video you might as well do TWO vidoes. That way you can get a persistent USB video created. lol. See, you start doing something nice and people get all needy and shit.

First off, I don't care what you use it for. Hack The Planet or whatever floats your boat. I suggest looking on SourceForge, Google Code, etc. I found this one real quick on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/freelogger/ One known issue is it doesn't capture special characters correctly. So instead of seeing ! you just see 1. Shift plus a key isn't handled properly. Anyway, i like being able to download the code myself if I like. Could it still include some nefarious shit? Ya. But it makes me feel better on the inside. Good Luck.

I'm using a Dell Mini 12 (inspiron 1210), Bios: Phoenix SecureCore Version A02. I purchased another USB drive so I will probably give that a try tomorrow if I'm not to busy (Security+ exam on Friday). digip, good ideas. Unfortunately my other laptop is a bit dated so I can't boot of of USB. I'll steal a buddies or something. You also made me realize I hadn't tried the other side of the motherboard so thats the first thing i'll do. Wow, kinda made me realize i didn't fully troubleshoot this before posting. Then again it was nice to have some ideas waiting for me while i was sitting on the floor of best buys isle searching FCC IDs on my iPhone. Ugh, it's such a pain to find the proper chipset... Thanks. edit: i also wanted to mention that even though I have changed my xorg.conf each time i boot off the drive and 'startx' it says no display available. then of course i have to manually reconfigure xorg and boot. Anyone else using a persistent usb drive?

OK, so first remember that if you install and aren't used to creating new partitions, etc... you are going to loose everything on that hard drive. With that said, check out the PDF in the link i provided. Read it all. Page 5 is specifically what you are asking for. Which pretty much tells you to watch the install video. Which is the second link i provided. If you are having issues I will try and help. http://www.offensive-security.com/backtrac...de-tutorial.pdf http://www.offensive‐security.com/vi...#8208;disk.html

I have a recently purchased USB thumb drive (SanDisk Cruzer 4GB) I have only used it a few times and decided it would be best served as a bootable persistent BackTrack 4 drive. Well after running through a incredibly helpful guide I had the necessary partitions, grub, and file systems, everything I needed. HOWEVER, when I boot that usb drive it's hit or miss. The second boot got the OS loaded but when it came time to check to see if I could write a file to the FS (to be sure persistence was working) BackTrack came back with an error. I couldn't put my finger on it until I saw the thumb drive light was off. WTF? SO I rebooted, and while it was trying to load the OS i get a stream of USB errors (I/O if i recall). My question to you is could this be a software issue (drivers for usb controller) or am I thinking to hard and it's something physical? (ie: bad usb drive or bad physical connection) I have noticed a bit of play when i connect it to the computer (ie: it wiggles back and forth a bit) but then I tried another usb drive and it's the same way. Perhaps I just never noticed this before because it wasn't an issue. I haven't used the drive enough to really be certain either way. Anyway experience issues like this? thanks.

Ya i found a lot of services that would do application integration but couldn't find much in line with programming. I appreciate the links, they look a bit dated but it should gives me somewhere to start. What am i trying to do? hrm... a lot. Haha, right now i am out of the country and when i get some free time i sit down with a notepad and think of random projects. Project 1: I have thought for a while (over a year now) about creating a web app that would be like a overzealous black book. Features: Add friends and acquaintances Add emails, phone numbers, address, etc Add pictures Add known associates, family members Add how i know the person Add schooling, jobs, hobbies Ability to utilize people search engines to automatically add more information Ability to utilize social networking sites to gather more information Add if they owe you a favor or not ;) Face recognition, email a picture or sms a picture to the server and have it bring up more info I am not incredibly dedicated to the project i just thought it would be an interesting concept. However i feel like it should be named 'stalker 3000' so i am unsure if i want to do it or not. You could also give close friends access to this and they could see if you have mutual friends or say your buddy needs a carpenter he could search to see if you know any and perhaps you could make an introduction for them. The voice integration would be having the ability to call a phone number (possibly skype) and say someones name or identifiable information and it could pull up more information for you. Project 2: I have also been thinking of (lots of thinking lately since all i do is work 24/7) home automation / interactive design. I would like to start some things with microcontrollers, be able to feed the dog remotely, look at the status of sensors (motion detectors, window sensors), check power consumption of certain areas of the house (and remotely turn off breakers) or specific appliances, have my computer play specific movies, check the local weather. Be able to tell the computer you need to relax and it sets the lights how you want, plays some good music, turns off the ringer to your phone(s). I see it as me asking the computer for something and it acting on it. I would love for it not to sound like the old Microsoft Sam. You could even integrate this with the previously mentioned software, "How is Bill doing?" and it would look up the latest 'tweet', facebook status, etc and reply to you using the most current one. For instance "Bills facebook status says he is "taking a poop". As a proof of concept i could also see asking the computer (assuming you could access this without being directly in front of a computer) to look something up for you and once it looks up what you want it could display that on the nearest screen. I am pretty much bored with little time to do anything technical so I am just tossing around ideas. Both of these would be big projects by themselves even without the voice recognition but it would be cool to come up with a couple proof of concept applications to use voice recognition with. -systemd0wn

Have some extra time on my hands and have been thinking about Voice Recognition software. It has been hard for me to find software on this topic. Want to look into integrating it with applications etc. A couple things i would like to do with Voice Recognition software is Home Automation and Data Mining. If anyone has any experience with voice recognition technologies i would appreciate a push in the right direction... Just want to evaluate the feasibility of some of my crazy projects. For some reason when i think about starting new projects they never start off simple... -systemd0wn

Hi my name is system0dwn Favourite game: Hrmm... been a while since i had time to game... Road Rash for Sega?! Favourite OS: Linux (Ubuntu distro), Forced into using Windows most of the time though. Favourite console: Sega Nationality: American Accent: I'm from the midwest, I'm told we don't have accents. Sex: Male Age: 24 Race: This American = English + Irish + ? Height: 5' 4" Status: Single Build: Athletic Favorite band: 311 Favorite book: The Hobbit, The Republic, The Giver Favorite author: J.R.R Tolkien Favorite movie: "Phantom of The Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber's" Favorite director: Kevin Smith Favorite TV Show: McGuyver, Entourage Favorite actor: Gerard Butler (in Phantom of The Opera. But ya he was badass in '300' too) Favorite Comedian: Dane Cook, Jack Black Other hobbies: Experiencing everything, Rock Climbing, Kayaking (Ocean), Camping, "hacking", Reading, Figuring out how things work Car: 1971 Ford Mustang Occupation: US Marine