mattfahrner.com

Month: December 2008

  • Favorite free Windows toys…

    Matt Fahrner

    Though I’m a Linux bigot, I work generally on a Windows laptop. Below is a list of my favorite free toys/tools that I use regularly. I’ve had good luck with all of them:

    • Unlocker Assistant – for unlocking pesky locked Windows files or drives.
    • I8kFanGUI – for controlling your laptop fans
    • TrueCrypt – for creating a mountable encrypted drive from a file or external media
    • CCleaner – cleans up your registry and other crap.
    • Cygwin – Unix emulation with complete Unix command set and environment for Windows
    • Malwarebytes – finds malware that most major AVs don’t.
    • TweakUI – free Microsoft tool (“PowerToy”) to tweak your system
    • Process Explorer – free system monitoring tool
    • Putty/WinSCP – great SSH tools (does telnet and FTP too)<
    • RealVNC – VNC remote desktop sessions
    • SolarWinds TFTP – standalone TFTP server useful for upgrading the IOS on a Cisco router
    • TeraTerm Pro – a much better replacement for serial Hyperterm (see UTF-8 version here for one with Windows installer). NOTE: The latest Putty now supports serial, so for basic uses that may be all you need.
    • WindDirStat – find where all your disk space is going.
    • Wireshark/WinPcap – for snooping networks
    • MBSA – Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer to find your big security holes
    • Windows Installer CleanUp Utility – Microsoft tool to remove unremovable/uninstallable program entries
    • PowerBooster 2k – Hitachi laptop disk performance tool
    • Google Earth – just a cool way to look at the world
    • MediaMonkey – one of the best MP3 player/burner/managers I’ve seen.
    • Fat32Format – format FAT32 drives of any size
    • HDD Health – monitor SMART drive output (may also want to see SpeedFan).
    • UltraISO – great for unpacking/manipulating CD ISO images
    • FastStone Image Viewer – very quick JPEG/GIF/TIFF/RAW viewer and editor (good for single images).
    • Picasa – Very nice and fast image organizer and editor (good for directories of images)
    • SyncToy – Microsoft disk-to-disk, directory-to-directory synchronizer (faster than backups). Personally I actually use the for-pay ViceVersa PRO but…

    Enjoy!

  • Defaulting a Cisco interface…

    Matt Fahrner

    One pain with Cisco IOS is trying to get a configured interface back to defaults. Half the time you don’t even remember what those were.

    If it’s a sub-interface you can “no” it, but you will still have configuration left behind:

    cisco(config)#no interface ATM1/0.1
    Not all config may be removed and may reappear after reactivating the sub-interface

    with physical top level interfaces you can’t “no” them at all anyway.

    The answer is to use the “default” command:

    cisco(config)#default interface ATM1/0.1
    Building configuration…

    Interface ATM1/0.1 set to default configuration

    Curiously this doesn’t seem to clear PVC definitions!

    NOTE: If you do this on the primary physical interface, all sub-interfaces will be defaulted and deleted (which may or may not be what you want). So use carefully!

    UPDATE: Well the docs say the sub-interfaces will be deleted, but they’re not in my experience. Also it’s not even clear if this works on sub-interfaces. The combination of a “no” on the sub-interface first and then a “default” after the fact seemed to maybe work, but no promises.

  • How to remove a VLAN from a port in CatOS…

    Matt Fahrner

    I can never seem to remember how to “remove” a VLAN on a switch (eg: Cisco 6500) running the older CatOS. The new IOS based switches are much easier.

    Anyway, it’s actually quite simple, just force the port to VLAN 1 (assuming that is your default/native VLAN). For example if port 6/5 was set to a VLAN and you wanted to remove it, just type:

    set vlan 1 6/5

    and bingo it’s removed from the current VLAN.

    Often this is necessary when reusing a port that had a VLAN assignment but you want to use as a trunk.