This is how I installed Windows 7 beta on my Mac with Vmware Fusion.

Download

The 2.44 GB ISO file can be downloaded from Windows7 beta download page. It took me around 2 hours to download it using my 8MB home broadband. You’ll also be given a Windows 7 Beta Product Key together with the download to activate windows 7.

Create New Virtual Machine

Create a new virtual machine by launching the Vmware Fusion and going to FIle–>New

Click on Continue without disk, because we’ll be using the ISO image to install Windows 7.

Then, click on Use operating system installation disk image file and select the Windows 7 ISO file downloaded earlier.

Choose the Operating System. I had downloaded the 64 bit version so, I chose Windows Vista x64 Edition.

Enter the Account Name, Password and the Windows Product Key

I don’t need file sharing at the moment so, I disabled the windows sharing by choosing None.

Default config of the new virtual machine. I wanted to give more RAM to the new vm so, clicked on Customize Settings

This is where you can customize the hardware settings for your virtual machine. Click on Processors & RAM to increase the RAM size.

Increase the RAM to 2048MB (2GB)

Click on the play button to begin installation

The installation starts…

After couple of reboots and an approximately half an hour later it’s done.

The installation was seamless and I’m planning to use Window 7 for some time next week to see how good it is. The immediate next thing is an anti-virus. Complimentary McAfee anti-virus provided by vmware fusion is not compatible with Windows 7 yet, and a quick google showed Kaspersky, so I might install that.

I’ve installed and tested it in my WinXP SP2 running on my MacBook Pro Vmware Fusion, and this is what I found.

Installation and usage
The installation is easy and straightforward. You just need to follow the on screen instruction. You’ll require: a domain administrator account, a smtp server address to send alerts via email and have to choose either Microsoft Access or MS SQL Server for the back-end database.

Scanning, Reporting and Patching
The user interface is intuitive and easy to use. After the scanning is completed, it gives a nice report of the scan (you can choose to scan a single computer, group or the whole network). In the first scan it let me know that my Office and Windows need some critical patches. If you expand each vulnerabilities then it’ll give the Microsoft ID, download link and the patch release date. You can apply the patch or choose to ignore it by right clicking on it. There’s a handy feature to mass deploy the Microsoft updates on selected computers or all computers in the network. Other notable features in patch deployment are:

- Custom Software deployment
- Uninstallation of Microsoft updates
- Detailed Patch Deployment log

Besides the vulnerabilities the scan reports on open tcp/udp ports, open shares, installed applications, password policies, groups and users (with their privilege, last logon and password age).

You can buy an extra ReportPack to create vulnerabilities scanning reports and system information reports for your managers and bosses. I think it would have been great to have this reporting built in to NSS.

Useful Tools
GFI LANguard NSS comes with very handy tools that a network/security admin uses every day

Conclusion
I’ve tried the GFI LANguard N.S.S 8 for few days and think that it is a very useful tool for network and security administrators. I liked the fact that it has all three useful tools i.e. network vulnerability scanning, patch management and auditing integrated into one. It’s also easy to use and manage. The lack of built-in ReportPack is the only down side of it. Here, I’ve just scratched few features of the product, if you’re interested you can try it for free with 30 days evaluation version before buying it.

Update: GFI have now included the ReportPack for free with GFI LANguard N.S.S. and all other ReportPack-powered software titles on top of the 45% price cut.

So, here is my mobile friendly blog — http://mobile.nirlog.com, created in 2 minutes.

Browsing with my dopod

With wider screen, it looks even better at my sons PSP

Desktop and mobile browsing

For the mobile email currently I’m using 4smartphone.net, they provide hosted push email service. I synchronize email, calendar and contacts with Dopod. So, my emails, calander and contacts are in sync with my mobile, desktop (outlook/entourage) and web (outlook web). This is an amazing convenience and control. Push email is cheaper and easier to implement than Blackberry.

push email from 4smartphone.net in my pocket outlook

If you’re looking for a free mobile email service, then Gmail Mobile is an excellent choice. You need to download a small java application to your mobile device once, after that you can access your Gmail on your phone with few clicks. I’ve tried the Gmail Mobile and can say that it simply rocks.

Receiving email with Gmail Mobile

And finally here is an extensive list of popular mobile friendly web sites.

In our scenario, a small office network is protected by Linux firewall and we’ll implement the secure OpenVPN to access the internal office network (File Server, Database Server and Desktop PCs) securely from anywhere in the Internet.

OpenVPN Server Installation
Download the OpenVPN and LZO packages, these are packaged RPMs for Fedora/Redhat, which also works for CentOS and Whiteboxlinux.

Install the packages:

Enable packet forwarding between 2 interfaces in OpenVPN Server:

#echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Master Certificate Authority (CA) Certificate and Key:
A set of scripts bundled with OpenVPN make the PKI management easier. We’ll use these scripts to generate a master CA certificate/key, a server certificate/key and 2 keys/certificates for separate clients.

Change your directory to easy-rsa subdirectory in your OpenVPN installation:

# cd /usr/share/doc/openvpn-2.0.7/easy-rsa

Edit the vars file and set the KEY_COUNTRY, KEY_PROVINCE, KEY_CITY, KEY_ORG, and KEY_EMAIL parameters. My vars parameters are as following, you need to setup your own:

export KEY_COUNTRY=HK
export KEY_PROVINCE=KLN
export KEY_CITY=Hong Kong
export KEY_ORG=”OpenVPN-TEST”
export KEY_EMAIL=”niranjan.kunwar@gmail.com”

Initialize the PKI:

Generate Certificate and Key for the Server:

Generate Certificates and Keys for 2 clients:

#sh build-key client-win
#sh build-key client-osx

Generate Diffie Hellman parameters

Copy the keys and certificate to /etc/openvpn

#cp dh1024.pem server.crt server.key ca.crt /etc/openvpn/

Server Configuration file
A sample configuration file server.conf can be found in /usr/share/doc/openvpn-2.0.7/sample-config-files, copy it to /etc/openvpn and customize it according to your needs. There are many possible customizations that you can do to the configuration file. In our case the VPN Server will be listening to UDP port 1194, which is the official OpenVPN port number. We’ll offer the virtual address 192.168.0.0/24 to the vpn clients and push the route 192.168.1.0, which is our Office LAN subnet. Following is the contents of our configuration file server.conf:

port 1194
proto udp
dev tun
ca ca.crt
cert server.crt
key server.key # This file should be kept secret
dh dh1024.pem
server 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
push “route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0″
client-to-client
keepalive 10 120
comp-lzo
user nobody
group nobody
persist-key
persist-tun
status openvpn-status.log
verb 3

Start the OpenVpn Server:

# service openvpn start

Windows Client Installation and Configuration
Download the OpenVPN GUI for Windows and install it.

Copy the ca.crt, client-win.crt and client-win.key files from OpenVPN Server to the windows pc at C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config. A Sample client configuration file client.ovpn can be found in C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\sample-config directory, also copy it to C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config and customize it according to your needs. Following is the contents of our client configuration file client.ovpn:

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote vpn.nirlog.com 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
ca ca.crt
cert client-win.crt
key client-win.key
ns-cert-type server
comp-lzo
verb 3

Connect:

Ping test:

Successful ping to 192.168.0.1 shows that you can reach the server via vpn tunnel. You should be able to ping the Desktops and Servers (192.168.1.x) in the office network too.

OS X Client Installation and Configuration:
Download Tunnelblick and install it by unzipping and dragging the Tunnelblick.app to Applications folder.

Copy the ca.crt, client-osx.crt and client-osx.key files from OpenVPN Server to the Mac at /Users/<yourname>/Library/openvpn. The client configuration file openvpn.conf can be found in /Users/<yourname>/Library/openvpn directory, customize it according to your needs. Following is the contents of our client configuration file openvpn.conf:

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote vpn.nirlog.com 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
user nobody
group nobody
persist-key
persist-tun
ca ca.crt
cert client-osx.crt
key client-osx.key
ns-cert-type server
comp-lzo
verb 3

Connect:

Ping test:

Successful ping to 192.168.0.1 shows that you can reach the server via vpn tunnel. You should be able to ping the Desktops and Servers (192.168.1.xxx) in the office network too.

This is my desk — powered by Synergy

1. Downloaded Windows Vista Beta 2 from the Customer Preview Program that Microsoft had some time ago (this program is already closed now) and burned it to DVD.

2. Made 2 partitions out of single 60GB hard disk. 40GB for Vista and 20GB for Ubuntu.

3. Installed Windows Vista Beta 2 to the first 40GB, NTFS partition.

4. Downloaded, burned cd and Installed Desktop Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) on the second 20GB, Ext3 partition. After this GRUB will manage the MBR.

5. Let the system reboot to Ubuntu after installation. Then, you have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to configure the GRUB. I added following lines to the file:

title Windows Vista (Beta 2)
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Also changed the timeout to 15 seconds, by default this value is 3 seconds.

6. Reboot the system and while you see the GRUB Loading Stage1.5. on the screen, press ESC key, which will lead you to the following boot menu.

7. Now you can boot Windows Vista

8. Or boot Ubuntu Linux

One of the leading security firm Sophos has released a Security Report, where it finds Trojans have dominated the first half of 2006. This is what they had to say:

Most interestingly, new Trojans now outweigh viruses and worms by 4:1, compared to 2:1 in the first half of 2005. In addition, the continued dominance of Windows-based threats has prompted Sophos to suggest that many home users should consider switching to Apple Macs, to shield themselves from the malware onslaught.

BBC has a story about the same report and switch advice, Threat prompt Mac switch advice, which brought a lot of attention in slashdot and backslash. I totally agree with Sophos. Specially for the home users who don’t know much about the threats that Windows PCs are exposed to. Macs are sleek, they work out of the box, they can do everything a home user needs to do and most importantly they’re much more secure than Windows. So if you’re planning to buy a new computer, you should seriously consider buying a Mac. After all if you find that OS X really sucks, which I can guarantee will not. You can still install windows in intel Macs.