Tag Archives: User (computing)

Using Storage Space To Make Data More Resilient On Windows 8

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Windows 8 Storage Space is a feature which resembles physical or software RAIDs that many server admins have dealt with on a frequent basis.  Server admins employ RAIDS to make sure data won’t just disappear.  Of course, Storage Space isn’t Enterprise grade, therefore it might not be as reliable or effective as real RAIDs are.  Nonetheless, Storage Space is definitely useful and effective in home computing environment.  An example would be how a person could quickly combine mismatched hard drives (i.e., different sizes and types) together through the usage of Storage Space.  The plus side for using Storage Space is that his or her data will even become more resilient than otherwise.

How would Storage Space work?  Basically, Storage Space feature within Windows 8 allows you to create Storage Pools.  From a Storage Pool, you get to create almost limitless amount of Storage Space.  What had I spewed?  No sweat!  Just imagine a Storage Pool as a computer configuration of multiple hard drives, and it’s indeed just that!  Nonetheless, a Storage Pool alone is rather useless, because it’s only representing a pool of combined hard drives.  You need to create as least one Storage Space out of a Storage Pool to make the Storage Pool useful.  In the context of Storage Space, just imagine it as a virtual disk space or virtual hard drive or virtual storage space.  The important point to keep in mind about Storage Space is that it’s being virtual!

By being virtual, Storage Space is free of physical limitation which many physical RAID configurations are facing.  I think software RAID configurations can pretty much be as flexible as Storage Space.   So, in this way a computer user can use Storage Space feature within Windows 8 to create any size virtual hard drive (Storage Space) from a limited configuration of Storage Pool.  Why Storage Pool is a limited configuration?  When a Windows 8 user creates Storage Space that is much larger than its Storage Pool, there is a possibility that such a Storage Space will overfill the physical configuration of its Storage Pool.  When this happens, Windows 8 will complain that a user must add more physical or network drives to a Storage Pool so there will be more real physical disk space to support the overfilled Storage Pool.

By knowing the differences between the Storage Pool and Storage Space, Windows 8 users can freely add however many and however large Storage Spaces into a Storage Pool quick and easy.  With Windows 8 Storage Space, I can see Windows 8 users will find their data to be rather resilient than usual.  I made a video on Windows 8 Storage Space, and you can watch it right after the break.  This video will go deeper into what I’d written here.  Enjoy!!!

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Dashlane Has Got To Be The Best Solution For Remembering Online Passwords So Far. I Love It!

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Dashlane

Dashlane

Wow, Dashlane wows me a lot!  Basically, Dashlane strives to be more than just a password manager, because it’s also capable in filling out your purchasing details and keeping your online shopping records.  I’m testing out Dashlane, and I’ve to say its password manager capability is quite pleasing to use.  Whenever I decide to log into a website, Dashlane automatically fills in my username and password.  If Dashlane has never seen me log into a website for the first time, it will automatically present me a popup form which allows me to add my credential information (e.g., username, password, category).  Dashlane is capable of automatically auto-filling user credential and purchasing details (e.g., address, credit card number, others), because you have the option to allow Dashlane extension to be installed onto your favorite web browsers.  Dashlane eases the adding itself to your favorite web browser(s) when you first complete the Dashlane first time registration process, therefore right after you have Dashlane going you should be able to use Dashlane password manager capability with your favorite websites right away.  Of course, beyond password manager ability, Dashlane helps you manage your purchasing history, credit card numbers, and more.  This is why Dashlane is so intriguing to me.

If Dashlane only is easy to use, it might not have enough inspiration to garner my adoration, but Dashlane is much more.  How come?  Dashlane is not only so easy to use, but it’s also secure.  According to Dashlane itself and TechCrunch’s Dashlane Speeds Up The Web With Instant Logins, Automatic Checkout And More article, Dashlane saves and encrypts the data locally.  If this is correct, it means Dashlane will not store our data anywhere else but only on our hard drives.  To access Dashlane app, one must know his or her master password, and this master password will not be stored anywhere.  Since the master password will not be stored anywhere, one will not be able to recover the master password if one cannot recall the master password from memory.  Losing master password, one might have to start Dashlane from scratch again — meaning to register with Dashlane app and hopefully filling in the correct website credentials again.  Luckily, if one has not changed any password from a browser’s password manager (one has to allow the browser to remember passwords), starting Dashlane from scratch might not be too hard since one can always allow Dashlane to re-import all the passwords from the browsers.  Nonetheless, some users might have been disabled the browser password managers for security purpose (i.e., they don’t trust the security of their browser password managers), therefore these users may have to recall most of their website credentials from memory.  It would be hard!

I think Dashlane will definitely speed up the online experience by a lot.  I’m myself like Dashlane a lot since Dashlane allows me to use the web without the hassles of remembering passwords and filling out the same online credentials over and over again.  Plus, Dashlane is capable of synching web credentials from multiple devices securely.  For this to work, it’s obviously that Dashlane is currently supporting all major operating systems.  This probably means that Mac OS X and Windows are being supported.  By the way, Dashlane encrypts data with AES-256 encryption algorithm — data will be very secure.

With Dashlane is being so awesome, I have to wonder why Dashlane is free!  It’s unclear to me yet why Dashlane is being a free service, but I guess I have to dig around some more on this so this question can be answered with earnest.  In my opinion, Dashlane is awesome, but one should also use KeepassX to manage one’s passwords alongside Dashlane.  How come?  Well, it’s all about redundancy matter!  In case Dashlane experiences whatever problems (might be super rare or if ever), one can always feel assure that one has saved web credentials with KeepassX.  Although KeepassX isn’t as capable as Dashlane in features, but its password management capability is definitely one of the best — just as good as Dashlane’s password management capability.  By the way, just as Dashlane, KeepassX is free to download and use!  KeepassX supports Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows!

Source:  http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/16/dashlane-speeds-up-the-web-with-instant-logins-automatic-checkout-and-more/

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How To Install Minecraft Server Onto Ubuntu 11.10?

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Home sweet home - in minecraft

Home sweet home - in minecraft (Photo credit: Larry and Laura)

I didn’t know anything about Minecraft, and I still don’t.  Nonetheless, someone has asked me how to install Minecraft server onto Ubuntu, and so I showed him how to do so.  Since now I knew how to install Minecraft server onto Ubuntu 11.10, I thought it would be a good idea to write about it.  It is simple to install Minecraft server onto Ubuntu 11.10 really!

You can either follow the instruction from minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server or you can follow mine here, because I actually had to use Minecraftwiki as the source of knowledge on how to install Minecraft server onto Ubuntu 11.10.

Steps:

  1. Are you running Ubuntu 11.10?  Make sure you are, and then follow the step number 2.
  2. Opening up a terminal and becoming root by executing this command [sudo -i], but do not use the square brackets as part of your command line — square brackets are there to only clarify the command line.
  3. Inside terminal as root, type in this command [add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/java].  This command is to add a ppa repository which contains sun-java6-jre software.  Using this ppa repository, you can now install sun-java6-jre easily through apt-get or aptitude.  I guess Minecraft server requires sun-java6-jre to be installed before you can launch Minecraft server.
  4. Since we have added a new ppa repository.  Now we should just update our aptitude database by doing this command as root [aptitude update].
  5. Now aptitude’s database is up to date, we should now be able to go ahead and install sun-java6-jre.  Let do this command as root [aptitude install sun-java6-jre].
  6. Now, we need to tell Ubuntu system to insert sun-java6-jre into user’s home path by doing this command as root [update-alternatives –config java].  You need to choose the selection that emphasizes sun-java6-jre specifically.
  7. Since we now have sun-java6-jre installed, we can now go to Minecraft official website and download Minecraft server software.  Make sure you are downloading the Minecraft server version that is to be used with Linux operating system, OK?
  8. Hopefully, you remember where you have downloaded minecraft.jar file to.  You need to change into the directory that you have downloaded the minecraft.jar file.  Now, execute this command [java -Xms1G -Xmx1G -jar minecraft.jar nogui] as the user who has the privilege to run server on your system.  Usually, preferable users are nobody (i.e., user apache is for running web server) and normal user.  Don’t run Minecraft server as root, because Minecraft server might have exploitable codes and allow hackers to escalate to root privilege by exploiting the faulty codes of Minecraft server — with root privilege, hackers will be able to do anything to the entire Ubuntu system.

Note:  If your server isn’t having enough RAM, then you should read the instruction at minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server to know how to solve the RAM and SWAP problem OK?  The command [java -Xms1G -Xmx1G -jar minecraft.jar nogui] has two parameters (-Xms and -Xmx) and by adding the free/available RAM amount of a system to these parameters, this action might allow a Minecraft server administrator to control how much RAM a Minecraft server would hog (i.e., use).  So, in a sense, you can manipulate this command line’s parameters to make Minecraft runs smoothly — depending on how much RAM your Ubuntu 11.10 system has.

Source:  http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server

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