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Update the Search Behaviour of the Firefox Address Bar

After having used Chrome for so long on my Mac (in the dev channel via the very useful Chromium Updater), switching back to Firefox reveals an interesting habit - searching via the address bar. In Chrome, you can type your search directly in the address bar and you'll get redirected to Google for your search results, however in Firefox it reacts slightly differently - it will carry out a Google "I'm feeling lucky" search which will direct you to the first result Google returns.

You can customise this behavior in the 'about:config' page within Firefox. Type 'about:config' into the address bar, and then update the 'keyword.URL' field to your chosen search engine. For example, if you wanted to use Scroogle instead, you would type:

By the way, If you are not already using Scroogle, it's a simple way to anonymise your search requests.

Installing and Uninstalling Software in Windows Safe Mode

It's quite common that you need to remove some software when running in Safe Mode, particularly when you find your system is unusable when running normally. However, by default, the key service required to manage installed software is not running, and cannot be started (the Windows Installer Service, aka MSIServer).

Here is a quick way around this issue - by adding the registry entry below, you'll then be able to start the service and remove / install the software you require.

reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"
sc start msiserver`

Once this change is made, it will remain permanent, and you won't need to re-apply it in the future, although you'll still need to start the msiserver service when required.

Transferring Files from a Decommissioned Netware Server

Here's the situation - you've remotely migrated all the data and printing services from a Netware server onto it's replacement, and you have just completed uninstalling eDirectory / NDS... the servers are locked away in the data center.

Just before you power it off, you find that one of the migrated volumes are not complete - data is missing! D'oh!

The old server is still powered up, but you can no longer authenticate to it across the network (no longer in the tree) - tools such as Adrem Free Console are no good, since you need to be able to authenticate. You still access to the server console, via the iLO (Integrated Lights-Out) / DRAC (Dell Remote Access Controller) - whew!

Getting the data off via ftp is the most straight forward, but is not a native app - thankfully it can be accessed via Bash. At the console prompt, type 'bash' then <enter> to drop into the shell. By default you'll find yourself on the SYS volume, with no obvious way of getting onto any of the other volumes. The data you need to rescue is on the DATA volume.
  1. At the Bash prompt, type 'mkdir /data', then press <enter>
  2. Type 'vi /etc/PATHTAB', then <enter>.
  3. Hit 'i' to enter insert mode and type '/data data:\'.
  4. Press 'Escape', then ':wq' and <enter>.
  5. Type 'exit' <enter> to unload the Bash shell, then type 'BASH' <enter> at the console prompt to load the shell again.
  6. Type 'cd /data' <enter> then 'ls' <enter> to display the root of the DATA volume - voila.
Now you have access to the data, the final step is to manually transfer over the missing portions of the data - using ftp, navigate to your selected folder, type 'ftp' <enter>, then 'open <new server>'. Once you've entered your username and password, you can now 'put <file>' to transfer across your missing data - you get the idea anyway.
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Andrew G. Allen

Andrew G. Allen

Information Security Evangelist, Technologist, and Internet Junkie.

http://www.andrewallen.co.uk/

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