Technology Insights

Install Backtrack 4 On Windows 7 In A Virtual Machine Using Windows Virtual PC

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I have been using a Windows 7 laptop for quite awhile as my daily driver and recently wanted to install Backtrack 4 in a virtual machine so I wasn’t required to dual boot or use a different laptop for BT4. I thought about using VMware as Martin wrote an article a couple months ago about installing Backtrack in a VM on Windows 7 but a couple months ago I discovered Windows Virtual PC during a Windows XP VM install. So far I have been really happy with Windows Virtual PC and decided to try installing Backtrack 4 in a Windows Virtual PC virtual machine. Below are the details on how to setup the Windows Virtual PC virtual machine and then information on how to install Backtrack 4 in that VM.

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Upgrade PostgreSQL 8.3 To PostgreSQL 8.4 On A CentOS Server Using Yum

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I have been needing to upgrade the PostgreSQL servers at my work for awhile now and was finally forced to do so after needing some of the features available with PostgreSQL 8.4.X. Currently we are running PostgreSQL 8.3.10 which is super old but it is definitely not the latest stable release available. One thing I am looking forward to testing is the improvements to the vacuum process. Over the past two years I have become a lot more familiar with Postgres and one thing that has been disappointing is the downtime involved in reclaiming disk space via data removed from PSQL database tables. The full vacuum process, which is required to reclaim disk after deleting data from a table, in 8.3 requires a lock on tables which essentially causes downtime. When you are dealing with large tables over 10GB in size this can take days to complete. Follow the directions below to first backup all of your PostgreSQL data, remove the current PostgreSQL installation, and then install PostgreSQL 8.4 on a CentOS Linux server.

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How to Create Transparency and Clickable Links in URXVT Terminal

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When ever I use Linux as a desktop I lie to be able to use the terminal I like which is URXVT. It is a port of the old rxvt with unicode support for all languages. One thing that I love about it is the ability to make links which when clicked will open up a defined browser. Most of the newer terminals like Gnome Terminal and Konsole in KDE have this ability but I do not care for either of those to much. Below I will show the few short steps to making a very nice looking URXVT terminal.

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How to Install Skype in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

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I just got around to downloading The new LTS release from Ubuntu which is 10.04. I have to admit as a long time Gentoo Linux user I am very impressed with the speed of 10.04. There are some annoying bugs but I am working on sorting those out and I will try to post some of the results. So this morning I needed to get Skype going so i decided to whip up a quick piece on installing Skype on the newest Ubuntu.