A private alternative to Dropbox for windows
Oct 9, 2011 Tech
(Note: this is an old post that got lost in the web host move, but its still mostly valid.)
I seem to have a love-hate relationship with dropbox. one one and i love the idea and the functionality of it. on the other hand, i dislike that my files are on someones elses server. (or ‘cloud’, depending on how much you like buzzwords)
So, with this in mind ive come up with my own alternative to dropbox. while the initial setup may seem a bit clunky, the final setup seems to work well in terms of functionality. This setup is only for windows right now, im sure there are some other decent methods for linux and/or mac systems online somewhere, I didnt find any decent windows ones.
what you will need.
ExpanDrive (from http://www.expandrive.com, not free, but there is a trial)
PureSync (from http://www.jumpingbytes.com/en/puresync.html, the personal edition is free)
a VPS or Home Server (you can find some good deals on http://lowendbox.com )
Lots of highspeed bandwidth, both up and down is a bonus, to make things go a little faster!
Firstly, im assuming you have already setup the security for the server or VPS your going to use, if not, do that now, also, make sure there is an SSH server installed n the OS. at this point you may choose to make a seperate user to use when you log into the server via ssh, it adds a little extra security as you can then set permissions on what that user can access. once thats done there isnt much else left to do on the server except remember the ssh login details that you will use to login to the server. you can choose to define to folders over ssh to share now or you can do it later.
Now to setup the software on the client machines, repeat this procedure for all of the machines you wish to share files with.
install ExpanDrive. once installed, open the drive manager and fill in the correct information. choose a name for your drive and type it into the drive name box. if you have a domain associated with your server you can type this nto the server box, otherwise type in the IP address of the server. (note if your using this setup on a home server thats connected to a router, make sure you forward a port for it! you can find out more about port forwarding at http://www.portforward.com.) type in the username and password of the user you use to login to your SSH server. from the authentication list, choose “use a password to log in”, if you have setup public-key encryption you can also use this to login to your server. in the directory dropdown box you can choose which directory is your main root directory on the server for sharing. then in the drive letter box, choose a drive letter for the drive that will appear in “My Computer”. to have this run of startup you can tick the box that says reconnect at logon, that way you will always be connected to your shared folder. click connect and the software should connect to your server and create a drive in “my computer”. you can now go into the newly setup drive, and start creating folders for sharing, some advanced sharing techniques are at the end of the article if you want some interesting ideas on how to expand functionality with this setup.
Thats half of it done! now to setup the syncing part!
first, install PureSync. once installed you need to setup some folders to sync. for example i sync my wallpapers folder to the server, i also have the same setup running on my laptop, this means the desktop and the laptop share from the same wallpapers folder. you can do similar things with some program configurations and other things like favorites etc. to setup a new sync, from the main window, choose “new syncronization”, choose the folders you want to sync; on the left hand side choose a folder on your local drive. on the right hand drive choose a folder you’ve defined for sharing from your ExpandDrive connected drive. click next, and the sync should start. an important setting to change on each sync job is for it to monitor its sync folders. once the initial sync is done, click “home”, then choose the sync job in the right hand box and click settings, this is where you can change the sync setting to make it monitor the folder. click auto sync nthe left hand side and check the box next to “when a file has been modified, i chose 2 seconds as the time to start the sync after. click ok and the settings will save. when you close the program it will minimise to the system tray. now if you put a file into one of the synced folders it will automatically be uploaded to the server, if there is another machine with the same setup on, this file will now be synced with that machine/device too!
thats all there is to it for the basic setup. but there are some advanced things you can do to add functonality. for example, if you wanted to have a publicly shared folder with http links, you could install a webserver on the server and configure it so the public directory is a folder you’ve defined for public sharing within expandrive. just make sure to remember it is public so dont put anything private there!
When i have the time i will update this guide with some pictures, have fun! 
Tags: alternative, dropbox, expandrive, private, puresync, server, vps, windows
newly updated usb switchblade drive thingy
Apr 6, 2008 Tech
So I decided to revamp my usb switchblade after seeing this guide, I wanted to intergrate it with my current setup. so after doing that, it was actually pretty easy as I already had a WinPE source on my drive. (plus its a really easy guide to follow anyways), anyways, i decided to redo the switchblade part of my pen drive, mostly because it was a bit buggy and didnt work sometimes because it was a really “hacked” implementation, so ive spent pretty much most of today creating a new implementation of it now, gone are the drive vars as they were uneeded and just caused unnessesary complications and made it less reliable. ive added so new icons for the u3 drive and the flash partition. All this is been done on my new 2GB titanium cruzer which is a lot more solid than the flimsy plastic 4gb one i had, i went for 2gb because FAT has a limitation of 2GB so i kept having filesystem problems with my 4gb, plus it had an ugly orange light when you plugged it in, this new one has a sexy new blue light which looks much better and matches the lights in my case too :p
The actual switchblade itself has also had options added to it, the safety option is now a built in option instead of an added hack. And truecrypt actually runs properly now.
So now what i have is the following:
A 2GB Titanium cruzer pendrive, formatted to FAT, multibooting with the following options:
Windows PE 2.0
Win PE
Memtest
DBAN
ntpasswd
FreeDOS
Ranish Partition Manager
The bootup process has been re-done too, its now based on grub and gives me a menu (like above).
The switchbladenow runs more reliably due to it using VB scripting instead of setting a system variable to point back to itself, running a .exe to run a .vb to run a .bat file, lol yes, it really was that bad :p but anyways, its a lot better now, i should write a guide sometime, although you can get a jist of how i did it by following the guide linked at the start of the post.
offtopic: Also i just noticed how, unfinished, the new wordpress admin / create post page is, it looks really bare with just random blocks of colour, and boxes that dont look like they’ve been positioned right, i thought it was IE at first but its the same in firefox, maybe im just used to seeing borders around things.
Tags: bartpe, ce, drive, grub, hack, menu, pe, switchblade, tool, u3, usb, windows
Vista SP1 RTM available, Yahoo to reject microsoft bid.
Feb 10, 2008 Tech
So Vista SP1 RTM has been released on Connect, and Windows Update apparently. Its quite likely that it’ll be available/leaked on torrent/http link if it isnt already. I should reinstall vista sometime and test it out.
update:
“Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.”
Im not sure if i have “the driver”, but I’m getting it from another source anyway 
in other news, yahoo is planning to reject the bid from microsoft, calling it a “hostile takeover bid”. I lol @ that. tbh, i dont see yahoo lasting much longer, the only dominant thing they own right now is flickr, and they cant survive on that forever. I dont know anyone who uses thier webmail. and there isnt really anything special about thier homepage either imo. Since Yahoo messenger compatibility has now been added to wlm, there isnt really any reason to use the Messaging client. I dont think many people use Yahoo ! widgets any more but who knows. I guess only time will tell.
Tags: bid, microsoft, ms, sp1, update, vista, windows, yahoo
Macworld 2008 & windows seven.
So I tuned into macworld the other day, when i say I tuned in, i mean i just kept the macrumours live page open to watch the updates lol. pictures were cool too, ars had some too, but that crashed out quite often, probably because of the huge amount of users online. so i wont bore you with all the talk that jobs likes to do :p there was supposed to be a stream somewhere but i couldnt get it to work/load.
so heres a 60 second overview 
http://www.mahalo.com/The_Steve_Jobs_90_Minute_Keynote_in_60_Seconds
I think the new macbook is the sexiest thing EVER. (except for maybe the cute girl next door) but the price and limitations on it are so crappy that I can see only mac fanboys buying one.
for $3000 (yes thats £1500) you get a fixed non replacable battery, non upgradable 2GB of ram, a most-likely short lived HDD since its solid state, and the lack of an optical drive.
the pros being, its very fast, very small, and very good looking.
Its a shame this thing has more cons than pro’s.
I think the new airport thing with the hard drive is just an over priced NAS & combined router/switch type thing.
I have recently been thinking such a device would be useful. but i think id get more use out of a home built WHS. (which this just seems to be an expensive copy of).
I think the online movie rental thing is quite good, the only limiting thing with that is the download time, i guess the watch times are reasonable, you get around 30 days to watch it after you’ve downloaded it.
probably not very useful for people on dial-up as it would take longer than 30 days to download lol.
I lol’d at the fact that itouch users will have to pay $20 to upgrade too.
Ive always wanted to play with an apple TV simply because i wanted to find out how it works, it doesnt seem to have taken off very well.
There was no “one more thing” either, also i have no idea who randy newman is, but im betting he has a lot more results on google now lol. so that was pretty much it from macworld.
Apparently there is a build of windows 7 (a.k.a Vienna) floating around somewhere.
more info about windows 7: (for the uninformed) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7
a copy of M1 has been shipped to microsoft partners:
[quote]The current M1 drop is available to Microsoft partners in English only and has shipped in x86 and x64 versions. An interesting feature that has been highlighted by Microsoft is the ability of the M1 software to handle a heterogeneous graphics system consisting of multiple graphics cards from different vendors. A new version of the Media center is already integrated in this software, but supports PC speakers only at this time.[/quote]
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35641/118/
When i manage to get some screens of this, i may post them in teh gallery >.>
CES also happened this week but for some reason i didnt pay much attention to it, the only real big thing that came out in the news about it was when gizmodo managed to piss off 90% of the community by playing pranks and turning off TV’s etc. personally i’d agree that it did seem a bit childish tbh.
in unrelated news, the downloads section is still empty, mostly because i dont really have anything to put in it. I dont really make things lol. I guess i could use it to mirror popular file but usually those files require lots of space and bandwidth, which i dont have a lot of. lol. nevermind :p
x
Tags: 2008, ads, ce, drive, hard drive, job, microsoft, mirror, ms, pe, post, software, space, support, tv, update, updates, upgrade, windows
my sexy new multifunctional bootable autorunning switchblade, drive.
Dec 18, 2007 Tech
So ive had my 4gb u3 enabled cruzer micro (I may actually buy a cruzer titanium because the plastic case feels a bit thin on this one) usb flash drive for a while now, and id been planning to setup a number of things on it.
- an implementation of switchblade.
- a portable applications menu.
- a bootable version of winPE.
Ive just finished setting up all of these on my drive, and now it rocks
The implementation of switchblade is pretty good as its sets to run completly from the u3 partition so that any anti virus software that thinks its a virus cant delete any of the files as the u3 partition is basically an emulated cd rom drive and as such is read only. log files are saved the the flash partition of the drive but theyre hardly likely to be detected as viruses this autoruns in the background on the drive when i plug it in. no popup windows or anything, thanks to CHP.exe the options of this ‘payload’ are configurable from a configuration program that is kept on the root of the flash drive, which is handy. One improvement to this that i might consider looking into is packing some of the ‘detected’ files with a uPX packer or something similar this should make them less detectable by anti virus softwares.
Btw, for the uniformed, Switchblade is a set of applications and scripts setup in such a way that they run silently when the drive is plugged in, these scripts applications, rip & decrypt usernames and passwords for windows, IE, firefox, email accounts, IM accounts such as MSN/WML/IRC etc, /network usernames and passwords, wireless keys, internal and external ip addresses and probably a lot more. it also sets vnc up as well as a mail server that sends email thorugh a secure tunnel to a specified email address, the emails contain attachments of the files that are ripped from pendrive and usb drives that are plugged in after mine. yeah im nosey. there is an option rip the contents of the my documents folder to the pendrive too, but ive left that option disabled just incase the mydocuments folder turns out to be like 8gb and then a copy error shows up, that’d be hard to explain lol.
the portable apps menu doesnt run automatically, but thats because its contained in a portable truecrypt partition. when plugging the drive in, truecrypt will auto start up and ask me for a password to the partition, upon entering this password i have full access to a whole load of applications tyhat i use normally on my home pc (the whole encrypted truecrypt partition only takes up 512mb so theres penty of space) if i dont enter the password i can just use the drive as a normal storage drive if i dont need to access my applications. Im also using a forked version of the portable apps menu which gives a lot more functionality and flexibility in terms of menu organisation.
The drive is also formatted as FAT (yes just FAT) so that it can be set bootable, there is an installation of BartPE on the drive which boots when you plug the drive in. Unfortunatly my motherboard doesnt support USB Booting 
So i havent been able to test it, VMware doesnt give me much luck either, but it should work depending on if the motherboard supports it, hopefully more motherboards will start to support it soon. This brings me onto my next project which i will talk about in a bit.
Also on both the u3 volume and the flash partition there are custom autorun.inf files that define custom context menu items ahd control what the default action is on a double click of that drive. I always hated that “autorun” or “autoplay” because the default action when there was a CD or autorun USB stick in the drive. So ive changed those back to “open” which just opens the “Files” folder on the flash drive when you double click it. same for both partitions, except for the u3 partition where its the root of the drive. but you wont find much there as all the files have been hidden. (as in hidden from windows too, you cant access them from explorer or DOS.) the context menu entries include an option to run truecrypt and an option to dismount all truecrypt partitions, as well as the autorun option which i cant seem to get rid of but that doesnt bother me really, and then theres the other uselless options that windows adss like explore and search. the autorun files also define the icon and the label for each drive, the icons are kept on the flash part so they dont default to windows icons, bu you know what windows is like, it still refuses to set my virtual drives to the same icon as my actual optical drive but never mind. the icons arnt a big deal tbh, just a nice feature.
Some more techincal details of how the drive is setup:
I used UltraISO to create a custom ISO to be ‘flashed’ to my u3 partition using universal customiser, my custom ISO is about 9.30MB so the original sandisk installer wont work, i think it can only handle an ISO thats around 3-4MB.
The custom ISO contains:
- Smithtech applauncher.
- Custom autorun.inf
- Switchblade implentation.
the autorun file is set to automatically run applauncher on start. this application will then run the 3 programs defined in its configuration. the configuration file is kept on the flash partition. in addition to running the defined applications it will also set a system variable of my choosing (I chose “U3CD”) this means i can use %U3CD% in paths to certain files and applications and it will point to the letter currently assigned to the u3 partition of the pendrive. this is because the drive letter may change from pc to pc due to the different drive letter configurations.
the first application the applauncher runs is drivevar. this program is solely for setting a system variable (%PA_DRV%) from the flash partition of the usb drive, I dont mind that you cant customise this one though, its still usable . this runs with the paramenter -a which will add the system variable without prompting the user.
The next application it runs is “chp.exe” this small .exe file is used for creating and starting hidden processes, hence the name CHP (Create hidden process) this is run with the parameter of go.exe (this is a small .exe file i made myself that simly runs a .vbs file from the u3 flash partition. this is what starts the payload running. Yes that is a long winded way of getting it to run but thats because applauncher has a few limitations when it comes to running programs/files. the applauncher cant run an application from the drive its running for (e.g. the u3 partition) and it also seems it can run anything but .exe files. (hence not being able to just put the vbs file on the flash partition – plus this saves it from deletion by an anti virus as mentioned earlier).
the 3rd program that is set to run truecrypt, this runns with a few paramenters which means it just pops up a password box asking for my password, which is handy.
the way the switchblade is implemented also has some error ‘managment’ too, if for some reason the system variable for the u3 partition doesnt get set, instead of not doing anything or producing error messages on screen, it runs a substitue vbs file that simply pops up a dialog welcoming me. this is so that i know the payload hasnt run but anyone watching would just think it was a cool ‘toy’ that i’d set up. this works because there is an identically named vbs file on the root of the flash drive, if the system variable isnt set then the .exe file assumes it should run the vbs file from “\” (current directory) which turns out to be the vbs file that pops up the “cool” welcome message.
as well as error managment the switchblade is setup to check for a certain file on the root of the c drive before running, if it finds this file it will not run (it wont do anything at all) this is so that i can plug the drive into my own machine safely without owning myself with my own payload :p
as i said earlier, the drive is formatted in FAT and has been set bootable, also the volume boot sector id has been set to 0×80, this is what makes the usb drive bootable. (again, this depends on the motherboard/BIOS and if it supports booting from usb devices).
To do all this I used PetoUSB. You’ll need a bartpe build source directory. this will copy bartpe to the disk too so all you need to do is setup your bios to bott from usb, restart and test if it works.
As I said earlier, this beings me onto my next project:
A Bootable DOS CD.
Yes, I know it doesnt sound as exciting but this will enable me to use my bartPE stick on a lot more computers, for example if the computer doesnt support booting to usb devices, like mine, then i can boot from a CD and launch bartpe from that.
for this to work i’ll have to look into loading usb drivers in DOS and accessing devices from DOS.
maybe setup an autorun so that when the CD boots up it automatically looks for the USB drive and boots bartpe from there automatically.
I’ll probably attempt this sometime in the new year, get christmas over with first.
after that my next project will be something similar but with the ability to emulate drives or mount .iso files in DOS.
this is so I can create a customised version of a windows install, maybe an unattended install, and install it from the usb drive, without having to carry around CDs all the time.
When i finally get one of these other projects finished, i may post here to say how i did it
I might post a tutorial sometime on how to do this, although this post pretty much explains the majority of it.
Thats all for now, folks.
Yes, that was a very long post.
In other news: I’ve recently discovered the awesomeness that is ill nino, it really is a mystery why I havent heard of this band before.
Tags: autorun, bartpe, computer, portable, portableapps, software, switchblade, Tech, usb, windows
Support Autopatcher
Sep 3, 2007 Tech
Recently a app called autopatcher which contains current windows patches for patching offline windows installations was ‘terminated’ by Microsoft.
This is after 4 years of the app being in existence which is a bit odd tbh. Microsoft have said its not to do with WGA concerns, which is probably true because WGA is installed with autopatcher patches anyway.
my personal opinion is Microsoft is closing the project down now as they are creating thier own similar services (the windows update catalog) also with the first vista service pack on the horizon, they will want to restrict the ways users get the patches ensuring they go through a correct Microsoft channel to authenticate their windows installation.
the official reason from Microsoft is that they dont want the possibility of malicious code being installed alongside thier patches.
while microsoft have every right and concern to do this, it still pisses off a lot of people who used it.
more info on the subject can be found at these links:
the official “its closed down thread” at neowin. http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=584427
the official “its closed down story” at autopatcher.com
http://www.autopatcher.com/134#comment-3702
one user took it upon himself to form a one man protest outside a Microsoft campus:
http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42304
Microsoft remains silent over autopatcher:
http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42295
for those interested, the C&D email received from Microsoft:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=584427&view=findpost&p=588813856
register your protest by contacting Microsoft here:
https://support.microsoft.com/common/survey.aspx?scid=sw;en-gb;1348&showpage=1&WS=mscomukform1
letters others have written to Microsoft on the issue:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=584427&view=findpost&p=588814393
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=584427&view=findpost&p=588814439
more ways to contact Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/PR_Contacts.mspx
the story on digg:
http://digg.com/microsoft/Microsoft_Ceases_AutoPatcher_Project
cnet’s opinion:
http://news.com.com/Patch+service+shuts+after+Microsoft+request/2100-7350_3-6205191.html
the inquirer’s opinion:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=42008
the online petition to save autopatcher:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/SaveAutoPatcher/signatures.html
lunarsofts opinion:
http://lunarsoft.net/news-324.html
the register’s opinion:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/30/autopatcher/
the story at PC pro:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=123635
the story at slashdot:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/29/1917221
the story at tech spot:
http://www.techspot.com/news/26809-microsoft-shuts-autopatcher-down.html
the story at search security – aus.
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com.au/topics/article.asp?DocID=1270060
Atomic – Aus.
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=21&t=1796
As you can see the news has reached the far corners of the web, from australia to the UK and the US.
If you still want to download autopatcher or its updates you can still use this mirror:
http://windowsedge.com/Mirror/AutoPatcher/Autopatcher-XP.html
Also here are some alternatives to autopatcher:
DIY Service packs:
http://www.heise-security.co.uk/articles/80682
Get all the security updates in one .ISO file from Microsoft for august:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E4DCC3E7-36BD-4C6F-A8B6-421CB8902EAA&displaylang=en
(unfortunately this contains updates for every version of windows so the file size is huge.)
windows updates downloader:
http://wud.jcarle.com
at the moment there is no news on weather autopatcher will survive.
Support auto patcher by displaying this image on your web site. (or create your own)
Thanks goes out to all those on the autopatcher team and everyone that made it possible
Tags: autopatcher, beta, neowin, site, support, Tech, updates, windows
The pinnacle of shitty software
So today I remembered an app that i used to use to “wipe free space”, it basically writes over your blank space with 0′s. because as everyone knows when you delete something its not actually deleted. so this app would actually go through your hard drives and “clean” your disks. I thought I hadnt done that for a while, but thats because I lost the app, and the only thing i remember about it is that the .exe file was called restore.exe, and google didnt give any results. anyways, so i thought I’d search google for an alternative, I didnt find many that were free(maybe im just rubbish at searching), the most i could find was a shareware version of a pprogram called “12ghosts shredder”. so i downloaded and installed, and looking through the options I thought it seemed quite a through program, so i clicked the “clean now button”, and within a few mins it tols me it was finished, odd I though as i Have around 500gb of space for it o work though, so looking further into the program, i had to tell it what to clean, so after ticking the box’s and pressing the button again, the program then proceeded to fill up my hard drive with files called “delete_me_delete_me_delete_me_(random_number).del”, they filled my desktop, my start menu, my quick launch menu, and pretty much any other folder I could find. WTF? and by the the prgress indicator said it was only 10% done, it stopped every 10 seconds with a dialog asking me to buy the program, which got really fucking annoying, So i quit, and then using windows search i searched for all files beggining with “delete_me”, there were over 50,000 files found, all of them 0kb. what possible use could these files have? apart from pissing off the user. I tried selecting them all and deleting them, but as you can imagine trying to delete 50,000 files in one go wasnt going to be easy. I tried system restore, but that didnt seem to affect it. so eventually I had to open a DOS prompt and use the “del” command to the delete them.
Never again am I going to use such shitty software. and if i Have to i’ll set up a sandbox or VM or something.
>.<
/end rant
Get free reseller access from any cpanel/whm based host
Nov 9, 2006 Tech
Before we start, i should say this isnt really a “legitimate” way of getting reseller access, more of a cpanel hack/exploitation, so as such i cant condone it 
So, i discovered this by accident, when i was checking out the reseller access option that my current host provides, it turns out that when using cpanel/whm to offer reseller access to your customers, cpanel keep the config in your “user settings dir” (lets call it that for now).
You dont have access to this directory yourself, only your host does, for example your homedir will be something like /home/username/ (where username is the username you use to login to cpanel) and you will have folders such as “.trash”, “ssl”, “tmp” & “public_html” (you may have more/less different folders than are listed here). your web accessibly files and folders will be in “public_html”. you dont have access to anything below /username/, but cpanel does.
Now there are two ways to do this, the manual way, which may not work depending on how big your site is or how your host is setup. or theres the “easy” way, which is a little more risky and involves using some “social engineering” (best way i could describe it) but theres a higher chance of it working. another thing i should say is theres more chance of this working on larger hosts that have lots of customers, that way they may not notice as quickly.
The first (manual) method:
Go into cpanel and generate a full backup, when the backup is generated, download it and extract it, keeping its folder structure.
Once you’ve extracted and opened the directory, you may see folders that you havent seen before, these are the settings that are kept in your “user settings dir” mentioned earlier. Now we are going to add “reseller access” to the backup. in your user settings dir create a directory called “resellerconfig”. in this directory you will create 9 files, that make up the settings for your reseller account. these files have no extensions (apart from one) First file to create is “reseller-limits”. you can use pretty much any text editor to make these files.
in this file type the following:
[source:c]username 0[/source]
replace “username” with your cpanel username.
the 0 means no limits.
The next file to create is “reseller-limits-bynumber”.
Leave this file blank for now.
Next, create the file “reseller-number-accounts”.
in this file type the following:
[source:c]username:0:[/source]
replace “username” with your cpanel username. The 0 specifies the number of accounts your allowed under your reseller account, 0 means no limit. The next file to create is called “reseller-resource-accounts”
type this into the file:
[source:c]username:,username_Single,username_new[/source]
this specifies the packages available on your reseller account, this is the default one, you can add more in cpanel later when you have access to the reseller part. replace instances of “username” with your cpanel login name. next create a file called “reseller-resource-limits”. In this file put this:
[source:c]username 1 bw=10000:disk=500:[/source]
replace “username” with your cpanel username. you can change the numbers to edit the amount of bandwidth and diskspace that is available to you. or it may be possible to change the 1 to a 0 to remove limits. next file to create is ”resellers”. in this file put the following:
[source:c]username:add-pkg,allow-addoncreate,allow-parkedcreate,allow-unlimited-pkgs,create-acct,create-dns,disallow-shell,edit-account,edit-dns,edit-mx,edit-pkg,frontpage,kill-acct,kill-dns,limit-bandwidth,list-accts,mailcheck,mod-subdomains,news,onlyselfandglobalpkgs,park-dns,passwd,quota,resftp,show-bandwidth,stats,status,suspend-acct,upgrade-account,[/source]
This should all be on one line!
this file specifies what a reseller can offer to its customers, if you want to specifically allow something add ‘allow-’ infront of the name, if you want to specifically disallow something put ‘disallow-’ in front of the name. if the item is listed without an allow- or disallow- tag, it is allowed by default. replace “username” with your cpanel login name.
next up is a file called “resellers.chris”. im not entirely sure what this file does or wheather its needed, its probably best to create it anyway, but leave it blank. The Final file to create is “resellers-nameservers”.
In this file you specify the nameservers that you will use, these must be valid nameservers! you can usually just use your hosts nameservers (the ones you are using already) put them in this format in the file:
[source:c]username:ns1.mywebhost.com,ns2.mywebhost.com,,,[/source]
replace “username” with your cpanel login name, and change the name servers to your own.
Were nearly there now, not long to go!
ok, going back to the “homedir” now, create a file called “.whmtheme”.
in this file put and x and save it. (yes, just an x)
also in your homedir create a directory called “cpanelbranding”, and in that directory create a folder called “x”.
next, in your homedir create a folder called “cpanel3-skel”. this will be the “skeleton” of the accounts you will give to your customers, whatever you put in here, will be put in all new customers “homedir”, its wise to put folders such as “public_html” & “public_ftp”, just to make sure that nothing breaks and so your users know where to put things.
Once all thats in place, create a compressed backup of the directory, this should include the directory that holds the homedir. so for example you should add this directory to the archive:
(your backup name will generally be generated from the date/time it was created and your username)
for example if the directory holding the homedir is called backup-5.16.2005_13-16-53_username (where “username” is your cpanel username) then add that to the archive. (yes i know that sounds confusing).
e.g. backup-5.16.2005_13-16-53_username/homedir
If your doing this on windows, you’ll have to find someway of converting this to a .tar.bz archive, to make it a little more believable
Next, go into the backup section of cpanel and find the “upload a backup” section, browse for the archive file that was just created and click the upload button. depending on the size of your site, it may take a while and may even time out, this is because the archive is being uploade over http, and your host will mostl likely have a “script execution time” limit set which means if it takes too long to upload then it will fail. if this doesnt work you could always try the second method below.
And thats all there is to it Note that these instructions were based off settings on my own host, your host may differ in things such as directory / file names and paths. so if it doesnt work, that’ll most likely be why, you could always pay for the reseller access i guess, but then, you wouldnt be reading this if you were willing to pay
Ok onto the Second Method:
This method is a lot quicker, easier and has more chance of working, since you will use files generated by your own hosts system. Although it is risky in the sense that its possible you’ll get found out easier. but if you think you can do it, lets go
Firstly you will have to find out if your host offers reseller access and how much they charge and if they’re willing to give you a ‘free taster’.If they do, thats good, contact them and ask them to setup it up for you, once thats done, you should see the reseller access icons in cpanel, have a play around if you want .
Now that your account has reseller access, go into cpanel and generate a backup of your whole account, this will generate a backup of all your files and databases including your reseller access config. once thats done download it and extract it, check to make sure the backup has the reseller config files in it by looking for a folder called “resllerconfig”, your host may use a different name, so look for anything thats reseller related
(if you can find anything, its possible that the generated backup did not include your recent account changes including the reseller config, the only thing i could suggest you do in this situation, is wait a day or so for cpanel to “catch-up”).
Once you’ve found its there you can delete the extracted files, but make sure you keep the compressed backup.
Next, contact your host and say you no longer want reseller access, if you do this straight away it may seem suspicious, wait a few days and then contact them. in the mean time you can play with your reseller access, test creating packages and limits etc.
So once you’ve contacted your host and had your reseller access removed, you’ll no longer be on thier billing system for added reseller access.
Now is where it starts to get tricky and a little risky, contact your host and ask them if its possible to upload a cpanel created backup into your home directory and have it restored to your account, if they allow it thats good, if that then there nothng you can really do about it, at least you have a backup of your site (if you switch hosts in the future and they use cpanel, you may be able to use if there if its accepted ) if the host says they will accept your backup, upload the one you downloaded a few days earlier, the one with the reseller access config files in.
Once this is restored to your account by your host, you reseller access will have returned, but because the billing system wasnt changed, you wont be billed for it, nothing bad will show up on a virus scan since your backup will be clean
It all depends on wheather the host accepts your backup and doesnt get suspicious like i said at the beggining of this little writeup, i discovered this by accident, i guess its a bug in cpanel/whm.
Disclaimer: you try these things at your own risk, i cant be held responsible if you loose your hosting account over this. im simply telling you how to do it, not forcing you too
When it “happened” to me, and i realised what had happened i cntacted my host a few days later to remove the reseller access from my account once again, just incase they found out a few months down the line and decided to charge me for the months that i had used it for
Enjoy :grinnod:
Vista news & Site updates, etc..
Sep 3, 2006 Other, Site News, Tech
Well its been a busy week in the vista camp, Pre RC1 was released a week or so ago, and was restricted to 100,000 downloads, although im not sure that was a problem in the end because i dont think that many people downloaded it, ive added some screenshots of it in the galleries anyways.. also a few days ago, RC1 itself was released on connect, so im just waiting for a publicly available download, which should be monday or tuesday, there was so short a time in between the two releases i wonder why i downloaded it really lucky i didnt burn it to disc, there are two different versions of this build, an x86 build for 32bit processors, this will probably be the most commonly downloaded when its available, then theres the x64 version for 64bit processors which has a restriction on intalling unsigned drivers, (i believe you have to do it in safe mode) and with there not being many x64 signed drivers available, its probably wiser to wait for more drivers to be released / signed. the ISO info is as follows
x86
vista_5600.16384.060829-2230_x86fre_client-LR1CFRE_EN_DVD.iso
x64
vista_5600.16384.060829-2230_x64fre_client-LR1CxFRE_EN_DVD.iso
Beta testers on connect can download it from here: https://connect.microsoft.com/windows/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=2887
Screenshots of RC1 will follow shortly.
I was going to write about the apple rumours i heard the other day about a new iPod and new Mac, but thats old news now and probably not true since ive not heard anymore about it. maybe apple are just getting better at damage control :p Although i did read they secretly upgraded thier mac minis which is cool.
As i mentioned earlier ive added a few pre rc1 shots to the galleries, theyre not very big pics though, sorry about that ive also added ome new babe galleries which ive had on my hard drive for a while and jut havent uploaded until now, well, a few days ago.
Hmm what else..
sorry for any typos and letters missing, this damn keybaord is annoying, its been doing it all night >.< and this wordpress thing is annoying too, it just wont use the WYSIWYG editor, no matter what i try grr, so sorry about the layout...anyways i'll probably uh, upgrade soon >.>
plus, might have a new default theme soon 
P
I met a cute girl last night at a party, unfortunatly shes married and has a kid lol, although she only looked about 23, she had a really nice, persona.. well, whatever, i was going to say personality, but that sounds way to cliche these days. heh.
Also happy birthday to my lil sis xx
edit: forgot to say the downloads section is under construction too…
Just testing this new WLW thingy… (Windows Live Writer)
Just testing this new WLW thing, Windows Liver Writer, Bea, its a bit like wBloggar but made by MS to go with the other live thingies, i dont usually like things like this because they’re not portable, meaning you cant just blog from anywhere, if you come too dependant on it, which can be slightly annoying, thats why i prefer web based apps for most things
Also the default font its Times New Roman, which is teh ugleh oh well lol
Bold text italics underline strikethrough coloured!
hmm i still think i like the WP interface, this has the annoying paragrpah thing where you have to hold shift to make line breaks instead of paragraph breaks
this is a blockquote, ya rly
i also hate the way the cursor resets to the beggining of the post whenever you press a button, maybe thats a bug though.. >.<
the spell checking is a good idea i gess, although i dont see much use for it myself since i tend to use slang etc on my blog
hmmmm :p i wonder if this supports smilies… i’ll see when i upload
the views button is nice, although it failed to pick up the proper CSS file for my blog, so its missing its style in the preview
all the shortcuts work though, which is good now if only it would reset the styling when i start typing a new paragraph..
come to think of it it takes a while to import the blog too… also i see no use for the sidebar, it was annoying in the versions of office and its useless here too
anyways thats probably enough moaning, ima go inspect the prefs dialog..
oh yeah i added a few things to the galleries a few days ago too, enjoy lol.
EDIT: well the post looks ok, (this is after submittal) the blockquotes look odd tho, im sure they wernt that wide before..
i guess the sidebar does have a use after all, the recent posts are shown there which allow you to edit it, although it doesnt seem to list any posts not created by WLW. oh well
The insert map feature looks interesting too but i dont see me having a use for it, i dont travel anywhere lol, plus it wouldnt be too good for privacy would it