Using WinSCP every day, for everyone

So now that umeishazoea kidogo kutumia WinSCP kila siku, there are some good tips for using WinSCP faster that are not obvious. Saved sessions make connecting only use a easy double click for either of your servers. The “Shell Icon” button can make it very easy to transfer documents to one place, like resources if you set the target Directory. I will explain these two things more below.

There are also some limits and warnings for using WinSCP.

• Sometimes the Root user is disabled for the SCP protocol for security reasons. You will not know if it is ready on your system until you test it.
• You will only be able to access or change the same files and folders that the username you logged in with is allowed to.
• Even students can use their accounts to log in to WinSCP but they will be fairly restricted to their normal place.
• There are a lot of grey Solaris hidden folders that show up in your Solaris Home directory when you look at it with WinSCP. You usually should not delete them as they hold settings for many of your user’s Solaris programs but you can hide them (or show them again) by pressing Ctrl-Alt-H all together.

Quick Sessions

First, type your login information as you did last time–put either 192.168.2.240 or 192.168.2.242 in Host name (The IP addresses for Server 1 and Server 2, respectably). If you want to include your particular user as part of this shortcut, type that too. This time, instead of Login, press “Save…” button. Choose a name for your session, it will suggest something like thadk@192.168.2.240 and, if you typed it, use the tick to decide if you want to save the password for other people to access your account with this shortcut (see picture above). You will see that after you have saved one session, you will always start WinSCP on the “Stored sessions” item on the left side instead of “Session”! Now you can double click the session you saved to open it instantly or click on the Session item on the left to create a new one. If you typed a username before you saved, that is part of the session and you will not be able to type it again.

Making an icon that sends files to a Resources folder

Now do you see the Shell Icon button on the left in the picture above? We will use it soon. First, choose a session for the server with the resources folder on it by clicking it once, then press Edit. That will take you back to Session but you should go over to Directories. In Directories set the Remote Directory to your resources folder. At Mpwapwa TTC this is “/resources” without quotes. Now go back to Session and save your session again, maybe as “Resources”. Finally make sure your new session is highlighted, press Shell icon and choose either “Desktop icon” or “Send To…”.

Desktop icon will let you double click or drag files onto the icon to copy them into your resources folder. “Send To…” will let you right click any file and look down at “Send To->Resources” from anywhere in Windows. If you’ve saved your password and/or username you won’t have to enter them.

Remember that your permissions will be just as the user logged into Solaris themselves. If they are usually not allowed to write to the resources then they won’t be able to do it in WinSCP. Also be careful saving passwords. It is convenient but poor students or staff could steal your information using your session!

Thanks for reading, the next Solaris tip will be where to find videos and good resources to learn more about Solaris from Sun. The next Windows topic will be how to make hidden files show on your flash drives, followed by notes on keyboard short cuts to make using Windows (even Ubuntu or Solaris) more effective.

Controlling Computer Viruses in Windows

Red bugs devouring a Baobao fruit

Viruses are a huge problem in Tanzania and most of Africa. Computers in Africa have many more viruses compared to the rest of the world. Parts of the problem may be that here virusi software siyo halisi and isn’t updated reliably because of the slow internet here.

In my experience, most Virus scanner companies are late to recognise viruses that come from East African countries so even if you have updates you are not always protected. Remember, the people that treat computer viruses and add them to the database are generally working in St. Petersburg, New York, or Israel; not Nairobi, Dar or Capetown.

Still, the first best way to deal with viruses is to keep your software up to date. No matter which software you use, it must be updated as often as you are bringing new viruses to the computer. This can be every week or every month. It depends on your computer. There are many virus scanners at FileHippo–some are Trial Versions but in order to get updates, you usually have to go into the software.

If you know where to find them, you can download offline files for the updates to use from your USB Flash Drives. Some versions of McAfee have programs to update with a file that you can download here (sdat). Some other company’s update files (Norton, Avast) can be found listed near the bottom of this page.

When I get stuck with those tool in Normal mode, the best way I have found to deal with viruses in Tanzania is to use Safe Mode (F8 while starting Windows), my normal Virus Scanner and the Sysinternals Suite from Microsoft. The main two programs I use from the Suite are autoruns.exe and procexp.exe. The package of tools is updated about once every two months to see more secret virus hiding places in Windows.  Remember: your normal virus scanner will always work best from Safe Mode. If it does not work in normal mode (“failed to remove”), then you should try in Safe Mode.

Here are some rough instructions:

• Turn on computer.
• right away, press F8 repeatedly in the first screen to get the option of Safe Mode
• Choose Safe Mode with Networking
• Safe Mode is a special mode where the programs that normally come when you start the computer do not come.
• If Safe mode gives a blue screen or restarts immediately then you have a very kali virus and you need to try to clean it from normal mode. You probably won’t be able to fix Safe Mode without reinstalling Windows.
• Press Yes to enter safe mode when it asks.
• Update your virus scanner from file that you downloaded if you could not update before. You can probably not install a new virus scanner in safe mode.
• Start the virus scanner from the start menu (On-Demand scan for C: drive)
• Start a scan.
• If you cannot find anything, Copy Autoruns.exe to the computer, newer version will work best to find new viruses hiding places (optional)
• On the virus scanner, when it has finished make sure all the viruses confirm “Deleted” status as action taken.

• If that has not worked, Unzip and open Autoruns.exe, wait for it to load.
• After it loads enable both Options->Verify Code Signatures and Options->Hide Microsoft & Windows Entries.
• Press refresh.

• Look through the list of items that will start. You can temporarily disable things that look suspicious with the checkbox or right click and delete permanently. Be a little bit careful about mouse and keyboard items.
• Reboot.

Next topic in viruses: How to make all hidden files from Viruses on Flash Drives appear.

ICT Results

Statistics for the Largest 15 Diploma Colleges in ICT course

Congratulations to the highest scoring colleges on these set of Exams last May! Once again you can view the PDF file with the details or look at the excel document itself. Above is a display of the marks for students at each of the 15 large colleges, again disregarding the size of the college.  It is sorted by % of students who passed the exam.

We should use this as a starting point to continue working hard at our colleges’ ICT departments, streamlining our classrooms to give our students consistent instruction and access to good resources.

You can review the  Diploma ICT NECTA Exam 2009 PDF right here and save it to your College’s resources folder for revisions.The  Diploma ICT-ICS Examination Format 2008 is also available.

Matokeo yametoka | The results are in.

Results of the biggest 15 Diploma Teachers colleges

Above are the Stashahada results from the largest fifteen Teachers Colleges sorted by total percentage of students who succeeded on the exam, disregarding size of the college. If you click on it you can see the full statistics in a PDF or click here for the spreadsheet. I am working on collating the individual subject results (like ICT) for colleges, the other 15 or so small Diploma colleges and Grade A.

As I’m sure you’re already aware, the original results are available here on NECTA’s website.

WHY CAPS are bad.

One of my big ideas in my first class is to teach students who have not used a computer is not to use the blunt CAPSLOCK and instead use the soft Shift Key when they type. I think capital letters are overused in Tanzania. Here are three reasons not to ever use them:

1. Capital Letters are hard to READ for your EYES. IF I WRITE A LONG PARAGRAPH IN CAPITAL LETTERS YOUR EYES CANNOT SCAN IT IN THE SAME WAY THEY DO WHEN you are reading lowercase letters. Lowercase letters are bumpy and your eyes can flow over them much more comfortably and quickly.
2. The spell checker does not check capital letters. In formal letters such as letters of application for a job, you need to be extremely careful when you choose to use capital letters (such as in addresses) because you can easily misspell an important word and miss a chance at a job or ruin your presentation. If you use First Letter Only capitals you will still look very professional in most cases and you will avoid major mistakes.
3. Capital Letters make you sound like you are shouting to many internet users. People will assume you don’t even know how to use a keyboard if you send them an email in capital letters.

Instead of using capital letters, you should use bold or italic for emphasis. It is more refined and respects the new era, leaving behind antiquated typewriter methods of getting someone’s attention. In practical exams when we ask for emphasis and wanachuo give EMPHESIS, of course: no credit. Write it right, please.

Servers & Clients get your files onto Windows from Solaris!

WinSCP is an Free and Open Source program that you can download easily (direct) on its home page. The installer is about 2mb. It is very useful at TTCs because we have SCP server programs running on both of our Solaris servers all the time and we are already storing our files in accounts with usernames & passwords. After I explain how it works, I will tell you how you will be able to move files around your ICT area more easily than with USB flash drives.

These SCP server programs are also sometimes called SSH server. It is the same thing. Ubuntu can also run one of these servers very easily, though it is not turned on by default. (If you are very persistent, you can even run an SCP server on Windows but it can be a lot of work because of permissions.)

A server program is a special application, often running on a server computer which offers a special service of some kind. Even though it is running in the background, the server application usually only runs as text on the terminal–it does not usually have a graphical interface or screen that you can click on. Generally, if you want to change how a server works, you usually edit the configuration file of the server and restart the server program. It is a little tricky but not bad ukizoea.

A client program connects to a server program. Because it is slow to say “client program” and “server program” you usually don’t say “program” so: the HTTP client connects to the HTTP server. Since there is no such thing as a HTTP server machine, only HTTP server program, everyone knows it is just a program if you say HTTP server by itself. Sometimes people say daemon because they get tired of saying server program.

HTTP is of course the protocol for the World Wide Web that that delivers most web pages on the internet. The HTTP client is usually called a “browser”. Your Solaris server probably has an HTTP server too, it can be found either at the address http://192.168.2.240 or https://127.0.0.1:1661. If you don’t get an error then your HTTP client connected to your HTTP server. If you got an error, don’t worry it is just an example.

There are many servers running on your Server computers. One large server program manages the SunRay thin clients, sending each thin client their screens over the network. Another server offers printer service waiting to hand things over to the printer. If you had success with the links above then you found an HTTP server to offer web pages on your LAN. Finally, the SSH/SCP server offers access to all your user files and user terminal from other computers–even Windows!.

Using WinSCP as a bridge between Windows and your Solaris servers’ files. WinSCP is a SCP/SSH client. It connects to your SSH daemon/server using your Solaris username and password and the IP address of your server.

First just download, and start to install WinSCP from here (or here) on your Windows computer to begin. Press next, next, etc. but when it asks Commander or Explorer interface, choose Explorer interface. <em>Note: If you decide not to reboot your computer initially (when the install asks), you might not be able to drag and drop to Windows until you do.</em>.

Next go to Start->Programs->WinSCP. You will see a window “WinSCP Login”, on the left “Session” is highlighted, on the right you should put either 192.168.2.240 or 192.168.2.242 in Host name (The IP addresses for Server 1 and Server 2, respectably). You can type your username and password here or just press Login and type it in the next step. Before you press Login, remember the Save… button. It is important! Okay, now press Login.

Now, if you typed everything correctly, you should be in your Home folder. You can probably see the Documents and Desktop folders from Solaris. Try to go into Documents, you can double click like normal. Now try dragging a file onto your Windows Desktop. A small box appears to confirm your transfer, just press Copy or enter. Did the file transfer work? If you want to look or update at an Office document without downloading it you can right click it and press Open. If you double click on a document, the default action is to edit it as a text file which often shows as ~blahblah~.

Welcome to WinSCP! More tips on it to follow!

Karibuni wakufunzi wote!

"nakukabidhi mwenge"

Welcome TTC Tutors to the new Blog for ICT Departments at Teachers Colleges’ around Tanzania. I am a USA Peace Corps volunteer who has been working at Mpwapwa TTC since 2007. Over the next two months I would like to share many things we use at Mpwapwa TTC to make our lives easier at our ICT department. I always enjoy visiting wakufunzi wa taifa to share these tips. I have already visited 6 of the 33 colleges from Butimba to Vikindu, but I think it is difficult to visit more. I want to be free to focus on new projects in Mpwapwa before I finish my contract at the end of the year. Instead of visiting you, I’ll be offering the tips here. For the first month, every three days I will post a new entry, some of the topics I will be talking about are in the list below.

I will assume that your college is working with the Solaris system the Wakute Project put together in December 2008 with a new user management website (if that link doesn’t give an error, you are ready!). I’m also pretty sure that you have many Windows XP computers around your ICT center so I will have tips for those too. More resources are available at the Wakufunzi Google Group but these will be openly available for easy access and better organization.

I will try to include good instructions so that you can use the tips to improve your work at your TTCs. If you ever have questions I’m always happy to answer via email or text. I am on Zain at 0782516598, yahoo IM at thadk, and skype at thadknull.

Some things that I already plan to cover:

• Ideas on viruses and how they’re spread in East Africa, how you can control them.
• Three ways to show the hidden files on your USB flash and why viruses hide them. Even when viruses delete the files instead of hiding them there are good programs to try to recover your files (if you haven’t used the flash again)!
• How to access free video Solaris training materials at your TTC.
• Why is the internet slow today?
• How to set up a proxy server with Ubuntu to filter
• How to enable printing and the difficulties
• What should you include in a resources folder for your students?
• My bookmarks keep getting erased! How can I have my bookmarks anywhere duniani?
• Using Windows & WinSCP to download files like a flash from Solaris: tips and tricks with screenshots
• How to add sections to word processing documents so that roman numeral page numbering (i,ii,iii) and normal numbering can be in the same document in OpenOffice and Word.
• “Cloning” a lab of Windows or Ubuntu desktops with CloneZilla so you can install Windows once and refresh dirty computers in 20 minutes to an “image” that is saved on your Solaris Server or flash drive.
• What is fiber, when is it coming to my TTC and why does it matter for TZ?
• The importance of power protection in Tanzania, problems already seen at TTCs (save your comments!) and what to buy for your computer to prevent it from dying.

Nashukuru sana, urudi tena tafadhali!
thadk