Safi Software

If you are using Windows, then I have some free software for you to try today.

NetLimiter Monitor Free is software that will watch to see how much of your internet speed is being used by each program on your computer. For example, you can see how many megabytes you downloaded with Mozilla Firefox on 21 September 2009. You can also see what is using all of your download speed or upload right now. Remember, each college’s VSAT has only 3kiloBytes per second to send data for all users to share! (between 30 and 200kiloBytes per second to recieve data: much bigger)

Paint.NET is a program that can help you to make simple diagrams and to clean photos or screenshots such as the one above. It is simple to use like Microsoft Windows Paint but much stronger. You might need the “.NET Framework” in order to use it, this is like downloading Java (or Adobe Flash for your web browser).

VLC (“VideoLan Client”) is a powerful movie player than can play any kind of movie.

Google Picasa is a good program to manage your digital photos.The version 3.5 will even find faces in your pictures so that you can quickly see all the digital pictures from one person.

WinDirStat is a good program to help you find what is taking up all of your hard disk storage space on Windows. It makes an interactive graphic of all of your files and their sizes.

Virusi si jambo gumu: How Viruses Trick You Part 1 of 3

A flash drive in Tanzania may seem complicated with all of the viruses that can get onto them and cause every kind of problem. The problems with them that Tz computer users see every day all have pretty basic explanations, especially when they are still on the flash drive. In the next three virus tips I will explain:

1. the idea of a virus (this tip),
2. the way that most common USB Flash virus spread on to Windows XP
3. and their common hiding places.

Virus: Work is Work; Don't hate my work, it doesn't help me. Us: Take your panga somewhere else

In one sense, computer viruses are like biological viruses. Viruses have two goals:

1. To spread their instructions to other computer, and
2. To do something else

Any one virus does not want to completely break your computer with these goals. If it breaks your computer then it can’t spread from your computer to new computers and it is a weak virus. The “do sometime else” includes making our computers run slowly, do strange things, and sometimes stop working altogether. Usually after many viruses have arrived, they start interfering with each-other to make your computer very slow or crash.

Though viruses seem almost as dangerous and flexible as their biological viruses, they are written by people to spread a message, steal information, use your computer’s speed, or generally hurt Microsoft. As far as we know, no one writes viruses to deprive African school children of the opportunity to use computers but in our world, this is most often the effect.

We need to think about how viruses spread to help protect our computers from the first virus.

• In Tanzania, the common way to spread a virus is through a USB flash drive when the user runs a virus program on it by double clicking on the main drive or fake items.
• A few years ago in the rest of the world, email was the most common way to spread viruses. Here in TZ though, if you have a Yahoo email account, it already scans all your messages.
• An important and often forgotten way viruses can come is when you download new software ovyoovyo without knowing that the person or website it is coming from is trustworthy. You should be very careful when you install internet software when it isn’t from a big company like Microsoft or Yahoo. The bad software is a like fake Chinese TVs or pasi–it looks almost right on the outside but inside it doesn’t work and might start a fire.

A virus usually cannot enter the computer through music or video. It needs to be free to give specific bad instructions to the central processing unit (CPU). Running programs talk to the CPU directly but playing music & video does not. This means that viruses can pretend to be music but that real music rarely has a virus inside. Also, clicking on a real folder cannot start a virus but clicking on a program with a picture (icon) that looks like a folder can be very bad. Viruses are computer tricks-Vinakudanganya kuwezesha kazi yake. The worst trick is one most Tz users don’t even see. They click fake movies and fake folders and dirty drives without seeing the virus.

Hata usipokuwa na virus scanner, If your Windows XP computer is updated to Service Pack 2 or 3 and you are careful , then there is no reason you should get any viruses. Your computer is not giving you viruses, you are being tricked to double click and run the virus program. If people on your computer never double click or right click your USB flash drive in My Computer, then you will never get viruses. Instead, you should find, click on the Folders button at the top and then left click once on your flash drive on the left side of the window as pictured.

Screen shot showing the dangerous place to double click in My Computer. If you have an completely updated virus scanner you can worry less about this, otherwise be careful.

Why? Read the next tip on Autorun & Autoplay in Windows XP in this series on Viruses coming soon!

Some portions of this posting were written in collaboration with Aron, an A-Level teacher at Bihawana Secondary School.

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.

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