On The Mark Contributing to the vast web, 1 blog post at a time – blogs by Mark Monica

29Apr/080

Free net monitoring tool gets a makeover

Spiceworks simply put is an IT/Network Managers best friend. Best of all - it is FREE! Building on Spiceworks strong foundation that allows IT Managers to inventory hardware, software, and other devices via WMI the new Beta 3 now allows it's built in Help Desk to operate via LDAP and performs testing of your Exchange server. The review on Network World doesn't do the product much justice because simply put this product is a must have. It easily saves me hours of time and notifies me of any problems that otherwise would have gone undetected. Try it for yourself. I often wonder how I lived without this software before.

Beta 3 - http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/13852
Spiceworks v2.1 - http://www.spiceworks.com/

20Nov/074

How To: Firefox and Integrated Windows Authentication

Do you have an Intranet or a similar web site that requires the use of Integrated Windows Authentication? If so the default Firefox browser settings will always prompt you for a username and password first before accessing a site using Integrated Window Authentication.

Fortunately Firefox has the slick ability to easily modify it's configuration to use Integrated Windows Authentication.

How to configure Firefox

  1. Open Firefox
  2. In the address bar type: about:config
  3. Firefox3.x and later requires you to agree that you will proceed with caution.
  4. After the config page loads, in the filter box type: network.automatic
  5. * Modify network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris by double clicking the row and enter http://www.replacewithyoursite.com or http://your-intranet-server-name
  6. * Multiple sites can be added by comma delimiting them such as http://www.replacewithyoursite.com, http://www.replacewithyourintranetsite.com

Package for Large Installs

If you are a network administrator that has a lot of installs to do, you can modify the Firefox installer.

  1. Use a tool such as 7-zip to extract Firefox Setup 2.x.x.exe
  2. Extract browser.xpi from the setup
  3. Edit all.js contained in browser.xpi contained in binjreprefs
  4. Modify the entries as in items 4 and 5 above
  5. Re-package browser.xpi and use the extracted setup to install Firefox

* Special Notes

To specify all subdomains use .replacewithyoursite.com instead of www.replacewithyoursite.com, help.replacewithyoursite.com, pictures.replacewithyoursite.com

Updated March 5, 2010