DuckDuckGo and StartSSL

Posted on by Simon

With more and more integrity issues floating to the surface, and privacy becoming more of a focus, I’ve started to look into what I can do.

For one, I’m trying out DuckDuckGo as a search engine instead of Google. Their philosophy is to not track people, making the web a tiny bit more anonymous. I’m happy enough with the search results, can’t really say I miss anything that Google found for me.

The other is that I’m starting to secure websites I’m working on with HTTPS. This is really way overdue for everyone, and HTTP/2 being on the work bench it’s about time that we all pick ourselves up and encrypt website traffic. It should be for the viewer’s eyes only. SSL certificates can cost a few bucks, and there are options from around $5 around the web, to the free option at StartSSL.com, which only really requires you to verify that you run the domain you claim the certificate for. Excellent service, and quick! I can highly recommend.

DuckDuckGo Free SSL Secured By StartCom

Remote joining Active Directory

Posted on by Simon

Today I found myself in an odd situation. A remote work PC needed join to Active Directory. But VPN would not work unless PC was already in the domain. Catch 22. After some searching and reading, I found that using “DJOIN” in Windows 7+, the PC could offline-authenticate. DJOIN is bundled with the system, by default. Here’s what to do:

On a trusted PC:

  1. On a CMD prompt as the appropriate Domain Admin or delegate.
  2. Run: djoin /provision /domain ad.example.com /machine PC-NAME /reuse /savefile blob.txt
  3. Copy blob.txt to the PC.

On remote PC:

  1. Open a privileged CMD (right-click on CMD, select run as Administrator).
  2. Run: djoin /requestODJ /loadfile blob.txt /windowspath %SystemRoot% /localos
  3. Reboot
  4. I still had to login as the local account and establish the VPN connection, which this time worked just fine.
  5. When VPN is running, Switch user (Win+L).
  6. Login as ad\username

Presto! From here on, I disconnected the VPN from my local account and started it again with the AD account.

Getting started

Posted on by Simon

Hello! Bonjour! ¡Hola! Hej! Guten Tag!

So it has finally happened, I’ve started blogging. It’s been on my mind for quite some time now, but never really got around to it until now.

My mission with this particular blog is to have a space to write down my nerdy endeavours around computer technology, system setups, programming and related topics. As a vivid heavy metal fan who enjoys festivals and concerts, there is a good chance you’ll read something about those, just as there might be the occasional post about economics, politics, exercise and travel. So in short – whatever I feel like. I will try to keep them properly tagged though so you won’t accidentally end up with a financial report when you’re looking for ideas around PHP-programming or setting up a server.

Happy reading!