Some of the information that I look-up as part of the research are the whois information and DNS records of the website in question.

DomainHostingView is a new Nirsoft application that seems to have been designed specifically for that purpose. The portable software looks-up information about a domain or website.

All the user needs to do is to enter a domain name in the form at the top of the application to generate a domain report for the domain.

It takes a few seconds to generate the report before it appears in the interface. The report begins with a summary at the top listing the important bits of information at the top. This includes the domain registrar and company or individual it is registered to, the web hosting company, mail server and information about the domain creation, update and expiration dates.

The program seems to have problems identifying some information from subdomains (like www.ghacks.net) correctly.

DNS Records, IP Addresses Information, Raw Domain Information, Web Server IP Address Information, Mail Server IP Address Information and Name Server IP Address Information follow after the summary.

All the information on the screen can be highlighted, copied and pasted easily. There is also the option to generate an HTML report of the current domain report. Reports can be saved locally for future reference.

The program is missing a few elements that other Nirsoft applications offer. This includes exporting the data to a txt or XML file, or printing a selection or all of the information. It is likely that at least part of the missing features will make their way into future versions of the application.

DomainHostingView is a portable program for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. The program is available for download at the Nirsoft website.

Imagine my surprise when I received a new email today from a company that I never worked with before. The email was send by leewanachapa@anez20.com and was send via secureserver.net, a Godaddy owned company IIRC.

It reads:

FWD: Attention: MARTINBRINKMANN.com Expiring Soon

Notice of Expiration

Domain Name: MARTINBRINKMANN.COM
Bill To: Invoice # 1304452910
Invoice Date May 3, 2011
Essen, NR Terms Net 14
45130 – US Due Date May 18, 2011
P.O. #
ONLINE SECURITY
Domain Name Registration Price Term
MARTINBRINKMANN.COM May 3, 2011 – May 3, 2012 $75.00 1 Year

Attention :

This solicitation is to inform you that it’s time to send in your search engine registration for MARTINBRINKMANN.COM. DRS is a submission service and search engine ranking firm.

Failure to complete your search engine registration by May 18, 2011 may result in the cancellation of this offer (making it difficult for your customers to locate you using search engines on the web).

Your registration includes search engine submission for MARTINBRINKMANN.COM for 1 year. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer by May 18, 2011. This notice is not an invoice. It is a courtesy reminder to register MARTINBRINKMANN.COM for search engine listing so that your customers can locate you on the web.

This Offer for MARTINBRINKMANN.COM will expire on May 18, 2011. Act today!
For Domain Name:
MARTINBRINKMANN.COM
ONLINE SECURITY
unsubscribe

All links in the email pointed to http://domainrenereg.com/. A few aspects of that email were suspicious:

• I was not addressed personally
• The price for a one year renewal was way to high ($75)
• The domain was set to expire on May 3, 2011 but I did not receive renewal emails before.
• The domain was paid for until 2013 and not 2011

I was curious and visited the site anyway. I knew that I was protected from harm by NoScript, so no worries there. The page looked like this

Notice anything in particular? Right, there is no account login on the page. All you can do is to enter your credit card data on the first page. That page was obviously phishing for credit card information.

This is the first time that I have received such an email. It looks and feels very amateurish to me. Having said that, it is likely that the attackers will tune the emails in the future, for instance by only writing to domain owners whose domains are really expiring.

Use this as a word of caution. If you receive such emails submit them to your domain registrar so that their legal department can take care of it.

As a side note. I’m currently working on a http://www.dmtools.com/“>domain management tool which webmasters and companies can use to manage all their domains and web properties. If you are interested to hear more about it let me know.

Centrify Express is free tool offered by the company that makes various Single Sign-On tools, of which only Express is available free and easily for the Linux operating system. Once you have used this tool to join a Windows Domain you will be shocked at how easily it is done.

Installation

I am going to illustrate this installation process on a Ubuntu 10.10 machine. If you need to install on a different distribution (or on Windows, or Mac) you will need to sign up for a download. If you do that you will find pre-compiled binaries for:

• Windows
• Mac
• CentOS
• Debian
• Mandriva
• SUSE
• OpenSolaris
• Oracle Enterprise Linux
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Scientific Linux

But if you are using Ubuntu, you can follow these easy steps:

1. Open up the Ubuntu Software Center.
2. Search for “centrify” (No quotes).
3. Click Install.
4. Type your sudo password and press Enter.
5. Once the installation is finished you can then close out the Ubuntu Software Center.

Now it’s time to do just a tiny bit of configuration.

Configuration

The only configuration you need to take care of is in the /etc/nsswitch file. In that file you will find a line that looks like:
hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

Change that file to just read:

hosts:        files dns

Now there is one other configuration you need to take care of BEFORE you join the domain. In the file /etc/centrifydc/group.ignore you need to add the group “admin” (no quotes) to this list. If you do not do this your sudo users will not longer have sudo privileges. Without sudo privileges your users will not be able to install applications or run anything that needs administrative permissions.

Once you have configured that file, save  it. You are now ready to join the comain.

Joining the domain

You will need the domain admin password for this to be successful. To join the domain do the following:

Open up a terminal window.

Issue the command sudo adjoin -w DOMAIN (Where DOMAIN is the domain you want to join).

Type the Domain admin password and hit Enter.

It may take some time but you will eventually be joined to the domain. You should now be able to open up Nautilus and explore your network by hostname as if you were using a Windows machine.

If you find you can not see your network by hostname, you might have to reboot and then log in with your AD credentials.

Final thoughts

You now have two methods with which to join a Windows domain. The enterprise pastures, for Linux, are growing greener and greener by the day.

After Samba is installed the smb.conf file will be around 533 lines long. Fear not. It’s much easier than it seems.

The smb.conf file is broken into sections. Each section will start with a line that looks like:

[TITLE]

Where TITLE is the actual title of the block. Each block represents either a configuration or a  share that other machines can connect to. You will, at minimum, have a global block and a single share.

Global

The global block is one of the more important blocks in your smb.conf file. This block defines the global configuration of your Samba server. This block begins with:

[global]

Within your blocks your configuration lines will be made up of:

option = value

statements.

The most important statements you will need in your global block are:
netbios name= NAME
workgroup = WORKGROUP_NAME
security = SECURITY_TYPE
encrypt passwords = YES/NO
smb passwd file = /path/to/smbpasswd
interfaces = ALLOWED_ADDRESSES

The values for each option above should be self explanatory. But there is one thing to note. If you are encrypting passwords you will need to add users (with passwords) with the smbpasswd command.
Within the global block one of the more important options is the security option. This option refers to authentication (how users will be able to log in). There are five different types of security:

• ADS – Active Directory Domain
• Domain – User verification through NT Primary or Backup Domain
• Server – Samba server passes on authentication to another server
• Share – Users do not have to enter username or password (until they try to access a specific directory)
• User – Users must provide valid username/password. This is the default.

Share Blocks

The next blocks will refer to individual shares. You will need a different block for each directory you want to share to Samba users. A typical share block will look like this:
[SHARE NAME]
comment = COMMENT
path = /path/to/share
writeable = YES/NO
create mode = NUMERIC VALUE
directory mode = NUMERIC VALUE
locking = YES/NO

Everything in caps above will be defined according to your needs. The tricky entries will be the create and directory modes. What this does is define permissions for any file created as well as the share directories. So the values will be in the form of 0700 or 0600 (depending upon your permission needs). Remember, you will need a share block for every directory you want to share out.

Naturally there are plenty of options that can be used in Samba. Many of these options will fall in the global block.

Printer Block

You can also define a block to share out printers. This block will start with:

[printers]

and will contain options like:
comment = COMMENT
path = /PATH/TO/PRINTER/SPOOL
browseable = YES/NO
guest ok = YES/NO
writable = YES/NO
printable = YES/NO
create mode = NUMERIC VALUE

Sample smb.conf

I have an external drive that I mount to /media/music and I share out to my home network with the following smb.conf file:
[global]
netbios name = MONKEYPANTZ
workgroup = MONKEYPANTZ
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
interfaces = 192.168.1.1/8
[wallen music]
comment = Music Library
path = /media/music
writeable = yes
create mode = 0600
directory mode = 0700
locking = yes

And that’s it. That is my entire smb.conf file. Granted I am only sharing out a single directory, but it shows how simple smb.conf can be to configure.

You might have some words that are synonyms of each other. You can drag these into groups which will have the result that only one word of that group is added to the combination. Another cool feature are the prefixes and suffixes that can be added to the domain name. What I really like is that you can pick the default ones but also create your own prefixes and suffixes which are then combined with the words that you have added.

Hovering the mouse over a word displays similar words that can be added as well to increase the possibility of finding a suitable domain name. Domains can be bought from a variety of domain registrars and it’s even possible to add hosting if you need that as well. The Godaddy price is awesome by the way. You pay only $6.95 for a domain name instead of $9.99 when you buy at Godaddy directly.

Bust a Name is a great help when I’m looking for a new domain name. I’m buying two or three domain names per week and it’s really helpful.