Journal

My journal in APA format can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

Monday – August 24

• Helped install second hard drive in all 18 student machines of the computer lab.
• Second hard drive is needed to store virtual machine images.

Wednesday – August 26

• Completed the installation of second hard drives in student machines.

Friday – August 28

• Installed Visual Studio 2008 in Windows so that students can compile visual basic applications.
• Installed SeaMonkey in both Windows and Fedora.
• Installed OpenOffice in Windows and Fedora.
• Installed Adobe Reader in Windows and Fedora.
• Installed PDF printer in Windows.
• Installed in Windows WinSCP (Windows secure copy).

Monday – August 31

• Installed Oracle client in windows machines.

Wednesday – September 2

• Installed VirtualBox in both windows and linux (machines dual boot WindowsXP and Linux, Fedora10).
• Installing VirtualBox in Fedora required installing development packages for the kernel.
• Installed windows XP and Fedora10 as virtual machines.
• Installed guest additions in both WinXP and Fedora10.
• Installing the guest additions for the Fedora virtual machine involved installing development packages and kernel source/headers, mounting the guest additions ISO, setting the install.sh file as executable (chmod 755 install.sh) and executing it with ./install.sh.
• Activated USB support and shared folders in both OS's.
• Activating USB support for VirtualBox in Fedora involved creating a user group named USB and adding a line to /etc/fstab as follows,
  none /sys/bus/usb/drivers usbfs devgid=502,devmode=664 0 0
• The devgid must be the groupid from the USB user group that was created the group id can be found by running,
  cat /etc/group |grep vboxusers |awk -F : '{print $3}'

Friday – September 4

• Installed Debian in VirtualBox
• Installed Oracle Server in Debian
• Compiled apache web server from source
  - configure command -
  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache --enable-so --enable-cgi --enable-info --enable-rewrite --enable-spelling --enable-usertrack –enable-deflate –enable-ssl --enable-mime-magic
• Set VirtualBox network adapter as bridged (Fedora Only) so that virtual machine can get an IP address on the same network. This allows Oracle and the web server to be accessed by other machines on the local network.

Monday – September 7

• Labor Day Holiday - School Closed

Wednesday – September 9

• compiled and tested php5 with Oracle support in apache
  – configure command -
  ./configure' '--with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs' '--with-mysql' '-- prefix=/usr/local/apache/php' '--with-config-file-path=/usr/local/apache/php' '-- enable-force-cgi-redirect' '--disable-cgi' '--with-zlib' '--with-gettext' '--with-gdbm --enable-oci8
• Tested Oracle with the following script. OCI8test.php - obtained from Oracle.com

Friday – September 11

• Updated the Windows and Fedora passwords on student machines before imaging the drives.
• Since all of the software was installed and functional in one machine we used ghost for Linux to create images of the hard drives and store them on our FTP server.

Monday – September 14

• Assisted in using Ghost for Linux to restore the two drive images from our FTP server to the remaining 17 student machines.

Wednesday – September 16

• After we restored the images to the student machines and began using them we realized that many of the hard drives we used were malfunctioning and needed to be replaced.
• Began sorting out which hard drives were not fully functional.

Friday – September 18

• Continued replacing defective hard drives and re-imaging them.

Monday – September 21

• Finished replacing defective hard drives and imaging them.

Wednesday – September 23

• After all of the machines were successfully imaged, we ensured that each machine had a unique hostname in the format NTC-122-$number ( $number is N01-N18 )
• We documented all of the Network adapter MAC addresses so that the DHCP server could be configured to give each machine a specific IP address

Friday – September 25

• Assisted with the configuration of an Apache Web Server to allow individual computers to get a public_html directory and that their home directories have the right permissions to be accessed from the Internet. Achieved by adding public_html to the /etc/skeleton file, adding a user share option to httpd.conf and running
  chmod 711 /home/*
• Troubleshot a students laptop. The student had a Cricket mobile Internet USB device that was not connecting. Resolved the connectivity issue and replaced the student expired Norton 360 with Avast, helped them register and enter the license key.
• Tutored a student on TCP/IP headers for ITSY 1342, Professor Steve Kolars.

Monday – September 28

• Sick – mainly just watched lab and had it open for students while Professor Santana was teaching class

Wednesday – September 30

• Helped student install Oracle in Windows.
• Installed Microsoft loop back adapter and enabled Internet connection sharing between the students main network connection and the loop back adapter.

Friday – October 1

• Tutored student on IPv4 network addressing.
• Went over the subnet boundary, the broadcast address and the 2n – 2 formula for calculating available hosts.
• Began working on a web page tutorial for TCP/IP headers.

Monday – October 5

• Continued working on web page - TCP/IP header tutorial
• Tutored two students on basic html and css.

Wednesday – October 7

• Finished TCP/IP header tutorial – added page explaining what a hexadecimal dump of a TCP/IP header is and how one can be acquired.
• Repaired virtual machine configuration in VirtualBox for a student whose Fedora 4 virtual machine configuration had become corrupted.
• Assisted one student with homework for intro to web programming.

Friday – October 9

• Lab Supervisor assigned all work study and practicum students to write a personalized web page for the computer lab.

Monday – October 12

• Continued work on personalized web page for the computer lab.

Wednesday – October 14

• Continued work on personalized web page.
• added TCP-IP tutorial to personalized web page and converted it from html 4.0 to xhtml strict

Friday – October 16

• Continued work on personalized web page.
• Added journal to personalized web page.
• Ghosted 2 machines for worker section of the lab.
• Set up network print server and printer for lab use only.

Monday – October 19

• Assisted student who was unable to log into Blackboard Vista. After checking all security settings and observing that the browser passed the Blackboard browser check, I believe that the Internet Explorer application on her computer was either infected or corrupted. We installed Firefox on her machine and were able to log in to Blackboard Vista.
• Tutored a student in intro to web programming. Assignment was to create a table showing the squares and cubes of the numbers one through ten. Continued working on lab page.

Wednesday – October 21

• Continued work on Lab Assistant website.
• Tutored student in Programming and Logic: IPO Worksheet and Visual Logic.
• Installed some web development software on Lab Assistant computers.
• Assisted student with virus removal.

Friday – October 23

• Continued work on Lab Assistant website.
• Assisted student with configuring a dual boot machine, Windows and Linux. Installed Fedora to create dual boot machine.

Monday – October 26

• Began assignment of learning to use aircrack-ng to test the strength of wireless network security.
• Flashed one the Labs wireless access points with DD-WRT Linux firmware and set the administrator user name and password, ESSID and WEP encryption key.
  This was done manually with CISCO's TFTP utility after power cycling the access point. access-point is WG602 v3
• http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

Wednesday – October 28

• Made a bootable USB with Backtrack3 for one of the other lab assistants to assist them with the wireless security assignment.
• Continued learning the aircrack-ng utility.

Friday – October 30

• Successfully retrieved lab access-point WEP key with the aircrack-ng utility.

Monday – November 2

• Tutored student in Intro to Web Programming with Java Script
• Added some videos to lab assistant web page.
• Added some linked program images to lab assistant website.

Wednesday – November 4

• Began installing Oracle in Centos to replace the old slower Oracle server.
• Steps taken are outlined here >>> install_oracle_centos

Friday – November 6

• Finished installing Oracle in Centos.
• Transferred lab assistant website files to lab server.
• Updated lab assistant journal on lab assistant web page.
• Tutored student on compiling programs in the Java programming language
  (Java, not Java script)

Monday – November 9

• Fixed students Internet connection. Was not working because the wrong connection was set as the default Internet connection.
• Continued work on lab assistant web page.

Wednesday – November 11

• Configured dual boot machine for student; Windows 7 and Fedora 11.
• Removed Oracle installation from students machine. Registry entries and files needed to be removed.
• Installed microsoft loopback adapter on students machine for future Oracle Installation.

Friday - November 13

• Updated Journal on lab assistant website.
• Assisted student with checking their personal hard drives and reinstalled Windows XP Home on the their personal desktop.
• Inspected students old desktop that was not functional. Determined that the motherboard had failed due to a blown capacitor.

Monday - November 16

• Tutored student for Programming and Logic, Visual Logic.
• Work on making Linux Oracle server auto start after reboot.

Wednesday - November 18

• Installed new Dell 5330n network printers in CIS computer lab.
  Obtained IP from Dell Printer digital display and menu
  Obtained MAC address through arp command and through nmap utility.
  Downloaded drivers from the Dell website
• Tutored student in Program Logic and Design with Visual Logic.

Friday - November 20

• Assisted other lab assistants with the testing of a students computer.
  We concluded that the power supply and the front panel (power connectors) were bad.
  The motherboard, CPU, RAM, Video card and modem were all good.
• Tutored student in Intro to Web Programming with Javascript.

Monday - November 23

• Tutored student in php and mysql.
• Tutored student in Program Logic and Design.
• Installed virtual PC with Fedora_4 and Windows_XP in student machine for Intro to PC Operating Systems.

Monday - November 30

• Assisted student who could access their Oracle database
  After inspection I noticed the student's loopback adapter had been disabled.
  Renabled student's microsoft loopback adapter.
• Updated lab assistant website
  added pictures and updated my practicum journal
• Tutored student in Program Logic and Design, Visual Logic

Download Files

Practicum Journal Fall 2009

• journal.doc
• journal.odt
• journal.pdf

Practicum/Work-Study Schedule Fall 2009

• schedule.doc
• schedule.odt
• schedule.pdf

Timesheet Template

• timesheet.xls