Category: Articles
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How to Use unattend.xml to Bypass OOBE During Windows 11 Installation
The Windows setup goes through several phases, with the last one being the Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE). It presents users with multiple dialogs for system configuration. Some settings are security-related, while others may be unclear to many users. Using an answer file, they can be automatically customized. Windows 10 introduced numerous settings that are queried during…
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Mastering Encryption and Decryption with Ansible Vault
Ansible Vault allows you to encrypt sensitive data such as passwords, keys, and other secrets rather than storing them as plaintext in your playbooks or roles. In this tutorial, I will explain how to use Ansible Vault to encrypt and decrypt data during playbook runtime. Prerequisites To proceed with this tutorial, you will need the…
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Warp: An AI-Enhanced Terminal for Linux and macOS, with a Windows Edition Coming Soon
Warp is a modern AI-powered terminal emulator that essentially allows you to execute commands in plain English. The Linux edition recently joined the macOS version, and a Windows release is slated for later this year. In this post, we will look at Warp’s new Linux edition. However, aside from slightly different keyboard shortcuts, the different…
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Understanding VMware vSphere: Editions, Licenses, and Pricing for the SMB Market
Following Broadcom’s takeover of VMware, the new owner significantly streamlined the portfolio, primarily selling products through bundles to large companies. However, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often only require vSphere, of which there are now only a few editions available. The Essentials Plus Kit often turns out to be the most expensive due to the…
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Using a Bash Script to Associate an Elastic IP Address to an EC2 instance
In previous articles, I explained how to create an AMI from an EC2 instance and then launch the instance with scripts. Next, you probably want to assign an Elastic IP (IPv4 address) to the instance. In this post, you will learn how to allocate, release, associate, and disassociate an Elastic IP with the AWS CLI…
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How to Adjust Privacy Settings in Microsoft Edge: Disabling Tab Grouping, Creator Following, Similar Sites, and Shopping Recommendations
Microsoft regularly uses its platform to push its software and cloud services onto users, often providing little value but bloating the system or siphoning off data. This is applicable to various Edge browser features that are active by default but can be disabled via GPO. Microsoft has long been installing Windows add-ons without user consent.…
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A Deep Dive into MaxPowerSoft Active Directory Reports
MaxPowerSoft Active Directory Reports generates various types of reports, eliminating the need to create PowerShell scripts to retrieve Active Directory data manually. In this review, I will elaborate on the key functionalities of the AD Reporting tool that are most beneficial. The AD Reporting Tool’s user interface resembles a Microsoft product, and you can customize…
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How to Convert Certificate Format Using OpenSSL
OpenSSL is an open-source library and a command-line tool that helps admins and developers perform various cryptographic tasks, such as generating key pairs, certificate signing requests (CSR), verifying certificates, encrypting and decrypting data, identifying certificate information, verifying file integrity and much more. In this post, you will learn how to convert TLS certificates into different…
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How to Verify Digital File Signatures using SigCheck
SigCheck, part of the SysInternals suite, is a command-line utility offering security features such as verifying the digital file signature and calculating file hashes using multiple hashing algorithms. Distributing digitally signed files to customer computers is a common practice for trusted software publishing companies. The code-signing process uses a certificate from a reliable certification authority…
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Comparing Sudo for Windows vs. Runas and Sudo for Linux
Sudo for Windows has been available since Build 26052 and is currently only accessible through the Windows Insiders program as part of preview builds for Windows 11. At this time, it appears that sudo will not come to Windows Server 2025. In this article, I explain how to use sudo in Windows 11 and compare…