Some Notes on the Machines

Many ways are slow, tend to crash on large collections of files, and/or do not produce HTML output which is reasonably small and readable. This command:

“ http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/tree.htm”: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/tree.htm

ported from Linux to Windows, does quite well. Obviously the Linux native version is excellent. Apple-isms are not known to this writer. On Windows, install the above, and then run something like this:

tree --nolinks -T "SERVER_NAME: Name of the Share" -H "C:/Folder Name" "C:/Folder Name" > "C:\ReportLocation\SERVER_NAME - Name of the Share.html"

You’ll notice one oddity, “C:\Folder Name” included twice; this is a quirk, the -H doesn’t do anything because we’re using —nolinks, but if you want you can use this without —nolinks to build a clickabe page.

Permissions can be a problem. The running user has to be able to see all files. Running the command in administrative CMD may not be sufficient. If you have RMM, its command-line capability may well have enough.

Here’s an overview of some choice web browsers, as of this writing. It’s not comprehensive and not going to be, because there are a huge variety of web sites and related needs, there is quite a lot of new development going on, and related publicity is not coherent (and cannot be in today’s world…). The below are the experiences of this writer only, and he is well aware that reality is far larger than his experience:

1. Firefox. Not the fastest and not stingy in memory, but if you need a particular site to work and you don’t need a Microsoft-only web application, try it, you’ll be most likely to find that it does the job. On the other hand, if you want lots and lots of tabs open and you have 8 gigabytes or less of RAM, or if you want maximum speed, try one of the others below. Firefox is also very compatible with probably the largest majority of plugin-based services, by way of it being the most current official product of the Mozilla codebase. Versions available for every major platform.
2. Brave. This is a relatively new browser whose company is headed by co-founder of the Mozilla project. It is not only an extremely fast, efficient, and reliable browser, the project is also a concerted effort to fix the current worldwide mess by which a very few huge near-monopolies have made web advertising almost worthless except to themselves. Brave uses the Chromium code-base, significantly revised and improved. Versions available for every major platform.
3. Microsoft Edge (as of 2019-04-24) and Microsoft Internet Explorer. As of this writing there are still many web-applications out there which require Microsoft web browsers. Edge ships with Windows 10 as its standard; Internet Explorer also ships though it is slightly hidden and publicly being deprecated. Edge has had its own code-base, really a major revision of Internet Explorer lacking some compatibility; recent Microsoft-only web sites have been Edge-compatible. But recently there was a Microsoft statement announcing an upcoming Windows update, in which the current Edge was to be replaced with a different Edge (an entirely different browser, with the same name…) with a Chromium code-base. It is entirely unclear what this will do to those dependent on Microsoft-only web applications. Obviously we will just have to watch and wait and see. Perhaps Microsoft will make things more complicated with some sort of embedding. We will see.
4. Chromium. Open-source web browser and code base. A very good web browser on Linux. Have not yet found a Windows version that works fully and automatically updates properly, though the Chocolatey system has promise.
5. Google Chrome. Now probably the most commonly used web browser. Chrome is generally slower and more resource-heavy than Chromium and Brave.
6. Vivaldi. This writer has had high hopes for Vivaldi for some time; it’s a highly customizable browser by a large group of mostly former Opera folks, and across-the-board web site compatibility was an original design goal, unlike Opera. Unfortunately, this writer has found its general web-site compatibility lacking versus Brave, Chromium, Chrome, and Firefox. Versions are available for every major platform.

‘paexec’. Highly functional and recommendable.

https://www.poweradmin.com/paexec/

Try this:

https://snag.gy/

There is a utility, for Windows, Linux, and Mac, which will convert MBR disks to GPT without destroying data. (Please note that it does NOT preserve data if you’re using an “extended” partition!!!!) It is called “GPT fdisk”, and it is here:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/download.html

Binaries for Windows can be downloaded here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/files/latest/download

In Windows, gdisk.exe needs one parameter, which is a drive number followed by a colon. Drive numbers are not letters; they can be obtained using the GUI Disk Manager or using ‘list disk’ in DISKPART on the command line.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 5.2.3790.3959
Copyright (C) 1999-2001 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: SITEFS

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status      Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  ----------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online       232 GB  8033 KB
  Disk 1    Online       466 GB      0 B
  Disk 2    Online       932 GB      0 B
  Disk 3    Online       931 GB      0 B
  Disk 4    Online       931 GB      0 B

DISKPART> exit

All you have to do to convert, is to run gdisk on a given drive:

gdisk 3:

say yes to all of the prompts, and then use the single command “w” for “write” the new partition table, and confirm. Then you will need to restart the “Virtual Disk” service if it’s running:

sc stop vds
sc start vds

and then test your results using DISKPART from the command line; the GPT disks will be starred as such.

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status      Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  ----------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online       232 GB  8033 KB
  Disk 1    Online       466 GB      0 B
  Disk 2    Online       932 GB  2550 KB        *
  Disk 3    Online       931 GB  2173 KB        *
  Disk 4    Online       931 GB  2173 KB        *

DISKPART>

Once you have ‘pip’, you can do:

sudo pip install repren

repren is very effective.

Windows, Linux, and MacOS:

https://etcher.io/

Chocolatey is a great way to get the fundamentals into a new install of Windows. First we install it:

@"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"

And then we get everything we want in:

choco install -y GoogleChrome Firefox jre8 adobereader flashplayerplugin flashplayeractivex adobeair adobereader-update flashplayerppapi adobeshockwaveplayer

Beautiful!

Here’s a great tester:

https://ftptest.net/

Wonderful tool, cross-platform:

http://www.httrack.com