Category: Geek Software of the Week

Macrium Reflect Free Edition

Are you looking for free backup, free cloning, or free disk imaging software?
Reflect 8 Free is the best no-cost solution on the market. Why does Macrium offer such a feature-rich and powerful product for absolutely nothing? Because we believe the safety and security of your data should be available to everyone.

Q: Why does Macrium provide a free backup product?
A: We believe the ability to keep your data safe and secure should be available to everyone.

Q: Is it reliable?
A: Yes, the core Macrium backup engine is common across our product range and trusted worldwide.

Q: Is it fast?
A: For one off backups and clones, yes. However, you will find it much slower than the rest of our product range when used for scheduled backups. We have not intentionally slowed Reflect Free; it is slower because it does not include various Macrium backup acceleration features.

Q: Where is it useful?
A: It is useful for one off backups and clones. We don’t recommend it for continuous / scheduled computer protection. In particular, it does not include:

• Features needed for fully featured ongoing protection of a computer
• Ransomware protection of backup files (Macrium Image Guardian)
• ReDeploy to ensure a restore will boot on new hardware
• Technical support

Q: Are the backup files compatible with Macrium’s supported products?
A: Yes. If you upgrade to a fully supported product, you can browse and restore backups made with Reflect Free.

Q: Can Reflect Free be centrally deployed and managed?
A: Reflect Free is not compatible with Site Manager.

Q: Is it licensed for commercial use?
A: Yes, when registered accordingly, it is licensed for limited use within a corporate environment.

Q: What uses are specifically excluded?
A:

• Backup of a computer other than that on which it is installed.
• Restore to a computer other than that backed up, other than its replacement.
• Install it on a device you do not own for use with any person other than the original registered licensee.
• Use it on more than 10 concurrent installs across any one organization.

Examples of excluded usage.

• Deployment of a common image to multiple computers (see the Macrium Reflect Deployment Kit)
• Backup of any machine other than the computer upon which it is installed (see the Macrium Reflect Technician’s License)
• Using a ‘service’ computer to clone, backup, or restore disks from other computers (see the Macrium Reflect Technician’s License)

Q: Is there a full EULA available?
A: Yes, it is here.

Q: Who should I contact with questions regarding Reflect free licensing?
A: Please send an email to licensing@macrium.com, and we will respond quickly.

Speaking of security and privacy… that applies to your phone as well! This SMS (text messages) client is awesome! Not only can you use it for encrypted, secure texts on your smartphone, you can use the Windows client to send and receive texts while working on your PC! Protect yourself with Signal!

Signal Secure SMS Client

“Speak Freely
Say “hello” to a different messaging experience. An unexpected focus on privacy, combined with all of the features you expect.

Share Without Insecurity
State-of-the-art end-to-end encryption (powered by the open source Signal Protocol) keeps your conversations secure. We can’t read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one else can either. Privacy isn’t an optional mode — it’s just the way that Signal works. Every message, every call, every time.

Say Anything
Share text, voice messages, photos, videos, GIFs and files for free. Signal uses your phone’s data connection so you can avoid SMS and MMS fees.

Speak Freely
Make crystal-clear voice and video calls to people who live across town, or across the ocean, with no long-distance charges.

Make Privacy Stick
Add a new layer of expression to your conversations with encrypted stickers. You can also create and share your own sticker packs.

Get Together with Groups
Group chats make it easy to stay connected to your family, friends, and coworkers.

No ads. No trackers. No kidding.
There are no ads, no affiliate marketers, and no creepy tracking in Signal. So focus on sharing the moments that matter with the people who matter to you.

Free for Everyone
Signal is an independent nonprofit. We’re not tied to any major tech companies, and we can never be acquired by one either. Development is supported by grants and donations from people like you.”

“This utility designed to erase all traces of (broken) connected USB devices – flash-drives, disks and CD-ROMs from computer registry of Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 (32/64-bit versions). The utility has a test mode of operation, i.e. without actually removing data from the registry, and, just in case, creates a .reg-file to undo any changes. There is also a fully automatic mode.”

Warnings
Eject all USB drives before clean
Required an administrative privileges
Required an immediate Windows restart after clean
No you can not clean Windows installed on USB drive
FAQ
Q: Why doesn’t Windows (after cleaning) detect my USB drive?

A: There may be Cached data about the USB drive somehow (for example you ignored a Windows restart or just no luck) was written back to the registry, so the drive is now erroneously partially registered. You must run the utility again to clean up the mess and immediately restart Window. Repeat twice.

Q: Why is my USB Hewlett-Packard printer not working after cleaning?

A: Some HP printers comes with “HP Smart Install” technology – when a USB CD-ROM with drivers to the printer appears in the system on printer connection. To avoid this you must:

Delete the printer from the system before cleaning
Switch off “HP Smart Install” on both the computer and the printer using the proprietary HP utility SIUtility.exe (or SIUtility64.exe) (usually in the UTILS folder of CD with printer drivers)
After that printer will be re-installed as a regular USB printer and utility will not affect it anymore
More info about “HP Smart Install” here: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2010/plugandprint/pdf/Smart_Install_FAQ.pdf

Q: How to restore a saved .reg-file?

A1: You can also restore from a System Restore Point: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12415/windows-10-recovery-options

A2: You must import saved .reg-file using System account, the administrative privileges are not sufficient:

Download PsExec utility here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/psexec
Run cmd.exe as Administrator and type on its console window:
psexec.exe -i -s regedit.exe
In opened Registry Editor import .reg-file using menu File ? Import…
Restart Windows

Here’s a handy utility to turn you USB stick into a quick install tool!

Ventoy Web Site

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.
With Ventoy, you don’t need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly.
You can copy many files at a time and Ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them (see screenshot).
x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way.
Most types of OS supported (Windows/WinPE/Linux/Unix/VMware/Xen…)

100% open source (license)
Very simple to use (Get started)
Fast (limited only by the speed of copying iso file)
Can be installed in USB/Local Disk/SSD/NVMe/SD Card
Directly boot from ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files, no extraction needed
No need to be continuous in disk for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files
Both MBR and GPT partition style are supported
x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI, MIPS64EL UEFI supported
IA32/x86_64 UEFI Secure Boot supported
Persistence supported
Windows auto installation supported
RHEL7/8/CentOS7/8/SUSE/Ubuntu Server … auto installation supported Notes
FAT32/exFAT/NTFS/UDF/XFS/Ext2(3)(4) supported for main partition
ISO files larger than 4GB supported
Native boot menu style for Legacy & UEFI
Most type of OS supported, 700+ iso files tested
Linux vDisk(vhd/vdi/raw…) boot solution
Not only boot but also complete installation process
Menu dynamically switchable between ListView and TreeView mode
“Ventoy Compatible” concept
Plugin Framework
Injection files to runtime environment
Boot configuration file dynamically replacement
Highly customizable theme and menu style
USB drive write-protected support
USB normal use unaffected
Data nondestructive during version upgrade
No need to update Ventoy when a new distro is released

Looking for a free, and Open Source, replacement for Teamviewer? I used to love Teamviewer, until they got greedy and stopped doing a free version. Then, they would nag you over and over to sign up for the paid version. Man! Anyway, there is a great alternative! It is “Remotely!” Check it out at:

https://remotely.one/

“Instantly connect to remote desktops either unattended or by invite. Invites are started from a single-file, portable executable that’s easy for customers to download and use.

Remote Scripting
Save time on quick fixes and ad-hoc scripting with an interactive console that lets you execute commands against multiple remote machines simultaneously, with instant results.

Use the shell of your choice: PowerShell Core, Windows PowerShell, CMD, or Bash.

Rich auto-complete for cross-platform PowerShell Core increases speed and accuracy of commands. You can even tab-complete folders and files on the remote machine.

Scheduled Scripts
Set up scripts to run on Hourly, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly schedules. Optionally send alerts to your email and/or to the Remotely web interface.

Alerts will send when there was an error running the script, or you can trigger them manually within the script based on some logic.

Integrated Chat
Ask end users for permission to remote in, or just chat it up a little, with integrated chat.

Notable Features

• Support for Windows and Linux devices
• Unattended and attended access
• Remote scripting for Windows PowerShell, PowerShell Core, Bash, and CMD
• Optional WebRTC for secure peer-to-peer screen transfer on Windows agents, which reduces load on the server
• Drag-and-drop file transfer
• Remote audio streaming (Windows only)
• Bi-directional clipboard sharing
• Custom branding for desktop apps
• Integrated chat
• Scheduled scripts
• Device alerts
• 2-factor authentication

How It Works
The Remotely client has two parts: the service and the remote control. The service is responsible for maintaining a persistent connection to the server and executing remote commands. The remote control is launched as needed for remote control sessions.

Both applications make outgoing websocket connections over secure SSL/TLS protocol. Because the connections are outgoing, you don’t need to open any ports in your firewall, and the service won’t accept any incoming connections.

The Remotely service will register with your Remotely organization ID, which is generated when you create your account or join an existing organization. On the first connection, the service generates a separate unique ID and sends it to the server. Upon each subsequent connection, the server must send back that ID before anything else, or else the service will uninstall itself immediately. This is an additional layer of security that ensures the service is communicating with the original server.

Users and computers are grouped into an organization, and they can’t interact with resources outside their organization. Microsoft’s Identity framework is used for all login and authentication to verify users.”

From the AudacityTeam: “We’re pleased to announce release of Audacity 3.0.0 which replaces all previous versions for Windows, macOS and Linux.

.aup3 Project Format

Audacity 3.0.0 is a major update on our previous Audacity 2.4.2. We’ve changed the format in which we save Audacity projects! Previously we saved projects as a sometimes large number of small files, with an ‘.aup’ file to coordinate the lot. This way of doing things is sometimes called ‘pile of files’ storage.

The problem, which happened all too often, was that data files and .aup file parted ways. Users quite reasonably expected the .aup file to contain the entire project. Well, the new .aup3 file does contain the data as well. The technical detail is that we are using an open source database, SQLite3, to store everything in one .aup3 file. That all happens ‘behind the scenes’. SQLite3 is open source, and it is a delight to work with. Nevertheless, this was a huge change, and we decided it was too risky to include many other changes we wanted to make at the same time – so 3.0.0 is almost entirely about this big format change.

Working with .aup3 projects editing audio should on most machines be a little faster than before, because there are fewer files being worked on. Finishing and closing a project at the end of working can be quite a lot slower, since there is more to do when a project is closed. We think the trade offs are worth it.

Importantly note that you can open your older .aup projects in Audacity 3.0.0 where they will be converted to the new .aup3 format.

Label Sounds & Noise Gate

We did have time to improve our ‘Noise Gate’ effect and add a new analyzer, ‘Label Sounds’, that can label sounds and silences. We also made a few small tweaks elsewhere. You can now import and export macros, and there are a couple of new commands for using the last used tool or last used analyzer that you can give shortcuts to.

Bugs fixed

We also fixed over 160 bugs that had been accumulating over the years. This is quite a staggering amount of work. The majority of these bugs were minor problems, easily worked around. Some though were really juicy high priority bugs that would have mattered a lot to the people affected by them. We’re really glad to have these bugs fixed now.

We hope you enjoy using Audacity 3.0.0 as much as we enjoyed putting it together.”

This week’s GSotW is a browser plugin that demonstrates the security issue of using browser technology and Javascript to allow “spoofing” your location from your browser.

Location Guard

“Location Guard is a browser extension that allows to protect your location while using location-aware websites, by adding controlled noise to it.”

The Chrome Web Store description says: “Hide your geographic location from websites.

Modern browsers such as Google Chrome can tell websites where you’re located in order to provide location-aware functionality. Your geographic location is obtained through various means (eg. using WiFi data) and is often highly accurate, which can be a violation of your privacy.

This extension allows you to enjoy the useful applications of geolocation while protecting your privacy. It does so by reporting a fake location to websites, obtained by adding a certain amount of ‘noise’ to the real location. The noise is randomly selected in a way that ensures that the real location cannot be inferred with high accuracy.

Three configurable privacy levels are provided. The higher the privacy level the greater the amount of noise, which gives better privacy at the expense of a less accurate fake location. This can be configured per-website for flexibility: a more accurate location can be provided for driving directions than for a weather forecast. There’s also an option to use a fixed location, instead of adding noise to the real one. This offers the best privacy (no dependence on the real location at all), at the cost of very low accuracy.

Note: your location can be also detected from your IP address, but usually with poor accuracy. Location Guard protects the accurate location revealed through the JavaScript API.”

Do you want to be able to control your home lab servers via a real IP KVM? Concerned that “off-the-shelf” KVM systems are prohibitively expensive for your home lab? Then check out TinyPilot, designed for Raspberry Pi 4 system. It is Open Source (the software,) and you can build your own, or you can just buy it built and ready to go. This is awesome! You can access your servers over your LAN, and get right into the BIOS, with what amounts to a “bare-metal” connection! Just what I am looking to do myself! (Yes, you can use TightVNC [or, any other VNC] that you like, BUT, not down to the BIOS level!)

If you need to access it from outside your LAN, over HTTPS, to manage your systems over the Internet, there is a “Pro” version of the software that you can buy for $99.99 (you still have to use your own Raspberry Pi) or, you can buy the “turn-key” system (hardware and Pro software) for $299.99. The “Pro” version also enable’s password protection. Compare THAT to the “big boys” (big price) systems! Kudos to Michael Lynch for developing such a system, and providing the software on GitHub for the home hobbyist/maker community!

“An easy-to-use, low-cost device for managing your bare-metal servers

Access your server before it even boots
TinyPilot plugs directly into your bare-metal server, giving you a virtual console during BIOS and boot.

Debug boot failures, install a new OS, and adjust your BIOS settings, all without ever connecting a keyboard and monitor.

Keystroke forwarding that’s so fast, you’ll think you’re directly connected
TinyPilot captures all keyboard input right from the browser and forwards it to your server.

Using lightweight websockets channels, performance is almost as fast as if your keyboard were plugged directly into your server.

Fast, high-quality video capture
TinyPilot captures video HDMI output from your server and displays it conveniently in your browser.

Capture at 30 frames per second at 1280×720 resolution with ~200 ms of latency.

Plug ‘n play
TinyPilot requires no software to install. Access everything you need right from your browser.

Just plug TinyPilot into your server’s HDMI and USB ports, and start controlling it through your web browser.

Open source
TinyPilot is an open-source project, and its code is available under the permissive MIT license.

What isn’t supported?
TinyPilot lacks support for the following functionality:

• Power management
• You can shut down the TinyPilot device through its web interface, but TinyPilot does not manage the target machine’s power
• Audio forwarding
• VNC/RDP compatibility

And, Coming Soon!

• Mount virtual drives: Dynamically mount storage volumes on your target system right through the web browser. Add any file or boot image you want, and the target system will see it as a USB storage device.
• Manage power: Connect TinyPilot directly to a power strip so that it can cycle power when the machine becomes unresponsive.

TinyPilot was created by Michael Lynch in 2020.

For any questions, email: michael@tinypilotkvm.com “