Quickest way to setup a test machine

So I set up a lot of test machines.  A lot.  It’s always a pain to load all the basic tools over and over again along with doing all the Microsoft updates and reboots.  I found a cool website that expedites the setup of many of the tools I use.  Take a quick look at Ninite.com and you won’t be sorry.  It basically allows you to select many commonly used applications and download and install them all at once. Very cool and very useful.

iptstate – Who you talkin’ to Willis?!?!

I was playing around with iptables today on some new boxen and found an old tool I had forgotten about.  iptstate is like top for iptables.  It’s a cool tool used to see who is connecting to your linux pc.  Here’s an example of the output (with the ip addresses and ports changed to protect the innocent!):

                          IPTables - State Top
Version: 1.4          Sort: SrcIP           s to change sorting
Source              Destination         Proto   State        TTL   
10.0.10.48:43081    12.18.123.135:7666  tcp    TIME_WAIT    0:01:08
10.4.17.49:59253    92.16.123.155:9666  tcp    TIME_WAIT    0:00:56
10.23.14.147:1900   15.18.61.105:12     tcp    ESTABLISHED  119:59:59
10.6.12.106:1549    213.168.1.105:89    tcp    TIME_WAIT    0:00:00
12.34.34.113:42343  121.138.1.103:87    tcp    ESTABLISHED  72:35:23
21.15.2.26:3404     107.168.1.102:80    tcp    ESTABLISHED  6:56:27
22.16.14.120:3783   145.168.1.120:77    tcp    ESTABLISHED  29:13:09
23.154.11.20:2517   123.18.1.100:8080   tcp    ESTABLISHED  15:41:32
24.184.14.12:1511   155.168.1.100:34    tcp    ESTABLISHED  40:02:34

Enjoy!