Android apps for finding my son's often-lost phone

I'm constantly convinced that my child is going to lose his phone. In fact, it's very common for him to misplace it at school, at practice, or even within the house. I've seen "Where's my iPhone/iPod?" installed on his iPod that seems like a decent idea, so I went in search of "Where's my Droid?" and found some decent options.

My basic requirements:

• Able to locate a phone within the house by remotely triggering a loud noise
• Able to locate a powered-on phone by GPS, WiFi, or 3G triangulation
• (the rarer one) Able to locate the last-known location of a phone when the battery dies

The ones I've seen recommended. I've tried a couple of them.

• ** Plan B and Lookout - (I like this one.) This allows you to install it AFTER you've lost your phone, which is interesting. Once the app starts, it starts sending emails to the registered email on the phone with the GPS location. You can simply go to the Google Play market place and select "Install" to push it to your device. It automatically wakes up starts sending emails. Pretty simple. It even works if the GPS is currently off. It also has a matching app called "Lookout" with some additional features that can make it scream or otherwise ring so you can hear it locally. COOL: The "Lookout" utility has a "signal flare" capability that automatically sends out last known location if the battery is about to die. You can also visit the Lookout.com web site, login with your gmail credentials, and use the controls to locate your device or make it "screem." Both features seemed to work pretty well.
• NOTE: One thing I don't like is signing into their site with your gmail password. I'm not sure I trust that.
• ** Where's my Droid (heavily downloaded and highly rated) - once installed, you can send it text messages "WMD GPS" or "WMD Ring" to have it locate itself. You can also link it to "Commander" (the online web site manager) with it's setup wizard on the phone. (NOTE: I saw an add for "Lookout" at the bottom of the screen). Once Commander is set up, you go to http://wheresmydroid.com/commander.html and click on the Commander icon to start. You log into the Google home page, then it starts the app. You can "get status," which sends a command to the phone and waits for a response with basic information about the phone. You send different commands to get "Quick" or "Accurate" GPS locations. There are pro features to take pictures or lock or wipe the device. The GPS response seems to take quite a while.
• Find my Phone
• Cerebus
• iHound
• Lost Phone
• Locate my Droid
• iTag

I'll edit and add more notes as I find them. For now, I might just stick with Plan B and Lookout.

Working with Samba user accounts

Working with something as simple as getting a couple users with various file permissions on Samba isn't as easy as I would have expected.

In order to control user permissions on a Samba file share, you need to do the following.

1. Create the user in unix. Use adduser or useradd. The user can have /usr/sbin/nologin to prevent console logins, if you desire. You can probably avoid giving them a password since the next command will take care of that.
2. Create the user with 'sudo smbpasswd -a User' and set the password AGAIN. This will sync it against the unix database.

After that, you can use 'sudo pdbedit -L' to see a list of valid Samba users.

Next, configure your smb.conf (/etc/samba) to use the following:

[global]

       security = user

[MyShare]

        comment = My Shared Storage

        path = /nas/MyShare

        browseable = yes

        guest ok = no

        writeable = yes

        create mask = 755

        read list = Home

        write list = Bob Fred Joe

        admin users = Sam

This will allow Sam to administer the share with root permissions. Bob, Fred, and Joe will be able to write files to the share. "Home" user will be able to read it, but not write data.