Favorite Linux Distro

So here are the results of the poll.

2 - Fedora
2 - Other
1 - RedHat
1 - Ubuntu

No one seemed to like either version of SUSE.

Obviously we don't get enough traffic here to properly assess the use of Linux distros, but there is a site that is a better representation of the popularity of the various distros available today.

DistroWatch

Check it out, not only does it give the current popularity, but it will give you updates, and basic information about each distro being tracked.

Favorite Distro

Vote on your favorite Linux distro by scrolling down to the poll on the right hand side of the page. Results will be posted next week.

Anti-virus software

By now you are hopefully aware that there are all kinds of different virus, worms, bots, etc... with the sole purpose of hijacking your computer. Hopefully, you are running some sort of virus protection on your computer since there are a few good ones out there available for free.

However, if you still haven't installed anti-virus software because you think it will slow down your computer, you don't believe you need it, or for whatever reason you can't install it, your still in luck. There are online scanners available that allow you to scan your computer through the use of a browser plugin. Two such companies that offer this service are:

Trend Micro
and
McAfee (follow the FreeScan link to run this one)

So if you are running Windows with no anti-virus check out one of the following sites to make sure that your machine is running virus free.

XP Performance

Lately I have been seeing a lot of ads on t.v. to speed up your computer. For a fee these companies can run a scan of your computer and do some voodoo to make your computer faster.

Instead of paying a fee, try doing a few simple tasks already built into XP that can help extend the life and improve the performance of that XP install.

Here is a link to some steps you can take.

Microsoft XP Maintenance

Audacity

I was going through some of my old things last night and ran across a bunch of old cassette tapes that I have. Poking around I realized that I had a lot of old music that I like and am limited to one tape deck, which was disconnected, to play it on.

Thinking I may have just found a new and interesting project, I decided to connect my tape deck to my PC and look for some software to record with. As usual, off to sourceforge I went and it was there that I found Audacity.

Audacity was easy to install, easy to configure, and easy to use. Without really having to know anything about editing audio I was able to record my music from the line in on the sound card, easily remove the dead air from the beginning and end of the songs, and easily export my recorded song to multiple formats.

I see no reason to try any other software package as Audacity does what I want to do. Let's just hope this project stays interesting long enough for me to get through all those old songs so I don't have to keep this tape deck on my desk to enjoy my music.

Phishing Attacks

With the holiday season upon us all of those emails with special offers may sound like an appealing way to save some cash. However, be aware that many emails sent around are from hackers running phishing scams to gain access to your personal information.

One easy way to safeguard against this type of thing is to not follow the links provided in emails. Hackers have gotten sufficticated enough to make these emails have the look and feel of a legitimate email. Instead of clicking the links directly, you can instead go to the website and browse to the special offers that they have available this holiday season.

While not all email is malicious, it's better to be safe than sorry.

The New Efficiency

I ran across this Microsoft site, not sure how new it is.

The New Efficiency

It's full of videos about the new Microsoft products and videos with some of the consumers of these products. There are also some partner videos from companies such as Cisco, HP, Intel, etc...

Poke around, some of the information is sales or fluff, some is informative, and some is just interesting.

Fedora 12 install

I was excited to get Fedora 12 installed when I got home from work and thought I would share my experiences with Fedora 12 as I go.

I chose to use the netinst media, as I usually do, to perform my install. I booted up the CD and the installed appeared to be about the same as Fedora 11. The whole install only took about 45 minutes over my cable modem connection.

So far the interface feels the same as usual and my first install was on a desktop so I won't get to play with the new wireless features just yet, but I do have a laptop I plan to install Fedora 12 on.

Admittedly, I really don't have much of value to report at this time, but I was pretty excited to be up and running and posting.

Stayed tuned for more.

Syslog

I have been looking around for an easy to setup and use syslog server and recently tried a couple in a production environment with a handful of switches, WAPs, and a firewall. The two I installed on a Windows 2003 server were Kiwi and Splunk.

Kiwi had a simple install and you were off and running. Splunk had an easy install with some minor configuration then you were up and running.

Kiwi was nice because everything is color coded and easy to read, but I found when I attempted to apply filters it would time out or crash the service all together.

Splunk isn't as easy to read, but has all of the information there and seems more robust. I can search on multiple different items and the results are returned fairly quick.

I think for a light logging Kiwi is good because all of the data is right there on the main pane, but for heavy logging with a lot of querying I think I'd go with Splunk.

Fedora Docs

Need to know how to do something in Fedora? The Fedora documentation page is a good place to start. They have documentation for multiple versions and it is organized in a way that makes it easy to find what you need and offers multiple languages and document types.

Fedora Docs

RedHat Features

I'm not sure how old this video is, but it is a pretty good video on how features make it into RedHat.

Video

FeatureList Fedora 12

Here is a link to the Fedora 12 feature list.

Solaris 10 Services

Working with services is pretty straight forward and provides some useful information and control of services on your Solaris 10 install.

If you want to see all of the services running on your machine.

svcs

If you want to list the details of a service.

svcs -l SERVICE_NAME

If you want to enable a service use the svcadm command.

svcadm enable SERVICE_NAME

As you might imagine disabling a service is just the opposite.

svcadm disable SERVICE_NAME

So as you can see, working with services in Solaris 10 is pretty straight forward. There are additional features for these commands, I'd suggest taking a look at the man pages for more info.

IronMail

I recently deployed McAfee Email Gateway, aka IronMail, and so far it's operated as advertised.

Out of the box, it does a better job than the solution it replaced. Now in defense of the old solution, it didn't have a database like TrustedSource to check reputation against, which by the way was one of the main reasons to move to IronMail.

IronMail has more than it's share of options, but I have to admit, they aren't always located under the tabs that I would typically expect to find them. However, once you figure out their logic it is really rather easy to navigate the GUI.

Troubleshooting issues via the CLI is very nice. If you are use to working at a *nix CLI, you will like this feature.

Finally, support. Like other SecureComputing, now McAfee, products I have used in IronMail tech support is very good. They have a special high level port that support can use to connect to your appliance to assist in troubleshooting.

It's not the least expensive solution nor the easiest to run, but I am impressed with the power and effectiveness of IronMail.

Fixup Protocol

I hadn't setup a new PIX in a while and the couple ASA firewalls I have recently setup haven't needed SMTP service till now.

I moved an Exchange 2007 edge server from a DMZ in a PIX to a DMZ in an ASA. Had all of my ducks in a row with routing, firewall rules etc..., so imagine my suprise when the edge server couldn't properly pass SMTP data to the hub and vice-versa.

After examining logs on the ASA and Exchange servers and going through the firewall and server configs multiple times it dawned on me that maybe I was dealing with the fixup protocol again. I had thought that Cisco would have addressed this pesky little problem with the ASA, but alas, no. As soon as I disabled ESMTP from the inspection section, mail started flowing without incident.

If your using Exchange and Cisco ASAs for the first time, before you get to frustrated with mail not moving between the edge and hub servers, check the fixup protocol.

Windows 7 part 2

Windows 7 has turned out to work pretty well for me so far. I was able to use the bulk of my applications that I need with little or no problems.

Wireshark, nmap, java, all installed without any problems. Java plugins in a few browser based systems I use worked without any problems. Oddly enough i had a problem with activex controls with one application that I use, SolarWinds Orion, where it kept wanting to install the toolset and no matter what I did with the browser, it simply didn't work right. Luckily they had a work around on Thwack, I suggest going out there if you run into similar problems.

The only other app I had problems with had a problem with the updater. The app launched and ran, but the auto updater couldn't pull down the files. I changed the install directory to reside outside "c:\Program Files" and it would download the updates, but not install them. I ended up installing the updates manually and now the app runs fine.

Plugins for our SSLVPN installed and ran without a hitch, so this was a major win as far as I am concerned since I use it nightly. Anti-virus software installed and runs, which is good, we use Trend Micro Officescan.

All in all, I have to say that my experience so far with Windows 7 has been positive and look forward to continuing to integrate it into my usage with the eventual goal of being able to upgrade from XP Pro.

Windows 7 part 1

Now that I have an official release version of Windows 7 I decided to install it on one of my notebooks and give it a try.

The notebook I am using is an HP nc6320 with 2GB of RAM and an Intel T7200 2.0GHz CPU.

First the install. In typical fashion the installation of the Windows operating system is very straight forward and easy to perform. Activation of my code was straight forward and went off without a hitch. After applying the updates, everything I needed to have up and running was, including all of the buttons on the keyboard except the presentation key, which really isn't critical for me on this notebook.

Performance feels as good on this base install as it does on a base install of XP on this same box. The web browsing experience is about the same as with XP/IE8 and the basic plugins such as Silverlight, Flash, and Adobe reader installed without any problems.

I'll examine application compatibility, security settings, etc... in following posts, but for now it's doing the job.

Kindle

I've had my Kindle for a while now, but haven't gotten around to write about it till now.

There are a lot of things I like about my Kindle, something I don't really care for, and only one thing that I could do without.

Let's start by examining the things I like about the Kindle. First, it has plenty of titles to choose from, I've had no problems finding things to read. Second, the size is perfect, it fits right in your hands like a paperback would. They did a great job with the display, it's easy to read and I don't get eye fatigue like I do when reading from other electronic devices. Finally, the battery life is really good. I stay connected to the network all of the time and I am able to read for several hours at a time without worrying about having to find an outlet.

Now when it comes to reading newspapers on the Kindle, I can't say I care for the format. You needlessly have to scroll through articles that you could easily pass over if you had the actual printed copy. (unless of course I am missing a navigation feature)

The one thing I could really do without is the DRM aspect. I have been burned by DRM servers going off line in the past and left with useless locked music files. I feel a little more confident that Amazon isn't going anywhere, but is something I always keep in mind.

So for me, books I would like to keep forever I still buy hard copies. Newspapers, it's print for me. However, for most titles I think the Kindle is a great format for which to read books.

Need IPv6 info?

Here is a website full of information about IPv6. It contains news, information and links to other sources of information for IPv6.

IPv6 Act Now

ittv

Here is a nice site full of some useful videos dealing with Windows and Windows based solutions.

ittv

What's installed?

Every needed or wanted to know what versions of software are installed on your Linux box? If you have a Debian or Debian based distro such as Ubuntu you can use the following command to list out the packages, description, and version info.

dpkg-query -l

sudoers file

If you ever run into an issue where the account your using doesn't have sudo rights you simply just need to edit the /etc/sudoers file.

Be sure and use the visudo command to do this.

NetStumbler alternative for Mac

The other day I was looking for a NetStumbler alternative for the Mac. After trying a couple I finally settled on KisMAC.

KisMac is straight forward to setup and use. It gives important information such as SSID, Channel, Encryption type, signal strength, etc...

If you ever just need a quick and dirty way to detect the WAPs in an area, i'd recommend you check it out.

N00b Boyfriend

This one was too funny not to share.

N00b Boyfriend

Missing that Show Desktop icon?

Missing that Show Desktop icon? Whether you deleted it or it just came up missing, it is easy to replace the show desktop icon on your Windows 2003 or XP machine.

Simply open a text editor and enter the following text.

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

Then perform a "save as" to the location of your choice.
file name: Show Desktop.scf

Copy or move the new file to the quick launch bar and your done.

SSH – Disable root logins

By default machines running Fedora, RedHat, and their variants allow root to ssh directly into them. In order to disable this and force users to first ssh into these boxes as themselves you should edit the sshd_config file.

To do this simply open the sshd_config file with your favorite text editor, I use vi.

Next, locate the line “PermitRootLogin”.

Remove the comment and change the value to no.

Save, close, and restart sshd.

Social Networking Safe Guards

Here are some simple things to keep in mind that will help protect you when using social networking sites.

Use caution when clicking links

* Many links have been shortened by sites such as TinyURL which means your flying blind when you click that link till you get there.

Don’t allow social networking sites to scan your address book.

* This will keep the email address of your friends safe.

Type the names of your social network site yourself.

* Following a link from another site or email may take you to a fake site.

Be selective when adding friends

* Hackers often setup fake accounts to try and gather personal information

What you post is there forever (be selective)

* Even though you may delete something from your site, you must assume that someone has copied it or it has been cached somewhere

Third party apps (be careful)

* Hackers sometimes write applications to gather personal information, so be aware before you allow an application

F5 BIG-IP resources

The BIG-IP is a great appliance and extremely powerful. However, because it can do so much you may find yourself looking for a little help getting pointed in the right direction. If you don’t already know about this resource, you should.

F5 DevCentral

This should be your first stop when trying to figure out how to configure your BIG-IP or write iRules.

McAfee Firewall Enterprise (aka Sidewinder)

I figured since I went to the trouble of pointing out how nice the new ASDM interface was I would point out an equally nice interface for firewall management. The McAfee Firewall Enterprise (aka Sidewinder), I still just call it the Sidewinder, has a very nice user interface for managing that appliance.

It is an explorer type interface with navigation on the left and tasks on the right. It is laid out logically and because it is a native Windows app, is very fast. I can honestly say I have never had this interface crash on me.

Besides having a nice management interface the Sidewinder is just a darn good firewall. Although, be warned, it is a proxy based firewall, so setting up rules isn’t always as straight forward as you might find with other firewalls, but don’t let that scare you away.

Cisco ASA

I have never been a fan of the PDM used to manage the PIX. It has always been slow, buggy, and not as intuitive as other firewall interfaces.

Today I had two ASA5550 firewalls to configure for an upcoming project. My opinion of the ASDM, well done Cisco. The ASDM makes managing the ASA a dream compared to using the PDM for the PIX.

The user interface is intuitive, it is straight forward to manage the objects and rules, it is much faster than the PDM, and after a full day of working in the interface, not one crash.

Network Monitoring Solution

If your looking for a good network monitoring application that is low cost, easy to setup, easy to use, and still does a good job, take a look at Cacti. Cacti is an open source network monitoring system that uses apache, php, mysql, rrdtool, and net-snmp to monitor network attached devices.

Cacti gives you device status via SNMP or ICMP and various performance graphs via SNMP. SNMP versions 1, 2, and 3 are supported by Cacti. The one shortcoming is a limited number of device types supported out of the box, but don't let that scare you off. The generic counters should be adequate to get you up and going.

I used Ubuntu 8.04 LTS as my host system and installation was straight forward and fast. Just make sure that you look at the install doc and install the required packages before you install Cacti. With the version of Ubuntu I used, apt missed the install of mysql-server for some reason. However, i simply installed mysql-server and then ran dpkg-reconfigure cacti and I was back on track.

If you want to get up and running with the least amount of trouble I would stick with one of the distros that have a package available, i.e. Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, etc...

Cacti Website

Have fun...

The Switching Kitchen

The Switching Kitchen is a Cisco website that gives some nice little tips on configuring switches. It contains recipe cards on what is being discussed in the videos and the videos are technical instead of sales driven.

Double posting

I have decided to double post for a while both here and on Wordpress till I decide where Tech Grab Bag is going to permanently land.

Warehouse 13

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Warehouse 13 on Syfy (or SciFi if you prefer) for what I was hoping it could be.

While it did start out somewhat slow, I thought it picked up as the show went on and finished out fairly strong. I think the previews leading up to the airing did a good job of portraying how the show was going to go and would recommend anyone looking for a "what if" show to check it out.

Warehouse 13

It's handy and has a fun name.

If your ever sitting behind a firewall and need to know the address your NATing to, here is a handy site that will tell you. Did I mention it had a fun name?

IP Chicken

Samsung Saga

My experience with the Samsung Saga.

What is your favorite Linux distro?

What is your favorite Linux distro?

Vista and telnet

Vista and Telnet

Possible move

I am starting to try out WordPress.

TechGrabBag on WordPress

Saving New Brain Cells

I read an article in the March 2009 issue of Scientific American entitled "Saving New Brain Cells", by Tracey J. Shors. It was a good read full of interesting information about where brain cells are created, the type of things that can surpress the creation of new cells, such as alcohol, and things that can help extend the life of brain cells, such as working through complex problems.

Here is a link to the article on the Scientific American website.

How to Save New Brain Cells

Secure your computer

One of the things you can do to help secure your computer is to lock the screen when you step away from it. This is quick, easy, and worth the effort.

Windows - -L
Mac - setup a hot corner
Gnome - -L

Coolest robots of 2009

Here is a link to a Network World slide show of the "Coolest robots of 2009".

Robots

Three Way Handshake

Here is an interesting way to look at the Three Way Handshake.

The Network Company

ReGenesis

I've been addicted to this show on Hulu lately. It's called ReGenesis and is about a lab similar to the CDC that tries to solve unusual cases. It is a couple years old, but worth watching. Hulu still doesn't have season 4 available, but I have my fingers crossed.

ReGenesis

SNMP Monitoring

Looking for a free, yet powerful way to do SNMP monitoring? Look at MRTG.

MRTG

MRTG is straight forward to setup and has excellent documentation. It displays graphs of the items you define through a webserver or your local machine if you just want to open the html files or images.

I suggest taking a look at it and judging for yourself.

HP TouchSmart

I recently got my hands on an HP TouchSmart and decided to share my experiences with it.

Setup was easy and straight forward, just like any new pc you might get out of the box. You can do anything with your finger you can do with a left mouse click, which can be a little tricky with the resolution turned up.

The HP TouchSmart Center software gives you a better interface to work in. It has an area to work with photos, video, music, etc... Everything is very large and easy to click. You can also drag objects around to move through the menu items which makes for a plesent interactive experience.

I haven't fully tested use of applications through touch, but I suspect without a stylus you couldn't get the control you need to work with certain applications.

So far, it's pretty cool.

Debian Graphical Installer

I've been playing with Debian 5.0 quite a bit lately and finally decided to try out the graphical installer.

It is rather nice, follows all the same screens I am use to seeing in the standard installer. I don't know that I will make that my default method for installing Debian, but it is nice to know they have an easy to follow graphical installer for new users.

Fun Fact

The planet Venus spins in the opposite direction of most other planets.

Scientific American

vi vs Emacs

A little vi vs Emacs humor.

Debian: Change default editor from Nano to Vim

I use Vi(m) almost exclusively, however the default text editor in Debian 5 is nano. If you are like me and want to change the default editor simply type the following.

update-alternatives --config editor

Select the line number containing the vim option and your set.

IE8 RC1

I had initially tried IE8 when the first beta was available. I didn't have a lot of success with it so decided to wait until RC1 was available before trying again. RC1 is quite nice and I have yet to find a site I have had a problem with. Especially with the compatibility view feature. The compatibility view is available by the address bar when you visit a site that doesn't rener correctly.

Another feature I like are the accelerators. Those allow you to highlight text in a site you are looking at and directly send that text to another tool such as live search, live maps, or email via live mail. I haven't tried adding any non-Microsoft accelerators.

There are several other features available in IE8, but I haven't had a chance to test them all at this point. Here is a link to better explain and walk you through some of the features in IE8.

IE8 Videos

Internetworking Resources

Here are some pretty handy resources to have bookmarked. All of these links are to the Cisco website.

Internetworking Terms and Acronyms

Internetworking Technology Handbook

Internetwork Design Guide

xVM VirtualBox on Ubuntu

The install of xVM VirtualBox on Ubuntu was as straight forward as it was on the Mac.

I was able to get XP and OpenSolaris installed as guest operating systems, but at this time I am having an issue with OpenSolaris appearing to hang upon startup. I'll keep working on that one and report back.

XP is up and running and the seamless mode works well, I think it is a keeper on Linux as well. I still need to test it on and XP host system, but so far xVM VirtualBox looking good.

My Ubuntu test was as follows:
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
HP DC5000 1GB of RAM
Guests
XP Professional sp2
OpenSolaris 2008.11

xVM VirtualBox

Success!

I have OpenSolaris 2008.11, Ubuntu 8.0r LTS, and XP Professional sp2 running on xVM VirtualBox on top of OSX 10.5.6.

I would recommend you fully patch XP before attempting to install the Guest Additions. I didn't do this and had some annoying display problems initially. After fully patching, I installed the Guest Additions and everything now works flawlessly.

The seamless mode works great so it is bye bye to Parallels, xVM is now my vm solution of choice on my mac.

Next to test is Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and XP Pro sp2 as host systems.

xVM VirtualBox

So I couldn't wait to share my latest experience with xVM Virtual Box. I was able to successfully install Ubuntu with no troubles and the guest add-ons went on without a hitch. This allows you to move seamlessly between the host and guest with the mouse without having to waste key strokes capturing and releasing the keyboard and mouse.

At this point I am running both Ubuntu and OpenSolaris guests and the resource management seems to be working great. I am experiencing no lag when moving in and out of the different environments.

So far so good, one OS to go, XP.

xVM VirtualBox

I decided today to download and try xVM VirtualBox from Sun Microsystems.

I decided to start with it on my MacBook Pro running OSX 10.5.6 and try a variety of different guest operating systems. The install was straight forward, as I expected it would be and the foot print seems to be lightweight.

My first virtual guest was OpenSolaris 2008.11. As you can imagine, no problems there, everything worked the first time, which is more than I can say for my attempt at installing OpenSolaris on Parallels. I still need to try Ubuntu and XP, but if everything goes well there, I will be replacing Parallels with xVM on my Mac.

Windows 7 Beta

So... I decided to install Windows 7 Beta, but not on a PC. I installed it on my MacBook Pro and I have to say it went better than I had expected.

I used the BootCamp utility to partition the drive and start the install. Install ran, I had no problems with my beta key, and before long I was booting into Windows 7. I was also surprised to see all but one driver was there so I connected to the network and off and running. The display looked good and performance was good, better than Vista ran on this laptop with the Apple drivers installed.

The only snag so far is that I have no sound, I'll work on that and report back if I figure that one out.

Perl from the horses mouth.

Here is an interesting youtube video of Larry Wall speaking about Perl.

Larry Wall at OSCON: Open Source as a Parenting Experience

South Park

If your a fan of South Park, you may like this site. Kick back, have fun, and be creative, I had a blast with it.

South Park Mixer

Video Tutorials

Here is a nice site with a lot of different video tutorials for a wide range of programming topics.

ShowMedo

Visio Stencils

If your like me, your always looking for Visio stencils from various vendors. From time to time as I run across them and of course, remember, I will post links to them.

F5 Visio Stencils