Diary of a Network Geek

Let’s start the year slow.

So, I’m sure a lot of you got new PCs or laptops, or upgraded your old ones, this holiday season.  Maybe it was a Christmas gift.  Maybe a Christmas gift to yourself.  Maybe you just took advantage of the post-holiday sales.  Whatever it was or how ever you got it, you probably are feeling the pain of reinstalling all those “essential” programs that you use on a regular basis.  Things like Firefox and Mozilla or Chrome and Skype or Winamp or Flash or .Net or iTunes or LibreOffice or any number of similar little things.  You’ll be feeling the pain of having to go to all those individual websites to collect the various install files to run.

Well, I have the solution to the problem you didn’t realize you had.  It’s a little site called “Ninite” and they call themselves “…the fastest way to install, reinstall or upgrade free software”.
You go to the site, check the different bits of software and click the “Get Installer” button and the site will serve up a downloadable installer file that will install the free software you checked on the form.  You run the file and your software gets installed.  That simple.  Oh, and the basic service itself is free.
Now, if you want to maintain that free software and keep it updated, they have a very reasonable service for that, too.  For the personal edition for a single computer, it’s just $9.99 a year, at the moment, but, of course, that may change.

Both the free and pay services are available for Windows or Linux, which I think is pretty damn extra cool.

Anyway, there’s your first fun/cool/useful link for the new year.  I think it bridges the fun, the free and the very geeky stuff that this blog is, I hope, known and appreciated for sharing.
Happy New Year everyone!

There are a lot of Linux distributions.

No, really, I mean there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of Linux distributions out there.
Frankly, it can get a little overwhelming sometimes.  But, I think about them and what they all are and what they do.  I think about them because it’s my job, and because I’m always thinking about what’s coming next in the IT industry.  So, what Linux installs do I think about?  Funny you should ask….
I think about Android.  Yeah, that’s right, the operating system that runs those Droid phones is a kind of Linux.  That’s kind of amazing to me, really, but there it is.  And, I think about it because Android seems to be on more and more devices these days.  Everything from phones to tablets to who knows what next in the consumer market.  But, I try to pay attention to Android because so many people at my office have Android based phones and they all expect me to help them figure their phones out.
I think about Fedora, which is the open source version of Red Hat, which enjoyed pretty good market penetration when they first got going.  They’ve got a lot more competition today, but, still it’s in an IT professional’s best interests to be at least familiar with Fedora.
That goes for openSUSE, too.  openSUSE was bought out by Novell some time ago, so there’s no telling where it’s going to end up with all the buying and selling around Novell’s bits and pieces these days, but it’s still a pretty heavily installed Linux distribution.  My brief experience with it was good, though, I have to admit, that was on older hardware for a personal project, not a corporate gig.
If you’re an Oracle shop, you’ll probably know about Oracle Linux, which is basically Red Hat Linux after Oracle has made modifications to it.  Oh, and jacked the price up.  Still, if you work with Oracle a lot, it’s probably worth looking into.
Eweek recently ran a slidwshow about these, and several other, versions of Linux under the title 10 Linux Distros Every IT Manager Should Know.  Obviously, I agree with some of their listing, but clearly not all.  And, I think they left some off.

For instance, what about the live CD editions?
Two I think anyone in IT should know are Ubuntu and Knoppix.  Knoppix has been around a longer, but Ubuntu has a slicker interface and, I think, is a little better at detecting hardware than Knoppix.  Also, you can install Ubuntu from the live CD media, if you would like, and plenty of people do run it as a desktop.  The real plus is that there’s a pretty healthy community around these two installations, especially Ubuntu.  So, if you need help with either one, there are a lot of resources on the internet to answer your questions.
I use these two all the time to recover data of damaged installs of Windows.  I even used one to build a PC imaging system before I started using Clonezilla, which is also, incidentally, based on Linux.

If you’re worried about security, Linux can help with that, too.
For quite some time, the National Security Agency has sponsored SELinux, which is a pretty secure, hardened version of Linux.  They designed it to be reasonably secure right as a default, since an insecure default install is usually where security problems start.  Of course, you may not trust the NSA.  And, while this is “sponsored” by them, it’s not actually an official US Government Linux install.
For that, you have to go to the US Airforce.  Their Lightweight Portable Security distro is the first official US Linux distribution.  I haven’t actually tried it myself, but ZDNet has a pretty good review of it.

So, as you can see, if you haven’t looked into Linux much before, there are a lot of things to investigate.  And, as a computer professional, I DO recommend that you check out at least some flavor of Linux.  It’s so prevalent and so flexible and handy to have that if you haven’t bumped into it yet, you will.  So before you need to know it, investigate it some on your own.  You’ll be glad you did.
(And, I’m sure every seasoned IT pro has their favorite distro, like Debian, but there are too many to list them all.  If you have opinions about any, please, leave comments!)

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"In God we trust. All others we polygraph."

Hackers are porting Linux viruses (virii ?) to OS X.

Last week Monday, ZDNet reported that hackers have ported code for a trojan from Linux to Apple’s OS X.  For those of my readers who don’t know what a trojan is I’m referring to a malicious program that opens the door for other, usually even worse, programs to come into the infected operating system, like the Greeks did in the classic stratagem known as the Trojan Horse.  It hasn’t been seen in the wild yet, but apparently the C source code for this has been available for quite some time.

Frankly, I’m surprised that this doesn’t happen more often than it does.  In the old days, virus writers had to really know something because they used assembly to create them.  Now, with Windows and all the other object-oriented programming languages filled with bloated libraries of programming calls, along with the availability of existing code on the internet, they hardly have to know anything to write fairly nasty malware.  And, as I’ve mentioned before, as Apple laptops become more popular, more malware will start to show up there.  I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to infect iPads and iPhones, too, if they haven’t already.

I hate people like this.
I spent most of my day today cleaning a malware infection off a machine.  This little bugger had not only disabled the Windows Task Manager, which is pretty common these days, but it also cleaned out the Start Menu, including all the built-in things like the link to Control Panel and My Documents and all those things on the right side of the Windows XP default Start Menu.  But, it also flagged most of the drive as Hidden and System, making it even more difficult to load the software I used to clean it.  I had to go into Safe Mode just to get the system clean enough to restart into Safe Mode with Networking so I could update Malwarebytes, which is what I eventually used to get rid of the beastie.   (I used Spybot Search and Destroy to keep the malware from loading to make the machine useable with networking support so I could update Malwarebytes, incidentally.)
So, yeah, these slimeballs keep me in a job, but, really, I’d appreciate it if they stopped helping me stay employed.  I promise I can find plenty of other things to do!

So, look lively out there people!  Be suspicious of what you download and click on!

UPDATE:  Apparently, this has been found out in the wild now.  And, according to TechWorld, it has a purpose; to use your system to generate BitCoins for it’s evil masters.  Very clever.  Nasty, but, still, very clever.

No, that’s not candy.

Though, I have to admit, sometimes the industry treats them like candy!
No, I’m talking about technical certifications, which are, I think, the bane of the IT industry now.  Folks over at TechRepublic are talking about tech certs and their relative value.  Personally, I don’t think they are that valuable any more.  Oh, back in the day, I think they were and, to a degree, they solve certain problems for hiring managers, but, I don’t think they matter as much any more.  Of course, maybe that has something to do with where I am in the industry and job market, too.  I am, frighteningly enough, a seasoned professional.  So, my work history and experience count for a lot more than the handful of certifications I have.  (For the record, I’ve been Novell certified since 1994 and Linux certified since 2003.)
As far as I’m concerned, the only thing my certs are good for any more are getting past a Human Resources person acting as a firewall to the hiring manager.  Usually, if I’ve done all my homework like I should before even applying for a job, once I get to the hiring manager, I’m pretty much in.  And, honestly, they don’t normally care about my certs.  They care about my ability to execute.

So, what do you think?  Are professional certifications like this worth the paper they’re printed on any more?

No, not some new chick I’m dating.

Sadly, it’s Linux software.   Okay, well, not so sad, because it’s Linux-based software to help you track your personal library.
Yeah, yeah, I know, what kind of geek has a personal library that’s worth cataloging, right?  Yeah, well, as it turns out, me.  I probably have a couple thousand books of one kind or another spread all over my house.  I’m pretty sure virtually every room in my house has a stack of books in it, if not a full bookshelf.  And, yes, I do lend quite a few books and they sometimes go missing.  And, yes, I have so many books, I have, on very rare occasions, bought the same book twice.  And, finally, yes, I’ve been talking about doing this for years, but this software actually looks like something I might use.  Besides, it’s free.

Among the features are the ability to search by ISBN, author, title or keyword so you can find just the book you’re thinking of in your collection; the ability to retrieve information from on-line bookstores and other sources; and the ability to use several different scanners, including the CueCat, for data input.  (You can read more about the features here at the Alexandria FAQ.)  There is more information, including a manual and screen shots at the Alexandria homepage.

So, yeah, a little geekier than my usual Friday Fun post, but it’ll probably excite the librarians among my readers.
(And, I really hope there are some sexy librarians who still read this blog!)
Enjoy your weekend!

I’m always looking for short-cuts.

No, seriously, there’s only one of me and my time is in HUGE demand, especially at the office.  So, I’m always looking for ways to automate stuff so I don’t have to do it myself.  Back in 2008, I cobbled together an imaging system that relied on Linux and a whole lot of personal documentation.  (You can read that, in two parts, here and here.)  It worked pretty well and I was pretty damn proud of myself for both figuring it out and saving me a whole lot of time doing each individual install of a machine.

Well, recently, we’ve started upgrading our engineers and draftsmen to the latest version of AutoCAD and Windows 7.
Naturally, Windows 7 uses disks in a totally different way than Windows XP, so all that work I did is now pretty much useless.  Which, frankly, is par for the course in our line of work.  IT is always changing, so we have to adapt, whether we like it or not.  In this case, I don’t mind so much.  Why?  Because Clonezilla pretty much does everything that I was doing by hand, only it does it almost automagically.  Just to be clear, I’m using the Clonezilla Live version and saving the images to my server.  Now that I’ve upgraded the storage capacity to a little over 4 terabytes, I’m not so worried about saving images there.  Especially because I still have most of the office convinced we only have a single terabyte of storage and that they need to keep their directories on the server lean.  It doesn’t help much, but it’s enough.

Seriously, if you have to image machines, go check out Clonezilla.  It works and, best of all, it’s FREE!
(Also?  It’s pretty damn fast on my network, which is a huge bonus!)

Wow, my High School English teachers would kill me for letting that participle dangle like that.

Good thing I went into IT, I guess, isn’t it?
But, I still love to write, as I think is evidenced by this blog.  And, I love Linux and open source software, too.  So, what could be better than combining those two things?
As it turns out, nothing.  So, here are some Linux and open source tools to help you write the next Great American Novel, brought to you by Linux Journal.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When I'm working on a problem I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But, when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
   --R. Buckminster Fuller

So, I promised you more technical stuff here, right?

Well, stop yer grinin’ and grab yer linen, ’cause here come a fist full of links with some great advice for network administrators, all from TechRepublic:
First, if you’re a real network admin, you’ve dealt with traffic issues on file servers.  Issues that have hidden sources.  Unknown processes that jam up your network connections until your users scream for your head.  So, how do you deal with that when you’re on a budget and don’t have a lot of tools?  Well, one way is to use “netstat” to look at what process is running on what port and sending what volume of data.  If you’re on Unix, you probably already know about this tool, but if you’re on Windows, check out “Netstat tips and tricks for Windows admins“.  It may save your bacon one day.

Second, you probably have wireless in your network now, too, right?  But, it may not always work quite the way you want.  Once again, users will scream bloody murder if they can’t read their blogs on their iPhone, so, how do you find out what’s jamming up your WIFI network so that no one can connect?  Read through “Troubleshooting for wireless connectivity issues” to get you started on running down the problem.

Thirdly, if you’re a REAL network administrator, you probably have at least one Linux box in your network.  Something that runs an open source network inventory or monitoring tool or, maybe even, an actual Linux file server.  In any case, sooner or later, even that sad, little, neglected Linux box will have disk space issues, so here are “10 things you can do when the drive on your Linux box is full“.

And, finally, my personal favorite.  You hear a lot of buzzwords floating around these days in IT shops, but “the cloud” is the most common magic cure for all ills.  Personally, I’m not so sure.  I worry about things like, oh, you know, security and auditing and connectivity issues and little details like that which seem like they might be an issue for the magic cloud computing panacea.  Turns out, I’m not the only one.  So, go see why Patrick Gray says “The cloud doesn’t matter“.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The weakness of men is their facade of strength; the strength of women is their facade of weakness."
   --Warren Farrell

I spent two days trying to teach someone just part of this once.

Now, you may think my failure in this regard is due to me being a bad teacher.  Sadly, it was not.  Two other people, one of whom I had already taught about RAID, and more specifically, SCSI RAID configurations, couldn’t teach this to my failed student either.  Shockingly, when I was “encouraged to find other opportunities to excel”, outside that company, naturally, that student took over my job.  Oddly enough, a few years later, I heard the person who had made that organizational choice had also been encourage to find other opportunities to excel.  Funny how that works.

So, now, in part to make up for not being able to educate that person, and also to spare someone the same teaching fate I faced, here are two articles about RAID.
First, from ExtremeTech, RAID 101, Understanding Multiple Drive Storage.
And, secondly, from TechRepublic, Choose A RAID Level that works for you!

You can go to those articles and get lots of detail, but I’ll break it down for you in brief here.
Something that people tend to forget, for some reason, is that RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.  That’s not as true as it used to be, thanks to server pricing and how cheap SATA drives have become compared to SCSI drives.  Back in the day, we always used SCSI and I still do for server systems, mostly, because it tends to be faster and more reliable than anything else.  That’s not as true as it used to be thanks to improvements in SATA, but if you still want to do a BIG array of disks, SCSI is pretty much the only real option.
There are a bunch of RAID “levels”, but, realistically, you’re mostly going to deal with three or four: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and, maybe, RAID 10.

RAID 0 is generally referred to as “disk striping”.
In a nutshell, what this configuration does is stripe data across multiple drives.  Generally, this is done to make more available disk space and improve performance.  The down-side is that there is no redundancy.  In other words, with RAID 0, you can take several disks and make them perform like one larger, faster drive, but if one disk crashes, they all do.

RAID 1 is generally referred to as “disk mirroring.”
And, that’s essentially what it is, a system which saves everything to a duplicate drive or drives.  Most often in server configurations, you’ll find the operating system on two drives that are mirrored.  That means that if one drive goes bad, the admin can reconfigure the other drive to take over running the server.  In theory, this works pretty well.  In practice, it takes a little finagling sometimes to get that mirror drive reconfigured as the primary.  The other thing to remember is that the second drive is essentially lost storage.  In other words, if you put two 1 terabyte drives in a RAID 1 array, you only have 1 terabyte of available storage when the system is running.
This is pretty much bare-bones, bottom-of-the-barrel redundancy.

RAID 5 is what most people think of when you talk about RAID arrays.
In RAID 5, data bits and “pairity” bits are striped across three or more drives.  Basically, data is broken up and written to multiple drives and then another, sort of “record-keeping” bit of data is written, too, so that the RAID 5 system knows where all the pieces of the data are.  Now, that’s a bit of an oversimplification, but, what it means is that if one of the drives in a RAID 5 array fails, the array keeps running and no data is lost.  Also, when a replacement drive is put into place, the RAID 5 array automatically rebuilds the missing drive on the replacement!  This, my friends, is like system administration magic!  Somehow, with a lot of really big math, that I frankly don’t understand, they can tell what the missing bit is based on the stuff they do have and fill it in.  This is the best invention since sliced bread!
Also, an option on many RAID 5 systems is something called the “hot spare”.  The hot spare is a drive that is part of the array but not active, until one of the other drives fails.  Then, the hot spare becomes active and will automatically start to rebuild the missing data on that new drive.  That means that the system admin and order a new replacement drive at their leisure and actually schedule down-time to replace it.  What a concept!  Not always doing things at the last minute or under fire, but planning ahead and taking your time.  It’s unheard of!
Finally, the best option available on many RAID arrays is the “hot swapable” drive.  In that case, you don’t need to schedule downtime at all, but only need to pull the damaged drive out of the array and pop the replacement right in.  All without even shutting the production system down for even a minute!  Again, this is like magic!

The last “common” RAID level is RAID 10.
Basically, this is a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0.  In other words, it’s a set of mirrored arrays.  This setup requires at least four drives and is fairly pricey.  It’s mainly used for redundancy and speed and, realistically, is almost only used for database servers.  In fact, I can’t think of any other instance that I’ve heard of this being used, outside of database servers.

There are other levels, too, of course, but you can hit the articles for more info about them.  They’re pretty uncommon outside of really high-end or experimental configurations of one kind or another.
Oh, one last thing…  RAID can be implemented either via hardware or software.  In general, software RAID, such as you might find in Linux, is cheaper, but is slower and more prone to having issues if something goes wrong.  Hardware RAID is faster, a little more expensive, but a far more robust solution.

So, there you have it, RAID in a nutshell.
And, yes, for those of you who have noticed, articles like this are me turning this blog back toward its roots as a technical blog.  I hope to have more basic info like this as well as some new projects over the next 18 months or so.  Certainly, more than there have been in the past two or three years.
I hope you’ll keep coming back for more!

No, this is not a post about sexual performance.
Pervs.

I use my iPhone for a surprising variety of things, even at the office.  For around $14, I threw together a suite of network scanning and testing tools that let me get a pretty good look at any network I manage.  But, that’s another post.
Today, I thought I’d bring to your attention a great blog post by Nicholas M. Petty tittled “iPen: Hacking with the iDevice“.  What he’s got is a set of instructions and tools for turning your iPhone, or, presumably, your iPad, into hand-held computer security penetration testing tool.  Yeah, I know, it still sounds dirty when you say “penetration”.  Grow up.

If you’re into security, whether you own an iPhone or not, it’s worth going to take a look at just to see the thought process and methodology.
Now, as much as I love this idea, I probably won’t actually do it myself because the first step is to “jailbreak” your phone and, frankly, as tight as money is and as important as my phone is to me, I can’t afford to have problems with it.  Still, it is an interesting idea, especially considering how many of these little devices are wandering loose out there and how many wifi access point exist out in the world.  I often wonder how secure any of them really are, especially in corporate environments.

Anyway, this should be something for network managers to think about the next time they see someone in the lobby of their building “playing a game” on their iPhone!