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Tue, 06 Jun 2006

favicon.ico Creation and Screen Captures on Linux
posted by Chip Witt

There are several tools and processes I've been wanting to make the subject of Weblog posts, but keep I forgetting about them until something comes up that makes me wish I wasn't so lazy about such things. Two popped-up again yesterday.

Last night, the sometimes mystical process of creating favicon.ico files for websites without the use of commercial tools came up as I was helping my wife put together a site for an organization with which she works. I often forget this process, as there is no built-in way to do this using my favorite image editor, The GIMP, directly. So, this post is primarily a breadcrumb for myself, but doubles as a useful tech tip for anyone else searching for ways to create these files easily.

Earlier yesterday, I happened to notice someone entered the search engine keyword phrase, "linux ppc screen capture", which is an almost monthly phenomenon, and results in a link to my (very) old Gentoo Linux PPC Screen Capture page. While this is pretty and all, it probably isn't particularly useful for someone looking for ways to create screen captures (a.k.a. screenshots) on Linux. I always hate to be disappointed upon visiting a search engine result myself, so I endeavor to minimize that disappointment in others as they navigate to our site.

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Tue, 25 Apr 2006

BCP and the Small Business: Computing Infrastructure
posted by Chip Witt

BCP, or Business Continuity Planning for long, is the art practiced to insure that when disaster strikes, your business doesn't crumble. It can, and should include such things as site evacuation plans, key communication information, details on business processes you or others may have to follow from scratch should the worst happen, any dependencies for the smooth operation of those business processes, recovery timeframe requirements, and, of course, information on key computing technology configurations to make recovery of required services possible...if not easy. While all of these things are important aspects of BCP, and deserve your focus and attention when putting together a comprehensive plan, I would like to spend some time talking specifically about business continuity and distaster recovery for your computing infrastructure, and what you absolutely MUST have squirreled away somewhere safe to reduce headaches and downtime when tornados land, the ground quakes, or hard drives fail.

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Wed, 18 May 2005

Good Repository Additions to PPM
posted by Chip Witt

When playing with Perl on Win32 platforms, you never get exactly what you need in the default ActiveState build...at least not for systems administration. I find the most useful missing modules to be Win32::AdminMisc, Win32::Perms, and Win32::Exchange.

To add some useful repositories, launch the Perl Package Manager, and:

rep add Roth http://www.roth.net/perl/packages/
rep add UWinnipeg \
 http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/cgi-bin/ppmserver?urn:/PPMServer

There are many others (including http://Jenda.Krynicky.cz/perl, which isn't responding to browser requests as of this evening), so if you find or use cool repositories (or modules) I've missed, please drop me a line.

Happy Perl-ing!

CW

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Wed, 22 Sep 2004

Mount an SMB/CIFS Share via Linux Automount
posted by Chip Witt

I have to admit, I love thinking that others read my weblog posts, and actually find them semi-useful...but realistically, I write them to leave my increasingly feeble mind breadcrumbs for repeating tasks which are performed infrequently, and that are either complex, or poorly documented elsewhere. This post is a great example.

It is no secret that I am a Linux user. I have tasks for which I still use other platforms, but I tend to try to centralize on the platform I actually enjoy using for most major undertakings. One of my recent undertakings was creating a Mon server to monitor an enterprise. Along with service checks for network continuity, ssh, FTP, DNS, etc., I needed to be able to perform free space checks on various file systems on both Unix and Windows platforms. While manually creating static mounts for connecting to various file servers proved trivial, it required interactive work anytime the Mon server was rebooted. With many connections, this was no fun. Another option would have been to use the /etc/fstab file, and create mount entries for all of the remote file systems, but mucking with the core system mount structure bothered me philosophically, and was far less dynamic for quick directory additions. Making use of autofs for automounting of directories is much easier on the admin in all respects. Unix (NFS) file system automounting is easy. So, it turns out, is the process of automounting a Windows file system...once you remember how to do it.

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Thu, 08 Jul 2004

Hunting a Rogue DHCP Server
posted by Chip Witt

As much as I hate the effects, I have to admit that I love the challenges presented when a user places a piece of unauthorized equipment on one of my networks. Only under this kind of pressure does one get to stretch the legs, and refine the hunting techniques.

About a week ago my team was presented with several symptoms that indicated we had a rogue DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol, for assigning IP addresses to hosts on a network dynamically) server somewhere in the enterprise. New machines, and laptop users were getting bad network configuration information, and our RAS services customers began complaining that they could not connect to resources on the network after successfully authenticating. That, in a word, sucked. I began my hunt for the naughty piece of equipment with the tools I had at my immediate disposal.

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