Rack Consolidation: Finale
Finally, it is completed. I won’t use finished because the implies it will never change…and we all know life is all about change. So what’s the final product look like? The rack is full. Sure if I wanted to I could squish everything together and get a couple of more U’s worth of gear..but i… Read more
Rack Consolidation: Part 4.3
Well got everything installed and completed the initial data replication. I went upstairs and removed all of the servers from the rack. I then removed all of the rails. I then re-installed the rails and then re-racked the servers. The r210 did not make it back as it was dead anyway. The order is now… Read more
Rack Consolidation: Part 4.1
Just like that. Another day arrives and the eBay shop where i bought the hard drives did me a solid. Instead of putting the two pairs of drives into two boxes he jsut shipped all four in the same box. I’ll be giving all the eBay vendors that were involved in my build excellent feedback… Read more
Rack Consolidation: Part 4
Finally got some parts in for the 520 that allow me to start getting it put together. I have half of the SAS hard drives, the SD card connector(don’t want to say SD card card..<G>), an extra 64 gigs of ram, all of the drive caddies, and of course the SD cards themselves. Read the… Read more
Rack Consolidation: Part 3
The project continues..:) I was able to take the ram, CPU’s, and HBAH310 (reflashed to base LSI IT mode) out of the 420 and put them into the 520. I now have the rest of the parts inbound: 8 x 6TB SAS HDD’s, SD card adapter, 8 x 3.5″ HDD caddies are all inbound. I… Read more
Rack Consolidation: part 2
I got the 520 in and began poking around. First of all I fired up the machine as a test and it booted fine. I then ran the lifecycle controller’s firmware updater. This machine was far far behind so i told it to install all of the updates. I stuck with it for a few… Read more
Rack consolidation project finally begins
I had recently purchased a Dell Poweredge R420 to replace my aging R310 server that acts as my central storage node. I began to have need to have the ability to run virtual machines and FreeNAS does support running virtual machines. I found out my R310 CPU is too old to run vm’s under… Read more
GAMECACHE UPDATE
So i ordered a couple of pci-e network cards one for my machine and one for the girls tower. Let’s see if that helps the eldest’s one game not crash the entire networking stack…:) Realteks are decent if you aren’t doing heavy networking stuff like I am doing..it will take a couple of weeks for… Read more
All Goes Well With One Exception
So far my eldest has all of her games on the gamecache drive. Unfortunately ElderScrolls Online refused to run on the Gamecache drive. It would hang up the network card causing all network connectivity to go away. Only a restart of the machine would fix it. However the fact that all of the other games… Read more
GameCache Project Updates
It is working out better than I anticipated. Right now the eldest has been installing all of her games on the G drive. I found out one of her games is nearly 200 Gigs in size. Holy crap batman. She can easily chew through more than 400 gigs of storage just with the games she… Read more
One Thing i like about zfs
*Game Cache Update* Is the built in compression. For vm’s you can sometimes get 5-10x compression because vms are mostly empty space. ZFS does compression transparently. Right now as part of the eldest’s game cache her system thinks it has written 75 gigabytes of data. ZFS compression has reduced that down to 52.5G in the… Read more
An Interesting Revelation
I just did my annual update to the Linux Counter Project which is located at counter.li.org. Once i finished my updates I was quote shocked at what I found. Out of all the machines I manage in one form or another(at least server wise) more than 90% are Linux boxes. Some of my clients have two Linux servers. Desktops are overwhelmingly… Read more
Further Explanation of Why We Need to Move to Postgres
This article says it better than i can. The GPL is actually now causing more issues than it solved. I would actually use the GPL to RESTRICT who can use my software and how..whereas the BSD license is truly a Free Open Source license. Internal Email on Why a Software Company Migrates Away from MySQL.
It’s time to move to postgres
InnoDB Storage Engine Dropped From Oracle MySQL Classic Edition. Oracle owns Innodb and now MySQL. It’s time to move from Mysql to postgres. Not one of the mysql forks..but postgres. Oracle is beginning the squeeze of Sun’s properties.
More Casualties of Oracle’s Purchase of Sun
Slashdot Developers Story | 33 Developers Leave OpenOffice.org. Openoffice is for all intents dead. Libreoffice is where it’s at which is what i am going to be trying out for possible reccomendations.
IN Support of Another NPO
I have been doing IT work as a volunteer for a local radio station WTHU for a few years now. Slowly but surely we have been moving along the technology track int he right direction. We have a stout server in wash state that handles our streaming. The costs for this are extremely reasonable but time have… Read more
Server Donation Part 4
Well i got the servers in and really didn’t want to wait for the 12u rack…mainly because it’s not int he budget right now. I took one of the servers and have installed untangle on it. I now have 4 network cards in the thing. One is red(internet), one is blue(free public wifi) and one… Read more
Zimbra is about ready to go
I just need to get the final list of current mailboxses and get the DNS switched over. Staff meeting this Monday to see if they’ll give the green light. I have found several extensions(called zimlets) that really extend the featureset of the Zimbra platform. I know have built into the platform: 1. Automatic detection of UPS and… Read more
What to do with a major server donation
You can read about the donation here. I have three IBM x335’s on the way with dual p-4 xeon 2.8 ghz cpu’s, dual 36 gig 10k rpm SCSI drives with hardware raid 1, 4 gigs of ram, all the cables needed including ILO, and rails. All for the cost of shipping. Why am I posting about it here? I run the… Read more
Sometimes Virtualization ISN’T the Answer
After some internal testing and research i can honestly say that virtualization may not be the best solution except for larger deployments. For the same money(or less) than either upgrading one server to be able to host multiple vm’s or the purchase of a new server that’s capable of doing that I can build two machines around Intel Atom d510’s… Read more
A case for Linux on the Corporate Desktop
The author makes some great points here. Take a gander. Not using desktop Linux? You’re wasting your money | Linux – InfoWorld.
Windows Server vs. Linux…which is better?
Windows Server vs. Linux. There are some serious errors in this..i’ll address them inline. Text below: Windows Server vs. Linux by Ellen Messmer June 8, 2010 — Which is better? Microsoft Windows Server or open-source Linux? This debate arouses vehement opinions, but according to one IT consultant who spends a lot of time with both… Read more
Terremark vCloud Express: First month « TechOpsGuys.com
Terremark vCloud Express: First month « TechOpsGuys.com. Oucies. That’s horrendously expensive. I’m assuming he’s getting great service..:) There are less expensive options out there…like mine..:)
More Railing aginst a non-existent monopoly
He said that with 70 per cent of the US market for Internet search, Google is the gateway to the Internet. How it tweaks its proprietary search algorithms can ensure a business's success or doom it to failure. via Consumer group calls for google breakup – The Inquirer. Give me a break. My business works… Read more
MIcrosoft Exchange and Outlook may have met their match
bfish.xaedalus.net » Stay in Sync with GCal and Thunderbird.. I have converted two of my domains to gmail via Google apps. I am now using Thunderbird via Secured IMAP to check my e-mail for those accounts. I also now have access to my business e-mail from my phone without having to get a higher priced… Read more
Yahoo’s Search to Become More Useless
It’s very simple. Yahoo is abandoning their search. All of their search results are going to come from Bing. How bad is Bing? I can search Microsoft’s site with Google faster, with more accuracy, and more relevance than Bing can hope for.
NewsFactor Network | MagicJack’s Next Act: Disappearing Cell Phone Fees
NewsFactor Network | MagicJack’s Next Act: Disappearing Cell Phone Fees. If MajicJack doesn’t get sued out of existence this is an excellent value..that means you can drop your plan back since you won’t be using as many minutes. If it only worked for CDMA phones then i could relaly save some minutes on my Sprint… Read more
How Open Source software can help save costs in our medical system.
I am not normally a fan of anything gov’t but this time the VA has developed a system for electronic health records that is well-rounded, stable, highly customizable, has tons of features into which more can be added, and is recognized as a great package. It’s called VistA(visit a..not vista). I’ll be looking into this… Read more
MIcrosoft Forgets Basic Security in Bing.
Bing hit by costly security loophole | Technology | guardian.co.uk. Whoopsie so now it’s pushed into the underground who are most assuredly taking advantage of it. Sorry MS your usual security by obscurity failed many years ago.
A huge Weapon Against crapware
Welcome | The PC Decrapifier. It seems you can’t buy a windows PC anymore without tons of crap on it that you never use and just junks up your computer. This FREE program now seeks out and destroys all the crapware that comes on most systems. This bad boy is going onto my thumbdrive now.
Some Basic IT Security Steps ALL People Should Follow
I am normally not a fan of government recommendations due to the fact they are usually outdated and irrelevant when they are released. However a paper releasede by NIST is the large exception to this rule. To security professionals these are no brainers but I still run into a ton of resistance implementing just a… Read more
Why IT Stereotypes Really Exist
Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks. Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks j.ello <A TARGET=”_blank” HREF=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/activity;src%3D2082207%3Bmet%3D1%3Bv%3D1%3Bpid%3D38837514%3Baid%3D216615229%3Bko%3D0%3Bcid%3D33070208%3Brid%3D33088085%3Brv%3D1%3Bcs%3Da%3Beid1%3D25598%3Becn1%3D1%3Betm1%3D0%3B_dc_redir%3Durl%3fhttp://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v8/38a8/3/0/%2a/t%3B216615229%3B0-0%3B0%3B38837514%3B4252-336/280%3B33070208/33088085/1%3B%3B%7Eaopt%3D0/ff/65/ff%3B%7Efdr%3D216664990%3B0-0%3B1%3B7137167%3B4252-336/280%3B32697494/32715371/1%3B%3B%7Eaopt%3D2/1/65/0%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://www.ibm.com/systems/info/x/newgeneration/blades?ca=agus_itnkigbb-20090309&me=banner&met=hs22&re=computerworld&s_tact=6n8ax03a&cm_mmc=agus_itnkigbb-20090309-6n8ax03a-_-b-_-hs22-_-computerworld”> <IMG SRC=”http://m1.2mdn.net/2082207/PID_1097355_IBM_SPP1_HS22_336x280.gif” width=”336″ height=”280″ BORDER=”0″ alt=”Click Here!”> </A> <IMG SRC=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/activity;src=2082207;met=1;v=1;pid=38837514;aid=216615229;ko=0;cid=33070208;rid=33088085;rv=1;×tamp=340061;eid1=9;ecn1=1;etm1=0;” width=”0px” height=”0px” style=”visibility:hidden” BORDER=”0″/> <IMG SRC=”” width=”0px” height=”0px” style=”visibility:hidden” BORDER=”0″/> <IMG SRC=”” width=”0px” height=”0px” style=”visibility:hidden” BORDER=”0″/> <a href=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.cpw.itmanagement/index;pos=imu;tile=7;sz=336×280,336×600;” target=”_blank”> <img src=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.cpw.itmanagement/index;pos=imu;tile=7;sz=336×280,336×600;” width=”336″ border=”0″ alt=””></a> <a href=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.cpw.itmanagement/index;pos=ezblaster;tile=8;sz=336×35;” target=”_blank”><img… Read more
Vendors Start Releasing TCP DOS Flaw Patches
Vendors are finally releasing patches today for the TCP vulnerabilities first publicized nearly a year ago that affect a huge range of networking products, including any device running a version of Cisco’s IOS software, and a number of Microsoft server and desktop operating systems. Both Microsoft and Cisco released fixes for the vulnerabilities on Tuesday.… Read more
August 2009 A/V Failures
Symantec, 11 others, fail Virus Bulletin’s August 2009 test (Updated) – Ars Technica. Some of these are the BIG BOYS in the market…:)
Microsoft August 2009 Black Tuesday Overview
oh boy. Get your mouse clickers ready and update Windows as this is a nasty bunch of updates. More than half of the patches are of the type that allow remote system takeover and most of the takeover udpates are in…..Drun Roll Please…..ACTIVEX!
Firewall Server Offerings Set
It is going to be either Astaro or Untangle. Depending on what the clients needs are. Ipfire feels kludgey and ipcop isn’t really designed for modern hardware and is a bit too basic for my needs. Comixwall is a typical Debian distro..if you want to live in the cli go this route..:)
Centos Comes off of Life Support..But is the Project Truly in Recovery?
According to the Centos homepage: The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis in attendance. During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users going forward. The CentOS project… Read more
Anyone Can Get Compromised
When ‘Big Leaguers’ Get Hacked | threatpost.
Business Banking Should Not Be Done With Insecure Browsers
Security Fix – The Growing Threat to Business Banking Online. NO clients of mine that have run Firefox instead of IE and followed my best practices advice have gotten infected with malware. If you don’t get infected online baking is perfectly safe from your end.
What the BOOM post means to ECC clients
For the clients running centos I am going to be researching other alternatives. Right now no servers are in danger of being unable to update. I will keep everyone informed as to how this situation unfolds.
New Server Location
I have relocated this site to a new server. It is actually a virtual machine on a physical server. I have noticed a 50% increase in performance of this site. I hope you enjoy the new speeds.
Security issues with sudo in Ubuntu
Security issues with sudo « Mihai’s Weblog. I have always thought Ubuntu’s way of locking out direct root access was nonsensical. It now turns out it worse than that..it’s Microsoft-ish.
Oracle Could be Sending Solaris to the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky.
Is Oracle getting ready to kill OpenSolaris? – Computerworld Blogs. I think it’s beyond open Solaris I think it’s also Solaris as well as Mysql and Virtualbox.
A MIsguided Attempt at Reducing Security
Full Disclosure: imageshack – pwned for anti-sec.. They also hit an outfit called SSANZ. Full-Disclosure is not meant to make money. If full disclosure did not exist many security issues would never be known by anyone except the bad buys. Companies like Microsoft would never have had to refocus on the lack of security of… Read more
Things are Moving Quicky now
It’s very hard to keep up with things moving as fast as they are. I can relay them verbally faster than typing sometimes. Watch this space for some updates.
Microsoft Fixes a Long Time Bug
After CERT warning, Microsoft delivers AutoRun fix | ITworld. It’s about time. I have been trying to kill U3 forever among other autorun enabled garbage. ALL ECC managed network will get this patch pushed out to them.
Narrowing Down My Firewall Server Offerings
There are so many out there it’s hard to sift through. I have narrowed things down to 4: 1. Ipfire 2. Astaro 3. Untangle 4. Comixwall Depending on capabilities and budget those are the 4 ECC is going to be choosing from for the foreseeable future. This makes it easier for my clients to know… Read more
A New BSD Based Firewall Distro
ComixWall ISG – Home. Now this is interesting. Comixwall looks like what i ahve been looking for. I have been wanting to find a UTM that takes what i had with ipcop/zerina/cop+/copfilter and have it integrated into one package…and be free. Astaro is very nice but it’s free only for home use. Untangle is nice… Read more
Is Apple/Linux Arrogant or Secure? Both..for Good Reason
CHR.DarkFiles.US » Blog Archive » Apple Arrogant or Secure. Their arrogance is partially justified due to superior design. The Unix system they use is multi-user by design…unlike windows which is not truly multi user. 90% of everything a user is going to do in Unix system is done inside userspace..so unless the user intentionally runs… Read more
Linux Distro Timeline
linux_timeline.png (PNG Image, 2888×2079 pixels). I found this interesting…enjoy.
SSL Cracked? The sky if falling!!!!! The sky if falling!!!!! The latest security overreaction
SSL broken! Hackers create rogue CA certificate using MD5 collisions | Zero Day | ZDNet.com. The sky if falling!!!!! The sky if falling!!!!! There is a ton of heavy breathing going around about this issue and it’s not necessary at all. This is a non-issue for the majority of folks and the “solution” is only… Read more
Google’s Andriod Already A Netbook OS
Startup Founders Turn Android into Desktop OS – PC World. Now this is itneresting. Read on for full details.
Blog
Welcome to the ECC Blog! This is where you will find various postings I have deemed important or helpful. If you find something of interest please use the contact form to alert me.
Microsoft extends support life of XP(the non-story) and a rebuttal of Leo Laporte.
<a href=”http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/06/25/vole-extends-support-life-xp”>Microsoft extends support life of XP </a> This is no news. The 2014 expiration has been <a href=”http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223″ target=”_blank”>part of the plan for a long time</a>. Look at the updated on page…2005. unless the author has updated information this is nothing new. I also have a huge issue with <a href=”http://www.twit.tv/148″ target=”_blank”>Leo Laporte and… Read more
Security Through Obscurity Debunked
Security Now!: MS and other closed source vendors like to say because their source is closed they are more secure. In other words the fact that others do not have access to the code any zero day vulns will be kept under wraps and not pose a danger to the userbase. Listen to this podcast… Read more
Defrag my linux?
BS’ Blog: Bryan J Smith devles into the MS file systems and compares then against Linux/Unix file sytems and digs out why MS needs defragmenting but Linux does not. *UPDATE* Bryan has updaed the post with more XFS and clarifications
Huge Cisco Mess
*NOTE*” If i forgot to trackback you and i used your post let me know and i will correct it as soon as possible. Everyone i have linked to deserves proper credit..:) Cicso and ISS have created quite a mess for themselves. First, Mike Lynn showed at the BlackHat conference how to get the equivalent… Read more