Archive for December, 2008
Open Source E-Mail Encryption
Dec 21st
“…Perhaps you think your email is legitimate enough that encryption is unwarranted. If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don’t you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something? If you hide your mail inside envelopes, does that mean you must be a subversive or a drug dealer, or maybe a paranoid nut?…” -Philip Zimmerman, Creater of PGP
Of course it doesn’t, it simply means you value your privacy.
PGP, or more specifically OpenPGP is a great, and more importantly FREE method of securing your data and your e-mails. You don’t want “The Man” reading your e-mails, and neither do I.
There are many PGP and OpenPGP programs out there, but the one that is the most versatile that I have seen is called GnuPG. It comes in some form for every operating system. It comes standard with Ubuntu Linux, and there are versions for Windows and MAC.
If you are a fan of Mozilla Firefox, and Thunderbird like I am, then you will be happy to know that there are GnuPG plugins for both of them. Enigmail for Thunderbird, and FireGPG for Firefox. Of course you have to have GnuPG installed for the plugins to work.
If you have any doubts on the strength of the encryption, it uses PKI and the encryption keys can go up to 4096 bits, which is so strong that if you take all of the computing power on the planet it would still take something ridiculous like 10 billion years to crack (Give or take). I also found a quaint little article here about how the FBI has problems cracking PGP.
“So ya ya ya, yackity smackity… where do I download this fantastic software?”
I thought you would never ask. You can download it from the following sites:
Enjoy!
Written by El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power
The 12 Admin Days of Christmas
Dec 19th
Last year I tried my hand at Christmas parody by writing An Admin’s Night Before Christmas. It was all festive and what not, and did spread some Christmas joy, but honestly it wasn’t my best work.
This year, I decided a much easier Christmas Carol to parody, The 12 Days of Christmas!
With the help of Mark Sexton, one of my company’s Senior Systems Administrators, I have come up with this year’s Sysadmin driven Christmas Carol, the 12 Admin Days of Christmas!
Enjoy!
On the first admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
On the fourth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
On the fifth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
On the sixth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
On the seventh admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
On the ninth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
On the eleventh admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
On the twelfth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
An EMC Clariion SAN
On the second adminChristmas my supervisor gave to me
2 Fibre Switches
and an EMC Clariion SAN
On the third admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the fourth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the fifth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
5 Hard Drive Shelves!
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the sixth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
6 9′s of uptime
5 Hard Drive Shelves!
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the seventh admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
7 storage admins
6 9′s of uptime
5 Hard Drive Shelves!
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the eighth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
8 HBA’s
7 storage admins
6 9′s of uptime
5 Hard Drive Shelves!
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the ninth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
9 fibre channel cables
8 HBA’s
7 storage admins
6 9′s of uptime
5 Hard Drive Shelves!
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the tenth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
10 Thousand RPM Drives
9 fibre channel cables
8 HBA’s
7 storage admins
6 9′s of uptime
5 Hard Drive Shelves!
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the eleventh admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
11 LUNs Provisioned
10 Thousand RPM Drives
9 fibre channel cables
8 HBA’s
7 storage admins
6 9′s of uptime
5 Hard Drive Shelves!
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
On the twelfth admin Christmas my supervisor gave to me
12 Terabytes
11 LUNs Provisioned
10 Thousand RPM Drives
9 fibre channel cables
8 HBA’s
7 storage admins
6 9′s of uptime
5 Hard Drive Shelves!
4 Storage processors
3 Phase power
2 Fibre Switches
We at aTa wish all of you a very Merry Christmas (Or what ever Holiday you celebrate) and a very happy New Year!
Please forward this to all of your friends and help me spread some Sysadmin Christmas love!
By El Di Pablo of www.Bauer-Power.net
Vista Tip: Can I copy a file or folders path instead of the file itself?
Dec 18th
Have you ever brought up a Open dialog and thought to yourself…
Why can’t I copy the path of a file/folder directly from explorer?
The boys in Redmond must have heard ya because here it is on your context menu!
It is not available in XP but… now it’s an option, in Vista.
What you need to do is hold down the shift key, while right-clicking the file or folder…
Choose the Copy as Path from the menu. Here is whats on the clipboard after clicking copy as path:
“C:\Users\Public\Pictures\Sample Pictures\Creek.jpg”
Note: This will also allow you to copy the path of a folder to the clipboard. This becomes VERY handy in grabbing a long path and definitely can save you a few clicks.
Anyone have a way to add this functionality to XP?
How to disable or enable Control Alt Delete in Vista… Easily.
Dec 16th
Some machines are given to us as hand me downs and some we configure from scratch. Depending on what these machines do, I have to decide how much security I want on the device. Under no circumstances do I EVER let a machine leave my desk without a password. But I could make the machine log in automatically and not require a Control-Alt-Delete finger exercise.
This is exactly how the parents computer got set up. I couldn’t stand getting the calls at strange hours asking what their passwords are. I asked how they remember their banking pin numbers…
They said they don’t because they don’t have any. We use bank tellers…
Strange? Not for everyone. So to disable Control-Alt-Delete we simply goto the start menu and type netplwiz.exe
You will get the screen above where you can enable or disable it! Do you have a favorite Vista tip or trick to share with us? If you do leave them in the comments below…
Ubuntu Tip of The Week: Changing the Login Message on Ubuntu Server
Dec 15th
Hey boys and girls out in Admin land! I thought I would swing by aTa today to drop a little Ubuntu know-how on ya.
Have you installed Ubuntu server and noticed that when you login to it there is the generic CYA login message from Ubuntu about them not providing warranty blah blah blah blah? Of course you have! Personally, I am not one to stick to defaults very often, especially when it comes to generic welcome messages that can be easily changed! Here is what the original message looks like:
Linux Hostname 2.6.24-18-generic #1 SMP Wed May 28 20:27:26 UTC 2008 i686
The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.
To access official Ubuntu documentation, please visit:
http://help.ubuntu.com/
Yuck! How boring is that? Why not change it to something a little more fun? Or perhaps, if this is a company Ubuntu server, maybe something a little more customized for your company? Changing the message is really quite simple. Just run the following from the terminal:
sudo nano /etc/motd
Make your changes, and save them. It really couldn’t be any easier than that. Now you might have something that looks like this:
For those not in-the-know, motd stands for “Message of The Day” which according to Wikipedia is used to:
…display rules, administrator contact, or simply a piece of ASCII art. This is frequently used in schools or workplaces such as offices.
Have you created a funny or strange motd message on your Linux box? Care to share a screen shot? If you have some good ones, please post a link to them in the comments.
[EDIT]- By The way, if you don’t want your new cool message changed back at reboot, you will also have to edit /etc/motd.tail as well. And yes Jeremy, you can use vi instead of nano!
By El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power
Why you should have a server in your house. The children’s book.
Dec 15th
I got a message from Kevin Rose via Pownce a little while back and it was a link to a series of pictures created to look like a children’s book. More specifically a book explaining how babies are made. But get this twist it was turned into an ad for Windows Home Server!
That’s right I said a Children’s book explaining the importance of a Home Server. But I almost pissed myself reading it. No matter how much I hate Digg for their evil ways I love Kevin’s sense of humor!
Go check out this whole thing over yonder…
[Flux.tastylime.net via Kevin Rose]
Apparently I love my family because we have several home servers :) Does anyone know it’s real origins?
EDIT: The guys at The Gizmodo reported on this way back when… Check it out. But it’s still flucking funny!
