[Discuss] [Position-available] Network Engineer @ Financial Recovery Technologies - Medford, MA

[Matt Shields]

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Financial Recovery Technologies is looking for a Network Engineer (with
some Linux skills).  If interested, please apply here:
https://app.jobvite.com/j/?cj=o2Rg8fw1 then send me an email (below)

Position: Network Engineer
Job Type: full-time
Location: Medford, MA

Company Description:
Join a fast growing company that is transforming its industry! Financial
Recovery Technologies has become a trusted partner to hedge funds, mutual
funds, custodians, sovereign wealth funds, and other institutional
investment firms, and our best-in-class people and technology have made FRT
a market leader.

Job description:
As a Network Engineer at FRT, you will use your strong understanding of IT
infrastructure, IT security, and IT best practices to ensure FRT’s network
and distributed system infrastructure are robust, reliable, and secure. If
you're a hands-on systems engineer who loves to geek out with various
technologies, we would love to talk to you.

The Role:
As a Network Engineer at FRT, you will:
- Be proactive in maintaining our existing network infrastructure,
identifying potential improvements, and proposing approaches to
implementation;
- Research and implement new hardware or software, picking the best tool
for the job and ensuring FRT is aligned with industry standards;
- Focus on the hardware - load balancers, firewalls, routers, switches;
- Identify any current or future risks in our current infrastructure and
propose efficient and appropriate plans to mitigate those risks;
- Participate in designing/planning and implement FRT internal
infrastructure improvement for three datacenters;
- Collaborate with CISO to implement security best practices utilizing the
latest software and utilities;
- Work with FRT business owners on improvement of processes and procedures.

Our Ideal Candidate Has:
- A firm understanding of IT infrastructure, IT security, and IT best
practices - networking and/or security certification would be a plus!
- 3-5 years’ experience in a 24x7 Technical Operations organization (though
you'll only have light on call duties here)
- Knowledge of multiple platforms - we are primarily Linux based (CentOS)
but we also use VMWare and Windows
- Experience with automation and configuration management (e.g., various
shells, Chef, Salt, CI/CD)
- Familiarity with Juniper EX network hardware and Dell, HP hardware
- Experience with some of our technology tool stack (various Atlassian
tools like JIRA, Splunk, Sensu, Grafana)
- A background with highly-available, distributed applications using
open-source technologies
- Comfort with security principles, solutions, and testing (e.g., NIST,
CIS, firewalls, IDS/IPS)
- A strong sense of accountability and a proactive orientation toward
problem solving;
- An open, active, and outgoing communication style, able to speak to
various stakeholders at appropriate levels of technical detail;
- A curious mind - you want to understand our business, are open to new
technologies, and are committed to continuous improvement;
- Of course, an interest in joining a growing company with a vibrant,
entrepreneurial culture, dedicated to being the top provider in the class
action recovery space.

What Benefits Does FRT Offer
- Health, dental, vision
- 401k (with company match!)
- Income protection plans (life, accidental death and dismemberment, short-
and long-term disability) and access to a suite of voluntary benefit
programs
- Close to public transit (walking distance to Wellington T on Orange Line)
- Free drinks and snacks
- Free parking onsite
- Free access to onsite gym
- Fun and diverse colleagues
- THIS POSITION IS BASED IN OUR MEDFORD, MA HEADQUARTERS. LOCAL CANDIDATES
ONLY, PLEASE.

AGENCIES: WE ARE ONLY WORKING WITH PREVIOUSLY APPROVED AGENCIES ON THIS
REQUISITION, SO IF YOU ARE NOT SUCH A FIRM, PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR
CANDIDATES FOR THIS POSITION.

Matt Shields
m...@shields.tv
781-424-3531
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Re: [Discuss] Cloud-backup solutions for Linux?

[Matt Shields]

By your definition Bill's solution would fail your test of what you need in
a backup solution.  He makes a backup once every couple months, then runs
it offsite.  He has a risk of losing up to 2 months worth of data in his
scenario.  He can't get back changes from Monday or Tuesday.  Not saying
his solution is bad, but it doesn't solve *your* problem.

Again the solution depends on the user's needs, but at least my solution
provides backups up to the minute offsite, then if the cloud server dies I
can go back 24 hours.  My potential risk is 24 hours.  So my solution backs
up to the cloud, which has versions and that cloud server is backed up to
S3.  By your definition my solution *is* a backup. And yes, just to verify
I just went onto my ownCloud instance and can see numerous versions of
documents and photos.  One particular file has 35 versions going back to
Dec 2013.

This will be my last comment, since this seems to be going nowhere.  What's
sad about this back and forth is that a few people already made up their
minds to dismiss my solution because it doesn't fit their needs or
definition. I'm not saying it's the perfect solution for everyone,
especially since my solution has server overhead, but I do know that it's
worked better than any other solution I've tried with no effort on my part
and with excellent results, which is what makes it a usable solution for me.



Matt

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 7:02 PM, Rich Pieri <richard.pi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/24/2015 3:22 PM, Matt Shields wrote:
>
>> ownCloud has version control (
>>
>
> Version control is not backup. If the disk dies then the versioned files
> die with it.
>
> Also since I never delete from my S3 bucket where I have a nightly sync
>> from ownCloud to, the risk of losing everything is low.  I also have up to
>> 24 hours to recover files that might have been written over.
>>
>
> Create a file on Monday. Change and overwrite it on Tuesday. Discover on
> Thursday that you need Monday's version. Sure, you can put the files under
> some kind of version control but if the disk dies then the versioned files
> die with it.
>
>
> --
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Re: [Discuss] Cloud-backup solutions for Linux?

[Matt Shields]

Check out ownCloud.  It let's you run your own cloud based backup service.

Matt

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 5:21 PM, Rich Braun  wrote:

> What do you use for offsite backup?
>
> Here's why I ask: For a few years I've been using CrashPlan as my primary
> backup, and rsnapshot as a secondary.
>
> About once a year, it seems, CrashPlan does something troubling and it's
> always felt like Linux takes a back-seat to their Windows and Mac platform.
>
> My CrashPlan setup failed again 48 hours ago, with a difficult-to-resolve
> auto-update that messed up its omnibus-installed Java JRE.  Upon a fresh
> reinstallation the UI fails to start and I get peer-auth problems in logs.
>
> Enough's enough but I haven't found an alternative to spending a couple
> days
> of debugging busted CrashPlan, er, crap whenever this happens.
>
> BackBlaze still won't do Linux. CrashPlan has clearly invested the most
> effort
> into defining a useful system, but I'm ready to consider one of the others
> if
> any of y'all have had positive experiences elsewhere.
>
> -rich
>
>
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Re: [Discuss] Cloud-backup solutions for Linux?

[Matt Shields]

So far have not had a single issue.  I have a private cloud in AWS that
myself and my family sync to using multiple platforms (Mac, Win & Linux).
That instance is backed up to S3.  Performance is great, computers never
have an issue, performance is great. And ownCloud offers a version that's
100% free with no limits.

My main reason for not using something like Synctuary, Dropbox, etc is
this: https://www.conceptblossom.com/pricing  I would rather write a custom
rsync (or something else for Win) script to automatically sync my personal
files rather than pay for something.  The only exception to this would be
if it were for work, then I would suggest paying for a service.


Matt

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 7:02 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) <b...@nedharvey.com>
wrote:

> > From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On
> > Behalf Of Matt Shields
> >
> > Check out ownCloud.  It let's you run your own cloud based backup
> service.
>
> Oh god, no. If you're thinking about ownCloud, try Synctuary instead.
>
> I probably can't make a statement about ownCloud without getting sued (I
> work for Concept Blossom and am a developer who works on Synctuary), so
> I'll just ask you to ask yourself these questions:
>
> What happens if you're in the middle of a file transfer, and the wifi
> drops, or the ethernet cable is removed, or you roam from one wifi to
> another, or close the lid of your computer?
>
> What happens if you create a file with a character in its name, that's not
> allowed on some other platform? The two most common ways this happens are:
> Someone on the mac creates a file with a ":" colon character in its name,
> which is not allowed on windows. Or someone on windows creates a file with
> a unicode 8211, the emphasized hyphen character, which is not allowed on
> linux.
>
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Re: [Discuss] Cloud-backup solutions for Linux?

[Matt Shields]

Depending what the person's use case is, sometimes "good enough" is "good
enough".  I can deal with my wife or one of my kids mistakenly naming
something with a bad character, because I only care that they can re-open
it on their computer, not on mine.  If they can save the file on a mac, and
re-sync back to a mac, then we're good.  Same goes for Windows to Windows
or Linux to Linux.  We rarely share files with each other and across
platforms.  It's mainly to keep a copy of what's on our computers offsite.
The cost is also almost zero for me since I maintain my own servers for
business.  So I allocate a small VM in my business.

As far as the interrupted sync. So far it hasn't happened, and for a
personal backup solution, I can deal with this and call it "good enough".
If we had a disaster with one or all our computers and I managed to recover
99% of my files from my ownCloud setup, I'd be more than happy because of
how little I've spent on the setup.

Again, if this were a business solution, I would pay for something that's
been proven and I know it's 100% solid.  My work computer has both
BackBlaze and I use DropBox Business.


Matt

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 7:39 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) <b...@nedharvey.com>
wrote:

> > From: Matt Shields [mailto:m...@mattshields.org]
> >
> > So far have not had a single issue.
>
> I repeat the question: What happens if you interrupt the client or network
> in the middle of a file transfer? What happens if you create a file with a
> disallowed character in its name?
>
> Be sure to md5sum or something, before and after transfer, to ensure
> you'll notice if anything unexpected occurs.
>
> Be sure to look at the filesystem of the platforms where the disallowed
> character is disallowed. To see what appears there, if anything.
>
>
> > My main reason for not using something like Synctuary, Dropbox, etc is
> > this: https://www.conceptblossom.com/pricing  I would rather write a
> > custom rsync (or something else for Win) script to automatically sync my
> > personal files rather than pay for something.
>
> Synctuary is free for up to 3 users. Although the OP specifically asked
> about linux, and I admit the linux Synctuary client isn't as good as it
> should be. Ubuntu only, and sometimes crashes.
>
> But never causes data loss, which is more than I can say for the
> competition.
>
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Re: [Discuss] Cloud-backup solutions for Linux?

[Matt Shields]

Who says sync/sharing is not a backup?  Is the goal a backup not to have
two or more copies of your data in different locations?  If the datacenter
happens to fail, your other copy would be the local one, correct?
Swapping backup drives/tapes isn't without it's own problems.  What happens
if the bank building burns down?  Or the drive/tape becomes corrupt?
Computer dies before your bi-monthly/quarterly drive swap?

For me, using a live sync solution provides a better backup solution than
dealing with SneakerNet. My backups are up to the minute and automatic and
redundant (computer -> ownCloud -> S3 in other region). I personally have
no time for dealing with manually backing up our personal computers and
swapping a drive at my banks vault.  My solution works for me because it
solves my problem of having offsite backups (and recovery) and keeps it
simple.  The trick is to find what works for you because if it's burdensome
and complicated you're not going to do it or you're going to forget about
it.  With all these idea/solutions we're playing the odds.  What are the
odds that my cloud instance, S3 and my local computer all die at the same
time?  What are the chances that my computer dies the day before I get a
backup to disk and take it to the bank?  Don't write off sync
technologies/services as not acceptable.  Evaluate what your needs are and
what is acceptable for data loss is and make a choice based on that.  For
some the cost of hosting their own sync server will not be worth it and a
backup drive taken to the bank is "good enough".


Matt

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 10:06 AM, Rich Pieri <richard.pi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 9/24/2015 6:36 AM, Matt Shields wrote:
>
>> Check out ownCloud.  It let's you run your own cloud based backup
>> service.
>>
>
> ownCloud is sync/sharing, not backup.
>
> On 9/24/2015 7:02 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote:
> > Oh god, no. If you're thinking about ownCloud, try Synctuary instead.
>
> So are Synctuary, SyncThing, SparkleShare, etc.
>
> Bill Cattey's answer is the correct one.
>
> What happens when your sync storage disk fails? You lose everything. So
> you get a RAID setup. What happens when the RAID controller goes stupid and
> scribbles garbage all over the disk? You lose everything. So you go to a
> big, safe cloud provider. What happens when the data center's power grids
> get hit by lightning four times in rapid succession? Maybe you lose
> everything.
>
> If it isn't on media that can be physically detached and stored securely
> (fire box, safe deposit box, etc.) then it isn't a backup. At best it is
> the first step in creating backups; at worst it is permanent data loss
> begging to happen.
>
> --
> Rich P.
>
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Re: [Discuss] Cloud-backup solutions for Linux?

[Matt Shields]

ownCloud has version control (
https://doc.owncloud.org/server/8.1/user_manual/files/version_control.html),
although you need to keep an eye on your server drive size.  It will start
to purge older versions if your disks exceed 50%.  But by your definition
this would still be considered a backup.

Also since I never delete from my S3 bucket where I have a nightly sync
from ownCloud to, the risk of losing everything is low.  I also have up to
24 hours to recover files that might have been written over.

Given that I already have enough safeguards for my personal needs, should
the need arise I could easily modify the sync process to do monthly full
backups (tar/gz), then incremental tar/gz for files that are new or
modified. As I mentioned, my solution may not be for everyone since I
already have cloud solutions in place for my business, which makes it
cheaper.  But it's easily scalable to the amount of redundancy I want.


Matt

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 1:55 PM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) 
wrote:

> > From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On
> > Behalf Of Jack Coats
> >
> > Syncing is a form of backup IMHO.
>
> The reason why syncing is not a backup, is because if you delete a file,
> and the deletion gets replicated, you cannot recover the deleted file.
>
> Ability to recover deleted files (or old versions of files that have been
> overwritten) is a pretty important characteristic of a backup system.
>
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Re: [Discuss] OpenSWAN VPN

[Matt Shields]

Routing table looks good, on both sides I can see the other's routes in my
routing table and it shows the correct next hop.

I'd much prefer OpenVPN, that's what we normally use for both employees and
clients.  I even have it linked to Active Directory, plus custom rules when
they log in.  But this client doesn't want to setup a host for OpenVPN on
their side, they *only* use ipsec VPN's.

Matt

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Matthew Gillen m...@mattgillen.net wrote:

 Not familiar with OpenSWAN, but in OpenVPN sometimes you have to push
 routes to the clients to force traffic through.

 Does your routing table look right?

 On 7/9/2015 10:44 AM, Matt Shields wrote:
  Does anyone have a working OpenSWAN config or can you see what the issue
  might be below?  Current test environment is two Amazon VPC's with a VPN
  server NAT'd behind firewall, UDP ports 500  4500 are being forwarded.
  I'm using the config below and it seems to connect, but can't ping/ssh
 to
  anything on either side.
 
  DC1:
   - External IP x.x.x.x
   - Internal Subnet 10.10.0.0/16
 
  DC2:
   - External IP y.y.y.y
   - Internal Subnet 192.168.0.0/24
 
  #this config resides on DC1 vpn server
  config setup
  # Debug-logging controls:  none for (almost) none, all for
 lots.
  # klipsdebug=none
  # plutodebug=control parsing
  # For Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora, leave
 protostack=netkey
  #   interfaces=%defaultroute
  klipsdebug=none
  #   nhelpers=0
  plutodebug=none
  plutostderrlog=/var/log/pluto.log
  protostack=netkey
  nat_traversal=yes
  virtual_private=%v4:10.10.0.0/16,%v4:!192.168.0.0/24
  oe=off
  # Enable this if you see failed to find any available worker
  # nhelpers=0
  #   forceencaps=yes
  conn dc1-to-dc2
  auto=start
  type=tunnel
 
  left=10.10.10.43
  leftsourceip=x.x.x.x
  leftsubnet=10.10.0.0/16
  leftid=x.x.x.x
 
  right=y.y.y.y
  rightsubnet=192.168.0.0/24
  rightid=y.y.y.y
 
  #phase 1 encryption-integrity-DiffieHellman
  keyexchange=ike
  ike=3des-md5-modp1024,aes256-sha1-modp1024
  ikelifetime=86400s
  authby=secret #use presharedkey
  rekey=yes  #should we rekey when key lifetime is about to expire
 
  #phase 2 encryption-pfsgroup
  phase2=esp #esp for encryption | ah for authentication only
  phase2alg=3des-md5;modp1024
  pfs=no
  forceencaps=yes
 
  #this config resides on DC2 vpn server
  config setup
  # Debug-logging controls:  none for (almost) none, all for
 lots.
  # klipsdebug=none
  # plutodebug=control parsing
  # For Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora, leave
 protostack=netkey
  #   interfaces=%defaultroute
  klipsdebug=none
  #   nhelpers=0
  plutodebug=none
  plutostderrlog=/var/log/pluto.log
  protostack=netkey
  nat_traversal=yes
  virtual_private=%v4:192.168.0.0/24,%v4:!10.10.0.0/16
  oe=off
  # Enable this if you see failed to find any available worker
  # nhelpers=0
  #   forceencaps=yes
  conn dc2-to-dc1
  auto=start
  type=tunnel
 
  left=192.168.0.22
  leftsourceip=y.y.y.y
  leftsubnet=192.168.0.0/24
  leftid=y.y.y.y
 
  right=x.x.x.x
  rightsubnet=10.10.0.0/16
  rightid=x.x.x.x
 
  #phase 1 encryption-integrity-DiffieHellman
  keyexchange=ike
  ike=3des-md5-modp1024,aes256-sha1-modp1024
  ikelifetime=86400s
  authby=secret #use presharedkey
  rekey=yes  #should we rekey when key lifetime is about to expire
 
  #phase 2 encryption-pfsgroup
  phase2=esp #esp for encryption | ah for authentication only
  phase2alg=3des-md5;modp1024
  pfs=no
  forceencaps=yes
 
  Matt
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Re: [Discuss] VPS suggestions

[Matt Shields]

Check out Linode.com

Matt

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Eric Chadbourne eric.chadbou...@icloud.com
 wrote:

 Hi All,

 Any VPS suggestions?  For the last year I’ve been using Digital Ocean.
 The price is right and the servers are fast.  Unfortunately it appears
 apt-get can’t update the kernel.  You have to use their web based gui.
 This isn’t acceptable to me.

 Anybody have any suggestions?  Are you happy with your VPS?  I also prefer
 hosts that use standard tools like ssh.  I don’t want to have to install
 stuff like gcloud compute just to login.  I don’t want strangely built
 versions of PHP that don’t work properly with PostgreSQL like Dreamhost
 has. I just want a “regular” gnu-linux or bsd box where I am root and
 things work as a normal human would expect.

 Thanks,

 Eric Chadbourne
 Nonprofit-CRM.org

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[Discuss] OpenSWAN VPN

[Matt Shields]

Does anyone have a working OpenSWAN config or can you see what the issue
might be below?  Current test environment is two Amazon VPC's with a VPN
server NAT'd behind firewall, UDP ports 500  4500 are being forwarded.
I'm using the config below and it seems to connect, but can't ping/ssh to
anything on either side.

DC1:
 - External IP x.x.x.x
 - Internal Subnet 10.10.0.0/16

DC2:
 - External IP y.y.y.y
 - Internal Subnet 192.168.0.0/24

#this config resides on DC1 vpn server
config setup
# Debug-logging controls:  none for (almost) none, all for lots.
# klipsdebug=none
# plutodebug=control parsing
# For Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora, leave protostack=netkey
#   interfaces=%defaultroute
klipsdebug=none
#   nhelpers=0
plutodebug=none
plutostderrlog=/var/log/pluto.log
protostack=netkey
nat_traversal=yes
virtual_private=%v4:10.10.0.0/16,%v4:!192.168.0.0/24
oe=off
# Enable this if you see failed to find any available worker
# nhelpers=0
#   forceencaps=yes
conn dc1-to-dc2
auto=start
type=tunnel

left=10.10.10.43
leftsourceip=x.x.x.x
leftsubnet=10.10.0.0/16
leftid=x.x.x.x

right=y.y.y.y
rightsubnet=192.168.0.0/24
rightid=y.y.y.y

#phase 1 encryption-integrity-DiffieHellman
keyexchange=ike
ike=3des-md5-modp1024,aes256-sha1-modp1024
ikelifetime=86400s
authby=secret #use presharedkey
rekey=yes  #should we rekey when key lifetime is about to expire

#phase 2 encryption-pfsgroup
phase2=esp #esp for encryption | ah for authentication only
phase2alg=3des-md5;modp1024
pfs=no
forceencaps=yes

#this config resides on DC2 vpn server
config setup
# Debug-logging controls:  none for (almost) none, all for lots.
# klipsdebug=none
# plutodebug=control parsing
# For Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora, leave protostack=netkey
#   interfaces=%defaultroute
klipsdebug=none
#   nhelpers=0
plutodebug=none
plutostderrlog=/var/log/pluto.log
protostack=netkey
nat_traversal=yes
virtual_private=%v4:192.168.0.0/24,%v4:!10.10.0.0/16
oe=off
# Enable this if you see failed to find any available worker
# nhelpers=0
#   forceencaps=yes
conn dc2-to-dc1
auto=start
type=tunnel

left=192.168.0.22
leftsourceip=y.y.y.y
leftsubnet=192.168.0.0/24
leftid=y.y.y.y

right=x.x.x.x
rightsubnet=10.10.0.0/16
rightid=x.x.x.x

#phase 1 encryption-integrity-DiffieHellman
keyexchange=ike
ike=3des-md5-modp1024,aes256-sha1-modp1024
ikelifetime=86400s
authby=secret #use presharedkey
rekey=yes  #should we rekey when key lifetime is about to expire

#phase 2 encryption-pfsgroup
phase2=esp #esp for encryption | ah for authentication only
phase2alg=3des-md5;modp1024
pfs=no
forceencaps=yes

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Juniper VPN's

[Matt Shields]

I ended up telling them to open a ticket with Juniper and they were able to
get their web based vpn portal to work with OS X.  I guess it was an issue
where the web portal wasn't telling OS X browsers to launch java properly.

Matt

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 4:35 PM, Tom Metro tmetro+...@gmail.com wrote:

 Matt Shields wrote:
  Anyone using the Juniper SA series VPN's?

 We're working with a client that uses a Juniper VPN. (We hate
 proprietary VPNs. What's worse is they have it configured to prevent
 split networking.)

 We've found that there are per-user settings on the server side that
 controls what sort of client you are fed (Java) or what sort of
 connection it expects. With OS X you have a choice between the older
 Network Connect client and the newer Junos Pulse, which you mentioned.
 I'm pretty sure you can't arbitrarily switch between these on the client
 side. The server settings have to be switched to match.

 Similarly, we're using OpenConnect as the client on Linux machines, and
 before that would work our accounts needed to be switch to Linux mode
 as the Windows admin called it.

 According to what I've read, OpenConnect will run on OS X, and gives you
 a lot greater control over the connection (like the ability to force
 split networking). However, to get Juniper functionality working you
 really need to build the bleeding edge version of OpenConnect, and even
 then might still need to apply a patch posted to the OpenConnect mailing
 list. (We've been involved in a few threads on the list. I can send you
 a link to the patch if you need it.)

 The funny thing about these proprietary VPNs is that they give the
 perception of being easier to use for the non-techie Windows users, yet
 then tend to be significantly time consuming to work with for power
 users. Open source has taken over most fields. Why are VPNs still a
 holdout? Is there not a super easy OpenVPN client for Windows yet? I
 know there is commercial support for OpenVPN.

  -Tom

 --
 Tom Metro
 The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
 Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting.
 http://www.theperlshop.com/

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[Discuss] Juniper VPN's

[Matt Shields]

Anyone using the Juniper SA series VPN's?  I'm doing work as a contractor
and their web based VPN is not working for me (Mac laptop).  I also tried
their Junos Pulse software and it's not working either.  I read online
somewhere on the Mac to try the Java Secure Application Manager (Juniper's
java based SSL VPN client).  Anyone happen to have a copy of this java
app?  All the download links I've found are behind Juniper's locked down
download site.

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Juniper VPN's

[Matt Shields]

It's a paid contact, but I'm working on their Linux servers, not their
network.  Their answer is everyone just goes to the web portal to log
in.  I don't think they have any Mac or Linux users, only Win, so that
works for them.

If I do need to purchase anything it will be billed back to them,
unfortunately I don't believe you can just purchase the Java Secure
Application Manager without having purchased one of their VPN appliances.
And this company doesn't know enough to open a ticket with Juniper to get
the software or log in to download it.

Matt

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) b...@nedharvey.com
wrote:

  From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On
  Behalf Of Matt Shields
 
  All the download links I've found are behind Juniper's locked down
  download site.

 If they're paying you, or anyone else doing work over that thing, they
 should pay Juniper for a support contract.

 Even if there weren't incompatibility problems (as there obviously are)
 there continue to be security flaws that require patching. But I assume
 you've already told them that, and you must be volunteering your time?  ;-)

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Re: [Discuss] xapo, what do you think?

[Matt Shields]

Check out Circle.com.  It was started by Jeremy Allaire (of
Allaire/Macromedia fame) and backed by a number of well known VC's

Matt

On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 11:13 AM, Eric Chadbourne eric.chadbou...@icloud.com
 wrote:


  On Jun 2, 2015, at 11:02 AM, Dan Ritter d...@randomstring.org wrote:
 
  On Tue, Jun 02, 2015 at 09:55:12AM -0400, Eric Chadbourne wrote:
  Hi All,
 
  I stumbled across an interesting looking bitcoin site https://xapo.com/
 
  Right now I’m playing around with Electrum but the extra services
 provided by xapo looks compelling.  Anybody ever use it or hear anything
 about them?
 
 
  I have come up with a list of the methods that have actually
  been used to make money with Bitcoins.
 
  1. Join five+ years ago, mine BTC.
  2. Run a BTC exchange. Charge a high spread.
  3. Run a BTC exchange. Abscond with the money.
  4. Invade a BTC exchange and steal from it.
  5. Steal BTC wallets.
 
  Anything else?
 
  -dsr-


 Oh I’m not trying to make money, I’m trying to easily transfer.  Kind of
 use it like PayPal.  I wouldn’t use it as a bank, as Rich made a valid
 point.

 FWIW, Xapo at the moment, from what I can tell, might be legit.  Just
 curious if anybody has interacted with them.

 Thanks,

 Eric






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[Discuss] Cross platform Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware

[Matt Shields]

I'm fishing for what others are using for anti-virus/anti-malware on their
Windows and Linux servers.  Both commercial and open-source is an option.

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Virtualized guests of OS X?

[Matt Shields]

I believe you can use Parallels Desktop and VirtualBox as well.

Matt

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 9:04 AM, Anthony Gabrielson agabriels...@comcast.net
 wrote:

 Hi Eric,
 Yes, I use vmware fusion and it just works. You just need to download the
 installer for the version of OS X you want.

 Anthony

 - Original Message -

 From: Eric Chadbourne eric.chadbou...@icloud.com
 To: BLU discuss@blu.org
 Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2015 9:01:00 AM
 Subject: [Discuss] Virtualized guests of OS X?

 Hi All,

 Is it possible to make OS X guests on an OS X host? I thought somebody
 mentioned an easy way to do this in a previous thread. I want to test some
 stuff and not bork my host.

 Thanks,

 Eric




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Re: [Discuss] External network scanning service

[Matt Shields]

Thanks Tom  Dan, I'll check them out.  At a previous company our security
officer used the self-hosted Nessus.

Matt

On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 7:30 AM, Dan Ritter d...@randomstring.org wrote:

 On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 04:28:35PM -0400, Tom Metro wrote:
  Matt Shields wrote:
   I'm
   looking for a SAAS that I can add my subnets and they will scan them
 daily
   and check for open ports and known vulnerabilities, etc and send us a
   report.
 
  I asked a similar question back in June:
 
  http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40blu.org/msg09068.html
 
  Although my expectation was that a SaaS solution wouldn't do the job as
  some exploits need to be performed on the same network segment, although
  so few potential attackers would have that access, a SaaS approach is
  probably good enough.
 
  The answer I got back was, Isn't that what Metasploit is for?
 
  So why the lack of SaaS offerings? Is it due to technical reasons or
  because of fear of liability? (A search did turn up
  https://www.qualys.com/; I can't find pricing on their site.)
 
  It sure seems like there ought to be a market for this.

 Veracode offers this, calling it automated web application
 perimeter testing. They want about $2K/year, for which you get
 more or less unlimited usage.

 Tenable offers Nessus Cloud, which is the Nessus scanner, plus
 their secret sauce, as a web service. That's also around
 $2K/year.

 Nessus was forked before Tenable closed it, and the resulting
 project is called OpenVAS. I don't know how many groups will run
 it against you for some amount of money.

 In general, the term you want to google for is vulnerability
 assessment.

 -dsr-
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[Discuss] External network scanning service

[Matt Shields]

I've used a number of open source tools such as nmap, Nessus, Saint.  I'm
looking for a SAAS that I can add my subnets and they will scan them daily
and check for open ports and known vulnerabilities, etc and send us a
report.

They don't necessarily need to be full pen testing, but it would be nice if
as they were scanning they could detect things that are being exposed.  For
example, years ago before I knew to turn off Apache httpd's mod_info/server
info, I remember being able to use open source tools to figure out what
version of Apache, PHP, and the operating system.  The report should have
the ability to mark things as known/acceptable, and the report be sent if
something changes.

Also, would be helpful if they offered some type of certification to show
our clients.

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] bitnami stacks are awful

[Matt Shields]

I found that out the hard way when one of my clients was using the Bitnami
Drupal AMI and was complaining how slow his website was for getting barely
any traffic..  It was using ApacheFriends XAMPP as the backend web/db
server.  The problem was the way the AMI was deployed it used all the stock
configs which are meant for desktop development environment, not for
production loads.

Matt

On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 3:35 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) 
g...@freephile.com wrote:

 If you want to launch an Amazon Cloud instance with an application + LAMP
 stack, don't try to make things easier by starting off with a Bitnami
 AMI.  You'll only shoot yourself in the foot, and end up starting over.

 I'm against vendor lock-in, and their AMI doesn't come with an uninstall
 option; changes the location of and functioning of the principle services
 (the A, the M and the P plus if you consider the MOTD, the L too) and
 requires you to rely on their documentation in order to do anything instead
 of just setting things up the 'normal' way.  It's the antithesis of open
 source IMHO.

 Greg Rundlett
 http://eQuality-Tech.com
 http://freephile.org
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Re: [Discuss] os x = poop?

[Matt Shields]

Going back as far as '95 I've been using Linux and ever since then I've
tried over and over to use Linux on the desktop.  Each time I'd have
limited success, usually the main reason for going back to Windows on the
desktop is because of some corporate software needs (most often Office,
Outlook, Project, Visio).  My closest time of using Linux on the desktop
was around 2009-10 when I used Evolution for mail/calendaring, and had a
second laptop using Synergy2 for Project/Visio.  But Evolution still
sucked, a lot.  So in 2010 I had the opportunity to get a Mac at work.  And
as much as I had previously hated Apple because I thought they were over
priced, it was the perfect mid-ground between needing a *nix on my desktop
since I write a lot of bash  python and getting an X terminal when I need
one, plus being able to use the dreaded MSOffice products for places I
worked.  my only wish was that I had switched earlier. So, I've come to
love OSX. But, I'll still always run Linux in the server environment.


Matt

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Eric Chadbourne eric.chadbou...@icloud.com
 wrote:

 I’ve been using a mac mini for the last few months and I must say the
 hardware is nice but the software is pretty bad.  Push notifications in
 Safari (yuck), iCloud hiccuped when I moved from gmail to protonmail,
 iCloud can’t backup by directory by default, the default email client is
 very slow, their Xcode IDE is merely adequate, their server products blow,
 you really can’t change the look significantly, by default it can’t read
 many other file system formats, case insensitive terminal, iTunes can’t
 read free codecs, etc.  I am very unimpressed with the software.  With so
 much cash behind them one would think they could write good code but no.
 It really sucks.  My Ubuntu boxes are so much more stable and have more
 features.

 Anybody here like OS X?  Why?  I’m not trolling.  I’m curious.  Why would
 somebody want to use this terrible piece of proprietary poop?

 Eric C - the one who is googling how to install Ubuntu on a new mac mini.

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Re: [Discuss] os x = poop?

[Matt Shields]

Also, I should add that back in the 2009-10 timeframe, besides the MSOffice
issues.  The other major issues I had were hardware related.  I spent a
good deal of time dealing with wifi or printer trying to figure out how to
get them to work, or why they stopped working for unknown reasons.  I'm
sure it's gotten a lot better for Linux on the desktop, but I've never had
the same issues with Mac.

Matt

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 8:56 AM, Matt Shields m...@mattshields.org wrote:

 Going back as far as '95 I've been using Linux and ever since then I've
 tried over and over to use Linux on the desktop.  Each time I'd have
 limited success, usually the main reason for going back to Windows on the
 desktop is because of some corporate software needs (most often Office,
 Outlook, Project, Visio).  My closest time of using Linux on the desktop
 was around 2009-10 when I used Evolution for mail/calendaring, and had a
 second laptop using Synergy2 for Project/Visio.  But Evolution still
 sucked, a lot.  So in 2010 I had the opportunity to get a Mac at work.  And
 as much as I had previously hated Apple because I thought they were over
 priced, it was the perfect mid-ground between needing a *nix on my desktop
 since I write a lot of bash  python and getting an X terminal when I need
 one, plus being able to use the dreaded MSOffice products for places I
 worked.  my only wish was that I had switched earlier. So, I've come to
 love OSX. But, I'll still always run Linux in the server environment.


 Matt

 On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Eric Chadbourne 
 eric.chadbou...@icloud.com wrote:

 I’ve been using a mac mini for the last few months and I must say the
 hardware is nice but the software is pretty bad.  Push notifications in
 Safari (yuck), iCloud hiccuped when I moved from gmail to protonmail,
 iCloud can’t backup by directory by default, the default email client is
 very slow, their Xcode IDE is merely adequate, their server products blow,
 you really can’t change the look significantly, by default it can’t read
 many other file system formats, case insensitive terminal, iTunes can’t
 read free codecs, etc.  I am very unimpressed with the software.  With so
 much cash behind them one would think they could write good code but no.
 It really sucks.  My Ubuntu boxes are so much more stable and have more
 features.

 Anybody here like OS X?  Why?  I’m not trolling.  I’m curious.  Why would
 somebody want to use this terrible piece of proprietary poop?

 Eric C - the one who is googling how to install Ubuntu on a new mac mini.

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Re: [Discuss] OS X server question

[Matt Shields]

Ditto.  I installed it on my mac mini out of curiosity.  I haven't used it
in production, probably wouldn't use it in the datacenter since I'm a
die-hard linux on the server guy, but I would consider if it were an all
Mac office.  It seems to do a nice job of tying services that are Apple
specific and what Apple users would find useful, file/printer sharing, Time
Machine backups, directory, dhcp, contacts/calendar/mail service, etc.

Matt

On Sun, Feb 1, 2015 at 6:52 PM, Richard Pieri richard.pi...@gmail.com
wrote:

 On 2/1/2015 4:17 PM, Bill Horne wrote:

 Please. I'm begging you. Run while you still can. OS X Server will suck
 your brain dry and leave only dust.


 It's not that bad.

 *snicker*

 Yes it is. The only reason to even consider OS X Server is if you need to
 virtualize OS X on non-Apple hardware.

 --
 Rich P.

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Re: [Discuss] Python module for Windows services that runs on Linux

[Matt Shields]

So far this looks the most promising.  For those interested, here's the
test script I wrote and it let's me display the status of all services.

import sys
import os
sys.path.append(os.path.abspath(/usr/bin))  #path where impacket example
scripts installed
import services #import the /usr/bin/services.py script

username=Administrator
password=testpass
address=app001

class options():
pass
options = options()
options.action=list
options.hashes=None

services = services.SVCCTL(username, password, domain, options)
try:
services.run(address)
except Exception, e:
print e

Matt

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Mike Small sma...@panix.com wrote:

 Matt Shields m...@mattshields.org writes:

  Anyone know of a python module that will let me query/start/stop a
 Windows
  service?  The module needs to be able work on a Linux system.  I've
 looked
  around but it seems all the modules I find require the python app to run
 on
  a Windows machine.

 Never had to do it, but impacket looks promising:


 https://code.google.com/p/impacket/source/browse/tags/impacket_0_9_12/examples/services.py

 Seems the others use the client side SCM and WIN32 API to it rather than
 using the
 wire protocol (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc245832.aspx)
 manually like this guy does.

 --
 Mike Small
 sma...@panix.com

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Re: [Discuss] Python module for Windows services that runs on Linux

[Matt Shields]

I'm sure SaltStack is great for config management and remove control, but
we have a custom internal dashboard where they would like to see the status
of each of the servers Windows service and be abel to start/stop them from
this dashboard.  It's a Flask/python app which runs on a linux box.

Matt

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 10:57 AM, John Hall johnhall...@gmail.com wrote:


 Have you considered using SaltStack?
 http://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/index.html#

 On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 8:01 AM, Matt Shields m...@mattshields.org wrote:

 Yes, run the python app on Linux but connect to a Windows server and
 query/start/stop a service.

 Matt

 On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) 
 b...@nedharvey.com
 wrote:

   From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
   bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Matt Shields
  
   Anyone know of a python module that will let me query/start/stop a
   Windows
   service?  The module needs to be able work on a Linux system.  I've
  looked
   around but it seems all the modules I find require the python app to
 run
  on
   a Windows machine.
 
  You mean you want to run something on linux, which will somehow reach
 out
  to a windows machine and start/stop windows services remotely, right?
 
  You're looking for a linux equivalent of these?
  sc \\machine stop service
  or
  psexec \\machine net stop service
  etc
 
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[Discuss] Python module for Windows services that runs on Linux

[Matt Shields]

Anyone know of a python module that will let me query/start/stop a Windows
service?  The module needs to be able work on a Linux system.  I've looked
around but it seems all the modules I find require the python app to run on
a Windows machine.

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Nagios config

[Matt Shields]

If you're going to use Nagios, use Icinga instead.  Same modules, same
configs, better interface.  One example is say you are trying to
acknowledge a number of services that are down.  In Nagios you need to
acknowledge them one by one.  In Icinga, you can select them all, then do a
mass acknowledgement of all of them.

Matt

On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 11:59 AM, John Malloy jomal...@gmail.com wrote:

 We are setting up Nagios for the first time in our shop.

 Does anyone have suggestions on build,  initial configs and autodiscovery,
 etc?

 Thanks!


 John Malloy
 jomal...@gmail.com
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Re: [Discuss] Monitoring your AWS instances

[Matt Shields]

Did you get an email telling you about reboots begin scheduled?  I know I
have a number of systems being rebooted today around 2pm.  If you log into
the console, and go to EC2 then click on Events on the left side it will
show you any ones that are scheduled in the future.  If you change one of
the drop down options it will show you closed events.

Matt

On Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) b...@nedharvey.com
wrote:

 I would really like to hear from anybody else who has AWS machines, and
 alerting/monitoring of those systems (by a system other than Amazon's own
 monitoring system).

 The number of alerts I'm receiving about systems being unreachable and
 then becoming reachable again is ... Crazy to say the least.  Several dozen
 last night alone, several dozen in the prior week, several dozen again each
 weekend for the last several weeks.  It's horrible.

 All systems being monitored, as well as the system doing the monitoring,
 are in US VA East.
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Re: [Discuss] Home security automation

[Matt Shields]

Part of wanting to do it myself is because I would learn about all the
different components and be able to troubleshoot and fix them if necessary.

Matt

On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 10:21 AM, Richard Pieri richard.pi...@gmail.com
wrote:

 On 9/19/2014 4:37 PM, Matt Shields wrote:
  I'd rather not go with a provider based system (like Comcast, ADT,
  Vivint, etc) since I want to control everything and not have to rely
  on a company for service or pay a monthly fee.
 [...]
  Any suggestions?

 Pay a professional to help you plan the system, install and configure it
 correctly. It'll be worth it in the long run.

 --
 Rich P.
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[Discuss] Home security automation

[Matt Shields]

I'm considering setting up my own home security system, video surveillance
and home automation.  I'd rather not go with a provider based system (like
Comcast, ADT, Vivint, etc) since I want to control everything and not have
to rely on a company for service or pay a monthly fee.

Ideally I would like it to have all three things (security, video 
automation) all work together in the same system and I'd like to have it
network based and even have a mobile app.

Any suggestions?

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Wireless devices, 2 Wireless Routers, local network. DD-WRT

[Matt Shields]

I haven't, but I'm interested in your results.  I also go camping and have
had to resort to getting a mifi which has a 10GB limit and I often go over.
 if there was a way to do what you're doing and limit my mifi use, I'd be
interested.  I'd also be interested to see if someone could accomplish with
a Raspberry Pi.

Matt


On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 8:38 AM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote:

 Here's the scenario:

 I like to go camping and often times they provide wireless access, but the
 camp site is often pretty far away from the wireless access point. I have
 a long distance wireless-G router with a high gain antenna. I have a
 second wireless-N router. Both routers are running DD-WRT.


 I should be able to connect to the camp ground's wireless with the high
 gain antenna using the Wireless-G router with a DHCP assign IP address. I
 should then be able to NAT to my own local subnet and be able to connect
 the Wireless-N to my local subnet and provide access to phones, tablets,
 and laptops.

 If these were standard linux boxes, this would be fairly easy, but the
 standard tools don't seem available on DD-WRT's shell.

 Has anyone done this? Got a good link? (I have googled, but the examples
 I've found aren't quite right or don't really work.)

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Re: [Discuss] Sync Revisited

[Matt Shields]

Did you try ownCloud?  It's a self-hosted replacement for Dropbox.  They
even have some built in apps, so I can use the web interface when I don't
have my computer or phone to log in and edit documents similar to Google
Apps.

Matt


On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 7:07 PM, Richard Pieri richard.pi...@gmail.com
wrote:

 At this point in time I've mostly given up on automated sync systems.
 Too many little problems for me to deal with.

 I dropped Dropbox a while back because, quite frankly, there's about
 zero security to it. Anything based on third-party cloud storage is
 automatically on my non-starter list these days, especially after the
 Code Spaces breach.

 I like the idea of BitTorrent Sync, how it goes about synchronizing
 arbitrary directories. The startup times and memory footprint, however,
 make it a poor tool for large-scale synchronization. By large I mean
 half-TB worth of data and hundreds of thousands of files on up.

 I gave Syncthing a try now that it's moved beyond the don't use this in
 production phase. I won't use it for real. It synchronizes nodes, not
 directories, and continuously spews error messages when any node in the
 group doesn't synchronize all directories under Syncthing control. The
 developer (one guy) says that's how it's supposed to work. I say that it
 a flawed design because I don't want to sync 600GB of data to my 16GB
 tablet. The developer says that he isn't changing Syncthing's behavior
 so I say that I'm not using Syncthing.

 As of this week I'm back to Unison and some little wrapper scripts.
 Nothing -- still -- does sync as well, as fast, and as securely as Unison.

 --
 Rich P.
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Re: [Discuss] Sync Revisited

[Matt Shields]

Ed,
It looks great (at least from the website) but it's not free.

What were the issues with ownCloud?

Matt


On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 10:03 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) b...@nedharvey.com
 wrote:

  From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
  bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Matt Shields
 
  Did you try ownCloud?  It's a self-hosted replacement for Dropbox.  They
  even have some built in apps, so I can use the web interface when I don't
  have my computer or phone to log in and edit documents similar to Google
  Apps.

 I have been dissatisfied with owncloud, as have many IT people I've talked
 with.  Now I use Synctuary http://conceptblossom.com
 Full disclosure:  I founded Concept Blossom and created Synctuary due to
 limitations with competing alternatives such as Boxcryptor/Encfs.

 The crypto parts are open source.  http://tinhatrandom.org and
 http://cbcrypt.org
 We haven't released the linux client yet.  It is currently top development
 priority, so it should be ready soon.

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Re: [Discuss] Sync Revisited

[Matt Shields]

It's dropbox replacement.  Gives you a GUI for management of your or your
companies files.  Also gives you a GUI file editor and you can create apps
that live on top of the system, like a calendar service.  Obviously it's
larger than what some people are looking for.

Matt


On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Richard Pieri richard.pi...@gmail.com
wrote:

 On 7/30/2014 8:06 AM, Matt Shields wrote:
  Did you try ownCloud?

 Yes. It's horrible. I mean, BTSync and Syncthing are single executables.
 Start the daemon and you're syncing files. Bang, done. ownCloud requires
 a full LAMP stack on a dedicated server and the associated
 administrative overhead.

 I'm sure that ownCloud has a purpose but that purpose is not me keeping
 files synchronized between my computers.

 --
 Rich P.
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Re: [Discuss] Selling GNU/Linux Hosting Business

[Matt Shields]

Check out webhostingtalk.com   They have a section for people looking to
sell their hosting business.  Just do due diligence to make sure whoever is
taking over your business is good.  Even though they will no longer be your
customers, the customers will still remember who you choose to care for
them in the future which will affect the rest of your business.

Matt


On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 10:06 AM, Will Rico willr...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hello everyone,

 As a side effect of my web consulting business, my company has been
 hosting websites for 15 years.  Over this time, we've transitioned away
 from web development/application work to marketing, and it makes little
 sense to continue with the technical services related to hosting.  We
 host about 80 sites and generate roughly $1500/month in income.

 I'm looking for a good home for my hosting clients and some compensation
 for selling this part of our business.  I'd be happy to provide more
 information to any interested parties.

 If anyone has any feedback or suggestions, please send them along.

 Will





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Re: [Discuss] GPS feature in cellphones?

[Matt Shields]

Having worked for McCaw Cellular aka Cellular One aka ATT Wireless
Services, I remember them doing this in the 90's.  Even if your cell phone
doesn't have GPS capabilities, the phone companies could track you using
what's called triangulation.  It's not as accurate as GPS, but it's close
enough.  I remember working next to our fraud department in Ft Lauderdale
and they would help the FBI and other law enforcement agencies track down
people doing illegal things.  It was a daily occurrence that some form of
law enforcement was in our office getting info.

Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking


Matt


On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 9:25 AM, Oliver Holmes oliverholmes...@yahoo.com
wrote:

 Hi All!

 Thank you for reading and answering my post in advance.

 My question is old voice flip phones could only be traced to the
 transmitting tower. But I understand now that GPS is built in and is active
 whether you activate it or not. So there is the potential to track you
 within three meters. Is this so?


 Oliver
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[Discuss] Antenna Signal Issues

[Matt Shields]

This is not computer or linux related but I'm hoping that someone on the
list might have some technical experience in radio signals or wireless
systems for audio engineering.

I have the following wireless equipment.  2 wireless handheld mics, 2
wireless headset mics and 8 in ear wireless monitor systems(IEM).  We're
having issues with signal dropout probably due to antenna issues, those
cheap plastic ones that come with the units.  Both the handheld and headset
mics run on the 2.4Ghz spectrum and the IEM's run on 566-608Mhz.  We have
already figured out which frequencies work best for the environment, so
that's not an issue and we don't have any conflicts with WIFI.

So the issue we think we have is range issue.  Can I buy a high gain
directional antenna and a splitter and run cables to each of the
devices(single antenna array)?  Or do I need to have the mic's and IEM's
use 2 separate antenna's since one is send and one is receive?  Or do I
need to have every system use a separate antenna?

A few years back I did something similar with my WIFI router, bought a
larger +12dbi gain omnidirectional antenna and my range almost doubled.
 The idea is that if I get a more directional antenna I should get a decent
amount of gain.

Here's the equipment I'm using:
2x Line 6 XD-V75 - handheld wireless mics
2x Line 6 XD-V55HS - headset wireless mics
8x Sennheiser EW300IEMG3-G - In Ear Wireless Monitor

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Antenna Signal Issues

[Matt Shields]

: Contents of Discuss digest...
 
 
  Today's Topics:
 
 1. Antenna Signal Issues (Matt Shields)
 2. Re: Antenna Signal Issues (Bill Horne)
 
 
  --
 
  Message: 1
  Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2014 09:25:05 -0400
  From: Matt Shields m...@mattshields.org
  To: discuss@blu.org
  Subject: [Discuss] Antenna Signal Issues
  Message-ID:
  
  caotd2yrqnrmfoxyebooxweawkco1k1wqs3ywp87uirk1v_i...@mail.gmail.com
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
 
  This is not computer or linux related but I'm hoping that someone on the
  list might have some technical experience in radio signals or wireless
  systems for audio engineering.
 
  I have the following wireless equipment.  2 wireless handheld mics, 2
  wireless headset mics and 8 in ear wireless monitor systems(IEM).  We're
  having issues with signal dropout probably due to antenna issues, those
  cheap plastic ones that come with the units.  Both the handheld and
 headset
  mics run on the 2.4Ghz spectrum and the IEM's run on 566-608Mhz.  We have
  already figured out which frequencies work best for the environment, so
  that's not an issue and we don't have any conflicts with WIFI.
 
  So the issue we think we have is range issue.  Can I buy a high gain
  directional antenna and a splitter and run cables to each of the
  devices(single antenna array)?  Or do I need to have the mic's and IEM's
  use 2 separate antenna's since one is send and one is receive?  Or do I
  need to have every system use a separate antenna?
 
  A few years back I did something similar with my WIFI router, bought a
  larger +12dbi gain omnidirectional antenna and my range almost doubled.
   The idea is that if I get a more directional antenna I should get a
 decent
  amount of gain.
 
  Here's the equipment I'm using:
  2x Line 6 XD-V75 - handheld wireless mics
  2x Line 6 XD-V55HS - headset wireless mics
  8x Sennheiser EW300IEMG3-G - In Ear Wireless Monitor
 
  Matt
 
 
  --
 
  Message: 2
  Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:37:31 -0400
  From: Bill Horne b...@horne.net
  To: BLU Discussion List discuss@blu.org
  Subject: Re: [Discuss] Antenna Signal Issues
  Message-ID: 538f3d3b.5060...@horne.net
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
 
  On 6/4/2014 9:25 AM, Matt Shields wrote:
   This is not computer or linux related but I'm hoping that someone on
 the
   list might have some technical experience in radio signals or wireless
   systems for audio engineering.
 
  Wouldn't you rather talk about DMARC? ;-)
 
   I have the following wireless equipment.  ...
  
   So the issue we think we have is range issue.  Can I buy a high gain
   directional antenna and a splitter and run cables to each of the
   devices(single antenna array)?  Or do I need to have the mic's and
 IEM's
   use 2 separate antenna's since one is send and one is receive?  Or do I
   need to have every system use a separate antenna?
 
  Splitters cost power; as much as 1/2 of your power can be lost when
  using them.
 
  Directional antennas are a double-edged sword: you get /some/added gain
  in /some/ direction, but they are never perfect, and will tend to leave
  dead spots in odd places.
 
  I suggest you start simply: elevate the transmitters and receivers above
  the floor as much as you can, for example, by placing them on top of
  emergency lights. Try to get wireless mic receivers out in the middle of
  the crowd instead of on the stage: they work better when tied to
  ceiling-mounted video projectors in the middle of the room.
 
  Let us know how well that works. Simplest is always better.
 
  Bill
 
  --
  Bill Horne
  William Warren Consulting
  339-364-8487
 
 
 
  --
 
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  End of Discuss Digest, Vol 37, Issue 2
  **
 



 --
 Thanks,
 Stu

 617-462-0552
 genuineau...@gmail.com
 blu...@netzero.net
 stuart.con...@state.ma.us

 Stuart Conner
 62 Rhodes Cir
 Hingham, MA 02043
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Re: [Discuss] Cable Modem Woes / Looking to Compare Notes

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 8:33 AM, Rick Umali rickum...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hello all,

 I'm looking to compare notes with people who use Comcast Internet.

 For the past month or so, my wife, who works from home, has complained for
 fairly regular outages with our Internet. We live in Arlington, and the
 outages happen typically between noon and 4 PM. The outages are of a long
 duration (sometimes seconds, sometimes a few minutes). She's begun to
 become very familiar with the light patterns on the cable modem, and she's
 not technical at all.

 When our TV began to exhibit tiling, we called Comcast, and the technician
 determined our signal wasn't strong enough. He put in new coax from the
 pole to the side of our house.

 A week or so after that, we contacted Comcast about our cable modem issues,
 and another technician came out, and said the signal to our cable modem was
 weak, and he took the coax from the side of the house and directly
 connected it to the cable modem.

 However, the outages continue to happen. Now Comcast has suggested we
 replace the cable modem. We're hopeful this makes our Internet stay alive.

 Has anyone had any similar experiences? My big fear is that replacing the
 cable modem won't fix anything. The other cloud hanging over me: the first
 technician said that the coax in our house walls are of an older
 generation. He recommended that we replace it, but it's something an
 electrician would have to do.

 Thank you all for any thoughts on this matter!
 --
 Rick Umali / www.rickumali.com
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A few years back I had a lot of issues with Comcast and they kept saying
there was nothing wrong.  I always have something like DynDNS setup so I
know my home IP address, so I setup Pingdom.com to monitor my home internet
connection and alert me.  I used those graphs to prove to Comcast that
there service kept going down and managed to get 2 free months of service
because of all the problems.  After that they came out and fixed the issues.

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] encrypted basic cable

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:14 PM, Tom Metro tmetro+...@gmail.com wrote:

 Daniel Barrett wrote:
  I found a similar no-set-top-box plan on FIOS for even less money,
  $10/month, switched, and never had a problem again.

 You're referring to a plan that only covers the retransmission of local
 broadcast stations (and probably public access stations), right?

 Are you using it with digital or analog tuners?

 At one time, and perhaps still currently, FIOS optical network terminals
 (ONTs) actually provided the basic channels as analog video. Something
 Comcast got rid of years ago. Given the architecture of Comcast's
 network, they had more incentive to do so, as it ate up shared bandwidth
 on their system.

 Now that the FCC has ruled that cable companies have no obligation to
 provide the basic tier as unencrypted digital, I wonder how long you'll
 be able to continue using this service without a converter box. (A
 converter box the FCC says you can be charged for, after 2 years.)

 The cable companies cited faster service and lower technician costs as
 the main reason why they wanted all signals encrypted so they could
 electronically alter your subscription level. A laughable claim, once
 you see what the ONTs are capable of.

 Comcast could install a box at the termination point at your house,
 which like an ONT spits out unencrypted analog and digital video for
 no-set-top-box service. But then they couldn't get away with charging
 you a per-TV rental fee for an ONT or upsell you on pay-per-view and
 other services that require a set-top-box.

 Showing once again that the FCC are either chumps, or are willingly
 doing what's most profitable for the industry they supposedly regulate,
 rather than in the best interest of the public.

  -Tom

 --
 Tom Metro
 Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
 Enterprise solutions through open source.
 Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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If you have any cable package with comcast (basic or other) you can use the
HDHomeRun to decrypt their signal and do what you want with it.  I have a
macmini running EyeTV for my dvr service and when I'm not using my tv I
have an EyeTV iPad app which I can use to watch tv.

Matt
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[Discuss] Patch/Server management software

[Matt Shields]

Anyone know of software that will give me a dashboard of my servers in
my network, what software is installed on them, what software needs to
be updated and let me target a remote update for those pieces of
software.  Say for example there's an SSH update for my CentOS 5.6
boxes, I hit one button and all those remote machines update that
package.  Or there is a Windows update for IIS, again one button push
tells those hosts to apply that update.

Also, it would be ideal that this software would have a dashboard that
can be used in our NOC to show threat level

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Patch/Server management software

[Matt Shields]

Love puppet for config management, but last time I used Puppet it was
servers checking in to see what it should do not me seeing what needs
to be updating and selectively updating what I want and when I want.

Matt


On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Drew Van Zandt
drew.vanza...@gmail.com wrote:
 You mean something like Puppet or Chef?  Or something orthogonal to those
 features?

 http://bitfieldconsulting.com/puppet-vs-chef

 Drew Van Zandt
 Cam # US2010035593 (M:Liam Hopkins R: Bastian Rotgeld)
 Domain Coordinator, MA-003-D.  Masquerade aVST



 On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Matt Shields m...@mattshields.org wrote:

 Anyone know of software that will give me a dashboard of my servers in
 my network, what software is installed on them, what software needs to
 be updated and let me target a remote update for those pieces of
 software.  Say for example there's an SSH update for my CentOS 5.6
 boxes, I hit one button and all those remote machines update that
 package.  Or there is a Windows update for IIS, again one button push
 tells those hosts to apply that update.

 Also, it would be ideal that this software would have a dashboard that
 can be used in our NOC to show threat level

 Matt
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Re: [Discuss] On-site backups revisited - rsnapshot vs. CrashPlan

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 4:40 PM, Rich Braun ri...@pioneer.ci.net wrote:

 I wrote last month a query about CrashPlan free peer-to-peer software from
 Code42.  I failed to get satisfaction from the vendor, even though the CEO
 of
 Code42 made a response, you can view the thread at

 https://crashplan.zendesk.com/entries/64160-How-do-I-request-a-full-integrity-check
 ; he didn't follow up any further though.

 I am developing an alternative strategy based on suggestions from BLU.
  Here's
 what I posted at the CrashPlan forum about that:

 I haven't yet found a suitable replacement for CrashPlan (peer-to-peer) off
 the shelf, but here's the strategy I'm using going forward:

 * Set up a central backup server using rsnapshot which can easily
   be set up to make incremental filesystem backups similar to
   CrashPlan's peer-to-peer mechanism
 * Supplement rsnapshot with a script to make sha256sum checksums of
   the archive contents, stored in a simple db table
 * Craft a monitoring script to warn me in case the archive files no
   longer match checksums, and to warn when backups are incomplete
   or stale
 * Make a tool that makes it more obvious to me whether a given local
   directory or computer is being backed up

 That's all I really wanted CrashPlan's peer-to-peer software to do, but
 it's
 hard to find out what it's actually doing under the covers.  For on-site
 backups, I don't need some of the other features that CrashPlan provides:
 encryption, de-duplication, the convenient UI.  But I do urgently need
 monitoring that goes beyond CrashPlan's weekly status emails, along with
 integrity checks that I control and understand.

 I /think/ I'm still happy with the paid remote-site backup service but I
 have
 to supplement or replace my local backups as noted above.

 ---
 I'm not sure how aggressive I have to be with the integrity checking --
 I've
 actually never had a known instance of a file getting corrupt -- but I
 figure
 it's worthwhile for a long-term archive.  Have any of you found or
 developed
 tools for this part of it, in particular doing it in conjunction with
 rsnapshot or another similar tool?

 Setting up rsnapshot is fairly easy, though at some point I want to write
 up
 and post a better how-to for the benefit of future users.  In particular
 the
 two-step process of sync and rotate isn't well-documented in the
 places I
 looked online, and you really want to have a separate script (beyond what
 cron
 does by itself) to invoke the rotation methods.

 -rich



How about OwnCloud? http://owncloud.org/features/  Setup your own Dropbox
service with no dependencies on anyone else.


Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Network monitoring tool recommendation

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Drew Van Zandt drew.vanza...@gmail.comwrote:

 Cacti, Nagios, and Intellipool are all solid for this.

 *
 Drew Van Zandt
 Cam # US2010035593 (M:Liam Hopkins R: Bastian Rotgeld)
 Domain Coordinator, MA-003-D.  Masquerade aVST
 *


 On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 12:11 PM, David Rosenstrauch dar...@darose.net
 wrote:

  We've got some machine (or machines) sucking up a lot of bandwidth on our
  network.  I'm trying to pin down exactly what, but not having much luck
 so
  far.
 
  The network's got about a dozen machines, behind a firewall.  What I'd
  like to see is a high-level view of the whole network's bandwidth usage
  over the span of, say, 24 hours.  I.e., which machines are using the most
  bandwidth (i.e., in Gb), and connections to which external sites are
  causing most of the hogging.
 
  Clearly, micro-level tools like iftop aren't going to cut it here, as
 they
  only show me a) what's using bandwidth right now, and b) an individual
  machine basis.
 
  I tried running darkstat on each machine in the network, but it didn't
  really give me what I was looking for.  Again, the reporting was
  per-machine, and so didn't provide a comprehensive view.  (Among other
  problems.)
 
  Bandwidthd looks like it might have some promise, but would take some
 time
  to set up to give me a comprehensive view.  (I.e., configure a pgsql
  database.)
 
 
  Anyone have any particular recommendations for a situation like this?
 
  Thanks,
 
  DR


Also try ntop.  Set it up on a standalone computer.  2 network ports, one
for management, one where you mirror all your traffic at the switchport to
it and have the interface in promiscuous mode.  Then it'll give you nice
charts to show you who is talking to what (ie. User1 is streaming content
from Youtube, etc).

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Network monitoring tool recommendation

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 6:29 PM, David Rosenstrauch dar...@darose.netwrote:

 On 02/06/2013 02:00 PM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:

 On 02/06/2013 12:34 PM, Matt Shields wrote:

 Also try ntop.  Set it up on a standalone computer.  2 network ports, one
 for management, one where you mirror all your traffic at the
 switchport to
 it and have the interface in promiscuous mode.  Then it'll give you nice
 charts to show you who is talking to what (ie. User1 is streaming content
 from Youtube, etc).

 Matt


 Will check that out - thanks!

 DR


 Great suggestion on ntop!  Looks like what I need.


 Just one thing I'm not sure about with it, though:

 It seems like the intention is that you would run ntop on your gateway
 machine (which all traffic on the network passes through) and that way get
 full stats for the entire network.

 However, that's not the setup I have.  I do have a gateway, but it's our
 firewall box, which I can't run ntop on.  The machine I am running it on is
 our ssh entrypoint into the network.  But the other machines on the network
 can initiate connections directly to the Internet through firewall without
 going through the ssh entrypoint.  So I'm thinking that by running ntop on
 the ssh entrypoint box, it's not going to actually be seeing all the
 incoming or outgoing traffic for the network, and so won't be able to
 report on it accurately.

 Am I right on this?  And if so, how best to work around this?  (Without
 having to run an instance of ntop on every machine in the network.)

 Thanks,


 DR
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I have a separate machine that I use for ntop, snort, tcpdump, nessus and
other monitoring tools.  It has 2 nics, one is management (ssh, http, etc)
and the second is set to promiscuous mode and connected to my core switch.
 On the core switch I have that port be a mirror of the main link.  So all
traffic in and out of the network is mirrored to my monitoring server where
I do analysis on what's going on.

Matt
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[Discuss] Boston CO's

[Matt Shields]

Anyone have a list of CO's (Telco Central Office) in the city of Boston?  I
know there's one at 1 Summer St and 300 Congress.  I'm looking for a list
of all CO's for a project I'm working on.


Matt
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Re: [Discuss] webmin

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 1:08 PM, Mark Woodward ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote:

 I am setting up a server for a fairly technical guy, not a admin level
 guy, but a smart kid that can do/figure out most tasks, and I also trust
 that he has the temperament to recognize and call me before he does
 anything *bad*. Generally speaking, of course.

 The webmin package seems to be a very powerful admin package and I've
 noticed similarities between it and the D-Link NAS I have.

 My question for the group

 Has anyone used it? Are there better options? How's the security? General
 opinions?


A long time ago when I was first learning linux it was the best thing, but
if I ever encountered a linux admin now that was using it I wouldn't let
them touch any of my boxes.

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Travelling abroad taking technology

[Matt Shields]

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Rich Braun ri...@pioneer.ci.net wrote:

 I learned something about international shipping this year. Know why we
 don't make much in the USA anymore? Because a couple of companies have
 built an oligopoly of shipping services: the costs are incredible, and the
 paperwork burden is horrendous.

 I moved into a house vacated by a Taiwanese friend. He asked me to ship a
 few things. My jaw dropped at the price quoted by UPS: anyone in China or
 Hong Kong or most places in Asia can send a package to the USA for a few
 dollars; we have to spend tens to hundreds going the other way.

 I tried sending a laptop battery at a downtown UPS store. After 20 minutes
 of writing up my order, the store manager cancelled it, apologizing that he
 didn't have the precisely correct hazmat label to get past the (American)
 bureaucrats to make it across our border.

 At work, it took about 5 weeks to transfer 2 boxes of embedded-systems
 equipment to the office of one of our contractors in India.

 So: you're better off hand-carrying equipment than mailing it. I look out
 at the harbor wistfully, looking at Chinese-flagged container ships filled
 with Chinese Christmas goodies as they arrived earlier this month, empty
 steel boxes going back the other way.

 YMMV.

 -rich


My 2 load balancers that I shipped over a month ago have just been shipped
back to me.  We provided them the original invoice which showed we paid
$100k for them a couple years ago.  This would be what we'd pay for them if
they were lost to get the latest model with support/replacement.  UK
customs said our price was wrong, to send an eBay page with what they go
for used.  The current value (without support/replacement) is around $5k.
 So custom's told FedEx to ship them back.

Anyone have experience taking servers/network gear on the plane with them?
 What should I expect as far as taxes and penalties?  etc?

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] satellite Internet vs. fixed wireless

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Dan Ritter d...@randomstring.org wrote:

 On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 04:54:13PM -0500, Tom Metro wrote:
  It makes you wonder what happened to fixed wireless around here? People
  were all excited about it back around 2000. I think there are still a
  few companies in the Boston area doing expensive fixed-wireless links
  for medium+ businesses. Nothing for consumers or small businesses. It
  seems like we got distracted by Wimax, which had more technical
  challenges dealing with mobile end-points, was undercut by cheap cable
  Internet, and increasingly cheaper 3G and now 4G cell data.

 I had TowerStream service in Cambridge in 2003-2004. At the time it was
 terrible: high packet loss, worse packet loss in rainstorms or with high
 winds, service randomly out. It was very fast to install,
 though, and priced reasonably (at the time.)

 Their website currently advertises a special price of $500/month for
 5Mb/s service. That's... not good. If you're in a Cogent-lit building,
 you can get 100Mb/s for $1000/month. If you are in a facility already
 served by another major ISP, you can probably get prices around $15-20
 per Mb/s. Local loop charges can be nasty, if you have to pay them, but
 you are still unlikely to have to pay $100 per Mb/s...

 -dsr-

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Their service has gotten better.  I currently use it at my office as a
redundant connection.  Their prices do come down at the higher speeds.

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] data caps

[Matt Shields]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 3:13 AM, Tom Metro tmetro+...@gmail.com wrote:

 Lets move on from DRM and GPL to another topic we all love - data caps!

 The clips and commentary below became too long, so I'll provide a tl;dr
 summary up top, and pose a question for discussion. Here's the premise:
 data caps are not about solving network congestion, they're about
 increasing revenues and staving off competition from other content
 providers; data delivery has gotten increasingly more profitable for
 ISPs as their delivery costs have dropped and their investment in
 infrastructure has shrunk; the lack of competition permits this to happen.

 Read further below if you want to see the articles that support the above.

 Given this, if you were choosing a broadband provider, and you didn't
 want to reward companies that follow these practices, who would you
 pick? While you can currently avoid data caps by selecting a
 business-class service, you're still rewarding the same companies with
 your business, and what's to stop them from introducing caps later?

 In the sub-$200/month price range, there doesn't seem to be an
 alternative to cable and telco fiber, unless you are willing to slow
 down to DSL speeds, or happen to be in one of the few areas where there
 is a fixed wireless provider.


Sorry for not reading the whole article, I promise I will later.  While I
would love to punish the companies that abuse datacaps in favor of profit.
 Some people do not have much of a choice when it comes to what service is
available.  In Quincy we have Comcast.  If you don't want Comcast you
either need to go with Clear.com whose service stinks (they don't have a
cap but they throttle) or buy a traditional T circuit which is really
expensive.  I would love for there to be more competition but in this state
the individual towns/cities make their own deals with the companies for
profit sharing.  Quincy happened to strike a good deal with Comcast and
they do not want to renegotiate with them to allow competitors because
their percentage per household in the city will go down and thereby cutting
some of the revenue for the town.

Matt
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[Discuss] Travelling abroad taking technology

[Matt Shields]

I have buildout a datacenter in London in January and I've ordered
everything I need directly to the datacenter because of everything I've
heard about dealing with customs.  The only exception of a single piece of
equipment we forgot that probably won't make it if I ship it now (a Cisco
serial console server).  I know that I can carry my laptop on the plane and
go through custom's fine, but is it possible to carry something like that
with me or pack it in a suitcase and go through customs?

Matt
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Re: [Discuss] Travelling abroad taking technology

[Matt Shields]

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 11:02 AM, Mark Woodward ma...@mohawksoft.comwrote:

 What am I missing? Why can't you FedEx it?


 On 12/31/2012 10:36 AM, Matt Shields wrote:

 I have buildout a datacenter in London in January and I've ordered
 everything I need directly to the datacenter because of everything I've
 heard about dealing with customs.  The only exception of a single piece of
 equipment we forgot that probably won't make it if I ship it now (a Cisco
 serial console server).  I know that I can carry my laptop on the plane
 and
 go through custom's fine, but is it possible to carry something like that
 with me or pack it in a suitcase and go through customs?

 Matt



My understanding is Fedex or UPS'ing it would take a month to get through
customs.  That's just what I've been told.

Matt
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[Discuss] [Position-available] Sr and Jr Linux/Network Engineer

[Matt Shields]

We have a couple positions open for both Sr  Jr Linux/Network System
Engineers.  Below is the description of the Sr position. Please contact me
directly if interested.


Location: South Boston (near South Station)

Compensation: commensurate with experience

Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, 401k, plus more

Job Type: Permanent, Direct Hire

*Position Overview:*

The Sr Network/Systems Engineer is responsible for building, implementing,
and managing products and solutions for Bullhorn's production environment,
while ensuring 24/7 availability.  The position will require an expert
understanding of network stack along with excellent understanding of Linux
and Windows services and configuration.  The ideal candidate will have
proven technical experience with a solid foundation of networking skills
along with a positive attitude.

*Responsibilities:*

   - Design, build, implement, and manage products and solutions for
   Bullhorn's production environment
   - Monitor and maintain all production system equipment and services
   - Participate in the planning and coordination of new product deployment
   and enhancement projects, ensuring preparedness in servicing the product
   - Ensure 24/7 availability of the production application environment.
   This will include 24/7 on-call responsibilities on a rotating basis.
   - Document technical environments, processes and procedures, testing
   plans, project plans.
   - Provide direct support to Software Development, Quality Engineering,
   Customer Support, Professional Services and third party vendors as needed
   to resolve production problems
   - Maintain network and systems configurations for national and
   international data centers.


*Required Skills and Experience:*

   - Bachelor?s Degree or equivalent experience required.
   - 5+ years total experience as a network engineer
   - 5+ years total experience with systems administration, as well as
   hardware and software troubleshooting
   - Must work well in high pressure environmentsExcellent written and
   verbal communication
   - Analytical and detail oriented
   - Have senior/expert knowledge of Cisco routers, switches, load
   balancing and security concepts; BGP/RIP/OSPF routing concepts,
   TCP/IP/ARP/MAC/Spanning-tree issues and configuration, VPN technologies,
   troubleshooting VLAN or physical connectivity using Wireshark/Tcpdump
   - Create and update network documentation/diagrams
   - Redhat or CentOS linux
   - JBoss/TomCat/Apache
   - Shell, PHP and Perl scripting
   - Previous experience in a SaaS and/or high volume website environment
   preferred

*Skills that are considered a plus*

   - Cisco or Juniper network certification (CCNA or CCNP)
   - Experience with pfSense and Cisco ASA firewalls
   - Experience with OpenVPN
   - Monitoring using Nagios, Cacti and Splunk/SyslogNG/Greylog
   - Open Source Project experience
   - Previous oncall experience



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Re: [Discuss] 'nother question

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 4:14 PM, Derek Martin inva...@pizzashack.org wrote:

 On Tue, Aug 07, 2012 at 07:10:44PM -0400, dan moylan wrote:
   Maybe add the verbose option and post the output to the list.
 
  ok, here 'tis:
Executing: program /usr/bin/ssh host 192.168.0.103, user moylan,
 command scp -v -t -- .
OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1, OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to 192.168.0.103 [192.168.0.103] port 22.
debug1: connect to address 192.168.0.103 port 22: Connection refused
ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.103 port 22: Connection refused
lost connection

 Seems as though there's no server running on 192.168.0.103, port 22.
 But you say ssh works?  Perhaps you should repeat this exercise with
 ssh.  Basically scp == ssh, so one would expect them both to work, or
 both to not work.

 Is it perhaps that when you ran ssh, it was in the opposite direction?

 --
 Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
 -=-=-=-=-
 This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will
 result in
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I missed the first part of the conversation, but here's a few things you
can check.  Do you have to the server?  If so, check netstat -lpn | grep
ssh to see if ssh is running on port 22.  Then try using tcpdump -i any
port 22 to see if you can see any host trying to connect on port 22.  You
can check iptables to make sure that ssh isn't being blocked.  Check
/etc/hosts.deny to make sure that your IP isn't being blocked by
tcp_wrappers.  On the client, try nmap -sT serverIP to see if your client
can see port 22 open.



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Re: [Discuss] 'nother question

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 10:07 PM, Tom Metro tmetro+...@gmail.com wrote:

 Matt Shields wrote:
  On the client, try nmap -sT serverIP to see if your client
  can see port 22 open.

 FYI, you can test SSH connectivity more simply like:

 % telnet ssh-server 22
 Trying 192.168.0.123...
 Connected to ssh-server.
 Escape character is '^]'.
 SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_...

 Then hit the escape character and type 'cl' and enter to exit.

 It's a nice simple sanity test that can be ran from just about any client.

  -Tom

 --
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 Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
 Enterprise solutions through open source.
 Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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True, there are lots of different ways to test like using netcat (nc
serverip 22).  Just trying to show options.  nmap, tcpdump, netstat are
some good tools for people to know.


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Re: [Discuss] iPhone vs. Android - the backup problem

[Matt Shields]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Kent Borg kentb...@borg.org wrote:

 Matt Shields wrote (privately, but I think it is of general interest and
 not confidential):

  Just an FYI for anyone who uses iTunes and buy's apps and music from
 Apple.  If you have lost your content for whatever reason, iTunes allows
 you to redownload load all your content again.  I believe they started
 doing this last fall.


 I recently bought my wife an Ipad (she loves it), and I noticed they are
 willing to play (or download) all her Itunes-purchased songs from the cloud.


 -kb, the Kent who is of the Android persuasion.


iTunes Match is different than downloading previously purchased content.
 If you buy anything from iTunes, you can download it as much as you want
to any of your devices (iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Mac's, etc) if you ever
delete it.

iTunes Match is a yearly fee to take any songs you didn't purchase from
Apple and they will match them in the cloud for you so you can stream or
download them to any device.  That way you don't have to rip/copy them to
all your computers


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[Discuss] [Position-available] Sr and Jr Linux System Engineers

[Matt Shields]

We have a couple positions open for both Sr  Jr Linux System Engineers.
Please contact me directly if interested.

Position Overview: The Systems Engineer is responsible for building,
implementing, and managing products and solutions for production
environment, while ensuring 24/7 availability. The position will require an
excellent understanding of LAMP stack technologies along with windows
services and configuration. The ideal candidate will have proven technical
experience with a solid foundation of operating system and networking
skills along with a positive attitude.

Location: South Boston (near South Station)

Compensation: commensurate with experience

Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, 401k, plus more

Job Type: Permanent, Direct Hire

Responsibilities:
* Design, build, implement, and manage products and solutions for
production environment
* Monitor and maintain all production system equipment and services
* Participate in the planning and coordination of new product deployment
and enhancement projects, ensuring preparedness in servicing the product
* Ensure 24/7 availability of the production application environment. This
will include 24/7 on-call responsibilities on a rotating basis.
* Develop system analysis and reporting tools and tools for task automation
* Document technical environments, processes and procedures, testing plans,
project plans.
* Provide direct support to Software Development, Quality Engineering,
Customer Support, Professional Services and third party vendors as needed
to resolve production problems
* Maintain network and systems configurations for national and
international data centers.

Required Skills and Experience:
* Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience required.
* 3+ years total experience with systems administration, as well as
hardware and software troubleshooting
* Must work well in high pressure environments
* Redhat or CentOS
* Windows server 2003, 2008
* Solid understanding of TCP/IP, network devices such as switches, hubs,
routers, firewalls
* JBoss/TomCat/Apache
* Shell, PHP, Perl or Python scripting
* Previous experience in a SaaS and/or high volume website environment
preferred
* Experience in automation and managing large server environments

Skills that are considered a plus:
* LDAP/Kerberos authentication against Microsoft Active Directory
* SAN and NAS technologies (iSCSI, FCP, CIFS, NFS, etc)
* Java/Tomcat
* Open Source Project experience
* Previous oncall experience
* Puppet/CFEngine
* Splunk/SyslogNG
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Re: [Discuss] Web Maintenance software (for Windows)

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 7:18 PM, Richard Pieri richard.pi...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Jun 7, 2012, at 7:37 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
 
  The only way he is going to do it is through DreamWeaver, period. I
  always found light colonels to be stubborn.

 Here's the thing: he isn't doing you a favor by managing the site.  You're
 doing him a favor by hosting it.  Make it clear to him that he must adapt
 to your security model.  He can do that by using a tool that you provide or
 he can buy himself a Dreamweaver upgrade.

 Or he can find himself a new host.

 Period.

 --Rich P.


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As I and someone else mentioned have him check out ExpanDrive.  He won't
even notice that he's connecting to another server, it'll just make the
sftp/ssh session appear as a network drive which he edit as if it were a
local drive.  I have a few designers doing this and it works great on both
Mac and Windows.


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[Discuss] Emergency consultant needed

[Matt Shields]

I wish I had the time to do this myself but I'm booked solid.  I have a
friend who is in need of a consultant.  They know the office environment is
Windows, not sure what the office network is.  They also have some cloud
services at Amazon but they're not sure what is hosted there(Windows/Linux
or AWS specific services).  They will need probably a couple hours this
weekend, then to come into the office during work hours.  Since they don't
know what they're network consists of it would be good to have someone that
knows Windows, Linux and networking.  Someone to do a complete audit.

Sorry for being so vague but can discuss more about the opportunity if
anyone is interested.  Pay is billable by the hour and I'm pretty sure
they'll pay whatever to get the help they need.  If interested, email me
with your contact number.

Matthew Shields
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Re: [Discuss] Bourne Shell variable assignment question

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote:

 I have not done my homework on this as much as I should.
 A coworker needs to set variable names and values input from another
 file. Normally, I would source that file, but he specifically wants to
 parse the file.
 So, in simple terms, he has a file that has something like:
 var1=foo

 Instead of sourcing he wants to parse the file using readline so he
 reads the variable name, then he wants to assign a variable of the same
 name.
 So, in his code he has something like
 readline
 ... - code to parse the line
 Where varname contains the variable name(eg var1), and value contains
 the value(eg foo)

 --
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 Boston Linux and Unix
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Maybe not the most elegant way, but it works.  See below

Matts-MacBook-Pro:temp matt$ cat test1.sh
#!/bin/bash
var1=dog
var2=cat
var3=cow

Matts-MacBook-Pro:temp matt$ cat test2.sh
#!/bin/bash
myvar=`cat test1.sh | grep var2 | cut -d= -f2`
echo $myvar

Matts-MacBook-Pro:temp matt$ bash test2.sh
cow

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Re: [Discuss] Backing up LVM partitions using snapshots

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 2:00 PM, Richard Pieri richard.pi...@gmail.comwrote:

 On 12/14/2011 12:34 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:

 I've been watching the (second?) incarnation of this thread for a
 while now and I think that I see your point.  I wonder if the TRIM
 functionality that is being added to filesystems in order to handle
 SSDs could help with this.


 I don't think so.  The problem I describe is that once a dump goes missing
 then any differentials against it will have inconsistencies between the
 file data and the file metadata structures.  TRIMming freed blocks won't
 make this go away.  It might make things worse what with dangling inode
 lists pointing to de-allocated SSD blocks.


 As an aside, enterprise backup systems like Amanda and Bacula and TSM do,
 indeed, maintain databases of backed up files and what media they are on.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought differentials are a backup of all
things that have changed since the last full.  Incrementals are changes
since the last incremental, differential or full, whichever happened last.

For example one my SQL Servers has a schedule that is a full once per week
(wednesday's), a differential every night (except wednesday), then
incrementals every 10 minutes.  If I want to restore up to this past Monday
at 9AM I would take the full from last wednesday, then the differential
from Sunday night/Monday morning, then I would apply all incrementals from
the time of the differential up to 9AM on Monday.  What I don't have to do
is apply every differential (Thursday, Friday, Saturday  Sunday).

Also, I believe I mentioned this in the last LVM discussion.  When you
snapshot LVM it does not make a copy of the original content.  It marks all
blocks in that original volume as read-only until the snapshot is released.
 Any new writes to either the original volume or the newly created snapshot
happen in the scratch space.  You can take as many snapshots as long as
you monitor your scratch space to make sure it's not filled up.  During a
snapshot whether you access the original volume (+ changes) or the snapshot
(+changes) it is on the fly deciding to pull blocks from the original
volume and the scratch space to recreate what you're asking for.

One thing to keep in mind when using snapshots is if your scratch space
goes to 100%, then all snapshots are released and all changes to the
original volume (which up to this point are being held in scratch space)
are written back to the original volume.

Allocating scratch space is done by not assigning to any logical volumes,
and deciding how much to allocate is hugely dependent on amount of changes
to your data over the amount of time that you keep your snapshots online
and the number of snapshots and whether or not you also modify your
snapshots.  I've always told people if you don't have time to build, test,
rebuild until you get it right, then just overallocate.

Now, some cool tricks you can do with LVM are adding more drives to your
volume and growing your volume on the fly.  If you decide that you want to
go from a 500GB volume to a 1TB volume, you can do an add and migrate of
your data.  All new data will be written to the new drive and during idle
time blocks on your old drive will be migrated to the new volume.  Once
data is off your old volume it can be removed from the group and removed.


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Re: [Discuss] Competition of broadband

[Matt Shields]

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote:

 On 12/02/2011 07:44 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:

 I see that Bill H. says that TV service isn't an issue for him, but it is
 one. In fact, TV service is the root of how broadband is deployed in
 Massachusetts.

 Back in the 1970s, when cable TV was new around here, the MA legislature
 decided to leave service carrier choice up to individual cities and towns.
  Most towns then proceeded to pick one exclusive provider, granting the
 chosen providers a limited monopoly.  The primary reason for this is so
 that all residents have comparable TV service, particularly in the
 community access TV channels.  Two different cable companies wouldn't
 necessarily share community access facilities, after all, thus most towns
 picked one provider.  My town happened to pick Continental Cablevision.

 Then Cablevision's assets in MA were acquired by MediaOne.  These assets
 were acquired in turn by Southwestern Bell along with several other cable
 companies back in 1999 or thenabouts.  The collected assets were branded
 ATT Broadband.  This marked the end of cable TV competition in MA.
  Comcast acquired all of ATT Broadband when SBC divested itself of the
 TV/broadband services.

 This is what many of us are stuck with.  Comcast lobbies the various
 local governments where it operates with this tactic, demonstrating how
 competing cable TV providers would be detrimental to their communities.
  Mayor Tom in particular is very, very convinced by Comcast's lobbying
 efforts.

  I believe that ATT Broadband was divested by ATT before Southwestern
 Bell acquired ATT.

 In any case, the issue today is that TV, Broadband, and Telephone are, in
 essence, much different today than in the past. Back during deregulation,
 the electric power monopolies were broken up into delivery companies (eg.
 NSTAR), and generation companies. (For instance Pilgrim Nuke is owned by
 Entergy). However, there was a time when broadband companies were required
 to use their cables to allow other services, such as Earthlink over
 Comcast. Additionally, phone and cable companies are handled differently..
 Verizon is a phone provider who offers TV and Internet services, and
 Comcast is a Cable TV company that offers phone and Internet services.
 Additionally, electircal power companies could also use their cables to
 provide services, but federal law prohibits that from back in the days when
 ATT was the only phone company.

 The bottom line is there is a hodgepodge of old laws on the books.

 --
 Jerry Feldmang...@blu.org
 Boston Linux and Unix
 PGP key id:3BC1EB90
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I don't believe the internet over power was a federal issue.  FPL in
Florida has been doing this for quite some time, as far back as late 90's
when I lived there.  I do know that at the time they were having other
issues with how the technology worked.  Not to mention it wasn't cheap yet.

For more info see http://www.fplfibernet.com/

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Re: [Discuss] Any Subversion geniuses out there?

[Matt Shields]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 8:11 AM, Edward Ned Harvey b...@nedharvey.com wrote:

  From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
  bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Matt Shields
 
   What I was wondering is it possible in Subversion when a changeset is
  being committed that a hook could be used to change the mime-type.  So if
  the file being committed is a *.sql, then it would override whatever
  mime-type the client is saying and apply text/x-sql.

 This question will be best answered by the subversion-users mailing list,
 http://subversion.apache.org/mailing-lists.html
 but let's see what we can say about it here.

 The mime type, I believe, is determined by the svn client, and it's
 determined by file contents.  What do you get, if you run linux file on
 the file?  What do you see if you try to open the file in vim or emacs?

 I'm sure you can change the mime-type as a precommit or postcommit hook
 (probably best precommit) but I'm almost equally sure that it's not what
 you
 want to do.  When they detect the contents and select a mime type, the
 reason they're doing it is because svn internally employs all sorts of diff
 and compression algorithms, to optimize both the network traffic and disk
 storage.  If you go overriding the mime types against its natural wishes,
 you run the risk of ...  Suboptimizing performance.  Is probably the
 diplomatic way of saying effing everything up.

 Another option you might consider, I believe, is that they have a mechanism
 of some kind to allow you to inject a custom client-side diff utility for
 certain files or mime types or something like that.  You might configure it
 so that your client doing the diff might run something like the SQL
 equivalent of dos2unix to convert a file format and then diff it, or
 something like that.  Of course the odds of success doing this are
 diminished by trac.  You might just have to use something like tortoisesvn
 or whatever to perform these diffs.

 In fact, tortoisesvn does some pretty excellent diffing.  What happens if
 you try diffing with tortoise?


Yes, I'm aware of that, and I can put something in each client's svnconfig
to override this behavior for specific filetypes.  I don't want to have to
do that since everytime we get a new developer it's one more step I have to
remember to do to their dev machine.

The issue is SQL Server Management Studio is encoding it weird and
TortoiseSVN is then taking that as it being a binary and not a text file.
 See the two outputs of file.  The first has been fixed by me forcing it to
be proper encoding and the proper mime-type.  The second was created in
SSMS and committed.

dbo.Proc_.sql: Little-endian UTF-16 Unicode c program text,
with CRLF, CR line terminators
dbo.Proc_.sql: ASCII c program text, with CRLF line
terminators

Yes, diff's in TortoiseSVN are great, same with Unix command line.  The
issue is the Dir of Tech prefer's to use Trac to review all changes, and
because it's encoded wrong, that means svn is applying the wrong mime-type
which causes Trac's diff feature not to work.

In this case I don't believe there is any harm forcing svn to use a
specific mime-type since they are both text. I'll check out the
check-mime-type.pl that Greg mentioned.

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Re: [Discuss] Any Subversion geniuses out there?

[Matt Shields]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:01 AM, John Abreau abre...@gmail.com wrote:

 I've seen this before with text files on Windows. Just changing the
 MIME type wil not work, because the files are encoded in UTF-16
 (note *NOT* UTF-8). 16-bit characters, not 8-bit characters. If you
 change the MIME type to force it to be interpreted as normal text,
 the file will have a null byte between each and every character.

 When I had to deal with those issues at a previous job, I used iconv(1)
 in my shell scripts to convert the MS text to UTF-8.

iconv --from-code=UTF-16 --to-code=UTF-8 ms-text-file.txt 
 plain-text-file.txt

 I also ran it through tr -d '\r' to scrape off the ^M at the end of
 each line before dropping it into the output file, but that's a separate
 issue.


 On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Matt Shields m...@mattshields.org wrote:
  On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 8:11 AM, Edward Ned Harvey b...@nedharvey.com
 wrote:
 
   From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
   bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Matt Shields
  
What I was wondering is it possible in Subversion when a changeset is
   being committed that a hook could be used to change the mime-type.
  So if
   the file being committed is a *.sql, then it would override whatever
   mime-type the client is saying and apply text/x-sql.
 
  This question will be best answered by the subversion-users mailing
 list,
  http://subversion.apache.org/mailing-lists.html
  but let's see what we can say about it here.
 
  The mime type, I believe, is determined by the svn client, and it's
  determined by file contents.  What do you get, if you run linux file
 on
  the file?  What do you see if you try to open the file in vim or emacs?
 
  I'm sure you can change the mime-type as a precommit or postcommit hook
  (probably best precommit) but I'm almost equally sure that it's not what
  you
  want to do.  When they detect the contents and select a mime type, the
  reason they're doing it is because svn internally employs all sorts of
 diff
  and compression algorithms, to optimize both the network traffic and
 disk
  storage.  If you go overriding the mime types against its natural
 wishes,
  you run the risk of ...  Suboptimizing performance.  Is probably the
  diplomatic way of saying effing everything up.
 
  Another option you might consider, I believe, is that they have a
 mechanism
  of some kind to allow you to inject a custom client-side diff utility
 for
  certain files or mime types or something like that.  You might
 configure it
  so that your client doing the diff might run something like the SQL
  equivalent of dos2unix to convert a file format and then diff it, or
  something like that.  Of course the odds of success doing this are
  diminished by trac.  You might just have to use something like
 tortoisesvn
  or whatever to perform these diffs.
 
  In fact, tortoisesvn does some pretty excellent diffing.  What happens
 if
  you try diffing with tortoise?
 
 
  Yes, I'm aware of that, and I can put something in each client's
 svnconfig
  to override this behavior for specific filetypes.  I don't want to have
 to
  do that since everytime we get a new developer it's one more step I have
 to
  remember to do to their dev machine.
 
  The issue is SQL Server Management Studio is encoding it weird and
  TortoiseSVN is then taking that as it being a binary and not a text file.
   See the two outputs of file.  The first has been fixed by me forcing it
 to
  be proper encoding and the proper mime-type.  The second was created in
  SSMS and committed.
 
  dbo.Proc_.sql: Little-endian UTF-16 Unicode c program text,
  with CRLF, CR line terminators
  dbo.Proc_.sql: ASCII c program text, with CRLF line
  terminators
 
  Yes, diff's in TortoiseSVN are great, same with Unix command line.  The
  issue is the Dir of Tech prefer's to use Trac to review all changes, and
  because it's encoded wrong, that means svn is applying the wrong
 mime-type
  which causes Trac's diff feature not to work.
 
  In this case I don't believe there is any harm forcing svn to use a
  specific mime-type since they are both text. I'll check out the
  check-mime-type.pl that Greg mentioned.
 
  Matthew Shields
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[Discuss] Any Subversion geniuses out there?

[Matt Shields]

It's a long story but basically we have a number of developers that all use
MS Sql Server Management Studio to write/edit their schema (along with
other tools such as Visual Studio, notepad, etc).  For some reason when you
create a .sql script using SSMS even though it's text it does some funky
encoding and when the developer checks in the code it adds the mime-type of
application/octet-stream (a binary file).  Because of this we can't review
diff's directly in Trac, we need to do them one by one on our computer.
 Using any other tool to create the .sql files is fine but it's something
about SSMS.

Now, getting the developers to use another tools isn't an option.  Adding a
setting to their svn config is a pain because as developers come and go
it's an additional step that needs to happen to every computer install.
 What I was wondering is it possible in Subversion when a changeset is
being committed that a hook could be used to change the mime-type.  So if
the file being committed is a *.sql, then it would override whatever
mime-type the client is saying and apply text/x-sql.

If this is possible, anyone have an example?  I'm sort of familiar with the
hooks and how they work, I installed one that emails me when a commit
happens with the changes, but would just need to know how to do a mime-type
change based on file extension.

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Re: [Discuss] Howdy

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:14 PM, John Abreau abre...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote:

  I live in Newton where we have Vz (FIOS), Comcast, and RCN. In general my
  Comcast service has been excellent with any outage not their fault.


 The difference is that you live in a town where there is actually some
 competition in the broadband market, so the companies *have* to provide
 good service in order to retain customers.

 Most towns give a monopoly to one broadband provider, who then has
 no incentive to give adequate service.



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I was talking with a friend who is the LAN/WAN manager for a town here in
MA and he was involved in the negotiations with Comcast and Verizon for
that town.  Previously Comcast had an exclusive multi-year(think it was 10
or 20 years) agreement and the town received a payment for each resident
that had Comcast service.  When FIOS came out, the town went back to
Comcast and told them if they didn't want to allow Verizon in then they
would pull their rights and only allow Verizon.  I guess Comcast agreed so
they now have both.

Unfortunately, not all the towns are doing this.  In Quincy where I live,
I've heard two different stories.  I've heard that they don't have the
balls to try a renegotiation, and I've heard that the payment they get from
Comcast is quite substantial and they're happy getting the money from
Comcast and if they renegotiated the amount per subscriber could be
significantly less.

But as one person had mentioned, where there are no other alternatives you
can always sign up for Clear.com.  Since I need to be on 24x7 and can't
have Comcast being down when I need to be online, I've got a Clear.com
wireless account for backup.  $55/month for unlimited wireless service.
 Not the fastest service (although Netflix and Hulu do work fine), but it's
great for when Comcast is down or when I'm on the go and need WIFI service.

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Re: [Discuss] Security

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 4:18 PM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote:

 On 11/02/2011 01:10 PM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote:
  At my work, here are a few vending machines. One of these machines has a
  nice little antenna on it. Presumably, it communicates via cellular
  network to the vendor in order to report on usage and supplies. Yes, good
  idea. Cool.
 
  It occurs to me that this machine, most likely, did not have to go
 through
  any vetting. Not only that, I bet the grunts that stock these machines
 are
  hired more for strong backs and no criminal record.
 
  So, here we have a powered machine with external wireless connectivity on
  the premises with no actual over site. It is there 24x7, powered!
 
  Think of all the cool/evil things you could put in a vending machine with
  a wireless link. Imagine having direct access to a Linux box in almost
 any
  company you want. You could run any software you want. You could have
  wi-fi too. Could you break the company's wireless security? Could you
  monitor their wireless communications? Could you eaves drop on
  conversations near by?
 
  Everyone suspects the cleaning crew, and if you are interested in
  security, you do background checks. Almost no one cares about the vending
  machines.
 The vending machine was placed in your office by Homeland Security
 because it thinks you are a terrorist and is currently spying on you :-)

 --
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Actually it was placed there by insurance companies so they can get out of
having to pay for your medical bills.

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Re: [Discuss] lvm snapshot cloning

[Matt Shields]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 10:16 PM, Richard Pieri richard.pi...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Oct 25, 2011, at 7:51 PM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote:
 
  The snapshot has no effect on the master, and yes, we've already said and
  we already know it is a weakness in LVM that if you don't extend your
  snapshots you lose them. This can be mitigated by monitoring and
 automatic
  volume extension.

 You missed it.  This isn't about what happens to master.  It's what happens
 to b when a disappears.  If master-a-b and a disappears due to reaping
 then b becomes useless.  Or b is reaped, too.  Either way you're dealing
 with data loss.  This is why LVM will not do what you originally asked
 about.

 Monitoring has problems.  If the volume fills up faster than the monitor
 polls capacity then you lose your data.  If the volume fills up faster than
 it can be extended then you lose your data.  If the volume cannot be
 extended because the volume group has no more extents available then you
 lose your data.  Like I wrote at the start: LVM will quite happily bite your
 face off.

 Now, to address your most recent question:

 How do I back up a 1TB disk.  Think about this: how do you intend to do a
 restore from this backup?  The most important part of a backup system is
 being able to restore from backup in a timely fashion.

 I have in production a compute server with two 8TB file systems and a 9TB
 file system, all sitting on LVM volumes.  I have an automated backup that
 runs every night on this server.  It's an incremental file system backup so
 I'm only backing up the changes every night.  This is, as you might expect,
 quite faster than trying to do full backups of 25TB every night -- which I
 can't because it would take three days to do it.

 On smaller capacity volumes, in the several hundred GB range, I use
 rsnapshot to do incremental file snapshots to a storage server.  Again, I
 don't back up the raw disk partitions every time.  I only back up the
 changed files.

 In both cases -- and in fact with all my backups -- they are file level
 backups.  The reason being that if I need to restore a single file or
 directory then I don't have to rebuild the entire volume to do so.  I can
 restore as little or as much as I need to recover from a mistake or a
 disaster.

 Suppose the case of a live volume that needs to be in a frozen state for
 doing a backup.  Database servers are prime examples of this.  Here, I would
 freeze the database, make a snapshot of the underlying volume, and then thaw
 the database.  Now I can do my backup of the read-only snapshot volume
 without interfering with the running system.  I would delete the snapshot
 when the backup is complete.

 If I were using plain LVM and ext3 for my users' home directories then I
 would do something similar with read-only snapshots.  There would be no
 freeze step, and I would keep several days worth of snapshots on the file
 server to make error recovery faster than going to tape or network storage.
  As it is, I use OpenAFS which has file system snapshots so I don't need to
 do any of this and users can go back in time just by looking in .clone in
 their home directories.  I still have nightly backups to tape for long-term
 archives.

 Now, time to poke holes in your proposal.  I have a physics graduate
 student doing his thesis research project on a shared compute server along
 with a dozen others.  They collectively have 7.5TB of data on there.  This
 is a real-world case on the aforementioned compute server.  Said student
 accidentally wipes out his entire thesis project, 200GB worth of files.
  It's 9:30 PM and he needs his files by 8am or he fails his thesis defense,
 doesn't graduate and I'm looking for a new job.

 With my file level backup system I can have his files restored within a
 couple of hours at the outside without affecting anyone else's work.

 With your volume level backup system I would spend the night on Monster
 looking for a new job.  The problem with it is that I can't restore
 individual files because it isn't individual files that are backed up.  It's
 the disk blocks.  I can't just drop those backed-up blocks onto the volume.
  Here:

  master-changes-changes-changes
   \-backup

 If I dumped the backup blocks onto the volume then I'd scramble the file
 system.  Restoration would require me to replicate the entire volume at the
 block level as it was when the backup was made.  This would destroy all the
 other researchers' work done in the past however many hours since that
 backup was made.  I would fire myself for gross incompetence if I were
 relying on this kind of backup system.  It's that bad.

 It gets worse.  What happens when the whole thing fails outright?  Total
 disaster on your 1TB disk.  Now it's not just 29 minutes to restore last
 night's blocks.  It's two hours to restore the initial replica and then 30
 minutes times however many deltas have been made.  Six deltas means 5 hours
 to do a full rebuild.  I can do 

[Discuss] Any Amazon EC2 experts?

[Matt Shields]

I need a way to be able to copy around 30x Win2k3 AMI's (EBS backed) from
us-east-1 to us-west-1 weekly, so automation and ease of use would be great.
 Not looking for a extremely manual process like creating new AMI in
us-west-1, then recreating everything manually.  I've checked out
CloudyScripts (https://cloudyscripts.com/tool/show/5) and Ylastic and both
only offer support for Win2k8 or Linux.

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Re: [Discuss] Server Room Power

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote:

 One question I have is in planning. One day we received a shipment of about
 5 or 6 Intel systems from out Toronto office. We ordered a rack, switch, and
 a rack KVM. We initially plugged everything in to a wall outlet. ran fine
 until it tripped a breaker, and the breaker box was not in the computer
 room, but somewhere else on the floor where we had to call building
 management. All I knew that the wall outlets were NEMA 5-20. The solution at
 that time was to take the two 6U monsters and plug them in to separate
 outlets in the ceiling. This worked for quite a while until my boss brought
 in a system he had at home (another 4U Intel whitebox). At that time I had a
 rack power strip, and the power strip popped a breaker, but the wall circuit
 was fine. I then bought another strip to split the load. before all that I
 estimated our power usage by adding up the wattage on the power supplies
 (each was about 700W). Each wall outlet also went to a separate breaker. It
 was at this point when we were getting the HP ESX box and IT somewhat
 dictated that we get 2 240V outlets). Right now I am pulling about 15A (7 on
 one, 8 on the other). But, the critical factor is at takeoff, or when
 starting all the systems, such as after a power fail. You've got all your
 systems spinning up drives and fans. This is what we need to plan. So, I
 would need a rule of thumb that I can take the wattage of each power supply
 and figure out my maximum amps. Had I performed that calculation initially,
 I would have had fewer outages. I can't help when a truck, bus, or tree
 takes out the entire Riverside T station and us :-)


 On 10/13/2011 12:29 PM, Tom Metro wrote:

 Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

 Hold it.  P=VI is a DC rule.  Power is more complex in AC.
 What's the difference between VA and W?

 If you have inefficient power supplies, you might be overpaying 30%
 for power.

 You're referring to power factor:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Power_factorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor

   The power factor of an AC electric power system is defined as the
   ratio of the real power flowing to the load over the apparent power in
   the circuit,[1][2] and is a dimensionless number between 0 and 1
   (frequently expressed as a percentage, e.g. 0.5 pf = 50% pf).
   [...]
   Circuits containing purely resistive [loads] have a power factor of
   1.0. Circuits containing inductive or capacitive elements (electric
   motors, solenoid valves, lamp ballasts, and others ) often have a
   power factor below 1.0.

 So when PF=1.0, VA==Watts. The better the quality of your power supply,
 the closer its PF will be to 1.0. In the last decade it has become
 common for name brand computer power supplies to specify a PF as a
 selling point.

 See also:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Switching_regulator#Power_**factorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_regulator#Power_factor

 for discussion of PF with respect to computer power supplies.


  When you're talking about 208, you're talking 3-phase.

 You can attach single phase loads to a multi-phase supply, as long as
 they are balanced:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Three-phase_electric_power#**
 Single-phase_loadshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power#Single-phase_loads


  If you want to use 3-phase 208, you need a special power supply in the
 server.  Generally you don't have such a thing...

 Old power supplies used to have a 120V/240V mechanical switch. Most
 modern switching supplies will work fine with any input voltage from
 like 90V up to 250V (check your supply specifications). The ability to
 handle a wide input range is a byproduct of the switching regulator
 design:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Switching_regulatorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_regulator

  -Tom



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NEMA 5-20 is both the connector type, but also tells you it's a 20amp
circuit.  To be safe and up to fire code you CANNOT use more than 80% of
your available power.  So for a 20amp circuit you can use up to 16amps.
 Keep in mind if you have two different 20amp circuits to distribute the
load of a rack of servers and you're hovering at 16amps (actually anything
more than 8-9), when you lose power on circuit 1, you will trip circuit 2
because it cannot handle all the load.  Remember that dual power supply
servers draw half the load from both power supplies, so when one fails it
draws full load from the circuit that's still up.

Also, calculating server amperage is not an exact science.  Even though
Watts = Amps x Volts, it's possible that your server with two 1000 watt
power supplies is 

Re: [Discuss] Server Room Power

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:46 PM, Edward Ned Harvey b...@nedharvey.comwrote:

  From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
  bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Matt Shields
 
  A long time ago I got fed up with trying to calculate amperage, so I
  invested in a clamp on ammeter.  Then I test my servers when I get them
 and
  record the high and average usage.

 This is an excellent practice.  I have been using kill-a-watt, but the
 clamp
 is more convenient.  Besides knowing the A, you also want to know the VA
 and
 W so you can spec your UPS appropriately.

 One thing to be keenly aware of is that power draw of a server is variable.
 To reach max power, you need to find ways of stressing the high power
 components - Usually the CPU and GPU (if any.)  But a while 1 { ; } loop
 will not stress much of the cpu, so it doesn't do a good job of reaching
 max
 power.  The best stuff will be things like the AES instruction set, and
 generating random numbers and doing parallel compression.  Get the max
 power
 of the system and fluff it a bit.


I also have a killawatt but the problem comes when I have to work on someone
else's live equipment.  The clampon ammeter means I don't have to shut the
server's off. I can also clamp on to the rack's main power feed if I don't
have a APC PDU.  Well worth the money I spent.

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Re: [Discuss] Old computers Re: (OT) Steve Jobs 1955-2011

[Matt Shields]

On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Rich Braun ri...@pioneer.ci.net wrote:

 Jerry Feldman mentioned an old computer:
  My first home computer was an Apple II (1978). What Jobs saw back
  then was that a desktop computer could be useful to real people.
  At the time, there were a few hobby computers. I almost bought a
  MITS Altair

 The first desktop I ever ran across was in my math teacher's class in
 Arlington, VA in 1977:  an HP 9830A (you can find pics of it via Google).
 Anyone else remember those?  It had 4K of RAM, kept your programs on a
 cassette tape, printed out (quickly) on an 80-column wide thermal printer.
 You programmed it in BASIC; I remember writing a banner printing program
 and a
 biorhythm chart generator.

 Being exposed to bigger mainframe computers starting around '72, I never
 thought of these micro things as anything other than toys.  So when the
 TRS-80
 and Apple ][ came out, they held little interest for me--my first
 factory-built (i.e. not cobbled-together) home computer was a 1982 DEC
 surplus
 PDT-11/150; it ran RT-11.  The first real home computer, that rivaled
 mainframe performance, came along about 10 years later:  the Intel 486.
 That's when speed-of-light constraints came to favor microchips over the
 frames containing CPUs in multiple circuit boards spread across a
 backplane,
 and transistor density has accelerated ever since.

 By the time of the 486, Linux was available: today's supercomputing
 clusters
 usually run Linux.

 -rich


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Mine was a Commodore Pet.  Dad bought one for his business and one for home.

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Re: [Discuss] Thumbs Up To Ben

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 11:49 AM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote:


 Today the biggest threat to long term freedom, and history as a whole, is
 the cultural and legal acceptance of DRM. If you think about this and its
 eventual elimination of the free flow of information, you should be
 scared. VERY SCARED.

 Steve Jobs is one of the biggest violators of the freedom to actually
 control what you own.



Everyone that purchases music from iTunes can easily bypass the DRM by
creating a CD of their music, then ripping it back as whatever format they
wish.  I do this for backup purposes should something ever happen to
Apple/iTunes.

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Re: [Discuss] (OT) Steve Jobs 1955-2011

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Ben Eisenbraun b...@klatsch.org wrote:

 On Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 10:19:49AM -0400, Matthew Gillen wrote:
  On 10/06/2011 09:23 AM, Dan O'Donovan wrote:
   My next cell phone will be an openmoko
  
   I remember saying that five years ago - kinda glad I got an iPhone
 now...
 
  I will never buy one of those.  The way they treat jailbreakers (sue
  them for copyright infringement, brick their phones)

 I call bullshit. A cursory Google doesn't return any hits for Apple suing
 people who jailbreak their phones, and I doubt you'll find _any_ reliable
 reference saying that they are deliberately bricking jailbroken phones with
 their updates.

 So, references please.

 As an aside, there is an incredible amount of FUD spread on this list.
 Instead of concentrating on the cool innovations that are happening in the
 open source community, half of the threads seem to be about how we are all
 getting screwed by Apple/Microsoft/Google/etc.

 -ben

 --
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I used to be an Apple hater.  A bigger Apple hater than I was a Windows
hater.  There were two main reasons.  First I thought they were extremely
overpriced.  And second I thought they were forcing user's to do things
their way, not the way I would want to do things.  So for the previous 10
years I ran both Windows and Linux side by side (with Synergy2) and hacked
my way getting things done.  I would have preferred running only Linux, but
I usually had integration issues with non-Linux people/systems.  Working
with all my datacenter assets worked flawlessly on a Linux desktop, but the
Linux desktop did have other issues with being quirky and not very polished.
 Since moving to Mac I've found like so many say, It just works.  And I
don't find their idea of the desktop experience intrusive or that it
conflicts with what I want a desktop to be.

On the issue of cost, I usually buy higher end laptops (more memory, faster
drive, higher graphics, 3 yr warranty) instead of the $399 cheapo's.  For
the same cost or less I can get a better MBP.  Last summer when I was
spec'ing out new machines, all the HP  Dell machines I wanted were around
$2000-$2500, my MBP was $2100 with 3 yr AppleCare.

Now, I'm running a single MBP, I integrate perfectly in a Windows
front-office, and a Linux datacenter, and I get the desktop experience I
want.  I'll dare say that Mac is the perfect desktop for Linux
administrators.  The only thing I regret is putting aside my hate for Apple
and not trying them out sooner.  I also have an iPhone4 and iPad2, they both
work seamlessly with my MBP.  When I an Android or Blackberry I never had
them work seamlessly with my desktops.

Now some other notes of interest.  Let's say I want lower end desktops for
my office workers.  The MacMini's actually pack more punch for the same cost
of a lower end PC.  Also, the MacMini's use very little power, making them
great for building large clusters in a datacenter or lab (and can run linux
too).  Apple is coming out with more tools to make managing Mac in the
enterprise easier (directory, database, internal wiki, vpn, file, remote
desktop, mail servers).

That said, Apple has been no more litigious than any other large company
(MS, HP, Oracle).  I do find that all the lawsuits.  They do give back to
the Open Source community (WebKit).

So all that said, my only regret is that I did hate them for so long, for
reason's that were based on my own misconceptions.  I wish I had my Mac's,
iPhone and iPad sooner.  Still won't give up on Linux in the datacenter
though :)

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Re: [Discuss] more on software patent

[Matt Shields]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Kyle Leslie fbx...@gmail.com wrote:

 While I don't have a ton of a background in this whole Patent thing, I have
 been reading this thread and trying to form my own opinions and gain
 knowledge. I decided to read the article that Matt posted and in doing so I
 stumbled upon one of the patents that the company is claiming has been
 infringed on.  I found it so interesting because some things look like they
 are just thrown in there for added benefit of blocking other people.

 US5546397 - (Abstract)

 A high reliability access point for RF communications in a wireless local
 area network. The high reliability access point includes a central
 processing unit (CPU) for handling high level protocol functions and for
 interfacing with the infrastructure of the local area network. The high
 reliability access point also includes at least two wireless adapters. Each
 wireless adapter includes a radio, a media access control (MAC) processor
 for handling low level protocol functions, and at least one antenna. The
 multiple wireless adapters allow the access point to perform self
 monitoring, reduce the effects of multipath interference, reduce some
 occurrences of collisions at the access point and provide infrastructure
 backup in the event of an infrastructure failure. The access points also
 allow for wireless network infrastructure communication for connection of
 one or more remote access points to the infrastructure. *A backup power
 supply for the access point is also shown.

 *---

 The last sentence is what I found so interesting.  From everything I have
 read, if someone designed a similar item but included a backup power supply
 then they would be infringing because that is patented.

 To prove infringement, the patent owner must establish that the accused
 party practices all the requirements of at least one of the claims of the
 patent. (This is from wikipedia)

 You essentially can't have an access point with a backup power supply
 because this patent holds that.  This is my understanding of how patents
 are
 used to block other people.  Find one small thing that is similar or the
 same and say No you can't use it or pay me money.  It literally looks as
 if someone was standing over the shoulder of the person writing the patent
 and said Oh put that in there so you can hold the patent for it.

 It was always my understanding that a part of innovation was to build off
 the ideas of other people.  To take what they created and make it better.

 If what I am saying is totally wrong then just delete this email.. but if
 what I understand patents to be and how they work correct then how is
 anyone
 supposed to be inventive with out the penalty of cost?

 If a program's algorithms are able to be patented, then software is in
 trouble (from what I read it sounds like it already is). What if HTML code
 were to be patented.  You wouldn't be able to use head or title tags with
 out a fee?

 Please let me know if I am stating things here that are correct in theory.

 Thanks,

 Kyle  (Trying to learn about Software Patents)

 On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 2:57 AM, John Abreau abre...@gmail.com wrote:

  The BLU leadership has neither the interest nor the funds to support
 this.
 
 
 
  2011/10/3 Hsuanyeh Chang hsuan...@gmail.com:
   If I have the honor, what I can offer now is to write up, in the name
 of
   BLU, a request for ex parte reexamination and get it on file in the
  patent
   office in an attempt to invalidate the asserted patent(s).  But, I
 would
   need support from the BLU (e.g., knowledge and time to find prior art,
   official fees to be paid to the patent office, and other costs). Would
   anyone be willing to take action together?
  
   HYC on the go
  
   在 Oct 3, 2011 9:01 PM 時，Matt Shields m...@mattshields.org 寫到：
  
   On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:57 AM, Hsuan-Yeh Chang hsuan...@gmail.com
   wrote:
   35 U.S.C. 101 Inventions patentable.
  
   Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine,
   manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful
   improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the
   conditions and requirements of this title.
  
   Talking about this particular patent (USP 7,818,225), the claims are
   directed to a financial instrument, which does not even fall into
   the four statutory patentable classes (i.e., process, machine,
   manufacture, and composition of matter).  This very patent cannot
   really prove that the patent system is screwed up.  This patent only
   proves that the Patent Office should train their Examiners better.
   Plus, there are administrative proceedings that one can use to knock
   down this patent.  The owner of this patent should better not seek
   enforcement, or it would be invalidated rather easily...
  
   HYC
   - Hide quoted text -
  
   On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:03 AM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote:
   
 See the poster child

 http://www.1201tuesday.com

Re: [Discuss] more on software patent

[Matt Shields]

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:57 AM, Hsuan-Yeh Chang hsuan...@gmail.com wrote:

 35 U.S.C. 101 Inventions patentable.

 Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine,
 manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful
 improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the
 conditions and requirements of this title.

 Talking about this particular patent (USP 7,818,225), the claims are
 directed to a financial instrument, which does not even fall into
 the four statutory patentable classes (i.e., process, machine,
 manufacture, and composition of matter).  This very patent cannot
 really prove that the patent system is screwed up.  This patent only
 proves that the Patent Office should train their Examiners better.
 Plus, there are administrative proceedings that one can use to knock
 down this patent.  The owner of this patent should better not seek
 enforcement, or it would be invalidated rather easily...

 HYC
 - Hide quoted text -

 On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:03 AM, ma...@mohawksoft.com wrote:
 
   See the poster child
   http://www.1201tuesday.com/1201_tuesday/2010/10/poster-child.html
  
   If this is a valid patent; already in; how do you accommodate that?
  
  
   If I were the Examiner, I would reject the claims and have the
 applicant
   appeal my decision.  With this particular case, I would blame the
 Examiner
   for passing this application to issuance.
  
  And that's the problem. You assume the patent examiner has the real
  ability to reject this patent. He or she does not. The patent examiner
  must have a defensible reason to reject a patent, it can not be
 arbitrary.
  There are limited tools with which they can reject a patent application.
 
  With Bilski, its a little easier, but it is still hard. The weight is on
  the examiner to prove it can't be patented, the patent application is
  assumed to be patentable otherwise. This is why absurd patents get
  approved.
 
  The patent system has been destroyed by IP lawyers and it is broken.
 
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Hsuan-Yeh,
This is exactly the kind of ridiculous stupidity that IP and patent lawyers
do to waste people's time and money.  Again, I'll repeat my recommendation
to you, if you are serious about helping the OSS community or the industry
in general, donate your time to defend against these trolls.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/03/2236255/Patent-Troll-Says-Anyone-Using-Wi-Fi-Infringes?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29


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Re: [Discuss] Self-introduction and more on software patent

[Matt Shields]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Hsuan-Yeh Chang hsuan...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thanks to many kind notes from BLU members.  I believe what I have done
 wrong is that I failed to introduce myself before speaking out.  So, here
 is
 a little bit of myself.

 I have a graduate degree in theoretical physics and done some real
 computations using FORTRAN, C, and other/scripting languages.  As a
 scientist, I unfortunately couldn't find any position to do science and/or
 research.  Like everyone else, I need to eat and, luckily, I found a job in
 the patent field.  That led me to pursue my law degree, which I will get in
 about a year from now.  So, I am still not qualified as a patent lawyer,
 but I have passed the patent bar exam and worked in the patent industry for
 quite many years.  It is a pity that I have contributed zero line of code
 in
 the open source repositories.  However, I have worked under the open source
 environment to do various things for almost 20 years.

 Now, a bit more about software patents.  To be clear, I am not and will not
 advocate whether software patent, or patent as a whole, is good or bad for
 the society.  I also would not conclude whether the patent system is
 screwed
 up or not.  These are of your personal opinion or belief, and I would
 respect it in any possible way.  What I was trying to do in another thread
 is to tell you folks WHAT patents are, and HOW the patent system currently
 works to the extent possible to protect the open source community.

 I understand many of you may have very strong feelings against software
 patents or maybe against the entire patent system.  Honestly, I am not
 surprised.  But what I hope is that if you have a different opinion, please
 focus on the point and not attack me or anyone personally.

 I myself have once been convinced by RMS's agenda that the government
 should
 abolish software patents entirely, and that all software patents should be
 invalid.  But after these years as a patent professional, I found that
 RMS's
 agenda has not done anything good for the open source community.  Software
 patents are still there and will still be there for quite many years if not
 decades.  Open source community must do something in parallel and not put
 all eggs in the same basket.  Don't forget, people from the other side are
 still accumulating their patent strength and are always ready to attack
 whenever time matures.

 In the real world, patents are often used as weapons against competing
 businesses.  Everyone knows weapons are dangerous and may serve good and
 bad
 purposes.  But it would be really really tough to eliminate weapons when
 bearing arm is citizen's right protected by the US constitution.  Many of
 you probably don't know that patent protection, similar to everyone's
 liberty and property interests, is guaranteed by the US Constitution.  No
 need to explain, you would see how hard it is to persuade the Congress to
 abolish the ENTIRE patent system.

 Even if you want to carve out software patents, it would still be very
 difficult.  The very first question is, where do we draw the line?  Namely,
 what should be considered as software and what should not?  We know that if
 you write some codes, it's software.  But if someone uses computer codes to
 control the ABS system for automobiles in a fancifully new way, should that
 be allowed or prohibited from seeking patent protection?  That would lead
 to
 more contention and would make the already complicated patent system even
 more chaotic.  Plus, it would create more jobs for lawyers, which you guys
 probably don't want to see that happen.

 Enough said, I have to acknowledge that I am a human being who makes
 mistakes.  It's my mistake by stating Dr. King as ever being a lawyer.  But
 if that single mistake could lead you to believe that all my other points
 are bogus, then you are not listening.  For those of you who don't believe
 in patent attorneys, I'd like to ask:  would you learn science with an
 artist, learn art with a businessman, and learn business with a scientist?
 I personally would rather learn science with a scientist, learn art with an
 artist, and learn business with a businessman.  My two cents for your
 consideration.

 Hope to meet with you guys in any of the BLU meetings.

 HYC
 http://hsuanyeh.com
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Welcome, officially, to the BLU list.  If you're looking for a way to
contribute to the OSS community, it doesn't have to be in code.  If you're
on your way to becoming a lawyer, how about looking at using that knowledge
to help OSS?  Contact one of the OSS organizations and see how you can help.
 I'm sure they would love to get some legal assistance, and you can add that
to your resume.

Back to patents.  Everyone keeps bringing up software patents, but I think
what should be abolished should cover more than just software.  

Re: [Discuss] The America Invents Act

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Hsuan-Yeh Chang hsuan...@yahoo.comwrote:


 2.  Apparently, engineering schools should consider opening at some courses
 on patent and copyright laws for future engineers.  Filing a patent
 application doesn't mean you should ultimately pursue and get a patent.  A
 patent application can be file for preventive purposes.  Because all patent
 applications will become published after 18 months, any idea thus published
 will prevent late comers in getting a patent, regardless of whether the
 person filing it eventually get a patent or not.


Absolutely.  My degree is in audio engineering (recording studio/live sound)
and we were required to take a course on copyright law taught by a former
copyright lawyer in the music industry, and that was over 15 years ago.  Why
aren't schools doing this now?

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Re: [Discuss] LVM Re: A really interesting chain of functionality

[Matt Shields]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:17 PM, Bill Bogstad bogs...@pobox.com wrote:

 On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:45 PM, Mark Woodward ma...@mohawksoft.com
 wrote:
  On 09/26/2011 07:17 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
 
  So, this all serves to rather emphasize my point, which is to say...
  (LVM) Create snapshot, mount it, monitor it with nagios or whatever,
  lvextend it, lvextend the filesystem, resize2fs, unmount and release
  snapshot...
  versus
  (ZFS, Netapp, Volume Shadow Services, etc.)  Do nothing, and don't worry
  about it.  It's all automatic and dynamic and just works.
 
  I don't think this is right. Running nagios on a snapshot would do
 nothing.
  A snapshot is protected from change.

 This is neither true in the logical nor physical sense with LVM.   It
 was never true in a physical sense, in that the storage for the
 snapshot is slowly used up due to copy-on-write as applications write
 to the original copy of the filesystem.   It's not true in the logical
 sense because LVM snapshots have actually been read/write for quite a
 while.  A common usage pattern for this appears to be when you want
 multiple copies of essentially the same virtual machine image.
 You start with a single gold copy and then create writable snapshots
 for each virtual machine.

 Bill Bogstad
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Correct, but from the way it's been desribed to me.  If you have a 500GB
drive, and only allocated 400GB, the 100GB becomes like a scratch space.
 When you take a snapshot, the 400GB volume is frozen and all changes (both
original and snapshot) go to the unallocated space.  If you run vgdisplay,
there will be a line that says Free PE / Size.  If this get's to 0 while
you have a snapshot, the snapshot will release so all those changes can be
written back to the main volume.

You can also take as many snapshots as you want.  For example, in the past I
had a QA department that needed weekly refreshes of a MySQL database which
were over 750GB.  Copying and restoring would take too long and they
couldn't afford to be down that long.  They also needed a MySQL master-slave
setup, but at the time we couldn't give them more than a single server.  So
we bumped up the memory on the server, attached it to a 4TB volume on the
SAN.  Then we setup mysql in /var/lib/mysql (running on a separate IP and
port) mounted as a 1TB volume on the SAN drive (notice only 25% allocated).
 This copy of MySQL was a slave process of what was running in production,
so it's always up to date with the latest copy, but is a read-only copy.

Next to give QA a working master and slave with the most recent data, I
wrote a script that shuts down MySQL(prod-slave), snapshots /var/lib/mysql
to /var/lib/mysql-master and /var/lib/mysql-slave, then starts MySQL
(prod-slave) back up and starts replicating again.  Next a couple of cleanup
processes were run against the two snapshot folders so they wouldn't try to
replicate from production.  Starts mysql on QA-master and QA-slave, then
rans a few more commands to make the slave instance a slave of the master
instance.  Running my snapshot script took gave our QA department a fresh
snapshot of 750GB of data in about 1 minute.

The to keep track of the unused 75% of the volume since changes from all
three volumes were writing to it, I had a nagios process that monitored the
SAN drive's Free PE / Size, so when it got to a certain threshold if QA
hadn't requested a refresh we told them it was about time.  If anyone's
interested I'll dig through my archive to see if I can find my script,
although I might have to clean them up a bit.

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Re: [Discuss] LVM Re: A really interesting chain of functionality

[Matt Shields]

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 8:10 AM, Edward Ned Harvey b...@nedharvey.comwrote:

  From: Mark Woodward [mailto:ma...@mohawksoft.com]
 
  I don't think this is right. Running nagios on a snapshot would do
  nothing. A snapshot is protected from change. Typically, what you would
  do is this:
 
  Create a volume, monitor it, create a snapshot to get a point in time
  image of the volume, backup the snapshot, and then remove the snapshot.
 
  Pretty much the same model as the other things.

 My memory is similar to what Matt wrote.  Suppose you have a 400G volume,
 and you use a 100G volume for snapshots.  You create a snapshot, and then
 the 400G is frozen, while all new changes get written to the 100G.  When
 100G runs out, the snapshot disappears.  I don't know if you have to
 monitor
 available usage using df on the pool, df on the snapshot, or lvdisplay or
 some other command, but I'm sure there's a command that will let you
 monitor
 the amount of space remaining in your snapshot device.  It is not allocated
 or resized dynamically.  If you want to make it reallocate dynamically,
 you're doing some pretty crazy scripting which is not necessary on other
 snapshot systems (zfs etc)

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See previous comment.  vgdisplay and the second to last line is Free PE /
Size.  Here's one of my desktops below.  See the bottom section, on this
150GB drive, it has 4753 x 32MB extents, I've allocated all of them to the
volume, and I have 0 free extents.  If I was building this for snapshots I
wouldn't use all the extents.

[root@mattlinux matt]# vgdisplay
  --- Volume group ---
  VG Name   vg_mattlinux
  System ID
  Formatlvm2
  Metadata Areas1
  Metadata Sequence No  4
  VG Access read/write
  VG Status resizable
  MAX LV0
  Cur LV3
  Open LV   3
  Max PV0
  Cur PV1
  Act PV1
  VG Size   148.53 GiB
  PE Size   32.00 MiB
  Total PE  4753
  Alloc PE / Size   4753 / 148.53 GiB
  Free  PE / Size   0 / 0
  VG UUID   dwP9d1-YYaJ-GisZ-8Lm4-1hiz-g1sc-XcTRMt

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Re: [Discuss] LVM Re: A really interesting chain of functionality

[Matt Shields]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Rich Braun ri...@pioneer.ci.net wrote:

 The open-source LVM manager in Linux provides excellent _read_ performance.
 Where it suffers relative to commercial products (NetApp, Isilon, et al) is
 the _write_ performance.

 In this thread, a criticism is leveled that it eats up disk space.  Well,
 if
 you were to allocate 2x the storage of your runtime volume, you'd never run
 out of space on a given snapshot.  With 2TB drives dropping under $100
 these
 days, I hardly see that space is much of a criterion when planning to use
 LVM
 or not.  If you want to create a lot of active snapshots, then this might
 be a
 consideration.

 Each active snapshot drops write performance due to the copy-on-write
 implementation.  (I'm not sure why the open-source product persists in this
 requirement, perhaps there are no active developers looking into this
 problem--there are other ways to attack this problem which would provide
 better performance.  Future versions of LVM will someday drop the
 copy-on-write implementation.)

 But as some have noted here, this is only a problem for active filesystems
 that see a lot of scattered writes.  Compare an SVN server with a MySQL
 server.  The impact of copy-on-write is far greater on a large (50GB+)
 InnoDB
 database tied to an active social-networking site than on a modest (10GB)
 source-code repository.  If frequently-updated files are a small percentage
 of
 your overall dataset, then snapshots are not much of a performance
 factor--especially (as is typical in case of developer teams) most of the
 activity causes updates to the same files.

 There are many applications where the performance hit is negligible, or at
 least outweighed by the benefit of fast file recovery or other capabilities
 that snapshots provide.

 -rich


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As far as eating disk space, this depends on how many changes happen between
when you take the snapshot and when you release it.  If you have a 500GB
drive, 400GB allocated to the volume, and 100GB free for snapshots, then you
can alter your data 4x (assuming you're using 100% available space).  The
math isn't exact but it's usually fairly close.  There are also commands you
can use to monitor the free space.

From what I've seen when I used LVM it's not meant to keep the snapshot
longterm, it's meant to grab a picture of the contents at a point in time
without having other processes change the files then move it to where you
can do something else with it.  So a perfect example is a backup of MySQL.
 You cannot copy the MySQL files why MySQL is running.  So shutdown MySQL,
take a snapshot, start MySQL, copy the snapshot to wherever you want since
it won't affect the running version, when the copy is done stop MySQL,
release snapshot, start MySQL again, then go over to your other system and
work with that copy you made.

The problem I've seen with LVM is that people are running it with one or two
physical drives and they're complaining about performance problems.  In the
past I've built a database that had a SAN backend (numerous physical
drives), the volume was managed by LVM and the physical drives had enough
spindles to deal with read/write performance even since there was a higher
than normal load.  Think of it this way, without LVM if your drives started
having more IOPS, how do you solve the latency issue?  Add more drives.

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Re: [Discuss] best dual core Linux box

[Matt Shields]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Daniel Feenberg feenb...@nber.org wrote:


 We are in the midst of licensing the SAS software product for a server.
 This is an extremely expensive product, and the charge for a quad-core
 machine is tens of thousands of dollars more than for a dual-core machine.
 If you are unfamiliar with SAS, it does lots of sequential I/O and is rarely
 CPU bound. So we are looking to put together a high performance machine that
 uses only a dual-core processor. I know that dual-core is now usually very
 low-end (or laptop) but creative suggestions are welcome. Ideally we would
 like PCI-e slots for SAS or SATA controllers so that we can have a lot of
 fast local storage.

 Daniel Feenberg
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I would speak with them about their licensing to get clarification.  Most
licensing is based on physical processors, not how many cores you have.  For
example M$ SQL Server works this way.

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Re: [Discuss] Photo Manager

[Matt Shields]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Theodore Ruegsegger grun...@gmail.comwrote:

 Derek Atkins wrote:
  Theodore Ruegsegger grun...@gmail.com writes:
  I've built a web application called Photo Album Manager that manages
  all metadata in a PostgreSQL database. Not sure that counts as
  lock-in, since it's all free software and it's easy to migrate data
  from one RDBMS to another.
 
  Okay, why did you do this instead of using something like Gallery2?
  http://gallery.menalto.com/

 Short answer: I started this over a decade ago. Looked at the
 available packages and they didn't meet my needs, especially scale
 (tens of thousands of photos) and searchability. Checked from time to
 time but found that the community seemed to be focused more on pretty
 skins than efficient management of large collections. A quick look
 at the Gallery site suggests it's worth another look. I can't find
 anything that looks like a simple walkthrough or tutorial, whence I
 could easily get a clear idea what it does and how it looks; I'd be
 grateful for a pointer to one. Failing that, when I have a chance,
 I'll set it up and try it.

 Ah, looking over the Gallery site again, I see a big difference.
 Sharing your photos requires not only a website to host them but that
 that website have PHP and DBMS support to run Gallery. Photo Album
 Manager/PhotoTrove requires a webserver with PHP and PostgreSQL to
 manage photos and assemble albums but the finished albums can be
 uploaded to any website as a static set of HTML pages or simply burned
 to a CD to display on any computer, no website required.

 Longer answer:
 Why Another Photo Album Manager?
 http://www.tux.org/~tbr/photoalbummanager/doc/desiderata.html

 Regarding tutorials, walkthroughs for Photo Album Manager:
 How to Build and Edit a Photo Set (with screenshots)
 http://www.tux.org/~tbr/photoalbummanager/doc/howtoset.html

 User's Manual (with screenshots)
 http://www.tux.org/~tbr/photoalbummanager/doc/usermanual/

 The Photo Album Manager is still available and still works fine, but
 if you get serious about using it, let me know and I'll make the
 considerably improved (more features, fewer annoyances) PhotoTrove
 available.

 Ted
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Also, ffmpeg required if you want to upload video.

Here's an basic example of Gallery that I setup for a friend
http://krazyflake.com/ Skip thru first couple pages to get to Gallery.

Yes, the opening pages are great, and the layout is plain, but this is what
my friend insisted on.

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Re: [Discuss] Extra splitter (OT)

[Matt Shields]

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 5:53 PM, edwa...@linuxmail.org wrote:

 The recent thread regarding RCN, reminded me of the ATT BB installation 10
 years ago.  They installed an additional splitter (two-way) with one cable
 going into the cable modem and the other cable going into another splitter
 (three-way) going to the TV's.  At the time of the installation, they also
 installed a filter on the other cable going from the two-way to the other
 splitter, but eventually Comcast removed it as it was no longer required.

 With the technological advances made since then, is this extra two-way
 splitter still required today, or could everything now go into one splitter?



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No because comcast no longer supports analog cable.  All TV's in your house
must either have a digital cable box, a digital dvr box or an analog to
digital convertor or you won't get any channels.  I believe they started
this about a year ago and sent out notices that you could get 2 free
convertors.

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Re: [Discuss] drop box software

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Stephen Adler ad...@stephenadler.comwrote:

 Boy.. do I feel stupid. I had no idea drop box was basically a
 repository on steroids. I thought drop box was a service where I could
 upload a 20 gigabyte file and send a URL with a password to a friend so
 that he could down load that 20G file, thus working around large file
 limits in e-mail attachments. I run a subversion server on my home
 system which suffices for me to deal with keeping key files in a network
 accessible repository. Any time I hear the word cloud, I cringe... What
 happened to The Grid?

 So, let me refraise my question, is there any open source packages which
 would allow me to upload a file to a web site (my web site) and have it
 password protected and I could then e-mail the URL and password to my
 friend. I can do this all by hand, with .htaccess files etc, but I would
 prefer a nice web service to do it.

 thanks, and sorry for the confusion on my side...


You can do this.  Just have put those files in a folder in your dropbox
account.  have your friend sign up for dropbox and share that folder with
them.  While sharing anything that either of you add/delete/edit will be
updated on the other person's account as well, but just for the shared
folder.

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Re: [Discuss] 10th Circuit Affirms in All Respects - Novell, Not SCO, Owns the Copyrights, etc.

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 12:44 PM, John Abreau j...@blu.org wrote:

 A comment found on Groklaw:


 Tragedy all round
 Authored by: FoxyLad on Tuesday, August 30 2011 @ 10:06 PM EDT

 Sorry, but I can't bring myself to celebrate. This affair is a tragedy
 on personal, corporate and national levels.

 First up, Darl (and those who connived with him) get to live happily
 ever after. It sticks in my craw that his father will go on believing
 the cute cattle-ranching story Darl told him, instead of seeing his
 son for the shallow grasping scoundrel he really is. Justice has not
 been served.

 And it's not just Darl. None of the perpetrators of this fraud have
 received any punishment. They all have their nice houses,
 directorships and fat retirement funds, and haven't even received a
 slap on the wrist for wasting so much time, energy and money. Let
 alone the multiple contempt of court orders, civil and criminal
 charges that should have been laid.

 So the next generation of CEOs, their officers, lawyers and media
 shills will go forth confident that this tactic works - they can tie
 their opponents up in a decade of legal knots, without any fear of
 sanction. Without any evidence, or even a credible case. Any business
 of Novell's size and smaller is now vulnerable to a larger competitor
 legally strangling them to death. Without any evidence, or even a
 credible case.

 In Europe, the strength of SCO's case was quickly identified and
 thrown out of court in a few weeks. End of story, everyone went back
 to productive enterprise. In the US, however, hundreds of people spent
 significant portions of their careers on this one case. Include all
 the other nuisance litigation flying around, and the chilling effect
 it has on small business and it adds up to a significant drain on the
 US economy.



 On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote:
 
  -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
  Hash: SHA1
 
  While SCO is effectively dead, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals affirms
  the previous judgment that Novell and not SCO owns the Unix copyrights.
  http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110830170454743
  Not even Boies Schiller could save SCO. In fact, Judge Terence O'Brien,
  who wrote today's decision for the panel, seems to me to have given
  SCO's lawyers a bit of a spanking.
 
  The transcript as well as Pamela in her red dress may be seen on the
  Groklaw site.
 
  While much has happened over the past year with Novell being acquired by
  Attachmate. It also looks like Ralph Yarrow will not get any proceeds
  from his loans. Ralph has been involved with Caldera and subsequently
  The SCO Group since it was founded by Ray Noorda. the late Ray Noorda
  was the founder of both Novell and Caldera. Ray Noorda's daughter ousted
  Ralph Yarrow as CEO of The Canopy Group back in 2004. The Canopy Group
  was the venture capital firm that Ray Noorda formed after he was ousted
  from Novell. Yarrow is a real skuz who actually was able to get Utah to
  pass an IP law, referred to a Yarrow's law. SCO's attorneys in the SCO
  vs. IBM tried to apply this law retroactively.
 
  - --
  Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org
  Boston Linux and Unix
  PGP key id:3BC1EB90
  PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
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  Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
  Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
 
  iQEVAwUBTl4wUHzqMPw7weuQAQK7hAf9Ex0eZbMxNSRYcX9nxLSBWZUL9kX7n7Og
  rvWNjdau90zxVkJHv2IT2fTrqAa//de5vsdfDG0JjQzbJ54cUmLfvmSoETLx6EhN
  6DPQ2Heb4CSgMpSHc4VLaargqwv/8hWJUBvQrgC410rfk85Xm+y+fOQoRhIf5X4u
  I+AIt/iKuzSb0/B4NO20V1bnTaF8Tu1sGhg/p9ovKrIHR1OJ2krT2YR0kShtRDFf
  2Th4vAq7U3+S5eOn8e6KNafgiDW6Fat+6+5Zsd9S1HKu2TjUdhkxRd1Y9Irs/HJu
  KkontZpUaFibCRpQW4NnT/0OumlpW9QLCEvZ6Nl11UPvSfrfGgKj6w==
  =joHn
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It baffles my mind that this crap has been allowed to go on for so long.


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Re: [Discuss] need to set up fax-mail system

[Matt Shields]

2011/8/29 Kent Borg kentb...@borg.org

 Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote:

 And an absurd one in an age when a lot of faxes are sent from computers. A
 fax is actually easier to forge than a digital document because of its
 relatively low resolution; it's trivial to pass off a Photoshopped document
 as an original fax scan. Yet another case of the law not keeping up with
 technical reality.


 I think we are missing a point here.  The fax itself is not thought by
 legal beagles to be some high-security, unforgeable thing.  Rather I think
 it is more a record of a communication.
 An oral contract is *just* a binding as a written version on parchment with
 tons of seals and signatures and witnesses.  The difference is the written
 contract has a better record (what are the particulars: how many widgets to
 be delivered on what date for what price with what penalty provisions for
 being late), and the parchment version is also harder to repudiate (yes, he
 signed it).  If the particulars of the oral contract are not in dispute,
 then the written version is no better.  Both might still go to court to
 argue about it.
 A legal fax I think is most valuable as a way to pin down the particulars.
  I don't think the idea is to prevent forgery.  When you have an ongoing
 business relationship with someone the opportunities for forgery are
 slim--it breaks the continuity of the communications.  We don't tend to use
 faxes for one-off transactions with strangers, we meet in person and use
 cash when buying a soda-pop from a street vendor.  Or use well-known
 middlemen when spending a lot of money on, say, a house.

 Long ago I once heard of an annoying HR person insisting that someone fax
 the original and not a copy.  The nerd who received the instruction thought
 it silly and I agreed at the time, but on reflection, I am sympathetic to
 the silly insistence.  I guess an aspect of that transaction is that the
 person sending it is attesting that Yes, in lieu physically delivering this
 document to you, I attest that I have the original in my grubby little hand,
 I am putting it in the fax machine, the version you are about to get out the
 other side reflects the appearance of the original that I have in my hand..
  This attestation also flushes out little corner cases such as Well, that
 document never had a physical existence before I sent it, I actually have
 several versions floating around on my disk, I can't be sure I e-mailed the
 one I intended to e-mail.  If using a fax instead of an e-mail saves me
 making a long drive there and back, during business hours...that seems a
 reasonable trade-off.  Yes, I might fax incorrect stuff, and I might put
 incorrect stuff on the form I hand over in person.  But I am probably trying
 to get my damn insurance reimbursement straightened out, I'm not
 masterminding a $194.19 heist.  Were I to fax for reimbursement for
 $194,000,000.00 to be payable to cash and sent to an address they don't have
 on record...neither the fax nor a physical form (Blanks are over there on
 that wall.) is going to be good enough.
 Faxes pin down specifics.  One of the key features that the law has relied
 upon is that to fax has largely been a pretty clear verb with a pretty
 well understood meaning.
 The crude, stupid, lumbering, brain-dead properties of a fax are a feature
 in this case: People know what a fax is.  The more that we set up clever fax
 systems with fancy storage and pre/post editing features...the more the
 legal system will notice and start to worry over the value of faxes.  But a
 fax is a way of sending unambiguous information, being a stupid old
 technology helps keep it unambiguous.  If the only people using faxes are
 bureaucrats, and if they refuse to buy fax systems with features that erode
 the clarity (stupidity) of faxes, faxes might stay with us for many years
 just to keep lawyers happy.

 You might say e-mail is pretty unambiguous, and you have a point, providing
 the definition of e-mail stays stable (and maybe stupid and crude and
 brain-dead).  Start conversing with someone on Google Plus, however, and the
 fundamental properties start to get vague.  (Do young people even use e-mail
 other than for formal things that some institution insists upon?  Kinda like
 faxes??)  Heck even gmail doesn't always seem to have stable properties,
 what I think is an e-mail they think is part of a living conversation tread,
 and at least on my Android phone, what looks like a specific e-mail doesn't
 seem to have a write-once unchanging property.  I haven't pinned down what
 they are doing, but Google seems to be making it fancier.  Start adding
 features like that to a fancy fax system and lawyers would be well advised
 to stay away from it.
 The law hates chaos.  They won't be much comforted by But Google shouldn't
 have done that, that's not what e-mail is!.

 The law does a lot of silly things, but it isn't always a silly as a
 civilian might think at first glance.


 -kb, the 

Re: [Discuss] Wireless router question

[Matt Shields]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 9:57 AM, Kyle Leslie fbx...@gmail.com wrote:

 My experience has been if you run the same SSID/Security setup but on
 different channels it works ok.

 You just have to make sure that the particular channel you select isn't
 getting a lot of interference.

 You could try Wifi Analyzer (Android app) to scan for interference. Also
 inSSIDer to scan other wifi networks and channels they run on.


 On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote:

  I will be running 2 wireless routers in my office configured as
  switches. All security will be identical. The question is SSID. Should I
  configure the second wireless as the same SSID as the first, or not.
  For example, the SSID of the first is FuBar, and the second is either
  FuBar or FuBar1. It does not matter which wireless one of our employees
  connects to.
 
  The advantage of using the same SSID is that possibly some wireless
  settings on phones and PCs will connect automatically where if it is a
  different SSID it may require the encryption key to be entered, which is
  a pain with Smartphones.
 
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I've done the same thing.  One problem I've encountered no matter if you use
the same SSID is if the person goes from one area to another, but can still
pickup the radio of the distant WIFI, then it won't always switch to the
stronger signal on the closer channel (or different SSID if  your using
another one).  It would be nice to know if there was a way to tell theOS to
always pick the WIFI with the stronger signal.

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Re: [Discuss] Large DVI monitor

[Matt Shields]

On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Dan Ritter d...@tao.merseine.nu wrote:

 On Sun, Aug 07, 2011 at 09:22:23PM -0400, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote:
  Monitors bigger than 1920x1200 will need a dual-link DVI connection
  if they don't have a DisplayPort input (which means pretty much
  anybody other than Apple), so make sure to get the dual-link DVI
  adapter for your MacBook Pro. (The first message said a Mac Pro
  which would be a desktop system but a later one said it was a
  MacBook Pro.) There are two versions of the DVI adapter; the
  dual-link one costs more.

 Recent high-end Radeon and NVidia video cards tend to come with
 DisplayPort, too.

 -dsr-


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It looks like someone has come out with an adapter to allow you to hook up
non-DP computer to Apple's Cinema Display.  No idea what the quality is
like.  But the price tag is $150 which I think is a little high.

http://gizmodo.com/5831396/kanexs-c247dl-dvi-hooks-your-computer-up-to-apples-crisp-clear-cinema-display

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Re: [Discuss] Large DVI monitor

[Matt Shields]

2011/8/8 Edward Ned Harvey b...@nedharvey.com

  From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org [mailto:discuss-
  bounces+blu=nedharvey@blu.org] On Behalf Of Shirley Márquez
  Dúlcey
 
  DisplayPort never really caught on with
  anybody other than Apple, and it strikes me as a standard that has no
  good reason for existence; what technical advantage does it have over
  the more widely adopted HDMI? (I'm prepared to be enlightened if it
  actually has one.)

 What, you mean like firewire vs usb?  Like thunderbolt vs usb3 or 10Ge or
 6Gb eSATA or any other low-cost high speed bus?  I love the marketing sham
 of the thunderbolt cable with chips inside of it.  Because supposedly
 that's
 necessary in order to get 10Gbit across the link...  ;-)  Like a Cat 6
 cable, or an eSATA cable for $6.   ;-)

 Yes, there is a reason for the existence of these things.  Apple makes more
 money if consumers believe there is a reason to buy them...  So it doesn't
 matter if there is any actual benefit...  It's marketing.  Just like so
 many
 of their other products.

 FWIW, I just looked it up, and HDMI can transport 10Gbit just like
 thunderbolt.  There's some sort of 8/10 encoding overhead, I suppose that
 must be error detection, so the actual payload is 8Gbit.  This includes (I
 forget now) ~34 Mbit for audio or something like that.  And supports
 resolutions up to 4k x 2k

 Oh, here's the perfect example.  This is a 10ft cable that supports 4k x
 2k,
 and 10Gbit.  Goes for $4.97.  You can clearly see that Apple would not make
 any money selling something that competes with this.

 http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102cp_id=10240cs_id=102
 4008p_id=3993seq=1format=2


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For me the beauty of the DisplayPort is that it's very small and offers
multiple connection types via a small adapter (vga, hdmi, dvi).  I've always
hated the huge vga or dvi connectors on laptops.  On my MBP I have one tiny
slot which has numerous possibilities.  If I could upgrade to ThunderBolt I
would but I guess I'll have to wait for a new MBP.

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Re: [Discuss] Large DVI monitor

[Matt Shields]

On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Glenn Hoffman glennhoff...@mac.com wrote:

 I use a Mac Pro as my principle coding machine and am looking for a good,
 large, DVI monitor for it. Any suggestions?

 Glenn
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If you can afford it, go with the 27 Apple Cinema Display.  You won't
regret it.  I've had one for 6 months and it's amazing, now just need to
save up enough to buy one for my home office.

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Re: [Discuss] Large DVI monitor

[Matt Shields]

On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Scott Ehrlich srehrl...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Matt Shields m...@mattshields.org wrote:
  On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Glenn Hoffman glennhoff...@mac.com
 wrote:
 
  I use a Mac Pro as my principle coding machine and am looking for a
 good,
  large, DVI monitor for it. Any suggestions?
 
  Glenn
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  If you can afford it, go with the 27 Apple Cinema Display.  You won't
  regret it.  I've had one for 6 months and it's amazing, now just need to
  save up enough to buy one for my home office.
 

 Displayport or dual-link DVI for the full resolution?

 Scott

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I'm using displayport to my MBP

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Re: [Discuss] Anyone tried Sparkleshare.org yet?

[Matt Shields]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 10:12 AM, Ian Levesque i...@crystal.harvard.eduwrote:

 On Jun 22, 2011, at 5:20 PM, Jack Coats wrote:

  Sparkleshare is an opensource version of Dropbox.  They say currently
  implemented for Linux and Mac.
 
  Has anyone tried it out yet?

 I've recently given it a go hoping to be able to provide a dropbox-like
 experience for some users at work that expressed a need for sharable project
 folders accessible from anywhere. They are looking into paying for Dropbox
 because it just works (can't argue there), and I'm hoping to lure them
 back to using our network storage in a new way.

 That said, I've had a few issues with Sparkleshare:

  * Decision to use ~/SparkleShare as a base directory
- this directory isn't synced, it's just a home for synced dirs. this
 is confusing for end-users.

  * Reliance on git (currently... unison support is apparently coming)
- slow and expensive commits for binaries (might be able to use
 git-bigfiles?)
- duplicate bits stored in local git repo means nearly doubling your
 local storage req's

  * Basically no error notifications

  * DIY server still rough around the edges
- still relies on using SparkleShare's XMPP server for notifications
- initial setup of the client is weird; if you don't have the server in
 your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, it fails.

 When it's working, it does work pretty well even with these limitations.
 I've synced about 5GB to a local server and have done lots of
 edits/additions/deletions to stress test it. There have been times where it
 appears to be working forever, and I have to quit and restart the app.
 Ultimately, it's not ready for deployment and I'd caution that it's really
 only ready for someone that is prepared to babysit it a bit.

 ~irl
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Does the server piece support multiple users?  If so, can it support folder
sharing like Dropbox?  This might be great for companies that want to have
an easy way to backup and share inside their company and be able to maintain
their own infrastructure.

Matthew Shields
Owner
BeanTown Host - Web Hosting, Domain Names, Dedicated Servers, Colocation,
Managed Services
www.beantownhost.com
www.sysadminvalley.com
www.jeeprally.com
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Re: [Discuss] Migration Environment Survey (host profiling) HOWTO

[Matt Shields]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 2:37 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) 
g...@freephile.com wrote:

 3. What programming languages are utilized with your current
 website/applications? (Please check any/all that apply)
 PHP___
 ASP___
 Python___
 ASP.NET___
 Perl___
 DotNetNUKE___

 I know of no better tool for this job than David Wheeler's sloccount
 (http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/).  With sloccount, you get a
 complete analysis of the source code


 4. What type, number and volume of databases are utilized with your
 current website/applications?
 MySQL ___
 MS-SQL___
 MS Access___
 Other (please
 define)__
 No. of unique databases___
 No. of unique databases___
 No. of unique databases___

 Since we use Postgres, I can tell you how to quickly get the size of
 your database:
 login as the Postgres user to the db host
 enter the psql client
 use this query:
 SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size('my-database'));

 Greg Rundlett


2. Missing quite a few common languages, ie Java.

3. DotNetNuke is a framework not a language, but for a site survey they
could add a separate question asking about what frameworks are used.
PHP - CakePHP, Zend, CodeIgniter...
Perl - Catalyst...
Java - Spring, Strusts...
Python - Django, Pylons, TurboGears...
.NET - are there any?

Another category missing is which application/web servers are used?
Apache
Lighttpd
Nginx
Tomcat
GlassFish
Resin
 and the list goes on

4. For MySQL you can use the following query
SELECT CONCAT(sum(ROUND(((DATA_LENGTH + INDEX_LENGTH - DATA_FREE) / 1024 /
1024),2)), MB) AS Size FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES where TABLE_SCHEMA
like '%YOUR_DB_NAME%' ;

Matthew Shields
Owner
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Managed Services
www.beantownhost.com
www.sysadminvalley.com
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Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Small Form Factor PCs

[Matt Shields]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Chris O'Connell omegah...@gmail.comwrote:

 Yeah, sorry about the Windows question,  I figured I could tap into
 the knowledge of the group.  I recently purchased a pair of the Genesi
 Smarttops that run Ubuntu for another small appliance type project I'm
 creating.  I love Linux too, but sometimes it's not the right fit for every
 job/project.

 The Genesi boxes would be a perfect solution, except that due to the
 processor being ARM based I don't think I could install my OS of choice for
 this particular project.

 The name of the software is HomeSeer.  HomeSeer allows for the control of
 everything from light switches, thermometers, fans, electrical outlets,
 cameras, thermostats... etc, all through one central administration system.
  My friend who has been experimenting with Homeseer says there are some
 Linux alternatives, but none work as well or as reliably as the Windows
 software.  There's been some talk about virtualizing this software, but IMO
 that's just one more thing to break.

 So again, sorry about asking for a Windows specific solution, but my
 question is really more about a small form factor than an operating system
 specific computer.

 Thanks for the feedback!  I'll check out the links you sent me.

 --Chris



 On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Mark Woodward ma...@mohawksoft.com
 wrote:

   On 06/13/2011 08:28 AM, Chris O'Connell wrote:
 
  1)  This is something I would like to productize eventually.
 
  If this is so, an up-front investment in sing Linux will be make your
 life
  much simpler.
 
   2)  Preferably Windows XP or Windows 7.
 
 
  Ok, so it isn't too specifically Windows. Depending on I/O requirements
 it
  may be possible to use Linux with Wine.
 
 
   3)  That's what the home automation software runs on.  I didn't write
 it.
 
  Which software is it? Is it for X10 hardware or something else?
 
 
   4)  I want something small with maybe 2GB ram, 16GB of storage, hard
  wired 100MB ethernet (or more).  I want something prebuilt (IE, I don't
 want
  to have to assemble myself).
 
  There are a lot of these systems available. The embedded market has some
  keep and small PC type computers.
 
 
   The FIT-PC seems to be pretty good, but it's price preloaded with
 Windows
  on it ($500 is the cut off point).  This little start up project is going
 to
  cost me at least 1,000-1,200 with all the accessories.
 
 
  There are a lot of small systems available, here's two
 
 
 
 http://www.amazon.com/Athlon-1-5GHz-Barebone-System-ZBOXHD-AD01/dp/B0043DMPTO
   http://www.mini-box.com/Car-PC-Automotive-Computing-Solutions
 
  Chris
 
 
  One last postscript. IMHO and this being a Linux/UNIX mailing list, you
  should really try to go Linux on this. It opens up far more
 possibilities.
  I'm not sure what home office automation software you are using, but I'd
 be
  quite surprised if there were not an equivalent system on Linux. Then,
 when
  you productize, you don't have to buy a Windows license for each unit.
 
  Also, there are a bunch of guys on this board that are really smart, and
 I
  bet we'd have a bit more emotional investment in helping you succeed if
 you
  weren't using Windows :-)
 
 
 
 
 
  On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Mark Woodward ma...@mohawksoft.com
 wrote:
 
  On 06/12/2011 10:31 AM, Chris O'Connell wrote:
 
  -- Forwarded message --
  From: Chris O'Connellomegah...@gmail.com
  Date: Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 11:49 PM
  Subject: Small Form Factor PCs
  To: bludiscuss@blu.org
 
 
  I'm looking for a very small form factor computer to install some home
  automation software on.  The software is not very resource intensive.
   Here
  are the key requirements for the system:
  1.  Must be able to power back up  without human intervention if power
 to
  the unit is lost.
  2.  Should be small and less energy intensive than a regular PC.
  3.  I would like it to be less than $500.
  4.  Must be capable of running Windows (so either an AMD or INTEL cpu).
 
  Can anyone make any suggestions about what might work well for me?  I
 was
  looking at the Dell Zino, but am unsure if a better option exists.
 
   I know I replied once already, I want to ask a quick couple questions.
 
  (1) Is this a on-off or do you intend to productize your system?
  (2) What version of Windows? You can use Wince.
  (3) umm, why Windows?
  (4) What do you expect for $500, a full PC or just the components. $500
  is, IMHO a very generous number.
  (5) If this is a one-off, I have a VIA-800 miniitx motherboard with 512M
  of ram and an IDE compact flash adapter that makes a neat little
   pseudo-embedded disk-free system that was removed from my robot last
 year.
  I could probably let it go for $100 bucks with a standard ATX power
 supply.
 
 
  With regards to #1, if you are going to product-ize this, you may want
 to
  consider a lower cost platform such as ARM.
  With regards to #3 and maybe #1, unless there is a REALLY specific need,
  

Re: help desk software

[Matt Shields]

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:00 AM, Eric Chadbourne eric.chadbou...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Hi all.

 I need to create a tech support dept for a medium size non-profit.  What
 ticket software would you suggest?

 Thanks!
 --
 Eric Chadbourne




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Just to name a few off the top of my head.  There are hundreds and new ones
come out almost every day.

RT
Spiceworks
Kayako
Cerberus
osTicket
PerlDesk
PHP Support Tickets
Support Logic Helpdesk
Help Desk Software
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Re: help desk software

[Matt Shields]

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Derek Martin inva...@pizzashack.orgwrote:

 On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:47:12AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote:
  On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:00:26AM -0400, Eric Chadbourne wrote:
   Hi all.
  
   I need to create a tech support dept for a medium size non-profit.
  What
   ticket software would you suggest?
 
  The only problem I've ever encountered using RT is getting
  people to use it when they've never used ticketing software
  before.

 This is helped somewhat by using RT's e-mail interface... if you can
 get them to send e-mail to a group address instead of to individual
 humans, that solves a lot of that problem.  You can never solve it
 entirely though... and some people resist even that much of a change.

 --
 Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
 -=-=-=-=-
 This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result
 in
 undeliverable mail due to spam prevention.  Sorry for the inconvenience.


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I've learned that there are always some people who want nothing to do with
ticket systems.  The way I got around this was by explaining to them that a
sysadmin's time has to be justified and this was what management wanted to
justify how we spent our time.  I'll go ahead and start to work on your
issue, but as soon as you get back to your desk I need a ticket submitted.
 I also used the ticket system as a queue for what takes priority over other
things and used it to assign tasks to other sysadmins.  It was also helpful
for rotating who's oncall and who should handle the weekly support tasks.

Anyway, you start to learn who will send a ticket in and who won't.  For
those who won't I tell them that since they continuously forget to submit a
ticket, then their issue will have to wait until they have the time to
submit one.  They learn real quick.

-matt
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Email migration script

[Matt Shields]

Does anyone have a script that will either POP3 or IMAP to a source mail
server and copy to a destination mail server?  Normally I've done this by
just using the client's credentials to copy mailboxes one at a time with
Thunderbird, but I have a client with a couple hundred mailboxes.  The
script can be either PHP, Bash, Perl, Ruby or Python.  It can be as simple
as it only takes 1 mail box at a time, and I'll write my own wrapper around
it.

-matt
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Re: Routers (with some humor)

[Matt Shields]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 8:50 PM, edwa...@linuxmail.org wrote:

 Not too long ago, I asked on the list for suggestions on a new router.
 I eventually purchased a Netgear N600 model WNDR3400 router.

 I recently returned, a Netgear N600 model WNDR3400 router.

 Right out of the box, the firmware was found to by buggy, the router
 actually wanted to spend its days in sunny California, as it refused to
 be let out of the Pacific Time Zone.

 Coupled with the fact that when this problem was reported to Netgear's
 (advertised) Technical Support, where a total of five e-mails,
 received from a total of four different technicians, /all/ told me that
 they have a better understanding of the problem and need to elevate it
 to a higher level., I then made a decision to attempt to return it to
 the place of purchase, which had a 14-day return policy on
 technology.  If Technical Support couldn't fix a problem after
 reaching the 5th level of technical support, it really was, a
 problem.

 Because it was after the 14-day return period had lapsed, I was not
 sure the retailer would accept it back.  Luckily, the manager on
 duty was kind enough to made an exception and accepted the defective
 Netgear N600 Model WNDR3400 router.

 It was exchanged for a Cisco Linksys E2000 router, which has no issues
 whatsoever being in the Eastern Time Zone.  :-)

 Enjoy your weekend.
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I have two of the WNDR3700's and they work great.  One running stock
firmware and one running DD-WRT.

-matt
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Re: Lightweight network monitoring program

[Matt Shields]

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org wrote:

 One of my systems at work tends to drop its network connection. What I
 need is a network monitoring tool. Certainly nagios will do the job, but
 I'm looking for something more light weight that will simply check a
 list of hosts periodically. I would like to run the monitoring software
 from either my Windows laptop of one of the network servers.

 --
 Jerry Feldman g...@blu.org
 Boston Linux and Unix
 PGP key id: 537C5846
 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



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How about smokeping?  It's perfect for this and it creates nice graphs too

-matt
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Re: Help Desk Software

[Matt Shields]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Chris O'Connell omegah...@gmail.comwrote:

 Can anyone recommend some open source help desk software?

 Obviously the software should be web based.  I also want to be able to run
 reports about closed items, open items, and who is assigned to what.
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Free:
osTicket
PHP Support Tickets
RT (previously mentioned)

Not free:
PerlDesk
Cerberus Helpdesk

I've used Cerberus for a couple different places and I have some mixed
reviews, at this point with all the changes they have made I don't think I'd
pick them again.

-matt
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