Security+ Certified !

I finally sat the Security+ Cert exam from CompTIA last month. Passed it, but it is definitely not an easy exam - they require memorization of lots of niggly little things that really do nothing to ensure that you really know about Securty. it's more about knowing the names of certain exploits, viruses, etc.
14 Apr 2012

Apache2 CMD to check VHOST Settings...

Well - since Apache V2 the ONLY command to use is apparently "apache2ctrl" as follows: Note this command will parse the VHOST configs and dump them to StandardOut...
sudo /usr/sbin/apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_VHOSTS
08 Apr 2012

Windows Server Login Script example

Found here: \\domain.local\sysvol\domain.local\Policies\foldername\USER\Scripts\Logon

Login Script example:

Dim WSHELL, SETNETTIME
CONST DOMAINNAME = "myDomain"

Set WSHELL = Wscript.CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

SETNETTIME = "net time /DOMAIN:" & DOMAINNAME & "/set /y"
'wscript.echo("Syncing workstation time with server time!")

WSHELL.run(SETNETTIME)
wscript.echo("Time has been Set." & vbCrLf & "Other Scripts disabled.")
20 Mar 2012

NTP setup for Windows Server 2003 (DC)

Synching to an External Time Source

Setting the Primary DC -  Windows Server 2003 to sync with an external time server:

Open the Registry Editor (regedt32.exe) make the following changes:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters\Type
This registry entry determines which peers W32Time will accept synchronization from.
Change this REG_SZ value from NT5DS to NTP
This configures the PDC Emulator to synchronize from the list of reliable time servers specified in the NtpServer registry entry described below.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config\AnnounceFlags
This registry entry controls whether the local computer is marked as a reliable time server (which is only possible if the previous registry entry is set to NTP as described above).
Change this REG_DWORD value from 10 to 5 here.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters\NtpServer
This registry entry specifies a space-delimited list of NTP servers to synchronize with. The list may consist of one or more DNS names or IP addresses (if DNS names are used then append ,0x1 to the end of each DNS name). For example, to synchronize the PDC Emulator in your forest root domain with tock.usno.navy.mil, an open-access SNTP time server run by the United States Naval Observatory, change the value of the NtpServer registry entry from time.windows.com,0x1 to tock.usno.navy.mil,0x1 here. Alternatively, you can specify the IP address of this time server, which is 192.5.41.209 instead. 

See this link for a list of NIST time servers to choose from: http://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi

Now stop and restart the Windows Time service using the following commands:

net stop w32time
net start w32time

It may take an hour or so for the PDC Emulator to fully synchronize with the external time server because of the nature of the polling method W32Time uses. Depending on the latency of your Internet connection, the accuracy of the CMOS clock on your forest root PDC Emulator should be within a second or two of UTC.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to wait for time convergence to occur between your server and the external NTP server, you can run this command on your PDC:
w32tm /resync /rediscover
01 Mar 2012

Boot troubles - Dual-booted -- Ubuntu installed after WinXP

Having to repair the Grub2 boot setup...

Here's how I fixed it...

  1. Booted to Ubuntu Linux 11.10 Desktop
  2. Opened a Terminal session
  3. Installed Boot-repair
  4. Ran same, and took the default one-click repair option...
For the less savvy of us, here are the two magic CLI commands to install & run it:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

Boot-Repair

  • Easy-to-use (repair in 1 click ! )
  • Free (GPL open-source license)
  • Helpful (Boot-Info summary to get help by email or on your favorite forum)
  • Safe (automatic backups)
  • Can recover access to Windows (XP, Vista, Seven).
  • Can recover access to Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint...
  • Can recover access to any OS (Windows, MacOS, Linux..) if your PC contains Debian, Ubuntu or derivative.
  • Can repair MBR-locked OEM computer boot if the original bootsector has been saved by Clean-Ubiquity
  • Can repair the boot when you have the "GRUB Recovery" error message
  • Options to reinstall GRUB2 bootloader easily (OS by default, purge, unhide, kernel options..)
  • and much more ! (EFI, SATA, filesystem repair...)
10 Feb 2012

Using Blockquote in Drupal to highlight text...

OK- I finally have one I like to highlight a quotation with. It is a Drupal module called "Blockquotes" and it goes like this: Posted by zeta ζ on July 14, 2008 at 7:38pm The Blockquote module is used to create styled blockquotes in your pages.

These blocks of text are intended for one or more verses or paragraphs that are quoted verbatim (word for word). Separating this text into a block shows that the whole block is quoted, therefore no punctuation marks are needed to indicate the beginning or end of the quotation.

Nevertheless, we do want the block to be styled appropriately, and Garland in particular, is lacking this feature. The Blockquote module provides this styling, especially tailored to harmonise with Garland, but can be used with any theme. RTL support is included: Make sure you are using an RTL or BIDI aware theme.
21 Jan 2012

Pull Quotes

I wanted to add some CSS to my Drupal sites to provide a cool quotations look for blog posts etc. This is the module that I found that I think does a very good job. Unfortunately, I also need an option to remove the original text from the post - so that ONLY the pull quote is viewable. But that doesn't appear to be available as an option with this module. For most of the time, I really want the quote to be INLINE in the text. Any thoughts on how that could be done would be welcomed - you can comment on it here if you like... What follows is the description of the module from the drupal website at http://drupal.org/project/pullquote

A pull-quote is a quotation or excerpt from an article that is typically placed in a larger or distinctive typeface on the same page, serving to entice readers into an article or to highlight a key topic.

Without the module, authors would need to duplicate the text excerpt.

Functionality

This module automates and simplifies the use of pull-quotes for Drupal, by:

  • removing the need to duplicate excerpts;
  • automatically adding opening and closing quotation marks to the pull quote;
  • leaving the excerpt unchanged in the body text;
  • formatting the pull-quote to match your site's design, using CSS.

To use, simply place intended text excerpt inside a span tag with a class of 'pullquote'. The module then duplicates the text, adds opening and closing quotation marks and formats with an eye-catching design.

Benefits

This has several advantages:

  • the avoidance of duplicated text, makes your work better with screen-readers like RSS, as there is no out of context excerpt duplication;
  • it is easier for less skilled authors to create pullquotes;
  • pull-quotes can be put on the opposite side, simply by adding a different CSS class; and
  • if you later want to change the design of your pull-quotes, you can do so with just one simple change.

Development roadmap

Credits

Thanks to:

  • css-tricks.com for their inspiration;
  • Sun for his code critique during development;
  • lliss and callison for their invaluable coding and co-maintainer contributions.
21 Jan 2012

Twitter Module Breaks if you don't upgrade to OAuth 6.x-3.0

I just sorted out the newest version of the Drupal Twitter module (https://drupal.org/project/twitter) - it was broken somewhere around December by an upgrade that pushed the version required of the Drupal OAuth Module http://drupal.org/project/oauth up to the newer OAuth 6.x-3.0-beta4 There is also now a required module ADDED called "Autoload" (Currently Version 6.x-2.1 - http://drupal.org/project/autoload) that was not required prior to this. You will also need to go into the User Permissions section and enable the permission for the "twitter_post" module for your preferred User Role, as for some reason, the change in versions removes that permission setting from the database. Lesson learned, keep checking your Twitter feed and make sure that posts are appearing as expected...
17 Jan 2012

Resetting the TCP settings in Windows 7 (& probably Vista etc.)

It's hard to admit this, but I have had a great deal of trouble with Windows 7 and VPN - connecting to a remote VPN service from a Win7 Desktop. I looked everywhere to try to resolve it, when I finally ran across this little gem:
netsh winsock reset catalog [resets winsock]
netsh int ip reset reset.log hit [resets the TCP/IP stack]
Run these two at the command line, REBOOT, and (at least for me) all of my issues with VPN connection failures were GONE !
02 Jan 2012

Settings (in Vista and Windows 7) to access Samba Shares...

Microsoft Vista’s default security policy is to only use NTLMv2 authentication. I am not sure what the setting is by default in Windows 7 - so this may apply there too. Note that NTLMv2 authentication is supported in Samba 3.0+ Seems like we ought to be heading towards Kerberos for all our authentication needs in the longer term. See the forum discussion on this at: http://www.builderau.com.au/blogs/codemonkeybusiness/viewblogpost.htm?p=339270746
14 Sep 2011
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