Murdering File System

When evaluating file systems, choose the one that doesn't murder your wife.

Tools of the trade dept: Network Monitoring

http://www.zabbix.com/ (++)
http://www.jffnms.org/
http://www.zenoss.com/
http://www.hyperic.com/
http://www.cacti.net/

Tools of the trade dept: wireshark and ratproxy

http://www.wireshark.org/ - network protocol analyzer
http://code.google.com/p/ratproxy/ - semi automated passive security audit tool (that's a mouthful)

Disable some PHP functions

Disable some uneeded functions. Add these to your php.ini

disable_functions: escapeshellarg, escapeshellcmd, exec, passthru, proc_close, proc_get_status, proc_nice, proc_open, proc_terminate, shell_exec, system, pcntl_exec, pcntl_fork, popen, phpinfo

Edit: Those who managed to gain access to a web server will look for these process when you have PHP installed. If you won't use it, disable it.

Sendmail premature EOM: unexpected close

Been geeting some errors on our sendmail server with:

premature EOM: unexpected close

at the sending server, the error was:

Deferred: Operation timed out with

and mails can't get in even if their really small. It turns out one of the RBLs I've configured is not responding anymore. I've commented out till I find out which one.

Look for:

FEATURE(`dnsbl',blah blah...

and comment them out:

dnl FEATURE(`dnsbl',blah blah...

run make or rebuild sendmail.mc then restart/reload sendmail.

Download a site and save a mirror copy:

wget -nv -E -k -m -p http://www.whatever.com

Be sure to check robots.txt as it may not allow some folders to be accessed.

Update[2008-06-19]: If there are javascript generated images, CSS background images, they won't be saved.

Handy Joomla functions:

$user = new mosUser( $database );
$user->load( (int)$row->id );

mosMail($mosConfig_mailfrom, $mosConfig_fromname, $confirmEmail, $subject, $message);

Recursive tasks unix style

I had to update a php file and each php file is under a different folder. A folder represents a site I'm updating:

site1.com

site2.net

site3.com.tw

so, I had to:

for j in *; do echo $j; cd $j/html && (for i in `find . -name "configuration.php"` ; do chflags noschg $i; perl -pi.bak -e 's/apache/apache2/g' $i; chflags schg $i; done; ) && cd ../.. ; done

I needed two loops as find would crap out because of the extra deep directory structure. Or maybe there's a flag to tell find not to go eny deeper than 1?

You might be wondering what's the chflags is for. It's an extra measure it won't get overwritten by Apache even if the the owner is root:wheel.

Securing RedHat Linux

From the "it-might-be-useful" department:

http://www.puschitz.com/SecuringLinux.shtml

Remove ^M in files

After transfering files from the Windows/DOS world, you somtimes get ^M at the end of each line. To remove:

tr -d \\r < dosfile > newfile

Make Linux Hard

Hardening Linux Systems

Jolli-worms?

Are we eating cultured worms? Check out this website:

http://www.jollibee.com.ph/jollibee-food-corporation.html

Open the HTML page:

Mozilla: CTRL+U
Opera: CTRL+F3
Internet Explorer: Edit->View source(???)

<META NAME="object" CONTENT="jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food, jollibee food corporation, earthworm, earthworm hamburger, earthworm hamburger issue, earthworm hamburger patties, earthworm meat, earthworm meat price, earthworm price, earthworms, earthworms price, eating fast food">

This is not an official indication that they do use cultured earthworms. If you also check out the end of the HTML page, they have lots of keywords put in for search engines. I wonder if this is allowed by Google?

Mac Mini Project

I'm planning to build a media center PC using Mac Mini. Here are the things to digest:

The howto by Chris
The hardware that connects the mini to a TV
The software that rips the DVDs and save them to a file

Convert FLV files to MPEG

to convert to "keys me" videos and the like

ffmpeg -i video.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 test.mpg

Bookmark: VMware Player

VMware Player multi-OS howto

WAMP?

Windows Apache MySql Php

Been getting flack about me moderating a guy's sub-forum at an all-female dominated community board. It's hard to act "professional" when some people act like children.

I secretly want to be a DJ

k700i & VGA Mode lines

Just got a new phone! It's Sony Ericsson k700i. It's an old phone but it's the phone I really want.

Just saw this on /.

I know I'll get moderated as a troll again because I suggest using Linux over Windows, but

Modeline "800x480" 40 800 864 928 1088 480 481 484 509 +hsync

Will do the trick for X. No drivers necessary.

It might come in handy someday.

Ultra Electro Magnetic Top!

I was checking out the Eraserheads entry at Wikipedia to see the albums they've made. I have their first album, titled "UltraElectroMagneticPop!". The Wiki entry didn't say where the name of the album came from so I tried editing it.

The Wiki hanged for a while till I decided to save it again.

Check it out! Hopefully, my update was accurate enough:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eraserheads#Discography

Bookmarks: Windowx XP Remote Booting

Might be handy someday.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/usewinemb/xp/deploy/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/xpehelp/html/xehowhowtoconfigureeltorito.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/xpehelp/html/xetbshowtocreaterun-timeimageformassdeployment.asp