Verified by VISA, unverified by the user...

Purchasing something on New Egg...after punching in my new credit card info, I get a redirect claiming to be "Verified by Visa", telling me to input my birth date, last 4 of my social security, etc. This is suspicious. Then there's the url:

https://www.verifiedbyvisa.com/VisaGold/app/pahandler.lt?vga= %3D%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fsecure2.arcot.com%2Facspage%2Fcap.cgi

Even if verified by visa and arcot are legit sites, they are using bogus means. I'm not sure what I'm going to do here. Could they make this mechanism look any less legit? Maybe some banner ads for pharmacee?

Trouble with VNC - shift key not transmitted

I ran into this recently: after launching a VNC server on my work machine, I couldn't log in because it wasn't accepting the shift key. Essentially, no capital letters and half the punctuation was unavailable. This made it so I couldn't log on because my password is full of mixed case and punctuation.

Thanks to bramschoenmakers.nl for the fix. I'm only putting this here so I can find it again if needed!

http://www.bramschoenmakers.nl/en/node/714

invoke x11vnc with -xkb flag or add the line xkb to your ~/.x11vncrc

Ubuntu gdm problem solved.

I ran into this shortly after updating 9.10, got the black box in place of login screen, following log messages in /var/log/gdm/:0-greeter.log

(gnome-settings-daemon:3419): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed

(gnome-settings-daemon:3419): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
Window manager warning: Failed to read saved session file /var/lib/gdm/.config/metacity/sessions/10a9a99fd3e4ce7c9b128608721774271800000034130008.ms: Failed to open file '/var/lib/gdm/.config/metacity/sessions/10a9a99fd3e4ce7c9b128608721774271800000034130008.ms': No such file or directory

/etc/motd told me system load was over 5, saw 4-5 gdm processes each eating 15-27% cpu.

I figured it was a faulty update, possibly of my evil binary nvidia driver. Turns out /tmp was full! Clearing it solved the problem.

Me: I hate the following as verbs: "partner", "dialogue". On the fence about "impact"

Jason: I can't stand it when people use "disconnect" as a noun. It's a freaking verb.

Me: There's a disconnect with you and that usage. Maybe we should partner to dialogue about the issue going forward.

Jason: Positively heinous. Nicely done.

Generic Snort Advice:

I got an email about the Snort User Group that I had run in the past. Local interest waned, and I got a new job. Once in a while I get a contact via email. Here's my recent response:

I don't know your setup or the threats you face, but my generic advice is to place Snort on a separate box inside the firewall, so it doesn't have to analyze traffic the firewall will block. The general consensus is that there's too much scanning, worm attacks, etc. for the data outside the firewall to be any use. There won't be much stuff where you'll say, "Aha! I gotta do something about that!" There will be enough stuff inside the firewall to worry about. The firewall logs will give you that data if you have the cycles to do something with it.

One reason to use a separate box: a problem with Snort won't sever your internet connection. There are always problems with host management, like running out of disk space or hardware failure, and Snort has had a few problems itself.

Other generic advice: I found the major problem with doing Intrusion Detection was efficiently processing alerts. For my money, nothing beats the sguil console. It's awesome, and it's free. I would not bother with Arcsight, or Cisco's SIM console even if they were free. Sguil puts all the things you need to see over and over right on one page. And when you need to go deeper, you have the whole tcpdump. When you need to see what else might have happened, you have all the session data. Easy asci protocol decodes so you can see the http sessions. There's an IRC channel for it on Freenode, #snort-gui. The primary developer is on there most days, and is incredibly tolerant of n00bs. Martin Roesch and Richard Bejtlich are among the other notables who can be found there. There are VMware appliances available to try it out. Setup is a little daunting, but if you stick it out you'll be really glad you did. http://sguil.sourceforge.net

Another issue is tuning Snort, which is an ongoing maintenance issue. Shutting off noisy sources of false-positives is a big job, and you don't want to start over every time you update the ruleset. There's a script called Oinkmaster which makes it a lot easier. Make your changes to the oinkmaster file, and apply it to each new ruleset. Suppression directives are another supplemental approach; they let you ignore results for particular hosts for particular rules, while leaving the rule in force for everything else.

There's a lot of information out there. Let me know if you have questions and I'll try to point you to some of it.

Living in Retardoville

We are going to set up an MS-SQL server at work. It's going to run on a dedicated machine, which gives better performance. We've identified a physical box to run this on, once we migrate what's currently running on that box to a virtual machine. This box is a dual processor server. MS licenses MS-SQL per processor.

So we are going to pull a processor from the machine to save licensing costs.

Now, what makes this retarded is not what we're doing, it's the stupidity and overhead of the MS revenue model.

We're not using a dedicated server strictly for performance and then electing to lobotomize it because we're morons. We're lobotomizing it to save money because the MS way gives us a financial incentive to cripple our server.

Go, Open Source!

Installing Veritas Storage Foundation on CentOS 4.4

SF Basic is free, with a limit of 4 volumes. Offers multipathing, storage virtualization, snapshots, remote duplication, etc. Might be easier to get these advanced features with this than with an Open Source project like iSCSI Enterprise Target.

CAVEATS: Saw a blog entry complaining about terrible performance on linux.

Only installs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Novell's brand. I searched for a record of anyone installing it on the RHEL free clone CentOS and came up basically empty. So FWIW, here is how I got it to install. I make no claims for the correctness of my perl; there may be better ways to accomplish what I did.

Experimental Installation on CentOS release 4.4 (Final) on this platform:

2.6.9-42.ELsmp #1 SMP Tue Aug 15 10:35:26 BST 2006 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

tar -xzvf Q18982H.sfbasic.5.0.00.0.rhel4_x86_64.tar.gz
cd rhel4_x86_64/storage_foundation_basic/

There are problems with the install script installsf - edit a copy to match the following, or just paste this into your own myinstallsf (you may have to tweak the formatting):

#!/bin/sh

MYDIR1="/root/rhel4_x86_64/storage_foundation_basic/scripts/"

MYDIR="/root/rhel4_x86_64/perl/Linux/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.8/"

MYOTHERDIR="/root/rhel4_x86_64/perl/Linux/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.8/i686-linux-thread-multi-64int/"

DIRNAME=dirname $0

[ -z "DIRNAME" ] && DIRNAME="."

PDIR=/usr IOPT="/opt/VRTSperl/lib/site_perl/UXRT5.0"

if [ -z "$PDIR" ]; then

echo "Cannot find perl to execute $0" exit 1

fi

PERLVERS=$PDIR/bin/perl -v | grep This.is | awk '{print $4}' | sed 's/v//'

PERLFOR=$PDIR/bin/perl -v | grep This.is | awk '{print $7}'

IOPT="-I$IOPT -I$PDIR/lib/$PERLVERS/$PERLFOR -I$PDIR/lib/$PERLVERS -I$PDIR/lib/site_perl/$PERLVERS/$PERLFOR -I$PDIR/lib/site_perl/$PERLVERS -I$PDIR/lib/site_perl -I$MYDIR1 -I$MYDIR -I$MYOTHERDIR"

eval 'exec $PDIR/bin/perl -x -S $IOPT $0 ${1+"$@"}'

if 0;

#!perl

use strict "vars";

use warnings;

no warnings qw(uninitialized redefine internal);

use CPI::common::CPI;

use CPI::train::common::UXRT;

use CPI::train::Linux::UXRT;

CPI::main();

There's a library missing. Fix via:

yum install libaio

The installation script you prepared will now run, but fail. The error message is:

Undefined subroutine &CPI::pkg::Linux::VRTSpbx::pl_die called at /root/rhel4_x86_64/storage_foundation_basic/scripts//CPI/pkg/Linux/VRTSpbx.pm line 25,

To resolve this error, edit scripts/CPI/pkg/Linux/VRTSpbx.pm

change line 25: change pl_die --> CPI::pl_die

The installation script you prepared will run further, but still fail, with a reference to a missing rpm and a suggestion to install 'compat'. This is fixed by:

yum install compat-libstdc++-296.i386

Installation proceeds successfully, I think. In one of life's ironies, it took too long to work this out; I don't have time to experiment with it. Maybe later...

Here's the installation record/output.

------------------------------------

* Storage Foundation Basic 5.0 Installation Program

Copyright (c) 2006 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The Licensed Software and Documentation are deemed to be "commercial computer software" and "commercial computer software documentation" as defined in FAR Sections 12.212 and DFARS Section 227.7202.

Logs for myinstallsf are being created in /var/tmp/myinstallsf-aBgSrT.

Enter the system names separated by spaces on which to install SF Basic: santest

Initial system check:

* Checking SF Basic installation on santest ............... not installed
* Checking libaio rpm ......................................... installed
* Checking glibc rpm .......................................... installed
* Checking kernel release on santest ................................. 42
* Checking distribution match with santest ........................... OK
* Checking architecture on santest ................................... OK
* Checking rpm dist match with santest ............................... OK
* Checking for SE Linux on santest ................................... OK
o Storage Foundation Basic 5.0 Installation Program

Checking system licensing


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX successfully registered on santest
<<>>

Checking installed rpms on santest

SF Basic can be installed without optional rpms to conserve disk space.

* 1) Required Storage Foundation Basic rpms - 324 MB required 2) All Storage Foundation Basic rpms - 438 MB required

Select the rpms to be installed on all systems? [1-2,q,?] (2) 2

* The following SF Basic rpms will be installed:
* VRTSperl
* Veritas Perl 5.8.8 Redistribution
* VRTSvlic Veritas Licensing
* VRTSicsco Symantec Infrastructure Core Services Common
* VRTSpbx Symantec Private Branch Exchange
* VRTSsmf Symantec Service Management Framework
* VRTSatClient Symantec Product Authentication Service Client
* VRTSatServer Symantec Product Authentication Service
* VRTSobc33 Veritas Enterprise Administrator Core Service
* VRTSob Veritas Enterprise Administrator Service
* VRTSobgui Veritas Enterprise Administrator
* VRTSccg Veritas Enterprise Administrator Central Control Grid
* VRTSmh Veritas Storage Foundation Managed Host by Symantec
* VRTSaa Veritas Enterprise Administrator Action Agent
* VRTSspt Veritas Software Support Tools
* SYMClma Symantec License Inventory Agent
* VRTSvxvmcommon Veritas Volume Manager Common Package
* VRTSvxvmplatform Veritas Volume Manager Platform Specific Package
* VRTSdsa Veritas Datacenter Storage Agent
* VRTSfspro Veritas File System Management Services Provider Press
* [Enter] to continue:
* ..continued:
* VRTSvmdoc Veritas Volume Manager Documentation
* VRTSvmman Veritas Volume Manager Manual Pages
* VRTSlvmconv Veritas Linux LVM to VxVM Converter
* VRTSvdid Veritas Device Identification API
* VRTSddlpr Veritas Device Discovery Layer Services Provider
* VRTSvmpro Veritas Volume Manager Management Services Provider
* VRTSvsvc Veritas Volume Server and Client Provider
* VRTSdcli Veritas Distributed Command Line Interface
* VRTSalloc Veritas Volume Manager Intelligent Storage Provisioning
* VRTSvxfscommon Veritas File System Common package
* VRTSvxfsplatform Veritas File System Platform Specific Package
* VRTSfsman Veritas File System Manual Pages
* VRTSfsdoc Veritas File System Documentation
* VRTSfssdk Veritas File System Software Developer Kit
* VRTSfsmnd Veritas File System Software Developer Kit Manual Pages
* VRTSvxmsa Veritas Mapping Service, Application Libraries
* VRTSmaprocommon Veritas Storage Foundation GUI for Mapping Press
* [Enter] to continue:
o Checking for patch(1) rpm on santest .......... version 2.5.4 installed
o It is possible to install SF Basic rpms without performing configuration. It is optional to configure SF Basic now. If you choose to configure SF Basic later, you can either do so manually or run the installsf -configure command. Are you ready to configure SF Basic? [y,n,q] (y) y
o Installing SF Basic: 100%
The following rpms failed to install on santest:
o VRTSddlpr
o VRTSvsvc
o VRTSdcli
o VRTSalloc
o VRTSmapro-common
o The enclosure-based naming scheme is a feature of Veritas Volume Manager. It allows one to reference disks using a symbolic name that is more meaningful than the operating system's normal device access name. This symbolic name is typically derived from the array name.
* . Do you want to set up the enclosure-based naming scheme? [y,n,q,?] (n) y
* . Veritas Volume Manager default disk group name configuration: Many Veritas Volume Manager commands affect the contents or configuration of a disk group. Such commands require that the user specify a disk group. This is accomplished by using the -g option of a command or setting the VXVM_DEFAULTDG environment variable. An alternative to these two methods for some commands is to configure the name of the default disk group of a system. Note: The default disk group feature is not available with the DCLI vxadm(1M) and vxquery(1M) commands. When using these commands, a required disk group must be explicitly identified using the -g option.
* . Do you want to set up a default disk group for each system? [y,n,q,?] (y)
* . Specify a default disk group name for system santest. [?] admin
* . You have decided to specify the default disk group as follows:
o Host: santest ....................................... Disk group: admin
o Note: If 'nodg' is displayed, then the host will be configured to have no default disk group. Is this correct? [y,n,q] (y)
* . Verify the install systems Fully Qualified Hostnames.
o Querying fully qualified domain name of host "santest" ........... fail
Press [Enter] to continue: Unable to find FQHN for santest.sscc.storage! Enter the fully qualified hostname of "santest" or 'QUIT' to quit install.
* . Enter the fully qualified host name: santest.sscc.storage
* . Choose how this install will be managed. This product can configured one of the two following ways:
o Storage Foundation Management Server managed host (Recommended)
o Standalone host Pre-requisites for Storage Foundation Management Server managed host:
+ A Storage Foundation Management Server (SFMS) is configured
+ SFMS should be currently running and fully operational.
+ Authentication Broker that is used by SFMS should be running.
The following information would be requested during configuration:
+ The host name of the SFMS
+ Previously set SFMS agent account password
There are no pre-requisites for deploying as a standalone host.
Enabling Storage Foundation Management Server management simplifies and improves management of the complex data center resources, reducing planned and unplanned down time.
* . Enable Storage Foundation Management Server Management? [y,n,q] (y) n

Verify the install systems Fully Qualified Hostnames.

* Configuring VEA in STANDALONE mode on "santest" .................... ok
* Configuring gridnode on "santest" .................................. ok
* Registering gridnode on "santest" .................................. ok
* Configuring actionagent on "santest" ............................... ok
* Registering actionagent on "santest" ............................... ok

Registering StorageAgent on "santest" .............................. ok
* Do you want to start Storage Foundation Basic processes now? [y,n,q] (y)
* .
o Starting SF Basic: 100%
o Startup completed successfully on all systems
o Setting default disk group to admin on santest ................... Done
Installation log files, summary file, and response file are saved at:
o /opt/VRTS/install/logs/myinstallsf-aBgSrT
o Scalars leaked: -1
* Scalars leaked: 1
* . [root@santest storage_foundation_basic]#