Savannah W-ITS

Naw, you just need to be viral, right?

If you are an IT problem solver then there is a good chance that you use one or more search engines on a daily basis.  Why go through the hassles usually encountered to resolve complex technical problems when, using a search engine you can cut the time needed to resolve the issue by reading how Joe resolved IT?  This site is one example

ModSecurity is a web application firewall (WAF) for the Apache server.

I’m a big fan** of this Open Source solution – Once you install the module you can use it to:

• filter at the server level (directly in httpd.conf or as include files),
• filter at the directory/location/folder level (via .htaccess files),
• stop specific (i.e. known) attacks,
• stop generic attacks.

You can also use it to simply monitor your web traffic at a more detailed level.

Recent log

Web server security is something that we all want, but usually, we only want it when it is convenient. (This also applies to other parts of our lives when security is a factor.)

Convenience for us usually means:

• that there is a simple login process
• that server settings and pages are easy to change, maintain, and update.

Convenience for our site visitors usually means that a web visitor can easily access your web pages

Systems Administrators (SAs) need some Whoops! time.

In addition to knowledge breadth and depth, system administrators need experience; this is, perhaps, the defining aspect between senior and other levels of technology creators, managers and maintainers.  Been there – done that.  Some less than positive examples (usually experienced early as a SA):

• made a small tweak/system change that caused everything else to fail OR
• accidentally locked out all users and/or auto-magic processes

NOTE – I am a disruptive user – I typically explore new(er) technology offerings in a manner that vendors might not prefer so please note that your mileage should vary, especially if you are a non-disruptive user…

Xen?  I thought that Xen = Citrix?

Yes and no…   The Citrix product line includes technologies developed/derived from the Xen Open Source project. 

Things are great when they work! Some recent change (around 11/14/2008) to the Yum Extender (or a change to some underlying component) caused it to ‘break’ – since there are quite a few users of this (very nice) package problem reports surfaced quickly (probably within hours or even minutes of the problem…)

If you are not using the Yum Extender then you are missing a great, simple GUI tool for

While exploring VirtualIron I rebooted into Vista and decided to try Open Solaris under Vista/VirtualBox (version prior to 2.0.4) ; I assigned 2GB of RAM an started the same VDI that I used under Fedora 9/VirtualBox – Blue Screen resulted almost immediately.

I install the latest release of VirtualBox (2.0.4) and re-start the Open Solaris VDI again – I get messages about possible file system problems (i.e. inconsistent file system);  the VDI

I get vendor emails on a daily basis – I usually ignore the web links that they contain…

Today, I accepted the invitation to visit Sun’s Web site.  While there, I happened upon an Open Solaris VDI download (~2GB compressed image.)  After downloading just uncompress, import into your VDI disk image selections, create a new Open Solaris type virtual machine (VM) and

Hopefully, you are not too troubled with email SPAM – SPAM being emails that are un-solicited where the goal of the sender is to:

• either trick you into action or
• invite you to click on a link and lead you to some action.

Note that it also likely that you receive ‘call to action’ emails from vendors with whom you have an existing business relationship (EBR.) Such emails also, typically include ‘active

If you have a number of old web sites or even a significant number of static HTML web pages then you may decide that moving them into a web based content management system (CMS) or even a blog might provide a benefit.

First, reasons NOT to migrate:

• not enough time, money, resources
• static pages actually ‘perform’ better (i.e. they will display faster since there are no, or fewer, dynamic components); in fact, many