____________________________PLAY BLUBRRY PROMO____________________________

____________________________PLAY OPENING MUSIC____________________________

[Keith] Welcome to A Couple Of Admins Podcasting. I'm Keith Albright

[Rich] and I'm Rich Niemeier.

[Steve] and I'm Steve Murawski.

[Keith] This is Episode 36 recorded on January 29, 2008.

Chit-Chat - What's going on with you?

[Steve]

[Rich]

[Keith]

Housekeeping Items

[Rich]

[Steve]

[Keith]

  • Contest reminders.

____________________________PLAY TPN PROMO____________________________

____________________________PLAY ACOAP PROMO____________________________

  • Always Check For Initialization [KEITH]
-We have a website for customers that allows them to login using account number and password. They register with an email address to it was asked when I first started here to allow login with PW and either acct num or email. I spoke with the vendor and they supplied me a new SQL stored procedure to do the lookup, but it was up to me to modify the ASP code.
-I modified the code and everything looked great, but it wouldn't work. I banged my head against it for weeks. Finally, I sat down and traced the code step-by-step (yes, I should have done this earlier, but it was such a simple change I couldn't rationalize there being a problem). As I trace, I realize each field for the login is initialized to a basic string. This string get passed when the form is submitted. The logic in my SQL query assumes the account num field is NULL when the email address is used.....not so. It has the initialization string. I added logic to the stored procedure to check for null or init string in the account num field and viola it worked perfectly. I can't believe I didn't see it earlier. I knew what the code did, I just never connected the problem it caused later.
-Link: http://
  • PHP, Perl and Python pass Homeland Security test [STEVE]

By Robert Vamosi, CNET News.com | 2008/01/09 09:47:02

-San Francisco-based Coverity, working in collaboration with Stanford University and under a contract from the Department of Homeland Security, is analysing source code to certify that open-source projects written in C, C++, and Java are secure.
-Eleven projects made the list: Amanda, NTP, OpenPAM, OpenVPN?, Overdose, Perl, PHP, Postfix, Python, Samba, and TCL.
-Link: http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/PHP-Perl-and-Python-pass-Homeland-Security-test/0,339028227,339284949,00.htm
-Link:http://shrinkster.com/u95
  • Open Source Code Contains Security Holes [STEVE]

By Charles Babcock InformationWeek January 8, 2008 09:40 AM

-Popular open source projects, such as Samba, the PHP, Perl, and Tcl dynamic languages used to bind together elements of Web sites, and Amanda, the popular open source backup and recovery software running on half a million servers, were all found to have dozens or hundreds of security exposures and quality defects.
-It's funny how two news organizations can look at the same thing and both see it from completely different angles. Perspective/bias really does come into play in these news stories.
-Link: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205600229
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u8h
  • FiT? to be tied [KEITH]
-So I get this email today to my ACOAP account:

Letter of Relationship and Establishment Aid.
for Personal Attention and Confidential
From : AMANIE DOUDOU
Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire West Africa
Tel : REDACTED
For logistic reason contact me on e.mail:(REDACTED@yahoo.fr)
Attention: Respectful,
Greetings and How are you today.I am AMANIE DOUDOU from Cote d' Ivoire in West AfricaI? would like you to kindly permit me to apply through this medium for your co-operation to secure an opportunity to invest and do joint relationship and business with you in your country.I got your contact address from Friends in Tech Forum Memberlist . I have a substantial capital I honourably Inherited from my late father late Chief BOUGA DOUDOU who was minister of Interior and deal in Cocao and coffee plantation and share from family Gold, Diamond mining site in Boukae Northern District of Ivory Coast. Before the Epmigo rebels killed Him recently in poltical crisis in our country that have resulted to war since this past years. I intend to invest this fund in profitable areas in your country into a very lucratives business venture of which you are to advise and execute the said venture over there for the mutual benefits of both of us.
...
This fund is legitimately acquired by my late father from sales of cocoa and coffee and diamond dealings. Looking forward to your prompt response on e.mail:(REDACTED@yahoo.fr)
Faithfully
AMANIE DOUDOU

-Anyone else on the FiT? member list get this email? I just thought it pretty brazen to tout where you snaked my email address. I'm pretty cautious about obfuscating my address to prevent scraping, but I let down my guard on this one. I'm not bashing FiT?, but I'm sure Amanie is not the only one scraping their site. I'm inclined to change my address on there.
-Link: http://forums.friendsintech.com
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u92
  • Thin Station [RICH]
-Linux Minimal OS that runs RDP and other remote connection software in a similar fashion to a thinclient
-I have been playing with an image that logs into a Microsoft terminal server
- There are many different flavors and a free version of a product called 2X Link:http://www.2x.com/thinclientserver/
- I like it for not business critical functions.
- LiveCD? version as well as installable to hard drive.
-Link: http://thinstation.org/
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u93
  • Medco sys admin gets 30 months for planting logic bomb [STEVE]

Sharon Gaudin, Computer World

-A former systems administrator at Medco Health Solutions Inc. was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison today for planting a logic bomb that could have taken down a corporate network that held customer health care information.
-The court also ordered Lin to pay $81,200 in restitution to the company, and to serve two years of supervised release after he completes his prison term. He was forbidden from working on computers during his prison time and supervised release as well.
-Link: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9056284&intsrc=news_ts_head
-Link:http://shrinkster.com/u8i
  • 3Com Utilities [KEITH]
-I know I mentioned one of these before, but didn't realize they had been updated until I saw they were being used in my Juniper training class.
-3CIPCalc is a stand-alone app that lets you calculate variable-length subnets and see the ranges, etc. Very handy.
-3CDaemon includes all the others in one package. TFTP, FTP, and Syslog server as well as a TFTP client. Great for your laptop when working on equipment and you want to TFTP configs/firmware up and down.
-Link: http://support.3com.com/software/utilities_for_windows_32_bit.htm
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u8g
  • Kiwi Tools [STEVE]
-To go along with Keith's 3Com utilities, there are a few free utilities from Kiwi that I have used and had good success.
-Kiwi Syslog Daemon
-Link: http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-syslog-daemon-overview/
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u8k
-Kiwi Log Viewer
-Link: http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-log-viewer-overview/
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u8l
-Kiwi CatTools
-Kiwi CatTools is quite flexible, including a TFTP server, a "scripting" engine (to run certain tasks at a specific time or on demand), and other management tools. It's free for limited usage (up to 5 devices and 5 tasks), and there are paid versions for larger environments.
-Link: http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-cattools-overview/
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u8n
-Kiwi Syslog Daemon
-Link: http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-secure-tunnel-overview/
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u8o
-And More...
  • Microsoft to force install of IE 7 [STEVE]
-From the IntelliAdmin? site: Starting February 12th, IE 7 will begin showing up on Automatic updates, and ignore the special registry key. It will be up to the user to continually reject the install.
-Link: http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2008/01/microsoft-to-force-install-of-ie-7.html
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u8s
  • From Linux to FreeBSD? with Depenguinator 2.0 [STEVE]
-From TaoSecurity?: This is a method to convert a Linux system to FreeBSD? remotely.
-From Daemonic Dispatches: In December 2003, I wrote a script for remotely upgrading a linux system to FreeBSD?.
-Notice "upgrading from linux to FreeBSD?" :)
-Link: http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2008/01/from-linux-to-freebsd-with.html
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u90
-Link: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2008-01-29-depenguinator-2.0.html
-Link: http://shrinkster.com/u91
  • PowerShell contest - second cmdlet - Set-PSDebug?
  • SQL Replication Breaks App Function [KEITH]
-We have an app that utilizes MS SQL Server 2000 on the back-end and got a trouble-ticket that they could no longer attach documents to a customer record. The error indicates that the attachment (a PDF) exceeds the limit of 65536 bytes. I checked the tables and found most of the attachments already there exceeded this threshold.
-I did a little research on the error code (7139) and found that the limit exists if the table is being replicated. I had recently set up this DB for full replication to our DR site. (Not 100% working), but the fact that it was a replicated table caused the new threshold to take effect.
-You can modify the setting for this using the following command in Query Analyzer on the Master DB:

sp_configure 'max text repl size (B)','16777216'

You can see the current values for all of the SQL global config values by running sp_configure with no options against the Master DB from Query Analyzer.

-Link: http://

____________________________PLAY SWEEPER____________________________

Listener Feedback

[KEITH] These first two were posted on the ListenerIdeas Wiki page and I unfortunately did not see them until today.

From listener....Angelo Mandato

== Can be a guest if needed ==

Hey guys, great show. If you ever need a guest on your show, feel free to contact me .... I know a lot about LAMP, Lighty, Qmail and other Linux admin items (pretty much everything RawVoice? does) as well as some Windows administration such as MIMESweeper, Apache for Windows, Install (setup) files to configure desktop/server settings with NSIS and Windows programming.

I don't recommend changing the name of your show. Proctor and Gamble didn't change their name when they had 3+ people involved in the company. The current name is good and you most likely have fans that have already remembered your name.

In your last episode, you were talking about virtual desktops. At my last job, we deployed UltraVNC since it allowed the computer services department to connect to desktops without blanking out the screen. We tried using Remote Assistance, but we found UltraVNC was much more powerful since it could be accessed with a web browser or with a small vncviewer.exe executable. You could transfer files and chat with the person on the other end as well.

Thanks for a great show,

Angelo

[KEITH] For those of you who don't know Angelo; he is the development force behind RawVoice? which is the Blubrry and Techpodcast Networks. Not to detract from Todd Cochrane, but to me Angelo is the one who executews. I would love to get him on as a guest.

From listener....Jerome S. in Virgina

Hey guys, I have a question for you maybe to help me with as a fellow admin. Maybe as a show topic. Do you have any recommendation for a tool to recover a deleted Active Directory object deleted by accident. Say if several user accounts get deleted in error. I have used adrestore.exe from sysinternals which works but does not restore any groups the user was a member of or passwords. Once when I had a whole OU deleted I went the restore server from TAPE and used authoritative restore process. I know you can buy commercial software that will do AD object restoral but I wanted to know if any of you have something that you use? I have read that Longhorn will have a feature for protecting AD object from deletion. Currently running Windows 2003 Server.

Thanks

Your the #1 podcast I listen too. de Jerome S. in Virginia

[KEITH] First, I would recommend getting another Systinteral utility we spoke about back on Episode 9 called ADExplorer. ADExplorer will let you create a backup of your AD database and view it offline. It will also let you do a comparison between two snapshots to see the difference. (Delta config). You could pair up ADRestore and ADExplorer to manually get the result you wanted. For example, if you take a daily snapshot each morning of your AD database and something got accidentally deleted during the day, you could use ADRestore to restore the objects then take another snapshot and do a comparison within ADExplorer and find out what objects are different and potentially get the information you need to restore.

Depending on the size of your AD database; Another possibility is to setup a job on your domain controller using the Windows Backup utility to backup the System State every hour(or couple hours) to disk and this will give you incremental states to restore to if a problem arises.

Link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963907.aspx Link: http://shrinkster.com/u9c

From listener....Jed Reynolds

Hope you guys have a good 2008 -- looking forward to seeing how your podcast develops this year as always. ...

Good luck finding your new name!

It's kinda interesting listening to so much about power shell.

Speaking of shells, I've been "switched" from my Fedora 6 desktop to Vista Business 64 bit. First thing I got on there was Cygwin. I soooo miss having transparent Xterms and multiple desktops. Any suggestions? I feel like I've been demoted all the way back to like ... an old copy of Solaris when using Cygwin rxvts :-( You guys got a shell window/terminal program to recommend?

Also, you guys interested in any discussion on bash scripting? I program in bash like daily. It might be an interesting contrast, and insightful similarities.

Jed

Steve

-I don't know about you Keith, but I'd definitely be interested in bash discussion. Before I discovered PowerShell, I was looking seriously at using bash on Cygwin.
-Jed, if you are missing the multiple desktops, the best program I have found for virtual desktops is Altdesk from Astonshell.com (http://shrinkster.com/u8p). It is a paid product, but it is much better than the freeware/opensource alternatives (in my opinion).
  • PowerShell Contest - third cmdlet - Import-CSV
  • Don't forget to listen to the PowerScripting Podcast to get the other three cmdlets.
  • and lastly, I just wanted to send a shout-out to Alexandair in Serbia, who I had an opportunity to talk with in the #Powershell chat room.

____________________________PLAY SWEEPER____________________________

Website Picks

Rich - http://www.epa.gov/cellphone/cell-recycling-locations.htmPlaces to send or take your cell phone to be recycled or reused.

-http://shrinkster.com/u94

Steve - http://shrinkster.com

Keith - http://osxportableapps.sourceforge.net/

-http://shrinkster.com/u8j

I'm probably going to start using a lot of these....

Last Call

Anyone....Anyone....Buehler.....Buehler....

Closing

All right, well that is it for the show. For listener feedback; you can email us at Feedback [at] acoupleofadmins.com or post a comment on the main site at ACoupleOfAdmins.com. If you use iTunes, you could write a review. If you just want to show us your listening, drop a pin on the Frappr map...there's a link on the show site.

Lastly, you can drop any show ideas or topic requests on the wiki. There is a link to the wiki on the main show site. If you would like to participate in the show; either through an interview, a segment contribution, or any other way, please let us know. We are also a member of the Techpodcast and the Blubrry networks. Check out some other great shows by going to Techpodcast.com and Blubrry.com....That's Blubrry without the E's

Thanks everyone.