Category Archives: news

Reason #… I’ve lost count…not to use Microsoft.

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Welcome all windows, and samba users. Please read badlock.org for why poor decisions have led to this day.

There is a known vulnerability with samba, please read the site listed. If time permits I will update this article with better info.  However, if you are running Samba the shame on you… especially the old version. I have not “had to run samba”, for anything in several years now.

Please read my article on using AFPd in linux to use it as a time machine  backup.  Works great! Or my preference is NFS on a LAN. 

Either way, I  hope this helps a few people. Please share the article if it helped.  There is a patch with CVE on the way according to their site.

Sincerely,
M

10yrs of Waiting! Finally got my Grados!

As many of my friends know, I am a bit of a audiophile. Not extreme, but I appreciate quality. I have had many headphones, from many manufacturers. Some very expensive, some very cheap.

I really like these headphones, as they give the best sound hands down; and they are very inexpensive.  Of course with anything you can spend more if you want.

So here are the Pros/Cons:

SR60e

 

Pros:

  • Amazing Sound
  • Low power Requirement
  • Comfortable

 

Cons:

  • Not the headphones you need if you are concerned about others hearing you.  It is very loud externally.
  • They are not what I would call “Pretty”, but I honestly consider that a Pro 🙂

 

Thanks to the family at Grado for an amazing product.  I am always willing to review any other of your products.

-M

Be Careful with LetsEncrypt!

 

I must say, like a lot of people I love the idea of a free SSL Certificate.  So I thought this would be great for my site.  So I downloaded the LetsEncrypt package on to an Ubuntu 15.10 box.  The server was running Apache2, and was pretty much stock.  When I applied the cert to the site, it was super easy.  I was very impressed with the ‘–apache’ option.  I then updated my URLs in WordPress to HTTPS.  That’s it I was up and running in a few min.  I was pretty happy at this point.

Then, I realized it broke all of the other services I had on the machine that were public facing.  I had several.  Even ones with their own certs were breaking.  So I decided to remove it…. After removing it from Apache completely I noticed an issue.  All of my users that had been to the site; were getting redirected still.  Somehow it is keeping the redirct with the cert/data that is installed when the cert is installed from visiting the site.

Long story short, I had many people that thought my site was down.  I even moved servers; and it still happened. I tried clearing browser cache, DNS Cache on my MAC, from another IP. Finally after a reinstall (probably not needed, but quicker); I was able to actually load my site without the redirect.  I am sure there is something here I am not seeing; but to be honest I didn’t feel like spending all my time dealing with browser settings.

If anyone would like to let me know how they get around this I would like to know.

I hope this helps those who are thinking of trying out LetsEncrypt.  I am not saying its a bad product; or idea.  I love the install and the idea of it.  However, the practical implementation is not there yet.  For those reading this keep in mind that it is still in Beta as of this article.  So this might eventually go away.

P.S. – To those on the LetsEncrypt project, I appreciate all the work; and I hope you take this criticism positively. A good uninstall path is needed before I think this will go mainstream on monolithic boxes.  Maybe its ok with a 12 factor applications.

Sincerely,

Matthew Curry

NAOMI Updated Pics

Here is the latest picture I have of the ‘Semi-Portable’ version of NAOMI.

This includes the following:

  • 30AH Battery @ 2.2a (tested)
    • 35AH LiON Cells “Quick Drain”
  • Touch Screen 7″
    • Mounted Externally in own case
      • Not Permanent, built for bench
  • RPI2
  • 1TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive
  • Bluetooth Dongle
    • Not Shown
  • Powered USB Hub
    • Replaced/Rebuilt for one with switched ports
  • Logitech C170 USB Camera/Mic

Quick Tip of the Day.

Not that I have them daily, but I might if I get a good response.

Have you ever tried logging into an SSH server, and get a weird error:

/.ssh/config: line 22: Bad configuration option: 342200202

This is a very simple issue but it can be a huge PITA if you can’t fix it quickly.  This is especially true for those of us that have to use an enormous amount of keys in our daily lives.  I know, I have a fairly simple config for SSH, but I still ran into this issue when I pasted a block of text in  ~/.ssh/config.  I opened the file with VI, and NANO. I was only able to get it to work when I removed the spaces before each line it complained about.  I then just put them back as normal, and saved.

It turns out, that copying from another place can have the spaces not interpreted properly. They are tabbed indentations actually.  Once manually removed they are replaced by a normal “space” in the code and it should work properly.  I hope this saves some time for some people.

 

Thanks,
Matthew D. Curry

 

Thank you all for the support

As many of you may know, my wife and I were hospitalized a day apart.  This was completely unrelated, and unexpected.  Luckily, I had family that was able to come help us out while we were in the hospital.  That, in conjunction with the many others that have shown support, and the hospital staff that helped us while we were there made it possible to keep us healthy, and together as a family.  I can’t show enough gratitude for everyone’s help.

Also, to my employer Welltok, who has been extremely supportive throughout the ordeal.  You have my deepest thanks, and I am forever grateful; and yours as an employee.

Again; thank you to everyone, even those not mentioned  (You know who you are).

 

Sincerely,

Matthew D. Curry

Husband, Father, Nerd, and Son.

The Nightmare of Azkaban with Hive (Hadoop)

I have been working on a deployment of Azkaban for about a week now; and getting the server up and running was easy.  However I have had many major issues with Azkaban since day one.  I feel like sharing this could help someone else if they decide to use it.

Pros:

  • It has dependency flows that are easy to use.
  • ACLs
  • Pretty Graphs
  • Scheduling (Kinda its purpose)
  • Good API

Cons:

  • Hive/Pig and Possibly other Jobtypes simply do not work.
    • After many hours of searching I found there is a bug in the jobtypes plugin, and it has not been fixed.
      • You must completely recompile with the newer version to have these job types work.
    • The Newest version of Azkaban is no where close to the version they have on their site.
      • This also is not compiled, you will have to do it manually.
    • The Documentation is full of errors, bad links, and omissions (at best).
      • Not to mention it is all for 2.5, when 3.x is out.
      • SSL Keystore Doc Links are all bad (major setup step).
    • No Packages for YUM/APT/ZYPPER/etc
      • I would have thought someone would have done this by now
        • I created some using FPM
    • No INIT script built. (Azkaban Init Script)

So, in closing as you can see the project has good intentions but that’s about it.  Its not ready for prime time, and they really need to get their stuff together.  If it were cleaned up and recompiled, and packaged.  It would probably be an OK product. However, the lack of organization and communication will be what prevent me from recommending this for any of my personal customers going forward.  I hope this helps anyone considering this product.

 

Sincerely,
Matthew Curry

DKA and Gasteroperesis

As many of you know I have been fighting an illness, as well as some rough times moving states.  I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that has helped us when we needed it.  Below is a picture of me before my illness (on the right); and afterward (on the left, just before I was admitted to the ICU for DKA).  Respective weights in pounds 189/318. There has been a lot I have learned from dealing with both diabetes and gasteroperesis.  Anyone dealing with gasteroperesis should take a look at http://livingwithgastroparesis.com/.  

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