Category Archives: Open Source

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12 Years without Microsoft and loving it!

As of April, 2004 I stopped using all Microsoft products.

For many reasons. I know people like to debate about microsoft products. However, for me its not a debate.

Examples [Just a tiny bit]:

  • If I was a contractor and came into your company and said, “I am going to record all your keystrokes, and put them on my server every 30min”, you would laugh me out the door. Especially in software, where the source can be recreated from the key logs.  Well, Microsoft does it.
  • If I was a contractor and came in to your company and found a security bug, and then sold it on the black market making you vulnerable before there is a patch to hackers.  You would probably sue me; and maybe even press charges of some kind, as it can put you out of business.  Well, Microsoft does it.
  • If I was a contractor and came in during the night and upgraded all your desktops to an OS you haven’t tested… well I think you get the point by now…
  • UEFI – Just look into it…
  • Severe security issues; and poor coding.
    • Keep in mind even if they don’t use the keylog maliciously, with the poor security wrapped around it, it is within reason to think it would be compromised.

Please keep in mind I am just looking at the black and white of things. This has nothing to do with how I ‘feel’ about them.  From a business standpoint, I can not simply fathom the use of any Microsoft product in any serious company; especially a software development one.

Now, I am experienced in IT/Software Development/DevOps; and anyone will tell you security is a trade off with convenience.  That is true.  However, between the cost (which is high); and the constant worry about security and stability with each patch.  Its something people really need to ask themselves, ” Is this really convenient/cost effective”; and 15 years ago it might have been yes. Now, there is no excuse.

 

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

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

 

Top 10 Most Powerful Computers in the World!

As some people may know; I like to use the example of  “Out of the top 500, how many supercomputers in the world do you think  use [your OS here]?”.  I use this example for a reason.  Unlike conjecture, theories, and even “gut feelings”; it shows that the OS was chosen, and serious money and time were poured into it.  This shows that is it at least a player in the field, and can handle the serious levels of computing needed.  It also shows things like, tune-ability, flexibility with change, and a few other things that only the people working with their own projects will be able to tell.  We are not concerned with that, just that they are on the list; and why if it sticks out as odd to see why.

I am using the TOP500 Project for this information, and it does get re-evaluated often.  However, I will say this; just like in nature there will always be a pretty clear delineation when it comes down to who is the “Winner” in this space.  Or the most efficient/successful like in nature.

The reason I write this article is to show a certain group of people an example of the difference in reality versus what advertisements, rumors, and self-perception have molded in their minds.  I think it is a good exercise to show the affects of the budgets used to change our perceptions. A good example is the budget used by companies like Microsoft (over $2,000,000,000); and Apple (over $1,000,000 in 2013/2014).  This is just money, and perception however.  This will never affect real life numbers on performance, math doesn’t lie. Results and time are my favorite sources of information.  Its a simple concept, there are 1000s of ways to move items.  However, in our lives in this age of technology the wheel is still very much in use.   Its the best solution at the time…. (a small but powerful statement).

So in lieu of keeping you away from the data pron you came to look at:

 

Top 10 Super Super Computers - Nov 2015

Top 10 Super Super Computers – Nov 2015

 

 

Here is the actual breakdown by OS (as of Nov 2015), as I know that is what most people are interested in:

List_Statistics___TOP500_Supercomputer_Sites

 

I know some people are wondering where is Windows, or IOS.  If you will notice; even in the breakdowns by OS they are pretty much all Linux/BSD [Windows isn’t even a filter option on their site as of right now].  This list is more a list of flavors of Linux with a few BSD machines in the list.  You will notice, like in most of the lists done in the past; there is not a single Microsoft product on the list.  This is a very simple, and very important fact that way too many people make.  This includes everyone from the guy that fixes your desktop all the way up to the VP of Infrastructure.  They are all swayed by what they own, and the amount of advertising spewed forth at them non-stop. Keep in mind these people are generally more connected than the rest of the populous.  Thus, affected even more so by the ads.  Combine that with sales people/calls/pressures on support/etc, and you get smart companies ( I didn’t say large), that make really bad technology decisions.  I exclude myself from that ad loop; and look purely at statistical performance.   This is great for business; since you can eliminate a TON of costs; and licensing fees/etc that you would have if you went with something not on this list.

 

List_Statistics___TOP500_Supercomputer_Sites 2

 

Want to see the full list of over 500 super computers for 2015?

Search entire server for Q4 2015 obfuscated PHP malware of unknown origin.

This is just a snippet I have used before to identify some malicious code on web servers.  This will not work on everything; but it will give you a way to find suspect files.  It is easy to cron in a script with others to make a nice daily report if you have those concerns.

#!/bin/bash
# Malware Search Script
# 11/1/15 – Matthew D. Curry
# Matt@MattCurry.com

echo “Search entire server for Q4 2015 obfuscated PHP malware of unknown origin.”

find / -name *.php -exec grep -Hn .1.=…….0.=…….3.=…….2.=…….5.= {} ;

 

Hope this helps, enjoy.

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

Your Favorite IDE/Editor (GUI)

I have tried many editors in Linux, Mac, and even Winblows.  However, none of them like this…  Please take a look at this video and you will be surprised at the customization that is possible with this editor.  No matter your language, theme, or plugin preferences.  It also has its own package manger to mange all the awesomeness so you dont get corn-fused…