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• Backup plan for linux webserver in small business?

  - by radman

  Hi, I am currently in the process of writing a backup plan for the webserver in use by my business. I am very new to this area and have a few ideas about how things should work but am unsure of what tools to use and what sort of restore process is appropriate. I'm looking for something relatively simplistic and it doesn't have to be 100% paranoid just enough to give me a reliable backup. Speed is not of the essence and there is not going to be a live fallback in place. The backup will be onto a single hdd that will be stored onsite (no option for offsite as yet). Backups will be taking place weekly. I am constrained by both time and money which is why I'm aiming for a good enough solution. Is taking an image of the webserver system drive periodically and using that as the backup appropriate? Should I be testing that the backups restore correctly every time that I perform one? This is a bit broad but what setup would you use if you were in my place, given the services I am running? Should I add additonal machines and split the services? Any advice is much appreciated! See below for server details Webserver Platform Linux Ubuntu server Running mail-server svn-server mediawiki wordpress apache-webserver Hardware single 500gb sata drive Architecture Single machine behind router (with firewall) accessible to the internet.

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• Possible DNS Injection and/or SSL hijack?

  - by Anthony

  So if I go to my site without indicating the protocol, I'm taken to: http://example.org/test.php But if I go directly to: https://example.org/test.php I get a 404 back. If I go to just: https://example.org I get a totally different site (a page about martial arts). I went to the site via https not very long ago (maybe a week?) and it was fine. This is a shared server, as I understand it, and I do not have shell access, so I'm limited to the site's CPanel to do any further investigations. But when I go to: example.org:2083 I'm taken to https://example.org:2083, which, if someone has taken over the SSL port, could mean they have taken over the 2083 part as well (at least in my paranoid mind). I'm made more nervous by the fact that the cpanel login page at the above address looks very new (better, really) compared to the last time I went to it over the weekend. It's possible that wires got crossed somewhere after a system update, but I don't want to put in my name username and password in case it's a phishing attempt. Is there any way to know for sure without shell access to know for sure if someone has taken over? If I look up the IP address for the host name, the IP address matches what I have on a phpinfo page I can get to over http. If I go to the IP address directly on port 2083, I get the same login mentioned above (new and and suspiciously nice). But the SSL cert shows as good when I go this route. So if that's the case (I know the IP is right, the cert checks out, and there isn't any DNS involved), is that enough to feel safe at that point of entry? Finally, if I can safely log in via the IP, does anyone have any advice on where to check first on CPanel for why the SSL port is forwarding to a site on karate? Thanks.

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• Migrating to Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controllers - a few Questions/Issues

  - by Chris

  Ok so here's our setup: We have 2 Windows 2003 Domain Controllers. I am trying to replace them with Windows 2008 R2. The 2003 servers are named DC01 and DC02. The 2008 R2 servers are DC1 and DC2. I prepared the Windows Server 2003 Forest Schema for a Domain Controller that runs Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. Then with both of the new servers up as member servers I ran dcpromo on DC1 using the advanced option and added it successfully to my existing domain. It's roles are GC, DNS and Active Directory Domain Services. I transferred The PDC Emulator, RID Pool Manager, and Infrastructure Master roles to DC1. The Schema Master and Domain Naming master are still on DC01. The first issue that I'm encountering is when I dcpromo the DC2 and select "Replicate data over the network from and existing domain controller" I select that I want to replicate from DC1 and I get the following error: Failed to identify the requested replica partner (dc1.xxx.org) as a valid domain controller with a machine account for (DC2$). This is likely due to either the machine account not being replicated to this domain controller because of replication latency or the domain controller not advertising the Active Directory Domain Services. Please consider retrying the operation with \dc01.xxx.org as the replica partner. "The server is unwilling to process the request. Is this because the Schema Master and Domain Naming Master roles are still on the old DC01? And if so, if I transfer Schema Master and Domain Naming Master roles to DC1 what is the risk or breaking my AD? I'm a little paranoid because this process HAS to be transparent. ANY down time or interruption will result in me getting a verbal ass kicking from my I.T. Director. Both of the new servers DNS point the the old DNS servers (DC01 and DC02) not themselves by the way.

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• xauth, ssh and missing home directory

  - by flolo

  We have several servers, and normaly everything works fine, except now... we get a new aircondition installed. This takes 36 hours and for this time almost all servers got shutdown, only 2 remaining servers run for the most important tasks (i.e. accepting incoming email, delivering some important websites, login-server). Everybody was informed that when they need appropiate data from the homedirs they should fetch it before take down. Long story short: Someone realized that he have run a certain program on one of the servers. No Problem, he can remote login into our login server and run the programm there without home directory (binaries are local and necessary information can be copied to the /tmp). That works like a charm until... ... the user needs to run a GUI programm. I find no easy way to make it running, usually ssh -Y honk@loginserver is enough but now the homedirectory is missing and ssh is not able to copy the cookies into ~/.Xauthority (as the file server with the home directories is down). Paranoid as all systemadmins all X-Server just listen locally not on tcp ports, so no remote X connection possible SSH config is waterproof - i.e. no way to set environment variables. My Problem is, that the generated proxy MIT cookie from ssh get lost as the .Xauthority doesnt exist. If I could retrieve it somehow I could reenter it a .Xauthority in /tmp. The only other option (besides changing the config) which came to my mind is, makeing a tunnel (netcat, or better ssh) from the remote host to the loginserver and copy the cookie manually (not sure if it the tcp-unix domain socket stuff works as expected). Any good suggestions (for the future - now our servers are already up)?

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• VPN on a ubuntu server limited to certain ips

  - by Hultner

  I got an server running Ubuntu Server 9.10 and I need access to it and other parts of my network sometimes when not at home. There's two places I need to access the VPN from. One of the places to an static IP and the other got an dynamic but with DynDNS setup so I can always get the current IP if I want to. Now when it comes to servers people call me kinda paranoid but security is always my number one priority and I never like to allow access to the server outside the network therefor I have two things I have to have on this VPN. One it shouldn't be accessiable from any other IP then these 2 and two it has to use a very secure key so it will be virtually impossible to bruteforce even from the said IP´s. I have no experience what so ever in setting up VPNs, I have used SSH tunneling but never an actuall VPN. So what would be the best, most stable, safest and performance effiecent way to set this up on a Ubuntu Server? Is it possible or should I just set up some kind of SSH Tunnel instead? Thanks on beforehand for answers.

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• Number of routers in small community lock up and require reboot.

  - by Anthony Hiscox

  I live in a small town which has one primary ISP. Lately I have noticed that a number of wireless routers have been locking up and requiring a reboot before allowing any connections. This has affected two of my routers, my work router, and a few others. In all cases wired continued to function as usual. Often wireless clients can see the SSID but simply won't connect. I can only think of a few possibilities and was hoping someone here might be able to point me in the right direction: Our ISP is well known to be flaky, something they are doing is causing this, what that might be I have no clue it as seems to affect the wireless only. There's a power issue in town, given our remote location and reputation for crap electrical, this seems reasonable. Only one router was plugged in to a UPS, and I'm not sure of the quality. There is some bug in all the different firmware for every one of these routers (all different). That doesn't seem reasonable, unless; it's an unknown (or known) exploit or DoS of some sort being launched by a massive team of ninjas hell bent on forcing us all to be tethered to our walls by ethernet cables or; it's just been a coincidence and I'm just paranoid (this has some weight, I mean read 4 again). Anyone else experience similar issues and have some tips?

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• Very Slow DSL (ethernet) speed [New Interesting Update]

  - by Abhijit

  Very IMPORTANT and INTERESTING UPDATE: Due to some reason I just thought to do a complete new setup and this time I decided to again have openSUSE plus ubuntu. So I first reinstall lubuntu and then I installed OpenSUSE 12.2 (64 bit). Now, my DSL speed is working very normal and fine on opensuse. So this is very scary. Is it possible for any operating system to manipulate my NIC so that it will work fine only on that operating system and not on another os? Regarding positive thinking and not being paranoid, what is it that makes ONLY suse to get my NIC to work at normal speed but ubuntu can not do it? Not even fedora? Not even linux mint? What all these OS are lacking that enables suse to work great? == ORIGINAL QUESTION == I 'was' on opensuse 12.2 when my dsl speed was normal. Yesterday I switched from opensuse to ubuntu 12.04 and speed decreased. It came to range of 7-10-13-20-25-kbps. Then I switch to linux mint, and then to fedora. Still slow speed. When I was in ubuntu I disabled ipv6 but still no luck. Now I am in fedora but this time with DIFFERENT ISP. And still I am getting very slow sped. So my guess is this is nothing to do with os. What can be wrong? Is this problem of NIC? Does NIC speed decreases over time? Does NIC life ends over time as with keyboard or mouse? Help please All the os I used are 64 bit and my laptop is Compaq Presario A965Tu Intel Centrino DUal Core. Interesting thing to notice is I get normal speed while downloading torrent inside torrent client softwares. This slow speed issue applied to download from any web browser or installing software using terminal.

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• SQL Server 2000, large transaction log, almost empty, performance issue?

  - by Mafu Josh

  For a company that I have been helping troubleshoot their database. In SQL Server 2000, database is about 120 gig. Something caused the transaction log to grow MUCH larger than normal to over 100 gig, some hung transaction that didn't commit or roll back for a few days. That has been resolved and it now stays around 1% full or less, due to its hourly transaction log backups. It IS my understanding that a GROWING transaction log file size can cause performance issues. But what I am a little paranoid about is the size. Although mainly empty, MIGHT it be having a negative effect on performance? But I haven't found any documentation that suggests this is true. I did find this link: http://www.bigresource.com/MS_SQL-Large-Transaction-Log-dramatically-Slows-down-processing-any-idea-why--2ahzP5wK.html but in this post I can't tell if their log was full or empty, and there is not any replies to the post in this link. So I am guessing it is not a problem, anyone know for sure?

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• Windows: disable remote access of local drive, even by domain admin

  - by Matt

  We have a network of Windows 7 PCs that are managed as part of a domain. What we want is for the domain admin to be unable to view the PC's local drive (C:) unless he is physically at the PC. In other words, no remote desktop and no ability to use UNC. In other words, the domain admin should not be allowed to put \\user_pc\c$ in Windows Explorer and see all the files on that computer, unless he is physically present at the PC itself. Edit: to clarify some of the questions/comments that have come up. Yes, I am an admin---but a complete Windows novice. And yes, for the sake of this and my similar questions, it is fair to assume that I am working for someone who is paranoid. I understand the arguments about this being a "social problem versus a technical problem", and "you should be able to trust your admins", etc. But this is the situation in which I find myself. I'm basically new to Windows system administration, but am tasked with creating an environment that is secure by the company owner's definition---and this definition is clearly very different from what most people expect. In short, I understand that this is an unusual request. But I'm hoping there is enough expertise in the ServerFault community to point me in the right direction.

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• CPU operating temperature ranges

  - by osij2is

  I have an AMD Phenom II 960T with 2 cores unlocked for a total of 6 cores. I don't overclock at all. I have a Arctic Cooling ACALP64 Heatsink/Fan installed. I'm currently running ESXi 5.0 so I have to go into the BIOS to read the CPU temperatures, which at idle seem to be in the 71-74C range. To me, this is pretty high, but I cannot find any official temperature ranges that AMD says the CPU can work well within. There seems to be a lot of questions on superuser and numerous forums around CPU temperatures but no one seems to have a clear consensus as to what the manufacturer temperature ranges are for specific CPUs. I've tried searching through AMDs site to no avail. At this point, I'd be willing to shut off the 2 extra cores if it keeps the heat down but until I get some sort of tolerance or range for temperature, I have no idea if the CPU is being damaged or not. Can anyone point to a direct source, article, FAQ from AMD that specifically states their CPUs temperature range? Or are CPU temperature ranges so varying that there's no possible baseline? Am I being too paranoid about this? To me, anything over 65C is a bit much and if I'm in the low-mid 70s range with NO VMs running, what can I expect if I have several VMs running?

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• How to prevent an SSD from disappearing from BIOS

  - by Midimatt

  I've only recently upgraded my old machine to a new one with a brand new 60gb SSD as my boot drive and a 1TB main drive. Paranoid about completely breaking my SSD, I read up on a lot of issues that I needed to watch out for, including making sure AHCI was turned on and trim enabled. PC has been working fine for a few weeks now, until today. My wife was watching some TV on the machine when it started to act strange and eventually blue screened. She rebooted and the boot mgr was missing. When I got home from work I checked the BIOS and the drive had disappeared. I panicked and looked up some possible fixes, and I discovered a large amount of people having problems with the drive firmware, especially on OCZ Vertex and Agility drives, and my drive is an Agility 3 drive. The problems included blue screens followed by missing drives, and a solution was to reset the CMOS and try again. This worked, and now everything seems to be working fine. My question is, is there any way to prevent this from happening? Am I missing a setting for my SSD? All of the posts I found were from early to mid-2011 nothing for the end of 2011 to 2012. So I am wondering if I've missed anything. EDIT: Checked my drives firmware and it is 2.15, which has had issues reported by users.

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• How do I know if I managed to completely remove an undetected trojan?

  - by ubuntuisbetter

  I catched a trojan that uses explorer.exe to reproduce itself in case of deletion of its autostart entry or main exe file in Programs/x. It had already tried to contact a suspicious server over explorer.exe, blocked that via my firewall. I: Removed the autostart entries from the registry Looked through my services if there was anything suspicious Deleted the trojan from Programs/ Went through System Volume Information to find a 2 month old explorer.exe and replaced the possibly infected one. There are no suspicious processes running now anymore (no duplicate explorer.exe) and nothing wants to connect this trojan owners sever either. I checked my system with several anti-malware programs too. What the trojan did: Started a second explorer.exe Always when I deleted the main trojan exe file it was reproduced (by the second explorer.exe) Always when I deleted the autostart entry it was reproduced by the explorer.exe too. When I terminated the suspicious explorer.exe, which used only half as much memory as the less suspicious one from Windows, a strange thing that I know from the computers in my Informatics class happened: A window popped up in the top left of my explorer-less desktop, titled "Personal settings for ... are ..." that obviously copied some files. Then both explorer.exes started again and the trojan was everywhere again. What did the trojan actually do to get explorer to rescue it? Is my PC clean of this newish trojan now? What are the other locations I should check for the trojan? The trjoan doesn't seem very high-level, could it have changed other system files or is the autostart entry vital for it? Thanks in advance, Your trojan paranoid friend (Getting linux in a week)

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• How to Browse Without a Trace with an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  No matter how diligently you clear your cache and erase your history, web browsing leaves traces on your computer. If you need keep your browsing private, then an Ubuntu Live CD is the answer. The key to this trick is that the Live CD environment runs completely in RAM, so things like your cache, cookies, and history don’t get saved to a persistent storage location. On a hard drive, even deleted files can be recovered, but once a computer is turned off the data stored in RAM is unrecoverable. In addition, since the Ubuntu Live CD environment is the same no matter what computer you use it on, there’s very little identifying information that a website can use to track you! The first step is to either burn an Ubuntu Live CD, or prepare a non-persistent Ubuntu USB flash drive. Ubuntu treats non-persistent flash drives like CDs, so files will not be written to it, but if you’re paranoid, then using a physical CD ensures that nothing gets written to a storage device. Boot up from the CD or flash drive, and choose to Run Ubuntu from the CD or flash drive if prompted (for more detailed instructions on booting from a CD or USB drive, see this article, or our guide on booting from a flash drive even if your BIOS won’t let you). Once the graphical Ubuntu environment comes up, you can click on the Firefox icon at the top of the screen to start browsing. If your browsing requires Flash, then you can install it by clicking on System at the top-left of the screen, then Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Click on Settings at the top of the Synaptic window, and then select Repositories. Add a check in the checkbox with the label ending in “multiverse”. Click Close. Click the Reload button in the main Synaptic window. The list of available packages will reload. When they’ve reloaded, type “restricted” in the Quick search box. Right-click on ubuntu-restricted-extras and select Mark for Installation. It will note a number of other packages that will be installed. This list includes audio and video codecs, so after installing these, you should be able to play downloaded movies and songs. Click Mark to accept the installation of these other packages. Once you return to the main Synaptic window, click the Apply button and go through the dialogs to finish the installation of Flash and the other useful packages. If you open up Firefox now, you’ll have no problems using websites that use Flash. When you’re done browsing and shut down or restart your computer, all traces of your web browsing will be gone. It’s a bit of work compared to just using a privacy-centric browser, but if it’s very important that your browsing leave no traces on your hard drive, an Ubuntu Live CD is your best bet. Download Ubuntu Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDAdding extra Repositories on UbuntuHow to Add a Program to the Ubuntu Startup List (After Login)How to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using WineInstalling PHP4 and Apache on Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• Wipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy Way

  - by The Geek

  Giving a computer to somebody else? Maybe you’re putting it out on Craigslist to sell to a stranger—either way, you’ll want to make sure that your drive is completely wiped, scrubbed, and clean of any personal data. Here’s the easy way to do it. If you only have access to an Ubuntu Live CD or thumb drive, you can actually use that instead if you prefer, and we’ve got you covered with a full guide to securely wiping your PC’s hard drive. Otherwise, keep reading. Wipe the Drive with DBAN Darik’s Boot and Nuke CD is the easiest way to permanently and totally destroy every bit of personal information on that drive—nobody is going to recover a thing once this is done. The first thing you’ll need to do is download a copy of the ISO image, and then burn it to a blank CD with something really useful like Imgburn. Just choose Burn image to Disc at the start screen, select the little file icon, grab the downloaded ISO, and then go. If you need a little more help, we’ve got you covered with a beginner’s guide to burning an ISO image. Once you’re done, stick the disc into the drive, start the PC up, and then once you boot to the DBAN prompt you’ll see a menu. You can pretty much ignore everything on here, and just type… autonuke And there you are, your disk is now being securely wiped. Once it’s all done, you can remove the CD, and then either pack the PC up to sell, or re-install Windows on there if you feel like it. More Advanced Method If you’re really paranoid, want to run a different type of wipe, or just like fiddling with the options, you can choose F3 or hit Enter at the prompt to head to the advanced selection screen. Here you can choose exactly which drive to wipe, or hit the M key to change the method. You’ll be able to choose between a bunch of different wipe options. The Quick Erase is all you really need though.   So there you are, easy PC wiping in one package. What about you? Do you make sure to wipe your old PCs before giving them away? Personally I’ve always just yanked out the hard drives before I got rid of an old PC, but that’s just me. Download DBAN from dban.org Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Use an Ubuntu Live CD to Securely Wipe Your PC’s Hard DriveHow to Dispose of Old Computers ResponsiblyHow To Delete a VHD in Windows 7Speed up External USB Hard Drives in Windows VistaSpeed Up SATA Hard Drives in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites

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• Validating Petabytes of Data with Regularity and Thoroughness

  - by rickramsey

  by Brian Zents When former Intel CEO Andy Grove said “only the paranoid survive,” he wasn’t necessarily talking about tape storage administrators, but it’s a lesson they’ve learned well. After all, tape storage is the last line of defense to prevent data loss, so tape administrators are extra cautious in making sure their data is secure. Not surprisingly, we are often asked for ways to validate tape media and the files on them. In the past, an administrator could validate the media, but doing so was often tedious or disruptive or both. The debut of the Data Integrity Validation (DIV) and Library Media Validation (LMV) features in the Oracle T10000C drive helped eliminate many of these pains. Also available with the Oracle T10000D drive, these features use hardware-assisted CRC checks that not only ensure the data is written correctly the first time, but also do so much more efficiently. Traditionally, a CRC check takes at least 25 seconds per 4GB file with a 2:1 compression ratio, but the T10000C/D drives can reduce the check to a maximum of nine seconds because the entire check is contained within the drive. No data needs to be sent to a host application. A time savings of at least 64 percent is extremely beneficial over the course of checking an entire 8.5TB T10000D tape. While the DIV and LMV features are better than anything else out there, what storage administrators really need is a way to check petabytes of data with regularity and thoroughness. With the launch of Oracle StorageTek Tape Analytics (STA) 2.0 in April, there is finally a solution that addresses this longstanding need. STA bundles these features into one interface to automate all media validation activities across all Oracle SL3000 and SL8500 tape libraries in an environment. And best of all, the validation process can be associated with the health checks an administrator would be doing already through STA. In fact, STA validates the media based on any of the following policies: Random Selection – Randomly selects media for validation whenever a validation drive in the standalone library or library complex is available. Media Health = Action – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Action.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Media Health = Evaluate – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Evaluate.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Media Health = Monitor – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Monitor.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Extended Period of Non-Use – Selects media that have not had an exchange for a specified number of days. You can specify from 365 to 1,095 days (one to three years). Newly Entered – Selects media that have recently been entered into the library. Bad MIR Detected – Selects media with an exchange resulting in a “Bad MIR Detected” error. A bad media information record (MIR) indicates degraded high-speed access on the media. To avoid disrupting host operations, an administrator designates certain drives for media validation operations. If a host requests a file from media currently being validated, the host’s request takes priority. To ensure that the administrator really knows it is the media that is bad, as opposed to the drive, STA includes drive calibration and qualification features. In addition, validation requests can be re-prioritized or cancelled as needed. To ensure that a specific tape isn’t validated too often, STA prevents a tape from being validated twice within 24 hours via one of the policies described above. A tape can be validated more often if the administrator manually initiates the validation. When the validations are complete, STA reports the results. STA does not report simply a “good” or “bad” status. It also reports if media is even degraded so the administrator can migrate the data before there is a true failure. From that point, the administrators’ paranoia is relieved, as they have the necessary information to make a sound decision about the health of the tapes in their environment. About the Photograph Photograph taken by Rick Ramsey in Death Valley, California, May 2014 - Brian Follow OTN Garage on: Web | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

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• Should I manage authentication on my own if the alternative is very low in usability and I am already managing roles?

  - by rumtscho

  As a small in-house dev department, we only have experience with developing applications for our intranet. We use the existing Active Directory for user account management. It contains the accounts of all company employees and many (but not all) of the business partners we have a cooperation with. Now, the top management wants a technology exchange application, and I am the lead dev on the new project. Basically, it is a database containing our know-how, with a web frontend. Our employees, our cooperating business partners, and people who wish to become our cooperating business partners should have access to it and see what technologies we have, so they can trade for them with the department which owns them. The technologies are not patented, but very valuable to competitors, so the department bosses are paranoid about somebody unauthorized gaining access to their technology description. This constraint necessitates a nightmarishly complicated multi-dimensional RBAC-hybrid model. As the Active Directory doesn't even contain all the information needed to infer the roles I use, I will have to manage roles plus per-technology per-user granted access exceptions within my system. The current plan is to use Active Directory for authentication. This will result in a multi-hour registration process for our business partners where the database owner has to manually create logins in our Active Directory and send them credentials. If I manage the logins in my own system, we could improve the usability a lot, for example by letting people have an active (but unprivileged) account as soon as they register. It seems to me that, after I am having a users table in the DB anyway (and managing ugly details like storing historical user IDs so that recycled user IDs within the Active Directory don't unexpectedly get rights to view someone's technologies), the additional complexity from implementing authentication functionality will be minimal. Therefore, I am starting to lean towards doing my own user login management and forgetting the AD altogether. On the other hand, I see some reasons to stay with Active Directory. First, the conventional wisdom I have heard from experienced programmers is to not do your own user management if you can avoid it. Second, we have code I can reuse for connection to the active directory, while I would have to code the authentication if done in-system (and my boss has clearly stated that getting the project delivered on time has much higher priority than delivering a system with high usability). Third, I am not a very experienced developer (this is my first lead position) and have never done user management before, so I am afraid that I am overlooking some important reasons to use the AD, or that I am underestimating the amount of work left to do my own authentication. I would like to know if there are more reasons to go with the AD authentication mechanism. Specifically, if I want to do my own authentication, what would I have to implement besides a secure connection for the login screen (which I would need anyway even if I am only transporting the pw to the AD), lookup of a password hash and a mechanism for password recovery (which will probably include manual identity verification, so no need for complex mTAN-like solutions)? And, if you have experience with such security-critical systems, which one would you use and why?

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• Authlogic, logout, credential capture and security

  - by Paddy

  Ok this is something weird. I got authlogic-oid installed in my rails app today. Everything works perfectly fine but for one small nuisance. This is what i did: I first register with my google openid. Successful login, redirection and my email, along with my correct openid is stored in my database. I am happy that everything worked fine! Now when i logout, my rails app as usual destroys the session and redirects me back to my root url where i can login again. Now if i try to login it still remembers my last login id. Not a big issue as i can always "Sign in as a different user" but i am wondering if there is anyway to not only logout from my app but also logout from google. I noticed the same with stack overflow's openid authentication system. Why am i so bothered about this, you may ask. But is it not a bad idea if your web apps end user, who happens to be in a cyber cafe, thinks he has logged out from your app and hence from his google account only to realize later that his google account had got hacked by some unworthy loser who just happened to notice that the one before him had not logged out from google and say.. changed his password!! Should i be paranoid? Isn't this a major security lapse while implementing the openid spec? Probably today someone can give me a workaround for this issue and the question is solved for me. But what about the others who have implemented openid in their apps and not implemented a workaround?

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• Authlogic, logout and credential capture

  - by Paddy

  Ok this is something weird. I got authlogic-oid installed in my rails app today. Everything works perfectly fine but for one small nuisance. This is what i did: I first register with my google openid. Successful login, redirection and my email, along with my correct openid is stored in my database. I am happy that everything worked fine! Now when i logout, my rails app as usual destroys the session and redirects me back to my root url where i can login again. Now if i try to login it still remembers my last login id. Not a big issue as i can always "Sign in as a different user" but i am wondering if there is anyway to not only logout from my app but also logout from google. I noticed the same with stack overflow's openid authentication system. Why am i so bothered about this, you may ask. But is it not a bad idea if your web apps end user, who happens to be in a cyber cafe, thinks he has logged out from your app and hence from his google account only to realize later that his google account had got hacked by some unworthy loser who just happened to notice that the one before had not logged out from google and say.. changed his password!! Should i be paranoid?

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• PHP $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] vs. $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'], am I understanding the man pages correctly?

  - by Jeff

  I did a lot of searching and also read the PHP $_SERVER man page. Do I have this right regarding which to use for my PHP scripts for simple link definitions used throughout my site? $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] is based on your web servers' config file (Apache2 in my case), and varies depending on a few directives: (1) VirtualHost, (2) ServerName, (3) UseCanonicalName, etc. $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] is based on the request from the client. Therefore, it would seem to me that the proper one to use in order to make my scripts as compatible as possible would be $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']. Is this assumption correct? Followup comments: I guess I got a little paranoid after reading this article and noting that someone said "they wouldn't trust any of the $_SERVER vars": http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/php-server-vars-not-safe-in-forms-or-links/ and also: http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php (comment: Vladimir Kornea 14-Mar-2009 01:06) Apparently the discussion is mainly about $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] and why you shouldn't use it in the form action attribute without proper escaping to prevent XSS attacks. My conclusion about my original question above is that it is "safe" to use $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] for all links on a site without having to worry about XSS attacks, even when used in forms. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

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• chrome extension login security with iframe

  - by Weaver

  I should note, I'm not a chrome extension expert. However, I'm looking for some advice or high level solution to a security concern I have with my chrome extension. I've searched quite a bit but can't seem to find a concrete answer. The situation I have a chrome extension that needs to have the user login to our backend server. However, it was decided for design reasons that the default chrome popup balloon was undesirable. Thus I've used a modal dialog and jquery to make a styled popup that is injected with content scripts. Hence, the popup is injected into the DOM o the page you are visiting. The Problem Everything works, however now that I need to implement login functionality I've noticed a vulnerability: If the site we've injected our popup into knows the password fields ID they could run a script to continuously monitor the password and username field and store that data. Call me paranoid, but I see it as a risk. In fact,I wrote a mockup attack site that can correctly pull the user and password when entered into the given fields. My devised solution I took a look at some other chrome extensions, like Buffer, and noticed what they do is load their popup from their website and, instead, embed an iFrame which contains the popup in it. The popup would interact with the server inside the iframe. My understanding is iframes are subject to same-origin scripting policies as other websites, but I may be mistaken. As such, would doing the same thing be secure? TLDR To simplify, if I embedded an https login form from our server into a given DOM, via a chrome extension, are there security concerns to password sniffing? If this is not the best way to deal with chrome extension logins, do you have suggestions with what is? Perhaps there is a way to declare text fields that javascript can simply not interact with? Not too sure! Thank you so much for your time! I will happily clarify anything required.

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• How can I protect my .NET assemblies from decompilation?

  - by Holli

  One if the first things I learned when I started with C# was the most important one. You can decompile any .NET assembly with Reflector or other tools. Many developers are not aware of this fact and most of them are shocked when I show them their source code. Protection against decompilation is still a difficult task. I am still looking for a fast, easy and secure way to do it. I don't want to obfuscate my code so my method names will be a,b,c or so. Reflector or other tools should be unable to recognize my application as .NET assembly at all. I know about some tools already but they are very expensive. Is there any other way to protect my applications? EDIT: The reason for my question is not to prevent piracy. I only want to stop competitors from reading my code. I know they will and they already did. They even told me so. Maybe I am a bit paranoid but business rivals reading my code doesn't make me feel good.

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• 'Forward-Compatible' Program Design

  - by Jeffrey Kern

  The majority of my questions I've asked here so far on StackOverflow have been how to implement individual concepts and techniques towards developing a software-based NES clone via the XNA environment. The small samples that I've thrown together on my PC work relatively great and everything. Except I hit a brick wall. How do I merge all of these samples together. Having proof-of-concept is amazing, except when you need it to go beyond just that. I now have samples strewn about that I'm trying to merge, some of them incomplete. And now I'm stuck with the chicken-and-the-egg situation of where I would like to incorporate these samples together, to make sure they work, but I cannot without test data. And I don't have tools to create test data, because they'd need to be based off of the individual pieces that need to be put together. In my mind, I'm having nightmares with circular reference. For my sample data, I am hoping to save it in XML and write a specification - and then make sample data by hand - but I'm too paranoid of manually creating an XML file full of incorrect data and blaming it on my code, or vice-versa. It doesn't help that the end-result of my work is graphic-oriented, which makes it interseting how a graphic on the screen can be visualized in XML Nodes. I guess, my question is this: What design patterns and disciplines exist in the coding world that address this type of concern? I've always relied on brute-force coding and restarting a project with a whole new code base in attempts to further along my goals, but I doubt that would be the best way to do so. Within my college career, the majority of my programming was to work on simple projects that came out of a book, or with a given correct data set and a verifyable result. I don't have that, as my own design documents that I am going by could be terribly wrong.

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• Push TFS 2008 code to remote VSS over VPN?

  - by drovani

  We have a local Team Foundation Server 2008 that we keep our code under version control. However, we also have a paranoid client that has their own Visual Source Safe installation that wants us to keep a running copy of the code on their server as well. As such, I'm hoping there is a way I can just do a nightly push from our TFS repository to their VSS repository. I'm not concerned about keeping each changeset on TFS as a different changeset on the VSS, just a once-nightly push that creates a new changeset on the VSS and uploads the latest changeset from TFS. I guess the first part is if it is even possible for TFS to push an update to VSS. I've noticed that most replies to this question have been something to the tune of "don't do it", but I can't find anything that specifically states that it cannot be done. The second part would then be automating the process by having the TFS server connect to the client's VPN, then push the code changes. I have full control over the TFS server and I can customize the VSS install, if there are settings that need changing, but I'm limited on what I can do about settings on either firewall or server specific settings on the client's VSS server.

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• JTA or LOCAL transactions in JPA2+Hibernate 3.6.0?

  - by Pangea

  We are in the process of re-thinking our tech stack and below are our choices (We can't live without Spring and Hibernate due to the complexity etc of the app). We are also moving from J2EE 1.4 to JEE 5. Tech stack JEE 5 JPA 2.0 (I know JEE 5 only supports JPA 1.0 but we want to use Hibernate as the JPA provider) Hibernate 3.6.0 (We already have lots of hbm files with custom types etc. so we doesn't want to migrate them at this time to JPA. This means we want both jpa/hbm mappings work together and hence the Hibernate as the JPA provider instead of using the default that comes with App Server) Now the problems is that I want to stick with local transactions but other team members want to use JTA. I have been working with J2EE for last 9 years and I've heard time and again people suggesting to stick with local transactions if I doesn't need two phase commits. This is not only for performance reasons but debugging/troubleshooting a local transaction is lot easier than a distributed transaction. My suggestion is to use spring declarative transaction management + local transactions (HibernateTransactionManager) I want to make sure if I am being paranoid or I have a valid point. I'd like to hear what the rest of the JEE world thinks. Thank you.

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• Endianness and C API's: Specifically OpenSSL.

  - by Hassan Syed

  I have an algorithm that uses the following OpenSSL calls: HMAC_update() / HMAC_final() // ripe160 EVP_CipherUpdate() / EVP_CipherFinal() // cbc_blowfish These algorithm take a unsigned char * into the "plain text". My input data is comes from a C++ std::string::c_str() which originate from a protocol buffer object as a encoded UTF-8 string. UTF-8 strings are meant to be endian neutrial. However I'm a bit paranoid about how OpenSSL may perform operations on the data. My understanding is that encryption algorithms work on 8-bit blocks of data, and if a unsigned char * is used for pointer arithmetic when the operations are performed the algorithms should be endian neutral and I do not need to worry about anything. My uncertainty is compounded by the fact that I am working on a little-endian machine and have never done any real cross-architecture programming. My beliefs/reasoning are/is based on the following two properties std::string (not wstring) internally uses a 8-bit ptr and a the resulting c_str() ptr will itterate the same way regardless of the CPU architecture. Encryption algorithms are either by design, or by implementation, endian neutral. I know the best way to get a definitive answer is to use QEMU and do some cross-platform unit tests (which I plan to do). My question is a request for comments on my reasoning, and perhaps will assist other programmers when faced with similar problems.

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