Background This weekend I decided to upgrade my home network with a Cisco WRVS4400N wireless router. Like a typical router it can provide standard wireless services WPA2, DHCP, etc, but the this model also provides support for four distinct VLANs and four distinct SSIDs. This has allowed me to create separate networks for work, play,
Author: fatherlinux
Lately, I have worked for Red Hat, the largest open source software company in the world. Through a variety of roles in my career, I have played key roles in building, maintaining, marketing, and selling open source software products and services.
In years past I was a social media start-up veteran, e-commerce old timer, and weathered government research technologist. This has led to experience in a variety of companies and organizations ranging from a seven person start-up to a 8,000 person technology company. This has culminated in a unique perspective on open source software development, delivery, and maintenance.
OpenSSL Certificate Authority
Background Recently, I discovered how to use the openssl provided CA script to create a certificate authority and self signed certificates. Traditionally, I had ran all fo the commands manually. When using the CA script it is critical to understand the underlying security concepts. Certificate Authority Openssl has infrstructure to create a long lived Certificate
KVM Virtual Network
Background My lab environment is supported by a KVM virtual network at each site. It includes four datacenters, more than a handful of physical machines and tens of KVM based virtual machines. Recently, I discovered that libvirtd does some interesting things with iptables FORWARD rules. When a NAT KVM virtual network is added, the following
Crunchtools Lab Environment
Background As a Solutions Architect for Red Hat, I have access to a very nice internal lab. This lab is great for giving demo’s but it is not set-up for personal use. As such, almost all of the Solutions Architects set up their own lab environments. Since, I recently came from working at a data
Last Pass with Yubikey
Basics There are several main factors in maintaining password security. When you store your passwords in an encrypted data store, also called a blob, whether it is online or not, there are two factors which need satisfied for a hacker to get your passwords. First, the hacker must gain access to your password data. Second,
Evernote vs. SpringPad
Background I have finally started working on upgrading my very complicated system which combines an online Pomodoro Timer, a Pomodoro Spreadsheet, MediaWiki, Request Tracker, Zimbra Notes, Google Tasks, Zimbra Calendar, and Google Calendar. I am finally combining Google Tasks, Zimbra Tasks and part of the Pomodoro Spreadsheet into SpringPad. Everyone has heard of Evernote, so
RHEL, Glusterfs, and the FUSE Client
This presentation overviews RHEL, Glusterfs, and the FUSE client. It was created for the Akron Linux User Group in May. There was a quick presentation followed by a demonstration using four virtual machines running RHEL 6.2. Three of the virtual machines were used as a Glusterfs storage pool using the open source RPMs. The fourth virtual machine was used to mount the storage pool using the FUSE client. I demonstrated the resilience of Glusterfs by pausing one of the Glusterfs storage pool nodes while the client was still connected. Since a distributed/replicated Glusterfs volume was used, the client paused for a short amount of time, then showed a listing of a directory with 1000 files in it. This was all done while the mount command on the client node showed the paused Glusterfs node being mounted, magical…
Pittsburgh Perl Workshop
Originally inspired by similar workshops in Europe, The Pittsburgh Perl Workshop was established in 2006 as a low-cost technical conference for users of the Perl Programming Language. The conference emphasizes real code and immediate, pratical solutions to common issues.
Designing a Robust Monitoring System
This presentation was created for the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop 2011. It gives an overview of a fairly sophisticated set of criteria to build a large Nagios installation.
Akron Linux User Group (ALUG) July 7th
Background Terry Morris will be presenting a talk on advanced grep usage. Schedule New Era Restaurant, 10 Massilon Rd, Akron Room Opens 6:30pm, Dinner 7-8pm, presentation 8-9pm