This week we cover various network utilities for Linux/UNIX and Windows platforms.

netcat – Linux/UNIX – netcat.sourceforge.net
netcat – Windows – www.vulnwatch.org/netcat

ntop – Linux/UNIX – ntop.org
ntop – Windows – tech.scottp.net

nmap – Linux/UNIX/Windows – insecure.org/nmap

wireshark – Linux/UNIX/Windows – wireshark.org

netstat
ethtool
dig
traceroute
lsof
ip
tcpdump
ifconfig
ping
route

Additional Windows links:
Help with ping, winipcfg, and other network commands
Sysinternals
ProcessExplorer

This week we interview Brad Williams. Brad Williams is a computer programmer and tech junkie who enjoys exploring technology and sharing his knowledge and experience with others. Brad is currently the IT Director at Batteries.com and an Advisor on SitePoint Forums.

Brad is the creator of TwitterTroll and has his personal blog at StrangeWork.com.

Listen in to hear about Brad’s upcoming new project called SnapFoo!

Linux Desktop Eye Candy:

gDesklets
SuperKaramba
Google Desktop for Linux

Virtualization:

Vmware:

• ESX Server
• Server – Free
• Workstation
• Player – Free

Free and Commercial Virtual Appliances:
CannedOS
VMWare Virtual Appliance Marketplace

Xen

Install XenExpress on Feisty:
Complete Newbies Guide to Installing Xen on Ubuntu Feisty
Ubuntu Forums – Installing Xen

Cool Apps:

Wubi – Linux Installer for Windows

Reconstructor – Create your own Linux Live CD

AptOnCD – Backup your Ubuntu Packages to CD or DVD

Website/Server/Service Monitoring

We discuss monitoring your website to make sure that it is available and responding in a timely manner. We cover the difference between agent and agentless monitoring. Various open source software monitoring solutions are mentioned along with discussion of using monitoring service providers if you can’t or don’t want to run your own monitoring server.

Monitoring Software
Nagios
Zenoss
Zabbix
Hyperic
Pandora
Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM)
MS System Center Operation Manager (SCOM)

Internet Communications Status
Internet Health Report

Internet Based Thirdparty Monitoring Services:

MoniTwitter – A couple of servers answering one simple question: What’s your website doing? Receive answers on your phone, IM, or right here on the web! Receive notifications when your website goes down. Keep track of how long it takes your website to load.

Montastic - Get an email when your site goes down and when it goes back up. Read statuses via RSS or Yahoo widget. No unreasonable limit on the number of websites monitored

Linuxchic’s Extra’s:

Tips for Monitoring a Virtual Server Environment

Nagios Exchange: Nagios plugins & extensions repository

Nagios on Ubuntu Quickstart

How to Monitor Wordpress with Nagios

ESX VMware Monitoring

Graphical Linux Desktop Environments

GNOME
KDE
Enlightenment

Apache mod_security – http://www.modsecurity.org

mod_security is a Web Application Firewall build as an Apache plugin. mod_security provides realtime monitoring and attack detection. It monitors HTTP requests and can identify and stop attacks before the request reaches your web applications. mod_security is configured using rules. A core set of rules are included that identify common web exploits like:

• SQL Injection
• Cross Site Scripting
• SPAM Comments

mod_security rules are configured with the appropriate “action” for the rule. The action types that are provided are:

• deny – deny the request
• allow – stop rule processing and allow the request
• status:nnn – respond with a HTTP status nnn
• redirect:url – redirect the request to the absolute URL url
• exec:cmd – execute a script cmd
• log – log the request to the error log
• nolog – do not log the request
• pass – ignore the current rule match and go to the next rule
• pause:nnn – stall the request for nnn milliseconds. Be very careful with this action; one Apache instance will be busy stalling the request. You could actually help the attackers in creating a denial of service attack.

Selecting A Web Hosting Provider

There are a lot of details to consider when selecting a web hosting provider. Everyone’s needs are different as is their knowledge of technnology. Some things to consider:

• Type of site – Personal/Commercial/Other
• Platform – Windows or Linux
• Managed or Unmanaged
• VPS or dedicated or shared

It is important to research possible hosting providers. A good starting point is Web Hosting Reviews at http://whreviews.com. This site provides good articles on what to look for in a hosting provider and what things to be cautious about. There are articles covering topics such as:

• Presales questions
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Uptime guarantees
• Overselling
• Server load
• Windows Vs. Linux
• Shared hosting

There are also very helpful sites where hosting company customers can participate in discussions of the various hosting providers and their individual experiences. Two such helpful sites are WebHostingTalk and HostHideout.

Wordpress Plugins

Akismet : A preinstalled plugin (you will need to insert an API key and activate it) that checks comments and trackbacks for spam against the Akismet web service.

Challenge restricts comment spam by throwing the commenter a challenge. The default challenge is an addition and multiplication math question. The challenge and the answer can also be user-defined. They can be of anything including PHP-evaluatable expressions.

Referrer Bouncer: A plugin to bounce back referrer spam attempts; requires no upfront configuration, no mod-rewrite. It is like the strong silent bouncer at your favorite club. Tested on WordPress 1.5.x and 2.0. It should work with earlier versions too.

Comment Timeout: A plugin that allows you to selectively close comments on your blog to help reduce spam. There are three ways in which it can do this:

1. It lets you close comments on old entries that do not have an ongoing, active discussion.
2. It examines your spam queue and your Bad Behavior logs to let you close comments and trackbacks across the board to troublesome IP addresses.
3. It allows you to reject comments that contain too many hyperlinks, or links in BBCode format.

ImgProtectr: A plugin that will take any text you pass to the imgProtectr() template tag and put an image with the specified text in it’s place. This is primarily intended for use in templates where you would have an email address displayed.

WP-Hardened-Trackback: Hardened Trackback generates single-use, expiring trackback url’s with AJAX. Whenever someone tries to send a trackback without a valid key it will be ignored.

Very useful Linux shell commands you might not be familiar with

• man
• wc
• file
• tac
• apropos
• which
• tail
• du
• wtf
• locate

Databases, Tips & Tools

• MySQL
  
• Detailed WordPress instructions with MySQL and phpMyAdmin:
  
• phpMyAdmin
  
• MySQL Query Browser
• MySQL Admin
  
• Stored Procedures in MySQL
  
• Using SQL With Gnumeric
  
• Postgresql
• EnterpriseDB
  
• Visual Case <
  
• SQLite
  
• OpenOffice Database
  
• Dia ERD Editor and DDL Generator

MySQL Tuning

mysqlreport: Script allowing you to see your MySQL status, usage and more. A great howto for using it can be found here.
The settings referenced here can be found in the my.cnf file

What the settings mean in my.cnf:

key_buffer = 48M
max_allowed_packet = 8M
table_cache = 128
sort_buffer_size = 48M
net_buffer_length = 8M
thread_cache_size = 4
query_cache_type = 1
query_cache_size = 4M

query_cache – this caches repeated SQL queries.
key_buffer – used for caching primary key indexes.
table_cache – tells mysql how many table files handles to keep open simultaneously.
thread_cache_size – this tells mysql to keep worker threads around which are expensive to start up, but cheap to maintain
sort_buffer_size – this value is used during queries to hold results in memory otherwise it creates temporary result tables on disk
net_buffer_length – should help on larger network based queries to improve throughput

Disable DNS lookups (a must for security as well as speed)

Add the –skip-name-resolve switch into your my.cnf config file (on most linux distros this is /etc/mysql/my.cnf) simply by putting this line in the file:

skip-name-resolve

Save and close the file, then restart MySQL (on linux usually by /etc/init.d/mysql restart)

More tuning links:

• MySQL Tuning Server Params
• InnoDB Tuning Tips
• Sample Configs For MySQL with Low Memory
• Optimizing MySQL (very informative presentation)
• MySQL Optimizations
• Tips from Drupal.org

Web Servers & Such

• Lighttpd (pronounced “lighty”)
  
• Apache Web Server
  
• THTTPD
  
• FastCGI
  
• FastCGI Support in Lighttpd
• Enabling FastCGI with Lighttpd and PHP
• Enabling FastCGI in Apache

A few more items from the show

Pixel Image Editor: Open source image manipulation software with support for MANY operating systems.

The Gabby Geek: Podcast with health and fitness tips for geeks (or anyone else that sits at a desk all day).

Housekeeping

Wikipedia on the History of SQL and SEQUEL

The first version of SQL was developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce in the early 1970s. This version, initially called SEQUEL, was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM’s original relational database product, System R. The SQL language was later formally standardized by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1986. Subsequent versions of the SQL standard have been released as International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards.

Reference to Premature Optimization is the Root of All Evil

Donald Knuth said, paraphrasing Hoare, (many references, one is : http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i24_fallacy.html)
* “We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.” (Code Complete, Page 594)

More posts on AlternaGeek.com to follow containing more configuration tips for web servers…

This week’s episode focused on Web2.0 which refers to a surge in new web based communities and services. Web2.0 isn’t based on any new technology, but relates to new uses of the web for collaboration, data sharing and providing dynamic interactive web applications. Web2.0 sees the web being used more for applications that promote interaction among users which is called social networking.

Topics

Social networking (Vox, Facebook, Last.fm, Flickr,…) , blogging (Vox, LiveJournal, Blogger.com,…), microblogging (Twitter, Jaiku), web feed aggregators (Jaiku, iStalker, Tumblr), Web2.0 applications (Meebo, NetVibes, Pageflakes,…)

Links

Hosted Blogging Sites
Vox
Wordpress
Facebook
Xanga
LiveJournal
Blogger.com

Other Social Networking Sites
Last.fm
Flickr
Twitter
Jaiku
Tumblr
Meebo
NetVibes
PageFlakes
Protopage

Website Software
Open Source CMS Software Lists
WordPress
Movable Type
XOOPS
Drupal

QCL Quantum Computer Simulator: QCL is a high level, architecture independent programming language for quantum computers, with a syntax derived from classical procedural languages like C or Pascal.

Gobby Collaborative Text Editor: Gobby is a free collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-like platforms.

Also discussed as a means of collaboration:

• Google Apps
• Google Docs and Spreadsheets
• Google Gears

Links:

Solaris 10

OpenSolaris Laptop project: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/

Solaris Training and Tutorials: http://www.learning-solaris.com

The Movable Type Open Source Project: http://www.movabletype.org/opensource/

WordPress Password Strength Recommendations

NetLingo: Top 20 Internet Acronyms Every Parent Needs to Know

OpenOffice Worm: Proof of a multi-OS risk.

Music: “Drum and Bass” by Ted-Tunes

Applications of the week:

Yakuake
http://yakuake.uv.ro/ (official site)
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=29153 (KDE Apps Site)

Yakuake is a handy little application which will allow you to instantly summon a terminal which scrolls down from the top of the screen. Yakuake uses KTerm and requires the KDE libs, but works great under Gnome and XFCE as well as KDE.

Lifehacker Code: Better Gmail (Firefox Extension)
http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/lifehacker-code-better-gmail-firefox-extension-251923.php

Better Gmail is a collection of Lifehacker’s favorite Greasemonkey scripts that enhance Gmail all rolled into one. Features include: skins, Google Calendar Link, open mailto links with Gmail, and more…

Kiba Dock
http://www.kiba-dock.org/ (official website)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=268645 (Ubuntu howto)

Kiba dock is a nice little application that uses akamaru for a physics based docking experience.

Perl beats Python in OpenGL benchmarks by 20%

http://graphcomp.com/pogl.cgi?v=0111s3B2&r=s3m3

According to a recent benchmark, using OpenGL from Perl is up to 20% faster than Python. This link offers up some in-depth benchmarks, as well as some other benchmarks including C vs. Perl.

HowTos:

How to Enable NTFS Read/Write Support in Ubuntu Feisty

• Open a terminal and type: sudo apt-get install ntfs-config
• After installation, go to Applications –> System Tools –> NTFS Configuration Tools
• You will see “The following new partitions were detected and can be configured: /dev/sdaX <click here to set a mount point>
• I chose windows – you don’t need the path, just the name. Now click the checkbox and Apply.
• Select “Enable write support for internal device” if you are running a dual boot machine
• Select “Enable write support for external device” if you have an external HD
• Now you will see an icon on your desktop with the windows mount. To unmount, right click on it and chose unmount.

Viola!

Resizing existing partitions in Ubuntu with Gnome Partition Editor

Backup backup backup. Did I mention that you should backup? The entire disk. Windows, Ubuntu… all of it!!!

** If you’re making space in the middle of the drive BEFORE the ext3 partition, you will NOT be able to resize backwards with gparted. There is the possibility you can move the start of the partition with an application like Norton.

Make sure you have a LiveCD to boot from (Note: gparted is NOT on the old CD previous to Feisty official release but we can work around this).

• Boot into the LiveCD menu and choose Start or Install Ubuntu
• After it loads, go to System –> Administration –> Users and Groups and change the password for root just in case you need it.
• Open Gnome Partition Editor by going to System –> Administration –> Gnome Partition Editor
• If you don’t have this listed, open a terminal window and type: su -
• Enter the root password you set earlier
• type: apt-get install gparted
• Now go back to System –>Administration –> Gnome Partition Editor
• Double check that you don’t have your HD partitions currently mounted. If you see disks on your desktop other than one labeled “Install” right click on them and chose unmount.
• Lets say I have a 50 gig Windows partition and a 30 gig ext3 Linux partition – but I really use Ubuntu more often so I want to resize the Windows partition down. I have plenty of free space so I am going to click on the Windows partition then the button that says Resize/Move. I am going to change the size to the size that I want then Resize.
• Now in the main windows click Apply. It will take a bit to resize the partition.
• Once it is finished you may need to unmount the partitions again because it sees them as changed.. basically all you have to do from this point is repeat the steps with the linux partition or create a new partition in the free space you just created.

Extra Links:

Enlightenment

Music: “Drum and Bass” by Ted-Tunes