ProFTPd, Wu-ftpd, And General Ftp Security
FTP in general has a long and sad history of security problems. If you need to run an ftp server, you need to keep careful track of vulnerabilites and exploits that may make for a very unhappy day.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/1229.html
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12.29.04 |
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Configuring
Basic Cisco Router Security
Network
security is a hot topic today, and will only increase in importance
in the months and years ahead. While most of the attention is
paid to exterior threats, there are some steps you can take
to prevent unwanted Cisco router access from within your organization.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/1220.html
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12.20.04 |
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Provisioning
User Management System Upgrades
Tommy
Sherman daily monitors a helpdesk-provisioning queue for a large
company. The current provisioning/user management system was
written with homegrown software. It has not had a major update
for several years.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/1209.html
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12.09.04 |
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Actively
Monitoring Disk Free Space
The
obvious answer is that low free space means upcoming problems,
like the inability to receive mail (for mail servers) or the
inability to store new files (for file servers). There are numerous
obvious reasons why free space is an operations management priority.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/1104.html
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11.04.04 |
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Easily
Create and Manage Your Remotely Hosted Sites
Xmanager
is a powerful and easy-to-use PC X server software application
that is running on a Windows platform. It allows you to bring
remote Unix/Linux desktops to your Windows PC seamlessly.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/1018.html
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10.18.04 |
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Does
Your Provisioning/user Management System Need an Upgrade?
Somewhere
in the world is a person who wants to see their provisioning/user
management systems get a sorely needed upgrade. But they seem
to be getting nowhere.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/1014.html
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10.14.04 |
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The
Votes are in on the Best Web Hosting Service
Too
often, service providers don't want to help the customer after
the contract is signed. It's company policy not to exceed customer
expectations. Giving the customer great service costs more than
it's worth. They know that they don't have to dazzle you to
keep your business.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0923.html
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09.23.04 |
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Avocent
Acquires Sonic Mobility For Secure Wireless Systems Administration
Avocent
Corporation announced that it acquired Sonic Mobility, a privately-held
company located in Calgary, Canada.
The agreement provides for a total cash purchase price of $8
million plus the assumption of liabilities and payment of certain
transaction costs.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0908.html
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09.08.04 |
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Learn effective strategies for GPOs, security, Exchange and more!
You
know the challenges to keep your network running smoothly. Attend
TechMentor - the leading technical training conference for Windows
networking professionals - and get the training, tips and tricks
you need to take your skills and systems to a new level.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0902.html
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09.02.04 |
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How
to migrate your company to Linux clusters
Anyone
following the high performance computing industry has probably
noticed the growing popularity of Linux cluster systems. The
23rd Top 500 list, a ranking of the world's most powerful supercomputers,
reported that clusters make up more than 50 percent of the list.
The appeal is easy to understand; Linux clusters are a fraction
of the cost of traditional supercomputers while providing blazingly
fast performance numbers. Many organizations from national labs
to Hollywood special effects shops have reported performance
increases that their previous systems couldn't touch. With such
widespread appeal and tangible benefits, the migration to cluster
systems seems inevitable for many organizations.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0715.html
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07.15.04 |
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Well-run
IT is like music to my ears
When
I'm not wearing my CTO hat, I spend a lot of time thinking about
music — listening to it, playing it, and reading about it —
which causes me to see IT operations in distinctly musical terms.
Managing IT often seems like managing the affairs of a rock
band, with its curious mix of creative talent, volatile personalities,
and lots of gear. When a sysadmin brags about the blazing throughput
of the Linux server he just built, it feels a little like listening
to Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel proudly describing his
amp that "goes to 11."
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0708.html
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07.08.04 |
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Network
Your Shell Scripts with Netpipes
There's
no advantage to a sysadmin programming his own utility when
he can do the same job (though perhaps less efficiently) in
a quarter of the time with a quick and dirty shell script.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0603.html
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06.03.04 |
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Receive
a 256 MB flash drive with Sun training
Complete
a 3-5 day course of your choice* this summer and earn a 256
MB USB flash drive. You can transfer files from home or
between computers with this portable memory stick. One of the
hottest technology gadgets on the market, this hard drive requires
no cables, power supplies, or batteries and is small enough
to fit in your pocket.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0526.html
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05.26.04 |
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The
ISAPI Execution Environment
This
document bases on information and testing done with IIS 1.0.
We have not re-tried it with later versions. However, we feel
very comfortable with the information contained herein and think
that it still is correct.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0520.html
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05.20.04 |
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POWER5-Based
Servers Hit the Street
The
wait for a physical manifestation of IBM's first-of-its-kind
virtual computing platform is over. Big Blue took the wraps
off two servers Monday -- dubbed the eServer i5 520 and the
eServer i5 570 -- built with the company's next-generation POWER5
processors, which are primed to provide twice the computing
power of its POWER4+ predecessors.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0506.html
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05.06.04 |
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Using
LDAP to Manage Unix Accounts
User
management is one of the most tedious tasks in a systems administrator's
job. There have been some attempts to centralize user management
with NIS and NIS+. NIS fizzled out because of its security holes,
and NIS+ is not very straightforward to configure. So, what's
the best way to centralize user management in an environment?
The answer is looking more and more like LDAP.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0422.html
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04.22.04 |
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Top
Ten Tips to Make Attackers’ Lives Hell
I
run a lot of penetration testing exercises against client networks
and systems. A lot of the time, testing is relatively straightforward,
as the network administrator is not filtering ICMP traffic,
and my network scans are not proactively blocked. I love this
type of testing, as it's easy and quick to undertake.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0408.html
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04.08.04 |
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Wireless
Security & 802.11 Learning Guides from SearchNetworking.com
Get
up to speed on the next generation networking technologies and
architectures that can enhance your network, save you money
and improve the quality of your enterprise network. SearchNetworking.com
provides a variety of valuable resources that help you determine
which network strategies, standards, architectures and technologies
are right for your organization.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0330.html
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03.30.04 |
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Recovering
System After Upgrade
Usually
upgrades are binary: either they work or they don't. Actually,
my experience with SME upgrades has been very good: I've only
had a very few where the upgrade process didn't work at all.
In those cases, you install new, apply all applicable blades,
and then restore from backup. That's annoying, but fairly simple.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0318.html
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03.18.04 |
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Transferring
To New Hardware With A Supertar
With
any of the Supertars, transferring to new hardware is easy.
If the new hardware uses the same disk controller (or the same
driver) as the old, you can just boot from your recovery media
and proceed to recover the system. But what about when the new
hardware is different?
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0311.html
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03.11.04 |
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Performance
Optimizing Syslog Server
We are
quite often asked how many syslog message per second MonitorWare
Agent can receive. The answer is not as simple as it may look.
It largely depends. So I finally thought I write this brief
article on the factors that influence syslog server performance.
Obviously, you can also use it as a rough guide to optimizing
your setup.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0226.html
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02.26.04 |
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Kerio
Mail Server
The
Kerio Mail Server is a cross platform ( Windows, Linux, and
Mac OSX) mail server. I tested it on RedHat Linux 8.
Before we get into the details, let me say that I was
very impressed. This is well done, and they have paid attention
to important details. I have a few minor nit-picks here and
there, but over all I can highly recommend it.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0219.html
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02.19.04 |
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Penetration
Test : My Meanest Hack
I was
requested to perform a proof of concept hack into a large organization
a few weeks ago. The aim was to get an interactive session,
preferably GUI, on one of the internal machines which was guarded
by 2 (External and DMZ) firewalls, and an Intrusion detection
system. I was allowed to use any means necessary to achieve
this goal. This is extremely unusual for a penetrations test,
where the rules, guidelines and penetration methods are very
strict and defined. I was supposed to impersonate a hacker that
would stop at nothing to gain interactive access to the internal
network.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0212.html
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02.12.04 |
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Monitoring
Windows Disk Space With Scripting Host
Did
you ever run out of disk space on an important machine? Never?
Well, I've done so and experienced all the headaches that come
along with this situation. In this article, I describe how I
implemented a basic automatic monitor system with the help of
a little scripting.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0122.html
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01.22.04 |
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Download
SiteScope: Monitor Your Network and Web Site
SiteScope
infrastructure monitoring software features a proven agentless
architecture, ideally suited to monitoring the availability
of your distributed systems, network services, servers and applications.
SiteScope keeps complex systems up and running 24x7, without
requiring intrusive agents to be installed on production systems.
With its agentless architecture and more than 65 monitors, SiteScope
is the most cost-effective solution for monitoring your Web
site and distributed systems, and provides a more rapid time
to value than any other monitoring tool.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0120.html
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01.20.04 |
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Security
Insurance May be a Smart Policy for Some
Making
your network hack-proof would be like constructing a fireproof
building. Doing either would be beneficial but expensive and
impractical.In both cases, purchasing liability insurance would
be an alternative. To paraphrase a security mantra: One shouldn't
spend $10 protecting something worth $5. However, what about
insuring it for 50 cents?
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0115.html
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01.15.04 |
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Building
a Better Monitoring System
Monitoring
Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 is important even for small environments.
Automatically monitored, critical failures can often be avoided.
But how to monitor a system without too much effort? The basic
idea behind a successful monitoring and alerting system is to
centralize all system events at a single monitoring station.
Once the information is centralized, it can be used to build
an alerting system or even carry out corrective actions.
http://www.sysadminnews.com/2004/0108.html
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01.08.04 |
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