Password Free Logins Over ssh (Part 2)

In the last post I suggested you add a passphrase to keep your private key secure. The problem with this is that now you have traded entering a password for entering a passphrase which is most likely longer. Doesn’t seem like such a great trade off.

Password Free Logins Over ssh (Part 1)

Are you sick of typing in passwords when sshing into systems or when transferring files of scp of sftp. Well the good news is that there is an easier and safer way to do this with ssh keys.

Is it Wrong – Zefrank One Year Later

It turns out that I am un-hip and not plugged into the Interweb scene. How did I miss the Zefrank bandwagon when it came around. I only found out about it a couple days after he did his last podcast.

Satan’s Jukebox

Satan’s Jukebox is playing again. That evil little song rattling around in my head, bent on my destruction. This happens a lot if you have kids. the songs go on and on until madness finally takes over. Unless, of course, you can get it out, exorcize it. The only real way to do this is to give it to someone else, usually my wife. This makes her very angry. I do it by singing the song to her until she has it firmly implanted in her head, then I am free.

DNS Change Regression Testing

For those who have needed to make a bunch of DNS changes and want to verify what the effect of those changes are, here is a little shell script that does a sort of regression test. Basically, it tells you what changes were made to a zone so you can see if any major mistakes were made.

The usage is simple try dnscheck -? for a list of options. It isn’t the fanciest thing in the world, but for those who need it, it might be helpful.

Open it in your favorite text editor to set the basic configuration options and make it executable and you are on your way.

Perfect or Just Good

I hear a great quote the other day. I think it cam from the guys who manage the Subversion project.

“Perfect is the enemy of Good”

It reminds me of the analog…

“Good execution is more important than a good plan”

I can’t tell you how many times I have been in groups that have argued endlessly about the very best course of action, only to have disagreement and division when it came time to execute.

Best Buy purchases Speakeasy, WTF

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Best Buy has purchased speakeasy? What an odd marriage. Does this mean that when you call Speakeasy support you get the Geek Squad, ugh. I, like other nerds of my ilk, have long appreciated Speakeasy’s Terms of Service and knowledgeable approach. I hope they can stay independent enough to keep to their ideals.

Here is the press release that went out:

MacBook Pro Justification

The time are a changin’ and now the reasons for bringing Intel based Macs into an organization are very compelling. I had an opportunity to get new laptops for some of my network engineers and was initially rebuffed by finance when I suggested MacBook Pros. So I have included here an excerpt of the justification document that I sent to them. Keep in mind that I work at a Fortune 500, so some of the reasoning may not apply.

Introduction

There have been some questions as to what the appropriate laptop standard for a Network Engineer should be. This brief overview aims to answer questions regarding the benefits the new Intel based Macbook Pro laptops afford us.

OS X provides a unix-based platform, which is the underlying architecture for most network devices. With the release of the new Intel based system it gives one access to not only OS X and Unix based tools, but allows for other operating systems to run natively on the system, including Free BSD and Solaris.

Using TextMate Blogging Plugin with WordPress

I was having issues getting the TextMate Blogging plugin working with WordPress, and I didn’t see any explicit directions for making it work with blogs actually hosted by WordPress so I figured I would post the tip for the wayward TextMate explorer.

The correct URL to use in the “Set Up Blogs” document http://<username>@<blogname>.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php. Not too complicated, but the example inserts a /blog/ in there that makes those who over-think things (who are you looking at) confused.

Getting Started

Please excuse the virtual dust as I get things set up here. I am transferring these posts from another blog site. I was getting frustrated with their interface and was impressed by the WordPress… experience.

So if the page style changes and there are frequent edits, it is just the strange little man behind the curtain pulling the assoted chain, flipping the random lever.

Thanks for listening.