Diary of a Network Geek

After a day and a half, I managed to get my kernel updated.
I’ve been working on a building a Linux machine that we can use to generate our own customized ZENWorks Imaging Boot CD for the past couple of days. Today, just before lunch, I finally got the kernel updated from 2.4.x to 2.6. It was much more challenging that it sounds! I must have run through at least five different documents from various places on the Internet before I finally found one that worked. Oddly enough, it was titled “How to compile 2.6 kernel for RedHat 9 and 8.0 and get Fedora updates“, by Mike Chirico. It did work, however, on the RedHat AS 3.x server that I’m running.
So, now all I have to do if figure out how to create the Novell Linux Imaging Build Script environment. Yeah, right, “all I have to do”.
Well, as a Lodge Brother used to say, I’m getting along “steady, by jerks”!

Not a bad idea.
Here’s something from AustralianIT that makes a lot of sense to me: vendor neutral certification. Okay, yes, I have a Novell certification that I’ve maintained since 1994, but I think the more open or wider certifications are better for the IT industry. Why? Because, in theory, they get us out of the pidgeon-hole thinking that our “pet” OS is the best. Ever heard the phrase, “If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”? Well, that applies to certifications, too. I have to admit that most of my solutions to problems are Novell-centric. I tend to focus on using one of their suite of products because that’s what I know. Lately, I’ve added a reversable screwdriver to my IT toolbox with Linux. And, yes, I have a Linux certification, too. But, that certification is fairly open in regards to what particular version of Linux is being used. Most of what was covered was applicable to virtually any version of Linux, and most versions of Unix.
So, yes, I think this is a good idea. I hope it catches on in Australia well enough that folks here in the States take it seriously. I think it’s the shot in the arm that IT certifications need.

Oh, yeah!
Man, Linux is just getting a massive boost this week! Yahoooooo! According to this announcement on Nero’s webiste, they’re now offering Nero for Linux. If you don’t understand how cool that is, then you’ve either never used Linux or Nero or both. This is the coolest thing since sliced bread, at least in the Linux world. And, if you’re already a Nero Ultra user, they’re GIVING Nero for Linux to you for FREE! How cool is that?!
Jeez, I remember ten or twelve years ago when this plucky, little OS was something that hard-core geeks were into and no one in the business world had even heard of it before. Now, major corporations are supporting it and some even live or die by how well Linux fares in the marketplace. Back then, the idea that anyone would give away an entire operating system for free was just, well, unheard of. No one thought it would amount to much. No one but us hard core geeks. And, now, here we are. Linux is a player in the Big Game and doing better every day.
We’ve come a long way, baby!

…Really, really excites me!
Novell believes in Linux so much that they’ve added extra support for it in their ZENWorks for Desktops suite of programs. According to this press release on Novell’s website, they’ve added “imaging, configuration lockdown, remote management, inventory and software management” to their software which will enable folks to use Novell ZENworks 7 Linux Management to manage most Linux platforms, including SUSE LINUX and Red Hat* Enterprise Linux. Now, this might not seem like much to some of you, but, trust me, this is a quantum leap forward in the Linux world. Five years ago, I couldn’t hardly concieve of a major networking company doing something like this. Now, I can completely cut Microsoft out of the picture, if I want. I can have Linux desktops and servers all managed with Novell software.
I’m so happy I could just plotz.
And, I have to say that I’m really, really glad that I not only have maintained my Novell certification, but also gotten at least one Linux certification, too. I didn’t know it at the time, but I couldn’t have planned it any better. Once again, my career choices have been affirmed.
Well, off to the uranium mines! Have a very high-tech day!

Attack someone’s network or website, that is.
Okay, this has been on my mind lately, not because I’ve done any actual hacking recently, since: a) that would be illegal and b) I haven’t done that sort of thing in, well, years. No, I’ve been thinking about it because, according to a friend of mine, at least one fan (short for “fanatic”) seems to think that I am not only capable of doing such things, but that I, in fact, have. And recently, too! As the French say, “It is to laugh…” So, as a thought experiment (that’s a mental exercise for you vocabulary impaired), here’s how I’d go about doing this, if I were, in fact, to do “ownz” someone’s “box”.
First off, I wouldn’t use a computer that I own, that can be traced to my ownership, or that uses an IP address that has ever been associated with my name. There are several ways around this, of course, including IP spoofing, anonymous remailers and other redirectors, and a compromised, third-party’s machine. That last one is the best, and, ironically, the easiest method. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Compromised Windoze machines are a dime a dozen. There are hordes of script kiddies out there just hammering away at every weak Windoze machine they can ping. Also, there are more and more insecure Linux machines floating around out there, too. (Have you applied all the latest patches to your penguin box?) Or, if you know of any systems that you left behind at an unhappy employment situation, that are still vulnerable, you can use them. Usually, a corporation will have a nice, fat data pipe which makes your “job” faster and easier. Of course, if they have half a brain, after you leave, they’ll change all the passwords, but sometimes someone slips. (The last place I knew of like that from my own past finally, after three years, changed the passwords as part of an upgrade.) Or, you could simply go to a coffee house that offers free Internet access via a wireless network. Every time you change coffee houses, you change IPs. And, while I normally am just fine with industrial-strength institutional coffee, a nice cafe au lait from Cresent City is always nice. Or, according to this article on Slashdot, Panera Bread Company is a good place to find a free wifi link.
So, now you have one or more launching platforms from which to case your mark. (That there’s criminal slang that means “look at your ultimate hacking goal”.) What do you use to look for a way in? Well, there’s three that I’d recommend, based on reviews; Snacktime, Nessus and NMAP. Of the three, NMAP is, arguably, the more robust and well known. In fact, NMAP was used in The Matrix movies. Now, that, my faithful readers, is “geek cred”! Though Snacktime is interesting to me because it’s PERL-based. Now, if you’re not familiar with these three tools, just stop reading and go play with your IIS 6.0 webserver. We’re about to talk “big boy” stuff here and you just won’t be up to it. So, if you’re still man enough to be following this, you’d load up your lookeeloo tool of choice on your remote launch platform at this point and get a fingerprint of your target system’s OS.
Now, we get to the meat of this little mental exercise… Okay, you’ve got your “open door”, or “doors”, as it were, into your target system. At this point it’s a matter of taking the information from the nice, clean results that NMAP, or whatever, gives you and applying your exploit. What and how you do that really depends on what you’re attacking, but it’s pretty much a paint-by-numbers affair now, thanks to the legions of script kiddies that keep us up to date. Right, root access (or Administrator, if your target is foolish enough to run Windoze). Now what? Well, that sort of depends, doesn’t it? Do you want data? Start a background transfer to a third party that you can collect later. (Use ftp, tftp, or, for loads of sneaky fun, telnet, to transfer your data. Many admins disable logs on these protocols because they don’t think they’re running. Double check.) Want to install something? Go for it! (Try a keylogger. Now you’ll get loads of target passwords to compromise other machines for further adventures!) Just want to crash the system? You should have skipped all this hassle and just hit your target with a DDoS attack from your many compromised machines, stupid. (Incidentally, for you Windoze admins out there, the entire Code Red scare you sloppy bastards caused was all about a Distributed Denial of Service “issue”. )

Of course, this is all very illegal and somewhat morally questionable as well, so I would NOT do it. What’s more, I would not recommend that anyone else attack, hack, assault, fold, spindle or mutilate any system other than your own. In short, the Network Geek, RyuMaou.com and Jim Hoffman (yes, we’re all the same entity) does not in any way endorse any of the above listed activities, except the cafe au lait from Cresent City. In fact, I suggest that you do NOT do anything that I’ve written about in this entry, including flinging wild accusations that cannot be proven. That’s called “libel”, or, if you say it instead of write it “slander”. That’s against the law, too, the last time I checked.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Love is that condition where someone else’s happiness is necessary to your own."
   --Robert Heinlein

I’ve been extra introspective lately.
I don’t know, maybe it’s the therapy, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my life lately. I guess I didn’t do that as much at the end of the year, because there was so much going on that I didn’t want to have to look at just then. I’ve really done okay, over the years, with my career. It hasn’t always gone the way I’d like, of course, but, still, it’s been okay. I remember telling my Father at one point that I didn’t want to just bounce from job to job, but that I wanted to take control of my career and steer it in a particular direction. He kind of got upset with me, like I’d insulted him or something. It struck me as odd, at the time, because I’d always felt that he’d done a pretty good job of steering his own career, which is what motivated the comment. I think he thought I was saying the opposite.
Anyway, I’ve been going over my history with my therapist, so that meant a lot of talk about jobs. In many ways, as a man, my job has defined me over the years. But, as I went through the different places and the certifications, it didn’t seem like I’d been steering much at all! I just threw myself upon fate and lucked out! I mean, winning the scholarship to pay for my Certified Novell Engineer training was very lucky. Sure, I did the work to maintain it, and even get Linux+ certified, too, but mostly it was luck.
But, one thing I am very proud of is that my Father got me one interview. That’s it, just one. Everything else that’s happened in my career is either due to luck, or my own ability. Sort of bootstrap-levitation. My therapist commented on it and said, “So, you’re really a self-made man, aren’t you?” And, I had to admit with no small amount of pride, that, yes, I am. So, I may not have as much career direction as I’d like, but I have a good job that I enjoy working for a company that I feel good about for a change. In the over all scheme of things, that’s better than a lot of guys ever manage. So, I guess I’m doing okay after all.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The Constitution of America only guarantees pursuit of happiness; you have to catch up with it yourself."
   --Gill Robb Wilson

Well, I’m back to something I’m comfortable with at work.
Yep, I finally got most of my end of the workstation imaging project done last week. The basic images for the hardware and the Novell client are all squared away. At least, they are for all the hardware that we have in stock. I still need to get images of one of the older Dell PCs and the engineering laptop, but that’s easy enough now that I have a good idea what I need to do. The hardest part of all this, so far, has been figuring out what should go into the dang image! But, the resident expert on workstation images got me all fixed up in that area and the rest was actually pretty simple.
Now, though, I’ve been back to the Linux-based ZENWorks Imaging partition. We had an “issue” with the restore menu I did. Apparently, if you have an existing partition and only restore one partition of an image, it doesn’t completely wipe the existing partition. In other words, it just copies the files over the existing install. Not good enough for our purposes. So, I had to devise a method for deleting the existing C partition, recreating it and then, finally, restoring it from the local backup image. Not a problem, right? Wrong. I needed to have a universal menu that could tell what size the existing partition was and plug that into the script which recreated the partition. Not quite as easy as it sounds. Well, thanks to sed & awk, second edition, I found a relatively painless and reliable way to get it done. Basically, I run an “fdisk /dev/hda -l”, pull the relevant information from those results with grep and use “awk” to spit out the correct information to populate the variable. Actually, I have to do some mathmatical adjustments to that, too, but, in a nutshell, that’s what I did. If anyone is really interested and doesn’t want to shell out the money for Learning the bash shell, second edition and sed & awk, second edition, I can put the restore menu that I use up on the site. I have to admit, it’s a pretty sweet solution. Hmm, maybe I’ll submit it to Cool Solutions for another t-shirt….
Well, that’s what I’ve been up to at work. If youse guys want to know more, just pop something into the comments!

Okay, so I’m almost done coughing up a lung.
Yeah, I’ve been sick this week, but not in the usual way. I’m not sure if it was a sinus infection or the flu or what, but horrible wracking cough is finally dwindling. I’m sure it was not helped by the long hours, or extra days, I was putting in at work. The good news is, though, that I mainly got my problems worked out and I’m starting to feel better. And, I now know more about Linux boot loaders and Novell’s ZENWorks Workstation Imaging solution than I thought possible. I feel like Dr. McCoy in that episode of Star Trek “Spock’s Brain” where he has an entire civilization’s medical knowlege dumed into his head. (Yes, I’ve had the same bug-eyed stare, too!) But, whatever, I got it more or less done. Now, we get to test. Yea! Incidentally, I don’t reccomend pushing yourself as hard as I do. I don’t plan on living to be as old a man as my peers. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Okay, so, maybe I’m not burning twice as bright, but I’m burning faster than I ought to be. Eh, what the Hell, I figure I’m losing the last years where I’m drooling on myself and don’t remember my own name anyway.
Oh, and for those of you who were interested, no, I don’t actually expect to get my Hilda back. That was just my way of expressing how crazy my week was. It felt like anything could happen! But, as always, I pray for the best and plan for the worst. Though, I am keeping an eye on what seems to be Hilda’s sister. Sometimes, volunteering at H.O.P.E. has its advantages!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Happiness is a direction, not a place."
   --Sydney J. Harris

Ah, the old days…
Yes, this past week or two sure has felt like the old days. Long, long hours that are appreciated only by a select few. Coming home to an empty house. Being at work late on a Saturday night. Yep, it sure seems like old times. The joys of being a Professional Network Geek. Well, at least I solved my little “issue” and, with the help of an equally dedicated co-worker, I have just a bit of testing to do tomorrow and we should be good to go for the mini-rollout.
In a nutshell, my last problem was getting the LILO information to update on the Linux-based ZENWorks Imaging partition on the local drive. Everytime I would get the damn thing installed, then added an image to the disk, the menu that let the user go into the recovery mode (ie. the Linux partition) would go away. So, after chasing my tail for a week, while sick as a dog, incidentally, I finally noticed something in the documentation that indicated a particular order to do things. Yes, once I read the “fine” manual, it was clear that I had to first enable the ZENWorks partition, then apply the updated LILO config that gave the user a boot option menu. Since I know that “once is luck, but twice is skill”, I tested this on a desktop and a laptop and a second time on a second desktop. All three worked like a charm. Yea! Now, I can go back to my regular 45 hour work week. And, maybe, I’ll get a little rest and get over being sick.
Just as soon as I finish the laundry and ironing and pay my bills and go grocery shopping.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
but I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.”
– Robert Frost

Man, I should work for the Chicago Sun Times.
Well, thanks to an article, or entry, or whatever, over at Slashdot last week, I have a new post about SCO. Been a long time since we’ve heard much about them, hasn’t it? Well, there’s a reason. According to this summation of a News.com story on Slashdot, a judge was very critical of SCO’s alleged “proof” that they had copyrights being infringed upon by the OpenSource Linux. To quote the quote they quoted, “… it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO’s alleged copyrights through IBM’s Linux activities”. Yeah! So there! Of course, those of us who have been following this case at all already knew that SCO’s case was thin at best, but still, it’s nice to know the judge hearing the case agrees with us. I, at least, take comfort in the fact that I can spot blindingly obvious legal facts when I see them.
Damn, I should’ve gone to law school.