Diary of a Network Geek

Good question.
First of all, I’m talking about work, not my personal life. So, no, you may not speculate on what kind of degenerate, misogynistic, low-life I am. Besides, there are already plenty of bottom-feeders who are doing that. No, now that I’m a on-man IT department again, I wear a lot of hats.
Last week, I was a data security officer, a helpdesk, a Microsoft Excel Developer, a graphics designer, a server administrator and a web master. This week, so far, I have been a helpdesk, a Macintosh administrator, a server administrator and a web master. But, it’s only Tuesday.

Oh, I also had a rather uncomfortable teleconference hearing with the Texas Workforce Commision regarding my requested benefits. Still waiting to see if I’m going to get that one week of unemployment or not. Good thing I didn’t need it, eh? But, I have to say, the entire hearing process was, well, really, er, “icky”. No matter what some people may have said about me in the past, I really don’t like confrontational situations like that. I can handle them, and handle them well, I might add, but I don’t really like them. Just something that I have to do from time to time. One of the many things I don’t like that I have managed to do well at anyway. Of course, I’ll have to wait and see how well I really did this morning, but I think it went well.

Oh, how I could have used this at other jobs…
Okay, now, I haven’t been writing about it, but I’ve been wrestling with worms. No, not earth worms, or heart worms or even tape worms. Windows Worms. Well, I guess they’re actually “e-mail worms”, but I’ve never heard of one that occurs on any other operating system other than Windows. Unless, of course, you count the infamous Internet, or Morris, Worm. In any case, since most of my workstations are Windows-based, I have worms. Not as many as I did, but it’s still something that keeps me awake at night.
So, imagine my joy when I finally found the Symantec Security Response Worm Removal Tool page.
Go forth and infect no more.

Just a random collection of thoughts.
Earlier this week, Frank Gorshin, the original “Riddler” died. He was always my favorite character. So wild, so creative, and always the mad genius who seemed one step ahead of the Batman. Yet, somehow, the writers always managed to make him trip up in the end. Never did figure that part out. And, interestingly enough, the Batman cartoon, which is the only reason I wake up before noon on Saturdays, featured a new villian today. You guessed it, the Riddler. He was good, but, he was no Frank Gorshin.

Thanks to a faithful reader, BleuCube, I took a quiz this morning. (My apologies, incidentally, for not spelling your site’s name correctly all this time! My very English oriented mind simply “corrected” the exotic French spelling on the fly.)

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 94% Idealist 75% Romanticist 56% Postmodernist 56% Existentialist 50% Fundamentalist 38% Materialist 31% Modernist 6%

What is Your World View? (corrected…again)
created with QuizFarm.com

And, finally, in security geek news, there’s a new version of nmap. The new version is not only faster, but uses a less invasive technique for scanning networks that leaves no trace. In other words, for you WinDoze admins who leave IIS out on the network, exposed, this bad boy can do a port scan on your network and you wouldn’t know it by reading the logs. Oh, but good news for you, there is a WinDoze version, so you can test your own network and try to plug the holes. If you can manage it between applying patchs, fixes and anti-virus updates. I’m so glad we’ll be moving to Linux soon at my office!

Well, it’s time to go play with my dog. It’s a nice sunny day here in Houston, and the grass seed I planted is starting to grow, so I’m off to water, feed the fish, and play some fetch with Hilda. Maybe I can finally get her to drop the ball when she brings it back…

Well, I survived the daytrip to New Orleans.
Barely. Not that the flight was bad, because my boss is actually an excellent pilot and the weather was good. In fact, it was better than most commercial flights I’ve taken, except for the fact that I felt like I couldn’t take a nap. I learned a long time ago to work hard while I was on-site and sleep on the plane.
No, the problem was the “little” problem I thought I was going to fix. See, what I thought was a little problem with some spam e-mail turned into virus hell. Of course, I prepared for that and I brought a copy of our Symantec Corporate Anti-Virus to install. No problem, right? Wrong. When I installed it an old version of Norton Anti-Virus was still installed and the resulting conflict led to the dreaded Blue Screen of Death on the server. Not good. So, I finally get that worked out and discover that the machines are all in a workgroup. None of them sign into the Domain on the server. That meant going from machine to machine and installing the anti-virus program by hand on each one, which, of course, I did. All day long, until about 6:00pm when a break in the weather sent us scooting home.
We got in about 8:30pm, which got me to my door at about 9:15pm, or so to find a puppy with her little legs crossed! I sent a friend who has a key, in case of emergencies, over to let her out, but she was afraid of him and wouldn’t do anything. Silly dog. Just like always, she’s daddy’s girl and wouldn’t do anything for anyone but him. Gotta’ admire that loyalty, even if it’s a little co-dependant.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized."
   --Leo Buscaglia

Actually, I think it’s a prop plane, but, you get the idea.
Well, the boss told me we’re off to the New Orleans office tomorrow to work out some of their computer issues. Mainly, it seems like they need to get their anti-virus software automatic update more, er, automated. And, of course, they need to get all their machines cleaned of spyware. And, while I’m there, I’ll do a bit of inventory. Since they seem to have a Windows 2000 server, I have a script that claims it will gather all the information on all the machines in the domain. We’ll see. If it works, I’ll post about that tomorrow.
So, it’s off to bed with me, since it’s an early morning tomorrow flying with the boss. Oh, didn’t I mention? The boss has his own plane. I’ll be flying in a single-engine prop plane and my boss is the pilot.
Pray for me.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Girls are like pianos. When they're not upright, they're grand."

I love Dr. Suess, but all he did was inspire the title.
I have two concerns this week: Linux servers and security. I’ve installed a test RedHat server and configured Samba on it, so now I can start testing how the accounting system will run from a mapped Linux drive. And, I’ll be testing the custom, in-house app that gives us our competitive edge. I’ve got server spec to get to the boss, when he’s in the office again, but I’m still waiting on pricing for a Linux-based backup system. It was actually much easier to get setup than I thought it would be. Though security may be an issue, since, essentially, Samba emulates Windows sharing on a Linux platform.
Security is my second issue. There’s a basic firewall in place on the router, but I don’t think that’s enough, especially if we want to block “adult” sites. And, since we do actually have a policy against that sort of thing, we do. So, eventually, I need to get that all spec-ed out and installed, too. And tested. Yeah, a little scan against our outside link would be interesting to look at, especially if I do it before and after. Ah, well, that’s down the line. First, I have to get the server upgraded.
Oh, and I still need to evaluate Novell’s Open Server on Linux before I decide which way to go for an OS on the new server. I know I want to avoid a Microsoft product, if at all possible. Frankly, it looks like it should be a real possibility. It all depends on how testing goes this week, so we’ll see. That and getting a CD burner at the office so I can burn the demo ISOs and install them.
Then, there are all the “little” projects that everyone keeps bringing me, not to mention all the nice G4s and assorted Macintrash… Ah, the work of a one-person IT department is never done. But, somehow, having easily defined goals makes the work more fulfilling. I know where I’m going and how I’m going to get there, so it’s all okay.
(The Suess book, by the way, was One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and a childhood favorite.)

Test your skills!
Well, since it’s hacking IIS 6, I’m not sure how much of a “challenge” it will be, but, still, the “Hack IIS 6 Contest” sounds like a bit of fun. The goal, obviously, is to crack a publicly available Internet Information Server 6 that the contest organizers have setup. They claim to have set it up as they would expect the “average” Windows Admin would have configured it. The goal is a simple defacement or the reading of a “hidden” document. The prize is an XBOX.
If I had more time, it might be fun. Of course, I’m not really a hacker, nor have I ever claimed to be a hacker. My “skillz” are so out of date that the last time I did any “security testing” was back in the days of the BBS. Remember those? Ah, the good old days… And, to be honest, even then I was little more than a clever script-kiddie. (On the other hand, there have been those who accused Kevin Mitnic of being little more than a well-connected, persistent, script-kiddie, too, so I guess I’m in good company!) But, for you young’uns that might be a little bit more spry than Old Man River, it could be a fun challenge.
The contest runs through June 8, 2005.

Looks like I’m going to be a Unix admin!
Yeah, it definately looks like we’ll be using some form of Linux at the new place. If not Novell’s Open Enterprise Server on Linux, then Red Hat Advanced Server. Of course, I’ll end up running SMB as a Windows PDC, for the login scripts, but, hey, at least I can do it! And, it almost sounded like the boss was actually leaning toward Novell’s solution. It actually worked out to be about the same, cost-wise, as Red Hat. Though, the Novell pricing doesn’t include any support if anything went wrong. But, I suppose we could pay by incident. I mean, I hardly ever call Novell anyway these days. Their online knowlegebase has most of the answers I need.
And, of course, there’s all the Mac and OS X stuff, too. That’s BSD, essentially, with a Mac X Windows front end. Funny, it all comes around to that GUI, doesn’t it? All point and click. Oh, for the good, old days when all we had was a command prompt and we were darn lucky when we got that! These kids today don’t have any appreciation for what a good command prompt can do. Why, I remember, back in the “before time”, messing around on an old HP-UX system and figuring out how to read mail from reading the man file! So, here I am, again, back where I started, about to become a Unix admin again.

Cool.

No, I don’t have a girlfriend.
No, I met the “Senior Partner” from Louisiana today. Apparently, he’s done some checking up on me with former employers. He mentioned Kirby by name and talked about people in management there. Not sure who he talked to, but they seemed to have liked me okay because he said they had nice things to say. Sort of interesting, considering the somewhat dubious circumstances under which I left that job. Well, I guess I did better at not burning bridges there than I thought! Yea for me!
I’ve been doing a lot of research into moving from Windows NT to some version of Linux this week. It actually might be easier than I thought. For one thing, I’ve been looking at Novell’s Linux solutions and they have several options, all of which use a migration tool that seems workable. It’s actually a Windows server “consolidation” utility which they meant for admins to use as a way of merging several Windows servers into fewer Novell servers. It sounded a little clunky, but it was free with the software. The other option was something called LSP from DAS Technology. LSP Pro, which showed on the site as costing $500 per instance, would migrate everything for me, automatically, and also add management tools for the long term. Not a bad option and it would be an easy upgrade to RedHat. I think I could make that work, if I can convince them to spend the money.

In other, totally unrelated news, I took my dog for a walk just a few minutes ago. She was so scardey of the little, tiny dog that we met I thought she was going to wet herself. Some fierce watchdog I’ve got. Ah, well, at least she’s lovable and always happy to see me when I get home. It’s the best unconditional love I’ve gotten since I left my parent’s house. I miss my mommy sometimes. I really ought to investigate those dog parks I wrote about some time ago. I just haven’t had the time with all the chaos in my life. Ah, well, one day soon it will all calm down. I hope.

Well, I survived my first day at the new job.
Oh, what’s that? New job? Oh, didn’t I mention it before?
Yeah, okay, there’s a funny story behind that. Well, there’s a story behind that which involves things like lawyers and teenagers and medical insurance and divorce. Come to think of it, it’s not a very funny story at all. But, I hope that it will be one day.

Anyway, I’m the IT Manager at a new company called SeaTrax now. We make cranes. Big cranes that are based on big platforms in the ocean. It’s actually pretty cool. It’s a Windows shop, but, well, nothing’s perfect. With any luck at all, I’ll be able to convert them to either a Linux shop or a Novell shop, or both!
It was a long, hard day trying to set priorities, so when I got home, I microwaved some chicken-fried steak and gravy followed by a dessert of Krispy Kreme mini-crullers. And, I washed it all down with a Sam Adams. Yes, even the Krispy Kreme! (Hey, back off! It was a long day!) And, my sweet doggie was so happy to see me when I got home, I let her lick off my dinner plate. She loves gravy!
Anyway, all I managed to do was get a rudimentary “To Do” list put together. Actually, I even stole that idea from a faithful reader, BlueCube. But, here it is anyway. Feel free to make suggestions!

Jim’s Great Big, Enormous To Do List of Doom

Short Term
* Get specs for hardware for server upgrade
* Figure out solution for PeachTree for server upgrade
* Figure out OS for server upgrade
* Document security layout for new server
* Order enought Backup tapes for Full GFS at for every backup server
* Tape Inventory & sign out
* Tape backup courier or a whole new scheme for backupadmins
* Clean up Edirectory
* Clean up data junk on servers
* Clean up active directory

Long Term:
* Address Windows Server Updates
* Work out Tape Cleaning procedure for all backups
* Upgrade Anti-virus software and automate
* Figure out Name Changes and write up procedures
* Figure out to do with multi-user accounts
* Create New user/change form
* Write backup procedures guidelines
* Write anti-virus procedures
* Write workstation software and hardware policies and procedures
* Evaluate T1/WAN connection, price and reliability
* Come up with plan for “roaming” staff
* Create Firewall maintenance/monitoring guidelines
* Create montly network maintenance procedures
* Create shutdown scripts for server

Blue Sky:
* create monthly newsletter
* Build wishlist for end of budget
* Formulate server percentage uptime
* Clean computer room
* Clean tech room
* Setup IDS system
* Implement PDA synchornization system and standards