Jim's Voice

Open Source and Security

2011-01-14T14:54:00.002Z

Just a quick brief note - as again I have been riled by someone claiming that closed source is inherently more secure, because with open source an attacker "knows more about the underlying architecture"

In simplest terms, being able to knit does not make counterfeiting a particular jumper any easier - knowing the source code of a product should not provide an attacker any more capabilities than a similarly secure (or otherwise) closed source product.

In fact, I believe a fair amount of complacency comes with developing closed source code leading to more difficulty in creating inter-operable applications and the potential for a greater number of security vulnerabilities.

Ok, rant over...

Google Horoscope makes me chuckle

2009-07-25T11:05:00.002+01:00

My iGoogle horroscope today made me smile - right on the money:

Although you may have obligations that carry you out into the world today, you may be more willing to get involved if you are assured that you'll have time to yourself later on. You have been so busy recently that you need some downtime in order to sort out your feelings and to tune in with your intuition. Remember, being with other people is not always a distraction; it can be part of your process, too.

Had a very busy few weeks and months, and having been ill most of this past week, I can definitely do with some down time this weekend - I'll be home with the kids tonight so reckon a nice bottle of New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and something nice to eat will do the trick. Just need to find something to keep them occupied for the day - looks like it'll be a trip to the seaside for the afternoon.

Double Rainbow

2009-07-06T17:09:00.003+01:00

We had the pleasure of a double rainbow outside the office window this afternoon - some torrential rain and about two minutes of bright sunshine provided us with this view (although the photo doesn't really do it justice)...

Cross Platform Backup Solutions

2009-06-23T20:17:00.002+01:00

Well, things are going to be crazy busy again over the coming few days or so.

I am looking for some suggestions of Cross-Platform backup solutions. I'm looking to be backing up a mix of Linux and Windows OS's, including MS Exchange 2007, SQL Server 2005 and 2008, MySQL Databases and VMWare and Xen virtual machines (mostly Linux VMs).

Looked at Symantec NetBackup - too pricey by a mile - currently considering Zmanda, BackupExec and CA ArcServe. I would appreciate any suggestions or feedback on how anyone else has got on?

Jim

Squid, SquidGuard and OpenDNS

2009-06-05T08:54:00.005+01:00

While my kids are both very young at the moment, Josh will be starting at infant school in September, and from our recent parent's introductory tour of the school they will be providing a good grounding in IT Literacy, including Internet familiarity.

As my working life revolves around Computer System Administration, I have more infrastructure than most at home - I host my own email, I have a web server and SSH VPN server, I have three seperate networks etc. It also means I spend a fair amount of time testing and evaluating software and services at home myself and with my family.

My latest focus for my home networks has been to start looking at how I can give my children Internet access while protecting them from the destructive and criminal elements of the Internet but without getting in the way of them making use of what is a very rich source of knowledge and experience.

There are two approaches I am looking at. Firstly, I am implementing Squid and SquidGuard on my Linux firewall.

I have these both installed, and have been looking at getting a set of policies put together to manage it all - currently I am looking at web-based management interfaces for the combination of Squid and SquidGuard (I'm sure there are a few) but haven't made much headway as yet. Watch this space for more as I find time to play.

Secondly, to back it up (and because the site definitions are likely going to be maintained much more often) I have already configured OpenDNS for my home LAN. Initially this was with the intention of speeding up name resolution from home but the service, to my pleasant surprise, includes much more functionality than a simple DNS lookup service.

First impressions of the OpenDNS service are very good - and the added bonus features (such as DNS Aliases - for example I could link "email" with my webmail server, "news" with the BBC News web site etc) are already proving useful. I was not looking for this service to offer the same results as my Squid/SquidGuard combination, but that would seem to be the result. A complementary set of protections, and an extra layer of safety against viruses can be no bad thing.

As a no-cost solution I would recommend people look at this service - in my opinion it compares well against some of the paid-for "Net Nanny" style products out there on the shelves, and will complement almost any combination of security measures you implement to protect your Internet activities.

Zimbra FTW!

2009-06-04T08:31:00.003+01:00

Having now used Yahoo's open source Zimbra email server to host my email for some time, I am finally getting around to writing some words about it.

As a no-cost solution, running on comodity hardware and an open source software stack supporting it, I would chose Zimbra over any of the hosted solutions I have come across for the 1-50 user business (or in my case family). The rich webmail client has replaced desktop email clients for me, and having access to the same mail client, with the same customisations and settings from any machine with net access is a great boost. More recently the full desktop client, which allows offline access to messages, is easily as feature rich and useable as solutions from Microsoft or IBM that I have had the opportunity to use in anger, as well as the various open source solutions out there - can anyone say "evolution --force-shutdown".

There are features that I miss - GPG and S/MIME signing and encrypting my emails, ctrl-click drag and drop to copy messages - but progress is good and you can always connect your favourite desktop email client.

One more promising bonus is the ZimbraME Beta product - this installs on your Mobile Phone and provides you access from anywhere to your mail, a great addon. I have the generic version running on my Three Skype S2 phone (although scrolling within messages doesn't work) and for a beta its great to check which parking space I have been allocated when I turn up at work first thing like a zombie!

With version 6 just around the corner, lets hope my high expectations continue to be met!

RHEL5/CentOS5 Graphics Problems on HP ML115/ML150

2008-06-17T08:56:00.005+01:00

Well, thought I would note this here for others' use - steps required to get RHEL5/CentOS5 to give you a usable display (without the corruption on the bottom 1/10th of the screen).

At the gdm login prompt, drop to a console session: Ctrl-Alt-F1

stop the graphical login screen by switching to runlevel 3: telinit 3

take a backup of the xorg.conf file:
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup"

ask X to create a config for us: X -configure

copy this config to our live xorg.conf, but force the vesa driver:

sed 's/mga/vesa/' /root/xorg.conf.new > /etc/X11/xorg.conf

edit the generated xorg.conf for keyboard settings etc with your favourite console editor

test the config: startx

assuming all is ok, System -> Log Out or: Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

return to runlevel 5: telinit 5

Don't forget to log out from VT1 Ctrl-Alt-F1

Hope this helps someone - its not a fix, but will at least give you a usable X session until a better solution presents itself.

Jim

Return of the Rain

2008-01-11T13:57:00.000Z

Well, its raining again today - came back from a quick walk around the shops (and purchase of some cough syrup) looking like I had been for a swim in my jacket!

Although its not quite so cold, it seems to be a lot more like an average English January now.

Wednesday was David's funeral - it was a very nice ceremony, and a real testament to the hard work that Ness, David (Junior) and Julia put in getting prepared that everything went so well. David (Senior) would be very proud I am sure, and I am certainly very proud of Ness, she was so concerned that things wouldn't go well and everything was perfect on the day. Thankfully, even the weather held out for us with hazy sunshine lasting until the early evening by which time we were all back indoors.

In better news, I have received my new employment contract at work for my promotion to ICT Infrastructure Manager which can be no bad thing - another step on the path to my goals.

Geeky technical news: got the UPS service working on the server at home (kept meaning to look at this since I put it in last October but never seemed to remember when I was at a keyboard), and I have found everything I need to set Ness's laptop up to work wirelessly and run Linux instead of Windows so she should be able to do her thing anywhere in the house.

At work, Tobie has finally got some useful support from our Firewall suppliers on how to get us up and running again, and today we have finally got at least one site working perfectly - lets just hope the other follow suit.

Well, thats all I can think of right now so back to the grindstone for me.

Happy New Year

2008-01-08T11:20:00.000Z

Well, its 2008 - taken me ages to get a chance to sit and write, apologies to anyone who has been waiting - not that I imagine there are many (sorry, any) of you.

Christmas has come and gone, New year has come and gone - I have yet to have a day resting this past three months though. What with everything that has been going on following the sad passing of Ness's Dad and all the usual Christmas period chaos with the kids and my family, it seems to have been non-stop.

Tomorrow we have David's funeral. Mum is coming to stay with me tonight (Ness and the kids are already at her Mum's) and tomorrow so that she can help me out - its tough being the last person people turn to, and someone to lean on is very greatly appreciated. While I am not looking forward to the inevitable emotions, I am glad we are finally able to put David at rest. It has been a long time coming, and I hope it will be a milestone in the grieving process for Ness and her family, allowing them to begin moving forwards and pick up the pieces.

That is all I have to say this morning, but with time on my own while Ness is staying with her mum I hope to start writing more frequently so watch this space - tech and geek stuff coming soon!

All that remains is to wish you a Happy and Prosperous 2008.

Introducing Me

2007-12-21T12:01:00.000Z

Well, this is my first post to my first blog, so Hi and thanks for finding me :)

I suppose a quick introduction might be the place to start. I was born way back in 1979 in Yeovil in Somerset - thats in the South-East of the UK. As a child I moved from Yeovil to Rugby, then to Solihull where I went to St Alphege Junior and Primary school, and Tudor Grange Secondary School for two years, before moving to Hethersett near Norwich where I finished my GCSEs at Hethersett High School.

Once I had left High School we returned to Solihull where I studied for my A-Levels at Solihull Sixth Form College for another two years, before heading back to Norwich where I attended the University of East Anglia for the first year of a Degree in Electronic Engineering with Computing.

Unfortunately, I didn't handle my money very well back then, and ran out. Coupled with poor performance in my exams I decided to leave University and join the job market.

I started in the Typing Pool at Norwich Union in the summer of 1999, where I continued to work until April of 2000. Then I moved to Williams Refrigeration where I was working as IT Support, and moved the company from fairly humble beginnings in computing terms to a much more structured network and server infrastructure (albeit on a low budget, so things often fell a little short of my hopes and expectations!).

At the end of 2005, following a falling out with Williams over my pay and conditions, I decided to move on and came to work for my present employer Freebridge Community Housing. At the time I was employed by the Borough Council of Kings Lynn and West Norfolk, as Freebridge was not yet a legal entity.

Stock Transfer happened in April 2006, at which time Freebridge came to being and I took responsibility for the two servers I had configured fresh to host and control our data and the three we inherited from the Council.

As of now we run over 25 servers, and have in excess of 50 times the storage that we had back then. In the mean time, I have also attained MCSE certification from Microsoft in managing the network, and have become a full member of the British Computing Society. I also now have responsibility for the ICT Service Desk and Tobie and Andy who man it, and I am the organisation's Data Protection Officer.

In my personal life, I have been living with Ness my Fiancee since 2004, we have a son Josh who is 3 and a daughter Ellie who is 1. Ness's father passed away on Monday of this week, and as a family we are deeply saddened and will all miss him greatly. I expect I will blog about this more over the coming weeks as we work through our grief.

Well, thats my life so far in a nut-shell (of course there's lots missing - I am not quite ready to write an autobiography yet!) all thats left to say is Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Jim.