Notes from the Net 2012 06 14

Finished up the RHCSA. On to the SecurityTube Python Scripting Expert course.

This months notes:

Routing:
The IP Routing Process - Step-by-Step Analysis
http://www.firewall.cx/networking-topics/routing/181-routing-process.html?goback=.gde_123120_member_110099489


Tools:
Smoke ping

http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/doc/smokeping_install.en.html

Cloud Performance Analysis (Large Scale)
http://dsl-wiki.cs.uchicago.edu/index.php/Cloud_Performance_Analysis_%28Large_Scale%29

RT: Request Tracker
http://bestpractical.com/rt/

Keypass Password Safe
http://keepass.info/index.html

Top 5 (mostly free) tools for monitoring bandwidth
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/222989-top-5-mostly-free-tools-for-monitoring-bandwidth


Productivity:
Some really great tools for time management (inc. a typing app, location tracking, email organization, etc.) :
http://www.inc.com/ilya-pozin/time-management-tips-how-to-save-an-hour-every-day.html


Linux:
Tuning your system with Tuned
http://servicesblog.redhat.com/2012/04/16/tuning-your-system-with-tuned/

Intro to Linux Shared Libraries
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2012/06/linux-shared-libraries/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGeekStuff+%28The+Geek+Stuff%29

Linux tgtadm: Setup iSCSI Target ( SAN )
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-setup-linux-iscsi-target-sanwith-tgt.html

SELinux tutorial
http://hackinglinux.blogspot.com/2007/05/selinux-tutorial.html

15 Examples To Master Linux Command Line History
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2008/08/15-examples-to-master-linux-command-line-history/


Windows:
Reading HFS+ drives on Windows (this is the Windows driver):
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?s=95be5f9ff95000712b712472950e730e&showtopic=183351&view=findpost&p=1769690

New Windows 8 Task Manager
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/13/the-windows-8-task-manager.aspx

Active Directory 70-640 Free Video Course
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBBA04BF566F0E0D6

 
Clustering:
dealing with HPC (Beowolf) clusters
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1242501


Storage:
ISCSI vs. Fibre Channel SANs
http://www.cuttedge.com/files/iscsi_vs_fiberchannel_explain.pdf

Dell SAN training
www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Moon-Experience-Remaster/dp/B005NNUKF4/ref=tmm_msc_title_0

SNIA SAN foundation training
http://www.angelbc.com/snia/snia_buy2_EW.html

Quantum StorageCare Learning
http://www.quantum.com/ServiceandSupport/StorageCareLearning/Catalog/Index.aspx

EMC Information Storage and Management v2 (ISM v2) FAQs
https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-16510


Education, Career, & Certification:
Realtime Nexus Digital Library (a free resource for IT Pros)
http://nexus.realtimepublishers.com/

How to land a cybersecurity job
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/050312-cybersecurity-tips-258931.html

Leaving Tracks and Collusion

Collusion is a plug in for Mozilla Firefox. It tracks and graphs what's leaving tracking cookies on your system while browsing the web. It does a good job at representing the connection between all the sites that track your online browsing and the fact that everything you do on the web is tracked by someone, whether that be for profit or not.

Who you think is tracking you:

Who is actually tracking you:

There was a Ted Talk introduction done by Gary Kovacs CEO of the Mozilla Corp., called "Tracking the trackers." Have a look:

 

Interesting food for thought regarding what you do online.

RHCSA "Cheat Sheet"

I've got the RHCSA scheduled for June 8th.Originally, I was scheduled to take the exam back in early April, but I had two classes cancelled on me. As it turns out, if the RH200 5 day class isn't booked by at least 4 people, the class and exam are cancelled. Consequently, it's best to call and book over the phone in order to see which classes are "GTR" or guaranteed to run.

In my final preperation for the RHCSA I've gone through and found some good references for a "cheat sheet," pulling from Michael Jang's RHCSA/RHCE study guide as well as this fantastic wiki: http://rhce.co/rhel6/Main_Page for those seeking their RHCSA.The RHCE portion is incomplete, but the RHCSA part is complete and only slightly outdated. It is a fantastic resource.

Between those two sources, notes from Tommasino's Hands-on Guide to the RHCSA/RHCE, and my personal knowledge, I put together this study guide based on the RE200 exam objectives as of 2012 05 15.


Objectives:

Understand and use essential tools

• Access a shell prompt and issue commands with correct syntax.
• • Change TTY
  • ctrl+alt+F1 
  • F1-F7 are available
  • Icon on top of left of GUI
  • -Menu/Applications/System Tools/Terminal
  • 
    
• Use input-output redirection (>, >>, |, 2>, etc.).
• • > overwright
  • < send into a command or file
  • >> append
  • << append into a command or file
  • • cat >> hoge.txt << _end
    • • cat the file
      • enter text in tot he file until _end has been met 
  • | funnel into
  • 2> redirect errors
  • 2>&1 redirect errors to std out
  • 
    
• Use grep and regular expressions to analyze text.
  • grep for nocase 
  • • # grep -i
  • egrep ‘^(wheel|root)’ /etc/group
  • less file | [e]grep string
  • inverted search with grep and egrep
    • grep -v ^# /etc/nsswitch.conf
      egrep -v ^# /etc/nsswitch.conf
      
      
• Access remote systems using ssh and VNC.
• • SSH user_name@host
  • ssh with x windows pass through
  • SSH host -lX user_name
  • vncviewer remote_host
  • 
    
• Log in and switch users in multiuser runlevels.
• • Runlevels 2, 3, 5
  • su - username
  • 
    
• Archive, compress, unpack, and uncompress files using tar, star, gzip, and bzip2.
• • # gzip big.jpg
    # bzip2 big.jpg
    # gzip -d big.jpg.gz
    # bzip2 -d big.jpg.bz2
    # tar czvf home.tar.gz /home
    # tar xzvf home.tar.gz /home
    # yum install star
    # star -xattr -H=exustar -c -f=home.star /home/
    # star -x -f=home.star
    
  • 
    
• Create and edit text files.
• • touch filename
  • vi filename
  • 
    
• Create, delete, copy, and move files and directories.
• • touch, rm, rmdir, rm -fr, cp, mv -r, mv
  • 
    
• Create hard and soft links.
• • ln source destination ## hard link
  •  ln -s source dest, 
  • 
    
• List, set, and change standard ugo/rwx permissions.
• • ls -l
  • chmod +x +w +r, 
  • chmod 755 ##folders default
  • chown user.group
  • chgrp
  • 
    
• Locate, read, and use system documentation including man, info, and files in /usr/share/doc.
• • man command_name
  • man -k command_name
  • search for command in the doc directory
  • ls -l /usr/share/doc | grep httpd
  • 
    

Note: Red Hat may use applications during the exam that are not included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the purpose of evaluating candidate's abilities to meet this objective.

Notes from the Net

So, I do a good bit web browsing research and figured I would post some of the links and things I find of interest. Hopefully this can be something ongoing that I can find time to do.

Storage:
A wealth of information from the USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies 12:
http://static.usenix.org/events/fast12/tech/

Certifications:
Quite possibly a complete list of certifications (updated as the author gets new info):
http://www.itcertificationmaster.com/list-of-all-it-certifications/
 

Managed File Transfer:
A managed file transfer ROI calculator:
http://www.filetransferconsulting.com/roi/

Linux Tools:
NFSping - a great tool for testing response times of your NFS server:
https://github.com/mprovost/NFSping


OS X:
A good explanation of OS X 10.7's Versions and Auto Save:
http://jacobonline.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/mac-os-x-lion-10-7-deep-dive-versions-and-auto-save/

Deploy studio for deploying OS X to workstations:
http://www.deploystudio.com/Home.html 

Deploying Eset Antivirus Business for OS X supported on a network:
http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN2565&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1335313017719


Learning:
A free course from Udemy on Operational Management:
http://www.udemy.com/operations-management/

--

1 Month Hiatus & Comptia / LPIC / Novell, 3 in 1

I haven't posted in about a month. I was going for weekly posts there for a bit, but have gotten caught up in my RHCSA, OpenStack, and SAN/NAS studies. Not to mention Family, work, and some sleep here and there. Now that my RHCSA exam has been cancelled twice by Red Hat (separate locations), I'm taking small pauses to do some personal stuff, like posting here.

For folks pursuing the Comptia Linux+, LPIC-1, or the Novell Certified Linux Administrator, there is good (old) news! When you pass the certification for the Comptia Linux+ exam, you also qualify for the LPIC-1 as well as the Novell Certified Linux Administrator certification.


These partnerships were made back in early 2010, however I don't think a lot of certification candidates realize the option is available to receive all three certifications with one exam. When ever the partnership is brought up in forums, a handful of people always seem to ask questions about how to go about receiving their Novell certification (Linux+ being the more popular choice).

To get to the point, I had come across the partnership notes on LPI's site with instuctions on how to attain the certification from Novell. So, I thought I would lay it out for those looking. Quoted from afore mentioned site:

NOVELL Certification Partnership

LPI is pleased to announce that holders of LPIC certifications are now eligible to apply for and receive the Novell Certified Linux Administrator (CLA) certification at no additional cost or exams.

This initiative is the result of a new partnership agreement between Novell and LPI. Under this program those Linux professionals who have earned their LPIC-1 status will also have satisfied the requirements for the Novell Certified Linux Administrator (CLA) certification. To further support this initiative Novell Training Services has formally agreed to include the required LPIC-1 learning objectives in its CLA course training material.

To apply for your Novell CLA, please fill out the required form at Novell. You will need to provide your LPI ID, verification code, name and contact information.
All LPI alumni are able to validate their LPIC status by providing their LPI ID and verification code.

Please refer back to this page for further information on the availability of Novell training programs which are based on LPIC-1 objectives for self study, on demand, and partner-led classroom training.

LPI alumni will know that LPI has worked with Novell for a number of years on exam development and that Novell provided an initial industry endorsement of our LPIC-3 program.
This new partnership with Novell further demonstrates that LPIC-1 is the industry standard in Linux certification and confirms LPI's longstanding position that LPI certification qualifies IT professionals to work on any Linux distribution.

* This program initiative with Novell and their CLA certification is not available to LPI candidates in Japan

Some additional resources:

Comptia Linux+
LPI's LPIC-1
Novell Certified Linux Administrator

Quick Configurations Make For Trouble

I'm a few days behind in my studies for the RHCSA. I've scheduled the exam which has the added effect of pressure to be done within a certain time frame even though, I can of course, reschedule. Who wants to do that though!

For labbing I enabled X11 over SSH and am running GUI tools like virt-manager and system-config-firewall (iptables shell commands changed with RHEL 6 and I'm working on gotten it all sorted out) while not at home. Even at home though, I connect via VNC from my Mac Pro to the VM server.


The VM server built with Scientific Linux 6 and Tigervnc (quasi Xvnc)  is their default VNC server from their SL repo. So, it is what I went with to get things up quickly.

[root@shuttlehosti ~]# yum search vnc server
...
tigervnc-server.x86_64 : A TigerVNC server
...
[root@shuttlehosti ~]# yum install tigervnc-server.x86_64

Done.

Ok, I installed, configured it under my user account, according to this post from server-world.info. Then checked to see if it was persistent through reboots and it wasn't. That's fine. I only wanted my user account to be able to have access, I wrote a super simple bash script and dropped it in my .bashrc file.

[root@shuttlehosti ~]# less /home/kim/vnc-start.sh

#!/bin/bash

vncserver :1 -geometry 1280x1024 -depth 24

/home/kim/vnc-start.sh (END)

...

[root@shuttlehosti ~]# less /home/kim/.bashrc

# .bashrc

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
        . /etc/bashrc
fi

# User specific aliases and functions
/home/kim/vnc-start.sh
/home/kim/.bashrc (END)

Each time I log in to the machine it launches the vnc service for display :1 and fails out if display :1 is already open. Great until I have more time to focus on shell scripting. 

Yesterday, I started having issues with the VNC server and my connection attempts were getting refused. I would log out or reboot and try the connection and get be refused. Ok, disable IPtables, SELinux and try it again. Still nothing. Even running "vncserver -kill :1" didn't stop the process or allow me to log in.

So, whats the vnc process up to?  I do a

[root@shuttlehosti ~]#ps -efH | grep vnc

qemu      7458     1  0 Mar08 ?        00:01:28   /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm ...

 There are three processes just like that. Hmm 3 VMs up and running. Which means each VM  takes up a single vnc display when up and running. Curious. I checked out the VNC command options and came up with:

[kim@shuttlehosti ~]$ vncserver -list

TigerVNC server sessions:

X DISPLAY #     PROCESS ID
:2              5931
:1              4007
:3              4206
[kim@shuttlehosti ~]$

The processes correspond to the VM processes noted in the ps command. Jeez. Ok, I shutdown the VMs, kill off the vnc process if any are left, relaunch the vnc process under my user account, and it works like a charm.

The moral of the story? Don't rush through Linux technologies when you need to " to get things up quickly."

So, RHCSA studies can resume. After the exam I would like to figure out how to write a shell script to check for the next available vnc display and to open a IPtables port to allow for connection.

Primer on reading Michael Jang's Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide

I started reading Michael Jang's RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide about 2 weeks  ago, then took a brief detour (3 days) to get my VM server up and running (see post - RHCSA Labs and Shuttle trouble - Just Getting Started). I'm working my way through the book and although it gets great reviews and is it's a great reference, I can't help but feel it's a tad all over the place.

For instance, The first couple of chapters have labs working through the chapter that are referenced at later points in the book (with things like "if you followed the previous lab, you should be here..."). However, it's never really clear if you're supposed to work those labs or only the ones at the end of the chapter, which seem a bit more official. I've been working both. On one hand the repetitive action is great, on the other it's starting to get a bit confusing.

Then there's the references to random sections in regards to previous and more advanced topics, which can drive one mad if you let it. Take SELinux for instance. When you are initially focusing on setting up VMs and deploying via kickstart, why not just set SELinux to permissive to allow a more clear focus on Kickstart? Instead there are random commands with no explanation other than referring to Chapter 4 and 11. Granted I know not all can be be explained at once, so why not circumvent the more advanced technology for the time being and address it with more a in depth explanation later in the book?

Well, enough ranting and besides, I really do like the book so far, sans the lab murkiness. Where this leads me is to a desire to list coherent directions on how to approach Jang's book. So, I'm going to layout how I am doing the initial 2 chapters and hope that will help keep me straight on what's going on.


Also, take note, some of the same tasks need to be done multiple times.


Chapter 1 Tasks:

1. Read through chapter 1 without attempting exercises or labs
2. Note drive partition suggestions (somewhat important for VM labs).
3. Note basic installation steps
4. Download demo of RHEL, download Scientific Linux 6 / CentOS 6 
1. I grabbed a 30 day evaluation of RHEL (requires registration) and the flavors
5.  Do Exercise 1.1 - Partitioning during install of RHEL (or flavor) on VM server
1. if you setup the VM host as part of exercise 1, ignore the partitions he noted as you will need more space for VMs
2. I'm working remotely, so setup VNC for host machine. Here's good instructions. 
6. Follow along with noted basic installation steps
7. If using a server to host VMs, ensure it is KVM capable Intel vmx or AMD svm
1. #egrep "vmx|svm" /proc/cpuinfo | less
1. in less type "/vmx" to search for vmx in the results
8. Setup and configure default file sharing services (http & ftp) on VM host
9.  Do Exercise 1.2 - configure Apache and vsFTP  on VM host
10. Do Lab 1 
11. Do Lab 2 - copy install media contents to the share directory on VM host
12. Do Lab 3

Chapter 2 Tasks:

1.  Ensure KVM is installed (pdf p.4-6)
2. Ensure the KVM modules are installed correctly
1. #lsmod | grep kvm
3. run "virt-manager" with root privileges from a shell within the GUI
1. The hypervisor (virt-manager) is supposed to prompt for the root password if run from a normal user, but I was unable to run it at all that way. Thus, VMM was not an option from the user's desktop menu
4. Do Exercise 2-1 within the hypervisor
5. Configure and create a VM (pdf p.15-19)
6. Do Exercise 2-2 with the VM you just created (why wasn't that an exercise?)
7. Note the VM deletion method on p.24
8. Configure VM server to be a kickstart server (pdf p.29-31)
9. Do Exercise 2-3
10. Install kickstart configurator and create kickstart file with it.
1. *Name it something different than the ks config from Exercise 2-3
11. Configure X over SSH on VM server or one of the VMs
12. Work through the 8 Labs. 

 The rest of the chapters are a bit more straight forward and so I won't do a layout for them.

 As another side note, Chapter 4's primer on SELinux can be well supplemented by the following:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Security-Enhanced Linux - User Guide

Linux Journal's Paranoid Penguin - Introduction to SELinux
Linux Journal's Paranoid Penguin - Introduction to SELinux, Part II