My Geek Finds

Bare Metal Software’s Bare Tail

Bare Tail is a handy little free utility that allows you to monitor log files on Windows real-time. Basically a GUI of the Unix command tail -f.

Allows you to tail monitor multiple files. Pretty neat check it out here http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/index.php

The Windows 2003 Resource kit contains a command line tail utility that is also pretty handy.

Defraggler – http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

Use Defraggler to defrag your entire hard drive, or individual files – unique in the industry. This compact and portable Windows application supports NTFS and FAT32 file systems.

And it’s free for personal and commercial use.

New feature in vCenter Update Manager allows you to stage vSphere updates before installing them.

Use the Stage wizard to download the patches before using remediation. This downloads and prepares the patches while the host is still online. This decrease the amount of time the host is off line (in maintenance mode) will applying patches.

Stage and Remediate in Upate Manager

You can stage at the cluster and Data Center level to prepare all hosts in the cluster for remediation.

Update Manager Stage Wizard

Shortcuts in Home-Inventory-Hosts and Clusters

Stage and Remediate Host - Cluster and Data Center

Just updated to ESX 4.0.0 build 175625. Staging took about 3 1/2 minutes total and remediation took about 12 minutes per host (this include Entering maintenance mode, VM migration, patch installation, reboot, exit maintenance mode). Three and a half minutes of savings may not seem like much, and across three hosts it really isn’t that big of a deal, but across 20 hosts that would make a huge difference.

Awesome new vSphere feature!

If you are looking for a way to backup your home computer check out Mozy.com. They offer a 2 Gig backup for free but for just $4.95 you get unlimited backup for a single computer. They have clients for Windows and Mac.

“Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable.”

Sign up for an account, install the client, select the files you want to backup, and that’s it. There are some tweaks to allow more bandwidth to be used for backups, or backup only when idle but I just selected all the defaults. The initial backup took about 10 days for 45GBs of data, but now my data is quickly backed up daily. I am sure they are using some sort of source de-duplication similar to AVAMAR.

Here is a capture from my Mozy account of my backup data

I have not tried to do a restore yet, but I have browsed through my backed up files on the Virtual Drive created when you install the Mozy Client and using the Web restore online.

Mozy’s web restore interface

If anyone from Mozy reads this… I wish you had a Linux Client!!!

Freeware LDAP Browser from Softerra
http://www.ldapadministrator.com/

Awesome free tool to help troubleshoot Active Directory/LDAP configurations.

Display Windows Computer information on the desktop background.

Download BGInfo from Microsoft

Here is a script I put together some years ago to create a simple Iptables firewall on my linux webserver. Some of the code was borrowed from a linux security book but I do not remember which one. Anyway it is a pretty handy script to give you some control and protection.

First create three files in /usr/local/etc:

ipblack.lst – this file contains a list of ip addresses you want to blacklist. One ip or subnet per line.

Example:

94.178.222.17
87.0.0.0/8

ipwhite.lst – this file contains a list of ip addresses that you allow unrestricted access (Be careful with this). One ip or subnet per line. Make sure you add localhost to this file.

Example:

localhost
10.10.1.1 #Home IP Address

ports.lst – this file contains a list of ports you allow.

Example:

22 #SSH
25 #SMTP
53 #DNS/Domain
80 #HTTPD
443 #HTTPS

Add this iptables.sh script to /usr/local/sbin

#!/bin/sh

#Iptables for webserver

IPTABLES=/sbin/iptables
WHITELIST=/usr/local/etc/ipwhite.lst
BLACKLIST=/usr/local/etc/ipblack.lst
PORTSLIST=/usr/local/etc/ports.lst

#—-Flood Variables—–#

# Overall Limit for TCP-SYN-Flood detection
TCPSYNLIMIT=”5/s”
# Burst Limit for TCP-SYN-Flood detection
TCPSYNLIMITBURST=”10″

# Overall Limit for Loggging in Logging-Chains
LOGLIMIT=”2/s”
# Burst Limit for Logging in Logging-Chains
LOGLIMITBURST=”10″

# Overall Limit for Ping-Flood-Detection
PINGLIMIT=”5/s”

# Burst Limit for Ping-Flood-Detection
PINGLIMITBURST=”10″

#Clear any current filters
$IPTABLES -F

#Process Whitelist
for x in `grep -v ^# $WHITELIST | awk ‘{print $1}’`; do
echo “Permitting $x…”
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -t filter -s $x -j ACCEPT
done

#Process Blacklist
for x in `grep -v ^# $BLACKLIST | awk ‘{print $1}’`; do
echo “Blocking $x…”
#$IPTABLES -A INPUT -t filter -s $x -j LOG
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -t filter -s $x -j DROP
done

#Allow Ports list
for port in `grep -v ^# $PORTSLIST | awk ‘{print $1}’`; do
echo “Accepting port $port…”
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -t filter -p tcp –dport $port -j ACCEPT
done

$IPTABLES -A INPUT -t filter -p tcp –syn -j DROP

#ICMP TIMESTAMP REQUEST AND REPLY
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -p icmp –icmp-type timestamp-request -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -p icmp –icmp-type timestamp-request -j DROP

#Logging of possible TCP-SYN-Floods
$IPTABLES -N LSYNFLOOD
$IPTABLES -A LSYNFLOOD -m limit –limit $LOGLIMIT –limit-burst $LOGLIMITBURST -j LOG –log-prefix “fp=SYNFLOOD:1 a=DROP ”
$IPTABLES -A LSYNFLOOD -j DROP

#INVALID SYN packets
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp –tcp-flags ALL ACK,RST,SYN,FIN -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp –tcp-flags SYN,FIN SYN,FIN -j DROP
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp –tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN,RST -j DROP

#Logging of possible Ping-Floods
$IPTABLES -N LPINGFLOOD
$IPTABLES -A LPINGFLOOD -m limit –limit $LOGLIMIT –limit-burst $LOGLIMITBURST -j LOG –log-prefix “fp=PINGFLOOD:1 a=DROP ”
$IPTABLES -A LPINGFLOOD -j DROP

Add /usr/local/sbin/iptables.sh to rc.local so that it runs when the machine starts up.

Anytime you make changes to the ipblack.lst, ipwhite.lst, or ports.lst files rerun the iptables.sh script to apply the rules.

The script also applies iptable rules to help protect against ping floods, SYN flood, and invalid SYN packets.

Between my computer at work with IE and Firefox and my computer at home running IE and Firefox, I have bookmarks and favorites spread all over the place – hundreds of them. I go home at night to do some research and remember bookmarking a site earlier but that was at work, log in to the office VPN just to get a bookmark. Not the end of the world, but still frustrating and time consuming. Xmarks allows you to easily manage, organize, and share your browser bookmarks/favorites.

I generally use Firefox for most browsing, but there are some vendor portals, sites, and utilities that either require or simply work better with IE or Firefox. Occasionally I will favorite something in IE and want it later with Firefox.

Xmarks is a free utility/service that lets you manage and maintain your bookmarks/favorites between browsers and computers. You simply sync your bookmarks using different profiles (work/home/etc) that you create and configure.

You also have access to all of your bookmarks/favorites online from any computer using the My Xmarks portal and you can share your bookmarks with others.

Check out Xmarks at http://www.xmarks.com/

Version 2.5.1 (April 15, 2009) – Bug fix! Better exception handling on the vDisk and vNetwork tab pages.

Download it here – http://www.robware.net/

Thanks to @danieldoughty for the RT a couple days ago from @techhie about Lifehacker’s Top 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions, 2009 Edition. Great list of useful extensions.

For me the real gem in this list is the AutoCopy extension. With AutoCopy text you select in Firefox is automatically copied to the clipboard. To paste you just click the middle mouse button. The official AutoCopy website is here – http://autocopy.mozdev.org/