Jan

Tips for Keeping Your Cloud Secure

admin

Tips

Cloud computing is a new phenomenon for many people, and it is understandable that there can sometimes be security concerns. Here are a few tips that everyone should be following, to ensure that information remains secure and everyone continues to be able to use the cloud to their advantage. Firstly, organisations should make sure that the computing environments are secure, and that only authorised people have access to any confidential information that is stored on the cloud. Any passwords and sensitive information should be kept secure as well, ideally not written down in obvious places or easily accessible by just anybody.

If the organisation needs to create a public cloud computing environment, then they should make sure that it is managed and configured in a way that meets any privacy and security requirements. If the company does not want everyone to be able to access their information while at home before playing Partypoker, then they need to make sure their security is up to scratch. If any adjustments need to be made to the cloud computing environment, then these should be made with care and with attention paid to the security of the operation.

Also important for companies is to make sure that the cloud computing system is monitored properly. Data should be collected and analysed on a regular basis, so that security risks can be monitored and dealt with. Also, any updates that need to be carried out should be completed quickly and efficiently, especially with browser add-ons as these do not tend to update themselves automatically. If clients are going to be accessing the cloud, then it is even more important that these maintenance procedures are carried out and that the overall appearance of the cloud computing area is presentable and useful.

Mar

Japan Earthquake 2011

admin

Society, Technology Tags

2011, 8.8, directory, earthquake, east coast, google, japan, magnitude, person finder, Philippines, sendai, tsunami

Japan has been hit by a terrible earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 today. Many of the roads and farmland has been destroyed by tsunami and as of this writing, there is a confirmed report of 15 casualties.

If you are in Japan and have internet connection, please help by providing information about other people’s location and yours using Google’s Person Finder.

Mar

How to Remove ^M Character

admin

Linux

add-on, bad interpreter, caret, check_summary, cluster, dos line break, dos2unix, edit, editor, fix, Linux, M, nagios, plugin, remove, replace, search, troubleshoot, vim, windows

There are a lot of other systems out there other than Linux, so if you have a file from, let’s say a DOS system, with extra ^M (caret M) characters at the end, you can correct it using vi. The tough part is, you will not be able to see these extra characters immediately, unless you encounter something like this:

$ ./check_summary.pl --help -bash: ./check_summary.pl: /usr/bin/perl^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

(Note: check_summary is a Nagios plugin that I am currently testing.)

See the ^M character at the end? It is called the DOS line break. Unfortunately, Linux is not able to recognize these line breaks so you have to delete them. With vim. Yes, with vim, or with any editor you want, but in this post, I will show how to do it in vi.

First, open up your file where there is an extra ^M characters. While in command mode, type the following:

:%s/^V^M//g

The ^V is a CONTROL+V character and ^M is a CONTROL+M. When you type this, it will look like this:

:%s/^M//g

This command searches for ^M character (the CONTROL+V escapes a control character) the replaces it with null. After doing this, save and exit.

Another way to fix this is to use the dos2unix command like so:

$ dos2unix [file]

This might work, but I have not tried yet. Have you tried using dos2unix? Did it work? Let me know in the comments section.

Feb

3ix Scam: Looking for Feedbacks

Remember my post how 3iX scammed me of my money and actually got away with it? There had been a lot of comments about that post. The sad thing about it is 3iX is still in the business. Yep, they are still doing business scams.

How you ask? Well, it works like this:

You subscribe to their super duper cheap hosting service (as low as $1/mo). You type in your credit card number or paypal account and they charge you for a whole year of subscription. Then you start using their web hosting service, and so happy that you got an excellent deal.

Or so you thought.

Less than a year after you signed up, your website is now down, and the cpanel is inaccessible. You email them about your website and you get no response. So you go to their website and hit the chat button, which connects you to their “technical support representative”. With their less than below average English skill, they tell you that you have violated their “terms of service”. Of course, you ask them how in the world it happened when you only have a plain wordpress website with less than 10 readers per month? You wait for their answer, and they disconnect the chat.

Thinking that your internet line is crappy, you connect again to their chat support, engage with a technical representative who talks the same, spells the same, but with a different name. You tell them again your problem and they tell you again that you have violated their terms of service. Again, you ask why. And they tell you that you have a script on your site that brings their servers down, affecting other users.

Then you ask for logs and other evidences that prove their findings. They tell you they don’t have it. You ask why, they tell you their backup servers went down yesterday and they are still recovering the files. You ask them to bring your site back online until they can present a proof that your website (among probably thousands of other websites hosted on the same server) is the one bringing the server down. They tell you they can’t. Because they already deleted all your files and those files are in the backup server that went down yesterday.

Frustrated, you tell them that they suck and you will file a lawsuit against them. They say OK, and disconnects the chat. Two days later, you get an email from the 3iX guy that you need to pay them $150 for engaging a technical representative into troubleshooting your website, which caused the server to go berserk (did I mention that there are probably thousands of sites in that server, and he randomly picked you?).

Yes, this happens over and over and over again. And he is still in the business.

Are you one of those customers who paid 3iX for webhosting service? I would like to know your experience with them.

Are you one of those who got ripped off and is in the process of filing a class action suit against 3ix? I am interested!

Feb

Strict Standards: date() [function.date] Error

admin

Linux, Troubleshooting Tags

apache, compile, configuration, date, error, fix, Linux, nagios, nagvis, ntpd, php, php.ini, red hat, rhel, sles, source, standards, strict, suse, time zone, timezone, utc, warning

I was installing NagVis when I came across this weird message:

Strict Standards: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings. Please use the date.timezone setting, the TZ environment variable or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected ‘UTC’ for ‘GMT/0.0/no DST’ instead in /usr/local/nagios/nagvis/nagvis/includes/classes/objects/NagVisStatefulObject.php on line 360

It clearly says that I should check the timezone, which I did. But there’s nothing wrong with time or date. ntpd is running and it set the correct timezone so what could be wrong?

If you are reading this then probably you are seeing this error too. To fix this, open your php.ini using your favourite text editor (like vi) and add this line:

date.timezone=UTC

Take note that depending on how you installed php, it could be in /etc/php.ini (RedHat) or /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini (SLES) or if compiled, /usr/local/php5/php.ini.

You need to restart Apache for changes to take effect.