Category Archives: Best Tools

Mar 05
2013

Using OpenSSL to validate a webserver’s certificate

Posted on March 5, 2013 by jason

I don’t often have to mess with SSL, but it seems like everytime that I do, I mess something up.  Here are two OpenSSL commands that I use on a regular basis to validate that my cert is installed correctly … Continue reading →

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Dec 12
2012

2 factor auth in ubuntu with google authenticator except for trusted networks

Posted on December 12, 2012 by jason

DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS IF YOUR COMPUTER’S TIME IS OFF. google authenticator is time based, if your clocks dont match the internet you will NOT be able to authenticate to your machine. 2factor authentication is awesome, therefore google authenticator is … Continue reading →

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Dec 10
2012

Send a syslog message to a remote server using netcat

Posted on December 10, 2012 by jason

Netcat is awesome. I needed to send a remote syslog message to a receiving server today and all I had was netcat.  Come to find out, that’s all you need. nc -w0 -u 192.168.0.1 514

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Mar 18
2011

Authenticating a RHEL/Centos box against an Openfiler LDAP

Posted on March 18, 2011 by jason

I seem to be running on a theme here. Setting your centos 5 boxes to authenticate users against your Openfiler LDAP server isn’t as straight forward as setting samba up to auth against it. You’ll obviously need to have Openfiler … Continue reading →

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Mar 05
2011

Authenticating a samba server against the LDAP server in Openfiler

Posted on March 5, 2011 by jason

I have an openfiler based NAS running as my main file server and an ubuntu VM running rsync that backs that server up. I wanted to be able to browse my backups via samba, and for giggles, authenticate that samba … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Tools, Linux | Leave a comment
Oct 15
2010

Write an event to the eventlog in windows from a script

Posted on October 15, 2010 by jason

I’m a regular user of the logger command on linux boxes and I’ve found the equivalent in windows. The command is called eventcreate.exe and seems to be present from windows XP forward. To create an informational event in the application … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Tools, Windows | Leave a comment
Oct 13
2010

find files older than X days on a windows box

Posted on October 13, 2010 by jason

To find files older than X days on a windows box, you either need the forfiles.exe command installed from the windows resource kit, or a 2003 and newer machine. The command looks like so forfiles -pC:TEMP -s -m*.* -d-5 -c”cmd … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Tools, Windows | 4 Comments
Aug 25
2010

Get the PID of an application pool in iis 6.0

Posted on August 25, 2010 by jason

All of the IIS process’s show up as the same process name, which makes it really challenging to figure out which of your websites has lost it’s mind.  In order to trace an IIS website or application pool back to … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Tools, Windows | Leave a comment
May 19
2010

Rip an DVD down to MPEG2 using mplayer

Posted on May 19, 2010 by jason

I back up my DVDs. I rip them to H264 using handbrake and then store the originals in a DVD holder and hopefully never have to touch, or scratch, them again. But I occasionaly run into a DVD that I … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Tools, Linux | 2 Comments
Oct 09
2009

Install VMWare ESXi 4 onto a USB thumbdrive in two commands

Posted on October 9, 2009 by jason

Install ESXi 4 onto a USB thumbdrive in two commands Continue reading →

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