Date: 03/13/05     Keywords: software, web, hosting

I am looking for opinions on WHM systems.

I have a very limited hosting base right now and I can manage to maintain it for the most part.

I have used Webmin with restricted permissions to provide access in select cases, but I don't know if it is the most intuitive solution for non-technical folks.

I went to cPanel's site and they want an arm and a leg for the software.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/7085.html

Date: 03/12/05     Keywords: no keywords

Recently, my XP (Professional, SP2) box started to feel very laggy. The Windows Task Manager's Performance tab tells me that my CPU usage is at 100% (even while idling), and it doesn't relent even a little bit.

If I view the Processes tab, it shows that all processes are using 00 CPU cycles. How, then, am I supposed to find out what is using up my CPU? Are there any third-party tools that I can use to investigate this situation? I have a 2.4 GHz processor, and it's feeling like a low-end Pentium II at the moment. Quite frustrating! My machine has been crashing and freezing ever since this started, and I can't figure out what's causing this to happen.

This seems to have started around the same time I began to run out of space on my primary partition. However, I cleaned it up and I have free space again. I wouldn't think that being low on hard drive space would cause CPU hogging, though.

Windows Task Manager Performance Stats

Totals
Handles: 20206
Threads: 780
Processes: 105

Commit Charge (K)
Total: 577280
Limit: 1280168
Peak: 753164

Physical Memory (K)
Total: 523760
Available: 145252
System Cache: 181764

Kernel Memory (K)
Total: 93124
Paged: 74100
Nonpaged: 19024

PF Usage: 567 MB

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/6677.html

Date: 03/10/05     Keywords: database, sql

OK, I am not an AD specialist, far from it.  However, it is falling to me to do some user creation and maintenance as I have the ability to script from the SQL database and perform mass operations.

I have been looking for an answer to this for a bit and cannot find any info that explains the behavior that I am seeing.

When I add accounts with a DSADD command, the displaynam shows as the logon name and not the value I specify in the -display attribute.  The Display Name field is populated and shows up corectly, both in the GUI and with DSGET USER [name] -display.

I can right click in the MMC and rename the user, but that defeats the automation a bit.

Is there something I am missing?

Thanks in advance.

X-Posted: computergeeks and itprofessionals

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/6540.html

Date: 03/06/05     Keywords: software

I have a 250 GB internal IDE hard drive, and my primary XP partiton (NTFS) is 60 GB. The rest of the drive is blank. I'd like to expand the size of this partition to 125 GB.

Does anybody have any suggestions for a program that will (safely) resize an NTFS partition? While a zero-cost program is preferred (who doesn't like getting software for nothing?), it isn't an absolute necessity.

TIA

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/6351.html

Date: 03/01/05     Keywords: sql

My business is currently using Veritas Backup Exec for Windows for all of our tape based backups. due to some recent licensing issues, we're looknig at an alternative to Veritas. I'm brand new to backup exec, so I don't have enough knowledge to ask correct questions, or make a decent comparison.
My big concerns are the following:

remote management/monitoring. I've got about 45 servers that I want to keep an eye on w/o having to touch each or remote into each
remote backups. I'd love to be able to backup 15 or so servers to a single system with tape drive/library
SQL agent/backup. I've got a ton of SQL servers that I'm backing up, and I can't take them offline.

I've looked at Dantz Retrospect, Tivoli, and Livestate Recovery from Symantec, so far.. LSR is disk based, so that's out of the question. anybody have experience with the above, or any others that they could recommend?

x-posted to it_admin, itprofessionals, and computertech

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/6089.html

Date: 02/14/05     Keywords: java

I hope this is on topic. I'm looking for a job as an entry-level Java/C++ developer in NYC and I have a BA degree in Computer Science and Math (double major). I also speak conversational Spanish, Dutch, French and German, type 85 wpm and am willing to travel extensively. If you wish to see my resume:

http://www.amuzulo.net/resume.doc
http://www.amuzulo.net/resume.txt

Besides the usual monster.com, careerbuilder.com, craigslist.org, dice.com, linkedin.com, do any of you have any suggestions for how to find work in IT in New York? If any of you know of any good headhunters here, that would also be greatly appreciated!

Like I said, I hope this post here is appropriate and I look forward to hearing from you all soon!

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/5412.html

Date: 02/11/05     Keywords: no keywords

Anyone here have a Sony Vaio Laptop -- VGN-anything?

Sony made a stupid decision to put the recovery CD on a hidden 5GB partition. When you've only got like 35GB, 5 is a huge chunk! So I .. wiped it and I lost my recovery CD. Those bastards want me to pay 11 bucks to get an actual DVD. I just need the HotKey utility and maybe the Sony Shared Library. They are not available for download :( Anyone have?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/5277.html

Date: 02/11/05     Keywords: php, mysql, sql, google

Does anybody have experience setting up PHP4 on Debian (woody) such that the GD module is recognized?

I've installed PHP4 and three modules: mysql, mcrypt, gd2:

apt-get install php4
apt-get install php4-mysql
apt-get install php4-mcrypt
apt-get install php4-gd2

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: imagecreatefrompng() in /var/www/cparker15/test.php on line 3

crossposted to debian

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/5053.html

Date: 02/07/05     Keywords: microsoft

Hi, new to this forum, I hope some people here can help me, or provide some ideas.

I was just wondering how other companies deal with remote/traveling user's VPN access back into their company?

We have established a Cisco router with L2TP support, (with Mainly MS winXP clients). This works fine for the most part, but it seems users are having trouble getting connected when they travel.


The reasons we have trouble, if you care.
The main problem(s) seem to be that:
a) The ISP (usually a hotel or airport, cafe, etc) is blocking VPN traffic for L2TP tunnels.
b) The ISP (or whatever) has incorectally configured DNS servers which respond authoritatively for domains that don't exist on the internet (for example returning 10.11.12.13 for ANY DNS lookup that doesn't exist in the 'real' internet--like DomainControler1.inside.mycompany.com Thereby, the 'isp' dns server responds like it 'knows' ALL of our companies internal addresses, but simply returns a bogus address. The clients then never fall back to using the internal DNS servers, and thus fail to ever connect to anything internally.

To Solve a) we plan on adding support back into our strategy a fall-back to PPTP-style VPNs. This isn't prefered because they're less secure, and rely only on username/password for connection (and our users have HORRIBLE passwords), the L2TP one uses both Certificates AND user/pass making it much more secure--not to mention it's using 3DES/SHA1, rather than Microsofts proprietary encryption scheme (which I'm sure is not that good!) However, since it seems SO MANY hotels, cafes, airports, and other access-points block all traffic except http/https/PPTP/FTP we're pretty much stuck using the old crap.

To bypass problem b) above, I understand that the only good workarounds to this problem is to:
1) Change the 'binding order' of the VPN connection and the NIC--except a known, and never resolved bug in ALL versions of windows (2K SP0 right through XP SP2) prevents the changes to binding order of VPN connections to EVER actually change. Making this 'fix' completely useless.
2) Turn off split-tunneling on the clients. We didn't want to go this route because it would mean forwarding all internet traffic through our already busy T1 internet connections (twice), and the added encryption/decryption load! Also hindering this option is I frankly don't know yet how to set this up on a Cisco router--and I've had people on Cisco's forums tell me it can't be done--although I've read elsewhere it can.

THE REAL QUESTION if you're too busy to read the background info:
What do other companies do here? Do we just tell the users (the managers, salesmen, etc) that they "can't use it where it doesn't work"--management and the users HATE this option; and in my opinion as an IT Professional it's a cheap way out. What else can we do? We obviously can't 'fix' all the crappy ISP's broken DNS servers; or force cafes and things to learn about new style VPNs and open their firewalls out. What are we to do? What kind of things can I tell management? Are there other options I'm unaware of?

I'd appreciate any and all comments, discussions, and opinions!

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/4762.html

Date: 02/07/05     Keywords: no keywords

... anyone here a bit of an Exchange guru-esque type person?

I'm just getting to grips with Exchange 2003 for the first time, and I've got a few questions about Exchange and how you make it work with child domains with a single server...

Anyone help?

Cheers!

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/4410.html

Date: 02/04/05     Keywords: html

Audit Agitation
In the February issue of CSO, our undercover columnist confronts the ultimate career dilemma: What customers want and what the CEO wants are two different things. (The first line, "My CEO is a psychopath," explains why this columnist is anonymous.)

http://www.cio.com/go/index.html?ID=1862&PMID=4435301&s=1&f=1

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/4263.html

Date: 02/04/05     Keywords: no keywords

I've got a Mac dialing into a windows VPN and all works fine but it disconnects randomly. I setup a cronjob to load an URL as detailed here to check for a connection. If there's none, it restarts the connection. I keep track of how often it does this and its way too common. The script checks for a connection (and thus makes activity) every 5 mins so there shouldnt be a timeout.

Here's what my logs say

Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd pppd[1708]: Terminating on signal 15.
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd pppd[1708]: MPPE disabled
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd pppd[1708]: Connection terminated.
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd pppd[1708]: Connect time 165.0 minutes.
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd pppd[1708]: Sent 29064 bytes, received 24291 bytes.
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd kernel: pptp_input unexpected, so = 0x10b3aa0, len = 21
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd configd[87]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd mach_init[2]: Server 0 in bootstrap d03 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd": exited as a result of signal 1 [pid 1730]
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd configd[87]: executing /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Kicker.bundle/Contents/Resources/set-hostname
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd pppd[1708]: PPTP disconnecting...
Feb  4 04:45:06 macnerd pppd[1708]: PPTP disconnected

The VPN Server is Windows based and it doesnt disconnect my XP clients. Here's the "pattern" of droppage.

Feb 4 04:45:06 macnerd pppd[1708]: Connect time 165.0 minutes.
Feb 4 06:10:06 macnerd pppd[2246]: Connect time 80.0 minutes.
Feb 4 07:35:09 macnerd pppd[2497]: Connect time 80.0 minutes.
Feb 4 08:47:55 macnerd pppd[2747]: Connect time 67.8 minutes.


Oh, also, sometimes when I connect 2 machines on the network, the Mac drops its connection:
64 bytes from 10.0.0.100: icmp_seq=14 ttl=128 time=11.226 ms
ping: sendto: No buffer space available

Any insight would be super, thanks!

x-posted to macosx.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/3857.html

Date: 02/04/05     Keywords: no keywords

Here at work, our Internet traffic is monitored by counting the number of hits we poll (yes, well all know that this is an inaccurate metric, which illustrates how clueless management is). Weekly reports on everyone's Internet activity are made available to all managers and supervisors. In the past, our previous manager and other supervisor never cared. Their stance was, "If my guys are getting their work done, meeting their deadlines, and stepping up to the plate when extra effort is needed, I don't care what they do otherwise." Thus, in the 1 1/2 years I've been here, that report has never been brought up within our team.

Well, both that manager and supervisor have been terminated, and now we have a different supervisor, who was recently promoted and really has no leadership experience. Out of nowhere, he presented the team with a statistics chart. Three of us had fairly high hit-rates, while the other three had next to nothing. Yet the three of us with the high hit-rates are also the most productive on the team!

My supervisor has made it clear to me, but not to the others, that he does not agree with the philosophy held by his predecessors. But he hasn't made this clear to the team, nor has he dicated what his expectations are, and this is frustrating everyone in my team.


What I'd like to know from everyone is this:

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/3694.html

Date: 02/04/05     Keywords: no keywords

I've read in a few places now (after Googling for some information) that Windows XP Home Edition can be modified/hacked such that it is capable of authenticating with an Active Directory (samba) domain.

I'm going to be instating a samba domain in my home, but not everyone is using a computer that is "Active Directory aware". Some machines are Windows XP Professional (a whole two), some are Windows XP Home Edition (three), some Windows 98 (three), one Windows 95, and a few *NIX desktops (FreeBSD, Fedora, and Debian). I'd like all of these machines to be able to authenticate via the samba-powered domain, but I'm more concerned about the XP Home machines at the moment.

Does anybody here have any information about how to do this? Perhaps some good sites to visit on the topic?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/3408.html

Date: 02/02/05     Keywords: linux

My employer thinks it would be a good idea to do the SANS online self study cources. Sigh - and I was hoping to go to Houston for a week.

I would appreciate any input on the self study courses - expecially Track 4 (Hacker Techniques, Exploits and Incident Handling) and track 6 (Securing Unix/Linux).

Should I be pushing to attend the in-person training?

TIA!


x-posted

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/3254.html

Date: 02/02/05     Keywords: no keywords

How many of you are avid technical eBook collectors? How big is your collection? Tell me about your tech book library (paper and electronic) at home and work :)

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/2982.html

Date: 02/02/05     Keywords: asp, sql

Any of you going to VSLive in San Francisco next week? I'm super duper excited. I'm going to the ASP.NET and SQL Server conferences!

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/2563.html

Date: 01/28/05     Keywords: browser, html

Jailed for using a nonstandard browser
A Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using lynx -- a text-based browser used by the blind, Unix-users and others -- on Sun's Solaris operating system. The site-operator decided that this "unusual" event in the system log indicated a hack-attempt, and the police broke down the donor's door and arrested him. From a mailing list:
For donating to a Tsunami appeal using Lynx on Solaris 10. BT [British Telecom] who run the donation management system misread an access log and saw hmm thats a non standard browser not identifying it's type and it's doing strange things. Trace that IP. Arrest that hacker.
Armed police, a van, a police cell and national news later the police have gone in SWAT styley and arrested someone having their lunch.

Out on bail till next week and preparing to make a lot of very bad PR for BT and the Police....

So just goes to show if you use anything other than Firefox or IE and you rely on someone else to interogate access logs or IDS logs you too could be sitting in a paper suit in a cell :(

Update:: The source that told me about this has corroborated it with more detail in private email, but is leery of going public. I hope that more publicly available details appear soon, and will post them when I have them.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/2558.html

Date: 01/20/05     Keywords: html, security, web

You can just go to the list from the Defcon web site for some of these:
http://defcon.org/html/links/other-conventions.html



Here are some I found interesting from there, and some other research I did for my travel plans this year:

SANS LoneStar 2005, Mar 10 - 16th - Houston
http://www.sans.org/lonestar05/

Notacon, April 8-10 - Cleveland, Ohio
http://www.notacon.org/

NAB, Apr 18-21 - Las Vegas (I scored a free pass for show floor - woot!)
http://www.nabshow.com/

LayerOne 2005, April 23 & 24 - Los Angeles, California Pasadena Hilton
http://layerone.info/

DallasCon, May 2-7 - Dallas, Texas The Richardson Hotel
http://www.dallascon.com/

Blackhat, July 23-28 - Las Vegas, NV
http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-link/briefings.html

DEFCON 13, July 29-31 - Las Vegas, Nevada The Alexis Park
http://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-13/dc-13-index.html

USENIX Security Symposium, August 1-5 - Baltimore, MD
http://www.usenix.org/events/sec05/

Nebraska CERT, Aug 9 - 11 - Omaha, NE
http://www.certconf.org/



Dates not announced yet:
Interzone West, in early October - San Francisco Bay Area

ToorCon, end of September - San Diego
http://www.toorcon.org/


Will I see any of you there?


x-posted to gothicgeek, infosec, it_admin, itprofessionals, itsecurity, & lj2600

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/2122.html

Date: 01/20/05     Keywords: rss, technology, database, web

If any of you are looking for jobs, check out International Legal Technology Association's Available Positions webpage.

I work for a law firm as a database administrator and I really enjoy it. The company I work for has been around for over 100 years and they are really great with benefits. In short, law firm tech jobs can rock.

Some of the jobs listed are...
Database Administrator - Cleveland, OH
Desktop/Network Support Analyst - San Diego, CA
Application Developer - Los Angeles, CA
Senior Network Engineer - New York, NY

It's updated almost daily. I asked them for an RSS feed but haven't heard back :|

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/itprofessionals/1842.html