Category: sysadmin

  • Google services now hosting in South Africa and whois.co.za

    Google.co.za is doing it, Gmail is doing it — resolving to 196.23.168.147 – hosted by Internet Solutions, and reverse-IP’ing to za196-23-168-147.cache.googlevideo.com (which suggests the implemenation of local youtube caching (youtube.co.za is in the offing for some time now)) – full rundown here. Youtube.co.za — registered by MarkMonitor on behalf of Google – was last updated on 15 May 2010, so it’s not far away – well, at the moment, it’s just redirecting to http://www.youtube.com/?gl=ZA&hl=en-GB They weren’t that lucky with gmail.co.za though 🙂

    While we’re on domain names – did you know that whois.co.za is no longer functional? You need to browse directly to http://co.za/whois.shtml – I’ll put a little something together for that…

    Just kind of interesting 🙂

  • Security Summit 2010 Wrap-Up

    So the Security Summit 2010 has come to an end. Featuring speakers such as Moxie Marlinspike, Joe Grand and Jeremiah Grossman (again), it’s a pity to say that there wasn’t much new that was presented. With repeated concerns about input- and output-validation, as the OWASP Top 10 for 2010 highlight and were used as a repeated example, and a call for a holistic approach to a company’s security posture, the idea of making the thought (and practice) of security part of the organisation’s culture came through over and over again. (more…)

  • Security Summit 2010

    So, it’s that time of the year again – Security Summit 2010 in Sandton, Johannesburg. Items on the agenda include:

    • The business of security – Threat horizon 2010 and beyond, legislation (PPI), risk, compliance, standards (PCI), security metrics, social networking, web application security, web services, web 2.0 and more.
    • Technical/operational security – Top 10 hacks, botnets, trojans, smartphone security, cloud computing, virtualisation, SaaS, practical return-oriented programming techniques, web application server attacks, defeating SSL, exploiting Microsoft DEP and more. (more…)
  • SEACOM link was down again, stable now

    “SEACOM’s backhaul service provider link is down from Mtunzini to Johannesburg due to an unusual failure on both primary and secondary routes due to circumstances beyond our control. SEACOM is in the process of reprovisioning customers onto a tertiary route.” is what SEACOM announced today. Some ISPs confirmed that SEACOM connectivity was restored at around 15:24 SAST, though links were only stable around 16:20 SAST.

    (more…)

  • Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04) LTS is out

    They’ve passed their RC status and have moved into full Long-Term Release for Ubuntu Lucid Lynx — local mirrors are still showing the RC version, but it’s out!

    What’s new?

    • F-Spot replaces the GIMP
    • PiTiVi video editor added
    • GNOME 2.30
    • New themes: Ambiance and Radiance
    • New wallpaper
    • Linux kernel 2.6.32
    • New nVidia hardware driver
    • Gwibber social media application
    • Faster boot time, with a different look and feel on the bootsplash screen
    • Ubuntu One adds contacts and bookmark sharing
    • Ubuntu One music store integrated into Ryhthmbox
    • Ubuntu Software Center 2.0

    I’ve only played with the 10.04 Server edition so far, and the faster boot time is definately a big win (though some regressive network driver support still needed to be ironed out – hopefully sorted for the final release…)

    Yay!!! Well done, guys!! Thanks for a new, even more sparkly LTS!

  • SEACOM cable issue resolved?

    The latest notification received from SEA-ME-WE 4 indicates that the repair work on the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable is expected to be completed by 22.00 (UTC) on 28 April 2010.

    That’s the update from SEACOM. MTN Business gives similar information.

    An hour ago, the link was marked as back up – the stability of the link will be shown by how fast / how slow the access on the web via the SEACOM cable is again, after the last few days of slow web access and intermittant internet connectivity via rerouting…

    Here’s hoping…!

  • Update on slow Internet – South Africa – due to SEACOM maintenance

    An update from Afrihost which echos what’s happening to IS-resellers of DSL bandwidth in South Africa:

    IS have removed ADSL users from emergency SAT3 backup and thus you will not be able to access international websites via the normal channels.

    Proxying is touted here to be the solution. Full background to the story of Seacom’s emergency maintenance is here: SEACOM maintenance extended until 30 April – South African Internet slow.

  • SEACOM maintenance extended until 30 April – South African Internet slow

    MTN Business (in their NOC notices) have confirmed what SEACOM had alluded to – the maintenance windows (and hence the high latency and traffic redirection via the SAT3 cable rather than the SEACOM link) has been extended until 30 April 2010. SEACOM in their notice on 26 April:

    The ongoing repair work is affecting several cable systems and has impacted negatively on the overall Internet connectivity in many regions across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, which rely to some extent on the availability of the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable for global connectivity. (more…)

  • Testing POP3 and IMAP servers from the command line in CMD or bash

    It’s quite simple, really: POP3 (Exchange, dovecot etc) you know, IMAP (Exchange, dovecot, courier etc) you know — so this is just a recap, right? You know how to telnet into the machine — in Vista or Windows 7, you may need to install it separately using “Add/Remove Programs”, or just use Putty in Telnet mode…  otherwise, apt-get install telnet if it’s not on your machine (or yum install telnet)

    POP3:

    telnet SERVER 110 (more…)

  • Windows cannot find FILENAME from Outlook or Thunderbird – Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.

    Uncheck Excel's Ignore other applications' DDE and you're done!
    Uncheck Excel's Ignore other applications' DDE and you're done!

    You double-click an attachment in Outlook – or Thunderbird – or any mail client or third-party client, for that matter – and you can’t open the file in Office (in my case Excel 2007, but this works for Excel 2003 as well).

    But instead of the file, you get a notification telling you that Windows cannot find “filename“. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button and then click search.

    Fear not – there’s hope. (more…)

  • Activate Windows XP by phone in South Africa toll-free – what number to use?

    Windows XP – got to love it. We have all reached the spot where we need to activate XP over the phone for some reason or another.

    On the activation screen, there’s a phone number – which does not work. It’s a matter of finding the right one, though – an a simple Google. Yahoo! or Bing search doesn’t return the result quickly. (more…)

  • Virus Removal: Quick list of Rootkit Scanners

    With the Alueron rootkit out and about, even the Microsoft patches can now detect whether it’s installed: Microsoft on Alueron rootkit
    A range of useful links below:
  • clamav 0.94 finally reaches end of life

    clamav finally sent the end-of-life payload yesterday evening – 0.96 is the current version, so it’s been a good run 🙂

    Possible symptons you experienced:

    • Repeated notifications:WARNING: getpatch: Can't download daily-
    • All freshclam mirrors are ignored
    • Your mailq fills up with detailed MAILER-DAEMON messages referring to the End-of-Life nature of clamav 0.94
    • (… add your own here…)

    But they warned they’d do this in October 2009:

    Starting from 15 April 2010 our CVD will contain a special signature which disables all clamd installations older than 0.95 – that is to say older than 1 year.

    This move is needed to push more people to upgrade to 0.95 .
    We would like to keep on supporting all old versions of our engine, but unfortunately this is no longer possible without causing a disservice to people running a recent release of ClamAV.
    The traffic generated by a full CVD download, as opposed to an incremental update, cannot be sustained by our mirrors. (more…)

  • Remote Desktop vs Local Desktop

    CTRL+ALT+DEL

    Local: CTRL+ALT+DEL

    Remote: CTRL+ALT+END

    RESTART

    Local: Start -> Shutdown -> Restart

    Remote: Start-> Run -> shutdown -t 0 -r

    I just keep forgetting it…

  • co.za and whois.co.za updates on server recovery

    They’ve been working hard! Well done!! 🙂

    Function Status Comments
    CAPTCHA whois Not affected http://captcha.coza.net.za
    Port 43 whois Not affected whois://whois.coza.net.za
    Primary Database Not affected
    Name Servers Not affected CO.ZA zone integrity unaffected
    Incoming and Outgoing email Not affected Applications queuing on incoming mail server
    RT Ticket system Not affected
    Network Partially affected – Fixed Redundant link restored
    Main web site Affected – Fixed http://www.coza.net.za
    Web whois Affected – Fixed http://www.coza.net.za/whois.shtml
    Registration Engine (Updates, New, Deletions) Proceeeding Normally Backlog processed – transactions being processed in real time


    Currently processing queued applications


    Final data sync, Final testing ETA afternoon of 8th


    New machine commissioned, OS Installed Restoring historic data

    Payment Processing processing backlog Commencing on the 9th – ETA of backlog completion 11th


    Processing of Suspension/Deletions suspended until complete

    Online VISA/Mastercard payments In progress ETA 9th


    Processing of Suspension/Deletions suspended until complete

  • If you’re itching for those GNU apps from Linux on Windows…

    You’re stuck on a Windows box. But you don’t want to install MinGW32? Can’t dual-boot to run Ubuntu or Debian on your Windows machine for some for that GNU happiness that sed, groff, wget, whois and all those happy apps bring with it? (more…)