Re: [lopsa-discuss] licensing

2009-03-13 Thread rackow
s well. Many of the candidates with alphabet soup listed for certifications turn out to be some of the weakest candidates I've come across. Not always, but more often than not. I think they feel they need that string of letters to boost their credentials. They really can't st

Re: [lopsa-discuss] licensing

2009-03-13 Thread rackow
ow that that "root" shouldn't be the root password, what prevents me from setting it to abc123?It's just as bad, but that wasn't the question on the test, so is it ok? /~\ The ASCII Gene Rackow email: rac...@anl.gov \ / Ribbon Campaign Cyber

Re: [lopsa-discuss] If you only had 5 minutes to secure a server ...

2010-02-03 Thread rackow
It used to be that forcing SSH keys was enough to thwart most intrusions from getting your creds. Unfortunately now most of the root-kits know how to steal a passphrase just as easily as a password. If it's not a root kit, it's a completely trojaned ssh and sshd installed on the machine. Either

Re: [lopsa-discuss] Configuration Management

2010-02-25 Thread rackow
In bcfg, this is trivial to do. Set up a bcfg cron run to have it processes only 1 bundle bcfg2 can take a -b flag to only process a particular bundle. That bundle (included in the config all of the time) could render like: The action will only fire when the timestamp file has changed. "Pa

Re: [lopsa-discuss] cfengine vs. puppet vs. chef

2010-05-22 Thread rackow
Dana Quinn made the following keystrokes: >This discussion makes me wonder - *why* isn't there a really good >commercial product? (and I do believe there isn't a good commercial >product). The addressable market seems big... like if a company got >it right (solving both small and big company

Re: [lopsa-discuss] off-topic? What animal is a system administrator?

2010-08-24 Thread rackow
I'm glad to see that Klondike is back on MeTV with the rest of the UnderDog crew. Even my kids find it funny. Savoir-Faire is EveryWhere! Actually the best animal is the Pooka. For the most part he's invisible, and for many that's exactly how things seem to be when we are doing the job and doi

Re: [lopsa-discuss] What do you ask when hiring a network admin?

2010-08-30 Thread rackow
One of the questions I will ask is what sort of setup they have at home and how they manage it. A few years ago this was much more interesting than it is today. With the possibility of outsourcing so much functionality the home network is no longer as critical as it used to be. Now it's a matter