Loafy's Geekism

Business site

2012-02-02T03:08:00.001-05:00

GM All,

I was up late trying to finish out my website but it's kind of hard doing it from a cell phone so guess ill be pluging up the laptop here shortly. Here's a sneak peek : http://www.ssmobilepcservice.com

Drop me a msg of what u think so far.

-Loafy

posted from Bloggeroid

Pooo

2012-02-01T07:38:00.001-05:00

Funny thing, before me and my old mma training partner had a fallen out he signed me up for a fight in Feb. since I never knew the date but was shocked that the promoter texted me this week asking me to still fight and even train at his place......Ive been so bizzy with work and school I've barely had the time for any thing else. I would have loved to fight heavy weight next month but after my last fight i have a few things to work on......good news tho im going to fight again in may. So by then most of my flaws should be perfected til next time...

Stay free (as in beer)

-Loafy

posted from Bloggeroid

Just checking In!

2012-01-27T14:37:00.001-05:00

Happy new years!!!

I'm just checking since i really haven't been posting like i should. I've been busy trying to build my business and just enjoy the holidays with family and friends. Since everyone already stated there new years revolution to the world I might as well follow suit:

1. Make it a point to be down right thankful for my family and what i have cause it could always be worst.

2. Spend less time chasing a buck and more time developing my skill set.

3. Teach my family what I now and Incorporate technology into family time.

4. Go to more IT events (SELF2012, OLF, DEATHCON etc....)

5. Become great with at least 2 programming languages

6. Stop letting MySql kick my behind.

7. Repeat numbers one-six

That's it for now, time to start on one of my many projects getting "Deb Squeeze" onto my Samsung galaxy s!

Be safe and stay free (as in beer)

-Loafy

posted from Bloggeroid

How to Reset "MySql" Root Password (CentOS 5)

2011-04-21T20:56:00.004-04:00

Evening all,

Ran into a problem a few weeks ago that I finally set down and solved after visiting a couple of forums. These steps are pieced together from many places. Special thinks to all the forums that helped me reset my database password. *Note* Every thing in blue is what you type. *Where you see "whatever password you want" means just that but keep it inside the parentheses () and quotations.

Stop the MySQL daemon : service mysqld stop
Start MySQL in safe mode with the –skip-grant-tables and -u root options in background : mysqld_safe –skip-grant-tables -u root &
Start the command line client as root : mysql -u root
Issue the MySQL command to reset the root password : UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD(‘whatever password you want’) WHERE User=’root’;
Issue the flush privileges command : FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Quit the command line tool : quit
Find MySQL Process ID: ps aux | grep mysqld
Stop the MySQL process : kill process id goes here `cat /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid`
Restart the MySQL daemon : service mysqld start
Log in as root to make sure the new password is active : mysql -u root -p
Type the new password at the prompt

YOUR IN, DON'T FORGET IT NEXT TIME!!!!!

Port Knocking (fwknop) for Fedora 13, 14

2011-04-21T09:01:00.002-04:00

Greatings All,

This tutorial is and How to Guide for "Port Knocking" using "FWKNOP" on Fedora 13 and 14 , courtesy of " Ubersec"

fwknop stands for the "FireWall KNock OPerator", and implements an authorization scheme called Single Packet Authorization (SPA). This method of authorization is based around a default-drop packet filter (fwknop supports both iptables on Linux systems and ipfw on FreeBSD and Mac OS X systems) and libpcap. SPA is essentially next generation port knocking.

Please download the following packages:

#yum install -y wget

#yum install openssh-server (If the server is not installed already)

#yum -y install system-config-services

#yum install setools-gui.i686 (To install SELinux if you don't have it already)

#yum -y install policycoreutils-gui.i686 (To install SELinux Management if you don't have it already)

#yum install -y nmap (installing network mapper)

#yum -y install perl-HTML-Entities-Numbered.noarch

#yum -y install perl-HTML-Parser.i686

#yum -y install perl-SOAP-Lite.noarch

#yum -y install perl-ExtUtils-AutoInstall.noarch

Download perlmod from the following website http://sourceforge.net/projects/perlmod/

#perlmod -i IPC::Shareable

#yum install fwknop (Install the port-knocking service)

Disable SELINUX and establish successful SSH session.

Check if SELINUX is running by typing: # sestatus –v | less OR type the following to see if SELinux is disabled on your PC #/usr/sbin/getenforce

If SELinux is enabled please disable it on your system through the GUI by going to System --> Administration --> SELinux Administratoin and restart your PC.

Type the following command to start SSHD server #service sshd stop && service sshd start

TIP:

Also go through the GUI to services and assure that you enable SSH to start next startup.

Type the following command to check your ssh session #ssh localhost

Now type #nmap -p 22 Check to see if port 22 is

open.

TIP:

It should return open. If not your sshd service is not running.

For Example:

[root@ittlabusr fwknop]# nmap -p 22 localhost

Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2011-04-08 12:23 EDT

Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)

Host is up (0.00019s latency).

rDNS record for 127.0.0.1: localhost.localdomain

PORT STATE SERVICE

22/tcp open ssh

Configure IPTABLES

#sudo iptables-save -c > /etc/iptables-save

#cat /etc/iptables-save | sudo iptables-restore –c

Type #ifconfig to find out which interface you Linux is listening on. You will need to add it to the firewall.sh script below.

Now create the following file firewall.sh and add the followings:

#!/bin/sh

IPTABLES=/sbin/iptables

$IPTABLES -F

$IPTABLES -F -t nat

$IPTABLES -X

$IPTABLES -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

$IPTABLES -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.0/24 -o -j MASQUERADE

$IPTABLES -A INPUT -j LOG --log-prefix "DROP "

$IPTABLES -A INPUT -j DROP

$IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --syn --dport 22 -j LOG --log-prefix "SSH SYN "

$IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --syn --dport 22 -j LOG --log-prefix "DROP "

$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -j LOG --log-prefix "DROP "

$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -j DROP

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

echo "[+] EnGarde Secure Linux iptables policy activated"

exit

Save the file and then change the permission to execute: chmod +x firewall.sh

Now run it by typing #./firewall.sh

Now type #iptables -L to check that your iptables contain the new rules.

For Example,

It should show the followings:

[root@ittlabusr ~]# iptables -L

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)

target prot opt source destination

ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHED

LOG all -- anywhere anywhere LOG level warning prefix `DROP '

DROP all -- anywhere anywhere

LOG tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:ssh flags:FIN,SYN,RST,ACK/SYN LOG level warning prefix `SSH SYN '

LOG tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:ssh flags:FIN,SYN,RST,ACK/SYN LOG level warning prefix `DROP '

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)

target prot opt source destination

ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHED

LOG all -- anywhere anywhere LOG level warning prefix `DROP '

DROP all -- anywhere anywhere

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)

target prot opt source destination

Now type the following command to assure that you save the rules in IPTABLES #/sbin/iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Now restart your computer by typing #shutdown –r now

Now run nmap again to assure that IPTAB

For example,

#nmap -p 22 Check to see if port 22 is filtered

[root@ittlabusr fwknop]# nmap -p 22 localhost

Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2011-04-08 12:25 EDT

Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)

Host is up.

rDNS record for 127.0.0.1: localhost.localdomain

PORT STATE SERVICE

22/tcp filtered ssh

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 2.10 seconds

Setup and configuring fwknop port-knocking application.

#gedit or nano /etc/fwknop/fwknop.conf

Change the line #ALERTING_METHODS ALL; (TO) --> ALERTING_METHODS noemail;

Change the line #shCmd /bin/sh; (TO) --> shCmd /bin/bash;

Change the line PCAP_INTF eth1; to assure that you are set to the correct interface!!!!!

TIP

Type ifconfig /all in another terminal to check your current interface.

Change the line #ENABLE_SPA_PACKET_AGING Y; (TO) --> ENABLE_SPA_PACKET_AGING N;

#gedit or nano /etc/fwknop/access.conf

Change the line #KEY: __CHANGEME__; to KEY: whatever you want; (The key must be 8 characters long at the least)

Add the line DATA_COLLECT_MODE: PCAP;

Unmark or add the line FW_ACCESS_TIMEOUT: 30; (time is in sec)

Stop and start fwknop service

#service fwknop stop

#service fwknop start

#netstat -anlp | grep fwknop (to check if fwknop is listening)

unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 42445 7317/perl /var/run/fwknop/knoptm_ip_timeout.sock

#service fwknop status

knoptm (pid 7317) is running...

fwknopd (pid 7314) is running...

knopwatchd (pid 7319) is running...

On the server side type the following to see logs coming in:

#tail -f /var/log/messages

On the other Linux client side type:

#fwknop -A -a -D

For example,

#fwknop -A tcp/22 -a 127.0.0.1 -D 10.75.3.232

Download fwknop for Windows from

http://www.cipherdyne.org/fwknop/download/ and run fwknop for windows

College Graduation

2011-03-25T21:15:00.002-04:00

The date is set!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Graduation for ITT Tech. Apr. 5, 7:00 pm (est), Chesapeake Conference center!!!! goto my twitter page for details " http://twitter.com/itt_tech "

Drupal6.16 Notes

2011-02-03T00:46:00.004-05:00

Quick notes for those trying to install and setup Drupal on an Debian machine:

For those trying to install #drupal6 in #debain-lenny use synaptic and do a packet force to get #drupal6.16 from backports

**Note in #debain-lenny the default files are not in /var/www/ there in /usr/share/drupal6/

Once installed from #synaptic restart apache then goto (from web browser) localhost/drupal6/install.php

My Crossroads

2011-01-18T02:27:00.005-05:00

Long time,
Well a lot has changed for me since my last post, where do I began........I've switched 9-5's yet again (job markets' ruff) currently I'm unloading trucks from 4-1am (7.65/hr). My business has slowed due to time constraints. I don't have the time to really advertise anymore. I'm in my last sem. for my AAS degree @ ITT-Tech (March Grad). And I'm at a crossroads on my career path. At this time one thing is for certain I want to have a career in Linux/Unix. Ive spent the last 12 months learning Asterisk from the ground up. I'm no guru yet but not to far from it. Ive also been reading off and on O'Reily's "LPI cert in a nutshell". This book is good for studying if you already have some what a back round working with Linux (1yr or better). I didn't set the usual new years resolution. I just set short term goals to accomplish. I'm not getting any younger and its time to choose a path for my life and run for it. My first goal is to grad from school. Second to build my brand. Third to take a cert and Pass it. Fourth learn a programming language. Fifth to work in the IT field full time. I know I've said this in the past but my blogs will become more frequent and more techie. My goal is to write every time i learn something new. I want to do this not only to keep track of new items but to also help those seeking answers to some of the problems that may or may not be so common to some geeks. In closing happy new years to all and until next time "RTFO" (rock the f...on)

Longtime

2010-03-20T17:34:00.001-04:00

Just getting back in to the swing of things so more detailed post coming soon>>>
-loafy

The Big Day

2009-08-26T13:06:00.001-04:00

Good Day All,
Well Friday Sept 4th is the day for my Linux + cert test. I'm kind of nervous about it because I suck at test taking. Nothing new going on beside studying for next week. My next semester @ ITT-Tech I'm taking on 4 classes. Really it's three but I'm auditing a programming class since when i took the class they were doing VB.Net. Now their teaching Pearl. I don't have anything aganist ".NET" I just want to learn another language. So aspect to hear from me around Sept. time frame. One more item, please checkout this link : http://openwaters.eventbrite.com
Its just a mini Opensource Conf @ ODU (Norfolk, VA)

TTYL,

Loafy

R.I.P. Michael Jackson 6-25-09

2009-06-26T00:07:00.000-04:00

Today is a sad day for most if not all music lovers. Today the King of Pop Michael J. Jackson was pronounced dead @ UCLA. The said cause was a heart-attack but has yet to be confirmed. This isn't one of my usual blog post but when I heard it I was deeply sadden by it. In the last couple of months we've lost so many great actors and singers; #IsaacHayes, #BernieMac,and #MichaelJackson. I know thats not all the names but those are the few that stand out to me. I grew up listening to Michael and Issac. I laughed til it hurt at Bernie Mac. In an nut shell I'm saying tomorrow is not promised to us so live everyday like it's your last!!!!!!!!!!!

Just a Rant

2009-05-25T15:10:00.004-04:00

Greetings all,
Wow, was looking at the last time I did a blog post....Shame on me. Well schools' out for two weeks so I have time to finishing craming for my cert. Looking at the new LPI I think I can pass this one. So I have two weeks to get $155.00 for the test. I'm giving my day job one more month for a number of reasons. The main reason tho is my boss. I'm tired of him lying to customers and feeding them BS about their machines to make a qwik buck. Virus here bad software there. Granted some cases are true, but let the customer talk about diff software and he has a fit. Last week I died a little inside when I had to install Vista over a copy of Ubuntu 8.10. Between the lying and the other BS I think it's time for me to grow else where. Plus I learned what I needed to; how to deal with laptops. Well this is my short rant for the week, time to enjoy my day off! TTYL

-Loafy

Friday's show

2009-04-12T16:29:00.002-04:00

Happy Easter all (who believe),
Fridays show was a big bust but a learning experience none the less. Problem 1. No notes..I basically shot from the waste my goal was to set up a live study group using talkshoe. I didn't want to actually lead the group more like provide an outlet to help others out. Problem 2. No one showed. I thought at lest one or two people would show up but hey what can I say " you can lead a horse to water but can make it drink". Problem 3. Just not prepared. OK now I'll take the blame on this one, all together I just wasn't confident enough. But hey you live and learn so now my goal is to try it again with a little more preparation. Because if this succeeds then I'll post it as a podcast and ogg feed to help future students of ITT. Well its home work time so until next time. L8tr.

Big Things for the Future!

2009-04-07T23:46:00.003-04:00

Greetings all,
Tonite I set up a short conf. call for my IT club @ school on talkshoe. I'm hoping all goes well. If so I'll turn it into a podcast and ogg feed. This is my first shot @ hosting anything so if anyone have any words of advice please fill free to share. O, the job is going great, we're trying to expand the shop a little by opening up and Internet cafe. I would love to set up and maintain that because it would give me the chance to flex a little knowledge of what I've learned so far. It would also give me a chance to show others about Free and Open Source software. That's it for today, catch-ya later. NN
-Loafy

New Job!

2009-04-02T05:42:00.005-04:00

Good Day to all,
As of the 30th of March I finally got another day job! Currently I'm a computer repair tech for a local shop here in Norfolk, VA. Funny thing how I came about this job, I lost my day job back in Sept. I've always had little side jobs here and there to help make ends meet but still I needed something steady. I'd applied for various IT help desk jobs in the Hampton Roads area. With every call I made and resume I sent up no luck. Every one just wanted me to have a cert in something. I thought since I had the experience that was just as good, WRONG! One day while getting my hair braided at a local shop I asked my braider how was the PC repair guy round the corner doing, she stated business was good but he needed help. To much work not enough hrs in the day to do it. When she was done I swung by his shop and grabbed a flyer. A week later I gave him a ring to see if I could help. He told me to bring a pencil and paper next week and he'd give me a little test to see how much I knew. Automatically I thought "man cram session again!". When I came in That Monday He set me in front of a desktop and said "Let me know what's wrong with it and then fix it". In my head I thought "Yes finally the brake I needed". My trial by fire was done in under 45min. Needles to say I got the job, and kept fixing boxes for the rest of that day. At the end of the day he'd thanked me & paid me. I was just happy that someone gave me a chance. I'm still studying for my certs to have the paperwork behind my experience. The moral here is practise your craft as much as possible you never know when someone will test what you know!

Making progress!

2009-03-23T23:32:00.002-04:00

Greetings all,
Yeah I know I know, I say the same thing every post. Sorry for the delay. Now a days I find myself getting busier and busier. I've finally have all the tools I need to knock out my two certs next month. For those who haven't been following me I'm currently studying for my LPIC and Net+ certs. I've broken it down to even days get Net+ study time and LPIC get the odd days. The reason I want to get my Net + is I'm currently an CNS student @ ITT Tech (Norf). My LPIC because I like Linux and the whole Open source thing. In the mist of my studying I'm making plans to attend the Southeast Linux Fest being held in SC. this summer. Well gotta go for now still doing homework for class tomorrow. TTYL

-D

Long Time, Sorry to all.

2009-03-11T20:33:00.000-04:00

Greetings to all,
I'm so so sorry it took so long to come back to this. Last month was rough all around, but classes started up this week and I'm back in the swing of things. Just a little fyi, I'm only taking two classes @ ITT-Tech this go around. Those are Linux (lol) and XP Pro :-( . Last month I'd slowed down on my studies for the LPIC and Linux+ but since I have a fresh start I'm hitting them full force. I'm cutting this short since I'm still in class right now but rest a sure no more slacking.
L8tr for now.

-Loafy

Fedora 10

2009-02-03T02:14:00.008-05:00

Greetings all,
Sorry for the late post but me and my family have been sick for the last week. We've been eating chicken noodle soup and wrapping up in blankets. Today I hit the books hard playing catch-up. Today I also loaded Fedora 10 on my laptop. I'm trying to learn and get a handle on rpm based distro's so what better to run the Fedora. I still have my test server running Debian etch and I'm in the process of learning Apache. To help with getting all this done I've been listening to past episodes of "Linux Reality" with Chess Griffin. He did some excellent tutorials on building a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql,PHP,Perl,and Python) stack. That's it for now I'm not @ a 100% yet so I need some rest, til next time. L8tr

Building my foundation.

2009-01-25T17:25:00.006-05:00

Greetings All,
It's been a long week for me how about you all? Friday was my first "LPI" study group with host Chad of the "Linux Basement". The meeting covered Chapt. 4 of O'Reilly's "LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition" (I'll include the links @ the end of this rant). Also this week I've started heavily building my linux knowledge foundation base by watching video tutorials and following along click by click. The current video set of tutorials I'm working with is "LinuxCBTDebian3". I'm working with Debian for a couple or reasons: 1. Ubuntu is a Debian based linux OS, this was the OS that brought me back to linux. I'm okay on Ubuntu but I really wanted to learn the base of what it was built off of. 2. I like their package manager APT. 3. In my eyes if you have a distro you like you should learn what it was built off of. That's my rant for today hope you all in joy the week to come and here are the links I promised:

Chads' show: http://linuxbasement.com/
LPI study group notes: http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=14464&cmd=tc
Linux computer based training: http://www.linuxcbt.com/
Ubuntu homepage: http://www.ubuntu.com/
Debian homepage: http://www.debian.org/
O'Reillys' book link: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005283/index.html

Catch-up Day

2009-01-20T20:14:00.003-05:00

Greetings all,
Today was a catch-up day for me. I finally finished up my reading and study for classes. Also I got the chance to lay out my study plan for my first Cert, CompTia's Linux + . I'm currently watching a training video from Learnkey on "Linux+ (using Redhat8)Certification" and reading the Linux+ Cert. bible (Finished Parts I &II). Those chapters were basic information on what Linux is and how to install it. This was easy reading, it was geared towards mainly new users. Since picking Linux back up in Jun.08 with "Ubuntu 8.04" this was a nice little review. Today was the Inauguration of our new president Barack Obama! Change has come. Today was a first in a long time where I shed a tear of joy, "Let Freedom Ring"! Will thats it for today, I'm putting in my copy of CBT Debian (disc2) on and cranking up my server for a little cram session. Good night all.

Intro

2009-01-19T23:37:00.005-05:00

Greetings all,
This is my first official blog. I started this blog after doing a call in show with dave yates of the "lottalinux links" podcast. I also wanted to start this blog because of my interest with Linux and the F/OSS movement and to help me keep track of my progress towards becoming Linux+ and LPI certified. My goal is to be a Sys Admin,Programmer and a basic Linux tutor(I do mean Basic). Since this is my first blog I will keep it short and sweet, I can be reached on twitter under the handle "itt_tech", and on identi.ca under the handle "luthaloafy". Goodbye for now.

-Loafy