Archive for 'Networking'
Kill a Whole Tree of Birds With Digsby
Posted on July 3, 2008, under Email, IM, Networking, Social Networks, Twitter.
I came across Digsby earlier today, and have been playing around with it all morning. Digsby is a IM client for all of your IM networks, much like Pidgin, Trillian, etc. However, Digsby also does your social networks like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. If that were not enough, it will also do your email: Live Mail, GMail, Yahoo, Pop, etc.
It packages all of your social connections into one easy to use desktop application, with a lot of features to allow for almost complete customization.
It’s defiantly worth a download, it might just replace all of your desktop clients at once.
Popularity: 29% [?]
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Bust A Name Fool!
Posted on August 27, 2007, under Networking, Tools and Services, Web Hosting.
We have all been there before: you are starting up a new blog or killer service and can’t find a domain name because all the cool domains are already taken. Well not really, there are still some good gems out there that the cyber squatters have not snatched up yet. The trouble is, how do you find them?
Enter Bust a Name. Before this little slick tool came across my radar, Name Boy was my favorite tool for this task; but no more. Bust a Name, like other tools allow you to enter keywords that describe your blog or service, and it will compile a list of available domains. There are other little bells and whistles that allow you to tweak the domain results listed back to you. Giving this a test with some keywords, it actually came up with a couple good domain names. If I did not already own a slew of domain names, I just might have bought them. Bust a Name also makes it easy to purchase any domain names you find with the click of a button. The are probably getting an affiliate fee for any domain name purchased through them, so help support their free service by buying through their affiliate links.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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Thoughts about PHP after the Facebook Source Code Leak
Posted on August 15, 2007, under Development, How To, Networking, Security, Tools and Services, Web Hosting.
So by now, you already know that Facebook source code was leaked due to a mis configured server. And if you didn’t already know Facebook is written in PHP, a language that is compiled when it’s executed. So there are some questions that come to at least my mind about this situation.
First, what does this mean for Facebooks’ reputation? It is in a legal dispute over whether or not Mark Zuckerberg, the sites founder, stole source code from fellow university students. Even though the source code of any popular and profitable company is valuable. It is arguably not nearly as valuable as the data that goes along with that source code. This is the case with Facebook, who has millions of users and personal information in databases. But how can someone get access to the databases just by having the source code, you ask? Well with PHP it’s not so difficult. In most cases there is a configuration file that has all of the database information you need.
So how could have Facebook, and others prevent this sort of this sort of thing from happening? Here are a couple ideas:
- Put your configuration file where it can not be executed directly. For example, not in your “httpdocs” folder anywhere. In this situation Facebooks’ servers were mis configured so the PHP code was not rendering but instead showing itself. This means if the configuration file was under the “httpdocs” folder somewhere, presto! Access to the database. (Obviously firewalls and things like that might stand in the way).
- Obfuscate your PHP code. Yes this might slow down the processing of your PHP code by milliseconds, but it really would have helped in any situation like this where the possibly of PHP being show is present. Some obfuscation tools will also optimize the code, so it might make up for any processing time gained by obfuscating.
- Sandbox environments, and pulling production boxes out of rotation. Not sure what Facebook’s server setup is, but sandbox environments might have caught this server misconfiguration before it made it to production. Additionally if you have any sort of mirrored servers (a company like Facebook is bound to have something along these lines), you probably have your servers behind a load balancer. When you push code to production you need to pull these servers out of rotation (meaning not available for outside access). You can then test these servers individually before putting them back into production with the new code. Tedious? Yes, but worth it for not having a PR nightmare like your source code leaked. Additionally there are lots of tactics you can employ to make this process semi-automated and not as tedious.
These are obviously just some of many tips you can deploy to keep this from happening to you. Most large companies like Facebook will have similar processing in place, but the key is to always follow protocol… no shortcuts not matter what time crunch you are under. One slip and your source code is all over the Internet… might even be worse.
Popularity: 9% [?]
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How To: Setup FeedBurner’s MyBrand Service
Posted on July 11, 2007, under Blogging, How To, Networking, Tools and Services, WordPress.
With Google’s recent purchase of FeedBurner all pay services from FeedBurner are now free. One of those services is FeedBurner MyBrand, a great service that allows you to complete mask FeedBurner by redirecting a domain or subdomain to your feeds on FeedBurner.
One thing I noticed off the bat with this service, is MyBrand works for all feeds under your account. So if you have multiple feeds and multiple domains setup under MyBrand all possible feeds and domain combinations will be available. So www.domain1.com/feed will be the same as www.domain2.com/feed. This is kind of an annoyance if you are doing this for multiple blogs and want to keep one FeedBurner account.
So how do we get started?
1) Well first login to your FeedBurner account and select “MyBrand” under “My Account”.
2) Add the domains or subdomains you wish to use for this service.
3) You now need to add a CNAME entry for the domains or subdomains you told FeedBurner will not be coming its way.If you are not sure how to do this with your hosting provider, you might need to submit a support ticket. Go Daddy has some instructions on how to do it with them.
Finished! DNS changes usually take about 24 hours to fully propagate. After that you will be serving up your FeedBurner feeds under your own domain name.
Popularity: 8% [?]
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How to Setup a Subversion Server on Linux
Posted on June 22, 2007, under How To, Networking, Software, Subversion, Tools and Services.
With my recent move over to Linux. over this last week I have been resetting up my file server and getting everything setup that way it was back when it ran that other operating system. On of the functionalities my file server has, is running a subversion server. There are many ways to setup subversion, tapped into apache, using xinetd, running as a daemon, ssh, ssl… the list goes on. At home I am behind a firewall and this server has no access to the outside word, so for me it was definitely a KISS (keep it simple stupid) moment. I chose to setup subversion with xinetd. Now Ubuntu made this dead simple, but I like to learn how to do things manually as that’s the spirit of being a geek. So lets take a look at hoe to get this thing up and running:
1) Install Subversion and xinetd
There are many ways to accomplish this: Yum, apt-get, up2date, or your favorite package manager. For this tutorial lets use apt-get.
[ftf]
apt-get install subversion
apt-get install xinetd
[/ftf]
2) Create a Subversion Repository
Your repositories can be located anywhere, for me there were on a NAS device. we use the fantastic tool ’svnadmin’.
[ftf]
svnadmin create /path/to/your/svn/myfirstrepository
[/ftf]
3) Configure xinetd
In this step we will configure the superserver to make it run an svn service. The configuration file for xinetd is located at ‘/etc/xinetd.conf’ under most circumstances. The configuration file should look something like the one below. Make note of the path to where your repositories are located, not the path to the actual repositorie: ‘/path/to/your/svn’. Also make note of the ‘user’ parameter. Whatever you set this user to, needs to have read and write access to your svn path.
[ftf]
# Simple configuration file for xinetd
#
# Some defaults, and include /etc/xinetd.d/
defaults
{
}
service sshd
{
port = 22
server = /usr/sbin/sshd
}
service svn
{
port = 3690
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = www-data
server = /usr/bin/svnserve
server_args = -i -r /path/to/your/svn
}
includedir /etc/xinetd.d
[/ftf]
4) Setup User Access to Your Repositories
Subversion has many ways you can setup access to your repositories, for the sake of this tutorial lets just setup a simple user name and password. Modify the file ‘/path/to/your/svn/myfirstrepository/conf/svnserve.conf’ and setup the simplest way of adding users, with the ‘passdb’ file. Your file should look something like this;
[ftf]
anon-access = none
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd
[/ftf]
What you are doing here is letting subversion no that users with no authentication access ‘anon-access’ should have no access to this repository, and users with authentication ‘auth-access’ access should have write access. The last line is letting subversion that we are using the ‘passwd’ file located in the same directory for the user list. That file, ‘/path/to/your/svn/myfirstrepository/conf/passwd’, you can now add users in the format of:
[ftf]
username = password
[/ftf]
5) Conclusion
Now, if all went well, you should be able to check out from your new repository:
[ftf]
svn co svn://localhost/myfirstrepository
[/ftf]
If you want more information on how to setup a subversion server including running it with apache, ssh, ssl, or other methods; I highly recommend the “Version Control with Subversion” book.
Popularity: 39% [?]
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My Move to Mosso and GMail: Part One
Posted on April 11, 2007, under Blogging, Databases, Development, Email, Networking, Web Hosting.
I have used many web hosting companies in the past, and always used Plesk as my choice of a control panel. It seems the same thing happens every time with a new web hosting company: at first the service is great and the resources are fast and responsive. Over time, quality degrades as resources are spread thin. Then the inevitable happens where the hosting company wants to up sell me on my current solution. There is always a point where one needs upgrade a web server, but there are also times when you have to ask “if you can’t manage my current solution, how do you expect to sell me on a bigger and more powerful solution.” I have reached these cross roads with my current hosting provider, and have not been impressed with the way they have handled major problems over the last several months so I am once again switching providers.
I have always wanted to be in control of my hosting solution, a nice balance between an easy to use control panel and the back end scripting to optimize things. Lately my time has been too pressed and too valuable to continue taking on the “server management” roll as well as wear many other hats. Sure, I could pay someone that knows 100 times more than me in the area of server management, but that’s more expenses on top of the actual box that I am already paying the hosting company to keep up and chugging.
So I have reached the point where it’s time to outsource. My plan is to move the many sites of mine, and the ones for friends and family, over to a new scalable solution that I need to have very little hands on work to make it… well work. The same goes for email, I am sick of tweaking spam filters and managing quotas for in boxes and worrying about uptime and downtime. So what’s the answer? Well for me, the plan is to migrate my web sites over to Mosso and my email over to GMail for your domain. Shouldn’t be too hard right? Well, we will see.
So why did I choose these solutions? Here is a little break down.
Mosso:
Mosso has an interesting approach to web hosting. For $100 you get a an all-in-one, scalable, flexible, hosting solution, for an unlimited number of domains. Sounds goods so far, but not unique. Well not so fast, Mosso takes the guess work out of the Linux vs. Microsoft debate and choice that one has to make when choosing a host. I have always preferred Linux servers for my own reasons, but I have freelanced on projects for a Microsoft shop that I need a real work test environment and have had to lease a server for a month or two at a time. Mosso has it all, and in one package. Furthermore any site can use PHP4, PHP5, ASP, or Python under one domain name… yup that’s right the ability to run multiple scripting languages and database back-ends under one site. Mosso has built a multi million dollar, and very unique solution giving you choices. The cherry on the cake is the very slick, powerful, and easy to use control panel that will make it easy to manage it all. There are some set backs however: You do not have SSH access, you do not have access to cron jobs, and no support for Ruby on Rails yet. These are minor set backs for me, and I have already researched work-arounds. While kicking the tires of the Mosso service over the last several months, I have learned that the support staff is friendly, hel, and fast to respond.. a big plus. Add on their service level agreement, that’s just about all I need.
GMail for Your Domain:
This one is easy: it’s Google, Gmail, it’s free, and my domain. There is really nothing more that needs to be said. I have yet to come across a scalable web mail solution, and am tired of bringing down IMAP servers with the large amount of mail I have. Add in GMail’s spam filtering features, and again… done deal.
Conclusion for Part On:
I am hoping that this move will go smooth, and for Mosso it could be the best real world client story and review yet. I have HyperSpin setup to monitor the performance and uptime of the new web host, and it should line up nicely with the re-launch of BlueCrestStudios and NetGrid. Stay tuned for further developments…
Popularity: 12% [?]
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OpenDNS and Local Host Names, a Work Around
Posted on March 30, 2007, under How To, Networking.
In a previous article entitled OpenDNS is a Better DNS, I explained some of the benefits to using OpenDNS. A brief recap for the boys a girls on what OpenDNS is:
OpenDNS uses its distributed network of DNS servers to speed up your Internet experience, increase reliability, improve security and make DNS smarter for users all over the world.
Since setting up OpenDNS on my networks router I have had some problems with local host names. For example my Network Attached Storage is called “NAS” appropriately. Well in some cases when using the logical name “NAS” to reference the box, it doesn’t work. I have to use the IP Address to access it. There is a relatively simple way to have the best of both worlds. The benefits of OpenDNS and the usefulness of being able to use host names.
What we are going to do in this work around is tell your host file to map logical names to certain IP Address. Your host file is used to look up the IP Address of a device on the network, a sort of mapping from IP Address to host name. So here we go:
1) Obtain the IP Addresses of the devices you want to map.
2) Navigate to “C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc” or “C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc” depending on your version of Windows.
3) Edit the file “hosts” in Notepad or your favorite text editor.
4) You want to add a line for every computer you wish to map in the form of “IP HOSTNAME” separated by a space. So if your IP Address was “192.168.1.50″ and your host name was “BigBadMachine” you would add a line like this “192.168.1.50 bigbadmachine”. Your host file would then look like this
[ftf]
# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.50 bigbadmachine
[/ftf]
5) You can add as many lines as you wish to the end. You will need to restart to see the results working.
This work around works best if you have static or “sticky” IP Addresses coming off of your router.
Popularity: 4% [?]
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Behind the P2P: Where are They Now?
Posted on March 28, 2007, under Networking, P2P.
When writing the article yesterday about backup solutions, I cleaned out a whole bunch of old software from my archives. A lot of old P2P applications that I guess I was holding onto for historical purposes. I was very intrigued with where these companies/software projects were these days. In an shameless rip from VH1’s Behind The Music and Where Are They Now I sent to find out.
Original Naspter: Ahh Napster… single handedly taking the MP3 format off of the IRC and FTP servers and into a easy to use desktop application. The surge started in college dorm rooms and soon was being use by every teenager in the United States. Just looking at the website from those days takes me back. Napster put Shawn Fanning on Time Magazine and in court rooms. Napster has shifted through many hands over the years, and is still alove and kicking and recently struck a deal with AT&T.
WinMX: Remember WinMX? Amongst the original Napster days when Shawn Fanning was on the MTV music awards in a Metallica TShirt. Long before the Bit torrent days, WinMX was one of the fastest ways to download you music and warez. Located at the now defunct www.winmx.com domain. So where is it now? Well, gone! Along with it’s FrontCode parent as well. From Wikipedia:
On September 13, 2005, Frontcode Technologies received a threatening letter from the RIAA demanding that they either implement filters to make it impossible for users to download copyrighted material from WinMX, or shut down. On September 21, 2005 the network and the WinMX homepage were officially confirmed as offline.
Grokster: Grokster, another P2P application from the good old days is interesting. The website, now in control of the studios, “logs you IP Address”and warns you about file trading on the Internet. As if this is suppose to scare you. Visiting a website is not illegal, and every website you visit logs your IP Address… they are called server logs. Anyway, Grokster was shutdown as well:
On 27 September 2006, Judge Steven Wilson of the United States District Court for the Central District of California granted summary judgment to the Plaintiffs as to StreamCast’s liability. The court rejected StreamCast’s argument that the Plaintiff need show specific instances of infringement resulting from StreamCast’s acts, holding that “Plaintiff need prove only that StreamCast distributed the product with the intent to encourage infringement.”
OpenNap: OpenNap was and still is an open source version of the original Napster server. During the whole shutting down of Napster, OpenNap servers were popping up everywhere. I really enjoyed this project, being a developer and all. I remember sifting through the source code, and learning the Napster protocol with it’s big endian - little endian ways. It was kind of cool to see similar work to what Shawn Fanning wrote way back in the day. You know Shawn’s got a copy of the original source just lying around, would love to see what that code looks like. The project is located at SourceForge but looks like it hasn’t been updated since September of 2001.
BearShare: Still seems to be around, but it has gone through it’s fair share of legal battles as well. According to Wikipedia “Since BearShare 6, the program is malware-free and cannot be used anymore to download arbitrary files. Instead, BearShare offers paid music downloads in the DRMed WMA format as well as free content in MP3 format. The free MP3 content is shared by users and is automatically verified by BearShare not to infringe. This verification is done using an acoustic filter.”
Kazaa: Kazaa was kind of the new found hope after Naspter was shutdown. Everyone migrated to Kazaa, and file trading continued. Kazaa was loaded with malware back in the day. Shareman networks settled a series of legal suits over the years. Kazaa is still offered in the 3.25 version, but copyrighted materials are no longer available on the service… not a surprise. Some of the founders and developers have moved onto other ventures.
Limewire: - Limewire was a fairly popular service, and is now open source. They even have their own blog. The service still appears to be functioning, not sure on the state of copyrighted materials.
Looking back is kind of funny now. Bit Torrent long passes any of the old methods of file sharing in speed, performance, reliability, etc. I wonder where Bit Torrent will be in five years, and if it will still be the king of P2P. It’s also kind of interesting to think that P2P applications brought spyware and adware into the mass circulation, because most of the “free” P2P applications would bundle this junk in just to make a dollar or two. I guess they didn’t make enough to cover the lawyer fees.
Well, hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane. If you have one on the list I forgot, and failed to mention let me know in the comments. And as always, I do not condone or encourage the downloading of illegal or copyrighted works - Smokey the Bear Says: “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires”.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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Speedtest.net More Than Just a Bandwidth Test
Posted on March 21, 2007, under Development, Networking.
I am a bandwidth whore. It’s true, I pay good money for my bandwidth and I am not a happy camper when I am crawling along. Where I live, I pay extra-extra money for the “Broadband Plus” package from my ISP. This will give me speeds up to 15mbps, with ideal conditions. There are many broadband tests out there, but Speedtest.net has been my favorite for since it arrived on the scene a while ago.
A little background, Speedtest.net makes great use of Flash giving you that sexy eye candy while testing your bandwidth speed. That’s just the beginning of the goodness, as Speedtest.net is loaded with features and functionality. They have servers to test all over the world, and have been continuing to improve the service. Speedtest.net will also keep your test history, a feature I personally love.
One thing I recently noticed was the amount of data that they make available for you to view. You can compare your test results with people in your area, but even better yet you can see the break down of ISP’s for anywhere in the world.
This information is incredible useful. There are a ton of websites and services out there that will give you information about ISP’s in your area, but this data is from people taking the bandwidth test on those ISP’s pipes. The data will give you a really good picture of what an ISP can offer you. ISP’s will use tricky language and marketing by saying you can get “up to” a certain speed, when in reality you will probably never see those speeds as they are best case scenario.
I have been sorting through some of the data here, and the difference between what DSL and cable can offer is great. I have always been a fan of cable internet over DSL, even though it’s shared bandwidth it’s just always been faster. A coworker has FIOS, addition he has a redundant connection with a Cable internet connection (drool); not sure when FIOS is going to be available in my area, I have been told not for a long time.
Anyway take a trip over to Speedtest.net and run a test, see how you measure up to others in your area. Post your results here in the comments of your speeds, I would be interested in where everyone stands. I am going to go back and sort through some more data.
Popularity: 4% [?]
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OpenDNS is a Better DNS
Posted on March 14, 2007, under How To, Networking, Tools and Services.
OpenDNS is an excellent service, it has been on my list of things to setup for a while and I finally got around to do so today. It really didn’t take long, which makes me procrastinating on it look that much worse. First things first… what is OpenDNS? Well I will let them explain it, since they seem to do a great job at it.
OpenDNS is a better DNS, free to all. OpenDNS uses its distributed network of DNS servers to speed up your Internet experience, increase reliability, improve security and make DNS smarter for users all over the world.
So why do you need it? Well, need is such a strong word, your would greatly benefit from using the service. OpenDNS will not only speed up your DNS queries for your internet enabled devices, but it will block access to websites that can potentially be harmful. You can setup OpenDNS on your home router, and every computer that connects to the Internet through that router will have the benefits of the service. Meaning if you have kids or friends that constantly are getting your computer in trouble, this is one way to shut them down for good with any computer in the house.
OpenDNS has several services for your home, your work, your mobile devices, and if you are an ISP. For home users, which is what I imagine you are, OpenDNS has a list of common routers, and easy to follow tutorials on how to setup OpenDNS on your home router in minutes.
OpenDNS makes money via advertisments on pages for domains that d not exist. This is not to be confused with advertisements being put on websites and interfering with your regular web surfing. This just means that if you go to www.idonotthinkthisdomainsexistsbuticouldbewrong1498282.com OpenDNS displays a regular page saying the domain does not exist and it will have an advertisement on it. It should be noted that OpenDNS tries to fix mistyped domain names. OpenDNS also states that they will provide additional services that will generate revenue, but reliable DNS will always be free.
Popularity: 3% [?]
