Jaime Gago Condensing Information Systems From the Vapor Of Data

27Mar/101

Hats Off

With increasing general interest in “Cyber Security” I feel compelled to write about this Black/Grey/White Hat “thing”. This is not an ego trip about how important my opinion is, it’s about curiosity, experimentation and facts, 3 concepts essentials to Science...Bingo!

29Jan/102

Automating Os X Server Backups Without 3rd Party Software

There are plenty of different options to backup Os X Server, including free tools like the excellent Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner and Open Source ones like lbackup or amanda. Michael Dhaliwal has a pretty good paper that he updates and publishes on his company (i.e. district13 computing) website.

For various reasons not worth listing here I decided to come with my own design while relying exclusively on built in tools (e.g. launchd). I thought this might help other OS X Server Admins so here it is.

Filed under: Server Continue reading
29Jan/100

Maximizing Os X Server Uptime

This is the first of 3 posts about the design I have implemented in my current position. Please note if you plan to use this as a reference that this setup was strictly meant for this particular environment so you *will* have to adapt it.

When it comes to uptime one of the way to go is to look at your design from Murphy’s perspective and come with the appropriate counter measure (e.g N+1 redundancy) for each different issue your can think of.

Here is my approach for an X Serve running Open Directory and AFP with a Vtrak Promise for User Data.

Filed under: Server Continue reading
22Jan/101

DNS Cracks on Twitter and Baidu

I wonder if the 2 successful and spectacular DNS attacks against 2 major websites (Twitter and Baidu) have anything to do with the DNS Cache Poisining that Dan Kaminsky revealed in 2008. Meh, probably not...

I never went too deep into Dan Kaminsky's rabbit hole (Alice are you there?), after all the main DNS NS I deal with are taken care of by some guy that -hopefully- totally understands this.

28Dec/092

Strong Passwords For All

Whether or not one is familiar with Information Systems Security, the concept of the “weakest link” is –I believe– quite easy to understand. 
Let’s imagine a lion is chasing us, and while you might be trying to outrun the lion, I’ll just be trying to outrun you. Yes, a very simple concept indeed...
I hope you understand now–if you didn’t before–why some systems keep refusing your “abc123” password. The topics of password strength as well as social engineering are well covered, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have one more post even if I am echoing others, on the contrary.

Filed under: Security Continue reading
22Dec/092

Apple Software Updates In A Business Environment

There are many ways to deal with Apple Software Updates, here’s the one I’m currently using with the Mac pool (300+) I am in charge of.

1)Automate the download from the mother ships aka Apple servers back to my home planet aka my LAN and make the updates available.

Filed under: Server Continue reading
9Dec/092

Modify Default Printing Presets in Os X (10.5 & 10.6)

There you are with some customized printing presets for your fancy new printer and yet for some reason every time you open a new printing box the one showing up by default is not the want you wanted : 2000px-Gnome-dev-printerfail

So you looked all over the OS, read some forums, used your Google-Fu and finally got to this post. Search no more the answer is here as seen on TV!

7Dec/090

*Encrypted* Sharing Of Personal Media Libraries with Simplify Media

About a year ago while I was looking for a simple way to share my personal media libraries (stored on a Mac) over the Internet I discovered Clipper_fistSimplify Media. The other zero conf tool was Hamachi-Log Me In VPN. Although Simplify Media doesn't say it in plain english, it's quite evident that as Log-Me In behind the curtain a custom VPN is running...

Last week the Head of the Music Department at the school I work asked me about a way to share music with his students when they are at home (understand over the Internet).

Filed under: Network Continue reading
5Dec/090

Highlight Code WordPress Plug In

I realized that I was often going to have code within a post (I have some bash scripts and my iptables rules ready to publish), thus I looked for a wordpress plugin to make it a little easier to read and/or download without interfering with worpdress posts code.Wordpress-logo

After reading this post I decided to go with the Easy Google Syntax Highlighter by Nick Burlock a fork of Alex Gorbachev original Google Syntax Highlighter. Still reading the documentation here and here but it looks like it's exactly what I was looking for, WordPress FTW!

edit: Since I use the Lightword Theme by Andrei Luca I modified my style.css according to the plug in FAQ and it works perfectly as you can see in this post

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