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ipmi / linux / dell poweredge SC1435

We recently bought two Dell SC1435 servers off eBay. They seemed cheap and quite well specced (dual 4 core CPUs, plenty of RAM for us) – perhaps ideal for redundant mail servers.

Anyway, they’re IPMI 2.0 compliant – meaning they should be controllable remotely (e.g serial console, forceful power cycling etc without the need for some sort of graphical KVM console or DRAC card.).

(A few years later, I bought a Dell t300 from Ebay; the below works for it too)

Here are some notes on setting up/configuring IPMI support and how it can be used – :

Continue reading “ipmi / linux / dell poweredge SC1435”

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spam (policyd-weight + excommunicado)

1. See http://github.com/palepurple/policyd-weight – I’m trying to make some changes to policyd-weight (something I’ve been using for ages) to make it more configurable and add in a GeoIP patch which I’ve seen floating around.

2. See https://twitter.com/excommunicado and http://blog.hinterlands.org/2013/11/an-update-on-communicado/ – for a DNS Blacklist you might want to use –  using excommunicado.co.uk as a RHSBL has stopped about 700 spammy emails for me already 🙂

3. See https://github.com/palepurple/policyd-dnsbl-spf-geoip – which should improve on policyd-weight which gave me problems with it’s helo checking etc. It’s easier to configure and hopefully far easier to read the sourcecode  (still perl though ! ).

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FTTC limited by wifi….

Compare :
random speedtest result on ethernet

(Speedtest over ethernet)

with

random speedtest result on wifi

(Speedtest over wifi).

Now how do I go about getting Sky to giving me a wifi router box thing that does 802.11n or whatever?

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BeThere to Sky Broadband

Given BT have finally updated our street cabinet to support FTTC, my home broadband will soon hopefully be moving form BeThere to Sky. The monthly cost remains roughly the same, but I move from about 8mbit to 40mb. I hope.

Except, Sky own BeThere. So perhaps I’m not really moving – but this didn’t stop BeThere sending me emails and texts (“We’re sorry to hear you’re leaving” etc).

Anyway, while signing up for Sky and talking to their minion on the phone ……

Sky minion: “So, we need to take some details from you for security purposes … what’s your mother’s maiden name? …. What’s your postcode? …… Choose a password ? “.

Five minutes later, when I had to ring Sky back to give them a MAC code I’d written down from talking to a BeThere minion :

Sky minion: “What’s your password sir?”

Me: xxxxxxxx

Sky minion: “That’s not what we have here, what’s your mother’s maiden name?”

Me: xxxxxxxx

Sky minion: “OK, Thanks. I’ll update your password to xxxxxxxxx”.

Hmm.

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EE Broadband box

On a random mailing list there’s a report of an EE broadband box being delivered with a QR sticker on the side.

eebox with stupid qr code
eebox with stupid qr code

Which when scanned gives something like :

SN:J32xxxxxxx;MAC:88-03-55-xx-xx-xx;USER:admin;Pass:xxxxxx;SSID:EE-BrightBox-xxxxxx;WPA:xxx-xxxx-xxxxx

Guess that makes it handy for the postman to use your broadband.

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Encryption / NSA / GCHQ and Open Source software

So, apparently the NSA and GCHQ are able to break some encryption protocols/formats, and have widespread access to Skype / Hotmail / Outlook / Gmail / Facebook etc.

I’m not sure why this is thought to be a surprise. It’s their job to do this, right?

While I’m not convinced the widespread trawling of data has been done with appropriate safeguards in place (it doesn’t sound like it has been) it isn’t that different to how it was an openly acknowledged secret that the state had automated monitoring of phone calls for certain keywords/phrases 10-15 years ago (nuke, bomb, anthrax etc) which no one particularly cared about then.

I’m skeptical that the revelations will have much of an effect on “professional” terrorists – who must have already been aware that anything transmitted electronically could not be guaranteed safe from eves-dropping. The main harm will surely be that the West can no longer claim the ‘moral high ground’ when it comes to surveillance / monitoring / hacking / infiltration – which it used to with states like China and North Korea.

Perhaps the revelations will lead to a wider uptake of open source software (which is presumably harder for a state to infiltrate/backdoor)? Certainly it should now be exceedingly hard for any state to justify using Microsoft Windows in any part of government where the information is classified/secret.

 

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