I just learned about the script: /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation. Very cool. Here are the commands that the script actually runs.
I am going to add these to my provisioning script (I already take care of the root password piece):
mysql -e “DROP DATABASE test;”
mysql -e “DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE User=’root’ AND Host!=’localhost’;”
mysql -e “DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE User=”;”
mysql -e “FLUSH PRIVILEGES;”
I have a MacPro at home, and I am running VMware Fusion on it. At night, I sleep the machine to save electricity. I have a CentOS guest running and the time is always out of sync. After the VM is restored from sleep, the NTP service is no longer running and my time really drifts.
I finally sat down and tried to figure out my time sync issues on CentOS and VMware. This document explains it all. At the bottom they say you should turn off VMware tools time sync and use NTPD.
To install NTPD (with the recommended changes from the above document)
The “tinker panic 0” is the most important part. Now when my VMware Fusion wakes and the CentOS guest powers on, NTP gets everything setup correctly.
I like having Cygwin installed on my machine, and since I always re-image, I needed a script to install Cygwin automatically.
function Install-Cygwin {
param ( $TempCygDir="$env:temp\cygInstall" )
if(!(Test-Path -Path $TempCygDir -PathType Container))
{
$null = New-Item -Type Directory -Path $TempCygDir -Force
}
$client = new-object System.Net.WebClient
$client.DownloadFile("http://cygwin.com/setup.exe", "$TempCygDir\setup.exe" )
Start-Process -wait -FilePath "$TempCygDir\setup.exe" -ArgumentList "-q -n -l $TempCygDir -s http://mirror.nyi.net/cygwin/ -R c:\Cygwin"
Start-Process -wait -FilePath "$TempCygDir\setup.exe" -ArgumentList "-q -n -l $TempCygDir -s http://mirror.nyi.net/cygwin/ -R c:\Cygwin -P openssh"
}
This will download and install Cygwin and install the openssh package.
Since my laptop hard drive died, I did not have access to my home VPN. I needed to set up OpenVPN on windows. I setup my PKI and installed the portable version of OpenVPN. Tried connecting and got this error:
There is a problem in your selection of –ifconfig endpoints [local=X.X.X.X, remote=X.X.X.X]. The local and remote VPN endpoints cannot use the first or last address within a given 255.255.255.252 subnet.
The fix? Add the following to your server config:
topology subnet
My laptop hard drive died. I was upset only because there was data on my laptop that had not been moved over to my desktop. My desktop has time machine and is rsynced to several other drives and locations.
So I lost data. My own fault because I was not diligent in moving data off my laptop.
To make sure this did not happen again, I needed the ability to run a script when I open my laptop at home. But how?
MAC addresses should be unique. Therefore the BASH script should only run when I am on my home network.
Here is the BASH script to find the Default Gateway’s MAC address
GATEWAY=`netstat -rn | grep default | cut -c20-35` MACADDRESS=`arp -n $GATEWAY | cut -f4 -d' '`
Next step is to use this code when I open my Laptop lid.
At our NYC office, I have a PXE/Kickstart system setup. All I need to do is boot to PXE, and I can install CentOS with very little intervention. I have to choose Server vs Desktop (each choice points to a different http hosted kickstart cfg file.) and I have to setup my partitons how I want them.
Recently I was tasked to setup a new office in LA. I had taken a CentOS iso with me, but I wanted to use the standard config file (hosted over http) at the central office. Basically I wanted to use the local bits with a remote config file. I learned a couple fo things going through this exercise.
The only way I could use local bits with a KickStart file, was to specify “cdrom” in the config file. Which means I had to have yet another option/config file= dekstop,server, server-cdrom.
News to me! if you want to create a vmdk larger than 256 gb, you need to blow away the datastore and re-create it with a larger block size!
Not that you would want to, but here it is.
wlsetup-all.exe /q /AppSelect:MovieMaker /NOTOOLBARCEIP /NOSEARCH /NOHOMEPAGE /NOCEIP /NOMU /NOLAUNCH
We have a “USBG-232MINI” USB to Serial adapter and I needed to connect to a Cisco router. GNU screen to the rescue!!
The command is
screen /dev/tty.usbserial-A9005yuF 9600 (Where A9005yuF is probably unique)
And to exit hit Control+A then K.
I wanted to dump a list of accounts and their password expiration dates – accounts that were not disabled, that had a certain description, and were not set with “Password never expires”
(Get-ADUser -filter {(Description -notlike "Service*") -and (Enabled -eq "True") -and (PasswordNeverExpires -eq "False")} -properties *) |
select samaccountname,description,
@{N="LastChanged";E={(Get-Date([System.DateTime]::FromFileTimeUtc($_.pwdLastSet))).ToShortDateString()}},
@{N="Expires";E={(Get-Date([System.DateTime]::FromFileTimeUtc($_.pwdLastSet))).AddDays((Get-ADDefaultDomainPasswordPolicy).MaxPasswordAge.TotalDays).ToShortDateString()}}