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Cool Firefox addons

May 19th, 2009 Ali Abbas No comments

Here is a list of very cool firefox addons which I think every serious Network/SysAdmin should have in his/her toolbox ;-)

1. httpfox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6647
2. Tamper data https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/966
3. Live http header https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3829
4. Nagios Checker https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3607
5. Asnumber https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2072
6. Cisco Doc Search Plugin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11390
7. Modify Headers https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967

Feel free to add any other extension you think could be an invaluable tool in the day to day job.

Cheers,

Categories: General

How to change sudo cache timeout

May 19th, 2009 Ali Abbas No comments

For those who wishes to change the sudo cache timeout for a specific user, let’s userA

sudo visudo or (su – then visudo)

Defaults:userA timestamp_timeout=20

We have now set the sudo timeout “password-less” prompt to 20mn, to make it infinite set it to -1

If for some reasons you have it set it to 20 or -1 and wish to re-enable the password prompt, simple type sudo -K

** remember even after a reboot, the sudo cache would still persist if it is of course in its timeout grace time.

Have a look in /var/run/sudo/userA/ and it will all be clear :)

I hope that was informative :)

Categories: Unix / Linux

Learn the basics of DNS with RIPE

May 18th, 2009 Ali Abbas No comments

I just found out that RIPE published a small interactive free flash learning for all of those who whishes to learn DNS

here is the link https://e-learning.ripe.net/training/e-learning/dnssec.html

Have fun ;-)

Categories: Networking

How to get your atheros wifi drive to work under Centos/Linux and get that WPA working

May 18th, 2009 Ali Abbas No comments

Many times I have come across this thread on forums… many wondering how to get their wifi card (Atheros) to work under Linux (Centos) and then how to proceed to get WPA working… now here is the bundle you have been looking for.

1) Do you have an atheros card?

lspci |grep Atheros (should give you enough info)

2) Get the madiwifi tarball

Go there http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/ and download the latest tarball.

wget http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4016-20090429.tar.gz

3) Untar it

tar -zxf  madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4016-20090429.tar.gz

4) Compile it

(Note: yum install gcc gcc-cc make kernel-devel) is REQUIRED in case you do not have it yet installed

cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4016-20090429

make && make install

5) Load the modules

modprobe -r ath5k (AND edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add blacklist ath5k to the list)

modprobe ath_pci
modprobe wlan_scan_sta

[ to verify all went well ]

lsmod | grep ath

you should obtain a similar or  even more output as

ath_rate_sample
ath_pci
wlan
ath_hal

6) Reboot (in some cases)

I know we did load the module so why the reboot fuss? with some cards a reboot would still be required… so go ahead reboot the machine

7)  Configure the card

First, do an ifconfig ath0 up if the network service didn’t bring the card up

Second… do an iwconfig ath0 scan to look for ESSID

So let’s sump up

a. ifconfig ath0 up
b. iwconfig ath0 scan

So now you see your favorite wireless signal in the iwconfig output… it is using WPA, how do you connect?

8) Connect to a signal WPA protected

Let’s assume our signal ESSID (the name) is bobHouse

First we need the wpa_supplicant installed… so yum install wpa_supplicant

on the command line, type wpa_supplicant bobHouse y&NcDspHUIfReX-Y$/IH

(keep in mind y&NcDspHUIfReX-Y$/IH is our WPA key)

now, look into /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and you should see something like

network={
ssid=”bobHouse”
#psk=”y&NcDspHUIfReX-Y$/IH”
psk=1ce60475894155fd6dec38082e749ccd70a29ad0452214472e9784e2f966d
}

(Of course, you would have different values than the one showed here)

So now that this is verified…

type on the command line

/usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -i ath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -Bw

if needed, do an ifdown ath0 and an ifup ath0 to request a new dhcp ip.

and voila.

Have the ios_supplicant command saved in a bash script and get creative…

Cheers,

Categories: Redhat/Centos

How to install flash plugin for firefox on centos/redhat

May 16th, 2009 Ali Abbas No comments

Hello,

There are many ways to get flash working on firefox, but here is a quick, easy, clean way to do it.

1) Go to http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer

2) Download the tar.gz tarball

3) tar -zxf Flash_Player_10_for_Linux_.tar.gz

4) cd Flash_Player_10_for_Linux

5) Run the installer, when asked for the location of firefox, enter /usr/lib/mozilla…

If for some reasons you still experience problems… then manually copy the libflashplayer.so file which should be at the root of your untarred flash tarball to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

5) cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

6) Once copied, restart firefox (or open it) and voila! enjoy :)

Clean, easy, simple, fast and no hassle.

Cheers,

Categories: Redhat/Centos