Deven Phillips - Über-geek

Book Review - Pro Puppet

2011-07-14T23:14:00.000-04:00

Recently, I was contacted by Apress and asked to read and review their new book, "Pro Puppet". Seeing as how I had been working my way through understanding puppet for my new job, I was quite excited to check out yet another resource. I'll try to be fair in this review, but sometimes your first love will always have a special place in your heart. And without further ado, in all of it's glory, my

Introduction To Java Persistence

2011-03-04T20:44:00.001-05:00

This is the blog representation of the presentation I gave at CodepaLOUsa in March of 2011. The presentation included some basic introduction and history and some code examples which are shown below. The Long Road To JPA Java has long had database capabilities. We started with JDBC, which is excellent for working directly with the database. A nice thing to have if you are DBA; but as

The Trials And Tribulations Of Windows Terminal Servers (Part 2)

2010-11-18T09:45:00.000-05:00

In the first segment I wrote on Terminal Services I discussed Terminal Services roaming profiles, their difficulties and some best practices. In this article I want to cover the various performance improvements you can make on your network to improve the overall responsiveness of terminal services. Be aware that while most of these are from well tested documents, making changes to the Windows

The Trials And Tribulations Of Windows Terminal Servers (Part 1)

2010-10-26T09:56:00.001-04:00

My employer made the decision to move to thin client computing several years ago, and I wanted to share with people some of the lessons learned and best practices for using Windows Terminal Services. In addition, I want to let people know what will not work (as best I can tell). I've experienced a lot of frustrations, but as we have overcome problems we have documented and studied. Without

Alive And Kicking . . .

2010-10-26T09:49:00.003-04:00

I would first like to apologize for neglecting this blog for so long. There are literally hundreds of comments I never even knew about on the site and I never responded because I have my notification settings wrong... Mea culpa!! Anyhow, going forward this site should be updated more often as I have a new position which allows me the freedom to post on a regular basis. I promise that I will be

How To Burn In A Server Under Linux

2009-09-03T07:49:00.003-04:00

From time to time we all need to install new hardware. The problem is, how can you be sure that all of the components of your server are working well before you put it into production? For other operating systems there are diagnostic tools which allow you to run burn-in tests to exercise your hardware before going to productions. This article will show you how to do a similar process on

My Latest JavaScript And AJAX Project

2009-06-12T23:27:00.004-04:00

I just finished a new site for Lacy Phillips Designs. It's a combination of Java, JSP and JavaScript. I also wrote an administration interface in ZK, but that's off limits. Go and check it out!!

Why Administrators Should Also Program And Programmers Should Learn Systems

2009-06-09T20:57:00.005-04:00

I have been working in I.T. for almost 17 years now. From my first programming job in 1993 through CTO positions years later, I have come to one conclusion. Programming and systems administration are not mutually exclusive. Either one can be enhanced by the other. Regardless if you use Windows or Linux, C or PERL; programming is enhanced by systems knowledge and systems administration is

Linux Logical Volume Manager Primer

2009-05-04T19:35:00.006-04:00

So, you're getting full up on disk space? Need to add more room? Want to do all of that without having to reformat, repartition, backup, and restore? Then LVM is the answer you seek!LVM, short for Logical Volume Manager, is a filesystem technology which was first invented many years ago and has been present in HP-UX, Solaris, Veritas Storage Foundation, and to a certain extent in Windows for some

Developing Liferay Portlets With ZK

2009-04-09T16:07:00.013-04:00

I have written here before about ZK, the AJAX library for Java. One of my job requirements recently has been to find an alternative to our in-house developed Intranet, which is long since unmaintainable because of lack of documentation and employee turnover. My solution? Liferay Portal Server. Liferay Portlets are simple enough to develop using traditional Java servlet methodologies, but when

ASSP & Greylisting, The ultimate SPAM solution?

2009-04-08T20:51:00.004-04:00

SPAM, UCE, Junk mail; whatever you call it, we all hate it. For many years now I have tried various methods to filter spam. Some have worked better than others, but last year I ran across a system that works better than any other I have ever tried. Various technologies have been developed to block junk e-mail: Bayesian scoring, whitelisting, blacklisting, redlisting. All of these features

Solaris Still Not User Friendly

2009-03-29T13:02:00.004-04:00

So this week I got a new Solaris server into our datacenter. I wanted to set it up to replace our ageing web application server which runs PostgreSQL, MySQL, Tomcat 5.5, and Apache 2. It's been a few years since I administered a Solaris box, but figured that I was up to the task. Boy! Was I wrong. First off, Solaris is nothing like the Linux that I have grown so spoiled by. There's no

Excel Reports Using PHP And Web Query

2008-12-16T16:01:00.018-05:00

Ever have times when you want to present data to people around your company in a spreadsheet, but you want the data to come from a live database? When you have tried to accomplish that, have you ever run into problems of getting database drivers and ODBC settings deployed to end users? If you have ever had either of these problems, then this article is for you. Getting live data into Excel

The Wonderful Joys Of SCREEN

2008-11-09T17:56:00.014-05:00

Ever logged on via SSH to a machine and started a long running process and then realize that you need to shutdown your laptop and take it with you? Ever accidentally get disconnected from an SSH session and lose hours of work? Ever started a command that's going to take longer than you expected and you want to do some other things while you're waiting? If you have, then you need to learn the

Symantec Endpoint Protection

2008-11-04T10:05:00.009-05:00

For a long time now, I have been a big fan of Symantec's Client Security product because of the nice management features contained therein. One of the things I really was missing was a way to manage the show from my Linux desktop. So, I was very excited to see that Symantec had moved to a Java based server and client for the new Endpoint Protection 11.0. Eagerly I loaded up the Web Start

First Steps With ZK - AJAX For Java

2008-10-22T22:46:00.009-04:00

ZK, a fairly cool name for what I feel is a pretty cool AJAX framework. Having done AJAX development for a few years now, I have yet to find an AJAX framework that I liked/found usable . . . until now. Is it that great? Well, for me it was almost exactly what I was looking for, but it also has it's caveats. In this article I intend to share some of the lessons learned and finish up with an

3G Connections With Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex

2008-10-12T13:22:00.014-04:00

Discussion So, in previous posts, I have discussed how to use Bluetooth and Personal Area Networking (PAN) to connect your Ubuntu computer to a Windows Mobile SmartPhone for Internet access. That was one way to get Internet access while on the go, but with the imminent release of Ubuntu's Interpid Ibex (8.10) there is supposed to be better support for 3G Internet connections. I decided today

Migrating Large XWiki Archives

2008-09-01T20:47:00.010-04:00

I'm not sure how many of you use XWiki, but at our company, we use it extensively as our knowledge base for IT information. Lately, our XWiki export backups are topping 100+ megabytes. Well, not too surprising. The real problem you run into is that when you try to load one of those exported archives, the Java virtual machine will almost invariably experience out of memory errors. This is a

The Falacies Of Information Security Practice

2008-08-25T08:55:00.010-04:00

In information security, there is growing trend toward the belief that network security is the only game in town. Several articles that I have read recently have lead me to believe that most professionals in the field have lost sight of the full picture. Their myopic views are highlighted by the fact that they focus only on computers, software, and networks while bypassing all other aspects

Completing Large Software Projects

2008-08-18T07:51:00.006-04:00

Recently I started working on a large Java/AJAX application on my own time. For several weeks I plodded away and ended up getting so frustrated at the lack of progress I was making. I was about to can the project and move on when I saw THIS article on LifeHacker. Here's what I took away from the discussion:Never set out to write a large application in it's entirety.The first goal should be to

Finding Dormant E-Mail Accounts In Courier

2008-07-31T13:50:00.012-04:00

I recently needed to determine if there were inactive/dormant e-mail accounts on my Postfix/Courier mail server. We use virtual accounts in a database, and it does not keep track of last login time for the users, but through a bit of creativity I came up with a way to determine how long it has been since the last login. Courier uses several files in the "Maildir" folder for the user, and

A Cross-Browser Compatible Replacement For getElementById()

2008-07-28T21:19:00.004-04:00

I have had problems many times writing JavaScript which is compatible across the major web browsers. Now, with AJAX and JSON becoming commonplace, this problem is come across even more often. So, how do you solve it? Well, I created a JavaScript function which works in place of getElementById() and I call it getObj(). The getObj() function basically uses Internet Explorer compatible code AND

Emulating LIMIT and OFFSET on DB2 for the System i (AS400/iSeries)

2008-07-17T15:11:00.006-04:00

For some time now, I have been spoiled by being able to use the database of my choice for every project I worked on. Recently though, I have had to venture out of my comfort zone and I have found myself longing for my familiar stomping grounds of PostgreSQL and MySQL. One prime example was trying to do pagination on a DB2 database engine. In PostgreSQL, I would merely do the following:SELECT

Installing Backup Exec Remote Agent for Linux/UNIX Systems on Ubuntu

2008-02-15T06:14:00.008-05:00

Backup Exec does not have native packages for Debian based systems like Ubuntu, but with just a few extra commands, the RPM packages provided by Symantec work just fine.Read on for the quick and dirty:1. Log in to your Ubuntu system and transfer the VRTSralus-.rpm and VRTSvxmsa-.rpm files to your home folder.2. Install 'alien' from your apt repository (i.e. sudo aptitude install

Leveraging Active Directory With Squid Proxy

2008-02-09T14:39:00.002-05:00

Many of us work in mixed environments of Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc... In these cases, our limiting factor is usually what the Microsoft products can handle. One such problem I recently had was filtering Internet content for my Windows users. What I wanted was to be able to provide full Internet access to most of my users, but filter traffic for those who are members of a certain group. The

Using NVBase For Unified Search

2007-12-25T11:28:00.000-05:00

Many of you have seen those shiny and cool Google search appliances which can index every aspect of your internal network, but did you know that you can get the same features from a piece of Open Source software called NVBase? NVBase is an application written in Java and using various libraries like jCIFS, Lucene, and JNDI to provide a complete enterprise search engine for your business. In this

Using Your Smartphone For Internet Access Under Ubuntu

2007-12-23T11:46:00.001-05:00

You know those smart-phones with Internet access? Ever wondered how you can connect them to your Ubuntu system and use them for Internet access while out and about? Well, here's my quick start guide to accomplish just that.This tutorial assumes that you already have a working installation of Ubuntu Linux (Gusty Gibbon 7.10). You must also have a working bluetooth adapter connected to your Ubuntu