Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Feb 19, 2009
I recently came across and excellent application for Christian websites called RefTagger. This application finds bible verses and links them automatically to the translation of your choice providing a quick reference capability without manually building the links.
Unfortunately this application did not have an easy integration with Joomla, it required manually modifying the template and inserting the appropriate code (which can be a drag if you want to make changes). I wrote a module to take care of this and it's avaialble in the downloads section of the site.
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Mar 5, 2008
I've had various servers over the years running SSH but recently I've seen more and more brute force attacks from various locations around the world. I've recently been looking at modifying the hosts.deny file for the IP addresses that attempt more than 1,000 invalid connections per day however this shouldn't be a manual process in this day and age so I turned to the internet for an answer.
I came across this utility: DenyHosts (http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/). It looks pretty neat and the setup was relatively simple and pretty well documented. Various tests illustrate it works pretty well even if it has a bit of a lag prior to modifying the hosts.deny.
I'd recommend implementing a similar utility for anyone running a publically accessible SSH Service.
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Jan 5, 2008
This is a two part process. First check to see if the server supports TLS by doing the following:
- telnet mail.server.com 25
220 mail.server.com ESMTP PostFix - ehlo testing
250 mail.server.com
250-PIPELINING
250-SIZE 10240000
250-VRFY
250-ETRN
250-STARTTLS - quit
Once you have determined that starttls is a supported command do this:
openssl s_client -starttls smtp -crlf -connect mail.server.com:25
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Jan 4, 2008
I am currently working at a large retailer charged with creating a test process for all print drivers that will be used in there print environment. Rather than reinvent the wheel I checked out some great articles Microsoft had using AppVerifier. After setting up AppVerifier your expected to run tests, aka create your print queues, print content, and check out what happens. Unfort I didn't want to produce reams of content if I could aviod it.
The idea was to create what appeared to the windows server as a jetdirect that actually just tossed out the assembled bits. I used my linux box to create a print queue that wrote to /dev/null and modified xinetd to pass the jobs from port 9100 to the print queue. Walla, a virtual jetdirect without the mess.
- Created a queue writing to /dev/null
- Create a file /etc/xinetd.d/jetdirect
service jetdirect
{
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = lp
server = /usr/bin/lp
server_args = -d -o raw
groups = yes
disable = no
} - Service xinetd restart
- Test it out
Now windows thinks its printing to a valid jetdirect and I can do all my testing without wasting paper!
