My web wanderings

13 Aug 2004: “The first thing to know about SNMP is that it is a service that is structured such that an SNMP agent sitting on a target host can be queried by remote hosts for various bits of information. Only the target host (the one you want information about) needs to be running an SNMP daemon. The client making the queries just needs some tool capable of making SNMP queries and parsing the output. Most Linux server and client tools are supplied by the Net-SNMP project.
http://rootprompt.org/article.php3?article=7489

14 Aug 2004: This document will introduce OpenVPN as a free, secure and easy to use and configure SSLbased VPN solution. The document will present some simple (and verified) scenario’s that might be useful for preparing security/networking labs with students, for creating a remote access solution or as a new project for the interested home user.

This article discusses Network Access Quarantine Control with Windows Server 2003, which allows administrators to quarantine mobile users before giving them full network access, by first ensuring these machines are up-to-date according to a baseline security model.
…excerpt from: http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1794

Making the Jump to Subversion


11 Aug 2004: “If you haven’t checked out Subversion, you should. It’s a free, open source, powerful revision control system that was built to be a better CVS. It was created with clear design goals and built on top of robust, time-tested technologies. If you’ve been waiting for a better CVS and are ready to roll up your sleeves, skip directly to the Installing Subversion section of this article. However, instead, you may be saying, “But c’mon, I’m a busy programmer, this sounds like extra work to me.

Linux Web Filtering with DansGuardian and ClamAV


12 Aug 2004: A web filter is software that can filter the type of content a Web browser
displays. The filter checks the content of a Web page against a set of rules
and replaces any unwanted content with an alternative Web page, usually an “Access
Denied” page. The type of content to be filtered is usually controlled
by a systems administrator. Web filters are used in schools, libraries, homes,
and companies to safeguard personnel from obscene content on the Internet.

Reporting Services Tip #2

The easiest way to install Reporting Services is to have the Report Server and SQL Server on the same server.  It’s the easiest way, but it certainly is not the best.  IIS should not be installed on the database server for performance reasons.  Now this isn’t true for small systems, but I rarely work on small systems so this is a general rule for me.  Due to this rule, the Report Server must be installed on a different server as it relies on IIS.  And yes this way requires the Report Server to be licensed as well as SQL Server.

During the installation of the Report Server, you may receive the following error when SQL Server is not installed on the same server:

Login failed for user ‘NT AUTHORITYANONYMOUS LOGON’

This error occurs when the installation is trying to connect to the SQL Server to install the databases used by Reporting Services.  You might be wondering why it doesn’t just use the account that you specified in the installation wizard, but that account isn’t used for the installation but rather for Reporting Services when it is installed.  By default the credentials of the person logged into the server is what is used for installing the databases.  I’m not sure why I have received the error as my account has local admin privileges on the database server and sysadmin fixed server role in SQL Server.  For some reason, the credentials don’t get passed correctly as I see from SQL Profiler the NT AUTHORITYANONYMOUS account trying to log in.

To get around this error, you can specify a SQL account (readme file says you can use Windows account but I’ve only had success with a SQL account) instead.  You do this from the command line or by modifying template.ini file.  Here is the command line way:

setup /i “D:setuprsrun.msi“ RSSETUPACCOUNT=sa RSSETUPPASSWORD=sapwd

Change the path for rsrun.msi if needed. 

For the template.ini file way, there are two lines that will need to be changed:

There are two lines that will need to be changed in the template.ini file:

RSSETUPACCOUNT=sa
RSSETUPPASSWORD=sapwd

The template.ini file is located at the root of where you are installing Reporting Services from.  If you are running this from a CD, you might find it easier to use the command line way as you won’t be able to modify the file on the CD. 

I’ve specified the sa account in both ways.  It can be any account that has sysadmin privileges.

For Reporting Services service pack 1, you must do the command line way as there is no template.ini file:

sp1setup RSSETUPACCOUNT=sa RSSSETUPPASSWORD=sapwd

You can not pass these parameters to the self-extracting sp1 file (SQL2KRSSP1-ENG.EXE).  You must manually extract the files, then run the command line option. 

Post to WordPress 1.2 Mingus from FeedDemon

If you’re using WordPress 1.2 Mingus, here are updated instructions on how to post to it from FeedDemon (thanks, Mark!).