Tag Archive for ‘programming’ at T. Longren

Tag Archive for 'programming'

MySQL Cheatsheet By Example

Published

on December 24, 2007

in Internet, Linux, Open Source and Personal

. 2 Comments Tags: coding, data, databases, dba, mysql, programming, sql.

Tech-Evangelist has put together an excellent cheatsheet for MySQL. There’s lots of other MySQL cheatsheets out there, but this one is unique in the fact that it gives examples of usage rather than just snippets of code.

This cheatsheet also includes a summary of commonly used MySQL data types, which will be really helpful to me. I can’t tell you how many times in a week I hit the MySQL website looking for specs on a certain data type.

If you think this cheatsheet would be useful to you, head on over to Tech-Evangelist to download the PDF.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Digg Integrator Plugin Fix

Published

Tyler

on September 23, 2006

in Internet, Noteworthy, PHP, Personal and WordPress

. 3 Comments Tags: blog, blogging, code, coding, digg, PHP, plugin, programming, scripting, WordPress, wordpress-plugins.

The Digg Integrator plugin v1.1 for WordPress hasn’t been working correctly. The author, WildBil, has been working on a fix for the last week or so. I got tired of waiting for a fix lastnight and took it upon myself to create one.

In addition to the referring Digg URL not being detected, I think there’s also a problem when submitting a site to Digg that has a “Preferred Digg Topic” set. The preferred topic is never sent along to Digg because the variable containing the preferred topic isn’t being called correctly in diggIntegrator.php.

All of the fixes I mention here are to be made within the wjt_diggThisPost function inside diggIntegrator.php. That function starts on line 225.

Now, moving on. The problem with the referring digg URL not being captured is extremely simple, I think. The function that captures the referring digg URL is simply not being called correctly. Basically, it’s not being run when it needs to. Look at line 278 in diggIntegrator.php:
Continue reading ‘Digg Integrator Plugin Fix’

Popularity: 6% [?]

Widgetbox In Public Beta

Published

Tyler

on August 30, 2006

in Internet and Personal

. 0 Comments Tags: ajax, beta, blogging, programming, software, tools, web-2.0, widgetbox, widgets.

This Widgetbox service looks very promising. It’s an online directory of web widgets for blogs or other web sites. Similar to Apple and Yahoo Widgets, except these are for the web.

Widgetbox also has a section where developers can submit their own widgets for others to download and use. They also have a feature that allows you to quickly manage widgets you’ve already installed.

Widgetbox is currently free and will probably always be. As the service matures, they’re likely to add more features that will be available only after paying a fee for that feature. It’s a really neat service, one that looks like it will definitely become more popular as word gets out.

[via Ajaxian]

Popularity: 5% [?]

The FEDERATED MySQL Storage Engine

Published

Tyler

on August 24, 2006

in Internet, Linux, Noteworthy and Personal

. 6 Comments Tags: coding, data, databases, dba, development, mysql, programming, sql, storage.

The FEDERATED MySQL storage engine is the coolest thing EVER! Seriously. It’s already saved me from having to do a whole bunch of synchronization coding. I can only imagine how it’ll come in useful in the future.

So, here’s my situation. I have two mysql servers sitting behind a firewall at “location 1″. People at “location 2″ need to write some software to connect to both mysql servers at location 1. However, MyODBC gets confused when connecting to the same hostname on two different tcp ports, or so I’m told.

Anyway, since I was basically told that there’s no way to connect to two seperate mysql servers behind one firewall, I got to thinking. So, I set off searching google for method for mirroring data in MySQL and came across the FEDERATED storage engine.

Now, the servers at location 1 are on a VPN with the network at location 3, my location. So, my network (at location 3) can see the network at location 1 without the firewall getting in the way. Since that’s the case here, I can connect to the default mysql port, 3306, on both servers because I can see their LAN IP, where the people at location 2 can’t (no VPN).

So, we’ve got the network flow figured out, now we can go about getting the FEDERATED storage engine in MySQL working. First, you’ll need MySQL 5.x. I chose MySQL 5.0.24 as it’s the latest stable 5.x release.

To enable the FEDERATED storage engine in mysql 5, you must pass the –with-federated-storage-engine option when running configure. That’s pretty much all that’s required to start using the FEDERATED storage engine. Most linux distributions probably have a mysql 5 package that comes with the FEDERATED engine on already, although Slackware does not currently. Continue reading ‘The FEDERATED MySQL Storage Engine’

Popularity: 7% [?]

More SSH Brute Force Protection

Published

Tyler

on August 23, 2006

in Internet, Linux, Noteworthy, Personal and Security

. 2 Comments Tags: breakinguard, code, coding, denyhosts, hacking, help, how-to, howto, Linux, Open Source, programming, Security, ssh.fail2ban.

Stopping SSH Brute Force Attacks resulted in some really great comments and suggestions from readers.

So, this is a follow up to the last SSH brute force post. I didn’t realize there was such a wide selection of applications for dealing with this, but there is! The two best looking options in my opinion are Fail2ban and DenyHosts.

I’ve actually started using DenyHosts on two machines now, and it’s working very well. I chose to go with DenyHosts for a very simple reason. Community stats. I love stats.

Anyway, if you’re looking for something to protect against ssh brute force attacks, go with Fail2ban or DenyHosts, they’re still being actively developed. I can’t say the same for Breakinguard, as it appears to have been abandoned about 1 year ago. And like I said, DenyHosts does it’s job extremely well, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

If you’re looking for another solution, try using cryptographic keys instead of passwords. A tutorial on configuring SSH to look for keys instead of passwords can be found here. This was suggested by commenter pwyll.

Oh, and this is the 700th post. yay!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Stopping SSH Brute Force Attacks

Published

Tyler

on August 21, 2006

in Internet, Linux, Noteworthy, Personal and Security

. 11 Comments Tags: breakinguard, code, coding, hacking, help, how-to, howto, Linux, Open Source, programming, Security, ssh.

A few weeks ago at work, I noticed a bunch of failed login attempts to one of our Linux servers. After doing some investigation, I found that no intrusion had actually been made, which is excellent. Lines similar to this were filling my /var/log/messages log file:

Aug 20 23:31:26 elixer sshd[22526]: Failed password for invalid user alias from 66.166.22.186 port 26217 ssh2

Notice they’re trying to login with the username “alias”, which doesn’t exist on that system. In fact, all the usernames attempted don’t exist, which makes me feel a little safer. Still, I don’t like seeing my boxes actively attacked. So, to stay on top of these breakin attempts, I installed Breakinguard.

Breakinguard basically watches your log file for any failed login attempts. You can set a pre-defined number of attempts that can be executed before breakinguard will block the IP.

The Package itself does a ‘tail -f’ of your syslog, and when it identifies a matching line within your logs, it logs this ‘attempt’. If more than the pre-defined number of attempts from the same IP address are received it triggers the iptables (or any other block method defined) block and also emails you notification.

I’ve never been able to get the configure script to work for me, simply because the perl module installation always fails. So, to get around that I simply installed these perl modules manually and commented out these lines in the configure script:

$PERL -MCPAN -e "install File::Tail"
$PERL -MCPAN -e "install IO::Socket"

Those two lines execute perl and try to install the File::Tail module and the IO::Socket module. After manually installing the perl modules below and commenting out the lines above in the configure script, the configure script should run and do it’s thing without error.

File::Tail
IO::Socket

After the configuration script has run, you should have a couple new files, /etc/breakinguard.conf and /etc/rc.d/breakinguard. Now, the /etc/breakinguard.conf file stores the breakinguard configuration. This is where you tell breakinguard which log file to monitor and how many incorrect login attempts are defined as a breakin.

I’m not going to bother going through all the options in breakinguard.conf, simply because they’re all explained pretty well within the conf file.

The other “new file”, /etc/rc.d/breakinguard is the script used to launch breakinguard. Run “/etc/rc.d/breakinguard start” to start breakinguard.

Once breakinguard is running, it will monitor whichever log file you specified in /etc/breakinguard.conf (/var/log/messages in my case). When it sees a failed login attempt, it will be noted. Now, when an IP fails a certain number of logins, iptables will be called to block all traffic from the IP.

Below is an example email that’s generated by Breakinguard when it blocks an IP:

BreakinGuard has blocked an IP based on suspicious activity
Please review this server.

Detail:
Hostname: elixer.hostname
IP Blocked: 202.82.16.180
Last log entry that caused the block:
Aug 22 06:17:05 elixer sshd[25591]: Failed password for invalid user alias from 202.82.16.180 port 45340 ssh2

Popularity: 7% [?]