StellarTech Blog

Dev Null Fsck Problems

Glen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:02:42 +0000

After upgrading a kernel on an older CentOS 3 box for a customer the server would no longer boot up. Instead I would get the following at the boot screen: /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit: line ###: /dev/null: Read-only file system The box would then drop into single user maintenance mode. When I tried to fsck the file system it would [...]

Roku Remote Update 1.5

Glen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:09:36 +0000

After posting about my initial script for controlling the Roku Digital Video Player, ProdigiousJuggalo and eri3k from the roku forums took up the torch and added some really nice functions and UI enhancements. Thanks guys! The screen shot to the left is the new interface. The latest version of the script can be downloaded by clicking [...]

Roku Remote Control Script

Glen — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:15:49 +0000

Hooray for necessity. My Roku digital video player remote controller stopped working yesterday. While it’s pretty cheap to replace I needed to find something I could use in the interim. Since the device will let you telnet to port 8080 and feed in remote commands, my first attempt was to use setup a few bash [...]

How to Sudo to Root with WinSCP

Glen — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:19:32 +0000

I’ve put together a quick video to show how to setup winscp so that you can log into a Linux server and change to the root user. This is the GUI equivelent of doing a ’sudo -s’, ’sudo su -’, or ’su -’ as a wheel user if you’ve setup your SSHD service to deny [...]

OpenVPN and McAfee Internet Security Suite

Glen — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:37:21 +0000

I recently had a problem setting up OpenVPN for a residential customer trying to connect to his office network. Everything looked great and should have been working without issue. The TAP adapter would grab the expected /30 bit subnet without issue, pushed settings were applied, and the VPN logs had nothing but good report. Unfortunately [...]

Detecting DoS Attacks on Windows

Glen — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:41:21 +0000

So you get the call from a client that their MS Windows server isn’t responding and it’s been randomly crashing as of late. If you are not seeing anything in eventvwr.msc your first instinct might be to grab a few sticks of RAM and a couple of diagnostic disks. Wait! Don’t forget to check for [...]

Securing Secure Shell

Glen — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 22:22:30 +0000

One of my favorite and most often used services is openSSH. While openSSH is generally known as being secure it never hurts to tweak a few extra settings. Here are a few changes I generally do to help ensure openSSH is in tip top shape. Use a strong password. My preference is to use randomly generated [...]

Problems Accessing Domain Shares via OpenVPN

Glen — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:04:34 +0000

Having intermittent problems hitting your favorite UNC path over openvpn? Does your Domain Controller turn it’s back on you randomly over the tunnel asking for authentication as if it no longer knows who you are? If you have been plagued by any of the above anomalies you are not alone! Unfortunately hair loss products, Viagra, those [...]

Snort Rules Not Updating

Glen — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:01:48 +0000

Recently I started to have issues with my snort rules not wanting to update and the snort service not wanting to stay running on my pfsense box. Taking a quick look at the forums I found several other with this problem and many different solutions the most prominent being to edit /etc/inc/system.inc. This fix seems [...]

cPanel Hosting on the Way.

Glen — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:28:40 +0000

We are proud to announce an expansion of our current hosting offering. In the past we have offered more of a managed approach to hosting with each site we develop free for a year which included a 12 hour support response turn around. In order to give clients more control over their development and hosting [...]