Summaries
Ondoy is now out, but the damage has been done.
Please send your help to those who need them to Philippine National Red Cross (I suggest to send the donations via text):
Monetary Donations
1. CASH or CHECK
Please send cash or check donations to the PNRC National Headquarters in Manila. Checks should be made payable to The Philippine National Red Cross. We can also arrange for donation pick-up.
2. BANK DEPOSIT
Account Name: The Phil. Nat’l. Red Cross
METROBANK
Port Area Branch
Peso Acct.: 151-3-041-63122-8
Dollar Acct.: 151-2-151-00218-2
Type of Acct. : SAVINGS
Swift Code: MBTC PH MM
BANK OF THE PHIL. ISLANDS
Port Area Branch
Peso Acct.: 4991-0010-99
Type of Account: CURRENT
BANK OF THE PHIL. ISLANDS
UN Branch
Dollar Acct.: 8114-0030-94
Type of Account: SAVINGS
Swift Code: BOPI PH MM
For your donations to be properly acknowledged, please fax the bank transaction slip at nos. +63.2.527.0575 or +63.2.404.0979 with your name, address and contact number.
Credit Card
Please fax the following info to +632.404.09.79 and +632.527.0575:
Name of card member, billing address, contact nos. (phone & mobile), credit card no., expiration date, CCV2/ CVC2 (last three digits at the back of the credit card), billing address, amount to be donated.
For online donations you may also visit our website at www.redcross.org.ph
In-Kind Donations
LOCAL
Please send in-kind local donations to The Philippine National Red Cross – National Headquarters in Manila. We could also arrange for donation pick-up.
INTERNATIONAL
1. Send a letter of intent to donate to the PNRC
2. A letter of acceptance from PNRC shall be sent back to the donor
3. Immediately after shipping the goods, please send the (a) original Deed of Donation, (b) copy of packing list and (c) original Airway Bill for air shipments or Bill of Lading for sea shipments to The Philippine National Red Cross–National Headquarters c/o Secretary General Corazon Alma de Leon, Bonifacio Drive, Port Area, Manila 2803, Philippines.
The PNRC does not accept rotten, damaged, expired or decayed goods. Though we appreciate your generosity, the PNRC also discourages donations of old clothes as we have more than enough to go around.
SMS and G-CASH (Globe)
SMS
text REDAMOUNT to 2899 (Globe) or 4483 (Smart)
G-CASH
text DONATEAMOUNT4-digit M-PINREDCROSS to 2882
Most urgent needs
Food items: Rice, noodles, canned goods, sugar, iodized salt, cooking oil, monggo beans and potable water
Medicines: Paracetamol, antibiotics, analgesic, oral rehydration salts, multivitamins and medications to treat diarrheal diseases
Non-food items: Bath soaps, face towels, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, plastic mats, blankets, mosquito nets, jerry cans, water containers, water purification tablets, plastic sheetings, and Laundry soap
Rehabilitation Programs: Shelter materials for house repair
Call Hotline 143 or 527.0000
THE PHILIPPINE NATIONAL RED CROSS
NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
Bonifacio Drive, Port Area,
Manila 2803, Philippines
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So,how do you, as a Linux System Administrator, force system users to change their passwords at first or next login? Very simple:
Using chage command:
If the password is already set, execute this command to expire the user account:
chage -d 0 user1
On the user’s next login, password change will be enforced.
Very simple.
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You may have read my previous post regarding the kernel bug 516949 (CVE-2009-2692), but that is just a workaround to secure your servers until the updated kernel versions are released. The following are the kernel versions that contain the fix for the mentioned kernel bug.
Red Hat Enterprise:
Red Hat Enterprise 3 – Kernel version: kernel-2.4.21-60.EL
Red Hat Enterprise 4 – Kernel version: kernel-2.6.9-89.0.9.EL
Red Hat Enterprise 5 – Kernel version: kernel-2.6.18-128.7.1.el5
Fedora:
Fedora 11 – Kernel version: kernel-2.6.29.6-217.2.7.fc11
Fedora 10 – Kernel version: kernel-2.6.27.29-170.2.79.fc10
I will gather more information for Ubuntu Kernel packages.
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Release Found: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, 5, and Red Hat Enterprise MRG.
Problem
The flaw identified by CVE-2009-2692 (Red Hat Bugzilla bug 516949) describes an issue in the SOCKOPS_WRAP macro in the Linux kernel, versions 2.4.4 and later, and 2.6.0 and later. This macro did not initialize the sendpage operation in the proto_ops structure correctly. This flaw was addressed via the upstream git commits c18d0fe5 for the 2.4 kernel, and e6949583 for the 2.6 kernel. On systems without these patches, this flaw can lead to a local denial of service or privilege escalation.
This issue has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.
Mitigation
Future updates will address this flaw for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, 5, and Red Hat Enterprise MRG. Until these updates are released, it is possible to reduce the risk and mitigate this flaw by blacklisting the kernel modules of the affected protocols.
The mitigation steps outlined below will not work if the modules are already loaded. If the modules are loaded and cannot be removed, for example, via “modprobe -r”, a reboot will be required before the changes take effect.
The “install” command is used to direct the system to run the “/bin/true” command instead of inserting the modules if they are called:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
Add the following entry to the end of the /etc/modules.conf file:
install bluez /bin/true
Note: the kernel-unsupported package provides the bluez module. This module is not available if you do not have kernel-unsupported installed.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5
Add the following entries to the end of the /etc/modprobe.conf file:
install pppox /bin/true
install bluetooth /bin/true
install sctp /bin/true
The sctp module cannot be unloaded from a running kernel if the module is already loaded; therefore, the above changes for /etc/modprobe.conf on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 require a reboot to take effect.
Red Hat Enterprise MRG
Add the following entries to the end of the /etc/modprobe.conf file:
install pppox /bin/true
install bluetooth /bin/true
install appletalk /bin/true
install ipx /bin/true
install sctp /bin/true
The modules listed above are not exhaustive, but should prevent the publicly-circulated exploit for this issue from working correctly, as this is the list of protocols (relevant to Red Hat Enterprise Linux) known to be affected.
More information can be found here.
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From time to time, we perform remote actions on the servers that we manage, including, but not limited to, automated file transfers. For this, rsync is used to simplify the operation and until recently, I encountered this weird error:
sudo: sorry, you must have a tty to run sudo
But where on this bloody earth did that error came from? All was going well until a new server was added to the pool of money-making machines and powerful enough to throw me off guard. This can’t be happening! I own these machines, I built them from scratch and configured them exactly the way I built the other servers! I could not be any wrong-er, the server must be leading an uprising against me!
Okay, that was an exaggeration (or paranoia). But it is true that the server has the same configuration as the rest. Except for one little line of default configuration:
Defaults requiretty
Comment out this line in visudo (must be root to edit) and everything should checkout.
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It’s been months since I paid the attention my blog deserves. Well, what do you know, I finally found the guts to upgrade my blog. So to make long story short, I upgraded to Wordpress 2.8.4, installed a beautiful new theme and voila! A fresh-looking blog.
The only thing missing is the logo at the header, which I will take care of in the morning. But for now, the goddess who created this beautiful blog needs to get her beauty sleep.
Ciao!
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Okay, this is totally random but really cool. I found out that you can write posts or comments with the letters upside down! The inverted text is created by the cool JavaScript found in SevenWires.com.
˙ɯoɔ˙sǝɹıʍuǝʌǝs uı punoɟ ʇdıɹɔsɐʌɐɾ ןooɔ ǝɥʇ ʎq pǝʇɐǝɹɔ sı ʇxǝʇ pǝʇɹǝʌuı ǝɥʇ ¡uʍop ǝpısdn sɹǝʇʇǝן ǝɥʇ ɥʇıʍ sʇuǝɯɯoɔ ɹo sʇsod ǝʇıɹʍ uɐɔ noʎ ʇɐɥʇ ʇno punoɟ ı ˙ןooɔ ʎןןɐǝɹ ʇnq ɯopuɐɹ ʎןןɐʇoʇ sı sıɥʇ ‘ʎɐʞo
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I recently tried installing xdebug on a RHEL 4 machine, and somehow, the server decided that it should refuse having xdebug installed. As if running a heavy Java app is not enough, I decided to add more processes for the server to run. And it looks like the server has got me:
[root@server src]# pecl install xdebug
downloading xdebug-2.0.5.tgz ...
Starting to download xdebug-2.0.5.tgz (287,621 bytes)
.............done: 287,621 bytes
12 source files, building
running: phpize
Configuring for:
PHP Api Version: 20041225
Zend Module Api No: 20060613
Zend Extension Api No: 220060519
/usr/local/bin/phpize: /tmp/pear/temp/xdebug/build/shtool: /bin/sh: bad interpreter: Permission denied
So, like I always do, I tackle the problem with my handy tool: Google. I found out that this error occurs when /tmp is mounted as read-only (ro). You can check this by looking at the /etc/fstab file and check the /tmp partition.
Okay, now I know what the problem is. How do I get over this?
Lazy that I am, I moved the /tmp/pear directory, and create a symlink to the root directory.
[root@server src]# mv /tmp/pear /tmp/pear-ori
[root@server src]# mkdir /root
[root@server src]# ln -s /tmp/pear /root/tmp/pear
Now that the directory from where the PECL scripts are running is in /root, the installation should go smoothly.
Another way to go around this is to remount the /tmp:
[root@server src]# mount -oremount,exec /tmp
I have not tried the above command because I thought that creating symlink is a safer approach rather than messing with the mounts.
If there are other ways to fix this, let me know using the comment box below.
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So I needed my hard-earned Paypal money so I decided to withdraw it to my bank account. Lo and behold! When I logged, it says that my account access is currently limited. I checked my emails and there is one message from Paypal saying that it looks like someone is trying to access my account without my knowledge and so they thought that the best way to secure my account is by limiting access to it. Great.
Here is the message from Paypal:
PayPal is constantly working to ensure security by regularly screening the accounts in our system. We recently reviewed your account, and we need more information to help us provide you with secure service. Until we can collect this information, your access to sensitive account features will be limited. We would like to restore your access as soon as possible, and we apologize for the inconvenience.
Why is my account access limited?
Your account access has been limited for the following reason(s):
# Aug. 10, 2009: We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third party. We have limited access to sensitive PayPal account features in case your account has been accessed by an unauthorized third party. We understand that having limited access can be an inconvenience, but protecting your account is our primary concern.
I Googled around and found that there are those who were unable to get their accounts back, money and all. Argh!!! I am hoping that their cases were different from mine, because I have a reasonable amount of credits in my Paypal account and it will be such a pain if I were to lose all that moolah.
To those who have similar experiences, here are the things that Paypal will ask you to do to get your account out of the limited status:
1. Change your Password.
2. Change you secret questions.
3. Verify your location/address.
The third one is the hardest since you either have to submit a scanned copy of any document that can prove your address (Bank/Credit card statements, Photo ID’s, etc.). This, or verify your bank account, which I do not know how to do. Or you can choose to verify your location (unfortunately this one is unavailable for me).
I managed to finish the first two requirements but the last is still waiting for authorization from Paypal. I never thought that I will encounter this horror but here I am. Hoping for the best.
Updates: Paypal has lifted the limits on my account and now I am able to send payments. It looks like that the document I sent, which was my credit card statement, was enough proof of my address.
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July 31, 2009 (Last Friday Of July)
10th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day
A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.
A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. All to make sure the webpage found its way from the server to your computer.
A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out.
A sysadmin worries about spam, viruses, spyware, but also power outages, fires and floods.
When the email server goes down at 2 AM on a Sunday, your sysadmin is paged, wakes up, and goes to work.
A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work — to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.
So if you can read this, thank your sysadmin — and know he or she is only one of dozens or possibly hundreds whose work brings you the email from your aunt on the West Coast, the instant message from your son at college, the free phone call from the friend in Australia, and this webpage.
Show your appreciation
Friday, July 31, 2009, is the 10th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. On this special international day, give your System Administrator something that shows that you truly appreciate their hard work and dedication. (All day Friday, 24 hours, your local timezone).
Let’s face it, System Administrators get no respect 364 days a year. This is the day that all fellow System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work. But seriously, we are asking for a nice token gift and some public acknowledgement. It’s the least you could do.
Consider all the daunting tasks and long hours (weekends too.) Let’s be honest, sometimes we don’t know our System Administrators as well as they know us. Remember this is one day to recognize your System Administrator for their workplace contributions and to promote professional excellence. Thank them for all the things they do for you and your business.
We are overworked and most of the time, underpaid. Our only drive is our passion. Cheers to all System Administrators all over the world!
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Here is one of the classic Filipino commercials I found on my Facebook wall. May underarm odor si Fe! Veto Deodorant with AS-7.
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