Kelly's Tech Nexus

Recently I’ve been thinking about re-doing my file server. It’s been running Windows Server 2003 for about three years (a copy I got while going to college, so it’s legal, all activated properly) and while it’s been running very well, I can’t help but think there’s an Open Source or at least Not So Proprietary solution for me to use. There are three main ones I’ve been looking at: FreeNAS, based on FreeBSD (which I’m familiar with); Linux with the BTRFS file system (Fedora or Ubuntu Server), and Solaris, in the form of NexentaStor Community Edition. Of these, FreeNAS and Nexenta both use Oracles’ ZFS file system (used to belong to Sun Microsystems), which has several advantages over traditional file systems. FreeNAS is said to run well on consumer-grade PC hardware, while Nexenta, having an OpenSolaris base, generally needs better quality hardware for good results. Both FreeNAS and Nexenta use a web-based front-end for system configuration after the initial install. Fedora can be installed with a GUI up front, and Ubuntu Server can be outfitted with Webmin. I’m sort of shy to try FreeNAS’s ZFS implentation, mainly because I’ve heard that ZFS in FreeBSD can have problems with certain hardware combinations, and tuning it to work with consumer grade hardware can be tricky. I’m really wanting to try BTRFS on Linux, but while its development has come a long way in the past couple years, it still lacks a fsck (file system check) utility. Think of it as “chkdisk” for BTRFS. One would need this if the server lost power while writing data to the disk(s), to clean up any errors in the file system caused by a partial write. While BTRFS is looking more attractive from a hardware standpoint, I can’t help but think ZFS is a more mature file system since it’s been in development longer. What I might do is back up my data from one disk on my server, unplug the rest of the disks, install each different OS, and see how they run on my hardware. I’ll post back when I’ve either tried this and made a decision, or chickened out and stayed with Server 2003. And yeah, I know I haven’t posted in a while.

Update: Well, I’ve made my decision, and it wasn’t any of the options I was considering. I ended up going with Server 2000. I forgot I had a copy left over from my school days, at the same time I got Server 2003. I ran into some problems with the other server OS’es that I couldn’t resolve in a timely manner. First, I tried FreeNAS with ZFS. The best transfer speed I could get out of it was 5 – 6 Mb/sec. That’s roughly half what I was getting with Server 2003, and I never could figure out why. I never got to try Nexenta because it couldn’t see the Promise ATA controller card I use to control the extra hard drives in my server, so that one was dead in the water. I tried Ubuntu Server with the BTRFS file system, but it kept losing the CD-ROM part way through the install process, and the install would fail. I verified both the downloaded ISO file, and the disk I burned before starting the install process. After the fourth time of that, I was done. Then on a lark, I put in the Server 2000 disk and let it install, which took around 30 minutes. I had almost forgotten how refreshingly spartan Windows 2000 was/is, and I set to work setting up the RAID array and shares, and set the permissions on them. It seems to boot faster than the Server 2003 install did, and it definitely consumes fewer resources. I can still access the server remotely with MSTSC, since I run the thing headless. After a trip to Windows Update for the latest goodies from MS, it seems to be running very well. Overall I’m happy with my desision. In a year or so I may revisit Ubuntu Server and I would like to try Fedora as well; I’ve heard it makes a great server OS. Well, till next time, take care.

Good words from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. Full article at the link after this citation.

Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend. The Web is also vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium. It brings principles established in the U.S. Constitution, the British Magna Carta and other important documents into the network age: freedom from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected.

via Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality: Scientific American.

According to the New York Times, the Obama Administration is drafting legislation that would require  a “backdoor” entryway into all communications systems, and one would have to be written into all cryptographic and “peer to peer” software like Skype. This would enable said government entities unfettered access to pretty much anything we do online, on our cell phones, or anything that is transmitted over commercial communication media, all under the guise of prosecuting criminal activity. Even if it was transmitted using a “secure” connection. Sorry, when one can’t trust the integrity of an encrypted communication due to this backdoor, even the best encryption is rendered useless. Look, the U.S. has enough trouble securing its networks the way they are now! And then to add a new built-in “backdoor”? Our government hasn’t shown any particular aptitude for security. The Chinese have been known to download gigabytes of data months or years before the breach was even discovered. If our government has the ability to eavesdrop, that could and probably would be hijacked by foreign countries to gain intelligence on us, just like what happened to Google a few months back.

Edit: More proof of this possibility from this story here. Specifically:

Among traffic rerouted via China during the 18 minutes was that destined for the websites of the US Senate, the Office of the Secretary of Defence, Nasa and the Commerce Department, the report said.

The one possible exception to this would be data gathered from Facebook; there’s not much intelligence going on there. One would hope the American people stand up and assert themselves on this one. Isn’t it enough we (via the government) just handed trillions of dollars to the crooks on Wall Street? And now this. More from the Electronic Frontier Foundation here.

Anybody who has used Windows for very long has probably heard the terms “fragmentation” and “defragmentation”. I won’t go into what these are, as I’ve written another blog post explaining it. I’ve tried literally dozens of defragmenters over the years, both free and paid (free trials) in search of “the one”, and have found most of the free versions lacking in some way or another. Continue reading »

According to anti-virus software vendor AVG, web sites are now actively exploiting the Java vulnerability Web Start disclosed at the end of last week, to infect Windows PCs. These include the popular songlyrics.com platform, from which users can download lyrics for the latest hits. The web site appears to have been hacked by criminals who have embedded a program to download malicious code from a Russian web server.

The vulnerability is the result of insufficient filtering of URLs, allowing them to be used to pass arguments to Java Web Start, which in turn can be used to launch local applications. Web Start can be exploited to download and run malicious code from the web. The vulnerability is not a problem in Windows alone – Unix is also affected although Java for Mac OS X is apparently not affected.

via Java vulnerability – when lyric sites attack – Update – The H Security: News and Features.

Up to 88% of Fortune 500 companies may have been affected by the Zeus trojan, according to research by RSA’s FraudAction Anti-Trojan division, part of EMC. The trojan installs keystroke loggers to steal login credentials to banking, social networking, and e-mail accounts.

via Almost all Fortune 500 companies show Zeus botnet activity.