SSH and FIPS Mode Enabled

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The Secure Shell, more commonly referred to as ssh, is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Typical applications include remote command-line, login, and remote command execution, but any network service can be secured with SSH.  Over the years, a more typical solution is to create a key type of rsa, which is the...Read More »

CMMC FIPS Mode Enabled

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To gain CMMC compliance, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 operating system or any of it's variants must enable FIPS mode.  FIPS mode can be a difficult hurdle, where it doesn't have to be.  While researching a recent problem that was encountered on a FIPS enabled system, more questions than answered were raised.  As you progress through this article, you...Read More »

How to adapt the scap-security-guide for DISA CIS for CentOS8 Linux

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The scap-security-guide changes in format with each new guide.  CentOS 8 is not fully represented within the guide.  The XMLs provided differ in context, so the RHEL XML must be used to generate the report but requires a small patch to do so. The CUI Profile The ssg-rhel8-ds-1.2.xml contains the profile cui, while the one for ssg-centos8-ds-1.2.xml does not. [root@admin...Read More »

ceph: Prepare the environment

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The goal of this guide is to serve as a precursor to the installation of ceph nautilus on CentOS 7.  This process was completed on a virtual environment and has been reproduced several times before this writing.   Ceph is an open-source software storage platform that replicates data and makes it fault-tolerant. A good definition and intro to ceph may be...Read More »

How to install ceph nautilus with ceph-ansible

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There are so many articles on how to install ceph with ceph-ansible.  Sadly, as ceph versions change, so does the process for installation.  This distinction is rarely made within in the instructions and because of that, the install is doomed to fail and the installer disenfranchised. This article should provide the process needed to install on CentOS 7 ceph nautilus...Read More »

CentOS 8 (EOL 2021) Migration to CentOS 8 Stream

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It has been announced that CentOS 8 will be End Of Life in Q4, 2021.  It will be phased out in favor of the CentOS 8 Stream, which falls between the Fedora and RHEL distributions. Instead of CentOS builds after RHEL updates, the CentOS 8 will be the development track for RHEL.  With that in mind, there is a path...Read More »

CentOS 6 End Of Life Repositories

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CentOS 6 finally came to end of life (“EOL”) as of November 30, 2020.  A rude awaking if you haven’t been paying attention and attempt a yum update to be presented with an error message.  CentOS does maintain a vault. There is a CentOS-Vault.repo that exists for earlier versions of CentOS 6, but with a few modifications, you can still…

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macOS: Useful Commands

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The intent of this page is a quick reference of some interesting and useful commands.  The following commands had been tested against macOS versions 11.5.2+ . Serial Number ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | awk -F'"' '/IOPlatformSerialNumber/{print $4}' Model Number sysctl -n hw.model | cut -d "," -f 1 | tr -d '[0-9]_' Current logged On User ls -l /dev/console |...Read More »

Windows: Useful Commands

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The intent of this page is a quick reference of some interesting and useful PowerShell and other commands. dism Enable/disable telnet client through command line telnet isn't something that I use often, but when needed, here is the command.  After using telnet, it may be advisable to remove it.  Here are the two commands to add/remove telnet. dism /online /Enable-Feature...Read More »

NFL Pick ‘Em for 2020 Season Schedule

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I had written a little clever script for last season that was supposed to work for every season until the end of time. Well, those hopes were crushed when the NFL changed their links to something that I cannot identify.  The following script is a culmination of four hours work, many edits and minor scripts to search and replace. There...Read More »

iDRAC 7 and Java 8 Connection Failed Easy Work-a-round

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There is an older Dell PowerEdge ("PE") R720xd; it comes equipped with the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 7 ("iDRAC7") Enterprise. The iDRAC has recently been provided a network connection and upon any attempt at launching the console from the Virtual Console Preview, it quickly resulted in the Connection failed messages. This guide will demonstrate how to download and install...Read More »