bamed.org » Open Source

Updated Resume

admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:18:33 +0000

In case anyone out there is interested, I’ve updated my resume to include recently obtained degrees and certifications. Specifically, a couple of months ago I managed to obtain OSCP status, and today I graduated with my Associate of Science in Information Technology.

I’m continuing on to achieve my Bachelor’s by next summer and I hope to obtain another certification or two this year.

So, if anyone is looking for either an entry-level infosec position, or an experienced sysadmin position, check out my resume and drop me an email.

Goals for 2010: Part 4 – Get involved in an OSS project.

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:27:59 +0000

For those who don’t know, OSS = Open Source Software.

I need to find a good OSS project that I care about that I think I can make some kind of contribution to. I’m most likely looking for something security-focused. I also need to continue to improve my programming skills before I can get too involved. I am getting ready to take and Advanced programming class and I’m hoping along with my self-study in Assembly I will actually be able to make some kind of meaningful contribution to something.

This goal goes back to the whole get involved in the community thing. OSS isn’t just about the code after all, but is also about the community.

Asterisk and Samsung

admin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:00:08 +0000

We’ve been having trouble with our integration of an Asterisk server and our old Sasmung Prostart DCS. The two are connected via FXO ports on the Asterisk-side, connected to SLI cards on the Samsung-side. The problem involves background noise on the lines, lines not hanging up when they’re supposed to, and lines randomly diconnecting during a call. I’ve traced some of the issues to bad cables, and more to bad ports on the Samsung-side. Then yesterday I was doing some more reading about the specifications of our Samsung hardware and found something interesting. When providing analog circuits throug the Samsung Proaster DCS there are two interface cards available, the SLI and the SLI-8. The SLI provides four analog port while the SLI-8 provides eight. Up until yesterday I thought that was the only difference between the two. While reading through some technical manuals I had, I discovered that the SLI is equipped with a DTMF receiver and provides overvoltage protection, while the SLI-8 doesn’t. So guess what. All of our analog ports are provided via SLI-8 cards. We always assumed we wanted the most bang for our buck, so eight ports instead of four seemed to be the wiser investment. Now it seems we may be losing some key features for the integration we are attempting to work because we’re using the SLI-8 cards instead of SLI cards.

So yesterday i ordered a couple of SLI cards and will install them next week sometime. Lord willing, this will fix the issues we’ve been having.

In other news, I paid $1.59/gal. on gas yesterday!!!

First Asterisk Problem resolved

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:27:51 +0000

Well I’ve already run into my first problem getting Asterisk working seemlessly with our old Samsung DCS, and I’ve managed to get the problem resolved as well. The problem was when making or receiving calls between the two phone systems if the caller on the Samsung side hungup first, Asterisk did not detect a disconnect signal and left that line off the hook. After playing with different configuration options in Asterisk, trying to get it to “hear” the disconnect signal I decided I’d do a bit of digging into the Samsung’s programming to see if that might be the problem. So I found a programming guide for the Samsung DCS and found my answer. Apparently the Samsung DCS doesn’t send a proper disconnect signal, unless that extension’s Ring-Type is set to DATA RING. So if anyone out there is going through a similar configuration problem, here’s a quick HOWTO. On your Samsung phone dial TRSF800, then your admin password, press the down arrow, then SPK. Dial 208, then dial the extension connected to Asterisk. Press the Up/Down arrows until the display says DATA RING. Press one of the buttons under the display, then go on to the next extension. When done press TRSF to exit programming mode. This will allow the Samsung DCS to send a proper disconnect signal that Asterisk can pick up on. Problem solved! Well, mostly solved anyway. For some reason, now the extension rings 20 seconds, then disconnects and starts ringing again. I’m sure it’s a timer somewhere, and when I find it I’ll let you know.

~UPDATE~
Nevermind about the timer problem. It had to do with some of the settings I was playing around with in Asterisk while trying to fix the first problem. I commented all those out and everything works fine.

Asterisk Implementation almost done.

admin — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:34:51 +0000

We finally reached a point in the remodelling of the new offices that I was able to run network cable. I also got the wireless bridge setup, and then I was able to plug in a phone and make a call through the Asterisk server.
So all the hardware is in place, now it’s just a matter of programming everything to work together properly. I’ll try to take plenty of notes and maybe put together a guide of some kind on getting Asterisk to work with a Samsung Prostar DCS. So far I’ve been able to make a call from a Samsung system to a VOIP phone and from a VOIP phone to a Samsung phone, then I made a call to an outside line from a VOIP phone. That part was easy, the complicated part will come when I tried to get the voicemail to work seemlessly.
Stay posted for more details.

BTW, have I mentioned how much I love this vimpress plugin?

This blog is brought to you by vim

admin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:21:24 +0000

I was chatting in the SMUUG (Southwest Missouri Unix Users Group) IRC channel from my favorite IRC client irssi, and someone posted a link to vimpress. That’s right, I can now post my WordPress blog entries directly from vim, my favorite editor and yours.
Now if that ain’t geeky enough for you, I don’t know what is!

Southwest Missouri Unix Users Group

admin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:05:08 +0000

So last night was our second SMUUG (http://www.smuug.org) meeting. Last time we had four people, by the end of last night we had seven, so we’re growing. We’re still trying to figure out what we’re all about and what our plans for the future are. I think we’re going to try an install party sometime soon. So I’ll let you know how that goes.

The problem I’ve had coming up with content is that I’m not sure who to expect in the crowd. If I come prepared with a presentation on my SAMBA PDC configuration, it may go over the heads of many or at least bore them to tears, but if I start off with basic stuff like using ls, grep, etc. then I could offend those who’ve been using Linux longer than I.

Anyway, I expect that to get easier as we grow. Hopefully we’ll end up with a decent size group who have plenty of experience and will be able to make presentations, then a large group of new Linux users to do presentation to. And occasionally we’ll throw in an advanced topic like SAMBA PDC, or I’d like to see a decent Asterisk presentation as well. We’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds

Fsck

admin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:33:10 +0000

Yesterday we lost power for about 45 minutes here in the office. Not really sure why, but we did. Everything worked like it was supposed to, UPS’s are all good. I went ahead and shut the servers down right away. I thought I’d preserver the batteries in case for some reason we really needed them, and only our servers have UPS’s so no one could access them so there was no reason for them to run until the batteries were going out.

So anyway, 45 minutes later the power came back on, I turned everything back on and expected to be back up and running in a matter of minutes. Well, our PDC (Primary Domain Controller for those less geeky-types – a.k.a. the MAIN server) said it had been 231 days since fsck had been run (file system check), and it needed to run now. The problem was it’s a 350GB partition, and fsck can take awhile. The real problem turned out to be that I couldn’t cancel it. It didn’t ask me if it was OK to run fsck now, and I couldn’t CTRL-C to cancel it like I’ve done in other distributions. A little research revealed that Ubuntu won’t let you cancel it. So long story short, the server down an extra 2 hours because it was running fsck. Nothing was wrong with the server, it was just performing routine maintenance, on its own, without permission from me. So I sat there for 2 hours and watched it fsck, taking calls and telling people the server would be up soon, but not yet. It was quite frustrating.

So I ran tune2fs to stop all this automatic forced fscking business.

From now on, Server, you’ll fsck when I tell you to fsck, and you won’t fsck unless I want you to!

Better Linux + Windows Interoperability

admin — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:41:26 +0000

Just released today: http://news.samba.org/announcements/pfif/

Today the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF), a non-profit organization created by the Software Freedom Law Center, signed an agreement with Microsoft to receive the protocol documentation needed to fully interoperate with the Microsoft Windows workgroup server products and to make them available to Free Software projects such as Samba.

WOOT!

Joplin Linux Users Group

admin — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:52:29 +0000

So… anybody interested in starting a Joplin Linux Users Group?

I’m thinking a Linux only LAN party might be a good way to kick it off.

So if you’re interested in a Joplin LUG, or just a LAN party leave me a comment.