Syslog-NG with TLS setup for centralized logging

Sure, I know this is more of a dull topic for most people as most of us have setup centralized syslog servers many times but when attempting to get Syslog-NG setup on Debian 6.0.6 I noticed that the majority of documentation was RedHat specific and I thought this topic could use a Debian walk through. My intent with this setup is to get a centralized syslog server where my remote clients (including network devices) could send their log files. I wanted to use the built in TLS encryption that Syslog-NG versions greater than 3.1 now support. This configuration is using …

Python: File System Storage Report

Recently I have been updating my scripting skills and learning Python. I have been using some of the great resources out there such as Codeacademy and the book “Dive into Python” but after getting about half way through I found a need to build some apps. So, please forgive me if the code looks horrible or if things could be done a better way but this is literally my first Python program… Anyways, on to the program. I needed a way to parse through terabytes of data and locate files that I could archive to different storage. The scan had …

ownCloud quick setup for Debian

First off I wanted to say that the documentation and installation of ownCloud is incredibly easy. I just wanted to add a few notes for people who are setting it up on a Debian distro as there is a slight difference from Ubuntu as well as offer some more assistance for Active Directory users. The following is the apt-get install string to install all needed dependencies for Debian. The apt-get string provided in ownCloud’s documentation should work fine for Ubuntu but you will get some missing package errors for php-pdo, php-xml, php-mbstring and php-zip in Debian: apt-get install apache2 php5 …

An alternative to Dropbox

With the popularity and ease of use of services such as Dropbox/box.net I have heard a lot of rumblings from users and companies looking for “business” solutions to the file sharing problem. While there does appear to be a multitude of cloud-based solutions the number of companies offering non-cloud based alternatives appear to be pretty slim and (in my opinion) overpriced with prices ranging anywhere between $1,600 to $11,000 a year for only 20 users. Based on my experience purchasing business software over the years I was anticipating something standard such as a one time software purchase ($1,000-$11,000+) with a …

GIT Hosting with gitolite

Setting up GIT hosting using gitolite This is my first git server and after some reading I decided to build gitolite to manage my git repositories. To begin building we need to generate a public/private key pair on your workstation and then we need to download and install gitolite from github since gitolite is not currently available in my servers distribution (Ubuntu 10.04). Alternately, you could install gitolite from your distribution (but that may change these instructions a bit). From your workstation First I generated a DSA keypair on my workstation. $ ssh-keygen -t dsa Generating public/private dsa key pair. …

Transitioning Subversion to GIT

So it has been a long time coming, I have heard about the benefits of GIT for a while now but have not had time to play with it much. So far I am looking forward to improvements in performance over SVN as well as a more secure implementation to share sections of my repository with colleagues. Lastly I hope at a later date to circle around and build out an active directory/ldap enabled config and to start using GIT to manage Linux configurations; but first I need to get my data out of Subversion. To begin we need to …