Articles by Scott Hebert

1. Allow DHCP Option 82 Through Cisco DHCP Relay Agents Safely

   Posted on June 18, 2007 in Networking

   Diagnose and allow trusted DHCP Option 82 requests through Cisco relay agents without using a global trust setting that weakens the relay boundary.

2. Technorati Loves Slaptijack!

   Posted on June 15, 2007 in Graphics Design

   Just a quick note.

   Slaptijack recently broke into the Technorati Top 100,000. Obviously, this doesn't mean a whole lot (and may not last long), but it's sure neat to see that Rank number shrink from 7 digits to 5 over the last two months. With a little luck, and …

3. Blow Away Your Cisco Catalyst Configuration

   Posted on June 14, 2007 in Networking

   If you've ever needed to reset a Cisco Catalyst switch to it's factory default (locked out, perhaps?), you've probably spent some time digging around on Cisco's web site. The Catalyst password recovery procedure starts off by reseting the Catalyst to it's original factory settings. Below, I'm going to give you …

4. Configure DHCP Option 82 on Cisco Catalyst Switches Safely

   Posted on June 13, 2007 in Networking

   Configure Cisco Catalyst DHCP snooping and Option 82 safely with a small pilot VLAN, explicit trusted uplinks, verification commands, and a rollback plan.

5. Hey Slap: How Do I Define My Own MySQL Prompt?

   Posted on June 12, 2007 in Software

   Someone looked over my shoulder the other day and was blown away by my MySQL client prompt.

   (slap@localhost) [slaptijack]>
   

   The boring default client just acknowledges that you are using MySQL and nothing more. This prompt indicates your username, the server you are working on, and the database you are …

6. The Annoyance of 'show config'

   Posted on June 11, 2007 in Networking

   How many times has this happened to you?

   SLAP#write memory
   startup-config file open failed (Device or resource busy)
   

   If you work in an environment where multiple users have enable access on Cisco devices, you've probably seen it more than once. This particular error is caused when another user has …

7. Updating OS X Network Settings to Use a Local DNS Server

   Posted on June 07, 2007 in System Administration

   This post relates to pre-Leopard versions of Mac OS X. Unfortunately, Leopard hosts that are configured via DHCP use the DHCP assigned DNS server before any statically configured servers. Check out the next post in this series to find the necessary tweaks for Leopard.

   If you've been following along in …

8. ncutil - OS X's Missing Network Configuration Utility

   Posted on June 06, 2007 in System Administration

   If you've ever had to administer a Mac OS X system from afar, you know how difficult it can be to manage network settings. The Network Preference Panel under System Preferences is a great tool if you have remote access to the <acronym title="Graphical User Interface">GUI</acronym>, but …

9. BIND Startup in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

   Posted on June 05, 2007 in System Administration

   While doing further research for my OS X Caching Only Name Server series, it has come to my attention that a couple of my methods (specifically relating to Startup Items and starting the daemon) are outdated. Although these methods may have been acceptable in pre-Tiger versions of OS X, Mac …

10. Post #100! (Cue Confetti)

    Posted on June 04, 2007 in Graphics Design

    Welcome to post #100! Since this is a bit of a milestone, I thought I'd put up a super chart.

    The image below shows the grow of RSS subscribers over the last 100 posts.

    

    Although the growth is modest, I think its impressive considering this site has lived between Google …

11. Starting BIND In OS X (Even After Reboot)

    Posted on June 04, 2007 in System Administration

    This information is really geared for pre-Tiger versions of OS X. In OS X 10.4 (Tiger), the BIND daemon is controlled by launchd and is pre-configured (although disabled). BIND Startup in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) has more detailed information. Although outdated, this article still includes useful information …

12. OS X BIND Config Cleanup

    Posted on June 01, 2007 in System Administration

    Before we can start running BIND on OS X, we have to make a few configuration changes. Although BIND is pre-installed in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), it's not ready to run right out of the box. We've already created our Startup Item, but now we need to cleanup …

13. Creating an OS X Startup Item For BIND

    Posted on May 31, 2007 in System Administration

    This information is really geared for pre-Tiger versions of OS X. In OS X 10.4 (Tiger), the BIND daemon is controlled by launchd and is pre-configured (although disabled). BIND Startup in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) has more detailed information. Although outdated, this article still includes useful information …

14. OS X Caching Only Name Server

    Posted on May 31, 2007 in System Administration

    By default, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) comes with BIND 9 pre-installed and pre-configured to operate in caching-only mode. Unfortunately, the operating system is not configured to start the server at boot time, or even use the server if it was running. In this series of articles, we'll create …

15. How To Hide Your BIND Version

    Posted on May 30, 2007 in Software

    By default, a BIND DNS server will report which version it is running to anyone that's interested. All it takes is a simple lookup of the version.bind text record in the chaos class of your server. Check this out:

    Skadi:~ slap$ dig version.bind txt chaos @localhost
    
    ; <<>> DiG 9 …