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Logwatch a Custom Log File

Mon, 22 Aug 2011, 1:42 pm — Robert

So I own a VPS (if you can ever really own a VPS) which does a number of things for me. It's backed up by the hosting company, something which requires root access. Now I always worry when giving someone root access, no matter how much I trust them, so the back ups are performed through a simple script which only allows certain commands to be ran, as well as logging all attempts.

New Take on Passwords

Mon, 6 Jun 2011, 8:07 am — Robert

The otherday I watched episode 303 of Security Now and Steve has a very interesting take on passwords. Essentially assuming we don't have a dictonary word then it's all about using as many different types of characters as possible. Yes length still matters but entropy (randomness) doesn't.

Umask Values

Mon, 30 May 2011, 5:10 pm — Robert

Another post containg stuff I usually have to look for.

umask valuefile chmod valuedirectory chmod value
000666 rw-rw-rw-777 rwxrwxrwx
002664 rw-rw-r--775 rwxrwxr-x
022644 rw-r--r--755 rwxr-xr-x
027640 rw-r-----750 rwxr-x---
077600 rw-------700 rwx------
277400 r--------500 r-x------

Rails 3 on Apache on Ubuntu 10.04

Tue, 24 May 2011, 4:38 pm — Robert

So I was investigating how to run a rails app on my VPS. I needed to use several sources to get little bit's working, so here's the combined instructions. Note that I assume you're starting with a working apache installation.

Fix Grub (Again)

Wed, 4 May 2011, 3:57 pm — Robert

So thanks to Windows going screwy again I had to fix grub on my machine. So I can find these instructions again here they are:

  1. sudo mount /dev/sda4 /mnt
  2. sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
  3. sudo mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
  4. sudo chroot /dev /bin/bash
  5. grub-install /dev/sda
  6. exit
  7. reboot

These instructions allow you to run grub-install in a chrooted environment.

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