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Customizing the MaxMind GeoIP2 database

Documentation exists for the old MaxMind GeoIP databases but I found myself needing to add some RFC1918 addresses into the DB for a logstash configuration. This was a bit of a pain so I figured I’d share for others who want to do the same. This script is setup to use the MaxMind::DB::Reader::XS and MaxMind::DB::Writer::Tree perl modules. (I gave up perl 20 years ago. Every time you think you’re out, they pull you back in!) Anyway, the XS module requires…

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LIO vs STGT

Some thoughts after a failed experiment with linux iscsi target services. The debate between SCST, STGT, LIO, etc is virtually religious. I ran STGT for about 8 years and the only real complaint I had was a lack of survivability under some less than graceful reloads and particularly, restarts. That said it was fast, stable and simple. However after needing to rebuild the storage server from the ground up, everything I read said that the focus was now on LIO so…

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Using Zabbix 3.2 with Centos and SELinux

There are others out there using zabbix who have run into the same SElinux difficulties as myself. Many people will say “just disable SElinux”. But if you don’t want to do that, here’s how you make it work. Install the zabbix repo for yum: rpm -Uvh https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/3.2/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-3.2-1.el7.noarch.rpm Install the zabbix agent: yum install zabbix-agent Install the SElinux policy core utilities: yum install policycoreutils-python Edit your zabbix config file: vi /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf (Yes, you have to use vi. Or else. Just learn it already. Vi is…

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Monitoring ELK dataset with Ruby

As a longtime elasticsearch/logstash user, one of the things I’ve always planned to do was setup basic rules-based monitoring of elasticsearch for correlation and alerting. I’ve broken ground on the work to do so and am sharing this simple framework for anyone who would like to expand upon it. All of this was put together over 2 days having never used ruby before so this should not be taken as an opportunity to assess the quality of the code. Functionality and security…

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Continuing the saga with Google Nearline backups

My last write up about backing up to Google nearline with a script had a flaw I pointed out which was the single threaded nature and the slow process to backup a large dataset. Well wait no longer. (If you were waiting.) I’ve added pthread support to the script and an update is attached. You will need to add pthread support to your PHP installation. This will also require ZTS support. Note that a lot of bundled PHP copies do…

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Shouting for the stars

I recently became aware of a debate of astronomical proportions. In the article “One Find, Two Astronomers”, a US astronomer and a Spanish astronomer are both taking credit for the same find. Now this black hole of strange cosmic stew thickens. Bruce Schneier has just posted that the Spanish astronomer confirmed finding the object as a result of telescope logs he obtained from Google. Interestingly enough this has the debate raging over ethics and the how the wealth of information…

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