scadblog

Here’s the welcome letter template I usually drop on a visitor’s desk if we’ve provided them a computing environment and to inform them of all avenues available for support.

[Department Name]
Princeton University
[Support Office Name]

(For additional computing support outside of departmental operating hours you may also contact the Office of Information Technology’s Help Desk at 258-4357 or helpdesk@princeton.edu.)

The people application as part of the CMS we use offers a convenient and easy way to store all of the data relating to people affiliated with the department and only show the public what we want. However, as part of the UI there is no way to edit what gets displayed in the table that returns people information to visitors of the site. CEE was able to determine where some of the modifications are located in the code (under mod/people in the cms repository).

Table’s Headers: index.mod.php line 133
Phone number truncation: index.mod.php line 103
Order of table data: people.lib.php function get_list line 265

Normal Users do not have rights to create new pages, use the file viewer or create links, nor can they be given access to do so via the Config page unless their access level is raised to Admin.

Admins cannot create a page unless they are also given privileges for the section in which they wish the page to reside.

[addendum]

I just realized I sound a little incoherent in this post. Please note that this is in the CMS category. All hints and tips in this category pertain to the Extrafin-derived CMS software.

A Cure for the Common SSH Login Attack discusses a simple method for implementing port knocking to further secure SSH. The example given in the article provides the following iptables entries (based on the default firewall configuration for Red Hat/Fedora). Read on for more information, but in the example a port knock on 1600 opens SSH on 22 and a knock on 1601 closes it again.

-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 22 -m recent –rcheck –name SSH -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 1599 -m recent –name SSH –remove -j DROP
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 1600 -m recent –name SSH –set -j DROP
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 1601 -m recent –name SSH –remove -j DROP

Okay that is just totally outrageous. The PSR (Princeton Software Repository) relaunched recently in its newest incarnation, now with licensed as well as freely distributable software packages. If you need to purchase a piece of software there is the option to have it ‘delivered’ (isn’t that what Campus Mail is for?). Whatever the case, the mere existence of a delivery option is not all that shocking. Actually, its quite a nice addition to what’s been a relatively smooth operation … until you see that there is a $5 charge attached to having your 2 ounce CD delivered to you.

[addendum]

It turns out the $5 fee is for large box orders, and they will hand deliver them. Still seems a little off to me but whatever.

That little amber adhesive tape that you often find inside of laptops is called kapton tape.

Dual boot Linux/Windows systems are no fun. Neither are these dual boot systems that you only have access to remotely. Fortunately there’s a pearl script (originally written for Mandrake) that will reboot a dual boot system once into its secondary OS and then return it to the primary OS upon the next boot.

(more…)