Upon an upgrade to the AD environment, winbind starts throwing errors like the one below:

Aug 16 16:20:38 ourhost winbindd[2459]:   rpc_api_pipe: Remote machine OURDOMAINCONTROLLER.ourdomain.com pipe \NETLOGON fnum 0x800areturned critical error. Error was NT_STATUS_PIPE_DISCONNECTED

After the upgrade to Samba / winbind, squid started throwing the following authentication errors:

Aug 16 16:39:58 ourhost (ntlm_auth):   Login for user [ourdomain\[username]@[DESKTOPHOST] failed due to [winbind client not authorized to use winbindd_pam_auth_crap. Ensure permissions on /var/lib/samba/winbindd_privileged are set correctly.]

In the end, it turns out that the latest Samba installation resolves this problem:

• /etc/init.d/squid stop
• /etc/init.d/winbind stop
• cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /tmp/smb.conf
• yum erase samba samba-common
• yum install samba3x samba3x-client –disablerepo=rpmforge
• cp /tmp/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf
• setfacl -m u:squid:rx /var/lib/samba/winbindd_privileged
• kinit Administrator@OURDOMAIN.COM
• net ads join -U Administrator
• /etc/init.d/winbind start
• wbinfo -u (to test to make sure you see user names)
• /etc/init.d/squid start

#!/bin/sh
#
#  MakePEM                                              Author: Rich West
#                                                       Rich.West@wesmo.com
#
# A simple script to generate a self signed certificate that does not require
# a passphrase in order to use it.
################################################################################

##
# Make sure we are started as we should be.
##
if [ "X"$1 == "X" ] || [ "X"$2 == "X" ] || [ "X"$3 == "X" ]; then
        echo "Usage: $0 <serial number> <days> <certificate_file.pem>"
        echo
        exit;
fi

##
# Set our defaults
##
ssldir=/usr/bin
conf=/etc/ssl/openssl.cnf
certs_dir=/etc/ssl/certs
serial=$1
days=$2
cert=$3

##
# Generate the certificate.
##
$ssldir/openssl req -new -x509 -days $days -config $conf \
-out $certs_dir/$cert -keyout $certs_dir/$cert \
-set_serial $serial
##
# Sign the certificate
##
$ssldir/openssl gendh >> $certs_dir/$cert

##
# We need randomness
##
$ssldir/openssl gendh -rand \
`test -c /dev/urandom && echo /dev/urandom` 1024 >> $certs_dir/$cert

##
# For sanity sake, display the contents of the generated and signed certificate.
##
echo
echo "Your new certificate is as follows:"
$ssldir/openssl x509 -subject -dates -fingerprint -noout \
-in $certs_dir/$cert

##
# Make it only readable by the owner.
##
chmod 600 $certs_dir/$cert

If you are using self signed certificates, there is no option to renew it. You just can’t (you’re the certificate authority anyhow), so you must generate a completely new certificate.

################# SSL Certificate Warning ################

  Certificate for hostname 'your.host.name', in file:
     /etc/ssl/certs/https_www.pem

  The certificate needs to be renewed; this can be done
  using the 'genkey' program.

  Browsers will not be able to correctly connect to this
  web site using SSL until the certificate is renewed.

 ##########################################################
                                  Generated by certwatch(1)

Control Panel -> System and Security -> Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy -> Local Policy -> Security Options

Find “Network security: LAN Manager authentication level ” and set it to: Send LM & NTLM responses
Find “Minimum session security for NTLM SSP” and set it to: Disable Require 128-bit encryption

For example, the iPhone has limited vibration functions.  Compared to a Blackberry in this regard, where the typical IT professional needs to be discrete in meetings but still needs to know the difference between an email (one vibration), a blackberry message (two quick vibrations), or an SMS message (three quick vibrations) in order to judge the urgency.  The iPhone just does a short vibrate.. once.

With that aside, the phone is still amazing.  Fix the alert options, and it could be a real contender in the office environment.

SMS message conversations blow the doors off of any other phone.  But how does one back these up? Low-and-behold, iTunes syncs these up behind the scenes, but it doesn’t provide an interface to them. Say you want to preserve them, but don’t want them piling up on the phone.

A small script in perl on a linux box will happily take that file and format it for you.  However, it does not have a way to determine who each party is.  It will display all conversations to/from a particular person.  Re-run it for preserved conversations with others.

sms_cleaner.pl