Hacks

Find LDAP groups with obsolete users

Sun, 02/21/2010 - 11:04am — shart

OpenLDAP has a nice "feature" that allows for group members to continue to exist, even if the user does not exist any more. Really handy! Problem is, if you, say, have a user in the "Domain Admins" group, and you delete that account, and then some normal user comes along with the same username, they will end up with unexpected elevated privileges.

So I created a script that I run weekly that finds group members that no longer exist, and sends me a report. It also tells me which groups are empty.

This relies on my toolbox... Find it here.

shart's Toolbox

Sun, 02/21/2010 - 10:09am — shart

http://xrayspx.com/part-1-foundations
http://xrayspx.com/part-2-some-standard-declarations-and-personalizing-y...
http://xrayspx.com/part-3-subroutines
http://xrayspx.com/part-4-wrapping-foundations

55 reads

Using some of our new tools

Sat, 02/20/2010 - 11:30pm — shart

Ok... Now that we have our toolbox Let's do something with it. Today we'll look at a simple solution to an everyday problem. Resetting a password.

Part 4: Wrapping up the foundations

Sun, 02/14/2010 - 2:02pm — shart

Just to wrap up, and in case you are lazy like me, give you a whole file worth of subroutines. It's my toolbox and I'm giving it to you. I put this in a secure location and just call it from my other scripts. This makes the code much shorter in my other scripts, nearly auto-commenting, and avoids bugs because if it works in one, it will work in others.

NOTE: This uses the foundations in parts 1, 2 and 3. You can find them here: Part 1 Part 2 Part3

Part 3: The SubRoutines

Sun, 02/14/2010 - 1:45pm — shart

Now for the tools. There's a lot here, but in further articles you will see how this can be useful. I'll go through each tool with what it does, how to call it, and then the code itself.

NOTE: This uses the foundations in parts 1 and 2. You can find them here: Part 1 Part 2

Part 2: Some Standard declarations and personalizing for your site

Sun, 02/14/2010 - 11:10am — shart

More foundational work. This stuff will configure for your site, and the routines that follow will regularly rely on them.

Part 1: Foundations

Sun, 02/14/2010 - 10:26am — shart

In our journey of code, it is always useful to have a foundation. For starters you will need to make sure that you have the following PERL packages installed, as we will be using them regularly.

Net::LDAP
Authen::SASL
IO::Socket::SSL
Digest::SHA
Mail::Sendmail
Crypt::SmbHash
CGI

I have found that some of these are much easier to install via packages (yum or apt-get), specifically Authen::SASL, as it requires Net::SSLeay, which requires it be compiled with the same compiler as your original perl installation. Most of the others can be installed from cpan.

Opening Message

Sun, 02/14/2010 - 10:12am — shart

Hello and Welcome!

Over the course of my time as an Admin I've done a lot of Google searches and writeen a lot of code that has been very helpful to me in my work. I will be posting things here that hopefully will help you in your quest to master some of these technologies (Or simply stand on the shoulders of midgets).

I by no means consider myself a Perl or LDAP expert. It has been a "Learn as you go" ordeal. No formal training, just get things done on an as-needed basis.

I assume that you have a basic knowledge of PERL and LDAP.

Enjoy!

-Sean

HOWTO: Properly SPAM A Blog

Sun, 01/10/2010 - 5:21pm — xrayspx

For anyone spamming blogs, especially my blog, this is the proper way to do it. This comment is vaguely related enough that it seems like maybe the person just missed the point they were trying to make, or is a bad writer. In fact, it was copied from this Amazon review of a DVD from 2007.

So rather than general Russian cyrillic nonsense, how about you morons try a little harder. I'm leaving that comment up as a monument to the way you idiots should be working. Put your damn back into it once in a while.

Storing money in a singularity

Sun, 01/10/2010 - 5:12pm — xrayspx

I grabbed this ad from a red line train:

I would LOVE to have a wallet that reduces my wallet size by 200%. Think of all the crap you could walk around with. Does it reduce the mass as well as the volume? Would I have a wallet that's much bigger on the inside than on the outside, but weighs like 4 tons, or is it more of a portal to a multi-dimensional space that you can just put things in? Like a TARDIS? Two Daleks can tow the TARDIS, even with all of the stuff it has inside, so is this like that? Can I put like a TV in there?

I think Cambridge, being home to the best engineers in the world, is probably a likely place for such a transdimensional breakthrough to make it to market.

xrayspx.com