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  1. blakerwry

    Hacked

    This was a total scam. As Striker suggested, the password came from a breach at one of the sites you have (or had) an account with. Password re-use is bad. More info: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/07/13/sextortion-scam-knows-your-password-but-dont-fall-for-it/
  2. blakerwry

    Firefox 57 and Legacy Addons

    I'm a daily FF user, but I have no qualms switching to Chrome (which is already my browser of choice on MacOS and iOS). I'll just use the best overall software out there. Sometimes that means having multiple browsers installed or using a VM for specialized tasks. If it matters, the only...
  3. blakerwry

    Home Theater Receiver with per-input programmable volume adjustment?

    Onkyo receivers offer a feature called IntelliVolume which, similar to Denon, offers a +/- 12dB correction per input.
  4. blakerwry

    Cloning a failing drive

    I've found the -rescue option under the advanced clonezilla parameters to be of assistance with source disk errors. It sounds like your errors are not in any important user data. If the errors are in any system files, you can likely run the sfc to resolve any corruption after cloning to a...
  5. blakerwry

    ESXi 6.5 vs ESXi 6.0

    I'm still on 5.5U3. I haven't found a reason to upgrade yet... Issues like the above as well as similar bugs that a client of ours has experienced on 6.0 and 6.5 have made me glad that I haven't upgraded. If I had, I would probably feel like vmware was using me as their guinea pig to test their...
  6. blakerwry

    Server rack suggestions?

    I'd watch out for older racks (stuff 10+ years old) if you plan to install servers. Many new servers are too deep for them, and a lot of the old racks don't provide room for cable management. Newer stuff from APC, Tripp-lite, Dell should be well built and include these features. I personally...
  7. blakerwry

    How to make VMs suck less

    The first sign was that a file system resize (we deployed an image and then increased the file system to fill the storage), which is an operation that typically takes ~2 minutes on bare metal took longer than normal (perhaps 10-20x longer than normal). So this indicated poor storage performance...
  8. blakerwry

    How to make VMs suck less

    Yup, we specified a client use dedicated 15k SAS or SSD storage for each server. We setup the servers and noticed performance was abysmal during setup. They had ended up providing VMs connected to a SAN that used 7.2k RPM drives (with the drives potentially shared with multiple systems). They...
  9. blakerwry

    How to make VMs suck less

    This is what I often see: Multiple VMs contending for a single, often under spec'd storage pool. When we trialed ESXi @ work, we used the Phoronix test suite and timed real world tasks and did not see a noticeable change in storage performance. Storage performance is very important to us, as we...
  10. blakerwry

    Something Random

    I always blamed the war in Iraq and Afghanistan - Why make ammo for a price conscious retail market one box at a time when you can sell it by the truck load at inflated costs to the US military? I don't buy the hoarder argument because Walmart (or your local sporting good's retailer) was only...
  11. blakerwry

    Enterprise Firewall

    That's a good start - better than a lot of folks in the IT field that receive edicts from management (or worse sales) that have little clue into the best practices, costs, or limitations of available technology. I would be willing to bet that a lot of businesses are ran the same way you...
  12. blakerwry

    Enterprise Firewall

    Coug, a lot of networks are built around the unprotected "outside" and the trusted "inside" model - basically what you get with your average residential NAT router. That model was never very good, but it was cheap and simple and thus it became popular. In a security conscious environment...
  13. blakerwry

    Cloud Backup

    Co-worker of mine switched to Uverse a few years ago and ran into their cap during the first month of service (downloaded several large games legitimately). He said Uverse made him agree to not use the service as much and capped his connection at 1Mbps for several months following. I assume they...
  14. blakerwry

    dSLR thread

    Not sure if this comment was meant in jest, but that's a lesson that I was taught: Know in advance that the majority of your photos will be average, some poor, and some good. Occasionally you'll get a spectacular gem. The take away for me was to take more photos to increase the likelihood of...
  15. blakerwry

    Identity Theft

    I turned on notifications for my CC's so that I receive an email whenever a transaction is made that is greater than $1. What I acually receive is an email when there is an authorization, which means that I see the authorization amount in most cases. Sometimes this is different than the actual...
  16. blakerwry

    Identity Theft

    That's essentially what the anti-DoS services are doing. They are breaking the amount of traffic into manageable levels by distributing to different servers at different sites and then filtering out the undesirable traffic while attempting to preserve the desirable traffic. I wouldn't consider...
  17. blakerwry

    Identity Theft

    Everywhere. Either as intended for service providers as an ingress filter on customer facing ports or as an egress filter using stateless ACLs at my network border on my own ports facing my service provider or both. I manage several ISP networks as well as my business' network (servers/office)...
  18. blakerwry

    Identity Theft

    Given the sustained DDoS against Krebs, now is probably a good time for network admins to be monitoring their pipes for unusual outgoing/upload activity from their networks. The last information I saw indicated that hacked DVRs and webcams were the devices generating the traffic (probably...
  19. blakerwry

    Identity Theft

    Agree. Dumping a pro-bono client under major attack may be good for the immediate bottom line, but I think the free advertising of keeping the client would have made up for it in the long run. I think the pro-bono arrangement between Krebs and Prolexic was one that Akamai (the current owners of...
  20. blakerwry

    Identity Theft

    Google is now protecting the site. Apparently Google offers the service free to journalists as an offer of good will to protect free speech.
  21. blakerwry

    Identity Theft

    https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/11/report-everyone-should-get-a-security-freeze/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/06/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-embrace-the-security-freeze/
  22. blakerwry

    Question about DNS configuration inside home network for a caching service

    If you're already using dnsmasq, then you're in good shape. I'm not familiar with the edgerouter config, but dnsmasq is often configured to read from /etc/hosts or a separate hosts file and use this data for providing DNS answers to clients. Specify the necessary entries in your /etc/hosts file...
  23. blakerwry

    Something Random

    I always mark spam as SPAM, even if I've already unsubscribed. A recent online purchase from a department store had an option to sign up for email advertisements during checkout. I dutifully unchecked this and finished my transaction. A few days later I started receiving advertisements unrelated...
  24. blakerwry

    Interior LED lighting

    We have a neighbor whose detached garage just burned down due to a loose extension cord and another homeowner nearby that had a house fire due to an extension cord plugged into the front porch. Makes me start believing I should place more trust in the fire-marshal not allowing us to use...
  25. blakerwry

    Question about DNS configuration inside home network for a caching service

    dnsmasq running on the lancache server or a pfsense (or similar software) allows you to override specific DNS names and point them to an arbitrary ip address. Another option would be to add the entries to your hosts file (perhaps the template hosts file could be hosted on the lancache server for...
  26. blakerwry

    Identity Theft

    If you guys want to become paranoid, check out http://krebsonsecurity.com/ sometime. Brian Krebs provides insight into events that normally go unreported, unnoticed, or are generally glossed over in the media or by officials.
  27. blakerwry

    Best movie you've seen

    Wife and I enjoyed Stranger Things, which is surprising because she doesn't usually enjoy horror or suspense. I was glad to read that there are plans for a sequel - hopefully just as enjoyable.
  28. blakerwry

    Paid antivirus

    My biggest beef with AVG was the nagging that seeped into the free version. Avast got just as bad in later years. I guess I shouldn't complain when getting something for free.
  29. blakerwry

    7200rpm SAS 4kn Drives Being Comparable to 10K rpm Drives.

    A few years back we noticed that vendors were beginning not to stock 3.5" 600GB 15k SAS drives. We were still able to get these through other channels or through special order, but most server vendors seem to have moved on to 2.5" drives, either 10k or 15k. We did some benchmarks and found that...
  30. blakerwry

    NAS Drive

    I think that's a pretty respectable time also. We occasionally have to rebuild 600GB 15k SAS drives in a RAID10 and they often take several hours to the better part of a day to rebuild on a PERC controller (defaults to 30% rebuild rate). The last time I had to rebuild a 7.2k RPM SATA drive it...
  31. blakerwry

    NAS Drive

    RAID operates at the block layer (or bit layer for some raid levels) so the controller and disks generally don't know what blocks contain data that are relevant to the file system/OS. A rebuild thus requires reconstruction from all disks in a RAID5/6 array or from the appropriate mirror disk in...
  32. blakerwry

    NAS Drive

    Something like the Norco DS-12D runs ~ $500. An basic LSI controller (non-RAID or RAID 0/1/10) with external SAS connections will set you back ~$300; A fancy one w/ cache + RAID 5/6/50 maybe double that.
  33. blakerwry

    NAS Drive

    If you don't really need network attached storage (NAS), you might look at direct attached (DAS) options. We use external eSATA or SAS enclosures that allow you to access large numbers of external drives as if they were internal. If you don't already have eSATA or a SAS card with external ports...
  34. blakerwry

    Windows 10

    ditto
  35. blakerwry

    NAS Drive

    After having been burned a few times, I like to burn-in test all drives individually. Most NAS devices do a poor or non-existent job of tracking drive health. For example, a drive that fails the SMART self-test does not trigger any alert on an HP home server I have. The extended/long SMART...
  36. blakerwry

    Something Random

    Recently listened to this freakonomics episode about an entrepreneur's opinion on tipping and what he did at his restaurant to eliminate tips. I have to admit, it changed my mind. Here's a more thorough article on the topic: http://ny.eater.com/2015/10/14/9517747/danny-meyer-no-tipping-restaurants
  37. blakerwry

    UnRAID Server Build

    I don't use an ESD strap either. I do the same procedure of keeping the machine plugged into AC ground and grounding myself to the case before touching anything. If the PSU doesn't have an off switch, there's usually a power strip that does. I was taught at Uni that you can pass components...
  38. blakerwry

    Proposed NAS build

    Looks to be. Readings seem to range between ~60C and 93C, depending on the system. A google search indicates this is normal.
  39. blakerwry

    Proposed NAS build

    My understanding is that the Dell cards with the "NV" option (default on all P models) have flash backed cache, which sounds similar to the "supercapacitor" that IBM advertises. Looking at some photos, the supercapacitor appears to contain a Li-Ion battery pack. Regardless, a capacitor is just...
  40. blakerwry

    Proposed NAS build

    Yes, the BIOS options are limited to the primary management functions. You can create an array/VD, delete an array, set a hot spare, and view the status of an array or drive. For anything more, you'll probably want to use MegaCLI or the new software set to replace it. I have used a few LSI...
  41. blakerwry

    Proposed NAS build

    This is the MegaCLI output from some of our Dell servers. Visibly, the drives do seem to spin-up in groups. This does seem to indicate staggered spin-up is enabled by default (and doesn't cause any substantial boot delay): Product Name : PERC H710P Adapter FW Package Build: 21.2.0-0007...
  42. blakerwry

    Something Random

    Have to wonder how much this might be related to the demographic that purchases R1's (or other sport bikes). I imagine many are rode hard and put away wet - literally.
  43. blakerwry

    Something Random

    My daughter either couldn't taste sour yet or didn't mind it. Zesty bbq sauce (or even ketchup) got her though.
  44. blakerwry

    photoshop witchcraft

    From Bridge, I usually open the images in camera raw-> select all -> (make any adjustments) -> save. No need to open Photoshop. However, my processing in Camera Raw is usually limited to < 100 JPG images, so no idea how well it does with thousands of raw files.
  45. blakerwry

    UPS for server room

    I agree. Another option would be solar. As Dave mentioned, most battery based units are not designed for prolonged runtime (more than a few hours) and perform poorly at this application. This page from APC does, however, list some solutions for 24+ hr runtimes.
  46. blakerwry

    Cheap Display

    At work we've bought 100+ dell LCD displays over the course of the last ~10 years. I believe we've had 1 fail within the (3 yr) warranty. Most make it 5+ years. After 7 years they seem to start giving up the ghost in various ways. I would personally recommend a Dell display over most other...
  47. blakerwry

    I want to buy a new car

    If there's a Carmax in the area, they can be a great way to test drive a lot of different cars. As long as you're not looking for a first model year vehicle, last year's model is probably similar enough to form an opinion in most cases. We bought a new car in 2011. Going in, my wife thought she...
  48. blakerwry

    Portable Computing Envronment

    I've had good luck using a Patriot or Sandisk extreme USB drive with a live Linux distro like Fedora/CentOS or Ubuntu for similar stuff. Just install your favorite browser and favorite pop-up blocker and you're good to go. These systems have auto-update mechanisms similar to Windows. However, I...
  49. blakerwry

    question Storage categories

    Those breakdowns are manufacturer specific categories used for retail purposes - not an industry standard. There are many solutions from systems integrators (EMC, Dell, HP, etc), retail storage vendors (Seagate, WD, etc), or roll your own solutions which may utilize white box chassis, open...
  50. blakerwry

    Need An Affordable Switch With 10G SFP+ Ports

    Testing transceivers in this switch or at the remote end? In my experience, vendors are picky about transceivers. I have always used the vendor branded transceivers with Dell, HP, Redback, Brocade gear. However, I have experience with Cisco devices and non-cisco branded transceivers. What I have...
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