Recent content on CoadyTech
Whilst rebuilding the theme behind this site I bumped Hugo past 0.146 and watched the build fall over with template parse errors. The fix is small if your theme is close to the standard layout, but the underlying changes are bigger than I first thought. In this post I’ll cover the quick fix that unblocks most builds, and where to read the rest.
Stepping into the vast world of Linux, I was armed with a mission: schedule my Python backup script to run regularly. The criteria seemed straightforward — execute every 30 minutes, refrain from overlapping runs, and have an option for manual testing. Simple, right? I was in for a surprise. In this post I’ll be diving into the world of task scheduling on Linux, covering cron and systemd…
Navigating the world of Linux commands can be rewarding yet daunting, particularly when dealing with file content management. In this article, we’ll delve into the powerful trio of cat, head, and tail, demonstrating their practical applications and streamlining your Linux experience. Prepare to master these crucial commands in no time!
Whilst trying to diagnose some issues with an AWS API Gateway recently, I hit an error that took me surprisingly long time to fix. Yet the solution is surprisingly simple! In this post I’ll detail the problem and how to go about fixing it.
I assumed (incorectly) that websites hosted on AWS Amplify (a serverless product) didn’t need to worry about managing SSL certificates. Unfortunately, I recently discovered my website showing an SSL certificate error. How could this be possible? In this post I’ll be going over what happened, the solution, and how to keep your AWS Amplify or serverless websites online.
As a best practice AWS accounts that are unused or surplus to requirement should be deleted. Unfortunately the process to do so was both manual and time consuming. That all changed on the 29th of March 2022 when AWS announced the availability of the ‘CloseAccount’ API. In this post I’ll be providing a quick overview of how to close or delete AWS accounts that are members of an…
Like many others I make use of Homebrew as the package manager on my Mac. Usually it’s quite reliable, yet when I recently tried to install Terraform from the brew repository I was shown the error “Your Command Line Tools are too outdated”. This post will cover the steps I used to fix the issue.
Windows Firewall is great for protecting both Windows servers and clients alike, and is generally enabled as a best practice. But what if traffic is being blocked by the firewall and you aren’t sure exactly why? In this post I’ll be going over how to identify specific firewall rules responsible for blocking traffic.
In this post I’ll be going over how to setup a serverless contact form with AWS Lambda, API Gateway and SES.
I’m currently working towards the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate exam and thought it would be a great idea to produce some notes on each of the AWS networking services. The process of researching, producing and publishing content on a topic really helps to cement it in my head. It’s also great for quick reference in the future. Hopefully this content is of some use to you. In this…
I recently moved this very website over to AWS Amplify, away from the traditional VPS and WordPress approach. Whilst everything worked fine in development, trying to add my domain name registered with CloudFlare to AWS Amplify’s domain manager returned a Certificate Authority Authentication error. In this post I’ll detail the problem and how to go about fixing it..
Since its release in 2008 PowerShell has quickly become one of the most powerful system administration tools for Windows. The modern cmdlet’s offer more functionality than its cmd predecessor, however this has sometimes been exploited by nefarious actors to perform attacks and bypass traditional security measures. In this post I’ll be covering the steps necessary to setup PowerShell transcript…
Recently whilst trying to configure a WSUS Server Core instance in my lab I needed to change the IIS configuration. On any normal Windows Server that would be an easy task of course, but with Server Core there’s no GUI. In this quick ‘How To’ post I’ll be covering the steps necessary to remotely manage IIS on Windows Server Core from both a Windows 10 client and via another ‘full fat’ Windows…
BitLocker is a fantastic way to protect the data stored on computers and thwart some offline tampering attacks. However, if you’re using BitLocker within a business environment, keeping track of the recovery keys can be quite burdensome. Thankfully Microsoft has developed a way to automatically save BitLocker recovery keys to active directory. In this post I’m going to be going through the…
The main part of my honeypot network is an amazing piece of free open-source software called the ‘Modern Honeypot Network’, or MHN for short. MHN acts as a centralised server allowing for the automated deployment of various honeypots (Dionaea, WordPot, etc) and the collection of data generated by those honeypots. This data is then presented to the user via a web interface. In this post I’m going…
It recently occurred to me that simple tasks such as setting up an internal web server or database were taking too long. Each time I needed to setup a website I was manually provisioning a VM, installing Debian, configuring the system by hand, installing Nginx, etc. There has to be a better way. Enter docker. I’ve know about containers for awhile now but have yet to take a look. In this post I’m…
My HomeLab network was recently treated to a networking upgrade in the form of a Cisco Nexus 5010 switch. Whilst it’s been working absolutely fine, it occurred to me the version of NX-OS (Cisco’s operating system for Nexus devices) installed was from 2009 and could probably do with an update. Nexus devices run NX-OS, not Cisco iOS, as is typically seen on other Cisco products such as the Catalyst…
With the release of vSphere 6.5 VMware have drastically improved the state of vSphere security by implementing new features such as VM-level disk encryption, encrypted vMotion and support for the new secure boot model. Unfortunately, unlike Microsoft’s Hyper-V, VMware took the path of relying upon an entirely separate key management system for the storing of encryption keys. In this guide I’m…
My home Wi-Fi password has always been rather simple and memorable. It makes it easy to give out to guests, input on devices without keyboards, and remember when needed. I always knew it was a little insecure, but how insecure? In this post I’ll be showing you how you can put your home WPA2 Wi-Fi network password to the test with free open-source tools and less than £30 worth of hardware.
The recently launched Optane 900P solid state drive is Intel’s first consumer storage product to depart from the use of conventional NAND flash and instead utilise Intel’s much newer 3D XPoint technology. 3D XPoint promises higher random I/O performance (up to 550K read IOPS), lower latencies and far better endurance. In this post I’ll be installing an Intel Optane 900P SSD in my HomeLab and…
Shortly after publishing my previous blog post, I accidentally stumbled upon Barkly. They represent a new breed of security technologies which have departed from traditional signature based detection methods and instead utilise machine learning and behaviour analysis for malware prevention. At the time, I hadn’t heard of Barkly before. After a quick search online I found no independent reviews or…
About two years ago, I stumbled upon Cylance. They marketed their product, CylancePROTECT, as being ‘next generation’ security software, utilising artificial intelligence and machine learning to beat malware and other online threats. Instantly I was intrigued. Wanting to know more, I started looking online for community reviews and/or downloadable trials. Unfortunately neither seemed to exist, so…
Even though they’ve been out in preview for almost a year, I only recently found out about Azure Server Management Tools! In essence, it’s a light version of Microsoft’s ‘Server Manager’ ported to the Azure web management GUI. If you have a hybrid cloud deployment to Azure, or are looking for ways to manage on-premise Windows VM’s (including Nano), this tool could be for you. In this quick guide,…
Deprecated 2018 Update: Microsoft have unfortunately dropped support for Hyper-V on Server Nano. Windows Server Core should now be used instead. Hyper-V Nano server is Microsoft’s true answer to VMware’s ESXi hypervisor. It weighs in at a tiny 500MB (approx) disk footprint and completely cuts out any sort of GUI, instead solely relying on remote management. This really is the future of the Windows…
For the price-to-performance ratio, you can’t really beat Ubiquiti. Over the past couple of years they’ve been releasing some fantastic products which are clearly aiming to disrupt the ‘enterprise’ market. One downfall, however, can be their quality. Prior to purchasing the EdgeRouter, I had a UAP-LR, which unfortunately started exhibiting strange performance issues after about 6 months. Luckily,…