Recent content on Kevin Guay
Version 1 I use Zoom a lot at work and don’t always want my video on. I also don’t want a huge photo of myself to show up when I talk either. So, I deleted my profile photo from my Google acount, which is synced with Zoom. That way it just showed my first initial on a colorful background, which was automatically selected by Google. A pink background. Now, it’s not that I have…
Speed test websites are invaluable for home internet users and system administrators alike. They are particularly helpful in troubleshooting internet issues. I recently rebuilt my companies VPN server and I wanted to test the speed between my computer and the internal network (over the VPN). We use split-tunneling, so a normal speedtset website wouldn’t do the trick. After some research I…
In this article I use 'Amazon' to refer to Amazon.com Business as opposed to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Most of the documentation available for using Google Workspace (formerly GSuite) as an single sign-on (SSO) identity provider (IdP) for Amazon pertains to AWS, not Amazon.com Business. We started looking at single-sign-on for Amazon in order to automatically create new purchasing accounts for…
Last weekend, Microsoft reversed its long-time recommendation that passwords should expire every few months. If your company has this policy, you know that people don’t really change their passwords. They use derivatives of the same password that are only different enough to fool Microsoft’s password history rules. ThisIsMyPassw0rd This1sMyPassw0rd1 Th1s1sMyPassw0rd3%…
In my last post about email security, I talked about why you should have strong passwords, especially for your email accounts, but I didn’t address how. Here are some rules of thumb to help you secure your digital world. 1. Use a password manager There are a trove of password managers available. Most populare are 1Password, LastPass, and Dashlane. 1Password is my favorite. The company…
We all have long and unique passwords for all of our internet accounts, right? Not according to the list of the most common passwords for 2018 with “123456” and “password” topping the list. Sure, some of those might be old accounts that aren’t important, or are they? Besides a password manager, your email password is the most important password that you have; more…
I’m an IT leader working at the intersection of research, infrastructure, and security. I currently serve as the Director of IT at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, where I’m responsible for the strategy, design, and operation of the systems that support cutting-edge oceanographic research. My work covers infrastructure, cybersecurity, and long-term planning. I’m responsible for systems…
TL;DR Always use two factor authentication and add the phone numbers to your contacts. Two factor authentication (2FA), or 2 Step Verification, has become ubiqudious, and for good reason. It adds a critical layer of security in the place where we are most vulnerable: internet accounts. Dispite countless warnings and horor stories, people still use amazingly simple passwords, including…
TL;DR I hacked the Falcon sensor installer for MacOS to include the licensing information. What is falcond? A lot of searches for “what is falcond” are landing on this page. falcond is the MacOS sensor for CrowdStrike antivirus software. The d is for daemon, a process that runs in the background, and falcon is the name of the antivirus software. Update (December 2021) A good semaritan…
In the past, I have avoided New Years resolutions becuase I perfered to have smaller goals throughout the year. Plus, there is plenty of evidence that creating resolutions around the holidays doesn’t work. Not only did I make a list of resolutions/goals last year, but I came up with a system to remember them and follow through. Start with a list I started by brainstorming a list of things…
Routine upgrade It was anything but. I had scheduled some maintenance time for an upgrade to our main HPC, which was still running RHEL 6. Because of the version discrepency, we had to implement work arounds for using, say, the latest version of gcc. It wasn’t ideal to say the least. By this time I had moved all of our user’s home directories to an NFS share, moved almost all…
We started using Zoom for video conferencing last year and it has been a huge success. We began with one mobile cart affectionately dubbed the “Zoom Mobile” and now have three Zoom Rooms, each with its own hardware. For those unfamiliar with Zoom, it is a newcomer to the video conference scene, particularly popular among educational and research organizations. Zoom offers a simple and…
I feel fortunate to have grown up with computers. That is, I grew up at the same time as computers were growing up. The first computer that my family owned was a IBM PS/2 with its classic pixelated black and white icons on the desktop. I booted up that computer every few years just to reminisce on how far technology had come. I got my first computer in 2003 for my 13th birthday; I remember as if…
Overview One drawback to static websites is ease of management. After working with static website compilers for the past few years, I have finally settled on a process that makes management a breeze. GitHub file structure I have always used GitHub when developing websites, but mainly for the version control and collaboration features. Now it is the basis of my workflow: I created a GitHub…
New User Accounts If you manage multiple linux servers, you know that creating users can be quite a process, especially when mounting/unmounting home directories and setting up permissions is involved. I am in the process of automating user creation with Ansible, but there is a road block that has been holding me back. Because we share home directories across systems, the user’s uid and gid…
TL;DR You can use HTML in Hugo content files (markdown files) by including some (any) markdown code at the top of the page (e.g. an empty header # ). Background I recently switched this website’s backend to Hugo instead of HarpJS. I have been using HarpJS for two years and love it. It is a very minimal static website compiler that has support for some great languages, including Pug (formerly…
The Gist Ansible has built-in “facts” about your hosts that make it easy to find basic information such as hostname, operating system, IP address. This is great for debugging or inventorying systems, however OS version is not included and it was surprisingly difficult to find a way to print this information out. I understand that Ansible is OS-independant (and hence…
The Problem Most of my servers (virtual machines) are running CentOS 6, but the new ones run CentOS 7. This morning I setup a new CentOS 7 box and was trying to mount a CIFS storage share to it. I copied the line in /etc/fstab that mounts the share, created the secure credentials file, and the mount directory. However, when I ran mount /mnt/share it failed with the following error:
Background I am responsible for a few dozen linux servers at work, and although there was an effort to install Salt a few years ago, they are all managed individually and manually. I spend more time than I should ssh’ing into boxes to add users. install applications, or restart services. I looked into Puppet a few months ago, but it seemed to complicated and clunky for my environment.…
It started with a book I have always loved book stores. From local mom & pop’s to Barns & Noble. I am also a huge fan of Amazon. Quite the dichotomy, huh? On a recent trip to Boston, I visited a brick and mortar Amazon Book Store. Problem solved. This was, hands down, the best (and probably smallest) book store that I have ever been to. The size forced the inventory to be highly curated,…
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Hold CMD/CTRL to select two letters Download Icon How to Set Your Google Profile Icon (PFP) Download the image: click the 'Download Icon' button or right click on the image and select 'Save Image As...'. Sign in to your Google Account. Open your Google Account settings by clicking your profile picture in the top-right corner and selecting 'Manage your Google Account. Under the 'Personal info' tab,…
Enter an IPv4 subnet in CIDR notation (e.g. 10.1.1.0/24) or a range (10.1.1.1-10.1.1.255); the calculator will display network information. Calculate