Book Review – The Devil Dragon Pilot and Defector

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Brent’s World Book Review

The Devil Dragon Pilot and Defector

It has been a moment since I have posted a book review, so I thought I would catch up with review not one but two of the recent novels I have read.  The Devil Dragon Pilot by Lawrence Colby and Defector by David Gledhill.

Let’s start off with The Devil Dragon Pilot, written by Lawrence Colby a retired military pilot and one of the few who have completed both the US Navy and US Airforce flight training programs the first in the Ford Stevens military aviation series.  The story focuses on a new highly advanced stealth Chinese attack bomber being developed in complete secrecy by the Chinese.  The aircraft is capable of complete stealth, high altitude, and speeds in excess of MACH 5!  It’s capable test pilot Wu Lee, who at an early age made a lasting friendship with an American family, has a strong bong with the United States.  After discovering he is dying of terminal Leukemia decides he does not want to die alone in China and decides to defect with the experimental aircraft with the help of his childhood friend United States Airforce Major Ford Stevens!

The book was fast paced and kept my interest, my only problem with the novel was that it was basically Firefox without the tension building espionage sub plot and character development and set in China instead of the cold war Soviet Union.  The comparison with Firefox also led to another letdown of sorts.  Except for a brief fight with the Chinese copilot while the aircraft was being stolen, there was really no action at the conclusion of the book. After all this is supposed to be a military thriller, so where is the military action?

I am not disappointed I chose to try this book from a new author, it still was a good read, and the premise did have potential.  I saw where the author was trying to go, but the lack of Chinese response at the realization that one of their most advanced pieces of military hardware was just taken from them made the ending seemed rushed, and the potential energy build up throughout the story wasted. 

I give The Devil Dragon Pilot 2 and a half stars, a good book if you need to kill time on vacation, though not something that will really knock your socks off.  I am on the fence if I am going to pick up the second book in the Ford Stevens series, though at $3.00 for the Kindle edition what do I have to lose?   

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M5JE20X/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o01_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Defector by David Gledhill is also a military aviation techno thriller, set in the early 1980s at the height of the cold war,  Due to major advances in aeronatics in the west, such as the General Dynamics F-16, and McDonnel Douglas F-15, the Soviets find their venerable but aging Mig 21s and similar aircraft are afraid of being unable to be able to obtain air superiority.  Enter the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker.  A revolutionary twin engine, twin tail fighter aircraft, that will go head to head with the likes of the F-15, and F-14 Tomcat!

 

There is only one problem, It’s test pilot Soviet Air Force Colonel Yuri Andrenev, whose wife has terminal cancer and tired of bumbling Soviet hierarchy decides to defect to West Germany with the Su-27 prototype.  Promising an intelligence coup for the West, and dealing a serious blow to Soviet aerospace development at the same time.

The book was well written, and in contrast with the Devil Dragon Pilot, there is plenty of good military aviation action in this book.  Sometimes too detailed, which tended to slow me down, as the details and minutiae became a little to dense.  However, it was interesting to be able to get a small (If even fictional) glimpse into the life of a front-line fighter poised both figuratively and latterly on the razors edge defending the border of East and West Germany.

I give the book 3 and half stars, and enjoyed it more than The Devil Dragon Pilot,  as it had more aerial action, which is why we buy military aviation thrillers to begin with! I would have liked to have given it more stars, but tendancy of the author to get into too much detail sometimes really slowed down the pace.  Though this may not bother some people.

Defector is currently available on Kindle for $2.99 at Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Defector-Phantom-Air-Combat-Book-ebook/dp/B00EUYEUDK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1490817621&sr=8-3&keywords=defector

(NOTE: This links are provided for your convenience, Brent’s World has NO monetized content.  I do not receive any payment for the review or endorsement of any product.)

 

Quickie – Installing Sophos Home on OS X Sierra

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Quickie – Installing Sophos Home on OS X Sierra

You may often hear that Mac’s just don’t get virus’s. Or that there are no known malware ‘in the wild’ that effect Mac’s. While this may or may not have been true at one time ( The caveat ‘in the wild’ makes that statement suspect, as it is acknowledging that someone, somewhere is probably developing some.).

Doing a simple Google  search, I was able to find a list of 51 pieces of malware targeting OS X. (Link to list by clicking here.) So while this number is nowhere near as large as what is present in the Windows world it is NOT 0. So knowing that there is malware out there and the predominant attitude is that our OS X workstations do not get malware. I would say we are actually more vulnerable than our Windows brethren.

it is ALWAYS best practice to install an antimalware application on your computer. Regardless if you are running OS X, Windows, or Linux.

Sophos offers a free anti-malware product called, Sophos Home for free. You simply need to sign up for the free account and download the installer. There is however one catch that I discovered while trying to install on OS X Sierra. The installer would exit with the following error.

I was able to find a workaround on the Sophos support forums.

1) Go to the location you downloaded Sophos Home – ie ~/Downloads /SophosInstall
2) Right click on the Sophos Installer Package 
a. Select “Show Package Contents” 
3) Go to ./Contents/MacOS/
4) Double Click Installer

Sophos will now install normally.

Once installed I recommend performing a full scan by clicking on the Sophos Icon in your menu bar, clicking on Open Sophos Home then click the Scan Now button.

Thanks for reading my blog, and safe computing. Please come back next month for our next technical post! If you wish to be notified by email of new posts please register for a free account. You may also want to check out our forums at www.catracing.org/hendrb/forum.

OS X – Installing GNU-sed

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OS X Technical

Installing GNU-sed using Home Brew repository

   Last month’s technical article focused on adding BASH 4 to OS X using Home Brew, because OS X ships with BASH v3.257 due to GPLv3.0 licensing requirements.   You can read the article here.  https://www.catracing.org/hendrb/tech-tutorial-adding-bash-4-osx-using-home-brewos-x/.  This month I will share some more tips  that will make your shell experience more compatible with Linux scripts by adding GNUsed,  First some background then we will fire up the terminal.app and get started!

  Back in 2015, I published article containing a type in yourself BASH script that will display random quotes from a file called ‘quotations’ that I converted from a CNET Amiga BBS plus file (Door, or external for the PC BBS SysOps).  (Click here for article.) While it ran great on Linux boxes, due to differences in the BSD-sed (stream editor) utility, which is  used to parse the blocks in the text file containing the individual quotes then centering them depending on the width of your terminal window.  Would work on a Linux box, but fail with an error on OS X.

(As you can see the script runs fine in CentOS Linux)

(The script failing in OS X with the ‘expected context address’)

  After upgrading to BASH 4 using the Home Brew repository I discovered you could also install the GNU version of the sed utility which would allow me to run my script error free without writing 2 versions of my script.  Which brings us to the purpose of this blog, installing GNU-sed from the Home Brew repository.

  There are 2 way we can install this from the repository, one method will install the files renaming GNUsed to gsed. Which will allow you to either call ‘sed’ (BSDsed), or ‘gsed’ (GNUsed) as needed from your scripts.

 

Method 1 :

Enter the OS X Terminal (SHIFT – COMMAND – U) Then launch the terminal.app.

You must be in an account with elevated privledges (NOTE: You can NOT sudo)

            If logged in a normal user account (Which you should be!), Type the following at the terminal prompt.

$ su – <username>

            The – option tell the terminal to switch users and load the environment of that user.

             At the Shell Prompt type

$ brew install gnu-sed –with-default-names

The Brew repository installer will install sed into /usr/local/Cellar/gnu-sed/4.2.2/, and create a symbolic link for  /usr/bin/local/sed to that directory

Now when you use sed, it will use GNU-sed instead of BSD sed.

You can revert back to BSDsed by removing the symbolic link in /usr/local/bin.

$ rm sed

You also need to remove the symlink to the man pages /usr/local/share/man/man1

$ rm /usr/local/share/man/man1/sed.1

NOTE: This does not remove the files only the symbolic links!
To permanently remove GNU-sed from your computer, simply type the following with your elevated account.

$brew remove gnu-sed

Method 2: Installing GNU-sed so it can be installed concurrently with BSDsed (dogs and cats living together.)

Let’s say that we wanted to install GNU-sed but for whatever reason (Such as compatibility), you wanted to install GNU-sed and have it reside on the system concurrently with BSDsed!  Or give your users the option to choose which version of SED they want to use by default.  This is quite simple to accomplish. 

Enter the OS X Terminal (SHIFT – COMMAND – U) Then launch the terminal.app.

You must be in an account with elevated privileges (NOTE: You can NOT sudo)

            If logged in a normal user account (Which you should be!)

            Type at the terminal prompt.

                        $ su – <username>

            The – option tell the terminal to switch users and load the environment of that user.

At your elevated prompt type.

            $ brew install gnu-sed

The brew repository will install gnu-sed in the same dictory as method 1, but it will not create symbolic links for sed, or the sed man pages.  You now have BSD-sed ‘sed’, and GNU-sed ‘gsed’ on your system!  Type it our, type $ man sed, and $ man gsed at a terminal prompt!  Scroll down to the last line of the page and note the difference!

If you are writing scripts that require the use of GNU-sed for your own environment just remember to use gsed,  if you need to run scripts written for Linux machines, you may want to consider writing a launching scrip that aliases sed to gsed and then removes the alias upon exit.  This can be done like this.

#!/bin/bash
# OS X Launcher for randquote.sh
# You MUST have gnu-sed installed from homebrew to use
# aliases sed to gnu-sed for linux bash script compatibility
alias sed=’gsed ‘
source ./randquote.sh
unalias sed

(Executiing randquote.sh with the launching script above, note that I needed to execute the script using the source command, instead of launching it using ./filename.sh)

In order for aliases to work inside a shell script, you must execute the script using the source command, not with the simple .\ from the command prompt.  Your other option is to use a text editor and replace all incidents of sed with gsed manually. 

Unless there is a specific reason option one will not work for you, I highly recommend installing GNU-sed with the –with-default-names option.  It will save extra steps and headaches down the road, and can always be easily removed if you suspect compatibility issues.

I hope you enjoyed todays OS X Terminal tutorial, please let me know if you found this interesting! Until next month, don’t stop exploring and be safe on the digital playground.

Sully – Miracle On The Hudson

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Movie Review: Sully

The Untold Story Of Cactus 1549 – The Miracle On the Hudson.

 

  Most of you know I am an aviation enthusiast, some of you know all too well that I am an aviation freak!  Anytime I find a good article relating to aircraft or their operation I lap up all the technical data.  Upon hearing that a movie starring Tom Hanks and directed by Clint Eastwood was being made about the US Airways 1549 flight that made an emergency landing on the Hudson River on a cold New York morning January 15. 2009 (Almost 7 years ago today), I could not wait for it to get release, and tonight I was finally afforded the chance to sit down and watch it.

  It is quite clear that the film would not directly focus on the events we already know so well from following the wide media.  Instead the film focuses on the emotional toll the event played on the flight deck and cabin crew; the passengers, and the New York TRACON controller who frantically worked to keep Captain Sullenberger advised of the available landing options and to keep traffic out of his way.

  While the rest of the country celebrated an aviation event that up until that time had not been thought possible, that an airliner could make a controlled water landing without a single loss of life.  The people directly involved, including our hero Captain Chesley Sullenburger suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, resulting in loss of sleep, recurring nightmares and lingering doubts about whether he made the right decisions that day.  Sully offers us a glimpse of the aftermath not seen by the praising new reports we remember.

  While the movie took many liberties in the way the NTSB treated Captain Sullenberger, which even Sully himself has stated that the NTSB hearing in the film was made to look more like a prosecutorial process, instead of a necessary open minded process necessary to ensure the finding of the root cause of all transportation related accidents and ensure similar events do not occur in the future.

  Overall this was one of the most enjoyable films I have seen all year!  Tom Hanks as Captain Sullenberger has found a roll he was born to play.  It was refreshing to watch a version of this event that was purely technical in nature, focusing on real people and real emotion, and the toll an event like this has even if it has a successful outcome.

  I would highly recommend taking the time to watch this film, Great acting, a solid storyline (If I was doing a book review, I could say it could have ripped right out of the headlines!), So buy the DVD, or buy/rent the digital download on your favorite online movie store, grab some popcorn, and prepare for takeoff! Oh, and in the unlikely event of a water landing,…

Tech Tutorial – Adding BASH 4 to OSX Using Home BrewOS X

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Fun With OS X

– Installing BASH 4 on OS X using Home Brew 

        If you have spent any time using LINUX or even other Unix variants like Solaris, you are already painfully aware of the differences that exist in various shells, commands, and utilities.  One of the more striking differences is that Apple continues to include BASH v.3.2.57 which is about 8 years old and does not support some very import features of v4 such as associative arrays and a myriad of additional types of command completion.  For a full list of BASH 4 changes click HERE. (Replace HERE with this LINK https://www.admon.org/scripts/new-features-in-bash-4-0/).  The reason that Apple does not include a newer version of BASH is that BASH4 is now under the GPL3 license, and does not conform to Apples copyright philosophy. However this does not stop you from installing it yourself.

  There are several ways to install BASH 4 on your Mac, including compiling from source if you are feeling masochistic.  The method that I used, installing the Home Brew repository will be covered in this tutorial.

  Part I – Installing the Homebrew repository.

  If you use Linux, you are already familiar with a software repository, and package management software.  Red Hat and CentOS uses yum and rpm, while Unbunto Linux uses apt-get or Synaptic.  For us OS X users, the only software respository most of us are familiar with is the App store, which allows us to purchase, install software and manage their updates.  Homebrew is basically an App Store for software packages created, compiled, and maintained by the community and are free of charge.  This is where we will be obtaining BASH version 4.  We first though must install XCode Command Line Tools (CLT), and Homebrew.

 For detailed instructions to installing Homebrew, go to brew.sh

  1. Launch your terminal

 2. Copy and paste the shell command on the home page into your terminal window at the shell prompt.
    This will automatically install XCode Command Like Tools, and the homebrew repository.
 3. Once installed test by typing man brew in your terminal window.

Man entry for brew

 

Part II – Installing BASH 4

  1. In your shell window switch to an account with elevated privledges, brew will not execute being run using sudo

     $ su – <priledged username>5

Then type.

      $ brew install bash bash-completion

This will install both BASH 4 and BASH completion in /usr/local/bin/base

  2. We now need to add the new shell to the list of whitelisted shells, this is done in the /etc/shells file.

      $ echo “$(brew –prefix)/bin/bash” >> /etc/shells

 3. OPTIONAL Change your login shell to BASH4

       $ chsh –s $(brew –prefix)/bin/bash

NOTE:  I chose to leave my login shell at BASH3, as BASH4 can be invoked in the shebang #! at the beginning of any BASH4 script.   Here are some other personal tweaks I did for my BASH4 installation.

I created a symbolic link for /bin/bash4 to /usr/local/bin/bash.  That way I can execute BASH v4 scripts using #!/bin/bash4.

I did this by typing the following 

       $ ln -s /usr/local/bin/bash /bin/bash4

You can see that bash4 is a link to /usr/local/bin/bash

I can change to BASH4 from any shell in this manner.

            $ /bin/bash4

I can re-execute the login script next by entering the following command.

            $ source /etc/profile

 

PART III – BASH Version checking in login scripts.

 

  I also added a BASH version checking routine to be placed in /etc/profile (Login script that is executed when opening a terminal window for ALL USERS).

You may want to consider adding this to your profile script.

     3  ## BASH3 .profile (Put ALL BASH3 specific code here)
     4  function bash3 {
     5  echo -e “\nUsing BASH 3 Specific and Version Neutral login profile\n” 
     6  }
     7 
     8  ## BASH4 .profile (Pull ALL BASH4 specific code here)
     9  function bash4 {
     10  echo -e “\nUsing BASH 4 Specific and Version Neutral login profile\n”
      11  }
      12 
      13  # Default BASH version checking
      14 
      15          if (( ${BASH_VERSION%%.*} > 3 ))
      16                  then 
      17                          bash4
      18                  else    
      19                          bash3
      20      fi
      21 
      22  ## PUT ALL VERSION NEUTRAL BASH SCRIPTS BELOW THIS LINE!

That is all there is to installing BASH4 in OSX.  I hope you enjoyed the tutorial will keep returning to Brent’s world for more great articles!

Is The Mac The Amiga Of Today – Part II

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Is The Mac The Amiga Of Today – Part II

rotten_apple Back in July of 2015, I wrote a technical op-ed piece comparing the Macintosh with the Commodore Amiga, contrasting their technical strengths, marketing strategies and popularity with the creative crown.  In hind sight knowing what happened to the Commodore Amiga; I am not sure it is fair to use the words marketing and Amiga in the same sentence. After looking at Apples latest offerings from the WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference),  I am beginning to wonder if my post was just a little too prophetic.

2 years later let us draw some more similarities between the two companies, and what now seems eerily similar in that it appears Apple may be poised to take a page right out of Commodore’s managements playbook.  The ability to “Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Let’s start out by recognizing that with the Amiga; Commodore had a potential winner on their hands!  In 1995 they had a 7MHz desktop computer that could display high resolution graphics, displaying 16 colors out of a palette of 4096.  4 voice digital audio, and a preemptive multitasking operating system.  At the time the best the Macintosh could do was 2 colors on a built in 9 inch screen.  The Macintosh II would not be released for another 2 years, to finally bring color to the Macintosh line, Apple was able to somewhat fill the gap with the Apple IIGS.  However, this was still an 8bit computer, which Apple further crippled so it would not directly compete directly with the Macintosh.

Due to the fact that the Amiga used a standard NTCS / PAL output and had the capability to genlock (Display computer generated graphics and text over a standard TV signal)  Video production and TV studios went with the Commodore Amiga for their video production.  Sales of the Amiga did not fully hit their stride with consumers however until the release of the Amgia 500, which was snapped up as an inexpensive home/gaming computer, with hit titles such as Lemmings, or Shadow Of The Beast appearing first on the Amiga before being ported to the PC, Atari, or even console games at the time such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or Sega. 

Commodores problem however was that even with their past successes in the home computer market coupled with the strengths of the Amiga management never really could figure out just what the Amiga was, who it should be targeted at, and most importantly where the product line should go to make it successful in the future.  Commodore did release milestone updates to the Amiga, such as the A3000, which was the first true 32 bit Amiga, which was followed by the 1200, and 4000 which brought the AGA chipset.  Capable of displaying 14bit video to the Amiga and gave the user the ability to display 256 colors on the screen at one time with a palette of 16.8 million colors.  However by this time VGA and SVGA were already pretty much standard on the PCs being release and could do more for less money.  Many saw this as too little too late and jumped ship.  Commodore was a sinking ship and finally closed their doors in 1994.

If you know your Commodore history, you know I left out a very important Amiga model.  The Amiga 600.  Here is where we start drawing comparisons to the last days of Commodore and the current Apple line up.

The Amiga 600, originally started out as the proposed Amgia 300.  It was supposed to be cheaper to product then the Amiga 500 (which at the time was the top selling Amiga computer.), and while it included the ability to add a built in hard drive, came standard with Amiga OS 2.0, and had a PCMCIA slot for the addition of extra RAM, modem, or network card.  It lacked a numerical keypad, ran slightly slower, and ended up costing more than the 500 and 500+ that it eventually replaced when released as the Amiga 600.  Commodore once again proved it could not sell igloo’s to the eskimos, and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Now let’s take a look at Apple.  Oh were to begin?

I could lament over their decision to kill the xServe line, which led to their discontinuing the XRaid, which led to OS X Server becoming a dumbed down $20 consumer ad-on.  However, as this is probably one of Apple’s most niche we can more on in favor of getting into the meat and potatoes.

Ports and Peripherals –

Firewire, conventional USB ports, CD/DVD-Rom drives, and  SD-Card slots.  As I mentioned in my original article, I felt that one of the things Apple did right with the release of the iMac and the remarketing of the Macintosh for the creative users and professionals the Commodore failed when the Amiga took of in this realm was not only their choice of connection technologies but their close relation to third party vendors such as Canon or Sony, so that we were able to go out buy a Macintosh and a Sony camcorder and come right home and start editing our video.   When it came time to share the video we could burn it right to a DVD and mail it off to our relatives. 

While ejecting the SD or CFAST card from my camera to transfer my pictures to my computer, regardless of if I am at home or on the road is not part of my workflow,  I simply plug my camera into my computer via USB to transfer my files, it is part of the workflow of many professionals.

Over the last 8 years, Apple has done away with almost every port and peripheral mentioned above, yes even conventional USB.  While a few of these we have grown used to not having, such as Firewire, and optical drives.  I have a IEEE1394 card in my PC in case I ever need to get something off of one of my old Camcorder tapes,  You don’t always need an optical drive, but they are nice to have on occasion!  Others such as the removal of the SD-Card reader, and conventional USB ports are potentially a show stopper for your professionals.  Going back to Apple’s relationship with vendors,  I just upgraded to a Canon EOS 5D MKIV, which comes with their own proprietary USB cable.  Pondering the scenario of upgrading my aging 2010 Macbook Pro with a current model with USB-C, I GOOGLED Canon EOS 5D MKIV USB-C data cable and came up with ZILCH!  Nothing! 

This means that to transfer pictures from my brand new camera to a brand new Macbook Pro, I need to remember to carry around a separate dongle,  but more on dongles later.  It is discouraging to see Apple forgetting that cooperating with the companies that are going to be making products that will interface with your computers is a selling point, and makes things easier down the road for your consumers, and professional users.

Hardware

Desktops – I want an expandable desktop, not a Mac Mini plus

Apple!  PLEASE, as a former cheese grater Mac Pro user, I am begging you to bring back a full desktop to your Macintosh line!  There were so many advantages to the original Mac Pro, for instance.  its expandability which saw me go through 3 versions of video cards, and from it’s original 4GB to 16GBs of RAM.  Desktops are more clutter free.  I loved the ability to have 4 hard drives without having to keep either a 4 bay or multiple external drive enclouse on my desk, each with their own data cable and power cord, not to mention the fact that I could have any one of the 4 drives a bootable boot camp device.  Something you cannot do with the current Mac Pro.  Apple traded form over function and expandability with its current Mac Pro, and has let it sit stagnant for 3 years. 

 

Current Macbook Pro – “It just works!  If you remembered your dongle.”

This I already touched upon in the last section, but there are so many things for a PRO not to like with the current interation of Macbok Pro’s.  First let’s start out with the ports.  4 USB-C ports and a headphone jack?  Is this your way of giving the bird to those who complained about the removal of our beloved 3.5mm jack in the iPhone7?  I just don’t get it.  Considering the fact that one of the ports must be used as a charging cable, thay leaves me with just 3 ports.  Which being USB-C I also have to bring along adaptors to plug in things like my camera, charge my iPhone, or even plug in a USB media stick.  For those that also use their Macbook Pro’s as desktop.  That leaves them with 1 free USB-C port after plugging in the power adapter and 2 displays.  On my current 2010 Macbook PRO, I could have my power adaptor plugged in, using an external monitor, have an external hard drive connected via Firewire 800, Wired to my LAN, transferring pictures via my SD Card slot, and still have one legacy USB port free!  The only dongle I would have to use is the Video Port to HDMI dongle. 

Oh did I also forget to mention that I can upgrade the RAM from 4GB to 8GB (The 2011 models you can upgrade to 16GB).  Another feature stripped from the current models. 

Even with the inclusions of the new touch strip, which looks like it will be a really cool feature, Apple is trading too much form over functionality to be considered as a professional option any more.  Which is too bad considering Apple still has one of the best portable form factors in mobile computing.

Software

Now let’s take a look at the other side of the house, because this has been another strength in product placement and product homogeny that has given Apple an edge over its competition,  and yet again another reason that Apple is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, just like Commodore .

OS X – Unreasonable and arbitrary obsolescence of hardware. 

Okay Apple, while I understand why OS X Sierra might not be functionally useable of a first generation intel Macbook, I fail to see the reason why it won’t run on say an 8 Core 3.0GHz Mac Pro from 2008, with 16GB of RAM, and 1GB of VRAM.  For the record my Mac Pro died 2 years ago, so I am just using the specs above as an example, not as a display of bitterness.  That is more than enough horsepower to run almost anything you can throw at it, so why is it unsupported hardware for your current OS?  It makes no sense.  It also made me decide not to repair my Mac Pro.  Since I do not want to get another all in one Mac like an iMac, the Mac Mini is not powerful enough for my needs, and I feel the current Mac Pro is a joke I have been using Windows 7 for the past year. 

Aperture –  Apple what the bloody hell were you thinking? 

You were the company who INVENTED professional photo workflow on a computer!  To discontinue the product and give your customers the option of using the consumer grade product Photo or move to Adobe Lightroom is laughably pathetic! 

Final Cut Pro X – It needs to be more like iMovie.

I am not a professional videographer, so there really is not much I can add to this that has not been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere on the internet, just another example of Apple grasping defeat from the jaws of victory, though this product is still alive somewhat.  Who knows maybe next month Apple will kill this one, and expect everyone to use iMovie.

As this has already become one of my longest articles to date, it is time to wrap this up.  It has been a wild is not somber ride for the past 5 years following Steve Jobs death.  As I watch Apple making more an more mistakes and replace more and more of their products with ones from their competitors.  I cannot help but feel that history is repeating itself and I am once again finding myself comparing the Apple, with Commodore Business machines.  Pretty much who’s computers were cutting edge, and loved by many, and in their prime were the masters of their own downfall, due to development delays, poor management, and marketing blunders snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  I hope I don’t have a write a third article, proclaiming that in the end, “The Mac Was The Amiga Of Today, as Apple Decides To No Longer Manufacture Computers.”

To read the original “Is The Mac The Amiga Of Today” click HERE! 

Brent’s World Blog News – Weaver Xtreme (Theme) Installed

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Blog Update

Weaver Xtreme Theme Installed

As stated in our 2016 blog goals, I have completed testing and installation of the Weaver Xtreme.  The decision was made to upgrade as our long time used theme Aspen was no longer being updated.  Weaver Xtreme was created by the same author, and Brent’s World could retain the look and feel that you are familiar with!

We will be testing the new theme in production for 30 days before purchasing a single site license.  Any feedback on the new theme would be appreciated.  Especially if you encounter any issues, or notice reduced performance.

You will also notice that I am using a new banner picture, as it had not been updated since 2015!  I will be working for a more permanent banner picture in the next couple of months!

I hope you like the new theme, and will keep returning for great articles from Brent’s World!

Wednesday Quickie – Outlook 2016 Attachment Reminder

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Wednesday Quickie – Outlook 2016 Attachment Reminder 

I accidently discovered a new feature in Outlook 2016 the other evening that I thought I would share.   I know we have all done this at work, I know I am guilty of this quite often.  In the process of sending an email that is supposed to contain an attachment, we become so focused on the content of the email that we forget the attachment when everything is said and done.

Depending on the content, this can either be embarrassing, or if you were sending your resume for that perfect employment opportunity, catastrophic!

So I was quite surprised this evening when I was helping someone troubleshoot an issue with an Amiga startup script, and was doing a poor mans attachment (Copy and Past) into the email text, when I hit Send, I received a message stating ,” You may have forgotten to attach a file.  (Don’t Send), (Send Anyway)”.

Forgotten_Attachment

I do not know if I should be scared, as my apps now actually seem to be reading my email while I type them, or delighted over this potentially life saving feature.   On the paranoid side it kind of brings back memories of this Clippy meme.

Clippy-Suicide Note

 

 

Anyway,  it has been awhile since I have posted a Wednesday Quickie, and was so pleased to stumble upon this feature, that I just thought I would share!

 

 

 

 

Thanks for visiting Brent’s World, and I hope you check out our other great article
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Brent P Hendricks (Blog and forum administrator)

 

Post Update – Active Directory Authentication Fixed in SAMBA Update 4.2.10-6.2.el7_2

Brent's World Posted on by

Blog - CentosIt was back in April when I posted the article here that SAMBA Update 4.2.10-6.el7_2 completely broke authentication with a Windows Active Directory domain controller, and in an emergency had to roll back to the previous version.   That blog post can be found here.  http://4.2.10-6.2.el7_2. It has been one of the most popular posts the last couple of months.

The update was released to fix the Badlock vulnerability, which could leave your servers open to man in the middle, or denial of service attacks.  The only problem was, that upon installation and restarting of the SAMBA services, domain users were unable to authenticate with their accounts.  After a few hours of trying to troubleshoot the issue, the only option available was to roll back to the previous version of SAMBA.  Not something to be taken lightly especially when a vulnerability patch is involved.

Surprisingly it took 2 months for the next SAMBA update to be released in the CentOS Repos.  I hear that Ubuntu had a fixed version almost immediately.  Something to think about when I think about putting my next Linux server online.  In fact with the version number being so similar I almost missed it, except I was actually physically looking at the REPO directories on a CentOS mirror and noticed the June 25th modified date.

I immediately fired up my development server, and did a YUM UPDATE, this is what was waiting for me.

samba                  x86_64        4.2.10-6.2.el7_2      updates          615 k
samba-client        x86_64        4.2.10-6.2.el7_2       updates          497 k
samba-client ibs  x86_64         4.2.10-6.2.el7_2       updates         4.3 M
samba-common  noarch          4.2.10-6.2.el7_2       updates         273 k
samba-common-libs  x86_64  4.2.10-6.2.el7_2       updates          157 k
samba-common-tools  x86_64 4.2.10-6.2.el7_2      updates          445 k
samba-libs                   x86_64 4.2.10-6.2.el7_2      updates          261 k
samba-winbind            x86_64 4.2.10-6.2.el7_2      updates          466 k
samba-winbind-clients x86_64 .2.10-6.2.el7_2       updates          120 k
samba-winbind-modules x86_64 4.2.10-6.2.el7_2  updates          106 k

After the update I rebooted the server (The update included a kernel patch), and did a simple wbinfo -u (Windbind list users)  I was happily rewarded with a list of my domain users!  The final test was switching to a domain user account with SU – (domainusername).  Again I was happily rewarded with a successful login.

On one hand I can happily say this issue has been fixed, but it does leave me with a somewhat bad taste in my mouth that it took this long to get a fix into the repository, when the same issue was affecting Ubuntu’s users and the patch was made available within weeks.  I understand the philosophy behind CentOS and it’s stability.  However leaving your users with a known vulnerability for months seems like a poor choice!

Anyway,  I am happy to report the issue as being resolved!, and I thank the people who came to Brent’s World after I reported the problem!

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CentOS 7 – Resetting Lost Root Password

Brent's World Posted on by

CentOS 7 – Resetting Lost Root PasswordBlog - Centos

You have just discovered that you have forgotten the root password of your CentOS 7 workstation or server.  What are you going to do?

 

 

If you have access to an account that is a member of the group ‘wheel’, you only need to login with that account and type the following at the shell prompt

$sudo passwd root

[sudo] password for (username) : **********

Changing password for user root.
New password: (Enter New Password)
Retype new password: (Retype New Password)
If you entered and confirmed the password correctly, the shell will return the following, and return you to the shell prompt. For Example.

passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
$

Now we can try switching user to the root account with the new password.

$ su –

NOTE: The switch user ‘su’ command defaults to the account root unless another account is specified. The ‘-‘ option tells the switch user command to load the accounts environment variables.

You then should be prompted with the password prompt, and if the change performed above was successful you should be logged in.

$ su –
Password: *******
Last login: Sun May 29 10:43:00 KST 2016 on tty1

“Wish I had a decent book of quotes!”

-Sysop

#

Notice the shell prompt is now a #, this indicates you are using the root account.

So what if you do not have an account that is a member of the group ‘wheels’?
You will need to boot your system into single user mode.

Here is where it gets rather sticky, as you do not have access to the root account, you will be unable to gracefully shut your server down (unless there is an account that has been given access to the reboot, or shutdown command through the sudoers file), if you run applications on this server that have a database backend like MySQL or MariaBD there is a possibility that data corruption will occur! Proceed at your own risk.

Physically reboot your Centos box.

From the grub bootloader, enter ‘e’ for edit

Grub

 

On the next screen use your cursor keys, and cursor down until you see an entry starting with ‘linux16’, we will be making the following changed on this line. NOTE using your cursor keys, move the cursor keys with your UP / DOWN cursor keys to the beginning of the block of text and use your left cursor key to position the cursor at the end of ‘ro’

Section after edit

Change ‘ro’ to ‘rw init=/sysroot/bin/sh’

NOTE: DO NO COPY THE SINGLE QUOTES. (See screen shots!)

The grub screen should now look like this. (NOTE: What looks like an underscore between init=/sysroot/bin/sh and rd.lvm.kv…. is actually your cursor. There should just be a space here.

Section before edit
Now press ‘Ctrl-x’ to exit and boot into single user mode.

Once you are in single user mode, issue the chroot command as follows.

:/# chroot /sysroot

We can then issue the passwd command to change the root password.

:/# passwd root

Your screen will look like this.

Single User Mode Password Change

 

Now update selinux

:/# touch /.autorelabel

Now exit chroot

:/# exit

Finally reboot the system, and test logging in a root.

:/# reboot

This brings up a good point, with it being this easy to change the root password, isn’t this a possible security issue, and if so what can be done to harden the system and prevent someone from coming along, rebooting our Linux machine and changing the root password?  The answer to this question is YES!  This is a big security hole and there are several things that can and should be done to prevent this sort of attack.

  • Set a grub bootloader password.
  • Enable root password for single user mode.
  • Enable root password for recovery mode.

Performing options 2 and 3, will require you to boot from the CentOS live CD in order to reset a lost root password, and can be circumvented if password is required to access the system BIOS. We will go over these 3 options in next month’s Brent’s World technical blog.

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