Why You Need To Think Very Carerfully Before Adopting A Service-Oriented Architecture Model

It's the latest craze - take whatever you can think of in IT and networking, and add "as a service" to the end of it.  Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are the three main types, and all the other xxx-as-a-Service types and aaS abbreviations can be classified as Infrastructure-based, Platform-based or Software-based.

Grow Your Sysadmin-Fu

There are a few commands that the Linux sysadmin simply can't live without.  The need to see exactly what is going on with your army of *nixs and what any one is doing at any particular time is a must.  Here are a few commands that I would seriously miss, and ones that I make sure are installed on every box I administer.  So, in no particular order....

Subscribe To LDTV For A Chance To Win...

Subscribe to my LDTV YouTube Channel for a chance to win absolutely nothing.  Well, no, not quite true, you will have the chance to win either some sleep, some technical knowledge, or just knowledge of the fact that computers bore you and talking about computers bores you even more to the point of never having anything to do with stories and stuff about them unless there's the chance of getting or winning something in return.

Which reminds me - subscribe to my LDTV YouTube Channel LDTV for a chance to.....

Re-subnet a Cisco Switch, The Easy Way! **With Pictures**

In good old internet backwardness, here is my first Vlog, taking 14 minutes to explain how to re-subnet a Cisco switch in seconds.

Monitoring With MRTG

After much more of a battle than I was expecting, I finally have MRTG running on a Pi and generating some useful graphs about my home network and it's boxes.  If you're not familiar, MRTG is the Multi-Router Traffic Grapher (although it almost stood for Memcard Reformatted Totally Gone).  It gets it's information via SNMP and then draws pretty graphs with the data.

Enabling WiFi roaming on Raspberry Pi

wpa_roam:-
Gives priority to wireless networks.

Click to read more....

Build a RADAR for Bournemouth Air Festival!

With #BmthAirFest just around the corner, now is the perfect time to build yourself a Radar system for a grand total of about £10!!

All you need is a USB stick with a Realtek RTL2832U chipset -- commonly sold as DVB-T tuners (TV tuner dongle).  You can get them off eBay for around £7-10.

Radar instructions are in this post.

Google Assistant on Ubuntu 18.04

So I decided to do a step-by-step guide to how I got Google Assistant working on my laptop running Ubuntu 18.04.  I can now say, "OK Google" and ask/change/trigger all the usual things.

You will need:

• PC/laptop/SoC running Ubuntu 18.04
• A Google account
• A working microphone (or headset)
• A working speaker (or headset)

Complete guide can be found at https://linuxdoctorafcb.blogspot.com/p/google-a.html

My Head(ache)'s in The (Google) Clouds With Google Assistant on Linux

I decided late last night that the one thing my battered, slow, old and full of crap laptop absolutely could not go without any longer was Google Assistant integration (I want to say "OK Google" to my Linux laptop, basically). I've now done it, understand it and just need to polish it up a bit, write a few scripts, change a few settings and then I'll put up a post on how to do it.

In doing this, though, I have just re-met the Google Cloud Platform... 'Kin' Ell there's a LOT of shit in there, and I mean a lot. So, in summary, Google Assistant on Linux laptop guide to follow, then probably 4 months of posts as I start hacking* the shit out of Google Cloud Platform.

* don't get excited, I mean hacking in the old old sense of the word, not "gaining unauthorised access of a computer or network or device that does not belong to you".

Public And Shared Keys Page

I've added a static page to this where public PGP keys, public SSH keys and all the like can get added in one ungainly, unordered list.

Techie Thursday: SSH Tunnelling

One of SSH's coolest (IMHO) features is it's ability to transparently tunnel TCP packets.  In fact, it can tunnel IP datagrams over TCP, but that's one for another day.  This looks at SSH's TCP port forwarding ability, and how you can use it to set up secure, fully encrypted point-to-point links between machines (or entire networks) in physically different locations on different networks.

Make your own Air Traffic Control RADAR

Ever wondered where that plane high above your head was going? Ever wondered who the annoying little propellor plane belonged to that keeps doing Top Gun-esque fly-bys of your house? Wonder no more with your own Air Traffic Control RADAR system!

Use TOR to create your own secure "cloud" drive

With everything seeming to be going back to much more of a 1970's style of network computing in terms of where the power lies in relation to the client/server, and the seeming need and demand for always-accessable network attached storage, I wanted something that wasn't owned by Google where I could store various things like PGP keys, system scripts and other assorted crap that would be handy to have.  I also wanted to be able to add to this non-Google-owned-thing.

Using TOR to provide remote access to anywhere

One of TOR's most useful features for the sysop/sysadmin is it's ability to forward not just web traffic but any TCP port.

Google Drive integration on Linux

Now, I'm in the I.T. minority - I actually use a linux desktop (anyone who knows me know that I hate Micro$oft with a passion, and won't touch even pirated copies of their overbloated insecure counter-intuitive standards-breaking non-rfc-compliant pile of pirated code that they laughingly call an "operating" system).