2015

Apple has introduced a new security feature in Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11) called System Integrity Protection (sometimes referred to as rootless). What is System Integrity Protection? According to Apple’s documentation: A new security policy that applies to every running process, including privileged code and code that runs out of the sandbox. The policy extends additional protections to components on disk and at run-time, only allowing system binaries to be modified by the system installer and software updates....

If you have not heard, the phenomenal cloud base SaaS password manager, LastPass has agreed to be acquired be the not so customer friendly LogMeIn. The IT world immediately panned the anti-idea as anti-consumer and the security world agreed and raised all sorts of red flags as well. People dislike LogMeIn for a variety of reasons but the main one is that they pulled the rugs out from under a lot of folks who were using LogMeIn to help administer remote computers (I was one of these people)....

I recently had to templatize PHP configurations using Ansible and Jinja2. I had to do some research to ensure that the memory directives that were being defined were actually valid. The three directives I was tinkering with were: memory_limit upload_max_filesize post_max_size These three directives values’ are actually tied together. memory_limit is the max amount of memory that a script can consume. upload_max_filesize defines the largest size a file upload can be....

I had some Apple Keychain issues after upgrading to Mac OS X El Capitan yesterday. Apple provided a reasonable resolution (blow away the login Apple Keychain and re-create it). As it turns out, my issues weren’t limited to just the El Capitan upgrade. The Juniper Networks’ VPN client, Junos Pulse, has some pretty awful issues. The behavior went something like this: Save a password for a VPN connection in Junos Pulse VPN client The first use of the VPN connection will be fine Disconnect VPN connection Close Junos Pulse VPN client Open VPN client Attempt to connect to recently created VPN (with saved password) All hell breaks loose; Apple Keychain issues galore....

I was reading through Wired magazine and saw a Windows 10 ad. If you’ve turned on a TV the past month you’ve seen the ad I’m referring to, this is just the print edition of the TV ad. She won’t have to remember passwords. Or obsess about security. To her, every screen is meant to be touched. And so on… (here’s the full ad if you really want to see it)....

I started having some Apple Keychain issues after upgrading to Mac OS X El Capitan. At random, I would be asked to sign back into accounts that I am logged into through Internet Accounts in System Preferences. I thought it a minor issue but it became unavoidable though once El Capitan told me it couldn’t find my login Apple Keychain after logging in: Something related to the ’login’ Apple Keychain happened during the Mac OS X El Capitan upgrade process I’m assuming and after a reboot this morning everything went to hell in a hand basket it would seem....

I was fixing MySQL replication on a slave this past week. Everything seemed to be ready to go after bringing data over from the master manually. I went to connect the slave to the master and nothing happened. Whaaaaaa? Last_IO_Errno: 1045 Last_IO_Error: error connecting to master 'repl@blah.local:3306' - retry-time: 60 retries: 86400 Let me look up MySQL error code 1045: Error: 1045 SQLSTATE: 28000 (ER_ACCESS_DENIED_ERROR) Message: Access denied for user '%s'@'%s' (using password: %s) That’s not helpful....

I’m Chris Short and I have Long Thoracic Nerve (LTN) Palsy with Winging of the Scapula. On October 12, 2003, during a military hurricane evacuation exercise at Avon Park Air Force Range, I managed to permanently damage my LTN leading to winging of my right scapula. Continued service and aging has led to multiple bone spurs in my neck. My life has changed dramatically since I got hurt. Pain is something that I am constantly learning to live with and occasionally thrive with....