04 « February « 2010

4Feb/100

Installing Ubuntu now…

I really like the Ubuntu operating system and the team that is making it. I hope to make it my personal development computer once I find a nice laptop to run it on.

Installing Ubunto 9.10 on VMWare

Full Screen Terminal Screen shot in Ubuntu while installing Ruby on Rails

Filed under: Linux, Sysadmin No Comments

4Feb/100

RedHat Linux ACL report bash shell script

Finally the day has arrived where I had to make a script to build an report for the access control list attributes on all of the files on my web server. I decided to use bash because it was easy for me to do and for compatibility of future releases of RedHat. I would have much rather have done it in Python or Ruby, but ohwell. By no means is this script really complete. I have to admit that it needs better testing of the input arguments and the debugging messages are pretty bad. I wrote this script in under 1 hour. I will do better as time proceeds, but for now, it got the job done.

My script does the following:

takes two arguments
1. the path to start looking for directories
2. the file name for the report
builds a header with date and time of report
finds the users and groups and counts the amount of times they appear in the report for a summary
appends the full report of all the files with the ACL

Ideas for the next version:

Prompting of cleaning up world writable files
Storing ACL for each file into a database for tracking history
Do you have any ideas? If so, please let me know and maybe I will add them to the next version.

And now, here is the script:

(for anyone who wishes to gen_acl_report.sh)

#!/bin/bash

# purpose: create ACL report on 1 level depth directories and output to text file report

# usage: ./gen_acl_report.sh start_path report

# the above command will generate a file called "report_20100203_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.txt"

# created by: aaron

# created at: 20100203

# debug flag

DEBUG="on"

# debug function

function DEBUG()

{

[ "$DEBUG" == "on" ] && $@ || :

}

# set path to find files

STARTPATH="$1"

# set report output

REPORT="$2_`date +%Y%m_%H%M%S`.txt"

# set temp report file

ACLFILELIST=/tmp/acl_file_list.txt

DEBUG echo "REPORT is = $REPORT"

DEBUG echo "ACLFILELIST is = $ACLFILELIST"

DEBUG echo "STARTPATH is = $STARTPATH"

# build acl list

function reportHeader

{

DEBUG echo "...inside function reportHeader"

echo "ACL REPORT" >> $REPORT

echo "Started on `date`" >> $REPORT

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

DEBUG echo "...end of function reportHeader"

}

function getACL

{

DEBUG echo "...inside function getACL"

# find all files excluding .svn

#find $STARTPATH -path '*.svn' -prune -o -type f -exec getfacl {} \; > $ACLFILELIST

# find all top level directories

DEBUG echo "executing find $1"

find $STARTPATH -maxdepth 1 -path '*\.svn' -prune -o -type d -exec getfacl {} \; > $ACLFILELIST

DEBUG echo "...end of function getACL"

}

function groupsSummary

{

DEBUG echo "...inside function groupsSummary"

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

echo "Group Summary:" >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^group:[a-zA-Z]" | sort | uniq -c >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "Default Group Summary:" >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^default:group:[a-zA-Z]" | sort | uniq -c >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "Users for each group:" >> $REPORT

for a in `cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^group:[a-zA-Z]" | sort | awk -F: '{print $2}' | uniq`

echo $a >> $REPORT

for g in `cat /etc/group | grep $a`

echo $g | awk -F: '{print "\t"$4}' >> $REPORT

done

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "Users for each default group:" >> $REPORT

for a in `cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^default:group:[a-zA-Z]" | sort | awk -F: '{print $3}' | uniq`

echo $a >> $REPORT

for g in `cat /etc/group | grep $a`

echo $g | awk -F: '{print "\t"$4}' >> $REPORT

done

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

DEBUG echo "...end of function groupsSummary"

}

function usersSummary

{

DEBUG echo "...inside function usersSummary"

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

echo "User Summary:" >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^user:" | sort | uniq -c >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "Default User Summary:" >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^default:user:" | sort | uniq -c >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

DEBUG echo "...end of function usersSummary"

}

function maskSummary

{

DEBUG echo "...inside function maskSummary"

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

echo "Mask Summary:" >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^mask:" | sort | uniq -c >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "Default Mask Summary:" >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^default:mask:" | sort | uniq -c >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

DEBUG echo "...end of function maskSummary"

}

function findGroups

{

DEBUG echo "...finding list of groups"

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep group:

}

function otherSummary

{

DEBUG echo "...inside function otherSummary"

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

echo "Other Summary:" >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^other:" | sort | uniq -c >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "Default Other Summary:" >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "^default:other:" | sort | uniq -c >> $REPORT

echo " " >> $REPORT

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

DEBUG echo "...end of function otherSummary"

}

function listofFiles

{

DEBUG echo "...list of files"

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

echo "List of files" >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST | grep "# file: " >> $REPORT

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

DEBUG echo "...end of list of files"

}

function appendACL

{

DEBUG echo "...appending acl contents"

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

echo "ACL list of files" >> $REPORT

cat $ACLFILELIST >> $REPORT

echo "===================================" >> $REPORT

DEBUG echo "...end of acl contents appending"

}

function removeACL

{

DEBUG echo "...removing temp files for ACL"

rm $ACLFILELIST

DEBUG echo "...removing temp files for ACL done"

}

reportHeader

getACL

groupsSummary

usersSummary

maskSummary

otherSummary

listofFiles

appendACL

findGroups

removeACL

Filed under: Sysadmin No Comments

4Feb/100

Simple note taking and organization with TiddlyWiki

I have really found TiddlyWiki to be of great help. I have been using them on a usb memory stick for a couple months now and have grown to like it for capturing data, links and other info.

My favorite things about the TiddlyWiki are:

Its all in one html file
Searching is fast
Composing a note is simple
Notes can have references
1. this makes for an option of opening all of the relative notes at one time (very cool)
2. linking notes together with out having to type specific info into the note itself
Timeline shows what you have been working on recently
Orphans show unused notes

I am sure there are plenty more benefits to using the TiddleWiki system. If you have any, please add them to the comments!