Using vim to quickly encrypt and decrypt files

Any time you have a text file on a Linux system that you want to keep private regardless of the privileges that other users with accounts on the system may have, you can resort to encryption. One easy way to do this is to use a feature that is built into the vim editor. You will have to provide a password that will you then need to remember or store in a password safe, but the process is straightforward. The file name will not be changed in any way, and the content of the file can be recovered in much the same way that it was encrypted.To begin, let's say that we have a file that begins like this:$ head -3 mysecret I feel the need to put my deepest darkest secret into a text file on my Linux system. While this likely isn't common practice, I'm not sure that I can trust anyone with it. But a penguin? That's a different story! So here goes ... Now, not wanting to risk your deepest darkest secret to fellow users, you use vim with its -x (encryption) option.To read this article in full, please click here

Fixing XML-to-JSON Conversion Challenges

In the last weeks I described the challenges you might face when converting XML documents that contain lists with a single element into JSON, be it on device (Nexus OS) or in an Ansible module. Now let’s see how we can fix that.

Blog posts in this series

Fixing XML-to-JSON Conversion Challenges

In the last weeks I described the challenges you might face when converting XML documents that contain lists with a single element into JSON, be it on device (Nexus OS) or in an Ansible module. Now let’s see how we can fix that.

Elixir Notes: Variables

Define a variable in Elixir with the equals (=) operator. Considerations Variables can start with a lowercase [a-z] or an underscore _ Variables can contain upper/lower case [a-zA-Z] and the _ underscore characters. snake_case is the formatting convention used for...

My List of Unusual Things in DNS

This is a running list of unusual data found in the Domain Name System.

Typically, DNS stores name-to-IP (for example, foo.example.net -> 192.0.2.123) and IP-to-name mappings (i.e., the inverse). But, the DNS is arguably the biggest, most distributed key/value store on the planet, making it a great place to stash all kinds of simple data.

The Week in Internet News: Google Threatens to Leave Australia

Google won’t pay for news: Google has threatened to end its search engine services in Australia over the government’s efforts there to require the company to pay news publishers for articles it links to, the BBC reports. The proposed Australian news code would require Google and Facebook to enter into mediated negotiations with publishers over the value of news content, if they don’t reach agreement first.

RIP, balloon-based Internet: Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is shutting down Loon, its attempt to deliver Internet service through balloons floating in the stratosphere, CNet reports. Alphabet says the business model doesn’t work, with the company unable to get costs low enough to offer services.

Judge rejects Parler: A U.S. judge has ruled that Amazon doesn’t have to reinstate Parler, the conservative Twitter competitor, after the company kicked it off its web hosing services this month, NPR reports. Amazon kicked out Parler after some members of the site threatened U.S. lawmakers and allegedly used the service to plan the 6 January attack on the U.S. Capitol. Parler has argued that Amazon’s decision threatens it with “extinction,” but the judge ruled that Amazon is under no obligation to “host the incendiary speech that Continue reading

New Docker Reporting Provides Teams with Tools for Higher Efficiency and Better Collaboration

Today, we are very excited to announce the release of Audit Log, a new capability that provides the administrators of Docker Team subscription accounts with a chronological report of their team activities. The Audit Log is an unbiased system of record, displaying all the status changes for Docker organizations, teams, repos and tags.  As a tracking tool for all the team activities, it creates a central historical repository of actionable insights to diagnose incidents, provide a record of app lifecycle milestones and changes, and provides a view into events creating audit trails for regulatory compliance reviews.  The Audit Log is available for Team subscription accounts, and at this point, is not included with Free or Pro subscriptions.

Some typical scenarios where Audit Log will play a key role include:  

  • When several team members are collaborating on delivering a project, Audit Log creates a list of activities that becomes a ‘source of truth’ to validate which tags got deleted and which tags got pushed into repos, when these activities happened and which team members triggered them. 
  • Audit Log provides knowledge base continuity, delivering information on projects completed earlier when new team members need to familiarize themselves with work done Continue reading

Tech Bytes: Doing Better Than ‘Good’ Or ‘Bad’ For UX Metrics (Sponsored)

On today's Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by AppNeta, we talk about getting real-time monitoring in place so that you can clearly define your performance benchmarks, accurately measure them from the end-user perspective, and have a strategy to make sure those benchmarks are met. Our guests are John Tewfik, Director of Global Alliances; and Seth Differ, Senior Manager, Solutions Consulting.

Tech Bytes: Doing Better Than ‘Good’ Or ‘Bad’ For UX Metrics (Sponsored)

On today's Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by AppNeta, we talk about getting real-time monitoring in place so that you can clearly define your performance benchmarks, accurately measure them from the end-user perspective, and have a strategy to make sure those benchmarks are met. Our guests are John Tewfik, Director of Global Alliances; and Seth Differ, Senior Manager, Solutions Consulting.

The post Tech Bytes: Doing Better Than ‘Good’ Or ‘Bad’ For UX Metrics (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Focus is a Virtue

The modern world craves our attention—but only in short bursts. To give your attention to any one thing for too long is failing, it seems, because you might miss out on something else of interest. We have entered the long tail of the attention economy, grounded in finding every smaller slices of time in which the user’s attention can be captured and used.

The damage of the attention economy is wide-ranging, including the politicization of everything, and the replacing ideas in politics with hate and fear. But for the network engineering world, the problem is exactly as Ethan describes— Technology mastery will be increasingly in the hands of the very few as a dwindling number of folks are willing, or perhaps even able, to create a mental state of focused learning. The application delivery stacks are enormously more complex than they were 25 years ago. Learning them requires a huge amount of focus over long periods of time.

The problem is obvious for anyone with eyes to see. What is the solution? The good news is there are solutions. The bad news is these solutions are swimming upstream against the major commercial interests of our day, so it’s going to Continue reading

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  • IP2Location is IP address geolocation service provider since 2002. The geolocation database or API detects location, proxy and other >20 parameters. Continue reading

Topology


Real-time network and system metrics as a service describes how to use data captured from the network shown above to explore the functionality of sFlow-RT real-time analytics software. This article builds on the previous article to show how knowledge of network topology can be used to enhance analytics, see Topology for documentation.

First, follow the instructions in the previous example and start an instance of sFlow-RT using the captured sFlow.  
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sflow-rt/fabric-view/master/demo/topology.json
Then, download the topology file for the example.
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d @topology.json \
http://localhost:8008/topology/json
Install the topology using the sFlow-RT REST API.
curl http://localhost:8008/topology/json
Retrieve the topology.
{
"version": 0,
"links": {
"L1": {
"node2": "spine1",
"node1": "leaf1",
"port1": "swp1s0",
"port2": "swp49"
},
"L2": {
"node2": "spine1",
"node1": "leaf1",
"port1": "swp1s1",
"port2": "swp50"
},
"L3": {
"node2": "spine2",
"node1": "leaf1",
"port1": "swp1s2",
"port2": "swp51"
},
"L4": {
"node2": "spine2",
"node1": "leaf1",
"port1": "swp1s3",
"port2": "swp52"
},
"L5": {
"node2": "spine2",
"node1": "leaf2",
"port1": "swp1s0",
"port2": "swp49"
},
"L6": {
"node2": "spine2",
"node1": "leaf2",
"port1": "swp1s1",
"port2": "swp50"
},
"L7": {
"node2": "spine1",
"node1": "leaf2",
"port1": "swp1s2",
"port2": "swp51"
},
"L8": {
"node2": "spine1",
"node1": "leaf2",
"port1": "swp1s3",
"port2": Continue reading

HAProxy Bonds with HashiCorp Consul to Extend Automated Service Discovery

Version 2.2 of offers service discovery and native support for the HashiCorp’s Daniel Corbett, head of product, HAProxy Technologies, in a blog post. Through a RESTful HTTP API, HAProxy connects directly to a defined Consul server and ingests the list of services and nodes from a Consul catalog, Corbett later told The New Stack. The API will set off a process that can “define an HAProxy backend and pool of servers to match this catalog and automatically scale up or down nodes/servers on-demand based on changes within the Consul catalog,” Corbett said. Corbett noted in the has also released version 2.3 of HAProxy itself, adding features such as forwarding, prioritizing, and translating of messages sent over the Syslog Protocol on both UDP and TCP, an OpenTracing SPOA, Stats Contexts, SSL/TLS enhancements, an improved cache, and changes in the connection layer that lay the foundation for support for HTTP/3/QUIC. For more information on the HAProxy’s Data Plane API,

Gartner: 2021 IT spending rally could hit $3.9T

Gartner projects worldwide IT spending will total $3.9 trillion in 2021, an increase of 6.2% over 2020 when spending declined a little over 3%.All IT spending segments—from data-center systems to communications services—are forecast to return to growth in 2021, according to Gartner . Enterprise software is expected to have the strongest rebound, 8.8%, as remote work environments are expanded and improved. The devices segment will see the second highest growth in, 8%, and is projected to reach $705.4 billion.To read this article in full, please click here

Gartner: 2021 IT spending rally could hit $3.9T

Gartner projects worldwide IT spending will total $3.9 trillion in 2021, an increase of 6.2% over 2020 when spending declined a little over 3%.All IT spending segments—from data-center systems to communications services—are forecast to return to growth in 2021, according to Gartner . Enterprise software is expected to have the strongest rebound, 8.8%, as remote work environments are expanded and improved. The devices segment will see the second highest growth in, 8%, and is projected to reach $705.4 billion.To read this article in full, please click here

Network Break 317: Citrix Bets The House On SaaS Collaboration; AWS Forks Elasticsearch

Today's Network Break examines Citrix's multi-billion bet on a SaaS collaboration acquisition, a fight over the Elasticsearch project where everyone gets a black eye, Red Hat's sop to everyone angry about CentOS, a pair of dangerous Cisco SD-WAN bugs, and more IT news.

The post Network Break 317: Citrix Bets The House On SaaS Collaboration; AWS Forks Elasticsearch appeared first on Packet Pushers.