Spanning Tree Protocol Lab#1

These few days i’ve learned the nature, concept of cisco switches and redundancy (topologies). how to create trunk ports, access ports, vlans, VTP, CDP, and last but not least, STP; which i believe more widely known as Spanning Tree Protocol. its sole objective is to detect and prevent any potential loop in switch environment as redundancies added in into the picture and business started to grow beyond boundaries..

i’ve created 4 trunking switches, placed each on its own management VLAN all in .1 subnet, 1 default gateway as router, and cloud represent my MS Loopback adapter. i’ve tried forcing down the root bridge both by priority, or root primary option through the terminal global config mode.. the STP took place by blocking the R3’s fast ethernet port 1/6 (fa1/6) when things are running in normal mode.. (i’ve opened a cmd window pinging from cloud to R4; through R1 as root bridge). and uh..  the simulation will took place at the root bridge, as i’m going to shut one of the port that connects R3 & R1 (fa1/4 to be exact). the traffic will be temporarily cut off, and fa1/6 will change its mode to LIS (listening), LRN (learning), and finally FWD (forwarding). well… what i’ve noticed is that the time gap between the consecutive pings on which it can reach up to 12-15 seconds.. and i presume it can made lots of things go haywire..

as things normalized (perform no shut command on the R1 fa1/4), the ICMP packets goes down / timeout again as normalized traffic flows through R1.. by knowing its limitation (and of course trying to appreciate it), i’ll advance into a deeper study about PSTP, RSTP and portfast in the next few weeks…

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牲醴祭拜之日.. 弭災、求福、報謝

昨天我凌晨四點起床,跟我爸媽去我已過世的爺爺奶奶家..離我家差不多十分鐘路程. 到了過後我就幫我父母準備, 擺些神前的供牲饌祭品, 點燃蠟燭, 獻茶, 酒等. 這些隆重祭拜和牲品是為了紀念老祖宗過世節日. 一共有九個人,再加上我已過世的爺爺奶奶. 拜拜是人類對宗教信仰實踐的行為表現，人類藉著拜拜的儀式行為與神靈交流，以祈求在生活中得到神靈的護祐，趨福避禍，獲得平安.

焚香了過後, 就擲杯筊請問神明的降臨, 神明既降, 對神明有所祈禱者，擲杯筊請問神明是否允許。雙手捧持金紙，拜供神明察納, 然後就焚燒金銀紙. 燒完了過後再次擲杯筊問神明是否用餐完畢, 持酒潑灑金銀紙，稱「奠酒」，以防紙灰飛散，然後撤收祭品.

收完了過後, 咱們就在廚房圓桌那裏吃早餐, 跟我堂兄弟姊們聊聊天, 然後就回家, 再次進行以上給我外公, 外婆… 這場傳統拜神的日子的確讓我懷念不已.. 從我小時候到現在還在進行, 以後輪到後代們來行禮了啦.. 希望不會逐漸消失..

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等待

等待就是人生唯一無法避免之事。我現在就在等往章宜機場的第一輛巴士。也算情況啦，因為我本身怕趕不上飛機所以特別早起。我不知第一輛何時來，只知道它五點半從車站點開始出發所以沒辦法，要便宜就是要等。等了三十分左右果然來了。

我這次回去預備了些學習錄影，正在看 cbt nuggets 和 total training 兩公司的片子。本身覺得前者所講些話題較仔細易解。哇靠，六點了，我手機自動重開啊。但是還好我已按下儲存。終於到海關了，這邊超冷呢，肚子又餓沒吃早餐。回去第一件事就是吃 batagor!!! :D~

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4.3KM @ 38 Minutes…

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reinitializing user.mysql database table

i gotta admin this was the stupidest mistake i’ve ever done. i accidentally clicked on the empty on the user.mysql table.. which results in db can’t be accessed whatsoever. i’ve tried the trick on reinstalling the mysql using yum remove, yum install, clean reboot, but still in vain.. finally i got the solution which is first to remove the files under /var/lib/mysql/mysql/user.* – consists of 3 (user.frm, user.myd, user.myi) –  i’ve found this after frigging 30-40mins tinkering here and there… zz…

after shutting down the sql (/etc/init.d/mysqld stop), – ensure all process killed (ps -ef and kill necessary services). and uh.. i’ve decided to reinstall the DB by typing command (mysql_install_db), restarted the db (/etc/init.d/mysqld start), and voila.. by accessing the db (mysql -u root -p), it still prompted the password and it reflected as wrong password (it shocked me for a while but after i tried with only (mysql), it allows me to go inside already.. so, to enter the username & password for root:: (/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password ****) it’s that simple.. took me almost 1hour to find out this solution.. well.. lessons well learned..

after which, the db tables were setup accordingly (script), and after altering the .xml file for the apache tomcat config to listen to my favorite port 1337, it’s all complete. I’ve yet to explore inside the functions but it looks quite sophisticated.. hmm..

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Indulging weekend with Harvard Business Review…

今日圖書館 – 學習心得.. 主要是在評價, 討論過去1979 年波特(Michael Porter) 寫的行業競爭力經營策略, 還有些奇怪的分析..

Harvard Business Review Mag Jan2010 – Feb 2010. Some of the findings:

1. For Bosses: People who’re prone to guilt tend to work harder and better than people who are not guilt-prone, and are perceived to be more capable leaders.. (research by Flynn p.30)
2. For Advertisers: Google search patterns during the broadcast of the 2010 Olympics opening ceremony show that viewers wanted to learn more about what they saw during commercials. (research by Zigmond et al p.32)
3. For Middle Managers: Gen Y workers see no value in reporting to someone who simply keeps track of what they do, when much of that can be done by themselves, their peers, or machine. What they do value is mentoring and coaching from someone they respect. Someone in other words, who is a master, not a general manager.  (research by Lynda Gratton p.36)
4. For Marketers: spelling out of differences in prices might be more persuasive (A is 50% faster than B; X is $300 cheaper than Y, etc), known as opportunity cost, famously invoked by Eisenhower in 1953, “Chance for Peace” speech. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this, a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.. whilst this was absent when Bush delivering the cost of war..  “whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay!” – (but how much?)
5. For Macro Econs: Adam Smith’s invisible hand often seemed invisible because it was not there: markets in general were not efficient when information was imperfect and asymmetric or risk markets were not complete – which is to say, always. (research by Stiglitz p.48)
6. For Corp Comm: Creating Shared Value should supersede CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in guiding the investments of companies in their communities. CSR programs focus mostly on reputation and have only a limited connection to the business, making them hard to justify and maintain over the long run. In contrast, CSV is integral to a company’s profitability and competitive position. It leverages the unique resources and expertise of the company to create economic value by creating social value. (M.E. Porter, M. R. Kramer, HBR p.76)
7. For HR / Boss alike: Sooner or later, business run out of room to grow. They’re compelled to reinvent themselves periodically. This is known as “Jumping the S curve” , S as in stall points. The idea is companies should realize the potential hidden talent that can drive growth. One sign that a company is investing enough in talent: employees have time to think on the job. (research by P. Nunes, T. Breene p.87)

Such an interesting and mind boggling afternoon.. HBR.. it’s surely “An Essential Groundwork for a Broad Executive Theory.” on which the theory of business must develop to such a point that the executive may learn from the experiences of others in the past how to act under the conditions of the present, otherwise, business will continue to be unsystematic, haphazard, and for many men a pathetic gamble. – Wallace B. Donham

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frustration – cloud.com installation

yesterday night i’ve spent quite amount of time troubleshoooting the source.list on why the server refuses to download although i’ve already cleared (aptitude clean) and (aptitude update) so many times.. i’ve modified the source.list (in the first place because root login wasn’t enabled, i was forced to su root from bash and use nano to get in the KDM master config file (/etc/kde4/kdm/), nano kdmrc, search for AllowRootLogin = true. afterwhich, went to the /etc/apt/sources.list and modify the deb http://… but still in vain..

this morning when i woke up i tried again on a fedora machine, it looks like it can get the repo (cloud.repo) when i started issuing wget command.. but after which, the installation breaks because of incompatible version of Phyton 2.7.. the repo rpms requires phython(Abi) = 2.6, also, i’m running fedora core 14 x64 architecture, according to the one of the community forum has just posted it doesn’t match.. recommend me to run FC13x64 instead.. : (

well.. easy solution would be just downloadin the core image which is 1.1GB.. the funny thing is, they (cloud.com) don’t even create another way for user to download its image, other than http download.. (torrent download anyone..)

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不成才..

看完了那布 ”社交網絡” 電影讓我覺得自己不成才.. 體內突然間發熱, 快要生病的感覺.. 腦海裡想一大堆計畫, 夢想.. 怪了自己, 怨恨了自己.. 到現在為何還不出人頭.. 唉.. 這幾天工作的事情讓我覺得越來越煩.. 開會完了過後總是沒有決定… 一直問同樣東西, 煩同樣東西, 講到半天也講不完.. 唉.. 累.. 每次上班似乎沒精神般.. 可今天呢, 還好點.. 昨天剛申請到了AS/400 系統用戶, 這幾天還好至少有東西玩.. 系統怎麼運行? 就靠我自己努力去學…. 家裡也剛裝了Solaris 11 (OpenSolaris 代替), 還有 Oracle 的數據庫.. 要嘗試下功能如何.. 正要學著怎麼還如何換 DB Listening Port.. 因為跟我 Zend 伺服好像有衝突..

越來越多東西要學.. 暈…

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Backend Password Reset – Prestashop (How To)

my short term memory must be failing.. i can’t remember what i put last week on the admin password for the backend admin panel for prestashop.. i don’t want to waste m time re-installin the whole web app and DB, so i thought i can tinker from DB table. i used phpmyadmin as my DB tool and hashcalc (freeware) to calculate MD5 hash value. steps for reference:

1. locate the directory “config” and open setting.inc.php in wordpad. look for the cookie, define(’COOKIE_KEY‘, ‘JpHI7Cy8KBWxKBRqy0FO9aVhDITwx0ULdFQInrDGN40auq4eY6LGsqvC’);
2. copy paste the highlighted and put in the hashcalc (download here http://www.slavasoft.com/hashcalc/index.htm) – i installed it on my VM, (precautionary trojan/virus, etc, but i think it’s quite safe to install..)
3. put this  + your password… example (see screenshot) the new password to be reset is admin12345 then put as: JpHI7Cy8KBWxKBRqy0FO9aVhDITwx0ULdFQInrDGN40auq4eY6LGsqvCadmin12345
4. click calculate, copy the md5 has value into the DB temployee table under password
5. the password is now reset to admin12345 for that particular account…

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Enabling Ethernet @ Backtrack4R2

Due to the nature of a security suite OS, backtrack doesn’t enable any ethernet interfaces open by default. The only interface that’s enabled is a loopback address.. so.. to enable the eth0 interface:

1. switch user root
2. password is defaulted as toor
3. /etc/init.d/networking start
4. Update-rc.d networking defaults

The DORA (discover, offer, receive, ack) will occurs and hopefully the router dhcp will automatically assign with default config e.g def.gateway and dns servers…if not, let’s assign it manually using:

Ifconfig eth0 inet 192.168.100.102 netmask 255.255.255.0 up (assign ip)
Route add default gw 192.168.100.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 (assign def.gateway)
Route –n (confirm routing table exist)
Nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (go to /etc/resolv.conf and set the nameservers manually)
Nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Voila..

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