Topics created by openit

@scottalanmiller said in Software to complete Disable/Enable Windows updates on Windows 10?:

@Dashrender said in Software to complete Disable/Enable Windows updates on Windows 10?:

But fixes are coming more rapidly today than in the past, Zero Days are seeming to be found more frequently, etc. The need to patch ASAP is higher then ever.

They are, but not the fix for needing to reboot for every little thing 😉

True, that's MS's whatever you want to call it for doing their big rollups, instead of smaller non rebooting patches.

@openit said in Zentyal community edition - is ok for production? and using VLAN with Zentyal.:

EdgeRouter seems a cheap and very worthy product, may suggest my friend as well, who used to setup small offices (with around 15 workstations).

As well as... what? Absolutely it would not be okay to use anything he builds himself. One is the best default option, one is nearly the worst.

Thanks a lot for nice insights.

@manxam said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:

How is this any different than SC? One can just use backstage to gain either powershell or CMD.
The only benefit I see to MC is that you can run either as the currently logged in user (though don't have much of a need of that myself).

Well for one thing, it's not Windows-only. Also it is lighter, no GUI being passed through. Backstage is, I think, a newer thing.

@Obsolesce said in Free alternative for OpenDNS, with minimal info on what's going on?:

@openit said in Free alternative for OpenDNS, with minimal info on what's going on?:

No plans of Pi-Hole.

Considering to go with Quad9, since:

It is free for business (unlike OpenDNS free version) No limit (unlike comodo free version) Have at least default blocking (unlike some other DNS service without blocking)

Only downside is, no visibility of what's on and cannot add our rules/policies, fine for free. Adding one layer for free, if budget allows in future, can go with OpenDNS with good control.

Only thing I wonder is, everywhere I just see configuring Windows/Linux to use Quad9 as DNS, but, how about using office network wide? Do I just need to tell my DNS Server (Windows server) to forward DNS Queries to Quad9 DNS IP (9.9.9.9) ? instead of forwarding the DNS Queries to current ISP?
@scottalanmiller @JaredBusch @Dashrender @black3dynamite @syko24 @marcinozga @dafyre

How many dns servers do you have? As in, how many Dns exit points?

I'm curious to know how this is helpful to know?

@openit said in Ubuntu firewall sucks, status showing allowed http, but won't:

I have ran following commands to redirect port 80 and 443, and it is working fine until next reboot:

#!/bin/bash
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8069
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8070
iptables-save

So I found one more article is saying to add first two commands to /etc/rc.local file to have rules permanently, but doesn't seems to be, not sure why?
@Pete-S @black3dynamite

Here's how to do it using UFW.
https://serverfault.com/a/238565
66ee7cc6-ba0d-489b-9b1c-a73e23ca9fb3-image.png

@openit said in CompTIA Linux+ LX0-103/104 or XK0-004? free training?:

On other hand, I'm looking for free or cheaper training, in which whole course content matches the updated/latest Linux+ exam, so I can take the certification. I had a look on Cybrary.it but it doesn't seems to be covering all topics from certification syllabus.

I find Cybrary to be a complete waste of time. Their courses are outdated and quite frankly suck! Don't even bother. I recommend Udemy where courses are around $10-20. They are rated by many people and you can get a good idea about the course through reviews before buying.

We are IT professionals here, and dont have time to try to save $10 and waste hours of time looking at useless material like cybrary or incomplete and incorrect data that can be on youtube and other untested sources.

Subscription based training is also bad IMO since there is no incentive to make each course be the best in it's category. No competition on a platform like Udemy.

@openit said in Needs suggestion on email server/ control panel for Ubuntu to run erp, web n emails.:

Odoo

That has been the worst install of a CRM I have ever done even in Ubuntu. Heavily do not recommend it.

@openit said in What job titles will fit my skills?:

As you know IT is broad, I feel titles like IT support, Desktop Support, Service Desk Analyst, System Administrator will fit for me, but I realised , in big companies titles may vary, ....

Variation is more in the SMB where titles are often fake. In the enterprise, there is variation for sure, but there is far more standardization. For example, system admin isn't even a potentially possible role in the SMB generally, but is the most common role in the enterprise.

Also what type of drives are you using?

@jaredbusch said in You know any IT Security Awareness (from Home Users to Enterprise) resource?:

@irj said in You know any IT Security Awareness (from Home Users to Enterprise) resource?:

@jaredbusch said in You know any IT Security Awareness (from Home Users to Enterprise) resource?:

@irj said in You know any IT Security Awareness (from Home Users to Enterprise) resource?:

I guess we were wrong... This course has about $80k in sales. I would assume it was bought mostly by employers, but maybe home users are interested in it as well.

@zachary715 said in You know any IT Security Awareness (from Home Users to Enterprise) resource?:

I have not gone through it, but KnowBe4 has a "Home Course" I assume designed for what you're looking for.

Neither of these are designed originally for the consumer. They are successful businesses that add this component on as a "perk" for the few random consumers that do it.

There will never be a successful business model for this kind of security for consumers that is not forced on them by external factors.

Knoebe4 surely focuses on businesses, but I'm not so sure that is the case with the instructor on udemy. The 3 courses he offers seems to be focused on home users.

Consumers are still not going to just buy into this.

I would bet most of his stuff business paid for.

I would assume you are probably right. I have bought a few udemy courses for my mother in law. One of them was how to use an iphone. This course explained how to turn it on and do really simple stuff like reply to a text message, etc.

@scottalanmiller said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

@storageninja said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

@openit said in What are necessary/worthy/affordable tools for SMB?:

., does it mean we need to leave these things since we don't have tools? Are these tools really worthy for this size of company? are they necessary?

Considering these tools charge per user (albiet with steeper discounts at scale) I'd argue SaaS solutions make a LOT of this stuff more accessible tha never before because it removes the expensive part (Staff trained with enough time and competence to deploy/manage them)

How many of this specific type are priced this way?

We have Office 365 essentials for email, but no additional tools like spam filter.
Spam filters are licensed per user.

We have general antivirus ESET, but no specialized anti-malware, anti-ransomware, anti.....
Licensed per user

We have firewall, but not additional add on like Outbound filters, etc.....
This I don't get as outbound firewall rules don't charge money, but if you want micro-segmentation per user that's a thing.

We don't have vulnerability scanners, commercial tools to monitor heartbeat of machines and network devices, no opendns kind of service etc...
DNS services can be priced per user, and monitoring like thousand eyes are per poll

@openit said in Is someone using OneDrive for Business 1TB space to backup data/system?:

@nerdydad said in Is someone using OneDrive for Business 1TB space to backup data/system?:

You can use Veeam Endpoint, but it does require a license to backup to ODfB. That is more of a premium feature. Otherwise, you're tied to some type of local storage, whether on your network or to your PC.

I was just giving an example of free software like Veeam, if it requires license, I will look for other free or cheaper option.

Looks like Veeam free version supports backup to onedrive
https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html

https://imgur.com/a/byjId27

@dashrender said in What exactly imaging software, any open source or free options ?:

@dustinb3403 said in What exactly imaging software, any open source or free options ?:

To throw a wrench into this conversation.

UrBackup is a backup solution that can be run constantly and allows you to restore the backup or any part of it to different hardware.

So while it falls in the "Backup" category it also blurs the lines a bit.

Most modern backup solutions can do this.

Yup, imaging is the process of recreating replicas which are the most common foundation of modern backups.

Hey there @openit glad that you are interested in SodiumSuite. The first management feature rolled out today. It's not much but it is a good preview of things to come, I think.

@tim_g said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:

@jaredbusch said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:

@tim_g said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:

@jaredbusch said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:

@tim_g said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:

@tim_g said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:

@eddiejennings said in Why restart works ? Technical reason ?:

I'll often have users do a restart, but if the issue is recurring, then I'll take the time to try to find the root cause.

We do a minimum of forced weekly reboot of computers with updates, regardless of whether or not updates are installed.

It's been helping a LOT, and is a free way to fix or prevent many issues that waste time and effort from nobody rebooting.

There are (as always) some exceptions.

I did this years ago. And no exceptions. The owner buys in to it or he doesn't.

The reduction of support costs is always the winning decision.

Yes, from the perspective of a company using service provider.

But I get paid hourly, so from this companies perspective, it costs the same regardless.

No it does not. Because you are wasting time (money) doing tasks that are not needed if you would have the reboots scheduled.

It may be the same to your paycheck, but it is not the same to the company. That is always the point of people trying to justify their jobs. Or of the SMB owner thinking he is saving money by using internal staff of lower skill.

Yeah, but there are exceptions... not my decision, not my argument.

of course, if the decision is out of your hands, absolutely that's not on you - just like Mike Davis spending 4 hrs working on a PC issue and costing more than the value of the PC - because the decision maker told them to.

I would love to see a hybrid of GLPI/Snipe-IT/Sodium.

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for good and cheaper webhosting, suggest please ?:

@jaredbusch said in Looking for good and cheaper webhosting, suggest please ?:

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for good and cheaper webhosting, suggest please ?:

@stacksofplates said in Looking for good and cheaper webhosting, suggest please ?:

Why would you want your email through a shared hosting provider? It's usually garbage and only IMAP/POP.

Can't be overstated. Unless you are reselling it to really foolish customers, I can't imagine any value there.

And again for $147 per year is nothing for email. Let alone hosting.

That is barely more than 2 Office 365 Exchange online only plans.

Except it's worthless email, not enterprise hosted Exchange. It's generally just POP or maybe IMAP if you are super lucky. Generally not even a web interface. Just someone tossing up Postfix and Dovecot and leaving you to your own devices. Literally approaching worthless as businesses can't use it for anything that matters (it's fine for things like your printer forwarding print jobs) because there is no protection on the storage, none on the deliver, no SPAM filtering, no malware protection, no failover, no web access, etc.

You could build your own, unlimited use, just as good on a $2.50/Vultr instance no problem. But no one does because... it's not worth $2.50.

So even one Office 365 email account is worth more, way more, in a business setting than "unlimited email" like this.

Also, while you get unlimited accounts, it shares capacity with your web hosting. So the email accounts can often be capped around 1MB each.

And while all that is true, many people people simply don't care and want cheap ass shit 😞

@openit said in What network monitoring s/w you are using ? Can you suggest one for me ?:

@quixoticjeremy said in What network monitoring s/w you are using ? Can you suggest one for me ?:

@openit said in What network monitoring s/w you are using ? Can you suggest one for me ?:

@quixoticjeremy said in What network monitoring s/w you are using ? Can you suggest one for me ?:

@openit said in What network monitoring s/w you are using ? Can you suggest one for me ?:

Hello there,

Just wondering to know what Network monitoring software you are using ?

I am looking for one, I just need a simple to setup and simple things to monitor like Up or Not ? with PING sensor or other, which checks the devices for every 5 minutes and alarm somehow. Of course free one 🙂

We have lots of Windows PCs, HP N/W Printers, IP Tel Server, Network devices (AP, router, switches etc.), Servers etc. to be Monitored.

Thanks !

Hi there, I work on the project sodium and while we don't have absolutely everything that you are looking for we are close and we are still early on and implementing new features/modules very regularly. The project is in early alpha so it does look rough, that being said it does work. We don't have absolutely everything you want yet but a good portion of it is in play already and that which isn't is already on our to do list.

A. We are free.
B. We do data collection every 5 minutes and show last check in via collection.
C. We gather information about what applications are installed, storage is available (and much more) with the intent of implementing alarms eventually.

Note: network devices are on the list but will be down the road a little bit.

If you are interested I'll be happy to talk to you further, just shoot me a message.

Definitely I want to explore it.

By the way, I am seeing some Sodium Help desk things and threads related to it here in ML, and tried to google but couldn't find any information about Sodium, where's the location (website) ?

sodium.waxquixotic.com

The reason we aren't pushing that hard as of yet is simply due to the fact that it is in alpha. Once we hit a point where all the features are lined up and we've put a little effort into cleaning up the visual side I'm sure that we will put more effort into making it more publicly visible. (We also are planning on changing the name for SEO purposes)

Okay.

I was trying to browse the site to have look on features etc. but it requires to login/register ?

It's in alpha, there is no advertising page. Just the site to actually start using it.