ck :: Interesting IT-links to follow ::

Links

Last Update: March 07, 2013

This page contains some links collected over time which contain interesting information, documentation, howtos, downloads etc... I hope they will exist for as long as possible!

Personal Links (Projects)
www.novahosting.ch	Web Hosting Company.
www.atelier2.ch	Website of an architecture office programmed by me.

Interesting blogs to follow
angrytechnician.wordpress.com	Cynical technology blog from an anonymous IT professional.
vknowledge.wordpress.com	Tech-blog from Ted Steenvoorden about Virtualization.
askdavetaylor.com	This blog is like a huge FAQ knowledge base - updated very often.
australian tech blog	That's how the aussies do IT - Tech Blog from Grant Davies.

Nagios Plugins and Documentations
OP5 ESX/ESXi Nagios plugin	A huge Nagios plugin written in perl to monitor ESX 3.x, ESXi, vSphere 4 and vCenter Servers.
check_hpasm	Very famous and good plugin to monitor the hardware of HP servers.
check_openmanage	THE plugin to monitor the hardware of DELL servers.
SNMP4Nagios	A lot of plugins which use SNMP to monitor network devices (like Brocade, Cisco, etc).
Monitor iSeries i5	Interesting article how to monitor IBM iSeries i5 with Nagios.
nagios.manubulon.com	Several plugins to monitor Firewalls and Proxy appliances.
www.nsclient.org	Nagios "plugin" to be run on Windows hosts (like nrpe for Windows).
Restart Windows Service through Nagios	Eventhandler configuration to restart a Windows service.
Event handler using NRPE	Well documentated example of an event handler using NRPE.
nagstamon	A small tool for Windows showing current notifications from your Nagios server.

VMware ESX/ESXi
Enable SSH on ESXi 4.0	A tutorial how to enable SSH on ESXi 4.0 (where it is not activated and supported).
vSphere SDK Perl 4.1	Official SDK from VMware with which you may manage your ESX/i server.
Recover a deleted VMFS	A tutorial what to do if a VMFS datastore has been deleted (e.g. by accident).
Install openmanage on ESXi	A tutorial how to install and use Dell OpenManage (Offline Bundle) on ESXi 4.x.
Kill a stuck/frozen VM	Useful commands to use on ESX (not ESXi!) when a VM hangs/freezes.
Stop a VM without vSphere Client	If you can't stop a VM in vSphere client you can use this commands.
Remote Syslog Server ESX	Use a remote syslog server on ESX (here 3.5).
Access USB/PCI Devices in VM	Very good information/tutorial how to access USB and other devices with VMDirectPath.

Hardware and information: DELL
DRAC5 Documentation	Documentation of DRAC (Dell Remote Access Controller) 5 card.
DRAC6 Documentation	Documentation of DRAC (Dell Remote Access Controller) 6 card.
PE 2950 Hardware Manual	Online manual of PowerEdge 2950 with important hardware information.
PE 2970 Hardware Manual	Online manual of PowerEdge 2970 with important hardware information.
PE R805 Hardware Manual	Online manual of PowerEdge R805 with important hardware information.
PowerConnect 54xx Manual	Online manual of PowerConnect 54xx switches.
Equallogic PS5000E Testing	Very good article of an admin who tested an Equallogic PS5000E.
OpenManage on VMware ESX	Documentation to install Dell OpenManage on VMware ESX (not ESXi!).
OpenManage 6.1 Compatibility	List of servers which are compatible with OpenManage 6.1.
OpenManage Version Docs	Overview of currenct versions and their manuals of Dell OpenManage.
OpenManage 6.4 Server Admin	OpenManage 6.4 Server Administrator for Windows (e.g. to monitor ESXi).
Dell's ESXi 4.1 ISO	Dell's own adjusted version of ESXi 4.1 U1 (Build# 348481) with additional drivers.
Dell's ESXi 5.0 ISO	Dell's own adjusted version of ESXi 5.0 U1 (Build# 623860) with additional drivers.
OpenManage ESXi Offline Bundle 6.5.0	OpenManage CIM Offline Bundle for ESXi 4.1.
OpenManage ESXi Offline Bundle 7.1.0	OpenManage CIM Offline Bundle for ESXi 5.0.
OpenManage ESXi Offline Bundle 7.1.0	OpenManage CIM Offline Bundle for ESXi 5.1.

Hardware and information: HP
ROM Identification and Upgrades	How to find your actual BIOS/ROM version and the corresponding firmware upgrades.
How to find the product number	A guide how to find your product number (needed for support).
Warranty Information	Check if your warranty/hardware maintenance support is still valid.
Another Warranty Information	Basically the same as above but another way to find information about your warranty.
HP SIM 6.2 Documentations	Overview of documentations of HP Systems Insight Manager 6.2.
HP SIM 6.2 Linux	HP Systems Insight Manager 6.2 (to monitor your hardware) for Linux systems.
HP System Mgmt Homepage	HP System Management Homepage for Linux 64bit
Using ESXi / Hypervisor on HP servers	Good information about running ESXi on HP servers and how to monitor them with CIM providers.
HP's adjusted version of ESXi	HP's own version of ESXi with already integrated CIM providers for better hardware monitoring.
ESXi 4.0 Offline Bundle 1.1	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.1 which contains CIM providers and other HP adjustments (for ESXi 4.0).
ESXi 4.0 Offline Bundle 1.2	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.2 which contains CIM providers and other HP adjustments (for ESXi 4.0).
ESXi 4.0 Offline Bundle 1.6	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.6 (for ESXi 4.0 U3).
ESXi 4.1 Offline Bundle 1.0	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.0 which contains CIM providers and other HP adjustments (for ESXi 4.1).
ESXi 4.1 Offline Bundle 1.0a	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.0a which contains CIM providers and other HP adjustments (for ESXi 4.1).
ESXi 4.1 Offline Bundle 1.0b	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.0b which contains CIM providers and other HP adjustments (for ESXi 4.1).
ESXi 4.1 Offline Bundle 1.1a	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.1a (for ESXi 4.1 U1).
ESXi 4.1 Offline Bundle 1.4-26	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.4-26 (for ESXi 4.1 U2).
ESXi 5.0 Offline Bundle 1.2-26	HP's ESXi Offline Bundle 1.2-26 (for ESXi 5.0).
Firmware Maintenance CD 8.40	Firmware Maintenance CD 8.40.
Firmware Maintenance CD 8.50	Firmware Maintenance CD 8.50.
Firmware Maintenance CD 8.60	Firmware Maintenance CD 8.60.
Firmware Maintenance CD 8.70	Firmware Maintenance CD 8.70.
Firmware Maintenance DVD 9.00	Smart Update Firmware Maintenance DVD 9.00.
Firmware Maintenance DVD 9.10	Smart Update Firmware Maintenance DVD 9.10.
Firmware Maintenance DVD 9.20	Smart Update Firmware Maintennace DVD 9.20.
Firmware Maintenance DVD 10.10	Firmware Maintenance DVD 10.10.
HP Business Forums/Community	Main overview of business forums where you often get the answer faster than from the support.

iSeries / AS400
www.help400.de	List of additional programs for iSeries.
wrkactjob description	A short description of wrkactjob and other AS400 tips.
Compress SAVF	A mailing list archive entry which describes the DTACPR (*YES) method to compress a SAVF.
A lot of AS400 FAQ	Very good website with a lot of FAQ concerning AS400.
List of AS400 commands	A list of AS400 commands with a short description of the function.
IBM's iSeries Fixes	AS400 Fixes (PFTs) from IBM.
Installing cumulative PTF packages	Good PTF installation instructions by IBM.
Basic command line infos	Very good page with basic information how to work on a AS400 system.
List of Disk Expansion hardware	IBM's list of storage products which can be used to expand the storage of your iSeries.
AS400 and LINUX Integration	Good document with important information how to integrate Linux and AS400.
Review Audit Journal Entries	A short overview how to read the audit logs created by AS400.

DNS/Bind
Pingability DNS Check	A good and quick DNS check for domains.
MXToolbox Check	RBL/DNS/SMTP/Port Checks.
www.who.is	Probably the best Whois Lookup engine.
Bind9 Master/Slave on Debian	A good HowTo install Bind9 Master/Slave DNS Servers on Debian Sarge.
Bind9 Master/Slave on SLES	Good tutorial how to install Bind9 Master/Slave DNS Servers on SLES.
Bind Zone Transfers/Updates	Good documentation how to enable the automatic domain update between Master and Slave.
SPF entry wizard	A very handy online wizard (form) to generate an SPF DNS entry.

SSL
Convert SSL certificates	An online form to easily convert SSL certificates (PEM, DER, PFX, PKCS, P7B)
OpenSSL Howto	A VERY good page with all the openssl commands you need to know

sed/awk examples
Lots of sed examples 1	A good list of useful examples of sed.
Lots of sed examples 2	A good list of useful examples of sed.
Some more sed examples	More examples of sed.
Word Wrapping	Interesting topic how to wrap words in Linux.
Some awk examples	Some examples of awk.
Delete with sed	Delete one or more lines from a file by using sed.
Replace exact matching word	Replace (or delete) exact matching word with sed.

Postfix / Anti-Spam solutions
ISPmail tutorials	Awesome (!!) tutorials from A-Z how to create professional mail servers on Debian Linux.
Official Postfix documentation	Here you find all the configuration parameters for Postifx. Official documentation.
Postfix statistics (pflogsumm)	This perl script runs on your Postfix mail log and gives you extended statistics on your mail traffic.
TLS support in Postfix	Good information how to activate TLS (connection encryption) in Postfix.
Postfix Backscatter	Interesting Howto from Postfix to fight backscatter mails.
Postfix Exchange integration	A perl script (getadsmtp.pl) which queries the Active Directory LDAP, saves the results in a static file.
Postfix Exchange integration 2	Another way to retrieve the LDAP entries but queries it with each e-mail instead of a static file.
Postfix and Amavisd-new	Incredibly good tutorial how to use amavisd-new with Postfix. In German.
Postfix/Amavisd/ClamAV	Very good tutorial how to configure Postfix, Amavisd-new, SpamAssassin and ClamAV.
Send test e-mail virus	This page allows you to send a virus by e-mail so you can test your Anti-Virus installation.
Test Virus (EICAR)	Another virus to test your Anti-Virus installation (EICAR Test-Virus).
Amavisd configuration	This page shows the most important configuration parameters for amavisd-new.
Mailzu - an amavisd interface	A tutorial to install a web interface to handle mails quarantined by Amavisd-new.
Official amavisd-new doc	This is the official amavisd-new documentation. Lots and lots of text... ;-).
Wikipedia: Greylisting	Wikipedia's declaration of Greylisting. What is it and what is it for?
Greylisting Installation	A small tutorial how to install Greylisting but it misses the Postfix config.
Use sender-blacklist in amavisd	Excellent mail post how to use a (black-)list of senders in Amavisd-new. Very easy and useful!
Daily spamassassin rules	Some information about the "rules du jour" (daily rules) for SpamAssassin. In German.
SpamAssassin learns (sa-learn)	Command 'se-learn'. You can tell SpamAssassin Bayes which mails are ham, which are spam.
Some custom SA rules plugins	Some custom rules/plugins for SpamAssassin created by the community.
Using Razor for SpamAssassin	Finally a good and useful documentation/information how to use Razor with SpamAssassin!
Blacklist Check	On this page you can test if your mailserver (or domain) has been blacklisted.

Microsoft Windows, Exchange
Prevent user to send external mails	Solution how to prevent an Exchange user of sending external e-mails (but still allowing internal).
Exchange Public Folders Tool	Easy tool to modify permissions on Public Folders in Exchange 2k/2k3/2k7.
Windows 2003 Resource Kit	Resource Kit Tools for Windows Server 2003 - a great package (robocopy, cleanspl, etc.).
Microsoft Office Compatibility	Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack so you can open MS Office 2007 documents (e.g. docx).
Windows Key Finder	Before formatting your computer you should have your Windows key ready for new install.

Tools for Windows-Admins (all free!)
HDDScan	Free Harddisk diagnostic utility which checks the S.M.A.R.T. status of many kinds of disks.
ISO Recorder	ISO Recorder by Alex Feinman. Create very easily .iso files from physical CD or DVD's.
Batch File Rename Utility	Batch File Rename Utility helps you create batch-files to mass-rename files on Windows.
Notepad++	Awesome text-editor on Windows with a lot of functions and programming features.
ProxyFirewall	A software firewall. You can decide which services should use a web-proxy or direct Internet.
TestDisk	TestDisk is a great tool to recover files and boot sectors from defect disks or flash sticks.
TreeSize Free	Missing 'du' on Windows? This tool shows you where you use your harddisk space.
EXT2/EXT3 on Windows	Thanks to this driver you may run (external) disks which were ext2 or ext3 formatted.
IMGBurn	Nice little program to burn (iso-)image files to a physical cd or dvd.
PC Inspector File Recovery	Program to recover corrupt or deleted files.
RegCleaner	Finally a tool to clean up the mess in the Windows registry !
VirtualCloneDrive	Simulates a CD/DVD drive and mounts/loads (iso-)image files. No need to burn anymore.
Unknown Devices	This tool helps you identify unknown devices appearing in the Device Manager.

Multimedia-Tools
Audacity	Audacity is a very good and handy program to create or mix audio files.
Audiograbber	Excellent program to create mp3 from your Audio CD (with CDDB connection).
Handbrake	Good program to convert video to another format (e.g. mpeg to divx avi).
Virtualdub	Program to cut/edit videos and reconvert them to another format.
MediaInfo	Very handy little tool which shows detailled information of video files (with codecs, bitrate, etc).
CCCP Codec Pack	A package of many video and audio codecs for Windows.
K-Lite Codec Pack	Another package with many video and audio codecs for Windows. Updated more often.
BBFlashBack Recorder	BBFlashBack Express is a free screen recorder, good to record your screen for tutorials.

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8980 Days
until Death of Computers
Why?