Author: Michael Blood
Family Bowling Night
Family Bowling Night
At 6:00 Wednesday October 3rd Matraex employees with their families had a bowling night at Big Al’s. It was great to get together with coworkers, spouses and the kids and spend some time having fun and getting to know the families. John was the experienced bowler of our bunch scoring an impressive 199. We are learning that John is a man of many talents.
Bowling at Big Als
Wednesday October 3rd
6:00
http://www.ilovebigals.com/meridian/
New Website Launched
River Raft Trip
River Raft Trip
Matraex held their 2nd 5th Annual Matraex River Rafting trip on Saturday July 21st. Nick, Michael, Vlade, Taner, Janae and John headed to the Lower South Fork of the Payette this year for some fun in the sun. Aside of a 2 hour delay from a boat stuck on a rock and John, Vlade and Michael nearly drowning in the last rapid, not much else happened here.
Like each of the other annual River Rafting trips, we finished up the evening with a dinner at the Sonora Mexican Restaurant in Horseshoe Bend
River raft trip
Saturday July 21
Lower South Fork
http://www.cascaderaft.com/
Fastlane Racing
Fastlane Racing
At 5:30 Monday June 18th Matraex Employees met at Fastlane Racing for a couple of quick go kart races. Nick has the most experience and led the pack, leaving Taner, Michael and John to follow.
Fastlane Racing
Monday June 18th at 5:30
http://www.fastlaneboise.com/
Employee Appreciation Dinner
Employee Appreciation Dinner
At 7:00pm April 16th Matraex had an Employee Appreciation Dinner at Berryhill & Co in Downtown Boise.
5 of the Matraex Employees brought their spouses for an evening filled with eating, eating and more eating as well as a little drinking.
A good time was had by all.
Berryhill & Co
Employee Appreciation Dinner
Monday April 16th
7:00 pm
http://johnberryhillrestaurants.com/
Fixed Hacked Site – PHP injection
Fixed Hacked Site – PHP injection
Today a customer called me about a PHP website that was popping up viruses all over the place.
I loaded up the site and there it was, the page was immediately redirected to a spyware / virus type site that tried to convince me to download their software to fix a problem. Since I knew better I carefully answered the browser prompts to make sure I closed out and left the page without opening anything malicious.
Then I went back to the page that had the problem and tried to load it again. But the problem was GONE!
After a bit more investigation I found that the people who wrote the virus dropped a cookie on my machine and made sure they allowed me back in the site. I am sure this trick helps them to keep the virus on a site for longer because the site administrators may not recognize it as an on going problem (or even a problem that their site caused).
In digging I found that each PHP page on the site had some PHP code added to the top of it.
something like
This was on a single line at the top of the file and even the administrator who had noticed the odd code at the top passed over it not thinking it was malicious.
However, the text inside the encoded string was VERY malicious. I decoded it and found several PHP functions and additional encoded strings.
I decided it wasnt worth figuring out what all they did with the code but instead decided to just clean it up. I assumed that the code probably helped replicate itself by checking that ALL other PHP pages on the site also had the same code in them. So if someone removed the code and then the code was run on another page it put itself back where you removed it.
Anyway, pretty sophisticated but it was easy for me to find the problem just opened and looked at the PHP file and saw code that shouldnt have been there.
A cool way that I found where the problem was before even opening the PHP file was to use HTTPWatch to see which exact files were downloaded from which site in the browser. I use the free version of the softwar and it has met all my needs so far. It is similar to firebug in FireFox.
Great SQL Formatting Tool
Great SQL Formatting Tool
We often deal with very complex, dynamically generated SQL Statements which run from our applications.
If we need to debug them for any reason we often have to display them to the screen and then copy and paste them in to an SQL Query window. The problem is that those SQL Statements are not always formatted to be very readable. Sometimes they might even be on a single line. This requires a bunch of time going through and reformatting the sql statement, making it legible for debugging.
I have used this tool SQLinFORM several times in the past but I keep forgetting about when I dont have to use it very often.
http://www.sqlinform.com/
I just copy and paste the SQL into the window and click Format.
It does a great job formatting code quickly and even has some options for how you would like to see the output, I then select the output and paste it into my SQL Query window.
If you use it often they do have a version for sale.
Linux System Discovery
Linux System Discovery
Over the last couple of weeks I have been working on doing some in depth “System Discovery” work for a client.
The client came to us after a major employee restructuring, during which they lost ALL of the technical knowledge of their network.
The potentially devastating business move on their part turned into a very intriguing challenge for me.
They asked me to come in and document what service each of their 3 Linux servers.
As I dug in I found that their network had some very unique, intelligent solutions:
- A reliable production network
- Thin Client Linux printing stations, remotely connected via VPN
- Several Object Oriented PHP based web applications
Several open source products had been combined to create robust solutions
It has been a very rewarding experience to document the systems and give ownership of the systems, network and processes back to the owner.
The documentation I have provided included
- A high level network diagram as a quick reference overview for new administrators and developers
- An overall application and major network, server and node object description
- Detailed per server/node description with connection documentation, critical processes , important paths and files and dependencies
- Contact Information for the people and companies that the systems rely on.
As a business owner myself, I have tried to help the client recognize that even when they use an outside consultant, it is VERY important that they maintain details of their critical business processes INSIDE of their company. Their might not be anything in business that is as rewarding as giving ownership of a “lost” system back to a client.
Remote Desktop Connection – Console (RDP)
Remote Desktop Connection – Console (RDP)
I use Remote Desktop (RDP) to connect to Windows servers and workstations every day(XP, 2000, 2003, 2008, Vista and Windows 7).
However I only occasionally need to connect to the console on the remote computer.
And every time I do I have to look up how to do it again because I can’t remember the syntax. Like today.
So when I looked it up today I just decided to copy the Shortcut I had on my Quick Launch bar and have a second button to connect to the console.
- First, I right clicked on the shortcut, clicked “Copy Shortcut”, this put a new shortcut on my Quick Launch bar but it will work where ever you have a shortcut, including the Start Menu.
- Then, I right clicked the new shortcut and went to properties and change the name to “Remote Desktop Connection (2)” to “Remote Desktop Connection – Console” and added this switch to the end of the target field ” /console” so it looks something like
…….mstsc.exe /console” - Then, I clicked Change Icon on the properties and I picked from the list of icons so the it looked different on the icon menu.
Problem solved, It only took 2 minutes and I can quickly connect to the console via Remote Desktop easily now. (of course this blog took another 10 minutes)
Matraex, Inc Has Moved Offices
Matraex, Inc Has Moved Offices
Over Presidents Day weekend Matraex moved our office space from the Southwest Boise location to an newer office building in downtown Boise. We are sad to leave the home weve known for 5 years, but were excited by the prospects the new secure building in the prime downtown location brings us.
The move affects only our office location, where all of the consulting, administration and accounting work for our business is done. No changes have been made to our hosting environment which remains in the rock-solid data center we have been located in for the last 8 years.
We use our own VoIP phone hosting service so moving our phone networkwas as simple as unplugging them from the old location and plugging them in at our new location. All phone numbers remain the same and you can still reach us at (208) 344-1115.
The biggest change to will be to our clients that send mail to our office Letters and payments will need to be delivered to a different address. All payments and mail communication should now be addressed to:
Matraex, Inc
1101 W Grove Street
Suite 202
Boise, Idaho
83702
If you have any questions about the move and how it may affect you as our client, please call Michael Blood at (208) 344-1115 extension 250.