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Over the past week I have been playing with Symantec Endpoint in preparation for a migration from Symantec Client Security 10.  Endpoint is basically the next version of Symantec’s anti-virus with a firewall and antispyware combined.  The management server seemed to have way more features than the previous version, however the interface is not any more intuitive than before.  Now, I’ve always noticed that symantec’s products are huge resource hogs, so I was surprised to notice that the size of rtvscan.exe had only a fraction of the mem usage of previous versions.  However on further investigation on several test machines I found that the usage was actually rediculously higher.  I’ve compiled a chart showing the differences in the usage.  I had four test machines running on VMware virtual machines.  Two windows xp clients, and two windows 2003 servers, one as a client, and the other as a management server.  Both Endpoint, and Client Security 10 memory usage is shown.

All the test machines has a fully updated system with nothing running but the Symantec program, wiht the exception of the Symantec 10 server which was also running several smaller inhouse apps.  The management program uses java, (another pig) which explains the high use of memory when the management app is open.  I attempted to do PCmark benchmarks, however it didnt like the virtual machines.

This is an horrible misuse of memory.  The program’s size on disk is less than all that.  Several posts by developers on symantec’s forums mentioned that they tried to reduce the memory footprint.  Not sure how they thought they were doing that.  I am hesitant to start rolling this out, because I know that all my users will start complaining about their machines slowing down.  I am running the endpoint client on my machine, however its a brand new Dell and has plenty of resources to spare.  I just need to install it on a Vista machine for the ultimate bloat experience.

I guess this proves what a procrastinator I am. 14 months after my last post, I finally started to make some changes to this site. I upgraded the backend to the latest version of Wordpress, 2.3.3. I also added Google Analytics so now I can finally track site stats. Unfortunatly the previous system I had broke well over a year ago, and I have no idea how the site has been used. I have been approving comments and cleaning up spam that got through, so I have a slight idea how things are going. As far as content, I always have a ton of thoughts floating around in my head that would warrant a good blog article, but since I am not a fan of writing and am also a bit of a slacker I may not get much up too often. Of course I have been very busy with other things the last year and a half and I should soon post a recap of what I have been up too.

Wow, from the look of this site you would think I fell off the face of the world.  But I’m still around.  The semester flew by, and I got way too busy with school, friends, and a girlfriend to give much thought to this site.  I’m disappointed, because I had a lot of good ideas of different content I wanted to put up.  And even though Christmas break is pretty hectic this year, I’m gonna try to do a few things to get this place back on it’s feet.

First off, I want to migrate my site from (mt)’s Shared Server system to the new Grid system.  This should open up some cool things as it eliminates many of the problems of the SS plan and allows me to run some cool apps, I’ve wanted to try out.  Then I will make sure that all the software I use is up-to-date.

As far as content goes, I want to start off with getting a new theme, and changing the look around.  I have some articles that I have been thinking of working on too.  I’m gonna change the focus from strictly tech stuff, to any random thing I feel like putting up.  So it will probably end up being tech stuff, sports, personal, funny stuff, and other random tidbits.  I’ll try to set some goals, and maybe I can accomplish them.

Sorry about not posting much recently, but I’ve been busy getting ready to go back to college.  And after a year, of working I am going back down to college.  I am all packed up, and I leave tomorrow morning.  I am going down to Clearwater Christian College.  I am transfering down there, so I have a lot of work to do to get all the classes I need before I graduate.  My sister also goes there and she convinced me to transfer there.  Ironically she is sitting out a semester to recover from a wrist injury (she is a piano major).  So tomorrow, I will attempt to drive 1000 miles from Philly to Clearwater in one day by myself.  Should be fun.  After I get settled, I’ll have lots of free time for the beach, weightlifting, girls, video games, and blogging.  I guess I’ll have studying to do too, but since I haven’t done that in a while, I probably won’t start that till its too late

This list of 100 things you don’t want to here your System Administrator say comes from PacketStorm Unix Humor. And I’ve got to admit, I’ve said several of these lines before.
1. Uh-oh…..
2. Shit!!
3. What the hell!?
4. Go get your backup tape. (You do have a backup tape?)
5. That’s SOOOOO bizarre.
6. Wow!! Look at this…..
7. Hey!! The suns don’t do this.
8. Terminated??!
9. What software license?
10. Well, it’s doing something…..

Continue reading ‘Things You Don’t Want to Hear Your SysAdmin say’

AOL’s research department released a dataset containing the search history of 500 thousand users with 20 million search terms. They released it for: “The goal of this collection is to provide real query log data that is based on real users. It could be used for personalization, query reformulation or other types of search research.” AOL soon removed the data from their site, but the damage has already been done and mirrors are all over the net.

This data is very valuable for marketers, SEOs, and spammers. The problem with the data is that it identifies users with a unique id. Thus all searched from a particular user are related with this id. And with enough searches it can be possible to determine who the person is. Since AOL uses google as its search engine, this is essentually the same data that Google fought the goverment to keep it from them. Now it is all over the net. And people are finding all kinds of interesting info.

It is only a matter of time until someone releases a web interface to search and parse this data. I am sure google link spammers are already parsing this data to find the best keywords to spam. I would imagine that google will have an interesting response soon. And this is definitly going to hurt aol. I am glad that I am not using aol for anything other than aim, but it would not suprise me if I found my chats online soon.

Of course I have already downloaded the data, and though I don’t have much time with moving in two weeks, I will probably import the data in MYSQL and do a few queries. >:)

These are a few tips on setting passwords in MySql from the Linux command line I figured out while setting up a MySql db server.

To set the root password run this: “mysql -u root mysql” Then run this query: “SET PASSWORD FOR root@localhost=PASSWORD(’password‘);” at the MySql prompt replacing the italics with the password.

Then run this command to connect to the database: “mysql -u root -p mysql” and enter your password.

Also to completely wipe everything associated with the database run “rm -rf /var/lib/mysql/*” and restart MySql server (/etc/init.d/mysqld start). This can be helpful to reset a forgotten root password, although there are less destructive ways.

I have finally created a JavaScript version of my C# password generator. The javascript version located here will generate multiple random passwords containing upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Just hit the generate button to get your passwords. Remember your passwords and keep them in a safe place.

I have several ideas to extend the functionality of this tool, and I will work on them when I get time over the next few months. If you have any suggestions please let me know.

Well tonight I reinstalled Windows XP on my computer. However I put the 32-bit version on instead of 64-bit which I had on before. I was having too many driver problems, and found I didn’t get any benefits from x64.

The install went smoothly, however I found out that Windows XP before sp1 does not support hard drives more than 130gb. But once I installed sp2, it recognized the rest of the hard drive. I just had to use Partition Magic to combine the partitions.

I would have liked to kept Windows XP x64, but it still has too many driver problems and program incompatibilities to be viable for a typical desktop setup.

This past week I took part of my vacation time. I figured since I am leaving in 3 weeks, it was a good time to take a weeks vacation. I spent Monday through Wednesday at Ocean City, New Jersey, at the beach with my good friend Dave Grimm and his family. It was a blast; we had great weather so we spent plenty of time on the beach and on the boardwalk. On Thursday my brother Allen and I went hiking at Blue Rocks campground. We had a good time together hiking to the top of a mountain. On Friday my Dad and I went to the Eagles training camp at Lehigh University. That was really cool. It was neat to see the players up close during practice. I took plenty of pictures during the week and here are just a few of them.

Click to see Pictures. Continue reading ‘A Week of Vacation!’