@Sawyer said in Raspberry Pi Zero W Bought for Testing:
I ordered Raspberry Pi zero W from https://robu.in/product/raspberry-pi-zero-w-with-raspberry-pi-zero-w-accessories-kit/.
What exactly does the NOOBS Software do?
NOOBS sets up your choice of OS for you. It's not needed, but is handy if you don't have another computer to setup an OS.
Also, if you have these sorts of questions in the future, just make a new thread.
@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Death scrolling ML, been a while since I've had a chance to post here. How is everyone doing?
I got a new job around 6 months ago. I'm now a network engineer, and like the job/coworkers/manager.
@Pete-S said in Windows 11 versus 10:
@JaredBusch said in Windows 11 versus 10:
@Pete-S said in Windows 11 versus 10:
Or is it just the usual make-a-new-version-so-we-can-market-and-sell-upgrades?
You know they haven’t sold windows upgrades for years now right?
Sure but I didn't mean that. New OS often requires new hardware which means a new oem license for MS and also new opportunities to sell M365 and other services. I'm sure they have this down to a science.
There are artificial hardware requirements they threw in with Windows 11. The big one being "require" TPM2.0.
Doesn't actually USE any of the features added in 2.0 compared to 1.2, of course.
Also Ubiquiti WiFiman.
Used to use WiFi Analyzer, but dropped it when it went add supported.
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@stacksofplates said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@stacksofplates said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
For almost two years, Microsoft officials botched a key Windows defense, an unexplained lapse that left customers open to a malware infection technique that has been especially effective in recent months.
Microsoft officials have steadfastly asserted that Windows Update will automatically add new software drivers to a blocklist designed to thwart a well-known trick in the malware infection playbook. The malware technique—known as BYOVD, short for "bring your own vulnerable driver"—makes it easy for an attacker with administrative control to bypass Windows kernel protections. Rather than writing an exploit from scratch, the attacker simply installs any one of dozens of third-party drivers with known vulnerabilities. Then the attacker exploits those vulnerabilities to gain instant access to some of the most fortified regions of Windows.
It turns out, however, that Windows was not properly downloading and applying updates to the driver blocklist, leaving users vulnerable to new BYOVD attacks.
OK that's definitely bad that they don't block it - but since you're an admin - why do you even care? the article says that the attacker is starting as a local admin.
Installers are typically local admins.
let me ask this another way.
Yes - it's bad that MS isn't blocking something they said they would.But does that make the situation any worse than it would really be if they did?
the attacker already has local admin - why would they need to install a driver that has vulnerabilities when they already have full local admin control - what advantage do they get they didn't already have?
Because they’re mostly things like automated installs. It’s not like someone is sitting at the keyboard as a bad actor. It’s an email with an attachment for a doc that when Sally opens it installs a valid signed driver that is vulnerable.
Exactly. Automated or confused users OR, don't forget, confused DEVELOPERS. It's not hard to get legit software, especially closed source, to think that MS signed drivers are safe (as that's the whole idea of the system is that everyone can trust them because MS is vouching for them) and trigger that they be installed, bypassing the expected security system.
I've seen that done by developers way to often.
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
We're visiting my brother-in-law for the first time, they're in central Minnesota.
not exactly a great time to go there...
No, but better than Novermber or December!
We're visiting my brother-in-law for the first time, they're in central Minnesota.
Was a long, rough day at work. The next project hits tomorrow, and even my boss was having trouble figuring out what is going on.
@Dashrender said in Is this a fake job?:
so fake interviews by who? head hunters?
I've been to a few over the years.
@nadnerB said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@nadnerB Haven't had that much bad luck with them as switches goes and they have lasted more than Dell and HP for us.
When other people have bought TP-Link kit, it's been pretty good.
At work (pre-merger) we had some things that APs, switch etc, they seemed to keep going.
Opposite story at home I've had, i think I'm up to, 3 DOA modem routers, and one that was dieing a slow death. IMO, I have bad luck with TP-Link, so I've stopped buying their stuff.Other people don't seem to have the issue.
Any of their home gear (routers, modems, etc) is generally trash.
Switches and enterprise gear is much better.
I've heard good things about their Omada products as well, but haven't used any yet myself.
@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Pains me to say - I may be going 'consumer grade' for a router as I now find that my 16port switch is lost as well.
This is due to cost and turn around.
You can still find 16 port switches for reasonable cost, they're just harder to find. I recently got a 16 port PoE TPLink switch from Amazon that wasn't overpriced or impossible to actually get.
Why would you consider consumer grade routers? At the very least, you can get ER-X from MicroCenter. There are a few other quality options around that are better than consumer c*** now as well.
@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Sigh
Device burn-out saga continues,… the ERL went down this morning. It now sings when powered.One more device to replace…..
How's the power quality in your area? I've had to buy the fancy online (power always comes from the battery) types of UPSs before because the incoming power was so dirty.
@scottalanmiller said in Microsoft Finally Deprecated WINS:
There was a time in the 1990s when Microsoft was taking a bet that WINS would be better than DNS, at least on the LAN. This proved to not be true and Microsoft officially made DNS their main mechanism with the release of Windows 2000 (NT 5) in 2000. That's 22 years ago. But for 22 years WINS has still been included and developed for Windows Server.
For those that haven't paid attention to the fine print, with the release of Windows Server 2022 (which we are deploying regularly) WINS is still included, of course, but they have announced that development has ceased and you can be sure that sometime, probably not in the next version of Windows, that WINS will no longer be included with it.
If you rely on WINS for anything, it is time to figure out where and start phasing it out now before it becomes painful.
But WINS was always painful.
Just avoid additional pain.
@scottalanmiller said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:
@Pete-S said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:
@scottalanmiller said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:
@Pete-S said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:
@Dashrender said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:
@Pete-S said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:
@scottalanmiller said in Send an Email via SMTP from Command Line with cURL:
First the command itself, showing gmail settings here by default but obviously fill in with your own details:
Does it work? I thought gmail required OAuth nowadays and you couldn't use plain username & password for authentication anymore.
gmail still allows the creation of app passwords.
OK, then it works for now I guess.
I always cringe when I see MSPs that set up their clients MFPs and other devices using random gmail accounts.
IMHO it's unprofessional and much better to use a real transactional email service for these kinds of applications.
It depends. If it is going out to customers, then it's weird. If it is for purely internal stuff then transactional email doesn't make too much sense. But if it is internal, normally you can just use whatever internal tool you already have.
Typical scenario with gmail is that someone sets up a MFP to use a random gmail address for sending alerts and scanned documents.
When the user scans the document it's often sent to his own email address [email protected]. So primarily internal.
Well, problem is that gmail saves mail sent over SMTP in the sent folder. Which means that the "printer guy", who if often not even an employee, can read all the scanned document that was ever scanned and emailed by logging in to the gmail account he set up.
And of course sent email coming from outside your domains might be flagged as spam. So people scan documents and it doesn't work. I mean the list of problems is long.
Well when lots and lots of companies still demand to only use Gmail already, it's not so weird.
You'd be amazing how often we get people requiring that they stay on Yahoo and AOL addresses for their businesses. I kid you not.
@Pete-S said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
@travisdh1 said in Any Experience with BeeLink Mini PCs?:
The NUCs are just a pain. Too many warranty claims (like 8-10% of new units out of the ~150 I deployed over 2 years). To make matters even harder, the OEM only warranties RAM/storage. So you have two different companies you have to deal with warranty repair/replace issues with.
That's a lot. Intel usually know what they're doing when designing PCs.
I've never had to RMA any of them but I've not deployed as many as you have.
Is it just one kind of failure or is it different?
All types. Some storage/ram, some motherboard/cpu. What makes it such a pain is that Intel doesn't actually sell a complete system, which means playing vendor roulette whenever something does go wrong.
@scottalanmiller said in Unattended remote access utility/ computer:
@travisdh1 said in Unattended remote access utility/ computer:
@AdamF said in Unattended remote access utility/ computer:
Great video. Thanks for that. Your assumption is correct. There are no PCs or servers on this network, just other networking equipment. I like the idea of the Pi and Mesh Central. I finally was able to find one and have it on order. Time to setup a mesh central vm.
I also found this as an option as well https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082VVCFNG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1
Not too badly priced either. But I am going with the Pi.
I'm leery about anything running a Celeron J or N series CPU, a Pi is probably going to perform better.
Actually they are probably faster than the Pi. But I like the Pi more.
Not in my experience, but I've also never run Windows on a Pi.
@AdamF said in Unattended remote access utility/ computer:
Great video. Thanks for that. Your assumption is correct. There are no PCs or servers on this network, just other networking equipment. I like the idea of the Pi and Mesh Central. I finally was able to find one and have it on order. Time to setup a mesh central vm.
I also found this as an option as well https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082VVCFNG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1
Not too badly priced either. But I am going with the Pi.
I'm leery about anything running a Celeron J or N series CPU, a Pi is probably going to perform better.
I've heard of them, but never actually had hands on one. That said, I'd jump at the opportunity to use anything other than a NUC.
The NUCs are just a pain. Too many warranty claims (like 8-10% of new units out of the ~150 I deployed over 2 years). To make matters even harder, the OEM only warranties RAM/storage. So you have two different companies you have to deal with warranty repair/replace issues with.
@pattonb said in ups battery life:
What sort of timeframe, before changing, does everybody get on UPS batteries. my experience is about 4 years.
I've seen a lot of oddballs, but generally 3-5 years.
Which reminds me, I probably need to replace some of my personal ones.
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Slow day around here. What's everyone up to?
An impromptu 2hr meeting with the boss this afternoon. Myself and the other engineer I work with both had things we needed to discuss with him in addition to what he had called us about.
Also saw the latest drive stats from Backblaze came out today. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ssd-drive-stats-mid-2022-review
