Scenario

You're working for a small which requires internet access, a Linux machine configure with two ethernet cards is the only machine actually connected to the Internet. You need to configure it to act as a router.

Estimated time for resolution 5 minutes.

***Note*** Of course your modification has to survive across reboots.

I'll publish the resolution/how to about this exercise in two/three days.

Lethe.

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cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

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3

 # Controls IP packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0 <-- change this to 1

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This will be a simple exercise, if you encounter problems you can refer to my previous post on how to reset root password to find solution to the exercise. Enough talk. 

You're the administrator for Example Inc. you're tasked for installing a new package, which requires root privileges, on host Example01, this system was previously administered by another admin who quite the company and did not leave any documentation of the current users and/or root password you now need to recover the lost password.

Document each step taken and reset the password to MySup3rS3cr3t .

Estimated time for this exercise 10 minutes.

Have fun, Lethe!

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With this exam down I need to more to achieve my Citrix Certified Enterprise Administrator certification which was originally requested by my company but now I'm pursuing just for a mere sense of personal challenge. I hope to be done soon with the two remaining exams as I plan to move to other stuff as soon as I have some more spare time, namely Citrix CCEE (the virtualization path which seems really cool) and security/voip related stuff. 

In all this mess I also have my RHCE lab scheduled in June and waiting for me :) I still keep making practice and can't wait to sit the exam, I'm pretty excited as I'm growing a bit bored about multiple choice exams… I need action, I need real HW to mess with, I need real scenarios which are oriented to real life problems, not to situations you'll never meet in real life as it too often happens with this kind of exams.

As I've wrote I want to concentrate on some security stuff as I've been writing the course syllabus for an introduction to offensive security and had tons of fun! I almost forgot what lead me on the IT path and how fun this part of our job can be so I want to take my study of the security world at a deeper level, we'll see for now I've already found a pair of lab certifications which seems really interesting :D I'll let you know!

Well time for me to get some rest as always after an exam I feel a bit tired :)

Cheer Lethe.

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Hopefully between today and tomorrow I'll finally be able to post the third part of the series on how to emulate Junos on GNS3 so stay tuned!

Cheer Lethe.

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I've already said I was really excited to see that the new exams will be more "real world" focuses, this is simply great as I love everything that is more real world oriented, I'm a trainer myself but usually in my classes I try to talk about what my students will really benefit of (aka I don't like to "…comment slides on a computer screen…") like real world/administration problems, real world tools, tips and tricks.

Enough words, in short in the new track we'll have lot of improvements and some good and some bad news :) :

• CCNP will now be three exams, ROUTE, SWITCH, and TSHOOT – As I've already written
  
• Exam price will increase from $150.00 to $200.00 per exam – Ouch!
  
• Classe, as exams, will be more real word and as per Cisco's words TSHOOT course will be 92% hands-on – Cool!
  
• ROUTE and TSHOOT official courses will now be supplemented with e-learning material (nearly 8 hours for ROUTE and 9 hours for TSHOOT) which will be part of the examination – Simply WOW lot of fun to cover!
  
• QoS almost gone from the CCNP Curriculum – Basically they removed the overlap with the CCVP track, too bad I've loved my ONT examination :)
  

New exams will be publicly available between march and april of this year, ROUTE and SWITCH exams will be available in March while TSHOOT will be available in April, and in general I think they'll better prepare both to real world Network Administration adn to the CCIE R&S Examination. If you've already started your CCNP track or want to take an alternative route to the certification you can also substitute exams as follows :

• ONT and ISCW exams can substitute for TSHOOT
  
• BSCI and BCMSN can substitute ROUTE / SWITCH

All the above remain valid for all the 3 years certification period, just keep in mind July 31st all "old" CCNP Curriculum exams will be retired, so you won't be able to schedule them anymore.

Even if it is too early to talk, I wish I had the time to schedule a beta exam in the new track :(, I'm really impressed and happy with the changes to the Curriculum I'm just worried as I would not like to see Cisco take the VmWare path (aka attend a course to get certified) or the Citrix one (you're not forced to undertake official training but due to lack of resources you end up anyhow attending one…).

We'll see, I can't wait to put my hands on the rough cuts of the new study material.

Cheer Lethe.

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LPI is pleased to announce that holders of LPIC certifications are now
eligible to apply for and receive the Novell Certified Linux Administrator
(CLA) certification at no additional cost or exams.

This initiative is the result of a new partnership agreement between
Novell and LPI.  Under this program those Linux professionals who have
earned their LPIC-1 status will also have satisfied the requirements for
the Novell Certified Linux Administrator (CLA) certification.  To further
support this initiative Novell Training Services has formally agreed
to include the required LPIC-1 learning objectives in its CLA course
training material.

I think this is a cool move from LPI people and so I'm now recognized even as a Novell Certified Linux Administrator :) If you're a current LPI-1 probably you've already received the same eamil, if you're studying to pass LPI exams you'll be happy to know you'll earn two certifications at the price of one.

I have to admit I was quite surprised when I read the mail but I am anyhow happy to have gained this new certification as well, I wish all certification I have under my belt were so easy to obtain.

Cheer Lethe.

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First of all you need to download the GNS3-All-In-One package from here. Once you've downloaded the package simply launch the exe file and basically just answer yes/next whenever prompted, just be sure to select all components when asked like in the following picture :

Once the the installation is completed GNS3 will ask you to configure and test Dynamips, here if you're using an x64 OS the path will need to be changed to reflect the actual location of where the Dynamips executable has been installed as you can see in the following pics :

If after changing the path the Dynamips test still shows a red Failed the problem may reside in Windows Firewall blocking the Dynamips executable, keep also in mind you could see a pop up asking what to do (of course tell the Firewall to simply allow the executable).

Once done this you're ready to go and start your Cisco Lab after loading some IOS images :) I've already blogged on how to configure GNS3 and make it work!

Happy labbing and as always please feel free to send me an email or comment below this post.

Cheer Lethe.

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It is a pretty easy and quick process, all you have to do is, at the GRUB command prompt in the image below, select the Kernel you want to boot and then press the "e" key to enter edit mode so that you can alter the boot process :

Don't pay attention to the number of Kernel in a typical installation there should be 2/3, this is just one my test machines where I need multiple kernels, you'll then see some lines similar to the following :

At this point select the line where the kernel to boot is specified, usually the second one, and hit "e" again to enter edit mode for the selected line and add the text highlighted in the following image :

At this point to proceed with the regular boot simply hit the "b" key and Linux will start normally but you won't see any graphical interface but instead the following prompt :

The above image is an image of what is called in Linux Single User Mode while in single user mode you're not asked for any authentication and can change the password of virtually any user account, root included, exactly as when you're logged as root himself but without you're being asked any password.

At this point all you have to do to reset root password all you have to do is issue the following command :

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passwd root

Now input the password two times and simply reboot the machine, all the modifications you've applied above will simply be gone as they are just temporary now login with the new root password you've just configured.

I hope you'll like and find useful this post, as always please digg it and feel free to write me if you encounter any problem with the above procedure!

Cheer Lethe.

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You know I'm a BIG Open Source and FSF fan, I think software as learning resources should be FREE! I'm fed up with the old story about "…Open Source = Free = Money…", we all know that's not true, we all know that's plain hypocrisy and we all know that is usually big companies excuse to cut our rights or to justify you have to pay large amount of $$$ to just use an OS or an App. Anyhow I was watching a few videos and reading some industry news about this iPad and have to admit I was quite positively surprised about Apple's creation, nothing to say they have good ideas and a good marketing department, but then something crossed my mind… How will applications/music/whatever be installed on this handled device? One word came to my mind AppleStore which, in turn, invoked into my mind images of iTunes, iPhone and… DRM!

I don't have an iPod nor an iPhone, don't need an iPhone and usually can listen to all the music I want on my pc, but as a good geek I read a lot and know a few people who saved to have an iPhone just to be like the rest of mass (no offence intended to iPhone owners, it's just a comment about Italian way of life) and so I'm pretty aware of very restrictive policy of Apple about installing "non official" application or non-DRM stuff.

A quick tour on search engines brought me to confirm all my fears but gladly enough I've even found FSF already launched a petition about Apple's policy on these matters, I've already signed it and invite everyone of you to do the same, the petition can be found here.

I think the best way possible to close this post it's with an image and Holmes Wilson's words :

"This is a huge step backward in the history of computing.
If the first personal computers required permission from
the manufacturer for each new program or new feature, the history of
computing would be as dismally totalitarian as the milieu in Apple's
famous Super Bowl ad."

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During these days I'm really really busy with work and real life issues, never again I'll relocate I swear it on the blog!, and thanks to Italian public transport I'm a 12 hours like schedule (thanks to Italian public transport) and don't have the time to do anything…

It seems my Citrix learning path has begun again as the company management once again asked me to rush all the certification in the CCEA path (of course with no study material and no courses I can attend cause "…you're scheduled on projects and on classes so we can't let you go for one week…" and I wonder how they suppose I should prepare) and I have to tell once again, Windows apart, I'm really liking all the thing and learning a lot of cool stuff and I think I'll put even more effort in this "project", of course for me and not for them.

Well time to run again as my students are back from coffee break!

Hope to write soon again, Lethe.

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