Cardboard Box

Examine x509 Certificate

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:22:51 -0400

A quick way to examine a certificate in plain text…

openssl x509 -text -in cert.pem

Convert Separate Key/Cert Files to a PFX

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:20:00 -0400

The reverse of the process of extracting the key/certs from a PFX can be achieved via…

openssl pkcs12 -export -in [certificate.crt] -inkey [private.key] -out [package.pfx]

Recover MySQL Root Password

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:48:05 -0400

To recover the password for the root account on a MySQL server use the following steps…

(Essentially, it can be done by restarting the daemon without the grant tables)

1. Stop the current mysql process

# /etc/init.d/mysql stop

2. Start the daemon without the grant tables

# mysqld_safe —skip-grant-tables &

3. Login to mysql as the root user … it will have a blank password

mysql> use mysql;

mysql> update user set password=PASSWORD(“newPassword”) where User=’root’;

mysql> flush privileges;

mysql> quit

5. Stop & restart the daemon

# /etc/init.d/mysql stop

# /etc/init.d/mysql start

Content-Disposition Header

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:44:05 -0400

In situations where you want a file linked to from within a website to present a ‘Save As’ dialog rather than simply displaying the content … you can inject a Content-Disposition header into the HTTP connection to prompt the browser to do so. I recently had a situation where I was linking to an uncommon file extension through a reverse-proxy and Internet Explorer wanted to include extra URI information in the ‘Save As’ file name. You can force the saved file name with this header as well.

In PHP, the header is introduced as follows…

header(‘Content-type: text/plain’);

header(‘Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=myfile.txt’);

Upper To Lower To Upper Case Command Line

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:40:39 -0400

Nice trick to pipe command line data through to convert it’s alpha characters to upper or lower case.

From UPPER to lower…

tr [:upper:][:lower:]

From lower to UPPER…

tr [:lower:][:upper:]

For example…

ls /directory | tr [:lower:][:upper:] | sort

Remote Reboot Windows XP

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:58:15 -0400

Using the Remote Desktop client to connect to a Windows XP system will not provide you with the option to reboot or restart the remote machine. This can be done from the command line however. Open a command prompt (Start->Run->Cmd.exe) and use the command…

shutdown -r -t 0

… to open a gui interface to manage the reboot …

shutdown -i

Enable Syntax Highlighting In VIM (vi) In Mac OSX

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:56:29 -0400

To enable the syntax highlight feature of Vim (vi) on Mac OSX, edit the /usr/share/vim/vimrc file and add the “syntax on” config. To do this from Terminal.app …

sudo vi /usr/share/vim/vimrc

…add a new line, “syntax on” and then save and close the file.

Mount ISO (.iso) In Linux

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:54:10 -0400

To mount an ISO (.iso) on a Linux system…

mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop /path/to/file.iso /path/to/mount/point

In many cases you will not have to specify the “-t iso9660” as most Linux distributions will auto detect that. The “ro” in the “-o ro,loop” tells this system to mount the .iso read only.

Convert DMG To ISO & ISO to DMG

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:48:04 -0400

To convert a Mac .dmg to a .iso image file, open Terminal.app and then run the following command…

hdiutil convert /path/to/filename.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/to/filename.iso

To convert a .iso image file to a Mac .dmg, also in Terminal.app run the following command…

hdiutil convert /path/to/filename.iso -format UDRW -o /path/to/filename.dmg

Strip Leading Zeros In Shell

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:29:24 -0400

Nice trick to strip leading zeros from an IP address at the command line (it turn 002.203.017.001 to 2.203.17.1)…

echo 002.203.017.001 | awk -F “.” ‘{print int($1)”.”int($2)”.”int($3)”.”int($4)}’

Convert PFX to Seperate Key/Cert Files

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:27:31 -0400

Using openssl to extract key and certificate files from a .pfx

To extract the private key…

openssl pkcs12 -in [filename.pfx] -nocerts -out [private.key]

To extract the certificate…

openssl pkcs12 -in [filename.pfx] -clcerts -nokeys -out [certificate.crt]

To decrypt the private key…

openssl rsa -in [private.key] -out [decrypted.key]

Symbols, Mac OSX Keyboard Shortcuts

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:21:08 -0400

Mac OSX keyboard shortcut combinations for many common symbols…

™ (trademark) = Option + 2

£ (pound) = Option + 3

¢ (cent) = Option + 4

∞ (infinity) = Option + 5

§ (section) = Option + 6

¶ (paragraph) = Option + 7

• (dot) = Option + 8

€ (euro) = Shift + Option + 2

° (degree) = Shift + Option + 8

¥ (yen) = Option + y

÷ (division) = Option + /

± (plus/minus) = Option + =

≥ (greater than or equal to) = Option + >

≤ (less than or equal to) = Option + <

√ (square root) = Option + v

π (pi) = Option + p

≈ (approx.) = Option + x

∆ (delta) = Option + j

∑ (sum) = Option + w

Ω (ohm) = Option + z

µ (micro) = Option + m

© (copyright) = Option + g

® (registered) = Option + r

† (dagger) = Option + t

HTTP(S) PUT w/Basic Authentiation via Curl

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:19:14 -0400

Need to use a secure HTTP PUT over SSL using Basic Auth?

curl -T file.txt -u https://[hostname]/[uri]

Add a -v to see that connection with verbose output.

Flush DNS Cache, Mac OSX

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 10:01:45 -0400

As a DNS admin, I frequently need to flush my local DNS cache in order to confirm that a change I made on a DNS server was correct. To do this on Mac OSX, open your Terminal.app and run the following command…

dscacheutil -flushcache

Home & End Keys, Mac OSX

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:49:47 -0400

Using Terminal.app on Mac OSX to connect to a Linux/*nix system and work in any text editor (such as Vim) is a bit of a hassle when you are used to the Home and End keys going to beginning or end of line on other systems.

Remap the keys in Terminal->Preferences->Settings->Keyboard to the following…

End: ctrl+[, [, 4, ~ it should look like this: \033[4~

Home: ctrl+[, [, 1, ~ it should look like this \033[1~

URL Encode/Decode (Perl)

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:43:27 -0400

Snippet of Perl code to URL encode/decode a string…

URL Encode:

$str =~ s/([^A-Za-z0-9])/sprintf(“%%%02X”, ord($1))/seg;

URL Decode:

$str =~ s/\%([A-Fa-f0-9]{2})/pack(‘C’, hex($1))/seg;