Cardboard Box

A quick way to examine a certificate in plain text…

openssl x509 -text -in cert.pem

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]

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

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.

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

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)}’

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]

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

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.

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