Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring is a new book from Packt that is aimed at helping Linux administrators effectively monitor their networks using Cacti. Written by Dinangkur Kundu and S. M. Ibrahim Lavlu, this book takes users through all key features of Cacti and shows how to use them for maximum effectiveness.
Cacti is an open source, web-based network monitoring tool that provides graphic solutions to your everyday monitoring issues. It is generally used to graph time-series data of metrics such as CPU load and network bandwidth utilization. A common usage is to monitor network traffic by polling a network switch or router interface via SNMP.
Along with the installation and setup of Cacti, this book will teach its readers how to import, manage and customize the graph templates, using the RRDtool, to make the output graphs look better and easier to understand. They will also learn more about adding devices to Cacti and use the graph templates to monitor the entire network. Basic procedures to create users and assign permissions to them to view or edit graphs will also be explained.
With this book, users will understand how the Net-SNMP application suite implements SNMP with Cacti and how the folder structure is used for backing up and restoring a system. By learning to create new data input methods and Script XML data query, users can retrieve raw data from the system to insert into data sources. The advanced command-line scripts provided in the book will also help users easily access and manage a network.
With loads of screenshots, illustrations and easy step-by-step instructions this book is ideal for network administrators using Cacti. The book is out now and available from Packt. For more information, please visit: http://www.packtpub.com/cacti-0-8-networ...
network administration
Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and the Enterprise
Perhaps Mozilla is finally seeing the light. There is a story circulating around that Mozilla will be providing better tools to deploy and manage Firefox within the enterprise. According to a PC World article that sources Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla Corp:
Through the program, which will start sometime soon after Firefox 3.5 is released at the end of June, companies can use a Web application provided by Mozilla to specify certain customizations for the browser -- such as bookmarks to certain sites or corporate intranets or portals, he said.
Companies also can brand the browser through technology called Personas that allows them to code a skin across the top of the browser with a company's logo on it, Beltzner said.
Once the custom browser is developed, the application then will send it to the company and give it an installation program that makes it possible to install the browser across all desktops in the company, Beltzner added.
As one who has deployed Firefox and Thunderbird in an enterprise environment, one of my biggest criticisms with Mozilla has been that Firefox and Thunderbird is not enterprise-ready software. It's not that there hasn't been a push by some in the Mozilla community to provide enterprises with the tools they need to deploy Firefox and Thunderbird. It's just without official backing by Mozilla Corp, those tools never really seem to fully materialize in a way that is needed in large organizations. Hopefully, this time will be different.
Story found via Matt Assay.
Michael Kaply: Deploying Firefox 2 within the Enterprise
Michael Kaply has been writing a series of articles on how to deploy Firefox 2 within the Enterprise. I wrote last year that one of the difficulties of deploying Firefox and Thunderbird in the enterprise was the lack of tools Mozilla provided for deploying the software. I'm happy to say that Kaply's articles do a fairly good job on providing some solutions for those organizations that need to manage a large network of clients. Kaply's original intent is to cover the following topics regarding deployment of Firefox 2 within the enterprise:
- Building a custom version of Firefox
- Adding Enterprise specific customizations to Firefox
- Creating a Firefox installer
- Setting up your own update server to deploy Firefox patches
Currently most of his articles can be found on Kaply's blog under the "enterprise" category.
eWeek: Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost?
"Now, there is a general feeling of hopelessness among security professionals involved in finding and disabling botnets. It remains to be seen how this despair affects security products and the attitudes of the technology executives who rely on them.
'We've known about [the threat from] botnets for a few years, but we're only now figuring out how they really work, and I'm afraid we might be two to three years behind in terms of response mechanisms,' said Marcus Sachs, a deputy director in the Computer Science Laboratory of SRI International, in Arlington, Va."
Plone: Current web site slowness
"The plone.org web site is currently being hit with multiple spam requests from various sources (on the level of a DDoS attack), and we're currently cleaning up the mischief. If the site is slow for you, we apologize."
Headaches from security updates for Firefox and Thunderbird
Sigh...another round of security updates coming from the folks at Mozilla. It looks like version 1.5.0.7 will be at our doorsteps soon. Now at home, updating Firefox and Thunderbird on the Windows PC is a snap since it is all automatic. However, updating in a secure enterprise environment is a different matter.
In most enterprises, most users don't have administrative privileges and without those rights Firefox and Thunderbird in most cases will not auto install the new version. What would really help is if Mozilla would provide their software in a MSI package. Until MSI packages are provided by Mozilla, it is difficult for me to accept Firefox and Thunderbird as "enterprise software". In a Windows Server 2003 environment, MSI packages are a must for easy deployment, management, and auditing.
