Problem with RAID volume larger then 2TB on Dell workstations

I ran into a interesting issue this weekend. I was setting up a RAID volume on a Optiplex and Precision workstations, which have three 1.5 Terabyte (TB) drives. I tried creating a single large RAID 5 volume but the Intel Matrix storage manger (8.5.2) would not set the array to bootable. After much trial I found I could create smaller volume 160 Gigabyte (GB) for the system which was bootable and another utilizing the rest of the storage. My original plan was to create a large volume and partition it using the OS but this worked just as well, so instead I had two RAID 5 volumes. The only difference is the large volume is not bootable and requires the small one with the OS on it to first be mounted.

Python file uploader

I recently had a need to upload large files to a server via HTTP. Most of the solutions required tweaking the web server or PHP instance which I didn't feel like dealing with. I found a Python script that would write the data in chunks so it could handle large files. I modified to script to include a few additional features including reporting a hash to the user, appending a date and revision to the file. I did my testing with Apache so your mileage may very with other httpd instances. The script is released under to GNUv3 so feel free to download a copy for your use or destruction. You can find it at Google Code or directly here: http://code.google.com/p/file-uploader/

I'm a certified penetrator

Okay that title is a bit loaded but I did pass my GIAC penetration tester exam today and did fairly well on it. As with most of the SANS certifications this one was quite difficult. I believe the only reason I did better on this exam then my previous SANS certifications exams was due to knowing in advance this is one of SANS more difficult exams to sit for (i.e. I actually studied). There were a number of very cool topics on the exam you can see here. My favorite topics were probably “Cross Site Scripting/Request Forgery” attacks since I was not as familiar with these concepts. I highly recommend a SANS certification to anyone looking to further their knowledge in information security with great vendor neutral certifications.