Create Your Own Network Assessment Appliance: Additional Tools

Introduction

I previously did a write up on a personal virtual machine I like to keep at hand for performing network analysis and discovery. I’ve since added a few tools to the VM and documented how they were installed so I figured I’d share on how it was done. Even if you don’t setup everything in this post it may be worthwhile to glance through it for some network engineering tools which are free to setup and use but not highly publicized. Anyone who cares to read this post has likely heard of Solarwinds but I highly doubt you have heard of all the tools in this list (let alone how to set them up). Regardless, I’ll start with a tool anyone worth their salt has heard of though, Cacti…

Linux: Headless Ubuntu Torrent Home Server

So it got to that time of the year where I feel the itch to upgrade my aging home server. I assessed the situation and realized that, for what it does, my current server does not need any kind of hardware upgrade. So I just decided to rebuild it with Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit and change up the server software a bit to be more accessible to my wife as well as to be a bit more modern (torrentflux and derivatives have been dead for a while now).

GNS3 on Ubuntu 8.04 – Migrating Your Install

Don’t have much time due to work obligations but I wanted to quickly drop this one out there for any who have followed my install guides. I was always ragging on and on about making the install somewhat portable by putting it into the /opt/ directory and now I’ll give a good example why.

Ubuntu Server 8.04 Post Install Tip #4: Setup SMART

Setup SMART Disk Monitoring

If your disk is going bad no one going to tell you about it until you start hearing it. And if you start hearing issues with your drive it may be too late to backup your data or do anything else you need to do to not be driveless. I’m uncertain why some of this is not available as an install option for more distros but a good warning before the storm can save your data and your sanity.

Ubuntu Server 8.04 Post Install Tip #3: Blacklist Modules

Here is another one that you may find useful to do after a default install of probably any Linux server, Disabling extra stuff from loading at startup. Ubuntu loads a ton of them and many I do not use at all. Since when do you need joystick or sound support on a server anyway? Anyways, here are some I disable and how I disable them.