vsftp server

1. Start vsftp automatically

If the FTP service shall be operated with inetd we open the configuration file "/etc/inetd.conf" with an editor:

# ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.ftpd
ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd vsftpd


xinetd
It is recommended to start the vsftp daemon with xinetd which is more up to date than inetd. Some updates are e.g. logging of requests, access control, binding of the service to a specific network interface and so on. A very good introduction to xinetd can be found under [7]. After the modification restart of xinetd is necessary. The configuration of xinetd could look like this:

# vsftp daemon.
service ftp
{
disable = no
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/vsftpd
per_source = 5
instances = 200
no_access = 192.168.1.3
banner_fail = /etc/vsftpd.busy_banner
log_on_success += PID HOST DURATION
log_on_failure += HOST
nice = 10
}

Retrieve Unique Values from gisdata

import arcpy
from arcpy import env

env.workspace = "c:/data"

patch_shp = "test.shp"

field = "GRIDCODE"

valueList = []

rows = arcpy.SearchCursor(patch_shp)
for row in rows:
    valueList.append(row.getValue(field))

uniqueSet = set(valueList)
uniqueList = list(uniqueSet)
uniqueList.sort()

del rows
del row

print uniqueList

Zend Framework with IIS 7.0

Zend Framework uses Fron Controller pattern to redirect incoming request. On Apache web server, mod_rewrite can be used to redirect the request. What I am interested is how to support url rewrite in IIS 7.0.

Google search revealed there is a URL Rewrite module for IIS 7.0.

SQL Server 2008 RTM is available at MSDN

 

MSDN subscribers can get the RTM.

DBCC LOG

There is an undocumented command for checking SQL Server transaction log file for 7.0 and 2000.

To use it: DBCC log(dbname|dbid, [type=-1|0|1|2|3|4])

The meaning of type is

-1: 4 + hex dump of low row info, checkpoint begin, DB version, and Max XDESID

from 0 to 4, more information about the transaction is retrieved. Default value is 0.

How to extract msi content?

 

From windows command line tool, msi content can be extracted using msiexec command.

With C:\>msiexec, a windows installer window will come up showing the syntax of msiexec. To actually extract the content,

msiexec /a msifile /qb TARGETDIR=outfolder

SQL Injection

Microsoft published a security advisory (954462) on June 24, 2008 warning about the rising occurrence SQL Injection attack. "These SQL injection attacks do not exploit a specific software vulnerability, but instead target Web sites that do not follow secure coding practices for accessing and manipulating data stored in a relational database."

This morning, I find out that one of our databases was subjected to this issue, which causing the web site failed to launch. We have to restore the data from backup.

One useful tool, (also suggested in the security advisory) is HP Scrawl, which help web site administrators to detect SQL Injection vulnerabilities.