Technology. People. Projects….Results.

Are Technology Consulting firms losing focus?

August 14, 2007 – 10:51 pm
I recently had a series of conversations with one of my colleague's employed with a competing consulting firm. He is in a senior management position and is directly responsible for the success of the engagement.  I will not divulge the customer nor consulting firm to protect the innocent. What I will say about the customer is that they are a major government contract for one of the large global consulting firms based in Dallas. This is not a small account and is a major source of income. This Government entity has contracted my colleague's firm to provide operations support, applications support and a service desk, on-site, in multiple locations. ...

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Life outside the “Iron Triangle”

August 8, 2007 – 7:17 pm
Scope, Resources and Schedule. These boundaries are often referred to as triple constraint or the iron triangle. These boundaries have long dictated "classic" project management theory and practice. In classic PM, projects are treated as distinct entities within the business. They have a scope, resources, schedule and are self-contained. The Project Manager must perform within these boundaries to deliver the expected results. Any decisions that require changing one of these boundaries must come from outside of the project. These decisions typically involve functional or executive management. If something unexpected happens that requires changing one of the boundaries; the Project Manager collects ...

Posted in Project Management | 3 Comments »

Configuring Big Brother as a Solaris 10 Service

August 7, 2007 – 8:35 pm
 Tip courtesy of Kyle Reynolds at http://www.camelrichard.org  mkdir /var/svc/manifest/application/monitoringcreate the /var/svc/manifest/application/monitoring/bigbrother.xml file.  contents of bigbrother.xml (change directories, user, group, and stop/start                            script paths to fit your install):---------------------------------------------------------------------------------  <?xml version='1.0'?><!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM '/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1'><!--    bigbrother.xml : BigBrother ...

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Configuring Big Brother Tests for Miscellaneous Processes

August 7, 2007 – 8:33 pm
 Tip courtesy of Kyle Reynolds at http://www.camelrichard.org   On the machine running the process you wish to test for, create a script in the $BBHOME/ext directory following the example script below.  Change the `PROC_1` variable to reflect the process you will `grep` for and the `BBPROG` variable to reflect the name of the script, and change the `TEST` variable to reflect the name of the test as it will ...

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Start Iplanet Without Password Prompt

August 7, 2007 – 8:14 pm
 Tip courtesy of Kyle Reynolds at http://www.camelrichard.org If Iplanet (Sun One Webserver) has security turned on (in the magnus.conf) it will prompt for a password to start the webserver. In cases where you might script the starting of Iplanet, you might want to provide the password, but not be prompted every time. create a file called "token" (or anything for that matter) and put your iplanet password in it. (Yes, this will be plain text, so take security measures...) now, start Iplanet by redirecting that file into the start command: /apps/iplanet/https-hostname.camelrichard.org/start < token and ...

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Rotate Iplanet Logs

August 7, 2007 – 8:13 pm
 Tip courtesy of Kyle Reynolds at http://www.camelrichard.org To force daily rotation of Iplanet (Sun One Web Server) logs, add the following line to magnus.conf: Init fn=flex-rotate-init rotate-start=0000 rotate-interval=1440 where the rotate-interval is in minutes, 1440 being 24 hours. Restart Iplanet. "access" and "errors" logs will be rotated every 24 hours and named as such: -rw-r--r-- 1 iplanet iplanet 143 Apr 23 00:00 access -rw-r--r-- 1 iplanet iplanet 143 Apr 21 21:35 access.200704220000 -rw-r--r-- 1 iplanet ...

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iPlanet Generate Server Key from Command Line

August 7, 2007 – 8:12 pm
 Tip courtesy of Kyle Reynolds at http://www.camelrichard.org Iplanet (Sun One Webserver) requires a server certificate to boot if you turn security on (to require a password to boot). This is commonly done through the admin console, but can also be done on the command line. This example uses Sun One Webserver 6.1SP7. To Turn Security ON: vi magnus.conf change: Security off to: Security on Now, if you tried to start the webserver, you would see a message like this: iplanet@blojszp1 /u01/app/iplanet/https-blojszp1.camelrichard.org ...

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vi Reference

August 7, 2007 – 8:11 pm
 Tip courtesy of Kyle Reynolds at http://www.camelrichard.org vi reference ------------ Editing commands Moving around the file h  cursor left     j  cursor right k  cursor up       l  cursor down ^  & B    Beginning of line  $         end of line )     Next sentance (     Previous sentance }     Next Paragraph {     Previous  Paragraph :$   end of file w    one character forward W    one word forward :20  go to Line no 20 or whatever number you give         displaying file info . ^g  give name of the file  current line and total lines of a file at the bottom . Inserting and appending text : i inserts text to the left of  cursor I inserts ...

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Trusted Authentication with openSSH

August 7, 2007 – 8:10 pm
 Tip courtesy of Kyle Reynolds at http://www.camelrichard.org Trusted authentication with OpenSSH 1. Change directory to the .ssh (hidden directory) located under your home directory, or create it (mkdir -m 755 ~/.ssh). 2. Create the necessary 1024 bit public and private keys for type dsa, version 2, of ssh (-t dsa).                     ssh-keygen -t dsa -b 1024 3. When prompted for values you may take the default file names.  This will generate two files in the .ssh directory that are married to one another.  It will overwrite existing key files with the same name if they exist.  The two files ...

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Solaris SED add delete replace

August 7, 2007 – 8:09 pm
Tip courtesy of Kyle Reynolds at http://www.camelrichard.org SED add/ delete/ replace
------------------------ sed -f <scriptname> <filename>  # runs the scripted commands against the <filename> example: sed -f deletescript myfile.ldif
sed -f addscript newfile.ldif or from command line: sed '/<searchstring>/d' filename -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- deletescript: # deletes any line containing <searchstring> /<searchstring>/d ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ addscript: # adds the <newline entry> above any line containing <searchstring> /<searchstring>/i\
<newline entry> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ addscript: # adds the <newline entry> beneath any line containing <searchstring> /<searchstring>/a\
<newline entry> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ replacescript: # replaces the <searchstring> with the <newline entry> /<searchstring>/c\
<newline entry> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ change every lowercase a, b and c to uppercase sed 'y/abc/ABC/' filename ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Change every instance of <string> with <newstring> sed 's/string/newstring/g' filename

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