RADIUS Services

By timadmin in Administrative 0 Comment

Today I learned of an open source RADIUS authentication server which has been used on a Raspberry Pi (among other platforms).  Here is a link to the project:

http://freeradius.org

Naturally it would be useful to follow somebody else’s instructions for setting this up the first time, so here is a post to a blog entry of someone who’s done it:

Binary Heartbeat’s blog

I’ll replace this link with my own experience when I have one.  Hopefully soon!

An intro to Python

By timadmin in Python Notes 3 Comments

This month I have an active subscription to cbtNuggets (http://www.cbtnuggets.com), a training site for IT stuff.  Once I finished my mission, I found that I have some time left in which I can learn something else.  Since there isn’t a course for git, I chose the next best thing:  a course in Python taught by Ben Finkel.

So far the material is basic and can be learned from many web sources, so I’m not repeating it here.  There are a couple chewy nuggets that I’d like to remember though – which is what this blog is about!

  1. The online python documentation can be found at https://docs.python.org.
  2. There is a library of python code and stuff located at https://pypi.python.org/pypi
  3. Python 2.x is preinstalled on OS X (I love Apple!).  To find the version running on your Mac, use the command python –version or python -V at a command line.  Mine is running 2.7.6.
  4. Launch python’s interactive mode from the terminal using the command python.
  5. Execute a python program file from the terminal using the command python <filename>.

That’s all for tonight.  I’m off to beg my lovely financial officer for a copy of the UltraEdit Studio!

Git Setup

By timadmin in Administrative, Git 5 Comments

Yesterday I ‘installed’ git on another MacBook – the process is pretty easy.  Simply open a terminal session & type the command “git“.  Follow the prompts as OS X installs the Command Line Tools.  Be sure to update them by visiting the App Store once the install is complete.

The harder thing is to initialize the git installation.  Here is what I am doing, based upon the suggestions found in Pro Git (link below).  I’m sanitizing some of the fields – they should obviously be set to appropriate values for other environments.

  1. Set username & email address
    1. git config –global user.name “Tim Armstrong”
    2. git config –global user.email tima@tims-zone.info
  2. Set the default text editor
    1. The default default text editor is typically Vim.  I like this and don’t change it, but it can be changed.
    2. git config –global core.editor <text editor>
  3. Verify the settings
    1. git config –list

Now that git is initialized, I should initialize a repository so that I can begin using git.  Within a terminal session, either create a new directory or change to an existing one that contains (or will contain) files to manage.  Once there type the command “git init“.  The next step is to begin tracking any files that are in the directory, using the following commands:

  1. git add *
  2. git commit -m ‘initial project version’

That gets things started.  I think that I’ll setup separate posts for each major action to be taken while managing the files/projects.

Lastly, here is a link to find the current version of the open source book on git, which can be downloaded for free and details everything that I’m doing.

https://progit.org