If you’ve read my OpenSSH series, perhaps even if you haven’t, you are probably aware of the power SSH offers to those who know how to use it. 
There are many ways to protect the service from unauthorized usage, focusing on self-contained or single host solutions, one finds two common flavors: those which make use of the Linux kernel’s packet filtering tools (netfilter and iptables), and those which rely on Wietse Venema’s TCP Wrappers. Netfilter certainly offers power and flexibility, but this may be at the cost of simplicity and management ease. While no security measure ought to be implemented blindly, there is an undeniable benefit to simple measures which can be configured quickly and with little fuss — in this arena, TCP Wrappers stands tall.
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One thing not mentioned in EC2StartersGuide is how to apply kernel patches. Technically, this isn’t currently possible in the Amazon cloud, which is to say that the boot loader (e.g. grub) within an EC2 instance cannot load an arbitrary kernel; nonetheless, official kernel updates are available via package updates, though cloud servers won’t automatically load the latest installed kernel when booted. Continue reading »
Database management is one of those tasks where GUI tools can often be handy and occasionally critical. The history of Linux point-and-click tools for MySQL is a bit checkered, and prominently features MySQL Query Browser and MySQL Administrator, official tools formerly supported by MySQL. Early releases were buggy and crash-prone, but had progressed to merely flaky by late 2009, when MySQL announced they would pull the trigger on them in favor of MySQL Workbench. MySQL support for the GUI Tools Bundle officially ended in June 2010, but the tools are still available in Debian and Ubuntu repositories, while MySQL Workbench is conspicuously absent. While this may deter many users from test driving Workbench, they are missing out on a powerful tool for database management. Fortunately, MySQL publishes MySQL Workbench binaries. Continue reading »
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