Rob the Geek

Random Musings: a blog of technology things

  • pfSense: SARG Reports not showing

    This appears to be a somewhat common problem with the more recent pfSense installations, when SARG reports are accessed ({Status} > {Sarg Reports} > [View Report] Tab) the UI responds with: Error: Could not find report index file. Check and save sarg settings and try to force sarg schedule. Edit: 02/01/2016 – After an update […]

  • “Factory” resetting an OpenWRT router

    There are many reasons to re-flash your  home router with a different OS than the one the manufacturer has cobbled together, the Misfortune Cookie attack (US-CERT) is just one of them, Having been involved in the testing of a number of domestic xDSL routers, I have a rather low opinion on the amount of care […]

  • Reflashing a Rooted Router

    I have a couple of Open Mesh Indoor Access Points that I’ve used for various projects, the most recent of which being the provision of WiFi for our Teenage Subnet. These devices have a very cool history. Originally created under the banner of Meraki (since sold to Cisco and thenceforth diverging from its open source […]

  • PASSWORD MANAGERS, CRYPTOGRAPHY, AND TRUST

    So, a friend* of mine asked me yesterday, (following my posting of an article), what I thought of a particular password manager – I obviously wanted to answer her question. I then decided that since I was in for a penny, I might as well be in for a pound and here we are, (hopefully) […]

  • Reversing a PDF with the GIMP

    While the GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program, not the one from Pulp Fiction) is a marvelously capable (and freely available) graphics tool, it has a complete meltdown when asked to perform a simple task like saving a multi-page PDF. GIMP will import a multi-page PDF fine: Right-click the PDF, Open with GIMP [Fig.1] Import from […]

  • XBox Live via an OpenWRT router

    One of the concerning requests of Xbox Live connectivity, is to enable UPnP or ‘Universal Plug and Play’ on your home router. The UPnP protocol has a long standing history of security problems, not the least of which being that it allows unauthenticated devices to connect to and through your home network. In the past, […]

  • UPnP – Why I don’t allow it on my Home Network

    The UPnP protocol has a long standing history of security problems, not the least of which being that it allows unauthenticated devices to connect to and through your home network. TLDR; UPnP is a flawed protocol which has been leveraged numerous times to conduct widespread attacks via large numbers of insecure devices. Do not enable […]

  • Kicking off with Koha

    Koha is a fully featured, scalable library management system. So, I thought I’d set up Koha on a virtual machine to have a bit of a play, and maybe use it to manage our library at home. Create the virtual machine I’m using VirtualBox as my VM manager, so – first off we create a […]

  • Managing Behaviour & Technology – A Night with NEAL

    I’ve just arrived back from an evening session on “Managing Technology and Behaviour @ Home” run by Andrew Cowie, Heather Eccles and Alan Curtis from NEAL (Northern Education Access Loop). I surprised myself by enjoying the session, it wasn’t that I personally learned anything technical, it was all about the presentation of the material which was simply […]

  • Tweaking the Home Network – pfSense Firewall [Part 3: Monitoring Your Network]

    Now that pfSense is connecting through your home LAN and serving addresses to the ‘Teenage Subnet’, we need to do some further tweaking to make sure we can keep our semi-hostile network safe as well as keeping an eye on our network traffic usage and what our users are accessing. Install Packages Filtering Traffic