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                   The Sys Admin Newsletter
                          News for the
          December 2002 issue of Sys Admin Magazine

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                            CONTENTS

1. Note from the Editor
2. Highlights of the December issue 
3. Call for Papers
4. Links
5. Subscription Information
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NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:

According to the SANS Institute "the majority of the successful 
attacks on operating systems come from only a few software vulner-
abilities." To help administrators identify and prioritize these 
weaknesses, SANS has updated their list of vulnerabilities for UNIX 
systems, including:

*  Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) 
*  Apache Web Server 
*  Secure Shell (SSH) 
*  Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) 
*  File Transfer Protocol (FTP) 
*  R-Services -- Trust Relationships 
*  Line Printer Daemon (LPD) 
*  Sendmail 
*  BIND/DNS 
*  General Unix Authentication -- Accounts with No Passwords or 
   Weak Passwords

For more information on how to identify and correct these weaknesses, 
see http://click.sysadmin.email-publisher.com/maaaDIPaaUouwa2sokSb/

Sincerely,
Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief

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	The December issue contains:

Maintaining DNS Sanity with Hawk by Greg Heim  
http://click.sysadmin.email-publisher.com/maaaDIPaaUouya2sokSb/
Heim describes Hawk, GPL software that can help track which hosts 
in DNS are really on your network as well as which hosts are on your 
network but not in DNS.

sockspy Knows TCP/IP by Cameron Laird  
Laird explains when to use and not use sockspy and shows how you can 
quickly try out sockspy for yourself.

db_update -- Controlling UNIX Enterprise Database Releases by Ed 
Schaefer  
Schaefer presents a Korn shell template, db_update, for controlling 
enterprise database changes.

TCP/IP Networking in Gawk 3.1.0 by Mike Warner  
Warner presents two sets of client/server utilities in Gawk -- a file 
transfer capability and a remote execution capability.

Remote Machine Monitoring with Marvin by Alistair Young  
Young describes a remote monitoring application called Marvin (written 
in Java and object-oriented Perl) that can be used to inform 
administrators 
when Web servers and proxy machines are unavailable.

Network Management with Overlapping IP Address Ranges by Scott Kirkwood 
Kirkwood explains how to resolve problems caused by overlapping IP 
address ranges.

Troubleshooting Network Performance with Alpine by Jeffrey Papen  
Papen shares a tool called Alpine that allows administrators to test 
available networking options without changing router configurations or 
affecting live network traffic.

qmail SMTP Authentication Using RADIUS by Blair Rampling 
Rampling shows how to set up a qmail SMTP server to use RADIUS 
authentication.

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	COLUMNS

Questions and Answers by Amy Rich  
http://click.sysadmin.email-publisher.com/maaaDIPaaUouAa2sokSb/

File Systems - Understanding the Internals by Henry Newman 
http://click.sysadmin.email-publisher.com/maaaDIPaaUouBa2sokSb/

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     CALL FOR PAPERS  

	Backup and Recovery -- April 2003

Proposals Due: December 2, 2002
Manuscripts Due: January 1, 2003

* Minimizing Bandwidth for Network Backup
* A Really Unusual (and Useful) Backup Script
* Multi-Platform Backup
* Economical Solutions for Offsite Live Backup
* Optimizing Database Storage
* Tips on SAN Management

	Performance Tuning -- May 2003
Proposals Due: January 1, 2003
Manuscripts Due: February 3, 2003

* BSD Performance Tuning Tips 
* Shareware and Freeware Tools for Tuning Up Linux Performance 
* Getting the Most from Limited Bandwidth 
* Undocumented Innovations for Improving Performance 
* Scripts for Tuning and Monitoring Performance

	Information Security -- June 2003

Proposals Due: February 3, 2003
Manuscripts Due: March 3, 2003

* Choosing an Encryption Algorithm
* New Solaris 9 Features for Securing Data
* Secret HIPAA Techniques
* They Said My Data Was Secure: How I Found Out It Wasn’t and What I 
Did
* Innovative Uses for Shareware or Freeware Encryption Tools 

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Email comments to: aankerholz@cmp.com
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