jra - Slashdot User

Submission + - What's good for inventorying IPs, users, and such? (pitas.com) 1

Submitted by jra on Sunday July 19, 2009 @09:47PM

jra writes: Once every month or so, people ask about backups, network management, and the like, but one topic I don't see come up too often is network inventory management — machines, serial numbers, license keys, user assignments, IP addresses and the like. Anyone care to share their firsthand experiences with this topic, and what tools they use (or built) to deal with it? I'm using RT (because I'm not a good enough web coder to replace it, not because I especially like it — sorry, Jesse) and Nagios 3; I've looked at Asset Tracker, but it seems too much to me like a toolkit for building things to do the job, and I don't want my ticket tracking users to have to be hackers (having to specify a URL for an asset is too hackish for my crew). But IP address space management, DNS zone file building, firewall rules file management, and that sort of thing are starting to get out of hand in my facility as we approach 100 workstations and 40 servers, and I'm looking for something to automate it. I'd prefer something standalone, so I don't have to dump RT or Nagios, but if something sufficiently good looking comes by, I'd consider it. My *least* favorite implementation language is Java, as it's the one I understand least, and I'd like to be able to hack a bit here and there, if I must. Perl and Python are probably up top, along with C. Any suggestions?

Submission + - Has NASA found the tapes? 1

Submitted by

jra

on Sunday June 28, 2009 @10:42AM

jra writes: "For over 5 years, various people both inside and retired from NASA have been engaged in a quest. They were looking for the long-lost original slow-scan video tapes from the Apollo 11 moon landing, which went missing in a record-keeping snafu, covered in unreasonable detail in a Wired article a couple years ago. Well now, according to the UKs Sunday Express newspaper, some tapes may or may not have been found which may or may not be the Apollo video. Apparently — I love the British press — the NASA boffins are a bit put out that it leaked; they were hoping to blow everyone's minds with the scoop themselves. All I can say, though, is Holy Living Fuck."

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