Craig Finch

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About Craig Finch
Linux and open-source software have been critical tools across my 20-year career in engineering and IT, and I love to share my knowledge with readers. I've designed radio frequency electronics, microfluidic bioreactors, high performance computing clusters, and enterprise information technology systems. I have BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering and a PhD in Modeling and Simulation with a focus on computational science and engineering. My first publishing opportunity was the "Sage Beginners Guide" through Pack Publishing. Since then, I've focused on self-publishing technical reference material.
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Blog postopenssl is the standard open-source, command-line tool for manipulating SSL/TLS certificates on Linux, MacOS, and other UNIX-like systems. I recently ran into an interesting problem using openssl to convert a private key obtained from GoDaddy. Someone else used GoDaddy’s “wizard” interface to generate a certificate signing request (CSR) and private key, and saved the files … openssl unable to read/load/import SSL private key from GoDaddy Read More »
1 week ago Read more -
Blog postThe latest Nginx rpm (nginx-1.16.1-1.el7) from EPEL for CentOS/Redhat is a fairly major update, from version 1.12 to 1.16, and includes some very important fixes to address multiple CVEs. There is another small but critical change in the latest RPM that isn’t mentioned in the bug report. RedHat had configured nginx to run as user “apache” … Nginx default user changed in RedHat/CentOS package nginx-1.16.1-1.el7 Read More »
4 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postHow to fix "permission denied" error when attempting to mount a CIFS share on RedHat/CentOS Linux 7.2 months ago Read more
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Blog postYou probably have at least a few business-class switches and routers silently do their job, year after year. Network devices can be so reliable that we configure them once, and then forget that they exist. However, forgetting them is a really bad idea, since they require regular OS or firmware updates to patch vulnerabilities, and … Secure, Automated Network Device Backups Read More »
3 months ago Read more -
Blog postGoogle Cloud SQL recently introduced the capability for an instance to have an IP address within the private address space of your VPC network. Previously, all Cloud SQL instances had IP addresses within the address space of the public Internet. Obviously, the public IP was a security and privacy concern, as well as a potential … Another Reason to Enable Private IP Addresses on Google Cloud SQL Read More »
5 months ago Read more -
Blog postI have a QNAP NAS at home which I use for file storage. It shares several folders with the family’s Mac, Linux, and Windows computers. Many of these files are are irreplaceable, especially our digital photos, so I back them up to the cloud. QNAP provides the Hybrid Backup and Sync application, which supports multiple … QNAP NAS: Backup & Sync to Google Cloud Storage Read More »
6 months ago Read more -
Blog postSetting up disk space utilization alerts in Google Stackdriver is almost unbelievably tricky. It’s easy to think that you can just choose the metric “Disk Utilization” and add a condition to alert when disk utilization crosses some threshold for some length of time (such as over 55% for 1 hour). File System Type Filter Your … Disk space utilization monitoring in Google StackDriver Read More »
6 months ago Read more -
Blog postIn Part 1, I explained the general feedback mechanisms that are available in Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), and compared their strengths and weaknesses. Now I will explain the different configuration methods that can be used to select a feedback mechanism. Domain-Level SNS Configuration You can configure Simple Notification Service (SNS) feedback for an entire […]7 months ago Read more
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Blog postI love using Salt to configure and manage servers at scale. Typically, a Salt master server manages an army of servers which are on the same private network. A salt-minion daemon runs on each client server and communicates with the master. Sometimes you need to manage a server which is outside of your internal network, … Managing remote servers with salt-ssh Read More »
7 months ago Read more -
Blog postHow advanced is your organization’s information system management? Here’s a simple framework for thinking about your organization’s infrastructure management capabilities: Level 0: We can’t get it to work. Level 1: We got it working! Level 2: We got it working and documented the process so that we can set up similar systems on a repeatable […]7 months ago Read more
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Blog postAmazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a lean, low-cost option to send bulk email. However, the low cost of SES comes at a cost; it lacks many features that are built into SendGrid or other email services. You have to build your own “features” with combinations of other AWS services. The figure below summarizes some […]7 months ago Read more
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Blog postQuestion: What are the timestamps for the last login for every WordPress user in this WordPress site? Most answers say to install some plugin, and there are dozens that will show the date and time when each WordPress user last logged in. However, plugins are a problem, because they always need to be kept up … Find Last Login Time for WordPress Users in the SQL Database Read More »
8 months ago Read more -
Blog postScenario A single Percona MySQL 5.7 server replicates asynchronously with a cluster of Percona MySQL 5.7 servers. After rebooting the single server, replication failed with the following symptoms: mysql> show slave status \G**************************** 1. row ************** Slave_IO_State: Waiting to reconnect after a failed registration on master Master_Host: my-replication-partner Master_User: repl Master_Port: 3306 Connect_Retry: 60 Master_Log_File: … MySQL replication fails with WSRE9 months ago Read more
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Blog postWearing the CISO Hat As someone who works in the CIO/CTO role in smaller organizations, I often have to act as the CISO and sometimes even as the compliance officer. Disadvantages As someone who is not a security specialist, there are a number of disadvantages to taking on the role of CISO. The most obvious […]1 year ago Read more
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Blog postHave you encrypted the hard drive or solid-state drive (SSD) on every laptop in your organization? If your business or nonprofit organization handles Protected Health Information (PHI), you should encrypt every laptop as soon as possible! Laptops that store PHI may be one of the greatest vulnerabilities in any organization. Just one stolen laptop can […]4 years ago Read more
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Blog postAmazon S3 is widely used as a repository for backups. Backups are an important aspect of a resilient system, but they are also a potential security vulnerability. Unauthorized access to a database backup is still a PCI or HIPAA violation. The permissions on Amazon S3 should be configured to minimize access to critical backups. My strategy is to use IAM to […]4 years ago Read more
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Blog postSSH is a powerful tool for accessing remote systems. This guide will illustrate one of the more confusing and poorly documented capabilities of the ssh command on Linux: port forwarding. Port forwarding is a way to “tunnel” any TCP protocol through a secure, encrypted SSH connection. It can also be used to make network connections transparent to the applications […]5 years ago Read more
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Blog postThe Open Compute Project (OCP) is valuable to enterprise IT professionals because it embodies the best practices of companies that operate hyperscale computing systems. It’s not often that a business is willing to share information about the practices that are key to their competitiveness. Economical, efficient, and scalable infrastructure is crucial to the success of […]5 years ago Read more
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Blog postRootwork consultant and co-founder Craig Finch will participate in a panel discussion about the Open Compute Project at the Data Center World conference, which takes place in Orlando, FL from October 19-22, 2014. The panel discussion (TRD-8) will take place from 4:30-5:30PM on Tuesday October 21 in Barrel Spring 1.5 years ago Read more
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Blog postCraig Finch has written a feature article for HPCwire about how outdated system administration practices are holding back the growth of high performance computing.6 years ago Read more
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