Author Archives: George Valentin Voina

#Biometric #authentication is useless and dangerous alone

By | October 14, 2017

Again and again the same myths and misunderstandings resurface from time to time. I noticed again a misplaced hype in an article shared on twitter about how biometric authentication will simplify banking. I have to share again something I learned many years ago when I was junior research student in a computer security group and… Read More »

#DRBD: Synchronization of sites after the connection between sites is down for a long time

By | August 10, 2017

In a DRBD setup as described in #DRBD based disk replication of a production cluster to a remote site cluster on RHEL 6 there is a special case when due to some external issues the communication line between the sites is down due to technical reason for a longer period of time (days). The line… Read More »

#Regional Participation Within #European Multi-Level #Governance

By | July 24, 2017

I am pleased to make some promotion for the new book of my wife, that deals with European politics. Interesting and complicated stuff from the world of European Governance. ” Why does the region of Saxony-Anhalt participate in the European Multi-Level Governance system and how does this occur? This book provides an account of the… Read More »

Portable #Docker #Swarm made of #RaspberryPI

By | October 12, 2017

This is the new cool thing to build at home. A small cluster made of Raspberry PIs. Hardware setup of the cluster ITEM 1: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B I went for a set of 5 PIs because of the greater flexibility when you get more machines. I hope to be able to test several… Read More »

#Docker volumes and Selinux

By | September 30, 2017

When running complex environments on Docker on Linux again we face the mighty selinux. There are plenty of selinux alerts generated when I start my environment when the host machines have selinux enabled and volumes are used by the containers. Setting selinux permissions is hard and tedious and many people just prefer to disable it.… Read More »

Validate and Investigate a live #DRBD replicated Oracle Instance using LVM clone

By | October 19, 2017

This is another post related to the DRBD replication setup I describe in post #DRBD based disk replication of a production cluster to a remote site cluster on RHEL 6. Sometimes we need to be able to mount the offline replicated Oracle database instance for investigations. This can be done by using logical volume snapshots.… Read More »

Hidden Oracle dependencies when running under #Docker on Fedora/CentOS/RedHat Linux

By | June 28, 2017

There are some hidden dependencies of running oracle database in a docker container under Fedora/CentOS/RedHat Linux. STEP 1: Kernel parameters Because the Oracle engine from the Docker container uses in fact the kernel of the host machine we cannot escape the need to set up some kernel parameters on the host. On the host machine… Read More »

#SMB Breaking News: #HPE #MicroServer Gen10

By | June 12, 2017

Finally a new release of the HPE MicroServer updated at the new generation Gen10. HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 It seems that the Gen8 release of the MicroServer was so successful (I am the proud owner of 3 HP MicroServer Gen8) that HPE never released a Gen9 model. What are the main updates after a quick… Read More »

Get over it: The #Cloud is always someone-else computer.

By | June 1, 2017

I read another article on a popular geek site on how the Cloud is the new normal and how odd you are if you have something against it. My take on it is that an intelligent IT professional is not to take this things lightly. There are several topics one has to consider when deciding… Read More »

How to evaluate your website from security/performance/value PoV

By | June 11, 2018

The issue of making a correct evaluation of a web site is one that should be addressed by any site owner at some point. The most important metrics of a web site that are a must will be discussed bellow. SECURITY I do not know how to stress the importance of this metric. This is… Read More »