A woman in a hot air balloon realizes she is lost. She lowers her altitude and spots a man fishing from a boat below. She shouts to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man consults his portable GPS and replies, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.”

She rolls her eyes and says, “You must be a Republican!”

“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”

“Well,” answers the balloonist, “everything you tell me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’re not much help to me.”

The man smiles and responds, “You must be a Democrat.”

“I am,” replies the balloonist. “How did you know?”

“Well,” says the man, “You don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and now you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but, somehow, now it’s my fault.”

Here is an excerpt from a Unix Administrator and programmer Resume for you to use, good blurbs to take pieces of, if you use it in full… well you are not too bright.

I won’t say it’s mine, in fact it’s not, however it does bear some similarities. Most of the personal data has been sanitized but you should get the idea if you are looking for wordings and such.

Summary:

XXX is a skilled UNIX system administrator and programmer with experience administering both large and small networks and developing software for many applications. XXX possesses the proven ability to solve complex problems in many areas and the creativity to research and implement innovative solutions even with limited resources. As a UNIX administrator for XXXXX, XXX has gained large-scale networking experience and has researched, managed, and contributed to numerous individual, team, and corporation-wide projects. Previously, as a founder and operator of his own successful software development company, XXX perfected his independent skills in system and business administration, security, project management, software development, support, documentation, and training. XXX’s technical abilities and broad range of knowledge make him of great value to his employers.

Technical Skill Summary:

Languages:	Perl, Shell Scripting (ksh/bash), PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, SQL, Visual Basic, VBScript, ASP
Key Skills:	- Servers (apache, iPlanet, tomcat, DNS/BIND, sendmail, postfix, IIS) - Veritas enterprise software (volume manager, clustering, NetBackup) - Monitoring systems (HP OpenView, Nagios, custom tools) - Security/Firewall tools (iptables, ipchains, system logging, swatch) - UNIX tools (ssh, rsync, vi, NFS, SSL, compilers, common commands) - Platform compatibility and VPN (samba, stunnel, ipsec, cipe, openvpn) - Desktop tools (Microsoft Office, Acrobat, Photoshop, OpenOffice)
Databases:	Oracle, MySQL, MS Access
Operating Systems:	Solaris, HP/UX, Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake), Windows 9x/NT/2000

Professional Experience:

XXXXXXXXXXX

UNIX Administrator June 20xx – Present[1]

§ Administered large-scale UNIX network comprised of hundreds of HP, Sun, and Linux servers, including server installation, task automation, troubleshooting, and hardware and software upgrades.

§ Authored business case and implemented comprehensive infrastructure monitoring project from beginning to end, improving results while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

§ Designed and implemented web-based DNS management system and database back-end, improving efficiency for customers and freeing system administrators from an unnecessarily repetitive task.

§ Developed automated reports on disk utilization, system resource consumption, and system and application availability to provide necessary metrics to management and high-level projects.

§ Coordinated work with developers and database administrators to deploy and monitor high availability applications utilizing Veritas Cluster Services and HP ServiceGuard.

§ Managed project to develop internal documentation site including web-based viewing tools, searching and indexing utilities, e-mail to website gateway, database back-end, and authentication.

§ Designed database schema and web interface to track host, vendor, and support data.

§ Developed and deployed applications for display on Operations Center wallboard.

§ Participated on Operations Excellence teams, representing all facets of Information Technology, to discuss and coordinate efforts between different infrastructure and customer service groups.

§ Represented UNIX administrators and database administrators on security incident team.

§ Provided frequent assistance and consulting to colleagues working on various projects.

Professional Experience (continued):

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, LLC

Owner and Operator June 19xx – June 20xx

§ Individually authored Discus and Discus Pro, World Wide Web discussion board applications written in Perl, which were registered for use on over 75,000 Internet sites.

§ Installed, documented, upgraded, administered, and maintained the company’s World Wide Web server, local area network, and internet connection for both shared hosting and dedicated connections.

§ Planned, designed, and implemented firewall and routing for Internet and intranet connectivity.

§ Developed tools to proactively monitor network status and report anomalies via pager.

§ Designed, developed, and implemented backup and disaster-recovery strategies.

§ Automated retrieval of company financial information from banks and credit card processors.

§ Integrated real-time credit card processing and customer database (MySQL, Perl, Authorize.NET).

§ Configured and maintained Internet and intranet implementations of DNS, web, and mail servers.

§ Implemented spam and virus e-mail filtering (SpamAssassin, Procmail, Bayesian filtering).

§ Patched operating systems and specific software packages as necessary for security and bug fixes.

§ Designed and implemented remote access methods (PPP dialup server, VPN, secure tunnels).

§ Analyzed hardware requirements and compatibility needs and installed new hardware as needed.

§ Led training sessions and workshops describing WWW discussion board technology.

§ Managed vendor and supplier relationships for hardware, software, and services.

Some College Office of Computing and Information Technology

Student Support Specialist January 19xx – May 19xx

§ Conducted security review of the entire web site of XXX College, a Midwestern liberal arts college, identifying over 50 potential vulnerabilities and, together with a team, repaired them.

§ Analyzed and reported student telephone usage statistics and developed new telephone pricing plans.

§ Analyzed and reported access to dial-up internet service to implement system improvements.

§ Individually authored Perl CGI scripts to allow faculty to download class lists, change passwords, access student information, and more using their web browsers.

§ Participated in additional projects relating to network security, statistical analysis, and web development.

Some College Department of Chemistry

Webmaster and Research Assistant June 19xx – May 19xx

§ Installed, maintained, administered, and upgraded chemistry department web server.

§ Administered environment comprised of Linux, SGI IRIX, HP/UX, Solaris, and Windows workstations.

§ Configured HP/UX system to control Varian FT-NMR system and make data available on workstations.

§ Participated in cutting-edge computational chemistry research, using models to predict chemical behavior.

§ Authored four articles published in major scientific journals relating to research performed.

Education and Awards:

Some College, in MI

Bachelor of Science, Mathematics, 19xx

Bachelor of Science with American Chemical Society certification, Chemistry, 19xx

GPA: 3.99/4.0 (Chemistry: 4.0/4.0; Mathematics: 3.9/4.0), Graduated Summa Cum Laude

§ National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, 20xx

§ National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 19xx

§ McElvain Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 19xx

§ Pfizer Chemistry Undergraduate Fellowship, 19xx

§ XXX College chemistry department awards: Godfrey prize to top graduating senior (19xx), Journal award to top junior (199x, Organic chemistry award (19xx).

§ Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, 19xx

Proper Grammar

On my 66th birthday, I got a gift certificate from my wife. The certificate paid for a visit to a medicine man living on a nearby reservation who was rumored to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction. After being persuaded, I drove to the reservation, handed my ticket to the medicine man and wondered what would happen next.

The old man slowly, methodically produced a potion, handed it to me, and with a grip on my shoulder, warned, “This is powerful medicine and it must be respected. You take only a teaspoonful and then say ’1-2-3. ‘When you do that, you will become more manly than you have ever been in your life and you can perform as long as you want.”

I was encouraged. As I walked away, I turned and asked, “How do I stop the medicine from working?” “Your partner must say ’1-2-3-4,’ he responded. “But when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon.”

I was very eager to see if it worked so I went home, showered, shaved, took a spoonful of the medicine, and then invited my wife to join me in the bedroom. When she came in, I took off my clothes and said, “1-2-3!”

Immediately, I was the manliest of men. My wife was excited and began throwing off her clothes. And then she asked, “What was the 1-2-3 for?”

And that, boys and girls, is why we should never end our sentences with a preposition!

ONE COULD END UP WITH A DANGLING PARTICIPLE!

At last a conpletely seamless installation for VMware 2.x for Slackware! No more goofing around patching the source, making temporary modifications to the file system so that it resembles something else…  Installation is as simple as extracting the files from the tartball and running the vmware-install.pl script!

Accepting the default prompts through the install script will give you the base install and runs without issue!  The only thing I added was the license key (gets emailed to you from VMware’s site with the download).

Now time to install the guest OS’s, the only safe way I know to run windoze…  Unfotunately there are still a few apps that will only run under M$, but keeping it locked in a guest OS and only firing it up to run those apps and then shutting it back down again.

Great way to test OS’s, applications, servers, malware etc…   Install the guest, take a snapshot, trash it, break it, just hose it up completely…  revert to the snap and start again

Happy VM hacking!

This is a linux command line reference for common operations.

Command Description
• apropos whatis Show commands pertinent to string. See also threadsafe
• man -t man | ps2pdf – > man.pdf make a pdf of a manual page
which command Show full path name of command
time command See how long a command takes
• time cat Start stopwatch. Ctrl-d to stop. See also sw
• nice info Run a low priority command (The “info” reader in this case)
• renice 19 -p $$ Make shell (script) low priority. Use for non interactive tasks
dir navigation
• cd - Go to previous directory
• cd Go to $HOME directory
(cd dir && command) Go to dir, execute command and return to current dir
• pushd . Put current dir on stack so you can popd back to it
file searching
• alias l=’ls -l –color=auto’ quick dir listing
• ls -lrt List files by date. See also newest and find_mm_yyyy
• ls /usr/bin | pr -T9 -W$COLUMNS Print in 9 columns to width of terminal
find -name ‘*.[ch]‘ | xargs grep -E ‘expr’ Search ‘expr’ in this dir and below. See also findrepo
find -type f -print0 | xargs -r0 grep -F ‘example’ Search all regular files for ‘example’ in this dir and below
find -maxdepth 1 -type f | xargs grep -F ‘example’ Search all regular files for ‘example’ in this dir
find -maxdepth 1 -type d | while read dir; do echo $dir; echo cmd2; done Process each item with multiple commands (in while loop)
• find -type f ! -perm -444 Find files not readable by all (useful for web site)
• find -type d ! -perm -111 Find dirs not accessible by all (useful for web site)
• locate -r ‘file[^/]*\.txt’ Search cached index for names. This re is like glob *file*.txt
• look reference Quickly search (sorted) dictionary for prefix
• grep –color reference /usr/share/dict/words Highlight occurances of regular expression in dictionary
archives and compression
gpg -c file Encrypt file
gpg file.gpg Decrypt file
tar -c dir/ | bzip2 > dir.tar.bz2 Make compressed archive of dir/
bzip2 -dc dir.tar.bz2 | tar -x Extract archive (use gzip instead of bzip2 for tar.gz files)
tar -c dir/ | gzip | gpg -c | ssh user@remote ‘dd of=dir.tar.gz.gpg’ Make encrypted archive of dir/ on remote machine
find dir/ -name ‘*.txt’ | tar -c –files-from=- | bzip2 > dir_txt.tar.bz2 Make archive of subset of dir/ and below
find dir/ -name ‘*.txt’ | xargs cp -a –target-directory=dir_txt/ –parents Make copy of subset of dir/ and below
( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p ) Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to /where/to/ dir
( cd /dir/to/copy && tar -c . ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p ) Copy (with permissions) contents of copy/ dir to /where/to/
( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ssh -C user@remote ‘cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p’ Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to remote:/where/to/ dir
dd bs=1M if=/dev/sda | gzip | ssh user@remote ‘dd of=sda.gz’ Backup harddisk to remote machine
rsync (Network efficient file copier: Use the –dry-run option for testing)
rsync -P rsync://rsync.server.com/path/to/file file Only get diffs. Do multiple times for troublesome downloads
rsync –bwlimit=1000 fromfile tofile Locally copy with rate limit. It’s like nice for I/O
rsync -az -e ssh –delete ~/public_html/ remote.com:’~/public_html’ Mirror web site (using compression and encryption)
rsync -auz -e ssh remote:/dir/ . && rsync -auz -e ssh . remote:/dir/ Synchronize current directory with remote one
ssh (Secure SHell)
ssh $USER@$HOST command Run command on $HOST as $USER (default command=shell)
• ssh -f -Y $USER@$HOSTNAME xeyes Run GUI command on $HOSTNAME as $USER
scp -p -r $USER@$HOST: file dir/ Copy with permissions to $USER’s home directory on $HOST
ssh -g -L 8080:localhost:80 root@$HOST Forward connections to $HOSTNAME:8080 out to $HOST:80
ssh -R 1434:imap:143 root@$HOST Forward connections from $HOST:1434 in to imap:143
wget (multi purpose download tool)
• (cd cli && wget -nd -pHEKk http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html) Store local browsable version of a page to the current dir
wget -c http://www.example.com/large.file Continue downloading a partially downloaded file
wget -r -nd -np -l1 -A ‘*.jpg’ http://www.example.com/dir/ Download a set of files to the current directory
wget ftp://remote/file[1-9].iso/ FTP supports globbing directly
• wget -q -O- http://www.pixelbeat.org/timeline.html | grep ‘a href’ | head Process output directly
echo ‘wget url’ | at 01:00 Download url at 1AM to current dir
wget –limit-rate=20k url Do a low priority download (limit to 20KB/s in this case)
wget -nv –spider –force-html -i bookmarks.html Check links in a file
wget –mirror http://www.example.com/ Efficiently update a local copy of a site (handy from cron)
networking (Note ifconfig, route, mii-tool, nslookup commands are obsolete)
ethtool eth0 Show status of ethernet interface eth0
ethtool –change eth0 autoneg off speed 100 duplex full Manually set ethernet interface speed
iwconfig eth1 Show status of wireless interface eth1
iwconfig eth1 rate 1Mb/s fixed Manually set wireless interface speed
• iwlist scan List wireless networks in range
• ip link show List network interfaces
ip link set dev eth0 name wan Rename interface eth0 to wan
ip link set dev eth0 up Bring interface eth0 up (or down)
• ip addr show List addresses for interfaces
ip addr add 1.2.3.4/24 brd + dev eth0 Add (or del) ip and mask (255.255.255.0)
• ip route show List routing table
ip route add default via 1.2.3.254 Set default gateway to 1.2.3.254
• tc qdisc add dev lo root handle 1:0 netem delay 20msec Add 20ms latency to loopback device (for testing)
• tc qdisc del dev lo root Remove latency added above
• host pixelbeat.org Lookup DNS ip address for name or vice versa
• hostname -i Lookup local ip address (equivalent to host `hostname`)
• whois pixelbeat.org Lookup whois info for hostname or ip address
• netstat -tupl List internet services on a system
• netstat -tup List active connections to/from system
windows networking (Note samba is the package that provides all this windows specific networking support)
• smbtree Find windows machines. See also findsmb
nmblookup -A 1.2.3.4 Find the windows (netbios) name associated with ip address
smbclient -L windows_box List shares on windows machine or samba server
mount -t smbfs -o fmask=666,guest //windows_box/share /mnt/share Mount a windows share
echo ‘message’ | smbclient -M windows_box Send popup to windows machine (off by default in XP sp2)
text manipulation (Note sed uses stdin and stdout, so if you want to edit files, append newfile)
sed ‘s/string1/string2/g’ Replace string1 with string2
sed ‘s/\(.*\)1/\12/g’ Modify anystring1 to anystring2
sed ‘/ *#/d; /^ *$/d’ Remove comments and blank lines
sed ‘:a; /\\$/N; s/\\\n//; ta’ Concatenate lines with trailing \
sed ‘s/[ \t]*$//’ Remove trailing spaces from lines
sed ‘s/\([\\`\\"$\\\\]\)/\\\1/g’ Escape shell metacharacters active within double quotes
• seq 10 | sed “s/^/ /; s/ *\(.\{7,\}\)/\1/” Right align numbers
sed -n ’1000p;1000q’ Print 1000th line
sed -n ’10,20p;20q’ Print lines 10 to 20
sed -n ‘s/.*