Category: Tools

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Write an iso to an external drive from Mac os X

 

A quick cheat!

Running an ios based installer from a hard drive, instead of from a usb can often be faster and is useful if you have a swag of machines to re image and esata is a lot faster than say usb V2. I’ve needed to do this a few times but I often spend far to much time looking for the information. So, Now I’ve written this little cheat!

First run this

diskutil list

This will give you a list of drives and the result will look a little like this

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                                                   *80.0 GB    disk2

As you can see hear the disk attached I want to write to is /dev/disk2
The command to use is

sudo dd if=linuxmint-18.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m

This will write the contents of the iso the the external drive

Break down of the command

dd if={path_to_iso_image} of/dev/{location of device you want this written to} bs=1m

Enjoy

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Install howmanypeoplearearound on mac os X

howmanypeoplearearound  “calculates the number of people in the vicinity using the approximate number of smartphones as a proxy”

To do this on Mac os X first make sure that you have “brew” installed.

See the simple instructions / site hear
https://brew.sh/

Your also going to need tshark the cli version of wireshark installed

brew install tshark

Also I found using python3 important as I was having dependency problems with the standard python install

Download and install python3 from hear

https://www.python.org/downloads/mac-osx/

Then

sudo pip3 install howmanypeoplearearound

now you can observe howmanypeoplearearound !

Typical usage

sudo howmanypeoplearearound -s 300 -o scan_big2.json -a en1

(Listens to network traffic for 5 minutes writes to the file scan_big2.json in json format using interface en1 (wireless card use ifconfig -a to check that yours is named in the same manner)

 

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Some of my favourite things!

 

This is a list of my favourite open source tools that I often use. I’ll up date this on occasion as I add discover and explore new things.

Documentation and ticketing

DokuWiki

This is a great little product and it’s very quick and easy to implement.
From the web site (all true!)… “DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn’t require a database. It is loved by users for its clean and readable syntax. The ease of maintenance, backup and integration makes it an administrator’s favourite.”
https://www.dokuwiki.org

Ostiket

Great product if you need to quickly set up a job tracking system. Runs under LAMP and is robust and easy to use. Also comes with support and hosting options if you need them.
http://osticket.com/

 

Mediawiki

Useful for bigger and more free style projects and also runs the wikipedia site. The grand daddy of Wiki’s!
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

 

Network related

Wireshark

Wireshark is one of the great open source projects that is an insanely great tool. Know exactly what is running on your network and dig down to forensic levels.
https://www.wireshark.org/

pfsense

I’ve written about pfsense before it’s a fantastic firewall routing system that can also be used to set up VPN’s and lots, lots more. Another project that you can purchase pro help for if you need it, or if management want to know that the thing is supported. It can run on just about anything and you an also get dedicated hardware if you want it. But you can put together a router from old parts and it will run just fine.
https://pfsense.org/