All Things Open 2014 - Day 1 Wednesday, October 22nd, 2014 Wes Morgan Network/Software Engineer for IBMConsulting Admin The Gurubox Project: Open Source Troubleshooting Tools

1. © 2009 IBM
Corporation
IBM Collaboration Solutions
The Gurubox Project:
Open Source Troubleshooting Tools
Wes Morgan
wes_morgan@us.ibm.com

2. ● First real job – Unix systems administrator
● When Usenet was github and comp.sources.* ruled
● First “home computer” - AT&T 3B2/310 with 3B2/XM and 5620 – 4MB RAM, 0.6 MIPS
● Contributed portability code to gnuplot, perl, bignum, nethack et al.
● If you ever see “3B2” or “3B20” in PORTING or README, it was probably me
© 2012 IBM
Corporation
Me and Open Source
October 24, 2014

3. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Open Source for End Users at IBM
 Green to Open Software Project (G2O)
850+ packages approved for some degree of internal use
Hundreds of thousands of OpenOffice installations
 Open Client for Linux
IBM's customized Linux desktop, built on RHEL and Ubuntu
Tens of thousands of clients deployed within IBM
 Supporting Open Source on IBM Platforms
IBM SDK for node.js
IBM Bluemix – http://www.bluemix.net
October 24, 2014

4. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Why are we here? The Gurubox Project
 Originated in corporate security concerns
 Troubleshooting with hundreds of customers over 20 years
 Need for a “sterile” system for troubleshooting and data collection
 Concerns in exposing our own information on customer networks
SOLUTION: Open source!
 Known tools
 Many already in use among customers
 Easily audited
 Empty of any/all company confidential information
 Easily wiped/sanitized
 Can be adopted by customers
October 24, 2014

5. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Caveats – The IS/ISN'T Approach
 Gurubox IS intended for general troubleshooting
 Gurubox IS NOT intended for “deep dive” subject matter experts
 Gurubox IS intended for “get in, find the red flag, get out” troubleshooting
 Gurubox IS NOT intended for long-term monitoring/analysis
 Gurubox IS predicated on ease of use
 Gurubox IS NOT necessarily “best of breed” in each area
YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY!
October 24, 2014

6. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Gurubox Platform
 ThinkPad W500
 Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 @ 2.53 GHz
 8 GB RAM
 160GB HDD
 Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
October 24, 2014

7. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Must-haves For the Enterprise-Level Troubleshooter
Network Analysis
Directory Search/Maintenance
Web Troubleshooting/Analysis
Virtual Machines
Troubleshooting Mobile/Cloud Services
Load Testers
October 24, 2014

8. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Network Troubleshooting - nmap
 Extremely robust network discovery tool (aka “network mapper”)
 Can perform a wide range of scans against individual systems or entire networks
 OS/service fingerprint detection
 Zenmap GUI also available
 http://nmap.org
October 24, 2014

9. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Network Troubleshooting – mtr and lft
 mtr – graphical traceroute, repeating, statistical analysis provided
Useful for catching “breakdown” in network connectivity
http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/
 lft - “layer 4 traceroute”
Many, MANY options – useful for discovering/traversing firewalls
http://pwhois.org/lft/
October 24, 2014

10. Network Analysis - Wireshark
 “The World's Most Popular Network Protocol Analyzer” - supports 1500+ protocols and packet types
 Reads/writes file formats of most commercial network analyzers
 Extensive utilities for manipulating capture files
 http://www.wireshark.org
© 2012 IBM
Corporation
October 24, 2014

11. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Network Analysis - MRTG
 Multi-Router Traffic Grapher
 Quick, easy monitoring of SNMP-enabled network interfaces (e.g. switches, routers)
 Runs from cron or Task Manager
 Automatically builds traffic graphs and web page for each interface
 http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg
October 24, 2014

12. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Directory Search/Maintenance – Apache Directory Studio
 Directory tooling platform with browsing/editing capability
 Works with almost every LDAP server
 Extremely useful for validating search filters
 http:/directory.apache.org/studio
October 24, 2014

13. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Simple Web Troubleshooting – Live HTTP Headers
 Firefox plugin
 Simple capture/save-to-file of HTTP request/response headers
 Perfect for quick “sanity checks”
 http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org
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14. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Simple Web Troubleshooting – Modify Headers
 Firefox plugin
 Quick on-the-fly modification of HTTP headers
 Pairs well with Live HTTP Headers
 http://www.garethhunt.com/modifyheaders or Firefox Add-On Library
October 24, 2014

15. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Advanced Web Troubleshooting - Firebug
 Firefox plugin
 Explore HTTP headers, HTML, CSS, scripts, DOM, cookie, network performance
 http://getfirebug.com
October 24, 2014

16. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Virtual Machines - VirtualBox
 Desktop virtualization
 Almost all x86 operating systems supported
 http://www.virtualbox.org
October 24, 2014

17. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Troubleshooting Cloud/Mobile Services - GeoIP
 MaxMind – open source data and APIs
GeoIP databases available for download - https://www.maxmind.com/en/opensource
 GeoIP supported by an increasing number of packages
INCLUDING WIRESHARK!
October 24, 2014

18. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Troubleshooting Cloud/Mobile Services - Android-x86
 Straightforward port of Android to x86 architecture
 Easy deployment in VirtualBox VM
 Allows data captures (e.g. network traffic) that is difficult on a mobile device
 http://android-x86.org
October 24, 2014

19. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Load Testing – Apache JMeter
 Can create tests for HTTP/HTTPS, SOAP, FTP, LDAP, SMTP, POP3, and more
 Record your own tests and scale with thread groups
 http://jmeter.apache.org
October 24, 2014

20. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
One for our Windows Friends – Process Hacker
 Adjunct to (or replacement for) Task Manager
 Views for Processes, Services, Network and Disk
 Live usage charts for CPU, Memory, and more
 http://processhacker.sourceforge.net
October 24, 2014

21. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Odds and Ends
 Quick and easy data plots – gnuplot - http://www.gnuplot.info/
 Screen captures
Shutter (Linux) - http://shutter-project.org/
Greenshot (Windows) - http://getgreenshot.org/
 Generating PDFs – cups-pdf (Linux) and CutePDF (Windows)
 Music composition/notation (just because!) - Musescore (Linux) - http://musescore.org/
October 24, 2014

22. © 2012 IBM
Corporation
Thanks for being here!
 Feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions
 Did I miss something? Let me know! I'm always excited to learn about new tools...
October 24, 2014
Twitter: @wesmorgan1
Email: wes_morgan@us.ibm.com
Blog: Cognitive Buffet
<http://wesmorgan.blogspot.com>