IBM DB2 Certification 5 September 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Work , add a commentWe need to deploy an IBM Websphere Portal. One of the requirements is a database backend. It was decided to install IBM DB2. While I’m whittling away the time awating the completion of the installation, I come across this particular info. It is just a basic paper, but.. Since it is quite affordable at RM228 at Thomson Prometric, well..
DB2 UDB V8.1 Family Fundamentals
DB2 V8 Family Fundamentals certification prep tutorials
enjoy!
Passive FTP and IPTables 4 September 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Linux,Work , add a commentHad to configure an FTP server at work. For reasons best left for discussion in a later undetermined future date, we put the FTP server outside the firewall. Therefore, the machine in question needs to be protected by it own built-in firewall.
IPTables to the rescue.
There’s a snag. The default IP connection tracking doesn’t seem to work properly. IPTables rules below suggest that stateful inspection would do IP connection tracking as well, apparently not-
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 21 -j ACCEPT
Seems that the “ip_conntrack_ftp” needed to be loaded separately in order to enable it.
# /sbin/modprobe/ip_conntrack_ftp
That should do the trick… but to have IPTables load it automatically, edit the file “/etc/sysconfig/iptables-config”
Add the following into it -
IPTABLES_MODULES=”ip_conntrack_ftp”
Data Migration is Evil.. 1 May 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Work , add a commentWell, I say that the hard part is almost done. Duplicates eliminated, hanging records purged. Now, I only need to create new 'Registration No', since the new system requires on 16 characters, instead of 25++ in the original.
What else? Oh yeah, remove all hyphens ("-") characters in the Identity Card Number column (This one needs a bit thinking). Seperate all I/C #s from old to new (This one's peanuts). Remove all instances of the apostrophe ("'" – heh!) and ampersand ("&") from Names and Addresses Fields (Ought to be fun!). Yeah, don't forget to split the addresses field by 35 characters 
(More to remind myself than just a simple blogging 
)
Umm.. Hope I can finish by midnight!
Weekend.. Shot! 30 April 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Work , add a commentDarn, sometimes I hate my life. My boss asks me to redo the whole database for the state of Kedah. Exactly 33,297 records in the database. First I have to clean them for duplicates, then I have to slowly and painfully update them to prepare for upload into the new database and eventually, new system that they gonna use at the Ministry.
Someone else might do the job ala – "chin chai".. Well, someone else did.. I started the job first, did it about 20% to a quater of the way. Later my boss told me to turn it over to someone else and told me to concentrate on my prime duties. Well, they botched it bad enough that my boss asks me to redo it again, from the top.
Oh well..