IT Pro Tuesday #114

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Hello IT Pro,

Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

This week, we’re looking for your favorite tools to share with the community. Please let us know those that help you do things more easily so you get better at your job!

As always, we’re updating the full, searchable list on our website here. Enjoy.

But on with this week's tools...! Here are the most-interesting items that have come across our desks, laptops and phones this week. Hornetsecurity has no known affiliation with any of these unless we explicitly state otherwise.

A Free Tool

ShellCheck is a GPLv3 tool that gives warnings and suggestions for bash/sh shell scripts to find the bugs in your shell scripts. It can identify syntax issues that cause a shell to give cryptic error messages, semantic problems that cause a shell to behave strangely and also the counter-intuitive and subtle caveats, corner cases and pitfalls that may cause an otherwise working script to fail under future circumstances. ASIC_SP finds it a "very useful too, helps you spot errors and avoid pitfalls."

A Free Course

Python for Network Engineers is a free, 8-week course that covers Python fundamentals but "with a network engineer's bent." The weekly lessons cover, in order: Why Python, the Python Interpreter Shell, and Strings; Numbers, Files, Lists, and Linters; Conditionals and Loops; Dictionaries, Exceptions, and Regular Expressions; Functions and the Python Debugger; Netmiko Basics; Jinja2 Basics, Introduction to YAML and JSON, Complex Data Structures; Libraries, Package Installation, and Virtual Environments. Uses Python3. Our thanks go to ktbyers for this one!

A Book

Database Reliability Engineering: Designing and Operating Resilient Database Systems provides a foundation for working with the architecture and operations of any modern database. Covers core operational concepts and a wide range of database persistence options, including how to implement key technologies to provide resilient, scalable and performant data storage and retrieval.

A Tip

A Powershell hint from disclosure5:

Set-StrictMode -Version 2

I can't tell you how useful this is. It's upsetting that Powershell doesn't do this by default. Consider the following:

Get-mailbox $usermane | Set-mailbox -Hiddenfromaddresslist:$true

See the typo? I misspelled username. What do you think that would do? Far from erroring out, Powershell just inserts an empty string, then proceeds to get every single mailbox and then hide them.

Strict Mode can really save your ass. I feel like I'm the only person using it and I don't get why.

A Tutorial

WIFI 101—How Wifi Works is a tutorial on exactly what wifi is for anyone who isn't completely clear on precisely how it all works. The well-organized, interesting explainer covers the history, science and usage of this ubiquitous technology.

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

phpMyAdmin allows you to handle the administration of MySQL in a web browser, so you can use it from any device. Supports a wide range of operations on MySQL and MariaDB. Frequently used operations like managing databases, tables, columns, relations, indexes, users, permissions and more can be performed via the UI. You can also directly execute any SQL statement.

Xibo is server-client based digital signage software. This open-source solution is designed to broadcast ads on multiple screens. beefysworld suggests it for occasions where you need to share a webpage across networked TVs and manage any changes centrally… "Free if you self host, runs on basic PCs like Compute Sticks, various clients and support... has been working well for the last few years."

Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.