IT Pro Tuesday #158

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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

We're also asking for your favorite tips and free tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

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

AutoPkgr makes it simple to install and configure AutoPkg quickly and reliably in the Mac OS. It's the easy way to take advantage of automated macOS software packaging and distribution without the need for command-line methods. gabhain explains, "For Mac downloads AutoPkgr is a god send, and you can make some interesting workflows and automations.”

A Blog

Practical Networking offers simple, concrete explanations of complex technology in a way that ensures what you learn is immediately applicable. It is intended to bridge the gap between very-basic articles on network engineering and those that get so far into the minutiae that they are virtually impossible to follow. Our thanks for the suggestion go to youngeng.

Another Free Tool

5G-air-simulator is an open-source, system-level simulator for modeling the 5G air interface. CulturalSock explains, "It is a compiled C++ code for Linux, which it's launched via terminal, that gives out a text trace. Then through grep and awk, I extracted the KPIs I needed."

Tips

Building on last week's cable-labeling tip about putting a straw between the label and the cable, GoogleDrummer adds, "You can still do this with premade, just run a cut up the straw, place it around the cable, then wrap the label around the cut closing it back up." 

And gregarious119 shares another idea: "Something we have found to make installs/troubleshooting/organization easier is that we have our patch cables color coded to length: 5’-White, 7’-Green, 10’-Blue, 14’-Gray, 25’-Black, 50’-White, Custom-Purple, Orange-Non-data (Video/HDMI converters, etc), Red-Crossover, Yellow-Datacenter. It's not a game-changer, but it really makes identification quick and easy when you're in a pinch and need to install something quickly."

moltari adds, “We color code by what they do: black-Security, Purple-WAP, Yellow-Corp Data, Blue-Phone, etc."

One More Free Tool

Patch My PC Home Updater is an easy way to update or install over 300 apps on any computer. This simple tool can help keep things secure for users whose home equipment might be accessing your network by making sure they always have the latest security patches and updates installed. Our appreciation for the recommendation goes to TheGraycat.

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

GNU Make is a tool for controlling the generation of executables and other non-source files, which can be helpful in building tools to manage and update configuration files. It enables an end user to build and install your package without really understanding what's going on under the hood, because it automatically determines which files it needs to update (based on which source files have changed) as well as in which order to update files if they are dependent on one another.

Teleport is an open-source solution that provides unified access for SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, web applications and databases across all environments. Features include single sign-on that allows discovery and instant access to all layers of your tech stack behind NAT across clouds, data centers or on the edge. Records all interactions in a structured audit log, so you can easily see exactly who did what. roiki11 adds, "It seems really nice for remote ssh... It's also nice in that you get remote guis and ssh in a browser, so it works on my iPad too."

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