Geek quote: “Logging what happens is wise…” In the past I used ULOG to analyze which packets were being dropped by iptables, but since it’s been marked as deprecated I’ve switched to NFLOG. …

Making backups should be mandatory. Unfortunately, most of us have learned over the years that this statement is dead serious. The problem is that doing it is a real hassle, so any program or method that automates it is welcome. …

What are “SMB”, “CIFS”, “Samba” and the version confusion? SMB (Server Message Block) is an application-level network protocol that enables sharing of files, printers, and other resources between devices on a network. Originally developed by IBM in the 1980s, it was later adopted and extensively improved by Microsoft, becoming the foundation of file sharing in Windows networks. The SMB protocol has evolved through multiple versions over the years. SMB1 (also known as SMBv1 or NetBIOS) was the initial implementation but had security and performance limitations. Microsoft introduced significant improvements with SMB2 in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and later SMB3 with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, with each version adding better performance, improved security, and new features like data encryption and compression. …

Plex Media Server lets you transform your computer into a multimedia center. It uses the digital content and sources you have available, such as media files or other multimedia sources. It organizes content into different sections to serve them to clients. …

In this post I explain how to create a VBA Macro to remove unused slide masters (patterns) from a PowerPoint file, dedicated to my friend Alfonso. :-) Why do so many masters accumulate in PowerPoint? When we work with presentations from different sources — such as corporate templates, third-party presentations, or when we copy slides from multiple files — PowerPoint automatically imports and keeps all associated design patterns (slide masters), even if we’re not actively using them in our presentation. …

Not long ago I came across PeakHour, a tool that lives in the macOS menu bar with a very pleasant look & feel, capable of visualizing your home network traffic in real time. To achieve this it uses the SNMP protocol — you register all devices that support the protocol and it polls them sequentially, displaying the traffic passing through them. …