Linux One Liner – Security

Here are a few useful one liners for Linux Security. View current packet filtering rules. (i.e. what can and can’t access your computer.
<br /> $ iptables -L<br />

On older distros, iptables may not be in place. Try ipchains. A good reference and tools on iptables can be found at www.iptablesrocks.org .

Identity open ports on your installation using the Network exploration tool and security scanner.

<br /> $ nmap -p 1-65535 localhost<br />

On my computer this returned
<br /> Starting nmap 3.70 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2006-06-11 12:22 EST<br /> Interesting ports on lamda.arabx (127.0.0.1):<br /> (The 65525 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)<br /> PORT STATE SERVICE<br /> 22/tcp open ssh<br /> 25/tcp open smtp<br /> 111/tcp open rpcbind<br /> 139/tcp open netbios-ssn<br /> 445/tcp open microsoft-ds<br /> 631/tcp open ipp<br /> 901/tcp open samba-swat<br /> 8005/tcp open unknown<br /> 32769/tcp open unknown<br /> 34315/tcp open unknown<br />

That’s a cause for a bit of concern. Will need to look into that more.

Looking into more detail, I know what runs samba-swat but let’s confirm.

<br /> $ fuser -n tcp 901<br />

This provides a confirmation and the Process id of the process using this port. A more susync output would be.
<br /> $ ps -ef | grep `fuser -n tcp 901 | tail -1 | cut -d: -f2` | grep -v grep<br />

This gives me.
<br /> root 3356 1 0 Jun10 ? 00:00:00 xinetd -stayalive -pidfile /var/run/xinetd.pid<br />

Which is exactly right, Samba Swat (the web interface for Samba) which you access at http://localhost:901 is configured using xinetd.

Now to investigate some ports I didn’t know were open.

Tagged with: General Linux One Liners

Speaking at COSCUP 2026 — Planning your upgrade to MySQL 9.7

I am excited to be speaking at COSCUP 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan on August 8th and 9th. COSCUP (Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters) is one of the largest open source conferences in Asia, and it is always a privilege to present to the engaged and technically sharp community there.

Producing Two Sample T-Test statistics with SQL

The two sample t-test for equal variance is a statistical test to determine if the means of two groups are different enough that the difference is likely caused by some underlying difference, rather than random chance.

Building your first VillageSQL Extension with AI skills

This is a technical walkthrough of the vsql-extension-builder recently released May 28 at Percona Live Bay Area 2026 and found at https://github.com/villagesql/villagesql-skills . Highlights Install VillageSQL pre-built binary first Install SDK with pre-built binary second Install the skill Run it with your AI tool The output can be found at https://github.