👾 Space Invader Homepage 👾

I need a place to put stuff on the internet, because I miss the old internet where blogs were useful and Google was actually good at surfacing that useful content. I'm very old.

Latest Posts

• Updating Supermicro BIOS and IPMI From TrueNAS SCALE

  Steps to Update the BIOS/IPMI on a SuperMicro board

  In the process of building a new TrueNAS SCALE machine (more on this soon), I needed to upgrade the firmware on the “new” motherboard. It’s actually an old Supermicro X11 series board from eBay, but for USD$220 I get a 45W TDP Xeon and 64GB of ECC RAM. Good enough, except for one thing: the BIOS was from 2017. There’s been a lot of fixes in the last eight years. Thankfully, things have changed since I last had to reflash a BIOS. No more floppy disks, for one. It’s actually shockingly easy to update these boards from Linux. In the interest of helping myself remember and maybe some other people, here are the steps to follow.

• AWS Native Scanning in ECR has a Gotcha

  AWS Native Scanning in ECR: Gotcha!

  TL;DR: If you switch to using AWS Native scanning in ECR, any scans done with the previous Clair scanner will no longer be accessible. In some cases, you can revert the setting and see scan results again, but I’ve got a 50% success rate, seemingly based on the number of images in the registry. Also, the Describe Images API will no longer report image vulnerability scan findings.

• Using Secretive for Git

  Using Secretive for Git

  Secretive is a macOS app that allows you to store your SSH keys in the Secure Enclave. This is a Good Thing™, because it means that your private keys are never stored on disk, as is typical back in the olden days. Like yesterday. Instead, they’re stored in the Secure Enclave, designed to be a place to put secrets.

• Raspberry Pi Serial Monitor

  Raspberry Pi Serial Monitor

  I recently had to do some hardware troubleshooting for an intermittent fault. To do this, I used a Raspberry Pi as a serial monitor. It’s pretty easy to do, but I’m writing it down here so I don’t forget.

• Screaming in the Cloud

  Podcasting

  Thanks Corey for having me on Screaming in the Cloud! It was fun, although I didn’t really know what to expect. I’ve listen to podcasts before, but actually being on one? The pressure!

• First post

  Pretty quiet

  This isn’t much for now, a bit about me. But it might grow over time!

About Me

If you’re really interested, a link to my bio and some presentations I’ve given. You can also find me on Mastodon or the Cloud Security Forum Slack. Nothing I say is official, I don’t speak for my employer, I am not a lawyer, no warranty express or implied, allow eight weeks for shipping and handling, etc.