Friday, May 28, 2021

IBM Cloud: Send out alert emails using SMTP

Last year, I blogged about how to use Slack or email notifications for security IBM Cloud security issues. Now I added another code sample, showing how to send out notification emails using any SMTP server. The code is written in Python and Node.js and deployed as IBM Cloud Functions-based webhook. The core part in charge of connecting to an SMTP email server and sending the email is isolated as dedicated action. Thus, it is possible to use it on its own, e.g., to send out emails unrelated to the IBM Cloud Security & Compliance Center.

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

My best practices: How to search Db2 documentation

I often answer technical product questions, for Db2 and IBM Cloud topics. To provide relevant links and to back up my "hunch" after reading a question, I typically search the relevant documentation. But what are efficient way to search in the Db2 documentation? What are good ways to find the relevant parts in the IBM Cloud documentation? Here are my best practices on searching documentation.

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Wireshark with Lua on RHEL / CentOS

Wireshark with Lua-based dissector

What do you do on a rainy public holiday with COVID19 restrictions in place? Finally get Wireshark to work with Lua support to have custom dissectors. Dissectors are useful to turn binary garbage into readable TCP or UDP packet content. Lua is a scripting language and a supported way of adding dissectors in Wireshark. Unfortunately, the install package for Red Hat Enterprise Linux does not include Lua support. Compiling Wireshark on my RHEL 8.3 does not simply work because it requires Lua version 5.2 for my scripts to work. And RHEL either has version 5.3 or 5.1 which both are incompatible (long story). So, let's get going.