Using Banner as a auth store for Portalgard

One of the biggest questions question with PortalGuard is what to use for the authentication store. Easiest for me would have been either the Luminis OpenDJ or Microsoft Active Directory. One of the things to consider is the flow. At the college that I work at, Banner is considered the gold standard. What this means is that if there is any conflict, Banner wins.

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Great Men and Cats

A friend sent this to me in a text message. Put a smile on my face. If this is a metric to judge me by, I am both a real and a great man.

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Fire Flare Up

I was at Gelson’s market when this flare-up happened. It is a lot more spectacular than what the picture gives it credit. I was talking to some of the employees outside looking at it. In my mind, Santa Barbara was just one bad wind away from burning down. The irony of the situation was that I had looked at the evacuation notices. Across the street, get ready to evacuate. A hundred feet away, where I was standing, I was safe. Computer logic at its best.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BcyZ532Fr6P/

Double handing while the Thomas Fire burns

Michael at helm Thomas Fire from sea

The Thomas fire has broken out Tuesday. We were sent home. A lot of smoke and ash was almost everywhere.

A good friend mentioned that her boat was in the water and suggested that maybe we should go sailing. It felt irresponsible, and wrong. Hey, it's sailing with good company! The burn was a long way away, well why not.

The wind was not as good as we wanted, but enough to fly the Kite and have a good time. Smelled like an oil field at times. To be honest, while out there, I did not feel as irresponsible as I originally did.

The second picture is the Thomas Fire while headed back to the Harbor.

Thomas Fire Maps

These can be found at the KEYT3 Thomas Fire Map Room. I feel that it is worth publishing elsewhere.

  1. Click here to view the latest evacuation map for the community of Carpinteria

  2. Here's a second interactive map showing you the hot spots. The red dots show where the Thomas Fire was most active during the past 12 hours. Click here

  3. This map shows the current fire perimeters of active wildfires across the United States. These are updated on a daily basis. Click here. Maps courtesy of Mapbox, satellite imagery courtesy of DigitalGlobe.

  4. View an evacuation map for Ventura County by clicking here.

  5. This map from the Ventura County Star shows homes that have been damaged or destroyed by the fire, updated as of Thursday.

  6. A map of the fire's perimeter from U.S. Forest Service updated on Dec. 9 at 12:08 p.m. PST Click here

  7. A Boil Water Advisory is still in effect for some parts of Ventura County. Click here to view the map.

  8. For a map of current power outages Click here.

Portalguard Banner Luminis Integration

One of my current projects is to integrate Portalguard into SBCC’s single sign-on system. The project includes:

  • Set up Portalguard test environment

  • Datastore integration:

    • Active Directory

    • Luminis OpenDS LDAP

    • Update Self Service Banner user (gobtpac)

  • Single sign in:

    • All CAS (Central Authentication Service) applications

    • Luminis V

    • Banner Self Service (DBA will be doing it)

    • Integrate Shibboleth 3.X. I know that Portalguard can do SAML, just that it does not do Incommon Federation.

So far I have a few CAS apps, Luminis. I have connected to LDAP and AD. I have a Banner Self Service procedure functional.

As time permits, I will document what I did to get things to work.

Why Blog?

To me, it is a good question. Originally, way back when it was because everyone should have a home page on the Internet. My problem back then, and now is that I actually enjoy the process of setting one up more so than creating content. Creating content puts you out into the world. Too many landmines to step on now a day. There is also the question of do I have something worth saying. I know of people who are smarter than me and much more eloquent. I have female friends who I would enjoy reading what they have to say and actually wish they would blog.

I got interested in the concept again when I was an MBA candidate. One of the benefits of being an MBA student is that one is forced to write and speak. Writing and speaking for a tech introvert [1] requires practice. I tried toastmasters for speaking. Writing is another thing.

This site got me interested in blogging again:

Use Jekyll for Your Academic Site

Life, as usual, got in the way, plus, I admit, I am a lazy writer, avid reader.

I ran across this site “what I learned this Week” while researching static generators, again. The process of building is so much more entertaining that maintaining was a reminder on how to create content, yet keep it simple. The author included these excellent links:

Hopefully, I will back to it. As much as I would like this site to be more slice of life, odds are, it will be sailing and information technology subject. Word of warning, I do not fix PCs or Apples.

Launching Escape

Going sailing involves getting Escape into the ocean. The process is about 45 minutes to move the boat into position and hoisting Escape into the harbor. Then rocking over to the harbormaster guest accommodation dock. These series of pictures were taken by an onlooker who as nice enough to share. They can also be found on my Instagram account.

Invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)

Quick documentation to be cleaned up later

When this does not work:

sudo pacman -Syu

Fiex

For Antergos:

sudo rm -r /etc/pacman.d/gnupg
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux antergos
sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys
sudo pacman -Syyu

For Manjaro:

sudo rm -r /etc/pacman.d/gnupg
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux manjaro
sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys
sudo pacman -Syyu