This month was showcasing the P-38 Lightning at the Living History Day. This plane is unique in that was a dual prop plane that was extremely quiet due to the fact that it’s turbo super-chargers were muffled. It was those same turbos though that allowed it to climb and allowed it be a successful plane in the pacific theater during WWII.
Author: Joseph Jenkins
Retrieve SSID info from Meraki Wireless Network
I support multiple Meraki Wireless networks and I wanted the ability to pull in pertinent data from the wireless networks that I support. This will allow me to pull in the data and then upload it into the wireless mapping programs and design software. This will also allow me to easily pull the channels, power settings, SSIDs, and other pertinent information. Here is the link to my GitHub site where I will be keeping the most up to date program as I fix things and work to improve it.
#!/usr/bin/env python#import necessary modules
import cred
import requests
#Meraki site information
MERAKI_DASHBOARD = 'https://api.meraki.com'
HEADERS = {'X-Cisco-Meraki-API-Key': (cred.key), 'Content-Type': 'application/json'}
#NETWORK = input(str("What network are we looking at? "))
NETWORK = cred.network
NETWORK_URL = MERAKI_DASHBOARD + '/api/v0/networks/%s/devices' % NETWORK
NETWORK_GET = requests.get(NETWORK_URL, headers=HEADERS)
NETWORK_RESPONSE = NETWORK_GET.json()
#Create a function pull in the information
def WIRELESS_SETTINGS():
WIRELESS_SETTINGS_URL = MERAKI_DASHBOARD + '/api/v0/networks/%s/devices/%s/wireless/status' % (NETWORK, DEVICE['serial'])
WIRELESS_SETTINGS_GET = requests.get(WIRELESS_SETTINGS_URL, headers=HEADERS)
WIRELESS_SETTINGS_RESPONSE = WIRELESS_SETTINGS_GET.json()
for SSIDS in WIRELESS_SETTINGS_RESPONSE['basicServiceSets']:
if SSIDS['enabled'] == True:
print("SSID " + (SSIDS['ssidName']) + " BAND " + (SSIDS['band']) + " BSSID " + str(SSIDS['bssid']) + " Channel " + str(SSIDS['channel']) + " Power " + str(SSIDS['power']))
#Loops through the network and the devices to find all of the information.
for DEVICE in NETWORK_RESPONSE:
if DEVICE['model'] == "MR42":
print("AP " + DEVICE['name'])
WIRELESS_SETTINGS()
Passing the CWAP
Last weekend I was able to pass the CWAP exam on my second attempt. The first time through the exam I was thrown by some of the questions and didn’t have as good a grasp on some of the random things that were asked for. So I spent 2 weeks between exam takes watching all of the videos again and then going through all of my notes and flash cards that I had made. I also spent a good amount of time looking at packet traces and figuring out where all of the information and how Transmit Beamforming works with NDP. Overall I felt it was a good exam even though it took me two times to pass it. I definitely feel a lot better now about the information and that I was able to absorb it for the exam. So now I get to use the cool CWAP image for things:
My next exam will be the CWSP exam as I work my through to the CWNP.
Here are some of the resources that I used while for the CWAP:
CWNP – Video training
CWNP – Practice Tests
WIFItraining – CWAP Workbook
CWNP – Official CWAP Study Guide
Airbrakes on the SBD Dauntless
Normally I am shooting the planes from the front or while they are in the air. This was the first time I had seen the back of the SBD Dauntless and could get a picture of the airbrakes partially deployed. These would be deployed when the pilot was dive bombing to keep them from reaching a terminal velocity and still be able to control their plane while diving on a target.
Lessons Learned from our Nutanix Install
We received our 3 node Nutanix cluster last week. I did contract for professional services to help with the install, but given that professional services getting scheduled is still a week out I decided it was better if I started the process myself. I figured how difficult could it be to build out a Nutanix Cluster using AHV for the hypervisor. Really how difficult can it be to learn a new platform and everything that goes along with it. This is the list of things that I learned while doing the install myself and working through the problems that I encountered.
I’ll keep updating as I go and find new things, just as reminder for myself for the next install that we will most likely be doing in our Cold or Distribution Center.
Living History Day Vought F4U-1A Corsair
This month’s Living History Day was the Vought F4U-1A Corsair at the Planes of Fame Air Museum. All shots taken with the 100-400 Sony lens on my A6500 Camera. 1/160th in Shutter Priority mode. I used a polarizing lens to try and keep the Aperture down so that the camera would continue to autofocus since I was in continuous focus mode.
One Source of the truth for IP Addressing
I’ve been working on my python programming skills and using scripts to configure all of my Meraki equipment through their API and cloud platform. It’s been a lot of work building the scripts and working through some of the limitations that are inherent in Meraki’s cloud and also in the way we manage our environment. I have over 1500 stores and use 2 /28 ranges for each store and I have been trying to use a formal IP management solution that would support it. Unfortunately after looking at Solarwinds, Bluecat, and other IPAMs I didn’t find what I wanted. I ended up going with a MS SQL Database that I can call via PYODBC and get the data based on the store#. This also allows me to put in other specialized information and I can basically build out what I need then call it from within my python programs.
Obviously I would never be confused with a web designer of any sort. However what it is, is quick and easy to use. The asp page pulls up fast and things can be added and removed within a few minutes. The amount of time I was going to have to spend in a formal solution was just more time than I had. The downside of course is that if I leave someone else has to learn what I did and then take over the support of it. That will however be a problem for a different day, unless of course I find a great solution that allows me to treat everything separately and not as part of a huge network.
Moving from Pymssql to Pyodbc
I was in the process of updating one of my linux servers with Pymssql when I kept getting an error message about it trying to do the install:
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pymmssql (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for pymmssql
Turns out pymmsql had been deprecated and was no longer being supported. I use pymmsql to connect to my sql database in order to pull data for ip addresses and other network specific information to build my stores in the Meraki Portal.
For the most part the conversion was fairly easy, I think the biggest issue I had was in getting the drivers installed for MS SQL for pyodbc. This site from MS was helpful in installing the ODBC drivers on Mac and Linux. Once I got the drivers installed I then had some issues with making https calls via my python programs. I had to reinstall python via pyenv reinstall. Once the version was reinstalled then it resolved the issues with the API calls and the requests module. Here is an example of the code I was running and the code that I am now running.
PYMSSQL CODE:
import pymssql as mdb
sql_host = cred.sql_host
sql_username = cred.sql_username
sql_password = cred.sql_password
sql_database = cred.sql_database
store = str(input(“What store are we creating?: “))
sql_connection = mdb.connect(sql_host,sql_username,sql_password,sql_database)
cursor = sql_connection.cursor()
cursor.execute(“select [VID2GW] from tblDSlip where [Store #] = (%s)”, (store))
VLAN2GW = str(cursor.fetchone()[0])
PYODBC CODE:
import pyodbc
store = str(input(“What store are we creating?: “))
if len(store) == 2:
sql_store = ’00’ + store
elif len(store) == 3:
sql_store = ‘0’ + store
else:
sql_store = store
server = cred.sql_host
database = cred.sql_database
username = cred.sql_username
password = cred.sql_password
cnxn = pyodbc.connect(‘DRIVER={ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server};SERVER=’+server+’;DATABASE=’+database+’;UID=’+username+’;PWD=’+ password)
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute(“select [VID2GW] from tblDSlip where [Store #] = ?”, sql_store)
VLAN2GW = str(cursor.fetchone()[0])
Planes of Fame January Living History Day – Focke-Wulf Fw 190
The local Air Museum holds a living history day each month where they bring out the planes along with people that might have flown them or worked on them. It’s a great benefit living so close to the air museum that I can just drive over and in some cases shoot from my backyard. As I am trying to improve my airplane photography I took this as an opportunity to work on shooting at a slow shutter speed and working on my panning. Needless to say my panning needs some work so that I can get some sharp photographs.
Date/Time Conversion in Python – ISO 8601 UTC to Pacific Standard Time
I had an issue where I was getting an ISO 8601 UTC date back from one of my API requests and I was asked to convert it to Pacific time as I was providing the information in a report. Since I had no idea what I was doing I first had to figure out what kind of date I was dealing with so that I could then figure out what I was trying to get to.
Here is what an ISO 8601 date looks like: 2019-12-24T15:04:18Z
Here is what the format of the data will look like after the process has been run: 12-24-2019 7:04:18
#Modules needed
import datetime
import pytz
#set the variable for Pacific timezone
pst = pytz.timezone(‘US/Pacific’)
#create the time variable date_time that will be used throughout, the data is coming from an api request and I am getting back json data.
date_time = (ISO 8601 Date)
#set the format for the date time
date_time = datetime.datetime.strptime(date_time, “%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ”)
#tell python the current timezone is UTC
date_time = pytz.timezone(‘UTC’).localize(date_time)
#tell python to change the timezone to Pacific
date_time = date_time.astimezone(pst)
#update the variable with the new time and date in the new format
date_time = date_time.strftime(“%m-%d-%y %H:%M:%S”)
