system-admin
Volunteers needed for OLF September 25-26
Wow! I just looked at the speaker list for the Ohio Linux Festival and I am really excited I will be there. (I am embarrassed that I had not looked closely at the program before.) LOPSA will be there offering some great training. We will also have a booth and we could use some help…
Why corporate IT should unchain our office computers. – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine
What’s worse, because they aren’t tasked with understanding how people in different parts of a company do their jobs, IT managers often can’t appreciate how profoundly certain tools can improve how we work. Why corporate IT should unchain our office computers. – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine. At first glance, this article made me…
ABLEconf 2009 Phoenix Call for Presentations
The Arizona Business and Liberty Experience Conference (ABLEconf) is soliciting presentations for its second annual conference. ABLEconf will take place on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 at the University of Advancing Technology (UAT) in Tempe, Arizona. Continuing ABLEconf’s drive to showcase free and open source software for business, we are seeking presentations in either 20 or…
Why I Joined Lopsa
I joined Lopsa because I feel that it is important to “professionalize” the practice of System Administration. So what does “professionalize” mean? According to Webster it means “to give a professional character to” where professional means “characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession” and “having a particular profession as…
Professionalism before you even get to the workplace.
For some reason, I get a lot of resumes from people who sign their resumes and emails (including the GECOS fields) with their irc/renaissance faire/SCA/WoW handles .. I should not have to be saying this to grown men and women (let’s face it, it’s men, and they’re not that grown), but if you cannot sign…
Webfile application: sharing files out via the web…
Have you ever had the need to allow web access to files on a samba or windows fileserver and really did not want to deal with setting up a VPN for the users (some of whom need access to just see a single file) or keep track of permissions on the file server and it…
Do we need to put the fear of the bogeyman into you?
Do we do a disservice to young sysadmins by teaching them important rules of thumb as if they were incontrovertible truth? When I was starting out, I heard a lot of these, especially in security. For example, “a login server is always crackable”. I was dubious, because I didn’t understand the complex thought being expressed….
Pre Apps: Infopedia
While waiting for my delayed flight, I had a chance to try out some of the new Pre Applications. Infopedia is one that allows you to quickly search wikipedia for any term or for fun you can look up a random page. Another feature I like is the Current Events link as it leads to…
Encrypted MySQL connections (for client and replication)
[Reposted from my work blog.] There are four basic things you need to do when attempting to set up encrypted MySQL connections. Make sure your MySQL installation is configured with SSL. Create a set of certificates for your master, your slave, and your client(s). Configure your master and slave my.cnf with the correct ssl-* options….