This just in: USENIX is pleased to announce open public access to all its conference proceedings. This significant decision will allow universal access to some of the most important technical research in advanced computing. In making this move USENIX is setting the standard for open access to information, an essential part of its mission. USENIX…
Here is a pair of ssh “for” loops to backup all the crontabs on my Linux and HP-UX systems to my admin host: for f in `cat ~/linux_hostnames.txt ` do echo backing up $f; ssh $f ‘sudo tar cvf – /var/spool/cron/’ > $f.tar done for f in `cat ~/hpux_hostnames.txt ` do echo backing up $f;…
To begin, I’d like to thank all of you that have participated in my research study so far. I appreciate your willingness to share your opinions about the tools you use to do your job. For those of you that have not had the chance to take the survey yet, I encourage you to do…
The syntax is: zip output_archive_name input_file_name Examples: zip new_archive_name existing_file_name will compress existing_file_aname into new_archive_name.zip zip new_archive_name directory_name will create new_archive_name.zip
I’ve been a bash user for several years (8?) but someone just showed me this trick about a year ago, and now I honestly can’t live without it. Control-R at bash prompt will allow you to quickly search your bash history in reverse order. It’s not a full search, you can only type a few…
I wrote this script to insert a timestamp into the pipeline. I call it “teetime” after /usr/bin/tee. It can make vmstat more informative, for example: vmstat 1 | teetime 14Feb2008-18:21:51 procs ———–memory———- —swap– —–io—- –system– —-cpu—- 14Feb2008-18:21:51 r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 14Feb2008-18:21:51 1…
To start the day off on a positive note, I decided to post my LinkedIn endorsements on my web site. Here are a few: “It was always a pleasure working with Aleksey at Earthlink. His dedication to projects, technical knowledge, and interpersonal skills are only a few of his many attributes.” (December 25, 2005) –…
I’m doing some work on fixing up our build and provisioning environment, and found the following blog post for booting Acronis via PXE: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/network-administrator/pxe-aka-pre-execution-environment-and-acronis-part-2/ I ended up using the kernel and ramdisk from the Acronis Universal Restore CD which seemed to work just fine. Sadly, my wifi at home is acting just funky enough that…
Picked up this tid-bit on how to disable IPv6 (which aligns with the general sys admin philosophy of “if we are not using it, remove it or turn it off to simplify the system and increase security”: (1) Edit /etc/sysconfig/network and set NETWORKING_IPV6=no. (2) Issue the following command as root: ‘chkconfig ip6tables off’. (3) Reboot…
macallan wrote:
As an educational IT guy, I am frequently asked about when to buy a new machine. My advice is always: buy when you need a new machine, and get the “best” one for your needs at that time. There are lots of separate discussions about what the “best” machine for any given user will be, but I never advise people to wait more than a week, since there is always something better[1] coming soon[2]. Most people are constrained by the lead time on a new machine, or some other deadline, so I say just buy something already.
1] that’s what marketing calls every new thing
2] marketing will have you believe it’s going to be here tomorrow
I think that’s right; when I’m asked about “what computer should I buy?” I generally tell folks it’s best to buy based on: