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….

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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…

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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….

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Nice setup for a software development startup

I was asked recently to find a low cost setup for a small software development company (about 30 people) for their infrastructure that had growth potential. I came up with the following: – One server running Open-E DSS software SAN/NAS: This holds 12 1TB disks in a raid 10 mirror and shares out the disks…

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Palm Pre Tethering

The Palm Pre continues to amaze me. It took 15 minutes to tether my laptop (I am tethered as I write this) to the Pre. The key application is http://forums.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/191213-my-tether-tether-over-wifi-usb-bt.html which enables you to tether the laptop to the Pre via the Pre’s Wifi (open access point or via USB (a lot more secure and…

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shell scripting class

Shell scripting is one of the offerings as Fall semester is almost upon us. Time to sign up for classes :). I will be teaching the shell scripting community college class. This is in person, so only relevant to those willing to be in Mesa two nights a week for 8 weeks. We also have…

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ABLEconf 2009 Phoenix

[http:www.ABLEconf.com/|ABLEconf] has [http:www.ABLEconf.com/press_releases/2009Jul29.html|announced] its 2009 Phoenix date and location. The Arizona Business and Liberty Experience ([http:www.ABLEconf.com/|ABLEconf]) is a conference organized to promote ways to leverage the use of free and open source software, such as Linux, Firefox and OpenOffice.org, in wide variety of settings. Planned tracks will discuss how to use open source in SMBs,…

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Transparent dynamic reverse proxy with nginx

A while back I wrote about using Apache as a dynamic reverse proxy. Anyone who has done even minimal research into web servers knows that Apache is the swiss army knife. It trys to be everything for everyone, and like a swiss army knife may not be as good as a more refined too at…

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Analyzing linux system performance and finding bottle necks

System performance analytics seems to be a frequent question on forums and mailing lists. Finding out why something is slow is generally nontrivial as there are many factors to consider. I have found the sysstat package to be an invaluable tool when looking at system performance. Specifically the command sar gives a wealth of information….

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