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“When Ants Look As Big As Cars…”

Paul Theodoropoulos — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 03:22:14 +0000

Much to my surprise, the article I published yesterday—regarding a nifty, simple trick for adding a measure of security to passwords that have been written down—was submitted to digg.com, and even more surprisingly, it turned out to be very popular. Or rather I should say, it was very popular on digg.com, but was a nightmare for me, scrambling to keep my server going under the crushing load.

Passwords On Post-its? You Bet!

Paul Theodoropoulos — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:36:32 +0000

A not-uncommon IT-to-user conversation:

IT Dude: "The password to log in to your new PC is r4eo1ss89"
User: "Um. Okay. But how will I remember that?"
IT Dude: "Not my problem."
User: "Okay, but there’s no way I can remember that. I’ll have to write it down"
IT Dude: "If you write it down, it’s no longer secure – if someone finds it, they’ll have access to your machine. Do not write it down!"
User: "But…but if I can’t write it down, and I can’t remember it, what can I do?"
IT Dude: "Not my problem."

Grabbing Status In A Script

Paul Theodoropoulos — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 19:48:15 +0000

Continuing my earlier theme of Things Unixly, here’s another mildly novel technique that I don’t think many folks are too familiar with.

I’ve written a lot of shell scripts over the years. Back in 1999, I needed to write a script to back up my servers to a DLT jukebox. Sure—there’s commercial apps out there that’ll take care of all the nitty-gritty, but I’m the kind of guy who prefers to get the nitty-gritty under my nails. So I did it myself.

Oh, And That Reminds Me

Paul Theodoropoulos — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 08:59:55 +0000

Nearly a decade ago, I came up with a couple of ideas that wound up staying with me all this time. I still use them to this day.

NOT_IN_SERVICE

Nothing but a directory. That’s it. But it brings a bit of order to the harried sysadmin’s life. Need to muck about with /etc/vfstab, one of those files where the slightest little typo can give you quite a blast of the cold sweats?

Grep For Knowledge, Grep For Industry

Paul Theodoropoulos — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 00:48:22 +0000

I’ve seen a number of stories regarding standard Unix commands get promoted to the front page of digg.com. It’s a peculiar phenomenon, at least to me. Most of the articles have been pretty much straightforward explanations of how to use these commands in completely "normal" ways, rather than in novel or innovative ways. I’ve been using Unix since 1986, and have worked as a systems administrator since 1994—perhaps I’m jaded. The popularity of linux has vastly increased the audience for Unix over the years, and that means there’s a LOT of inexperienced people out there who use a Unix-like OS, but have little experience with what was formerly the bailiwick of experts.