Traveling Computer Security

7 things all travelers with smartphones and computers should do to be secure while traveling....

LAMP Server Security

Linux server security is a huge topic. After all, there isn’t a security checkbox. Why is that? Every server is a little different, but the ideas to security each of them is the same, the OS doesn’t matter. Depending on your level of expertise, the answers for each of these items will be...

Linux GUI Tools Easier? Not Always.

Came across an article on how to backup Ubuntu/Debian and related distro package lists, settings, icons and themes Seemed like a useful article, so I skimmed it. It was about 20 pgs of text and 26 images. Is that really easier? They installed a GUI app that is completely redundant and harder to aut...

Traveling with Computers Safely

I’ve been traveling overseas more and have discussed security issues with others in the IT security industry. Here is what I’ve decided. With the recent HeartBleed issue in the openSSL libraries that impacted 80% of websites and the GnuTLS issue from last month, what should we do when sec...

1st Five Minutes on a Server

11/2018 Update For Ubuntu 18.04, the commands have changed for network setup thanks to netplan, but the major ideas are still the same. Hammond is active on the Ubuntu Forums. He has many server setup guides 6/2016 Update Nothing major, just minor tweaks and a few details added. 4/2015 Update Seems t...

How-To Migrate Debian/Ubuntu Systems and Data Overview

From time to time, we all need to migrate our systems from 1 machine to another. With Linux, often it is possible to swap the old HDD into the newer machine to get that accomplished. Sometimes that is not an option and we need to migrate the data, settings and installed programs some other way. A few...

Encryption Means Great Backups Needed

For a few years now, Linux installations have offered to encrypt our HOME directories as part of the installation. On portable devices, this is a great idea – after all, the risk of loss or stolen equipment on a portable device is real. Portable Devices NEED Encryption For a while, I ran virtu...

Rdiff-backup Real Use

I like rdiff-backup. It isn’t perfect, but for my needs, it fits. I’ve written about it, mostly in abstract ways, over the years. Seemed like time to show a non-trivial example. Below is the command used to backup a major storage server here....

Common Answers for Ubuntu and Linux Issues

Organizing a LUG and being active on Linux forums, I find that the same questions get asked over and over. Here are the most common questions that I’ve answered. Why Linux? Troubleshooting Booting Best Practices Security Privacy ...

Cleanup Old Kernels from APT

Update May 2021 sudo apt autoremove sudo apt autoclean dpkg -l 'linux*' | awk '/^rc/{print $2}' | xargs sudo apt purge -y that will clean up removed Linux kernels, Linux headers, and Linux modules on Debian systems. The Original Article The script linked below stopped working recently on Ubuntu 14.04...

Annual Digital Cleanup

When ever a new year arrives, it is time to do some digital cleanup. Going through old files, new files, old emails, new emails, archiving important things and deleting as much as possible. Heck, if I didn’t respond to that email yet, it probably wasn’t all that important. Anyway, here&...

What Petraeus Did Wrong- No Encryption

This week we’ve all read how General Petraeus was forced out of his position because the FBI was able to read his emails. I’ll leave the moral question about affairs for you to determine on your own, however, from a technology perspective, he did many things wrong. I’ve added an up...

How Long Do You Use Hard Drives?

This morning I was thinking about how long hard drives should be used. Seems that the disks spinning 24/7/365 in an array here were purchased in 2006, just under 6 yrs ago. The drives themselves have never caused any issues, though a loose SATA cable was problematic the first 12 months or so. Since...

My Worst Technology Purchases

We’ve all felt screwed before. Today, I’m listing the computer/tech items that I felt unsatisfied buying after a little use. These items really go beyond unsatisfied and enter into the completely screwed over or forever hate category....

New KVM VM Host

The last few weeks, we’ve been using Ubuntu 12.04 Server for internal testing as a VM host running KVM. The VMs have been a mix of 12.04, 10.04. and 8.04 systems. It has been stable with zero issues on that front. Below are the other changes recently made that you may find interesting....

Outage-Hardware Failure

Over the last few days we had an outage here. A UPS used by the network infrastructure failed and nobody could physically get to it until sometime yesterday. Actually, nobody could trouble shoot the problem to know what actually caused the lack of connectivity. Around here, we don’t have many ...