7 things all travelers with smartphones and computers should do to be secure while traveling....
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...
Poor quality of Seagate disks is a well-know issue for people using spinning disk storage at home. I hear their enterprise HDDs aren’t bad, but that isn’t what we purchase.
My sample size is very small. From 1990 – 2005 I went out of my way to purchase Seagate HDDs. They lasted for ...
Ansible is a DevOps tool. It is amazing. The purpose of this post is to get you thinking how to use ansible in your environment, not teach you to use it completely.
If you ever need to run a command on 2-50,000 servers and get the results back, then I can’t think of any easier, more flexible t...
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...
So, you are a true complete Linux beginner and want the shortest path to the deep knowledge. We all were new at some point. The learning curve is steep, like a new language, but rewarding.
Learning Linux is like learning a new language or learning to fly a Boeing 747. It takes time, practice, effort...
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...
Update: Jump to the “Better Article” header below. My stuff here isn’t as helpful as his.
Picked up an Acer C720 (2G RAM version-bummer) yesterday. I had ZERO intention of running ChromeOS … ever. The machine has a fairly powerful CPU – an Intel Celeron 2955U. That CPU i...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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
...
Sometimes the hardware inside our PCs is not immediately discovered by Linux so we need to
figure out the hardware vendor and chips
understand the device driver (or a close relative in the same family of drivers)
locate/install the driver
load it as a kernel module
configure it through the kern...
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...
Some days we just can’t win.
This little blog VM is out of disk space … er … sorta.
It is out of inodes. Fortunately, it is at 93% use for sector storage, but unfortunately, there are less than 3K inodes available.
apt-get update cannot complete. Out of disk error.
The VM has 1.5G ...
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&...
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...
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...
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....
I wanted to update my Acer Tablet, an A500, to ICS Android v4.x, but knew it would mean losing all my data, programs and root access. Today, the desire for MKV video support on the tablet finally overrode my desire to retain all that other stuff, and I started the update process....
