Wandering Thoughts: Recent Entries For 2006

Categories: links, linux, programming, python, snark, solaris, spam, sysadmin, tech, unix, web.

2006-12-31:	A (Solaris 8) automounter irritation
2006-12-30:	Weekly spam summary on December 30th, 2006
2006-12-29:	What can go wrong if your compiler is not thread aware
2006-12-28:	A thought on the advance of X auto-configuration
2006-12-27:	Solaris 8 DiskSuite's lack of good monitoring HTTP as it is seen in the wild
2006-12-26:	Link: OpenBSD spamd Link: varnish, a HTTP accelerator
2006-12-25:	The problem with `#ifdef` A thought of the day Link: A lovely summary of the XHTML issue
2006-12-24:	What Google Sitemaps isn't
2006-12-23:	Weekly spam summary on December 23rd, 2006
2006-12-22:	Another example of why Bourne shell quoting makes me grumpy
2006-12-21:	Something to avoid in callback email address verification
2006-12-20:	How many root DNS servers are reachable over Internet II?
2006-12-19:	An Internet dependency
2006-12-18:	A basic principle of website security
2006-12-17:	How to get me to block your web ads in a flash Weekly spam summary on December 16th, 2006
2006-12-15:	An unsurprising discovery about spammer behavior
2006-12-14:	Fedora Core's memory problem
2006-12-13:	An example of Unix's slow fossilization A SMTP implementor's conundrum
2006-12-12:	A limitation of OpenBSD bridging NAT firewalls
2006-12-10:	An irony of web serving Weekly spam summary on December 9th, 2006
2006-12-09:	How DWiki uses partial function evaluation
2006-12-08:	What I want out of a Linux partitioning program Why I don't expect result-oriented work hours to work out
2006-12-07:	Another obnoxious discovery about Ubuntu's `/var/run` stuff How not to set up your DNS (part 13)
2006-12-06:	Setting up switches to avoid unwanted VLAN leakage
2006-12-05:	A small annoyance with Unix wildcards
2006-12-04:	How SSH achieves forward secrecy
2006-12-03:	More fun with Python's indentation rules
2006-12-02:	Weekly spam summary on December 2nd, 2006
2006-12-01:	Ubuntu's attention to detail in `init.d` scripts
2006-11-30:	How Python parses indentation
2006-11-29:	Turning off HTTP basic authentication in urllib
2006-11-28:	Progress towards an all 64-bit application world
2006-11-27:	Some words of wisdom on email certification programs Why I don't rip my CDs
2006-11-26:	An irritating X Windows limitation with wheel mice Link: Serif vs. Sans Serif Legibility Weekly spam summary on November 25th, 2006
2006-11-25:	The quest for a nice Linux CD player application
2006-11-24:	A classical Unix tape gotcha
2006-11-23:	Why I don't file bug reports very often
2006-11-22:	Why ssh validates host keys using the exact name you supplied
2006-11-21:	A small script: `bsearch-nums`
2006-11-20:	A DiskSuite annoyance: `metastat`
2006-11-19:	How https: should work Weekly spam summary on November 18th, 2006
2006-11-18:	Link: Golden Rules for Bad User Interfaces Should you care about whether you can upgrade hardware? The good old days of Unix
2006-11-17:	How to quiesce NFS traffic the brute force way
2006-11-16:	An annoying omission in the Solaris 8 DiskSuite toolset
2006-11-15:	A little regexp thing to remember about \b (and \w) Why the Bourne shell is not my favorite language
2006-11-14:	Some more power consumption numbers
2006-11-13:	People aren't suspicious
2006-11-12:	Some ways to break your syndication feed Broken syndication feeds are worse than no feed
2006-11-11:	Weekly spam summary on November 11th, 2006 A thought about disaster recovery planning
2006-11-10:	Link: On Bots
2006-11-09:	A fundamental problem with challenge/response anti-spam systems The importance of printable objects
2006-11-08:	Link: Pumas on Hoverbikes The quest for the mythical `C.UTF-8` locale
2006-11-07:	Link: Unicode Spaces
2006-11-06:	HTML character sets
2006-11-05:	An interesting Python garbage collection bug
2006-11-04:	Weekly spam summary on November 4th, 2006
2006-11-03:	Installing Wine on Fedora Core 5 x86_64
2006-11-02:	Knowing things versus being able to prove them
2006-11-01:	The downsides of remailing
2006-10-31:	A Solaris 8 `make` bug An Internet rule of thumb
2006-10-30:	A brief Exim observation First irritations with Fedora Core 6
2006-10-29:	Python's `assert` is a weak debugging tool
2006-10-28:	Weekly spam summary on October 28th, 2006
2006-10-27:	In (modest) praise of Solaris DiskSuite
2006-10-26:	Languages need comments
2006-10-25:	Another advantage of distributed version control systems
2006-10-24:	Google and YouTube
2006-10-23:	A `dump` performance hint: the block size really matters
2006-10-22:	Why cursors blink
2006-10-21:	Weekly spam summary on October 21st, 2006 An irritating iptables limitation
2006-10-20:	Why releases are important
2006-10-19:	A paradox of ignorance An Ubuntu astonishment
2006-10-18:	CSS is assembly language Getting your spam crossed
2006-10-17:	Link: HTML Doctype declarations inventoried An Amanda gotcha with dumps to disk
2006-10-16:	Why have an MX record to yourself?
2006-10-15:	On the various meanings of `<tag />`
2006-10-14:	Weekly spam summary on October 14, 2006
2006-10-13:	Why quoting in the Bourne shell makes me grumpy Link: Warning Signs for Tomorrow
2006-10-12:	How stable my AMD 64-bit systems have been
2006-10-11:	Getting nice looking TrueType fonts on Fedora Core A spectacular web spammer failure
2006-10-10:	Cross building i386 RPMs on an x86_64 Fedora Core 5 machine A trivial script: `wcat`
2006-10-09:	I ♥ Fedora Extras
2006-10-08:	A reason to read blogs in reverse chronological order
2006-10-07:	Weekly spam summary on October 7th, 2006
2006-10-06:	A Python quoting irritation
2006-10-05:	Thoughts on machine identity
2006-10-04:	A pyramid of little scripts: `nsdig`
2006-10-03:	Some numbers for modern disk performance
2006-10-02:	The longevity of old hardware
2006-10-01:	The advantage of vendor packages
2006-09-30:	Weekly spam summary on September 30th, 2006
2006-09-29:	Gnome daemons you'll want to run in a custom environment
2006-09-28:	Why I hate `$LANG` and locales on Unix
2006-09-27:	How not to set up your DNS (part 12)
2006-09-26:	Why people still like TCL/TK Web site security theatre
2006-09-25:	Some reactions to a dual monitor X setup
2006-09-24:	Two approaches to Unix environments Weekly spam summary on September 23rd, 2006
2006-09-22:	A NFS mount accident on Linux
2006-09-21:	The danger of relying on Javascript for input validation An amusingly truthful hostname
2006-09-20:	A peculiarity of hardware at universities
2006-09-19:	One of the reasons I dislike SELinux
2006-09-18:	Why `/var/log/btmp` may be using up a lot of space in your `/var` My current view of Linux system filesystem sizes
2006-09-17:	How to convert a time string in GMT to seconds since the epoch
2006-09-16:	Weekly spam summary on September 16th, 2006
2006-09-15:	The temptation of LVM
2006-09-14:	A bonus to writing documentation The brute-force way to install missing Solaris 9 packages
2006-09-13:	The really irritating thing about voicemail
2006-09-12:	A quick note about how extended partitions work
2006-09-11:	Python's extra-clever `help()` function 'In place' filesystem defragmentation with Disksuite
2006-09-10:	A thought on iTunes and similar online services Weekly spam summary on September 9th, 2006
2006-09-09:	Something I really wish vendor product pages did
2006-09-08:	A Solaris 8 Disksuite single user mode surprise I hate hardware (AMD CPU edition) Link: IRON File Systems
2006-09-07:	Industrial strength Python Some wise words from Henry Spencer on backups
2006-09-06:	How fast an LCD refresh rate is going to be fast enough?
2006-09-05:	Stupid web spammer tricks
2006-09-04:	A thought about interactive development environments
2006-09-03:	Why writing documentation is no fun
2006-09-02:	Weekly spam summary on September 2nd, 2006
2006-09-01:	Link: The Single Unix Specification et al Why Postfix is not my favorite mailer
2006-08-31:	`SIGCHLD` versus Python: a problem of semantics How `dd` does blocking
2006-08-30:	A problem with debugging threaded Python programs How to lose readers of your syndication feed
2006-08-29:	An interesting filesystem corruption problem Documentation should be cheap
2006-08-27:	Documentation is not free
2006-08-26:	Weekly spam summary on August 26th, 2006
2006-08-25:	Please don't use session cookies Another stupid spider mistake
2006-08-24:	More on the Solaris ssh stuff (part 3) How not to get our business
2006-08-23:	Why I am irritated with `evince` An update on impending changes to access to Solaris patches
2006-08-22:	How not to set up your DNS (part 11) Link: Csh Programming Considered Harmful `fork()`, `wait()`, and threads
2006-08-21:	Most new products are upgrades How not to set up your DNS (part 10)
2006-08-20:	Finally, a good reason to periodically reboot servers
2006-08-19:	Weekly spam summary on August 29th, 2006 Documentation needs testing
2006-08-18:	Why `apt-get` is not my favorite application (part 2)
2006-08-17:	Idealist versus Realist The quick secret to bootable USB keys
2006-08-16:	The fun of 32-bit bugs
2006-08-15:	Hardware RAID versus software RAID
2006-08-14:	The importance of numerical literacy Distributions: keep your hands off `vi`
2006-08-13:	The real Bourne shell problem
2006-08-12:	Weekly spam summary on August 12th, 2006
2006-08-11:	An unhappy spam milestone
2006-08-10:	A Bourne shell gotcha: redirection order
2006-08-09:	A Bourne shell irritation
2006-08-08:	Slashdot's tacit admission of failure
2006-08-07:	A problem in Python's implementation of closures
2006-08-06:	A fun little regular expression bug
2006-08-05:	Weekly spam summary on August 5th, 2006
2006-08-04:	My current set of Firefox extensions
2006-08-03:	Link: When the "best tool for the job"... isn't. How to irritate your successor (on Solaris)
2006-08-02:	In praise of installing from Live CDs
2006-08-01:	One serial problem I should remember
2006-07-31:	The limitations of Unix `atime`
2006-07-30:	XHTML on the web is for masochists Weekly spam summary on July 29th, 2006
2006-07-29:	Link: Ten Risks of PKI Another little sysadmin twitch or two
2006-07-28:	A plug for blastwave.org
2006-07-27:	Unix files do not have creation times
2006-07-26:	xterm's ziconbeep feature
2006-07-25:	An `awk` idiom: getting fields backwards from the end of the line Reading Unix manpages
2006-07-24:	Link: Linguistic blindness illustrated A brief history of cut and paste in X Walking away from Slashdot: a story of design
2006-07-23:	Weekly spam summary on July 22nd, 2006
2006-07-22:	Solaris's sparseness
2006-07-21:	What Linux distributions we use (and sort of why)
2006-07-20:	Why I like Python more than Perl Link: non-errors in English
2006-07-19:	A sysadmin habit: screen locking Using Python to test system behavior Link: 'Document Centric'
2006-07-18:	Why you can't mix wildcard IP port binding with other bindings
2006-07-17:	Thesis: SMP is a failure for most Internet servers
2006-07-16:	Weekly spam summary on July 15th, 2006
2006-07-15:	A robot wish
2006-07-14:	SELinux bites man: a story Pointers to some SELinux explanations
2006-07-13:	A thought on Linux installation versus Solaris 9 installation
2006-07-12:	Why I like 'lib64' better than 'lib32' for the x86_64 transition
2006-07-11:	Why `nofollow` is useful and important
2006-07-10:	A suggestion for people with 'Out of Office' autoreplies
2006-07-09:	Weekly spam summary on July 8th, 2006
2006-07-08:	The problem of IT winning arguments
2006-07-07:	Sysadmins are an overhead
2006-07-06:	More on tabs
2006-07-05:	On tabs
2006-07-04:	A surprise with using `object()` instances
2006-07-03:	Why Solaris is not my favorite operating system
2006-07-02:	Weekly spam summary on July 1st, 2006
2006-07-01:	Link: The virtual furniture police Another annoying RSS feed trick
2006-06-30:	Some thoughts on the Fedora Core 5 Gnome desktop
2006-06-29:	`screen -x`
2006-06-28:	The problem with cool URLs
2006-06-27:	More on the Solaris ssh stuff (part 2) Microsoft has a problem
2006-06-26:	How not to report spam (part 1) WSGI versus asynchronous servers
2006-06-25:	Weekly spam summary on June 24th, 2006
2006-06-24:	A problem with signals in Python
2006-06-23:	Respecting Unix signals
2006-06-22:	An extreme example of C preprocessor (ab)use
2006-06-21:	A year (and a bit) of WanderingThoughts More on the Solaris ssh stuff
2006-06-20:	How to improve programming productivity
2006-06-19:	Impending changes to access to Solaris patches An odd choice of hostname WSGI: the good and the bad
2006-06-18:	Weekly spam summary on June 17th, 2006
2006-06-17:	Metrics considered dangerous
2006-06-16:	`/etc/inittab` versus `/etc/rc.d`
2006-06-15:	How to have your web spider irritate me intensely Dispelling a nightmare (a sysadmin tale)
2006-06-14:	How to supply an IP address in Red Hat's Kickstart
2006-06-13:	A web validation aphorism
2006-06-12:	Why charging for things is deadly at a university
2006-06-11:	Link: The Unix Heritage Society Weekly spam summary on June 10th, 2006
2006-06-10:	Fixing the bad Solaris ssh patch
2006-06-09:	Seeing Quicktime movie trailers on Fedora Core 5
2006-06-08:	Some computer power consumption numbers
2006-06-07:	Some Fedora Core 5 experimentation
2006-06-06:	Internet Distance (In Memoriam)
2006-06-05:	A Python coding mistake People are ordinary
2006-06-04:	Weekly spam summary on June 3rd, 2006
2006-06-03:	The fundamental problem of spam
2006-06-02:	An object identity gotcha in Python
2006-06-01:	Link: a Unix sysadmin rosetta stone The cynical take on nofollow
2006-05-31:	A simple way to get a disk space usage summary Fiddling with X selections from shell scripts
2006-05-30:	An shell script idiom for choosing what file to operate on
2006-05-29:	An obvious way to do bulk initialization of dictionaries
2006-05-28:	Weekly spam summary on May 27th, 2006
2006-05-27:	Today's dilemma: wiki page or blog entry?
2006-05-26:	A message you do not want to see from your backup software The problem with treating RAID arrays as single disks
2006-05-25:	Link: Classic Mistakes Enumerated A Linux `su` surprise SCGI is a form of caching
2006-05-24:	The not so secret history of vmlinuz
2006-05-23:	Link: Why overtime is bad for everyone A defense of Unix that always irritates me
2006-05-22:	A little failsafe feature in 3-prong electrical plugs
2006-05-21:	My mistake with the `Host:` HTTP header Weekly spam summary on May 20th, 2006
2006-05-20:	Things that irritate me about Python's socket module
2006-05-19:	Some modest suggestions on vendor tradeshow giveaways
2006-05-18:	The future of spam is advance fee fraud
2006-05-17:	Where to find package inventories on Solaris 9
2006-05-16:	A Python limit I never expected to run into
2006-05-15:	PlanetLab hammers on `robots.txt`
2006-05-14:	Absolute versus relative URLs in syndication feeds Link: an engineering management hack A small user interface suggestion Weekly spam summary on May 13th, 2006
2006-05-13:	Safely updating Unix files
2006-05-12:	The problem with preforking Python network servers
2006-05-11:	Building a boot floppy for BIOS flashing
2006-05-10:	Another really stupid web spider The practical cost of forking in Python
2006-05-09:	Bad patch management at Sun
2006-05-08:	Link: an excerpt from On Writing Well A really stupid web spider
2006-05-07:	Link: Search engine page size limits for indexing SCGI versus FastCGI Weekly spam summary on May 6th, 2006
2006-05-06:	Using a stock kernel.org kernel on Fedora Core 5
2006-05-05:	Link: Readable colour text combinations Peeking under mount points with NFS
2006-05-04:	A subtle advantage of simple wikis
2006-05-03:	Fedora Core 5's missing 32-bit shared library symlinks
2006-05-02:	CSS and syndication (another CSS limitation)
2006-05-01:	Emergency repairs with GRUB
2006-04-30:	Weekly spam summary on April 29th, 2006
2006-04-29:	Another little script: `field`
2006-04-28:	Some first impressions of Fedora Core 5
2006-04-27:	A picture of what university IT is like
2006-04-26:	Common web spider mistakes
2006-04-25:	Linux's `%iowait` statistic
2006-04-24:	People are social
2006-04-23:	The sort of command line I can wind up typing Some CBL stats for the week ending on April 22nd, 2006 Weekly spam summary on April 22nd, 2006
2006-04-22:	Link: Scaling Apache at ftp.heanet.ie
2006-04-21:	Working on RPMs with `quilt`: an illustrated guide A CSS limitation: it's not supported by `lynx`
2006-04-20:	The spread of syndication
2006-04-19:	A gotcha with analyzing syslog logs
2006-04-18:	How Solaris matches names in NFS exports
2006-04-17:	What do variable names mean (in Python and elsewhere)?
2006-04-16:	Weekly spam summary on April 15th, 2006
2006-04-15:	The problem of the growth of syndication feeds Public interfaces and Solaris 9 `patchadd` exit codes
2006-04-14:	Why `del` has to be a Python builtin
2006-04-13:	An obnoxious RSS feed trick
2006-04-12:	Something to remember about networking restarts
2006-04-11:	A little script: `howmany`
2006-04-10:	`xiostat`: better Linux disk IO statistics The fun and charm of quoting URLs properly
2006-04-09:	Weekly spam summary on April 8th, 2006
2006-04-08:	Apple joins the webmail hall of shame A common socket programming mistake: not handling short IO
2006-04-07:	A `bash` irritation A pleasing Python regularity with `__future__` Some quick SMTP connection statistics
2006-04-06:	Some things about `smpatch`
2006-04-05:	Keeping up with new Python features The other dynamic linking tax
2006-04-04:	Why I don't like resorting to caching
2006-04-03:	An ugly spam attempt Spiders should respect `rel="nofollow"`
2006-04-02:	Weekly spam summary on April 1st, 2006
2006-04-01:	The best April Fools joke I've seen here A Firefox CSS irritation
2006-03-31:	The perfection trap: a lesson drawn from Worse is Better The difficulty of punishing people at universities
2006-03-30:	What disk IO stats you get from the Linux kernel
2006-03-29:	Easier Solaris patch management with `pca`
2006-03-28:	Hotmail spam stats revised Using threading to implement a 'busy' cursor (a tale from long ago)
2006-03-27:	A helpful Apache safety tip
2006-03-26:	Weekly spam summary on March 25th, 2006
2006-03-25:	A little gotcha with `os.path.join`
2006-03-24:	Setting up to build RPMs
2006-03-23:	Side effects are bad: a personal illustration We apologize for the disruption in syndication feeds Atom versus RSS Solaris patch exit codes and what they mean
2006-03-22:	Google Desktop and conditional GET (part 2)
2006-03-21:	The backend for our recent mirroring
2006-03-20:	An optimization thought
2006-03-19:	Weekly spam summary on March 18th, 2006
2006-03-18:	Some little things Firefox gets right
2006-03-17:	How not to set up your DNS (part 9) The problem with LiveJournal
2006-03-16:	A tricky memoization decorator
2006-03-15:	The aftermath of our mirroring
2006-03-14:	Some problems with `iostat` on Linux
2006-03-13:	Preparing a high load web mirror setup
2006-03-12:	A DNS realization Weekly spam summary on March 11th, 2006
2006-03-11:	Web design trends that I don't understand (part 1)
2006-03-10:	Why dynamic linking The dynamic linking tax on `fork()`
2006-03-09:	Making things simple for busy webmasters Closures versus classes for capturing state
2006-03-08:	Thinking about project failures
2006-03-07:	A modular approach to Apache configuration
2006-03-06:	How not to set up your mail server (part 1) A thought about Technorati
2006-03-05:	Weekly spam summary on March 4th, 2006
2006-03-04:	`os.walk` can be surprisingly slow
2006-03-03:	Visualizing dynamic program flow
2006-03-02:	A robots.txt surprise The `:;` shell prompt trick
2006-03-01:	Unicode is not simple
2006-02-28:	Practical RAID-1 read balancing A sad day for SGI: it's now a spammer A web spider update: not actually Uptilt's web spider A surprising effect of RAID-1 resynchronization
2006-02-27:	Python's extra-clever function parameters
2006-02-26:	Weekly spam summary on February 25th, 2006 The hassle of email (as compared to RSS)
2006-02-25:	More clever (ab)use of `and` and `or` A trick for handling mutable default arguments
2006-02-24:	Wanted: RSS feeds for vendor software updates
2006-02-23:	Checking systems with RPM verification (part 1)
2006-02-22:	Peter Drucker on the Five Deadly Business Sins
2006-02-21:	An annoyance with $PATH on Red Hat
2006-02-20:	More on regular expression performance
2006-02-19:	Irony in a Referer spammer Weekly spam summary on February 18th, 2006
2006-02-18:	Automation promotes action Stupid web spider tricks
2006-02-17:	Some regular expression performance surprises
2006-02-16:	An interesting IDE to SATA migration problem
2006-02-15:	Fun with control characters and the web
2006-02-14:	An advantage of using a non-standard shell
2006-02-13:	GNU bc for the birthday paradox The problem with <pre>
2006-02-12:	Weekly spam summary on February 11th, 2006
2006-02-11:	The return of how to get your web spider banned
2006-02-10:	The charm of Sun's Freeware collection Session IDs and the Birthday Paradox
2006-02-09:	Using the tempfile module to get temporary files
2006-02-08:	The `id` attribute considered dangerous
2006-02-07:	$PATH in Solaris
2006-02-06:	The sysadmin's life More on simple markup languages
2006-02-05:	Weekly spam summary on February 4th, 2006
2006-02-04:	Why simple markup languages make sense
2006-02-03:	Van Jacobson illustrates the importance of cache effects
2006-02-02:	The rise of wikiblogs
2006-02-01:	A suggestion: read your own syndication feed
2006-01-31:	Getting console messages in X
2006-01-30:	An impending Debian derailment
2006-01-29:	Weekly spam summary on January 28th, 2006
2006-01-28:	A bad product name
2006-01-27:	Pointer: The Unix-Haters Handbook
2006-01-26:	A Unix annoyance
2006-01-25:	Site navigation stuff goes on the right side
2006-01-24:	A digression on spelling
2006-01-23:	Why case independent filenames are a bad idea
2006-01-22:	Weekly spam summary on January 21st, 2005
2006-01-21:	Please have stable ids for your feed entries
2006-01-20:	The limits of web spider tolerance
2006-01-19:	A Python length gotcha
2006-01-18:	A portability gotcha with `accept()`
2006-01-17:	The economics of CPU performance
2006-01-16:	Some words of wisdom for all ISPs The danger of specific errno values
2006-01-15:	How not to set up your DNS (part 8) Weekly spam summary on January 14th, 2006
2006-01-14:	Writing HTML considered harmful
2006-01-13:	An unconventional reason for large RAID stripe sizes
2006-01-12:	How not to set up your DNS (part 7) On not logging things
2006-01-11:	Recording attribute access and method calls
2006-01-10:	The peculiar effects of grant funding at universities
2006-01-09:	How Linux names network interfaces
2006-01-08:	Weekly spam summary on January 7th, 2006 Towards assessing SORBS' false positive rate
2006-01-07:	Some notes on Solaris 9's Sunscreen IP filtering package
2006-01-06:	The old nameserver glue record hell
2006-01-05:	Is concurrency 'hard'?
2006-01-04:	Python synergies in list addressing
2006-01-03:	In practice, there are multiple namespaces for URLs
2006-01-02:	Universities are peculiar places
2006-01-01:	Weekly spam summary on December 31st, 2005

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