Wandering Thoughts: Recent Entries For 2010

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

2010-12-31:	The only way to really be secure with SSL One group that can sensibly use non-GPL'd Linux kernel modules
2010-12-30:	Why you need `select()` even with communication channels
2010-12-29:	Spam as a tax on public participation in open source projects
2010-12-28:	A modest proposal for fixing your bug tracker
2010-12-27:	Users don't care about security
2010-12-26:	A lesson for myself: write tests. Really.
2010-12-25:	Garbage-collected languages and memory allocation failures
2010-12-24:	The jurisdiction problem with making SSL CAs liable for things
2010-12-23:	More on the Unix interpreter startup problem
2010-12-22:	The Unix interpreter problem(s)
2010-12-21:	Why I want tests to be easy to write
2010-12-20:	I don't understand how to test complex data structures
2010-12-19:	A tale of memory allocation failure
2010-12-17:	A Python (non-)idiom that I should really avoid Sometimes bugs have very small edit distances
2010-12-16:	The elements of a non-event
2010-12-15:	Always remember that people make mistakes
2010-12-13:	Fumbling towards understanding how to use DRBD A program that I want to write: a 'sink' SMTP server
2010-12-12:	One problem with the files-in-directory approach to configuration
2010-12-11:	The danger of having system programmers around, illustrated
2010-12-10:	How to get sysadmins to never use your software again
2010-12-09:	A small request for C programmers: no static locals
2010-12-08:	Exploring a limitation of the DTrace fbt provider (on x86)
2010-12-07:	More on https as a necessary mistake
2010-12-06:	What performance anomalies mean
2010-12-05:	A log message format mistake that I've made
2010-12-03:	Asking users questions never increases security Why https was a mistake, but an inevitable one
2010-12-02:	My view of OpenSolaris and Illumos
2010-11-30:	A modest idea on how to get people to use Fedora Rawhide
2010-11-29:	Why low quality encryption is not better than no encryption Why 10G Ethernet is not a near-term issue for us
2010-11-28:	Why I am harsh on Solaris Live Upgrade and similar tools
2010-11-27:	Why I'm not really interested in Solaris's Live Upgrade stuff
2010-11-26:	My view on Wayland replacing X in Linux
2010-11-25:	An example of the progress of the modern web
2010-11-24:	My oddly inconsistent caution (or paranoia) with email addresses
2010-11-22:	Where to find the Illumos source repository
2010-11-21:	Why I think some coding tricks are especially damaging
2010-11-20:	Why I avoid DSA when I have a choice More on those Python import oddities
2010-11-18:	My current Apache SSL cipher settings Thinking about how long our infrastructure will last
2010-11-16:	When good ideas go bad: how not to do a file chooser dialog
2010-11-15:	The language dilemma for production software
2010-11-14:	Four reasons to have a firewall The ordering of SSL chain certificates
2010-11-13:	How `os.path` exposes some Python import weirdness
2010-11-11:	The changing assumptions about viruses in email Some `yum` tricks with `distro-sync` and `--releasever`
2010-11-09:	Directory link counts and a `find` trick
2010-11-08:	A `find` optimization and a piece of history, all in one When Linux's rp_filter might make sense
2010-11-07:	When you should care about security
2010-11-06:	Modern versions of Apache and `Redirect`
2010-11-05:	GNU sort and `-k`: a gotcha
2010-11-04:	What we (currently) use virtualization for
2010-11-03:	One reason that I call us a midsized environment
2010-11-01:	Redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS is a bad security idea
2010-10-31:	How I run two Firefoxes at once and still have remote control How I set up my isolated testing Firefox environment
2010-10-30:	A very convenient trick: having a testing browser
2010-10-29:	What problems the Maildir mail storage format solves
2010-10-27:	An extra problem with not documenting things in open source modules A modern VCS mistake enabled by working on live trees
2010-10-26:	Why Python's struct module isn't great for handling binary protocols
2010-10-24:	Why we built our own ZFS spares handling system Why I'm interested in Go
2010-10-23:	My issues with Go's net package
2010-10-22:	My theory on Unix's one chance to have a standard GUI
2010-10-21:	The problems with testing for round-trip capable codecs
2010-10-20:	Round-trip capable character encodings in Python
2010-10-18:	A module that I want in the standard library: Parsing The cache eviction death spiral
2010-10-17:	Read IO is generally synchronous (unlike write IO)
2010-10-16:	The attraction of the milter protocol
2010-10-15:	How big our fileserver environment is (part 2)
2010-10-13:	How big our fileserver environment is (part 1) Why visited links being visible is important for blog usability
2010-10-12:	Why non-linear directories have not been popular in filesystems
2010-10-11:	The Unix directory problem and the history of directories
2010-10-10:	Fixing Upstart's coupling of startup script presence and activation
2010-10-09:	An illustration of how careful and clever spammers are today
2010-10-08:	Why I am unhappy with Upstart right now
2010-10-07:	In universities, you often buy hardware when you can
2010-10-06:	What is going on with Samba's POSIX locking on NFS on Linux
2010-10-05:	Why people combine NFS with Samba servers
2010-10-04:	Linux, Samba, NFS, and POSIX locking
2010-10-03:	An API mistake Unix has made several times
2010-10-02:	ZFS resilvers are a whole-pool activity
2010-09-30:	Stopping kernel updates on Ubuntu A lot of my bugs are conceptual oversights
2010-09-29:	A surprise about random IO versus unnecessary IO
2010-09-27:	Why there is no POSIX standard for a Unix GUI Why Grub2 doesn't solve my Ubuntu kernel problem
2010-09-26:	The problems with OpenSolaris
2010-09-25:	How Usenet used to be a filesystem stress test
2010-09-24:	Frames were never necessary for menus and tables of contents
2010-09-23:	Why things should be in Python's standard library
2010-09-22:	The mysteries of video cards for Linux
2010-09-20:	Dear Solaris boot sequence: SHUT UP
2010-09-19:	Your on the fly control system should not use toggles Some notes on (dynamic) Bind 9 logging
2010-09-18:	Another reason why I don't like Ubuntu kernel packaging
2010-09-17:	More on the module selection problem
2010-09-15:	Why I like modules to be in the Python standard library An overview of the Debian and RPM source package formats
2010-09-14:	A confession: I find third party modules awkward in Python
2010-09-13:	Why you want a recursive-forwarding caching nameserver
2010-09-12:	Keyword expansion: why RCS rewrites files when you commit them One aspect of getting used to modern version control
2010-09-11:	A simple thing that every package management system should have
2010-09-10:	Go's network package and IPv6 (and my ideal version thereof)
2010-09-09:	Go, IPv6, and single binding machines
2010-09-07:	My new view of DomainKeys
2010-09-06:	Sorting out DomainKeys and understanding its limits
2010-09-05:	An observation from changing my password A plan to deal with my feed reader problem
2010-09-04:	The laziness of a programmer, illustrated
2010-09-03:	Finally understanding the attraction of AJAX
2010-09-02:	Why Python's `global` is necessary
2010-08-31:	I don't understand how `net.ipv4.conf.*.rp_filter` can work
2010-08-30:	My avoidance of Python global variables
2010-08-29:	A Bourne shell irritation: no wildcard matching operator How many uberblock copies ZFS writes on transaction group commits
2010-08-28:	The different between an SMTP proxy and a SMTP relay
2010-08-27:	My impressions of Google Chrome so far
2010-08-25:	A Windows moment on my laptop The limitation of templates for web design changes
2010-08-24:	A design mistake in my comments form
2010-08-23:	Why I hate the Solaris 10 version of `/bin/sh` My (probably wrong) assumption about Flash on Fedora
2010-08-22:	Another reason to hate `$LANG` and locales on Unix
2010-08-21:	A sudden realization about Unix access time updates and disk mirrors
2010-08-20:	A clever blog anti-usability trick
2010-08-19:	Getting Flash to work on my upgraded 64-bit Fedora 13 machine
2010-08-18:	Please, no automatic scrolling to the next item
2010-08-17:	The two sorts of Referer spam that I see
2010-08-16:	What OpenSolaris's death probably means for us
2010-08-15:	Why I change font sizes
2010-08-14:	What I want in a caching nameserver
2010-08-13:	PPP over ssh: solving problems with indirection
2010-08-12:	Many programs should provide an easy way to change font size
2010-08-11:	You should have a way to purge history
2010-08-10:	Upgrading to Fedora 13 with my first yum upgrade
2010-08-08:	The joy of debugging other people's programs A personal view of the Fedora versus Ubuntu issue
2010-08-07:	Why buying a Linux machine is not such a simple thing
2010-08-06:	A thing I miss in the modern X world: command line arguments
2010-08-05:	Doing unsigned 32-bit integer math in Python
2010-08-04:	Good Solaris news from Oracle for once
2010-08-02:	How OpenBSD's pf `source-hash` maps internal IPs to NAT pool IPs
2010-08-01:	The consequence of Oracle's Solaris decisions
2010-07-31:	The other peculiar effects of grant funding at universities It's the indirect failure modes that will get you
2010-07-30:	A little modern Unix twitch
2010-07-29:	Some brief notes on OpenSSH's known_hosts hashing
2010-07-28:	My Fedora 8 problem: upgrading
2010-07-27:	What I would now do differently in a file based blog engine
2010-07-25:	Why sysadmins almost never replace distribution packages iSCSI versus NFS
2010-07-24:	Thinking about the implications of your program being successful
2010-07-23:	A realization about why my inbox keeps being my to-do tracker
2010-07-22:	Why keeping `/etc` under version control doesn't entirely help
2010-07-21:	The easy way to do fast OS upgrades
2010-07-20:	The sysadmin view of messages from programs
2010-07-19:	Why blog calendar widgets are bad
2010-07-18:	How I solve the `configure` memory problem
2010-07-17:	More building blocks of my environment: `tkrxterm`, `tkssh`, and `pyhosts`
2010-07-16:	Realistic blog usability
2010-07-14:	Making the Linux kernel shut up about segfaulting user programs The challenges of shared spares in RAID arrays
2010-07-13:	Sun Support's habit of publicizing private bug reports Single-level list flattening in Python
2010-07-12:	On (not) logging calculated statistics
2010-07-11:	When is using SQL the right answer?
2010-07-10:	People forget exceptions
2010-07-08:	Unix programs should avoid exiting non-zero for clever reasons
2010-07-07:	A gotcha with the Bourne shell's `set -e` and `&&`
2010-07-06:	How `zpool status` reports on ZFS scrubs and resilvers ZFS scrubs and resilvers are not sequential IO
2010-07-05:	A thesis: noisy email addresses are dead
2010-07-03:	`/u`, one of our long-standing Unix customizations Returning to the era of 'duplicated' Ethernet addresses
2010-07-02:	A gotcha with Python's `socket.htonl()` and `ntohl()` A corollary to the limits of anti-spam precautions
2010-06-30:	An update on comment spammer behavior here on WanderingThoughts
2010-06-29:	Converting between IPv4 addresses and 32-bit integers in Python There is such a thing as too much SQL (a reminder to myself)
2010-06-28:	The great irritation of hidden access controls
2010-06-27:	How we propagate password information in our fileserver infrastructure
2010-06-26:	The Unix system UID and login name problem
2010-06-25:	Python class definitions can be nested
2010-06-24:	The elements of fileserver infrastructure
2010-06-23:	The advantages of separate machines for separate things
2010-06-22:	Why feed readers are not good for skimming things
2010-06-21:	Applying low distraction design to alerting systems
2010-06-20:	How my mail notifier avoids interrupting me
2010-06-19:	Don't make your 'I am processing' animation too complex
2010-06-18:	ZFS and multi-pool shared spares
2010-06-17:	One reason why I prefer browser windows to browser tabs
2010-06-16:	The problem of testing firewall rules changes
2010-06-14:	The practicalities of non-GPL'd Linux kernel modules A thought on feed readers versus the social web
2010-06-13:	A (surprising) missing Unix tool program
2010-06-12:	iSCSI Enterprise Target 1.4.20.1 and disk write caches (and ZFS)
2010-06-11:	What I know about ZFS and disk write caches
2010-06-10:	What an iSCSI Enterprise Target kernel message really means
2010-06-09:	The challenge of analyzing NFS packet traces
2010-06-08:	Focusing on what you actually need in a program
2010-06-07:	One problem with testing system changes
2010-06-06:	The quiet death of postmaster@anywhere
2010-06-04:	How to set up your module exceptions to be useful How disk write caches can corrupt filesystem metadata
2010-06-02:	A ZFS feature wish: rewriting read errors
2010-06-01:	My sad little irritation with Twitter
2010-05-31:	Another building block of my environment: `sshterm`
2010-05-30:	The end of university-provided email is probably nigh
2010-05-29:	UPSes: defense against problems, or sources of them? Some comments on spam scoring and anti-spam tools in general
2010-05-28:	Why I am really unhappy with ZFS right now: a ZFS import failure
2010-05-27:	One benefit of relying on third-party (anti-)spam filtering
2010-05-25:	Watch out for quietly degrading SATA disks
2010-05-24:	Give your personal scripts good error messages
2010-05-23:	Replacing modules for testing (and fun)
2010-05-22:	How I fixed Google's search results redesign Why I'm wrong about what sort of APIs C's stdargs allows
2010-05-21:	An example of an API that you can't do with C stdargs
2010-05-20:	The limitations of C's varargs support
2010-05-19:	Why RPM's `.rpmnew` files don't work in practice
2010-05-18:	An illustrated example of how not to do package updates
2010-05-16:	You should also document why you didn't do attractive things A theory about our jumbo frame switch firmware bug
2010-05-15:	Why we don't use jumbo frames for iSCSI: a cautionary tale on testing
2010-05-14:	A sysadmin mistake: shooting your virtual foot off
2010-05-13:	Python exceptions for C programmers
2010-05-12:	'Borrowing' IPv4 netblocks to get around address space exhaustion
2010-05-11:	Retrospectives are uncommon
2010-05-10:	A little `vi` twitch
2010-05-09:	Why diskless Unix machines lost out
2010-05-08:	SSL certificate vendors are selling a commodity
2010-05-06:	Oracle's future for Sun's hardware and OS business is now clear The right way and the wrong way to disable init.d services
2010-05-05:	The right way to fix ZFS disk glitches (at least for us)
2010-05-04:	Dear software packagers, startup scripts edition
2010-05-03:	Keeping track of filesystem consistency
2010-05-02:	A brief history of `fsck`
2010-04-30:	A rule of thumb: Automate where you can make mistakes Never kill the screen locker
2010-04-29:	How you access an object can be important in Python
2010-04-28:	Altering a Python function's local variables with a trace function
2010-04-27:	Evolving our mail system step 1: adding an external mail gateway
2010-04-26:	How we moved from a black-box mailer configuration to a white-box one
2010-04-25:	An observation about Twitter (and Google)
2010-04-24:	Evolving our mail system: the overview and our goals
2010-04-23:	What per-partition disk IO stats you get from the Linux kernel
2010-04-22:	The latest Solaris licensing and support rumbles
2010-04-21:	The advantage of garbage collection for APIs
2010-04-20:	Standard format Unix errors in Python programs
2010-04-19:	Why you don't want to host your MTA machine in the cloud
2010-04-18:	I think it's time to turn off automatic periodic ext3 fscks
2010-04-17:	The 30 second elevator pitch on HTML 4.01 (vs XHTML)
2010-04-16:	How to write to stderr so people will like you
2010-04-15:	The standard format Unix error messages
2010-04-14:	The myth of a completely shared knowledge base across sysadmins
2010-04-13:	The impact of single-disk slow writes on mirrors (and other RAID arrays)
2010-04-12:	The importance of figuring out low-level symptoms of problems
2010-04-11:	The comedy potential inherent in people reusing your address space
2010-04-10:	Why commands can never afford to get it wrong in a version
2010-04-09:	The processing flow of a network copying program
2010-04-08:	A little script: `sshup`
2010-04-07:	Our current mail system's configuration
2010-04-06:	How not to set up IP aliases on Ubuntu (and probably Debian)
2010-04-05:	An important thing about how ZFS handles spares
2010-04-04:	The problem with header and footer overlays on web pages
2010-04-03:	A DVCS advantage for open source development
2010-04-02:	Notes on the compatibility of crypted passwords on various Unixes
2010-03-31:	Looking back at a year of our disk-based backup system Remote applications and Gnome settings: an irritation
2010-03-30:	One possible future for Solaris
2010-03-29:	More signs of Oracle's view of Solaris My theory on why our worklogs work for us
2010-03-28:	The evolution of checklists in my work
2010-03-27:	Testing in the face of `popen()`
2010-03-26:	Tkinter sometimes has a busy-wait main loop (more or less)
2010-03-25:	The problem with overly verbose package installation
2010-03-24:	One reason why '`zpool status`' can hang
2010-03-23:	No DSL is 'human-readable' as such
2010-03-22:	Why I exploit Python to shim modules for testing purposes
2010-03-21:	The power of 'I like this' in social applications
2010-03-20:	Web analytics versus `GET` parameter security
2010-03-19:	The problem with general purpose languages as configuration languages
2010-03-17:	How Solaris 10's `mountd` works Another building block of my environment: `rxterm`
2010-03-16:	The Solaris 10 NFS server's caching of filesystem access permissions
2010-03-15:	How to create pointless error reports (and how not to)
2010-03-14:	Space and content
2010-03-13:	A surprising lack: milter clients
2010-03-12:	End results versus what's inside the black box
2010-03-11:	Why the pam_mail PAM module is not my friend
2010-03-10:	Mythology about Unix workstations
2010-03-09:	How not to design an API (in C): the `enum` ordering mistake
2010-03-08:	Exceptions versus error return values
2010-03-07:	Why I don't expect third-party support for OpenSolaris
2010-03-06:	Pushing code changes upstream is hard work
2010-03-05:	PCs are (or can be) Unix workstations
2010-03-04:	You want to do spam forwarding on a separate machine
2010-03-03:	All syndication formats use XML
2010-03-02:	A building block of my environment: `rxexec`
2010-02-28:	Why XML is terrible for configuration files The dividing line between supporting code and forking it
2010-02-27:	An 'email marketing' wish
2010-02-26:	The remaining Unixes (and their manpages)
2010-02-25:	Reading the Oracle tea leaves for Solaris
2010-02-24:	How to listen on a socket in the modern IPv6-enabled world
2010-02-23:	What Linux's `getaddrinfo()` is doing with IPv6 (on some versions)
2010-02-22:	Unix portability and scripting language versions
2010-02-21:	It's sinking in that Sun is gone
2010-02-20:	Viral marketing versus word of mouth marketing
2010-02-19:	Using `socket.getaddrinfo` to look up IP addresses
2010-02-18:	Some notes on using `socket.getaddrinfo()`
2010-02-17:	The purpose of configuration files
2010-02-16:	A Linux gotcha about daemons and `bindv6only`
2010-02-15:	IPv6 with Lighttpd on Linux
2010-02-14:	Brief notes on IPv6 support in some Linux programs
2010-02-13:	Some stuff on dual-bound IPv6 sockets on Linux
2010-02-12:	The many IPv6 addresses of an IPv4 machine
2010-02-11:	Forcing your webpage content to scroll is generally a bad idea
2010-02-10:	Beware of using Linux's `hostname -s` switch Some thoughts about 6to4
2010-02-09:	Why your program should have an actual configuration file
2010-02-08:	A thought on deliberately slow disaster recovery
2010-02-07:	The problem with blog footnotes
2010-02-06:	Why a laptop is not likely to be my primary machine any time soon
2010-02-05:	Emergency procedures checklists need check steps
2010-02-03:	Outdated documentation is especially risky for sysadmins Link: Pollution in 1.0.0.0/8 How to destroy people's interest in updating documentation
2010-02-02:	What charging credit cards doesn't prove
2010-01-31:	More vim options it turns out that I want Thinking about syndication feeds and spoilers
2010-01-30:	I'm puzzled about DNS glue records in the modern world
2010-01-29:	A theory about Apple's new iPad
2010-01-28:	Always sign exactly what you are authenticating
2010-01-27:	AT&T's mad unbundling and the damage it did to Unix
2010-01-26:	Why the modern age is great
2010-01-25:	You can only really expire cookies on the server
2010-01-24:	How I should have done password crypto for DWiki
2010-01-23:	A Python safety tip: Do notice that things can throw exceptions
2010-01-22:	Three ways to get tracebacks in your CGI Python application
2010-01-20:	The argument for not managing systems via packages One of the things that killed network computers (aka thin clients)
2010-01-19:	OpenSolaris versus Solaris
2010-01-18:	More on mismatched sectors on Linux software RAID mirrors
2010-01-17:	I do not like Unix's fossilization
2010-01-16:	Different visions of what packaging systems are for
2010-01-15:	Packaging systems should support overlays
2010-01-14:	Packaging systems should be comprehensive
2010-01-13:	One reason why you should not let people register other people
2010-01-12:	How systems get created in the real world
2010-01-11:	In praise of `crash` (and kernel source)
2010-01-10:	Why the Solaris packaging system is bad
2010-01-09:	Patch management is part of package management
2010-01-08:	A brief and jaundiced history of Unix packaging systems Interesting things can happen when you scale things up
2010-01-06:	A theory on why most browsers control their own list of CA roots The department's model for providing computing support
2010-01-04:	Some thoughts on battery backup for RAID controller cards Turning synchronous channels asynchronous
2010-01-03:	Go interfaces are not my sort of interfaces
2010-01-02:	Proper disclosure, or how not to be a comment spammer
2010-01-01:	Brief bits from the evolving ipsCA failure

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