Wandering Thoughts archives

2007-12-30:	The importance of killing processes in the right order
2007-12-23:	Multihomed hosts and `/etc/hosts` Shortening hostnames for fun and profit
2007-12-22:	Getting a useful persistent VNC session
2007-12-05:	Safely updating files that are read over NFS
2007-12-04:	Dumb switches are now too smart for my good
2007-11-28:	The problem the automounter was trying to solve Another aphorism of system administration
2007-11-16:	Improving your life with checklists
2007-11-14:	What NAT is useful for
2007-11-02:	Note to self: check for gigabit Ethernet
2007-10-24:	The format of PTR records in Bind irritates me
2007-10-16:	Our old mail system's configuration
2007-10-12:	Getting your networks to your racks
2007-10-08:	I have new system enthusiasm
2007-10-05:	Why we don't use cable management arms
2007-10-01:	How Exim determines the retry time for local deliveries
2007-09-30:	Understanding Exim's weird way of doing retries
2007-09-24:	Assume the existence of folklore among your users
2007-09-23:	Names are not cheap
2007-09-12:	Mass scanning via POP3
2007-09-09:	Rethinking my views of Fibrechannel
2007-09-06:	When you don't want RAID-5
2007-09-02:	I wish mailers had a real programming language
2007-08-27:	On the naming of machines (part 2)
2007-08-23:	The excessive cleverness of some people's reverse DNS
2007-08-16:	How not to set up your DNS (part 17) How to tell a DNS no data reply from a lame delegation
2007-08-14:	The benefits of growing your toolbox
2007-08-12:	Adventures in network design, illustrated by our new backbone connection
2007-07-30:	What we want out of our new fileserver design
2007-07-24:	Using iSCSI and AOE to create artificial disk errors
2007-07-19:	A safety tip: keep your different sorts of source trees separate
2007-07-09:	How not to set up your DNS (part 16)
2007-07-06:	What the flags on DNS query responses mean How not to set up your DNS (part 15)
2007-07-03:	How not to set up your DNS (part 14)
2007-07-01:	The optimization rule for systems
2007-06-29:	The stupidity of being nickled and dimed by vendors
2007-06-15:	Why I am in system administration instead of programming
2007-06-07:	Why I hate firewalls, especially stateful firewalls
2007-06-06:	Why you want a filesystem consistency checker
2007-06-04:	Why we need our SAN RAID controllers to support logical drives
2007-05-16:	My rules of thumb for picking conference talks
2007-05-15:	Sizing your swap space (part 2)
2007-05-14:	Sizing your swap space (part 1)
2007-05-10:	The other problem with network booting
2007-05-03:	A stupid switch configuration trick
2007-05-01:	Some good practices for web servers
2007-04-30:	Being specific about where your systems are
2007-04-26:	A clever way of doing IP address assignment
2007-04-13:	A little gotcha about binding services to interfaces
2007-04-06:	Why network booting is not a good answer
2007-04-05:	Wanted: remote controllable DVD drives An irritation about rails
2007-04-04:	A brief sad note about root passwords
2007-04-02:	Some lighttpd bits
2007-04-01:	An advantage of virtualization for license servers
2007-03-28:	A surprise to remember about starting modern machines
2007-03-23:	Counterintuitive RAID read performance
2007-03-20:	On educating users
2007-03-14:	The problem of machine startup order dependencies
2007-03-13:	Machine room archaeology
2007-03-12:	New warning messages might as well be fatal errors
2007-03-10:	What a sysadmin's machine should be able to do
2007-03-02:	A story of network weirdness
2007-02-26:	Things I have learned about effective sysadmin meetings
2007-02-23:	The downside of distinctive hostnames
2007-02-22:	My zeroth law of compromised machines
2007-02-19:	Another aphorism of system administration
2007-02-18:	Why we do NFS fileserving with a SAN
2007-02-15:	Something all full-service backup systems should have
2007-02-04:	A sysadmin twitch about `dump`
2007-01-31:	The inherent fragility of complex systems (in system administration) Why I am not fond of DHCP in lab environments
2007-01-25:	A clever trick to deal with students powering off workstations
2007-01-21:	Sometimes system administration requires a hacksaw
2007-01-08:	What I really want from an automounter

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