Wandering Thoughts archives

2010-12-16:	The elements of a non-event
2010-12-11:	The danger of having system programmers around, illustrated
2010-12-10:	How to get sysadmins to never use your software again
2010-12-05:	A log message format mistake that I've made
2010-11-28:	Why I am harsh on Solaris Live Upgrade and similar tools
2010-11-14:	Four reasons to have a firewall
2010-11-04:	What we (currently) use virtualization for
2010-11-03:	One reason that I call us a midsized environment
2010-10-27:	A modern VCS mistake enabled by working on live trees
2010-10-15:	How big our fileserver environment is (part 2)
2010-10-13:	How big our fileserver environment is (part 1)
2010-10-05:	Why people combine NFS with Samba servers
2010-09-19:	Some notes on (dynamic) Bind 9 logging
2010-09-12:	One aspect of getting used to modern version control
2010-09-11:	A simple thing that every package management system should have
2010-09-05:	An observation from changing my password
2010-08-22:	Another reason to hate `$LANG` and locales on Unix
2010-08-14:	What I want in a caching nameserver
2010-08-13:	PPP over ssh: solving problems with indirection
2010-07-31:	It's the indirect failure modes that will get you
2010-07-29:	Some brief notes on OpenSSH's known_hosts hashing
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
2010-07-18:	How I solve the `configure` memory problem
2010-07-17:	More building blocks of my environment: `tkrxterm`, `tkssh`, and `pyhosts`
2010-07-12:	On (not) logging calculated statistics
2010-06-27:	How we propagate password information in our fileserver infrastructure
2010-06-26:	The Unix system UID and login name problem
2010-06-24:	The elements of fileserver infrastructure
2010-06-23:	The advantages of separate machines for separate things
2010-06-21:	Applying low distraction design to alerting systems
2010-06-16:	The problem of testing firewall rules changes
2010-06-07:	One problem with testing system changes
2010-05-31:	Another building block of my environment: `sshterm`
2010-05-24:	Give your personal scripts good error messages
2010-05-16:	You should also document why you didn't do attractive things
2010-05-14:	A sysadmin mistake: shooting your virtual foot off
2010-05-11:	Retrospectives are uncommon
2010-05-09:	Why diskless Unix machines lost out
2010-04-30:	A rule of thumb: Automate where you can make mistakes
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
2010-04-24:	Evolving our mail system: the overview and our goals
2010-04-14:	The myth of a completely shared knowledge base across sysadmins
2010-04-12:	The importance of figuring out low-level symptoms of problems
2010-04-10:	Why commands can never afford to get it wrong in a version
2010-04-08:	A little script: `sshup`
2010-04-07:	Our current mail system's configuration
2010-03-31:	Looking back at a year of our disk-based backup system
2010-03-29:	My theory on why our worklogs work for us
2010-03-28:	The evolution of checklists in my work
2010-03-17:	Another building block of my environment: `rxterm`
2010-03-15:	How to create pointless error reports (and how not to)
2010-03-02:	A building block of my environment: `rxexec`
2010-02-08:	A thought on deliberately slow disaster recovery
2010-02-05:	Emergency procedures checklists need check steps
2010-02-03:	Outdated documentation is especially risky for sysadmins How to destroy people's interest in updating documentation
2010-01-30:	I'm puzzled about DNS glue records in the modern world
2010-01-20:	The argument for not managing systems via packages
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
2010-01-12:	How systems get created in the real world
2010-01-09:	Patch management is part of package management
2010-01-06:	The department's model for providing computing support

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By month for 2010: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec; before 2010; after 2010.