Useful list of linux kernel console modes
http://www.devtrends.com/index.php/linux-console-modes-80×25-really/
Archive of posts filed under the Sysadmin category.
Kernel patches I’m hoping to see in Ubuntu 10.10
I’m planning on buying/building a new computer and I think I will install Ubuntu 10.10 on it. My plan is to use btrfs for the first time. Risky, but I will be taking nightly backups. However, Ubuntu 10.10 is planning on shipping with the Linux 2.6.35 which has a severe btrfs performance regression as documented …
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My kingdom for the perfect Linux filesystem
It is extremely difficult to keep up with all the filesystems being developed for Linux these days. Clearly, so much activity represents an understanding that the current filesystems do not address the needs of users. However, as is all too often the case, development is extremely fragmented with very small groups each trying to build …
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Blocking Spam with Javascript
So I am trying the WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam plugin for WordPress. It uses javascript to prevent spam. I’m really hesitant because I prefer websites which do not require javascipt for their basic functionality. Perhaps I will use another spam blocker. Or perhaps I will just resign myself to accepting that functional javascript is requirement from browsing …
Fixing pygrub in Ubuntu 9.04
I think Ubuntu 9.04 is the only version of Ubuntu suffering from this bug but it appears as though no fix for this serious regression will be forthcoming. To get pygrub to work you actually have to fix a bug in the python 2.5 curses library. Open “/usr/lib/python2.5/curses/__init__.py” and add the following lines starting at …
FileZilla sends spaces in user name fields
Just got done helping a user debug connection problems using FileZilla to connect over SFTP/SSH. I noticed, sadly not immediately, that the username he was using was being send with an extra space at the end and thus was an invalid user. I’m not sure there is a valid reason not to trim/strip whitespace from …
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Enabling remote desktop on Windows
I sent this to a client who didn’t know how to enable remote desktop administration in windows.
Setting up a user with only scp and sftp access
In the olden days one had to use packages such as scponly and rssh in order to restrict a user account to just being able to use scp and sftp. Now that functionality is built into OpenSSH. A client wanted me to setup such an account for 1 user on a system. I modified sshd_config …
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