Retroactively Minimizing Installed Packages on CentOS 5.1
In my CentOS 5.1 Minimal VPS Install Guide I describe how to install a very lean set of OS packages when starting from scratch. But what if the VPS is preinstalled for you by a hosting provider? There...
View ArticleRecommended mount options for ext3
The details of the various mount options for the ext3 filesystem are fairly well documented, but as with many things in the Unix world, knowledge is far easier to come by than wisdom. That’s a pithy...
View ArticleSilencing pointless reverse DNS warnings from OpenSSH
If you’ve been using SSH for long you’ve probably seen this at least once: Address 11.22.33.44 maps to www.foobar.com, but this does not map back to the address - POSSIBLE BREAK-IN ATTEMPT! Sometimes...
View ArticleUbuntu Linux 8.04 “Hardy Heron” Upgrade Report
Painless! I’m actually starting to expect it to work without hitches now. There are a couple of config file changes that need babysitting but none of them was difficult; I really do wish it would...
View ArticleCentOS 5.3 Minimal VPS Install Guide
I just did this yesterday; you can pretty much just follow my CentOS 5.1 Minimal VPS Install Guide. The differences are: When you get to the “More Minimizing” section, yum -C grouplist will show a...
View ArticleUbuntu 8.10 and 9.04 (Intrepid Ibex and Jaunty Jackalope) upgrade notes
I’m at WordCamp San Francisco today and decided that running a year old version of WordPress (on a year old version of Ubuntu Linux) was undesirable. So, with the confidence that comes from many...
View ArticleUbuntu 9.10 (Jaunty Jackalope) upgrade notes
Once again Ubuntu Linux proves itself to be easy to upgrade. Going from 9.04 to 9.10 (one release newer, since their numbering is bsaed on dates) was easy, but included the standard sprinkling of...
View ArticleKarmic on Xen with Bad /etc/fstab = PAIN
Argh! I spent about 5 hours yesterday troubleshooting a failed Ubuntu Jaunty -> Karmic (9.04->9.10) upgrade. It worked fine until I rebooted and then failed to boot. Here’s how I fixed it. It...
View ArticleUnix tip: kill -STOP and kill -CONT
Pretty much every Unix user knows about the kill command, and most know about ‘kill -KILL’ aka ‘kill -9′. But do you know about kill -STOP and kill -CONT? I’m not sure of the exact mechanism (kernel...
View ArticleManaging autossh via monit
SSH port forwarding is so useful that sometimes you want to daemonize it, to create encrypted tunnels that never go away. But it’s not trivial to do this. Fortunately it is possible with a little...
View ArticleTake back your control-space keybinding in Ubuntu w/ Cinnamon
I use Emacs and just switched to Cinnamon when upgrading to Trusty Tahr. It somehow stole the control-space keybinding, which I use in Emacs a lot; it is used for setting the current mark, so I can cut...
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