ghc6 Hits Testing Today
Debian’s Haskell packages have been stuck out of testing for some time. I learned that they’re going in today, though, finally! There are also several other packages that this will push into testing,...
View ArticleDebian From Scratch
Newsforge has a nice article about Debian From Scratch, my Debian install-it-yourself CD, rescue CD, and CD builder package. I must say, Bruce Byfield’s instructions are more complete than my own...
View ArticleDFS Installation Tutorial
Suramya Tomar has written a very nice tutorial on installing Debian from my Debian From Scratch images (or from DFS images you build yourself). Nice and thorough work.
View ArticleClik here to view.
Debian From Scratch 0.99.0 Is Out
At long last, I’ve finally updated Debian From Scratch (DFS). For those of you not familiar with DFS, it’s a single, full rescue CD capable of working with all major filesystems, LVM, software RAID,...
View ArticleHow to solve “The following packages cannot be authenticated”
Users of Debian’s testing or unstable distributions may be noticing messages from apt saying things like: WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated! foo bar baz Install these packages...
View ArticleAn additional RedHat Gripe
Debian base install: about 150MB RHEL base install: about 1GB df showing 1% of disk used: priceless
View ArticleThe SPI election results are in
The results are in. Bruce was removed from the board, and Josh Berkus, Neil McGovern, and Michael Schultheiss were added. (Neither Mako nor I sought another term.) Congratulations to the winners — I’m...
View ArticleHP Officially Supports Debian
Yes, it’s true. I have two words for this: Woohoo! Finally.
View ArticleDisk encryption support in Etch
Well, I got my new MacBook Pro 15″ in yesterday. I’ll write something about that shortly. The main OS for this machine is not Mac OS X, though, but Debian. I decided that, being a laptop, I would like...
View ArticleAnd we’re off!
Yesterday afternoon, we started our information meetings with employees about our Linux on the desktop project. We’re underway on our migration. But before I talk about that, I need to back up and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Debian Developers 7 Years Ago
Today while looking for something else, I stumbled across a DVD with the “last archive” of my old personal website. On it were a number of photos from the 2000 Annual Linux Conference in Atlanta, and...
View ArticleLinux Hardware Support Better Than Windows
Something I often hear from people that talk about Linux on the desktop is this: people want to be able to go to the store, buy hardware, and be confident that it will Just Work. I would like to point...
View ArticleLinuxCertified Laptop LC2100S
As you might know from reading my blog, at my workplace, we have largely standardized on Linux on the desktop and laptop. We use systemimager to maintain a standard desktop image and a separate...
View ArticleThoughtfulness on the OpenSSL bug
By now, I’m sure you all have read about the OpenSSL bug discovered in Debian. There’s a lot being written about it. There’s a lot of misinformation floating about, too. First thing to do is read this...
View ArticleCrazy Cursor Conspiracy Finally Fully Fixed
So lately I had the bad fortune to type in apt-get install gnome-control-center on my workstation. It pulled in probably a hundred dependencies, but I confirmed installing it, never really looking at...
View ArticleAdministering Dozens of Debian Servers
At work, we have quite a few Debian servers. We have a few physical machines, then a number of virtual machines running under Xen. These servers are split up mainly along task-oriented lines: DNS...
View ArticleServer upgraded to Debian lenny
This afternoon, I finally decided to upgrade my main server from Debian etch to lenny. Lenny is still testing, but is nearing release. This server is colocated with Core Networks, and I have no...
View ArticleIntroducing the Command Line at 3 years
Jacob is very interested in how things work. He’s 3.5 years old, and into everything. He loves to look at propane tanks, as the pressure meter, and open the lids on top to see the vent underneath. Last...
View ArticleJacob has a new computer — and a favorite shell
Earlier today, I wrote about building a computer with Jacob, our 3.5-year-old, and setting him up with a Linux shell. We did that this evening, and wow — he loves it. While the Debian Installer was...
View ArticleDebconf10
Debconf10 ended a week ago, and I’m only now finding some time to write about it. Funny how it works that way sometimes. Anyhow, the summary of Debconf has to be: this is one amazing conference....
View ArticleWikis, Amateur Radio, and Debian
As I have been getting involved with amateur radio this year, I’ve been taking notes on what I’m learning about certain things: tips from people on rigging up a bicycle antenna to achieve a 40-mile...
View ArticleResearch on deduplicating disk-based and cloud backups
Yesterday, I wrote about backing up to the cloud. I specifically was looking at cloud backup services. I’ve been looking into various options there, but also various options for disk-based backups. I’d...
View Articlerdiff-backup, ZFS, and rsync scripts
rdiff-backup vs. ZFS As I’ve been writing about backups, I’ve gone ahead and run some tests with rdiff-backup. I have been using rdiff-backup personally for many years now — probably since 2002, when I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Proud Dad
I saw this on my computer screen the other day, and I’ve got to say it really warmed my heart. I’ll explain below if it doesn’t provoke that reaction for you. So here’s why that made me happy. Well for...
View ArticleShell Scripts For Preschoolers
It probably comes as no surprise to anybody that Jacob has had a computer since he was 3. Jacob and I built it from spare parts, together. It may come as something of a surprise that it has no...
View ArticleHow to debugging Linux failure to resume from suspend?
I’m running a computer with a Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3 motherboard, and have never been able to get it to properly resume from suspend to RAM in Linux. It has worked fine on the rare occasion I’ve tried it...
View ArticleWindows & a dying hard disk: Solving with Linux
Today, my workstation sent me this email: The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors and then a little later, this...
View ArticleVoice Keying with bash, sox, and aplay
There are plenty of times where it is nice to have Linux transmit things out a radio. One obvious example is the digital communication modes, where software acts as a sort of modem. A prominent example...
View ArticleWhy and how to run ZFS on Linux
I’m writing a bit about ZFS these days, and I thought I’d write a bit about why I am using it, why it might or might not be interesting for you, and what you might do about it. ZFS Features and...
View ArticleFirst impressions of systemd, and they’re not good
Well, I finally bit the bullet. My laptop, which runs jessie, got dist-upgraded for the first time in a few months. My brightness keys stopped working, and it no longer would suspend to RAM when the...
View ArticleUpdate on the systemd issue
The other day, I wrote about my poor first impressions of systemd in jessie. Here’s an update. I’d like to start with the things that are good. I found the systemd community to be one of the most...
View ArticleDebian – A plea to worry about what matters, and not take ourselves too...
I posted this on debian-devel today. I am also posting it here, because I believe it is important to more than just Debian developers. Good afternoon, This message comes on the heels of Sam Hartman’s...
View ArticleHas modern Linux lost its way? (Some thoughts on jessie)
For years, I used to run Debian sid (unstable) on all my personal machines. Laptops, workstations, sometimes even my personal servers years ago ran sid. Sid was, as its name implies, unstable....
View Article“Has Linux lost its way?” comments prompt a Debian developer to revisit...
I’ll admit it. I have a soft spot for FreeBSD. FreeBSD was the first Unix I ran, and it was somewhere around 20 years ago that I did so, before I switched to Debian. Even then, I still used some of the...
View ArticleFirst steps with smartcards under Linux and Android — hard, but it works
Well this has been an interesting project. It all started with a need to get better password storage at work. We wound up looking heavily at a GPG-based solution. This prompted the question: how can we...
View ArticleDetailed Smart Card Cryptographic Token Security Guide
After my first post about smartcards under Linux, I thought I would share some information I’ve been gathering. This post is already huge, so I am not going to dive into — much — specific commands, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hiking a mountain with Ian Murdock
“Would you like to hike a mountain?” That question caught me by surprise. It was early in 2000, and I had flown to Tucson for a job interview. Ian Murdock was starting a new company, Progeny, and I was...
View ArticleCount me as a systemd convert
Back in 2014, I wrote about some negative first impressions of systemd. I also had a plea to debian-project to end all the flaming, pointing out that “jessie will still boot”, noting that my preference...
View ArticleI’m switching from git-annex to Syncthing
I wrote recently about using git-annex for encrypted sync, but due to a number of issues with it, I’ve opted to switch to Syncthing. I’d been using git-annex with real but noncritical data. Among the...
View ArticleSilent Data Corruption Is Real
Here’s something you never want to see: ZFS has detected a checksum error: eid: 138 class: checksum host: alexandria time: 2017-01-29 18:08:10-0600 vtype: disk This means there was a data error on the...
View ArticleSwitching to xmonad + Gnome – and ditching a Mac
I have been using XFCE with xmonad for years now. I’m not sure exactly how many, but at least 6 years, if not closer to 10. Today I threw in the towel and switched to Gnome. More recently, at a new...
View ArticleHow are you handling building local Debian/Ubuntu packages?
I’m in the middle of some conversations about Debian/Ubuntu repositories, and I’m curious how others are handling this. How are people maintaining repos for an organization? Are you integrating them...
View ArticleA (Partial) Defense of Debian
I was sad to read on his blog that Michael Stapelberg is winding down his Debian involvement. In his post, he outlined some critiques of Debian. In his post, I want to acknowledge that he is on point...
View ArticleGoodbye to a 15-year-old Debian server
It was October of 2003 that the server I’ve called “glockenspiel” was born. It was the early days of Linux-based VM hosting, using a VPS provider called memset, running under, of all things, User Mode...
View ArticleTips for Upgrading to, And Securing, Debian Buster
Wow. Once again, a Debian release impresses me — a guy that’s been using Debian for more than 20 years. For the first time I can ever recall, buster not only supported suspend-to-disk out of the box...
View ArticleAirgapped / Asynchronous Backups with ZFS over NNCP
In my previous articles in the series on asynchronous communication with the modern NNCP tool, I talked about its use for asynchronous, potentially airgapped, backups. The first article, How & Why...
View ArticleExcellent Experience with Debian Bullseye
I’ve appreciated the bullseye upgrade, like most Debian upgrades. I’m not quite sure how, since I was already running a backports kernel, but somehow the entire system is snappier. Maybe newer X or...
View ArticleManaging an External Display on Linux Shouldn’t Be This Hard
I first started using Linux and FreeBSD on laptops in the late 1990s. Back then, there were all sorts of hassles and problems, from hangs on suspend to pure failure to boot. I still worry a bit about...
View Article