Silent 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...
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