Re: Ridiculous
sure. How has that worked with Cuba, Iran, North Korea?
Posts by oxtan
5 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2012
Russian developers blocked from contributing to FOSS tools
Microsoft conceals job ad in Bing homepage
Friday 17th May 2013 08:50 GMT 
yes, other companies hide job ads in http headers. Yes, some weird people look at that.
For example:
$ GET -Used http://icanhazip.com/
GET http://icanhazip.com/
User-Agent: lwp-request/5.827 libwww-perl/5.833
200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 07:23:51 GMT
Server: nginx
Content-Length: 14
Content-Type: text/plain
Client-Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 07:23:51 GMT
Client-Peer: 198.101.241.44:80
Client-Response-Num: 1
X-ICANHAZNODE: dfw.icanhazip.com
X-RTFM: Learn about this site at http://rkrh.kr/2us and don't abuse the service
X-YOU-SHOULD-APPLY-FOR-A-JOB: If you're reading this, apply here: http://rackertalent.com/
(icanhazip.com is a site that lets you query your external ip from a command prompt, sometimes handy).
Top tools for junior Linux admins
Friday 22nd February 2013 09:45 GMT
Give them a copy of http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Linux-System-Administration-Handbook/dp/0131480057 to get them acquainted with the OS and of http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668 to undestand what being a sysadmin is (this latest book is platform independent, I wish more Windows admins read it).
As a comment to your article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/21/linux_isnt_that_hard_really/ stop cloning linux vm's. Learn how to use kickstart for redhat distributions, mirror internally the OS repositories (mrepo https://github.com/dagwieers/mrepo is quite easy to setup) and spinning a new vm will take you 3 minutes with the latest updates. Yes, really.
Your rants on the ifcfg-xxxx files for configuring nics on redhat based distributions are quiet funny. You try shoehorning your windows admin practices on other types of systems and you run into problems. Stop doing that! Kickstarting the OS with a clean, unattended installation will solve all your problems about that particular point. It really is a non issue for most people except the ones cloning vms.
The network config files of redhat are very easy, are very well documented (https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Deployment_Guide/ch-Network_Interfaces.html). The documentation for redhat systems is simply excellent: https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/ , as a linux admin using redhat based distros get familiar with it. Stop using forums to find your answers and start reading the fine manuals, they are there for a reason.
Learn how to use the vi editor. Yes, you have to. No, this is not optional. Sooner or later you will need to do something on a system with that one as only editor available, so you might as well just get used to it. You do not need to be a vi guru, just be able to edit a file.
Learn how to write your own shell scripts. Read other people's scripts. Understand them.
Learn a high level scripting language. Lots of admins know Perl, Python is fine as well.
Learn how to troubleshoot your system. Where are the log files, how to bump up debugging for the various subsystems, how to turn services on and off, how to find info on those services and subsystems without an internet connection (yes, it happens that you are cut off the net and you have a problem).
If you have to work with readhat distros, learn to like selinux. It is your friend and might save your ass on those internet facing servers when they get owned by a faulty web app deployed by hit and run ruby on rails developers (or php, or python or ....)
Once your really understand how a linux computer works, then you can start scaling out with cfengine/puppet/chef/ansible, whatever.
All the above things will make your junior admins better Windows admins as well. They will understand how protocols work and they will concentrate on finding the solutions to their problems instead of just clicking around without really knowing what they are doing in their shiny tools.
If your junior admins are not willing to do this, they should be forced by management. If they still do refuse to do it, get new juniors admins. If the company wants to run linux servers, admins need to support it. It is that simple.
The 10 best … Windows Server 2012 features
Friday 11th January 2013 09:54 GMT
Re: Power Shell?
For starters: I am really glad MS finally saw the light and recognized the essential importance of having a decent CLI in their systems. However I am blinded by your arguments. Let's see:
1. PS is slow to start up or to do anything. Denying it is just stupid, anyone having used both a linux shell or PS knows it.
2. What features does a linux shell lack in your opinion? Truly interested in your answer.
What I still cannot do in powershell is use a MUA like pine or mutt; a browser, irc client, rss feed reader, mp3 player, ..., god, I can't do plenty of stuff I already can with my old fashioned linux prompt. Is this progress? Not for me.
3. text processing in PS is ... painful. It is not its strongest point. Try finding matches of a certain string on a 3GB text file (like an iis log file in a busy web server), you will soon grab naar findstr.exe or script something fast in Perl (yes, for Windows, works great) to get the job done without bringing the server to its knees.
Parsing the windows event log on the other hand is very convenient with PS. Slow, but convenient ;-)
4. yes, syntax can be terse. It's a shame that MS just *ignores* the rest of the industry and 40 years of knowledge and experience to invent another wheel instead of just adopting the posix standard every admin they want off Unix already knows. Weird.
5. You're right on paths, those work fine.
6. snippets? O, you mean like 'functions'?
Risk management? Like thinking what you're doing before hitting enter? Or writing scripts properly with proper error handling? With great power comes great responsibility.
Database shells? Never heard of cli tools for databases? Those tools ensure the consistency of the database, so please spare us your bullsh*t ITIL lingo.
And you should just google job control to learn about suspending and starting jobs.
Oh and:
PS D:\tmp> gc logfile.log -La 10
Get-Content : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'La'.
At line:1 char:19
+ gc logfile.log -La <<<< 10
How hard can it be?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
