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{ Monthly Archives } September 2011

Why Firefox Is My Browser Of Choice

Posted to my Google Plus account (https://plus.google.com/115784859563110525602/posts/cwwMBdh4iPL): Let’s talk browsers. Specifically, Opera 11.51, Firefox 7.0.1, Safari 5.1 and Chrome 14.0.835.163. I don’t have access to Internet Explorer 9. Ordered best to worst. JavaScript standards compliance: http://test262.ecmascript.org (lower failures is better): Firefox: 191 failures Chrome: 425 failures Safari: 832 failures Opera: 3,750 failures HTML5 standards compliance: [...]

2011 09 30 Firefox Comments (27)

Salt Packaged For Debian/Ubuntu

I created a Debian package for Salt, doing my best to adhere to the Debian Policy. You can find it at http://mentors.debian.net/package/salt. If you’re not familiar with Salt, head over to http://saltstack.org and check it out. From the author’s website: Salt is a powerful remote execution manager that can be used to administer servers in [...]

2011 09 29 Debian
Ubuntu Comments (2)

How To Properly Create And Burn CD/DVD ISO Images From The Command Line

Too often, I see the recommendation on forums, IRC, and elsewhere across the internet to use improper tools for creating ISO images. For example, consider the following two commands, both of which are not the correct way to build a CD/DVD image: $ dd if=/dev/scd0 of=cdimage.iso # NO! Or worse yet: $ cat /dev/scd0 > [...]

2011 09 26 Debian
Scripting
Ubuntu Comments (3)

Avoid Using which(1)

This post comes from BashFAQ/081 on Greg’s Wiki. He argues why you should not be using which(1) to determine if a command is in your $PATH at the end of the page. I’ll put that argument at the front: The command which(1) (which is often a csh script, although sometimes a compiled binary) is not [...]

2011 09 26 Debian
Scripting
Ubuntu Comments (3)

Alphabet Book

Our family has been tasked with drawing a picture for each letter of the alphabet in an alphabet book for my soon-to-be-born niece. The letter ‘d’ was available, so it was obvious to me what should be drawn. I know when she starts flipping through the pages of the book, she will love this page [...]

2011 09 18 Debian Comments (3)

PGP/MIME Versus S/MIME

I’m going to try to keep this post short (many of my regular readers will know how long winded I can be). However, with my recent post of setting up Mutt to support both PGP/MIME and S/MIME, based on the account I’m using, I figure a followup post on their similarities and differences might be [...]

2011 09 17 Security Comments (5)

Setting Up Mutt With S/MIME And PGP/MIME

If you have two accounts that you use with Mutt, and one of them you would like to use your OpenPGP key for signing mail (PGP/MIME), and the other you would like to use an OpenSSL certificate for doing the same (S/MIME), then this post is for you. Before beginning, however, you need to have [...]

2011 09 15 Scripting Comments (2)

Use Your SSH Client To Help Prevent Stupid Mistakes

I have chosen the path of system administration for my career. It’s been very rewarding, and I really love my job. However, there are times when I make stupid mistakes that cost others money. I’m sure we’ve all been there. It’s stressful, embarrassing and can really shake you up, if you mistake is bad enough. [...]

2011 09 06 Linux
Scripting Comments (13)