I’m a fan of all things microblogging, but let’s face it: until URLs become part of the XML, and not part of your character count (which is ridiculous anyway), shortened URLs are going to be a way of life. Unfortunately, those shortened URLs can be problematic. They could host malicious scripts and/or software that could [...]
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: [...]
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 [...]
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 > [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
Recently, I’ve made the switch from GNU Screen to Tmux for my remote terminal multiplexor. I still prefer GNU Screen for serial connections, however (something the Tmux developers don’t seem to think is important). So, when getting it setup, I wanted my hardstatus line to imitate my GNU Screen hardstatus line as closely as possible. [...]
I will be attending the Ohio Linux Fest this September (in about two weeks) giving a talk on “Password Theory and Breaking Encrypted Filesystems”. The talk covers some theory on what exactly makes a “secure password”, including some mathematics, entropy, random number generators, shadowed passwords, salts, rainbow tables and cryptographic hashes. I end the talk [...]
It’s been over 3 years since I wrote the original article about pimping out Irssi, with various themes, scripts, aliases, etc. Well, I figure it’s probably time for an update. After all, if you know anything about me, you know I’m an IRC junkie with Irssi, and currently having a love affair with Bitlbee. Aliases [...]
This blog is now fully mobile. If you visit http://pthree.org with your mobile browser, you should be taken to a mobile version of the site. It’s only using browser detection, rather than domain mapping, as I’m not in the mood to create A records for m.pthree.org, which only ends up making the URL longer anyway. [...]
This post comes from Matt Taggart, who put together a document about the best practices for using OpenSSH. A lot of the points brought up in that document rang the bells of common sense, and are so good, it’s worth blogging about in hopes that the points mentioned therein reach as many as possible. I’ve [...]
I just recently received the Bitlbee 3.0.3 update in Debian Sid, so I thought I would checkout the changelog, and see if there is anything I would get excited about. And indeed, there is. Very much so. Here’s the relevant changelog: Version 3.0.3: – Fixed Twitter compatibility. (The API call used to get the following [...]
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