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March 2, 2022 – 2:00 pm

Books have been written on the subject of awk and sed. Here’s a small sample of commands I put together over the years that are useful for everyday system administration tasks. Most of these tasks …

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Home » Archive by Month

Article Archive for November 2015

nutrition tips for a healthier you

November 25, 2015 – 1:12 pm
shell

Ready to jumpstart your health? Here are five nutrition tips to get you on the right track:
1. Eat whole foods.  If you want to eat better, choose foods that are in their natural form and avoid …

Deleting Lots of Files Quickly

November 17, 2015 – 9:03 am
machine-gun-001

I am not talking about hundreds or thousands of files. I am talking about hundreds of thousands. The usual “/bin/rm -rf *” may work, but will take a while. Or it may fail with the …

When Was that Server Built?

November 11, 2015 – 11:49 am
shell

Just a quick note on how to (sort of) figure out when a server first came online. This can be useful to various folks in your bean-counting department working on maintenance contract renewals and whatnot. …

Log Event Time Distribution (Part II)

November 11, 2015 – 2:30 am
time clock watch

Earlier I discussed a way to visualize frequency and distribution of messages in log files. Here’s a script to help you with that. Currently, the script works with two time formats: the one used in …

Securing VSFTP with TCP Wrappers and IPTables

November 11, 2015 – 1:44 am
computer_security_0001

I’ve been drinking beer and perhaps had one too many. Regardless of the reason, I felt the urge to further secure my favorite server. The target of my paranoia is once again the VSFTPd. I …

Testing Email Server Response

November 7, 2015 – 5:37 pm
colorful shells

A little while ago I ran into a situation when connections to the relay email server would occasionally time out. The issue seemed sporadic resulting in a controversy regarding its source. The perimeter email server …