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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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Article Archive for May 2016

Kodi Volume Control Stops Working

May 22, 2016 – 1:01 am
kodi-14-helix-addons

All of a sudden, when using the remote (either radio or IR), Kodi sound controls stop responding. The volume level does not change and the mute button doesn’t work. These are possible symptoms of an …

VMWare VMDK Locked Error

May 21, 2016 – 10:27 pm
reverse_ssh_tunnel

So, being a Unix admin on-call for the week, I just spent half of my Saturday fixing a dead Windows VM. Very annoying. The best I can tell, the issue occurred during the snapshot operation. …

Decrypting Mac Disk

May 20, 2016 – 11:41 am
apple001

It is generally a good idea to use full-disk encryption, especially on a laptop. However, this becomes bothersome if you are trying to re-partition your disk, say, to make the system dual-boot. Here’s a quick …

Avoiding CPU Speed Scaling

May 18, 2016 – 1:04 pm
cpu

Disabling CPU speed scaling can boost your system’s performance and responsiveness at a slightly higher power consumption. Here’s a good article explaining the process.

Top 30 Nmap Command Examples For Sys/Network Admins

May 11, 2016 – 2:39 pm
network_cable_01

Useful nmap examples for system and network administrators.

How to: Linux Iptables block common attacks

May 10, 2016 – 2:37 pm
firewall-icon

IPTables filters and other tricks to prevent common syn-flood and malformed packet attacks on your server.

Avoid IP Spoofing And Bad Addresses Attacks

May 9, 2016 – 2:01 pm
firewall-icon

Spoofing and bad address attacks attempt to fool the server into believing packets had come from local network. Here’s a brief explanation and a useful script that uses IPTables to prevent such exploits.

Useful Bash One-Liners

May 2, 2016 – 8:43 am
shell

Here’s a  loosely-organized pile ‘o shell quickies I kept googling now and then and finally decided to write ’em down.