mikas blog

Linux has always been able to show how much I/O was going on (the bi and bo columns of the vmstat 1 command). iotop is a Python program with a top like UI used to show of behalf of which process is the I/O going on. It requires Python ≥ 2.5 and a Linux kernel […]

Quoting the package description of Debian’s gitosis: gitosis aims to make hosting git repos easier and safer. It manages multiple repositories under one user account, using SSH keys to identify users. End users do not need shell accounts on the server, they will talk to one shared account that will not let them run arbitrary […]

At linuxdays Graz I held my talk about "Systemadministration++". I was telling my audience mainly stuff I collected for adminzen.org. It was the first time I could use the lessig method for presentation. First time, and could? Yes, because when using the lessig method to be able to use a presenter screen a dual head […]

Update: thanks for mentioning ethtool, Robert Fischer A common sysadmin task is to locate a specific device and identify which driver is responsible for it. Usage examples to identify a WLAN device on Linux: Not so well known yet – pciutils >=2.2.9. provides switch ‘-k’ for lspci: % lspci -k […] 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel […]

Click for the large version: [shot by Sven Guckes]

21:59 < formorer> mika: pong :) 22:01 < mika> formorer: ping 22:02 < ft> ricmp? :)

My personal wishlist for the successor of Lenovo’s X300 ThinkPad: less noisy fan / better fan regulation docking station support stronger CPU firewire connector SD card reader ExpressCard/PC card slot What I really like at the current X300: the overall size the 13.3-inch display running at 1440×900 the builtin SSD (from Samsung) the keyboard (just […]

adminzen.org

Nice failure of a presentation setup (name of manufacturer blackend): Another nice fsckup – seen at the webcam setup of an assembly line: Three more nice failures at the same locations – though I can’t provide any pictures (first one containing too much sensible data, second one very bad picture quality and no picture captured […]

Martin, sorry for calling you Madduck on the debian.ch-mailinglist. Luckily I didn’t use that name during our meeting in Zurich last week. *pfuh* ;) To take part in the pdo-game with my own name (being Michael Prokop ;-)): as many of you might know I’m known as Mika in the community. The name was invented […]

Do you know the situation where you just aren’t sure whether you are spelling a word the right way? If you know how to type the word pretty well, then a dictionary might work just fine. If you aren’t sure at all you might consider using Google’s ‘Did you mean’-feature. Check out a simple demonstration […]

It’s done, we have new releases of grml, the Debian-based Linux Live-CD for sysadmins and texttool users: grml 1.1 (32bit) – Codename Skunk grml64 0.2 (64bit) – Codename Schwammerlklauber grml-medium 0.1 (32bit) / grml64-medium (64bit) – Codename Pfuh It’s the first stable release being based on our new build-framework grml-live which itself is based on […]

Title: How to subtile fsck your Apache setup. Solution (quoting the original command line): cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled lrwxrwxrwx 1 root www-data 33 2007-09-28 15:23 auth_basic.load -> ../mods-available/auth_basic.load lrwxrwxrwx 1 root www-data 33 2007-09-28 15:23 authn_file.load -> ../mods-available/authn_file.load lrwxrwxrwx 1 root www-data 36 2007-09-28 15:23 authz_default.load -> ../mods-available/authz_default.load Disclaimer: no, it wasn’t me; it’s the log of […]

Update on 2024-02-16: provide curl usage instructions. Update on 2020-12-04: include tmux.conf. Update on 2017-01-27: provide easy to remember grml.org/console/$filename URLs. Update on 2009-02-13: adjust zshrc setup as .zshrc.global is deprecated, see grml-zsh-refcard. Update on 2008-10-10: replace old hg.grml.org URLs with current git.grml.org. Update on 2009-08-11: refer to /etc/vim/vimrc as /etc/vim/vimrc and /etc/skel/.vimrc have been […]

When cloning a Linux/Debian system 1:1 you should have a checklist of what’s important to change on the cloned system. For cloning I use the grml Linux Live-CD of course (the following tips are part of grml-tips as well). To create a 1:1 clone I boot grml on the systems (usually using the ssh=password bootoption […]

The battery of your laptop keeps getting drained even though you are using Suspend-To-Disk [STD]? (No, I’m not talking about Suspend-To-RAM!) That’s what happens at least on my Lenovo ThinkPad X61s notebook. Thankfully there exists a workaround: Check out what suspend method you use: # cat /sys/power/disk [platform] test testproc shutdown reboot So by default […]

… or something like that… I planned to write a short note about how to start with using git-svn so I can provide a pointer to some of my colleagues. It turned out that git has too many nice features that you should be aware of. :) Hopefully my notes (now being a reference for […]

Currently there are some routing problems to the newsserver of Albasani.net. I can’t reach the newsserver from the system where I’m reading news, but through another system ($GATEWAY) which is located at another ISP without any problems. Solution? ssh -L 9999:news.albasani.net:119 $GATEWAY NNTPSERVER=localhost:9999 slrn -f $NEWSRC Simple. No further setup changes. Just. Works.

I usually don’t blog links to external ressources without adding any further information, but too many people I’ve met in the last few days aren’t aware of the following docs: Ulrich Drepper’s "What every programmer should know about memory" (PDF) D. J. Bernstein’s "Some thoughts on security after ten years of qmail 1.0" (PDF) Proceedings […]