Unix as a Second Language

Advice for everyday Unix systems administration and some clever ways to approach more challenging problems.

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Serial numbers in zone files: Yours and named’s

Serial numbers in zone files help your DNS service determine whether it should re-ingest your zone files or ignore them. But there's more to these pseudo timestamps than meets the eye.

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jul 27, 2009 4 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Setting up sudo

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jul 22, 2009 4 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix Wizdumb: Document It!

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jul 15, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix Wizdumb: Clean up empty “in use” files with “cat /dev/null”

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jul 08, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix: Impossible File Types

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jul 01, 2009 3 mins

Consumer Electronics Data Center Open Source

Unix: Adding swap space on the fly

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jun 25, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Network Know-How: An Essential Guide for the Accidental Admin

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jun 17, 2009 4 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

So many passwords, so few hiding places

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jun 10, 2009 4 mins

Data Center Endpoint Protection Open Source

Redirecting errors with exec

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jun 03, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix tip: Password complexity for users

Solaris 10 offers a suite of settings that provide a lot more control over users' password choices. These settings, stored in the /etc/default/passwd file, allow you to your own rules.

By Sandra Henry Stocker

May 27, 2009 5 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix tip: Making do with less

By Sandra Henry Stocker

May 20, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Wizzywig volumes 1: Phreak and 2: Hacker

By Sandra Henry Stocker

May 13, 2009 3 mins

Consumer Electronics Data Center Open Source

Mapping Ports and PIDs

By Sandra Henry Stocker

May 06, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix tip: Recursively removing empty directories

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Apr 29, 2009 4 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Sftp-Only User Accounts

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Apr 22, 2009 2 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Peeping into PostgreSQL

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Apr 15, 2009 4 mins

Business Intelligence Data Center Open Source

Checking disk space

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Apr 08, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix tricks – Useful but unusual

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Apr 01, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Finding process IDs with fuser

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Mar 25, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Book Review: Cisco Routers for the Desperate, 2nd Edition

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Mar 18, 2009 3 mins

Data Center Networking Open Source

Spring forward file fixing

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Mar 11, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

GPG fundamentals for encrypting messages

If you're ever tempted to send encrypted messages to a particular recipient but have never used PGP, you might be happy to learn that it's not all that hard to get started. Enter GnuPG and a handful of gpg commands!

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Mar 04, 2009 5 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Creating images with a text editor

Even if you're familiar with the basic difference between raster and vector images, it might not be immediately obvious that you can create simple images using nothing more than a text editor. Learn how.

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Feb 25, 2009 5 mins

Computers and Peripherals Data Center Open Source

Who’s Using Samba?

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Feb 18, 2009 3 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix tip: Finding a fault when your server’s shut down

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Feb 11, 2009 7 mins

Computers and Peripherals Linux Open Source

Unix tip: Monitoring network switches

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Feb 04, 2009 6 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix tip: Putting old systems to sleep

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jan 28, 2009 4 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix sysadmins and their good/bad bosses

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jan 21, 2009 8 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix tip: Inter-host trust on Unix, part 2

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jan 14, 2009 5 mins

Data Center Open Source Operating Systems

Unix tip: Inter-host trust on Unix, part 1

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Jan 07, 2009 4 mins

Data Center Linux Open Source

Unix tip: 7-Zip to the rescue

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Dec 30, 2008 4 mins

Consumer Electronics Data Center Open Source

Unix tip: Monitoring networks with Nagios

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Dec 23, 2008 4 mins

Data Center IT Leadership Open Source

Unix tip: Useful Unix aliases

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Dec 17, 2008 4 mins

Data Center Linux Open Source

Bristle.com – High on content, low on frills

Need to learn Unix or Ajax, do a price comparison or figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar acronym? Let Fred Stluka at Brsitle.com give you suggestions on where to begin your search.

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Dec 08, 2008 3 mins

Consumer Electronics Linux Open Source

Unix tip: Monitor disk arrays with sccli commands

Disk arrays take a lot of worry about disk failure off your shoulders, but that's no reason not to notice when one goes bad. The sccli command can tell you a lot about what's happening with your StorEdge arrays. Let it warn you about disks ....

By Sandra Henry Stocker

Dec 04, 2008 4 mins

Computers and Peripherals Data Center Open Source