I wasn't originally going to write this up on the blog, but considering that we've just finished our transition from our old backup software (BRU, no link) to Bacula community edition and considering that it's World Backup Day, it seemed like it would make sense. As many of you are …

This weekend, Rob and I had been testing the use of hardware keys to secure ssh sessions, especially for back-end console access and certain administrative functions. Since the hardware keys are a special case, and cannot be added to the ssh-agent, we were slinging around a fair number of command …

OK, now that I have your attention with the catchy title, let me get right into the reason behind this post. Rob has been doing a lot of work lately on a set of roles to provision raspberry pi systems. I'm grateful for the work in this area, because frankly …

At ClueTrust, we use a lot of automation to run our systems. It's mostly how just a couple of us can manage hundreds of virtual servers and keep them up-to-date and operational. A few years back, I moved from using Puppet to Ansible, mostly at the suggestion of RS, who …

Over the past few weeks, RS and I have noticed an increasing number of unexplained failures logging in over SSH with both manual and automated means. On most of the servers it was just an inconvenience, but as it started to become more frequent, it became a significant issue for …

At the beginning of the month, I wrote about the move to convert Gaige's Pages to a static generation model. Today I'm following up with some performance graphs. There's absolutely nothing surprising here, but it's good to see nonetheless that things work as they should. Look to the right of …

Over Thanksgiving, one of the two drives in my "Big Disk" RAID (it was a mirror of 2 2TB drives that I used to store large things that aren't worth having on the SSD on my Mac Pro). Generally speaking, my response to failures with SMART (especially with cheap spinning …

I'd never heard of World Backup Day before seeing an article about it in Wired today, but it sounds like a good idea, especially for those whose friends may partake in a little bit of the April Foolery tomorrow. So, it's a good time for me to discuss backup software …

Hi folks. We're back on the air with a new server and a new design. Hopefully this less noisy design is a bit more palatable. Any links to the old site will cease to function today, but there weren't many anyway (according to Google Webmaster Tools), but we have preserved …

Normally, I wouldn't post about an Apple security update, because they're relatively common and generally attack most of the issues within a period of time that everyone agrees is a bit too long. However, there was a lot of hubub about Apple's "delay" in getting the security patch out for …

This is very good news for those of us in the Mac community that have been pining after some of the high-performance RAID systems available on other platforms. For a long time, 3ware has been a vendor of choice for hardware RAID in both the SATA and ATA arenas due …

So, given that we've now heard about 2 "defections" from the Macintosh to Ubuntu, I wanted to see what the fuss is all about, so that I could comment on things. So, I downloaded (via bittorrent) the latest (6.0.6) version of Ubuntu and gave it a whirl. My …

I realize that now even CNet has gotten into the act with publicizing the defection of one long-time Macintosh user (Mark Pilgrim) and another who is making noise about possibly switching (Tim Bray of Sun). So, it's time to make some more noise about what's really happening. Unfortunately, I didn't …

Just because there haven't been enough stories about running XP on your Macintosh, here's a new one: Parallels of Herndon, VA (that's right down the street) has announced availability of a beta version of Parallels Workstation for the Macintosh, available today. Unlike the solutions to date, this is a commercially …

I've been using a MacMini running OSX Server to do VPN at my house for about a year now. It worked very well until I got my new MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, there have been problems since then. I now have a call into Apple and a nice work-around. I'm not …

For those out there (you know who you are) who may have some time over the next couple of weeks and are looking to hone Macintosh programming skills, you might take a look at the iron coder contest. It's a timed contest wherein an API is disclosed and the participants …

This is definitely not for non-administrators. However, I spent some serious time today trying to track this down, so let me save somebody some time here with this tidbit. It all started when I noticed that some of my users on my OSX Server machine were unable to access private …

According to an article in today's Washington Post (read it fast, 'cause the Post'll charge you if you wait too long), Grants.gov, the Federal Government's clearinghouse for grant applications is not compatible with anything other than Microsoft's Windows operating system. Apparently, the contractor (Northrop Grumman) felt that their implementation …

Following up a story from late last week (and a smidgen late in my follow up), Oracle has indeed announced Oracle(r) Database 10g Express Edition (XE). Unfortunately, the details aren't exactly to my liking. The biggest complaint that I see with the product in the initial release is that …

Oracle, the biggest name in commercial databases, is preparing a new version Oracle 10g Express Edition for free use by users who would otherwise go to Open Source solutions (such as MySQL or PostgreSQL). The new version, to ship by the end of the year according to an article from …