It was back in 1996 when I saw my first Unix command line. I'd heard about Unix before and had always been quite interested in it, mostly due to its history and the folklore surrounding it. But now I had the chance to really get stuck in!
That first time was back in college, where one of our teachers was quite taken by Linux. He decided to include Linux in his classes and and that's how it all got started for me. We learnt very basic stuff, like adding dial-in lines, configure network settings and setting up X11 on a 512kB video card. I was still completely wet behind the ears, but already I knew that this was what I wanted to do in life: be a Sysadmin for Unix boxen. Things went fast from there on: I did a few internships working with Linux, then spent a few years being a Solaris admin at various companies. I was also a consultant for Spherion and Snow and now I work for Unixerius.
In the summer of 2007 things changed and I decided that I didn't want to stay in IT for the rest of my life. I decided to go back to college and study to become a high school teacher. That little adventure lasted for about a year, after which a completely new adventure started: I became a father and went back to IT.
But enough about me :) I decided to add this section to my website to contribute a bit more to the web. I was already busy writing HOWTO's etc for Apple's OS X, but I also wanted to get things going on a professional level. Over here I'll gather as much hard-to-find info as I can. You know the stuff: things you're researching for days on end, just to get something crucial to work. If you happen to be stuck on some weird problem: hang in there! You'll break it (or find a way around it) soon enough :)
2010-01-10 15:10:00
The past few weeks I've spent a few hours here-and-there, trying to get BoKS 6.5 to run on Fedora Core 12. Why? Because FoxT's list of supported platforms only has commercial Linuxes on there. The last free version on there is RedHat 7. I've asked my contacts at FoxT whether they're looking at converting BoKS for free Linuxes, like Fedora.
Unfortunately my efforts were only partially successful. I've used the base BoKS 6.5.2 package for RHEL, which requires a few tweaks to make it work. In the end I got SSH and SU to work properly, but "su -l" and telnet don't work. You can telnet into the Fedora box, but it's never checked for authorization, though servc on the master does receive the request. Also, "su -l" fails immediately with the message "su: password incorrect" without even asking for my password.
I've compiled a list of about a dozen tweaks and extra packages that are needed to get to this point, but I'm far from having a proper BoKS client on Fedora.
kilala.nl tags: sysadmin, boks,
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2009-12-26 11:04:00
After a fellow forum member recently got hacked I decided to quickly check the status of my own website's PHP security. Thankfully, using the free PHPsecinfo tool this becomes trivial. The resulting output quickly gives you an overview of quick wins you can implement to greatly improve your site's security.
All of these fixes require changes to your server's php.ini file, which can be troublesome if you're in a shared server situation. However, Dreamhost have gracefully provided a way of loading your custom php.ini file on their servers.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2009-12-05 22:10:00
Why the frag does the IPv4 networking setup on Red Hat and Fedora Linii need to be so damn complicated? I've just spent half an hour Googling to find the right commands to ensure that my Fedora 12 VM in Parallels configures its eth0 at boot time. Seriously, compare the two:
Solaris 10:
1. Enter hostname and IP in /etc/hosts
2. Enter hostname in /etc/hostname.ni0
3. Enter network base IP and netmask in /etc/netmasks
Fedora 12:
1. Run system-config-network. Fill out all details.
2. Enter hostname and IP in /etc/hosts
3. Enter hostname in /etc/sysconfig/network
4. Set "ONBOOT" to yes in /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0
5. Run: chkconfig --level 35 network on
Seriously, who the fsck comes up with that last line?! I already have the network startup scripts in /etc/init.d and everything in /etc/sysconfig is set up and I -still- need to enable the network config to be loaded at boot time? WTF?! A few years back I had the same fights with setting up static routes that needed to be carried over reboots.
I fscking hate Red Hat.
kilala.nl tags: sysadmin, unix,
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