OpenSource software should be encouraged more…
I have been using Debian for more than fifteen years now. Not exclusively — I have used Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, even some BSDs here and there — but Debian is the one I keep coming back to. It is the operating system I trust with my servers, my home lab, and increasingly my daily driver too.
Debian[……]
I’ve been upgrading my Debian 12 (bookworm) server fleet to Debian 13 (trixie).
Here is the successful process I ended up following for them all.
The process is essentially: update your package lists, switch the repository URLs from bookworm to trixie, and run the upgrade. Here is how I did it.
Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware sent licensing costs through the roof. Here’s what it teaches us about open source, vendor lock-in, and why the safe choice isn’t always safe.[……]
Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware sent licensing costs through the roof. Here’s what it teaches us about open source, vendor lock-in, and why the safe choice isn’t always safe.[……]
Paperclip recently caught my attention as it allows you to orchestrate teams of specialised AI agents through a beautiful self-hosted web UI, so I had to give it a try.
The concept is solid: specialized agents for different tasks, all tracked through a ticketing system. The UI[……]
Interesting article on Linux permissions. It explains how to recognise which permission system might be in use (SELinux, ACLs), the meaning of the special bits (setuid, setgid, sticky), how umask works, and more.
The basic Linux permission model — owner, group, others with read/write/execute — is ju[……]
Need to know the dynamic IP ranges used by AWS in a specific region? AWS publishes this as a JSON file.
curl -s https://ip-ranges.amazonaws.com/ip-ranges.json | jq '.prefixes | .[] | select((.region == "eu-west-1") and (.service == "EC2")) | .ip_prefix' | sed 's/"//g'
This filters for EC2 in eu-we[……]
Interesting article on the different levels and skill sets of System Administrators. It breaks down what separates a junior sysadmin from a senior one and the kind of knowledge you accumulate along the way.
Whether you are just starting out or have been managing servers for years, it is a good read[……]
Open Source software was becoming more and more popular in 2009, even though many of these applications were still little known. According to PCWorld, here are ten of the greatest.
Firefox — The open source browser that challenged Internet Explorer and changed the web.
Chromium — The open source pro[……]
Sometimes disks stop responding and cause system slowness because the kernel is waiting for a response that never comes. The disk appears 100% utilised in iostat even though nothing is being read or written.
To avoid rebooting, reset the device. First find it:
lsscsi
Then remove and rescan:
echo[......]
When dealing with hardware, you often see log messages like:
ata9: hard resetting link
ata9: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
To map an ata number to the actual sdX device:
ls -l /sys/class/ata_device/ata9/device/host*/target*/*/block
This shows which sdX corresponds to ata9. Che[……]