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Linux and Unix administration and troubleshooting articles, help and inspiration for freelancers and the self employed, advice on blogging, SEO and earning money on-line.

Not a significant source of information concerning Microsoft products. Primary author is an opinionated Mac OS X and Linux Evangelist.

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May contain liberal opinion, small dashes of politics and some crankiness as well as the occasional grin. Contains Skill Tests, Unix and Linux Consultant Listings and more.

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Most recent posts:

Kerio Connect 7 Beta

Kerio is renaming its mailserver to "Kerio Connect". My initial reaction is that changing "Mailserver" to "Connect" is a bad idea. They feel that because the product is so much more than a mailserver, changing the name is appropriate. ..

Kerio 11/19/2009 Tony Lawrence

Freeing disk space with >

I wrote this up after a forum discussion in which several posters didn't really understand why ">" can free disk space when "rm" cannot. The basic problem is that if another process has a file open (for reading or writing, it doesn't matter), the disk blocks are not freed by an "rm" until the process or process using the file quits (or stops using the file, at least). That part seems to be well understood. ..

Linux 11/18/2009 Tony Lawrence

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The Art of SEO

I hope this book helps put an end to ridiculously priced SEO "courses". It could also help eliminate some of the shadier practitioners of SEO, but I'd be happy if it just helps a few people avoid wasting money on nonsense. ..

Books 11/17/2009 Tony Lawrence

Sort -u vs. uniq

I have sometimes seen people use a pipeline that includes "sort | uniq". The result of that is no different than just adding a -u flag to sort and absolutely requires more time and processing power - not that it usually matters; unless the input is humongously long, you'd need to run them through "time" to spot any difference. So why use "uniq"? ..

Linux 11/15/2009 Tony Lawrence

LiveUSB OpenBSD project at sourceforge

It is really easy to create a USB bootable OpenBSD LiveUSB image. With that you can do just about anything you want. ..

Programming 11/14/2009 Girish Venkatachalam

Google's Go

Well, the names on the Go design team rung a few bells: Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Ian Taylor, Russ Cox, Jini Kim and Adam Langley. Yes, THAT Rob Pike, THat Ken Thompson. ..

Linux 11/12/2009 Tony Lawrence

Fishing for an unknown device

If you have a DHCP server anywhere in the network, the device will have obtained an IP address. The DHCP server should be able to show you addresses it has passed out. The only problem is recognizing it - if the server doesn't bother to show you when the DHCP lease was acquired, it may not be easy to spot the new addition. ..

Linux 11/10/2009 Tony Lawrence

Awk vs. Perl

As Perl became ubiquitous, I thought of awk like something sticky you'd find under your car seat. Whatever use that thing may have had in the past, it's heading for the trash now. Why on earth would I suffer with awk's limitations and difficult synatx when I have Perl? ..

Linux 11/9/2009 Tony Lawrence

Using color in shell scripts (Linux, Mac OS X)

Color is tricky. Displays can be bad at it, people can be color blind... using colors can make text hard to read - I don't like using color in scripts. But, if you insist... ..

Linux 11/8/2009 Tony Lawrence

A strangely compromised Linux box

First, there was no attempt to hide any evidence. I could see in wtmp and the secure logs that he had logged in, attained su status, and created a new su user for himself. He then changed root's password. ..

Linux 11/5/2009 Tony Lawrence

When Samba Pigs Fly

Such confidence had I that immediately after hitting send, I left my house to do some errands and when I realized I had forgotten my phone, I didn't even bother to go back for it: everything is under control, all pigs are fed and ready to fly. ..

Troubleshooting 11/4/2009 Tony Lawrence

Gentle Waves

Some people "got it" very quickly. They understood it so much that they were arguing with the people who didn't get it, saying things, like "No, really, this would have been a fantastic tool to have for the work I used to do!" Others were obviously confused. ..

Web/HTML 11/3/2009 Tony Lawrence

Misunderstanding Wave

There are people who don't understand Google Wave. There are people who don't like Google Wave. There are people who do understand Wave, and people who do like it. Most of those who don't like it just don't understand it, but even a few who do understand still don't like it. ..

Web/HTML 11/2/2009 Tony Lawrence

My first Waves

One of the people happened to be someone I do business with and his appearance reminded me that there was something I wanted to talk to him about. We started doing that in a "private" conversation within the existing wave, but then realized that it was better to spawn it off to a new Wave. That's very easy to do and is an advantage of Wave over Mail and Chat - not that you can't peel off from either, but it's easier in Wave. ..

Web/HTML 10/31/2009 Tony Lawrence

Help, I'm disappearing!

Google Maps insists that my address simply does not exist. Indeed, if I summon up a map of the town, the whole street has disappeared! It's still visible in the satellite view, as is my house and even the golf cart parked in my driveway, but the map view shows empty space. ..

Web/HTML 10/29/2009 Tony Lawrence

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