Scripting Sysadmin

Links for 2009-11-08 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-09T00:00:00-08:00

activity streams - an extension to the Atom feed format to express what people are doing around web

Links for 2009-11-06 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-07T00:00:00-08:00

Amaya Binary Releases

Links for 2009-11-05 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-06T00:00:00-08:00

How to compile a kernel for Ubuntu Karmic | My Thoughts

Links for 2009-11-03 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-04T00:00:00-08:00

Speaking UNIX: Peering into pipes

2009-11-03T11:37:00.001-06:00

Pipe Viewer is one of those little-known gems that once you find it, you can't recall how you lived without it. You may find some applications of pv in your daily command-line use, but you are likely to find oodles of uses for it in your automation scripts. Rather than stare at a blinking cursor waiting patiently for some indication that all is well, you can now insert a probe to give you real-time feedback. Pipe Viewer adds a heartbeat to the soul of the machine.

Speaking UNIX: Peering into pipes

Links for 2009-11-02 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-03T00:00:00-08:00

The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave

Links for 2009-11-01 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-01T23:00:00-08:00

Powershell 2.0 for all platforms

Links for 2009-10-31 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-01T00:00:00-07:00

Hak5 episode - Metasploit 101 with Mubix

2009-10-29T20:23:00.001-05:00

via Hak5

Testing...

2009-10-21T23:32:00.004-05:00

New domain name... scriptingsysadmin.com
old one is dead...

Pixar Intro Parody

2009-10-21T17:07:00.001-05:00

What happens after the lamp crushes the letter "i"?

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

GigaOm: Data Center in a briefcase

2009-10-15T11:32:00.001-05:00

via gigaom

VirtualBox vs. Vmware

2009-10-14T18:48:00.001-05:00

hak5

On waving...

2009-10-14T09:54:00.001-05:00

The trouble is, everything you type into Wave is transmitted live, in real time—every keystroke was getting sent to Zach just as I hit it. This made me too self-conscious to get my thoughts across.

The Google Wave chatting tool is too complicated for its own good. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine

I ran into the above problem and it really does throw one off when composing a reply. There used to be an indicator which showed if someone was online. A small green dot by the name in the contacts list. But its gone. Now you don't know if someone is online at the same time you are. If you start replying they could be looking at you type your reply. What if what you type isn't the message you wanted to get across? You can't take it back. They either need to enable the draft button, or at least get the indicator back.

Its early though, and they are trying out new ideas. I had no idea there was all this nomenclature other than wave itself:

You've even got to learn a new nomenclature: In Wave, messages are called waves, which are themselves composed of smaller elements called blips. There's also another class of message called pings, which are meant to be more urgent than waves—though once you're done with a ping, it turns into a wave. Got that?

Giving IE8 a try…

2009-10-14T08:44:00.001-05:00

It tends to stop responding quite often on one machine (win7rtm) ...

And has tabs that are stuck connecting forever on another machine (vistasp2)... and now I'm wondering why am I giving IE8 a try?

Conan interviews the real Ajay Bhatt

2009-10-10T15:16:00.001-05:00

via engadget

Schtasks

2009-10-08T14:53:00.001-05:00

Schedules commands and programs to run periodically or at a specific time. Adds and removes tasks from the schedule, starts and stops tasks on demand, and displays and changes scheduled tasks.

via microsoft

I've known about the at command to schedule tasks in windows, and it turns out that schtasks is a more detailed command.

For instance to schedule a task to run every five minutes:

schtasks /create /tn "task name goes here" /tr executable_goes_here.exe /sc minute /mo 5

Wave Invites

2009-10-05T08:38:00.001-05:00

I’m starting to hate google now. They gave me eight invites. I asked a couple of friends and invited them. Google hasn’t sent out the invites. My friends are thinking I played them or something. Stupid Google.

SCCM Guides

2009-09-28T13:40:00.001-05:00

I've been messing around with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) for work and I just wanted to point to these great tutorials at windows-noob.com. Also this screencast was a good starting point as well.

I used virtual machines for my setup. Active Directory / DNS / DHCP servers are required for SCCM. Run them in their own virtual machine, away from SCCM to avoid headaches!

Phoenix Instant Boot BIOS video

2009-09-24T22:52:00.001-05:00

via engadget

A good list of reasons not to have an always active update daemon.

2009-09-24T21:51:00.001-05:00

Here are a few reasons why an always-active daemon (software speak for a tiny app that runs in the background) for handling software updates is a bad idea:

It opens up an always-on tunnel to Google. While Google may be confident its update servers will never be compromised, how confident are you? If a third party gains control of that server, it can inject nearly any code it wants into your machine.

It’s always on, always looking for update. On an expensive, pay-by-the-megabyte EVDO network? Google Updater doesn’t care and will suck down any available updates without asking, costing you money.

Google updates Google Earth or Picasa or Gtalk, but the update ends up having a bug that wipes data from your drive. Sorry, too late — the auto-updater already grabbed the latest version without asking. Kiss your data goodbye.

Administering a large network that needs to be locked down and tightly controlled? Cross Google software off your list. All the above problems apply, but they’re cascaded across your network for added headaches.

via Why Google’s Software Update Tool Is Evil | Epicenter | Wired.com

This is a test

2009-09-15T23:57:00.001-05:00

Just testing to see how long it takes for this post to show up in friendfeed.

Update: Took about 8 minutes for the item to show up. Thats not real time… though a wiki says its 95% done.

On tornado

2009-09-11T22:40:00.001-05:00

Started playing with the tornado library released by facebook recently and it seems you cannot run tornado on windows. The framework seems to use fcntl which only works on Unix platforms.

Python on snow leopard

2009-09-06T00:04:00.001-05:00

Seems snow leopard comes with two version of Python. Python 2.6 and Python 2.5. Python 2.6.1 seems to be running in 64 bit mode by default. When I try to import wxPython I get the following:

ImportError: /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/wx-2.8-mac-unicode/wx/_core_.so: no appropriate 64-bit architecture (see "man python" for running in 32-bit mode)

I need to have the 32 bit version of python execute. One of the methods listed in the man page is:
export VERSIONER_PYTHON_PREFER_32_BIT=yes

Adding this to my .profile leads to the 32 bit version of Python running which loads wxPython just fine.

A Dynamic Network Layer for Advanced Cloud Computing

2009-08-03T21:03:00.001-05:00

via youtube

Why OpenBSD's Release Process Works

2009-07-16T21:43:00.001-05:00

via slashdot

Just testing... please ignore...

2009-06-13T21:37:00.003-05:00

Scoble gets advice about your facebook page

2009-06-11T19:06:00.001-05:00

via techcrunch

Robert Scoble is launching his new site and that's a video from the site about facebook pages.

FireFox 3.5 Treats Videos Like Web Pages.

2009-06-10T12:40:00.000-05:00

via techcrunch

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

2009-05-28T21:32:00.001-05:00

via friendfeed

Here is a link to youtube if you want to watch the video there.

Update: Just wanted to note how refreshing it is to see an internet company actually work to extend/improve the internet, instead of introducing a service that locks you in to their platform.

EcmaScript 5: Changes to JavaScript

2009-05-20T12:35:00.001-05:00

via Ajaxian

Google Tech Talk: State of the X Window

2009-05-16T14:19:00.001-05:00

via youtube