Tag Archives: sysadmin

Moving!

I’ve been [comparatively] quiet for a while now, and I can finally announce the results of my endeavours: I’ve resigned from Internode (ie. iiNet) in order to accept a position at Google in Sydney. This means that Missy and I … Continue reading

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ping -f[aux flood]

I’m having trouble admitting this publicly, but I learnt something new recently about ping, of all things. To quote from the man page of ping: -f Flood ping. For every ECHO_REQUEST sent a period “.” is printed, while for ever … Continue reading

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Multiple SSH port-forwards, all in a row…

Sometimes, you really need to get from point “A” to point “B”, but you can’t. Restrictive firewalls, poor change control, you don’t own the infrastructure, or maybe it’s just “temporary” and you don’t want to have to go to all … Continue reading

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GNOME-Shell multi-timezone clock

As many of you know, the company I work for (Internode) was recentlyish purchased by iiNet. iiNet’s headquarters is in Perth, which is 1.5 or 2.5 hours “behind” Adelaide time. There’s no longer a multi-timezone clock available for the panel, … Continue reading

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NetWorker – Random stalling

One of the things I’ve spent a lot of time with, has been EMC NetWorker (previously Legato NetWorker). A vaguely common issue is for a process of some kind – backups, staging to tape, restores, etc – for no reason … Continue reading

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IPv6 for SysAdmins

IPv6 is a new and complicated piece of technology; like any new technology it takes a while to get used to and discover what does and doesn’t really work. Who am I? I’m Robert Mibus, and I helped roll out … Continue reading

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gSolaris

Among other things at work, I help look after a small set of Solaris hosts. One of the real frustrations I have with Solaris is the lack of functionality in many of the “standard” applications, things that I’ve come to … Continue reading

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MythTV “du” – find out what shows take up the most space

I was wondering where all my space was going in MythTV recently, so I figured I’d whip up a quick “du” that will give me a per-title breakdown of usage. It assumes you have just the one storage area for … Continue reading

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GoDaddy – mixed-case DNS WTFery.

A friend passed me a bounce of mail to my domain; DNS-related it said. Dutifully, I checked the record: $ dig @ns43.domaincontrol.com mibus.org mx ; DiG 9.7.3 @ns43.domaincontrol.com mibus.org mx ; (2 servers found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got … Continue reading

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Desktop SCRAM

So the problem goes like this: A coworker asks if I want to join them for a coffee. (This happens multiple times per day, FWIW). I say “Yes!” and jump up… …then sit back down to lock my computer screen, … Continue reading

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