System administration is a special are of IT. It also has a special place in my heart. It is an interesting mixture of all the other disciplines, both common across the whole industry, and at the same time unique for each person, company, and geographical location. When I have something to say or share about system administration, I use this category.
7 habits of highly successful Unix admins
Qualys SSL Labs : SSL Server Test
This free online service performs a deep analysis of the configuration of any SSL web server on the public Internet.
Yum Fast Downloader 0.6.0 Released!
Gladly, I was able to devote some time to update yum fast downloader plugin to work much better with recent yum versions in Fedora 19/20. The plugin effectively disabled delta rpm support since the integration of presto into yum. To fix the issue, I reworked the plugin using the new download framework of yum/urlgrabber. The result is yum-fast-downloader plugin for Fedora 20, which not only fixes the problem but also brings better integration. As a result, the plugin is now responsible for almost all downloads including downloading drpm packages.
Besides, it is now possible to specify arbitrary command line arguments (e.g. -q) for aria2c in the plugin’s configuration file.
I've been using Vim for about 2 years now, mostly because I can't figure out how to exit it.
— I Am Devloper (@iamdevloper) February 17, 2014
If you haven’t heard about The Heartbleed Bug yet, here is your chance. Â This page describes it nicely in not too technical detail. Â Let’s get a few quotes to get you started:
The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs).
The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.
That doesn’t just sound nasty. Â IT IS!
Continue reading The Heartbleed Bug