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{ Monthly Archives } August 2007

Stupid Software!

Stupid Winamp. I update it on my laptop last weekend, and suddenly none of the MS Office products work any more.
Stupid MS Ofice. After I get back to the office, I try to repair it by pointing it at the setup files it’s been looking for all weekend, but it doesn’t like those setup files.
Stupid [...]

Why I Read All My Email as Plain Text

Click the image below for a full size version:

And no, the IRS doesn’t have a site ending in .ir (that’s Iran).

Authentication Servers, the Next Generation

I’m mildly embarrassed by my previous setup authentication servers, but this one should be a vast improvement. A reminder of the existing constraints and conditions:

Lots of Linux systems and a few Solaris systems, some of which dual-boot and aren’t accessible as *nix systems during normal hours of the day
An Active Directory already in place
An overworked [...]

The New File Server: Puppet and Modules

On to Puppet. I’ve not yet factored everything about the new server out into separate modules or classes; that’ll come later. But things that will either get reused on other systems (e.g., Active Directory ties) or things that need to be generated consistently and repeatedly (e.g., Amanda configurations) have been factored out. The new server’s [...]

The New File Server: Preseeding and LVM

Remember that no one cares if you can back up — only if you can restore.
– Amanda 2.5.2 Documentation
So we’ve got a new file server in the middle of initial installation and configuration. The file server is one of our most mission-critical systems — if mail goes down, a half-dozen people care. If the web [...]