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Ethernet Interface Naming

As far as I recall the standard for naming Linux Ethernet devices has always been ethX where X is a number starting at 0. Until fairly recently the interface names were based on the order that device drivers were loaded or the order in which the PCI bus was scanned. This meant that after hardware […]

Why Clusters Usually Don’t Work

It’s widely regarded that to solve reliability problems you can just install a cluster. It’s quite obvious that if instead of having one system of a particular type you have multiple systems of that type and a cluster configured such that broken systems aren’t used then reliability will increase. Also in the case of routine […]

Pre-Meeting Lightning Talks

This evening I arrived at the LUV [1] meeting half an hour before it started. I was one of about a dozen people sitting in the room waiting, some of us had laptops and were reading email but others just sat quietly – the venue is sometimes open as much as an hour before the […]

Creating a SE Linux Chroot environment

Why use a Chroot environment?

A large part of the use of chroot environments is for the purpose of security, it used to be the only way of isolating a user from a section of the files on a server. In many of the cases where a chroot used to be used for security it […]

SE Linux status in Debian/Squeeze

ffmpeg

I’ve updated my SE Linux repository for Squeeze to include a modified version of the ffmpeg packages without MMX support for the i386 architecture. When MMX support is enabled it uses assembler code which requires text relocations (see Ulrich Drepper’s documentation for the explanation of this [1]). This makes it possible to run programs […]

Digital Video Cameras

I’ve just done some quick research on Digital Video Cameras for some relatives. It seems to me that the main feature that is necessary is Full HD (1920*1080) resolution as everyone seems to be getting 1920*1080 resolution monitors (getting smaller doesn’t save enough money to be worth-while). Resolutions higher than 1920*1080 will probably available in […]

Is Lebara the Cheapest Mobile Phone company in Australia?

My parents have just got a mobile phone with a Lebara pre-paid SIM [1]. Lebara advertise free calls to other Lebara phones but have a disclaimer that they charge a 25 cent flagfall and charge 15 cents per minute after the first 10 minutes – which is still cheaper than most mobile calls although not […]

Virtual Hosting Prices

Linode has just announced a significant increase in the amount of RAM in each of their plans [1].

The last time I compared virtual hosting prices in a serious manner was over two years ago [2], so it seems like a good time to compare the prices again.

Now there are some differences between these […]

Carpal Tunnel – Getting Better

Three months ago I wrote about getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome [1]. A few weeks after that I visited the specialist again and had my wrist brace adjusted to make it a little less uncomfortable. The specialist also gave me some quick ultra-sound treatment and then said that if it didn’t get better in a month […]

Should Passwords Expire?

It’s widely regarded that passwords should be changed regularly. The Australian government declared last week the “National Cyber Security Awareness Week” [1] and has published a list of tips for online security which includes “Get a stronger password and change it at least twice a year“.

Can a Password be Semi-Public?

Generally I think of […]