Excellent Unix tool which watches for attacks on ssh and blocks malicious hosts from connecting. I’ve only just found that it has a “synchronization” mode which shares the knowledge of evil hosts. Installed on all my servers.
Filed under
:
linux
:
security
:
ssh
The Debian SSL fubar farrago - some light perspective
If you have a Debian or Ubuntu box and used it to generate an SSH key in the last couple of years, due to a rather heinous bug, there’s a high chance you have one of roughly 260,000 keys.
To put this in perspective, if your account was protected by a 4 lower-case-character password, it would be harder to brute-force access (264 = 456,976).
For the sake of the internet, follow the instructions to update the keys on your servers forthwith.
Wine for OS X and Linux especially designed to play graphically-intensive Windows games. The Orange Box and its contents are supported, and Audio-Surf ran OK for me, with some minor resolution-based oddness. Not sure it’s worth $40, though, when I can just reboot to Boot Camp.
The excellent TrueCrypt now runs on OS X, as well as Windows and Linux. I’ll definitely be shunting some of my files onto an encrypted thumbdrive later.
If you can read this…
…then my DNS-fu has worked, and you’re now hitting groovymother.com on its new server, a virtual Linux box running via Xen, hosted by VPSLink.com
For the last 6 years, all my sites have been hosted from my home, at the mercy of my (usually exceptionally-reliable) Speakeasy DSL connection. However, when the whims of BitTorrent take me, it can cause slowdowns, and virtual-server technology now means I can get root on a hosted server for less than the price of a cup of gin a day, so I’m putting my trust in a hosting company’s arms, and seeing how it works out.
(After signing up with VPSLink, I received a recommendation for Slicehost who offer similarly-priced services, so it’s good to know that switching shouldn’t be a problem if VPSLink turns out to suck balls for some reason)
“Ext3cow is an open-source, versioning file system based on ext3. It provides a time-shifting interface that allows a real-time and continuous view of the past. This allows users to access their file system as it appeared at any point in time.”
Filed under
:
ext3
:
filesystem
:
linux
Open source Guitar Hero-a-like.
Good to know — how to cleanly reboot a frozen Linux box when you can’t even get it to give you a terminal prompt.
Filed under
:
howto
:
linux
:
mnemonic
Open source Worms-a-like. Far too many of my student hours were taken up playing “Worms 2” against my flatmates. Admittedly, most of that time was taken up by giggling as we named our worms things like “Sean Is A Virgin” and “Jim’s Cock”, but I think the game was fun too.
Truly excellent open-source Bust-a-Move clone hits 2.0. Features, oh yes, internet multiplayer mode. My productivity hits new lows. (No Windows or OSX port yet, but hopefully only a matter of time)
Filed under
:
download
:
free
:
games
:
linux
:
oss
Good commentary of the unpleasantness that’s about to unfold with this Firefox/Iceweasel fork. The two new “features” which will now ship with Debian, Ubuntu, et al are just the tip of an iceberg of confusion and incompatibility.
More in-depth screen-fu from the Gentoo Wiki. screen is now officially my favourite Linux utility EVER! (of the week).
Filed under
:
gentoo
:
linux
:
screen
A little screen-fu — I didn’t realise that one screen session could encompass multiple screens.
Filed under
:
gentoo
:
linux
:
screen
“I nearly switched to Ubuntu when Mark did…” hee.
Manoman is this handy. Boot up off the live CD and repartition your hard drive on the fly without losing data. It’s like PartitionMagic, but free, free and it doesn’t corrupt your data!
Free but not-free tool for system monitoring. Looks like a usable alternative to Nagios.
Cross-platform mountable network file-system storing your precious data with Amazon’s S3 service.
Cool. I’d been looking for a simple Linux monitoring tool like this a few weeks ago — Something simple that can plot load over time.
Jeepers, this is a cool hack. VT100-emulator running in Javascript over AJAX to allow you to remote-control a server over HTTP.
Filed under
:
ajax
:
download
:
linux
:
oss
:
python
Tool for running olde DOS games (Soundblaster emulation and all) in Windows/Linux/OSX. I’ll have to try getting “Jones In The Fast Lane” up and running with it.
I'm 