Ryan Tomayko

Building Filesystems the Way You Build Web Apps —

Interesting concept. Layer the routing guts found in modern web frameworks over Linux’s FUSE userland filesystem stuff and you get a nice model for developing custom filesystems.

The small example (~30 LOC) shows how to build a simple GitHub filesystem, which gives you this:

opus:~ broder$ ./githubfs /mnt/githubfs
opus:~ broder$ ls /mnt/githubfs
opus:~ broder$ ls /mnt/githubfs/ebroder
anygit      githubfs     pyhesiodfs  python-simplestar
auto-aklog  ibtsocs  python-github2  python-zephyr
bluechips   libhesiod    python-hesiod
debmarshal  ponyexpress  python-moira
debothena   pyafs    python-routefs
opus:~ broder$ ls /mnt/githubfs
ebroder

Pretty awesome.

man what —

Chris Wanstrath makes the case for UNIX man pages and tours through a bunch of tools for creating, finding, and reading them.

Running Processes —

Dustin Sallings lays out a nice list of simple, non-pid-polling process supervision techniques available on various Unix and Linux environments. Great reference. I’m pretty sure the /etc/inittab respawn directive is one of the most underrated utilities in Linux server environments.

Hot swapping binaries —

The technique in a nutshell:

The basic idea of what’s going to happen is that we will create a pair of pipes and then fork(). The child process will hold the pipe that does the writing and the parent the one that does the reading. Now, the parent will exec. This is a bit odd. Normally when you fork, then exec, it’s the child process which does the exec. However, here we really want the new version of the program to have access to all of the old file descriptors. Luckily, execl preserves these. As an added benefit, the program gets the exact same process ID.

Boom. Nice.

dtach —

Not sure how I never heard of this program before:

dtach is a tiny program that emulates the detach feature of screen, allowing you to run a program in an environment that is protected from the controlling terminal and attach to it later. dtach does not keep track of the contents of the screen, and thus works best with programs that know how to redraw themselves. dtach does not, however, have the other features of screen, such as its support of multiple terminals or its terminal emulation support. This makes dtach extremely tiny compared to screen, making it more easily audited for bugs and security holes, and also allows it to fit in environments where space is limited, such as on rescue disks.

GitHub has rake tasks that use dtach to manage redis and maybe some other things.

40 years of Unix —

Amazing, the way these things happen:

… in August 1969, Ken Thompson’s wife took their new baby to see relatives on the West Coast. She was due to be gone for a month and Thompson decided to use his time constructively – by writing the core of what became Unix. He allocated one week each to the four core components of operating system, shell, editor and assembler.

Constraints are powerful things.

Delve into UNIX process creation —

It’s important to understand how fork(2), pipe(2), and exec(2) work. I don’t want to hear anymore of this “fork is a hack” shit from any of you :)

An in-depth interview with Steve Bourne, creator of the Bourne shell, or sh —

I <3 sh(1).

bash 4.0 NEWS file —

Big list of new features in bash 4.0.

cowsay(1) —

Best. Program. Ever.

tcpdump for Dummies —

Alexander Sandler’s get-up-and-running guide to the tcpdump packet sniffer.

Processes spawn faster than threads? —

Sometimes! Or, fork(2) is a very fast operation on legitimate operating systems. I didn’t realize it could be as fast as spawning a thread, though.

Git Management KernelTrap Thread —

Interesting thread wherein Linus describes the need for various types of Git workflows for leaf developers vs. maintainers. Lot’s of talk about the pros and cons of rebasing in different situations.

Multiprocess versus Multithreaded ... or why Java infects Unix with the Windows mindset —

Erik Engbrecht: “Java took cheap Unix processes and made them expensive. To compensate, it provided primitives for multithreading.”

Why aren’t you using ionice yet??? —

I’m more than a little embarased that I’ve never heard of this utility. I think most modern kernels prioritize IO with normal nice, though…

BashPitfalls —

Most of these are relevant to POSIX sh(1). This one gets me every time: echo <<EOF :)

Csh Programming Considered Harmful —

Uggghhh. I just spent 30 minutes hunting some arcane tcsh bug caused by coreutils dircolors. This is my revenge. I don’t even know I had any csh code running on this machine. It turns out that MacOS X’s /usr/bin/which is implemented in csh. Dumb.

Chroot in OpenSSH —

“… adds a chroot(2) facility to sshd, controlled by a new sshd_config(5) option ‘ChrootDirectory’. This can be used to ‘jail’ users into a limited view of the filesystem, such as their home directory …”

Ubuntu's Upstart event-based init daemon —

I have a strange fetish for init systems (sysv, rc, launchd, etc). This is the first quick introduction to Ubuntu’s new init system (Upstart) I’ve seen. Nice examples of using the initctl command and writing job files.

Git User's Manual —

Finally: “this manual is designed to be readable by someone with basic UNIX command-line skills, but no previous knowledge of git.”

htop - top(1) replacement with hierarchical process listing, nicer keyboard interface, and more... —

Runs on Linux and FreeBSD (with linproc mounted on /compat/linux/proc). I’ve always wondered why top(1) just kind of stopped being developed 10 years ago.

In Unix, what do some obscurely named commands stand for? —

Dennis Ritchie: “There was a facility that would execute a bunch of commands stored in a file; it was called runcom for ‘run commands’, and the file began to be called ‘a runcom’. rc in Unix is a fossil from that usage.”

Nmap for Beginners —

I can never remember nmap args for some reason…

VMWare: Coming Out of the Cloud? —

EC2 is my current pick for most interesting / innovative tech development of the year. Everyone will have to have an EC2 clone by the end of 2008.

Bourne Shell Server Pages —

“Installation is left as an exercise for the reader.”

GNUpdf —

“The goal of the GNU PDF project is to develop and provide a free, high-quality, complete and portable set of libraries and programs to manage the PDF file format, and associated technologies. ”

Mr. Peabody Explains fork() —

Brilliant!

ZFS Puts Net App Viability at Risk? —

Schwartz: “… we will be going after sizable monetary damages. And I am committing that Sun will donate half of those proceeds to the leading institutions promoting free software and patent reform, and to the legal defense of free software innovators.”

Hotwire graphical terminal —

Looks like they’re bringing the basic capabilities of readline up to the GUI level. Definitely interesting.

ManPageView —

Vim add-in for viewing manpages, perldoc (both system and embedded), help, info, and php files. Maybe I’ll finally be able to read all that GNU info doc I keep hearing about in the GNU coreutils man pages.

Fear and loathing at the command line —

“To average users, the suggestion that they use the command line – or the shell, or the terminal, or whatever else you want to call it is only slightly less welcome than the suggestion that they go out and deliberately contract AIDS.” That’s a damn sham

Configuring Apache httpd —

Starting with absolutely no configuration file. This is why I’ve prefered lighttpd, because I can put together a separate config in about five minutes. httpd’s sprawling default config has always scared the crap out of me.

The rsync(1) Algorithm —

Some detail on rsync’s “rolling checksum” algorithm invented by Andrew Tridgell.

Good Shell Coding Practices - Handling Command Line Arguments —

Very nice look at different methods (good and bad) for handling the command line in sh scripts.

Unison File Synchronizer - User Manual and Reference Guide —

I’m gonna give this a try for managing home directories now that I’ve convinced myself that version control is the wrong solution. I moved my homes from CVS to SVN a couple years ago and just tried going with bzr but VCS just isn’t right here.

Cronic - A cure for Cron's chronic email problem —

“… cron’s pathological behavior has be petrified into the Unix standards. So if it isn’t broken, it isn’t cron.”

unix domain sockets vs. internet sockets —

Pretty much what you thought but with great detail :)

Microsoft 'evidence' turns against them [tectonic.co.za] —

“The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does.”

Server Monitoring With munin And monit On Debian Etch —

Nifty combo.

Dell joins the Microsoft-Novell alliance, hopes for Windows / Linux harmony —

I’ve read the following line five times but it refuses to compute: “… and now it sounds like Dell will be buying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft …” Huh? Looks like I should have further researched the MS/Novel deal.

Does Linux "Fail To Think Across Layers?" [slashdot.org] —

Slashdot has become a horrible discussion forum for most topics. Disk theory and UNIX sysadmin type stuff is an exception, though. This story on ZFS might have the most informational comments I’ve seen in years.

Did Microsoft just patent sudo? —

What’s next? which(1)?

These are the systems and peripherals [Michael S. Dell] is using right now. [dell.com] —

Michael Dell runs Ubuntu 7.04 on his personal laptop :)

What to watch out for when writing portable shell scripts —

Nice look at techniques for writing portable sh.

You are kidding arent you? —

“Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve.” :)

leaving duke —

Seth is on the market. Hire him.

Define - /etc? —

“et see” :)

getopt and getopts —

A complete look at the little used utilities for processing arguments in scripts.

What's cooking for FreeBSD 7? —

Lots of stuff from Sun (ZFS, dtrace), Linuxulator translates Linux syscalls to BSD syscalls with not performance penalty, lots of performance enhancements to the network stack from the card up, and a new malloc.

UNIX® Load Average Part 1: How It Works —

Love it! This is less of an article and more of a minute by minute account of hacker seeing something he doesn’t understand and following the trail (man, code, calculus) to understanding.

Making Fedora RESTful —

Wow, I’m surprised I’ve never seen anything about this before.

Text email clients revisited [linux.com] —

I’ve been using a fetchmail, procmail, and mutt setup on my Mac for a few months now in an attempt to get control over five different mailboxes and it’s working pretty well. If you’ve got some free time and lots of mail, consider playing around with one o

IEs4Linux —

Whose going to get this running on OS X? I guess it doesn’t really matter. I can always X over to a Linux box…

Fedora Legacy shutting down —

This seems like really bad news to me.

Microsoft versus FOSS Configuration Management —

“Dependency management is probably the most important contribution of open source to software engineering.” — I don’t know about that but it’s definitely up there. It’s mind boggling that MS hasn’t developed some form of package management.

UNIX productivity tips —

Best UNIX productivity article I’ve read in a long while.

Shell Tips and Tricks —

… and not just the usual suspects either.

Linux is Not Windows —

Lot’s of things I’ve wanted to say in here…

Unattended, Encrypted, Incremental Network Backups: Part 1 —

Cool.

Patent absurdity —

Stallman on the EU software patent mess.

Is Linux For Losers? —

Worse is better.

Open-source LAMP a beacon to developers —

Beautiful. Our pal Stephen O'Grady gets a nice quote in this one. To the moon!

Linus compares Linux and BSDs —

“Which mindset is right? Mine, of course. People who disagree with me are by definition crazy. (Until I change my mind, when they can suddenly become upstanding citizens)”

Seth Vidal : Fedora Foundation —

Seth on the recent Fedora Foundation announcement: “It reminds me of the announcements about 2 years ago for something called the Red Hat Linux Project.”

The Most Powerful Labor Union in the World: Linux? —

I don’t even know what to think of this…

How The Kernel Development Process Works —

Debunking the common myth that anyone can commit changes to any F/OSS project whenever they.

SCO to Groklaw's PJ: Who Are You? —

Haha! SCO is out of control.

Mr. Yum —

A great snap of Seth Vidal, quite possibly the best project leader I’ve ever had the privilege of working with.

Using Bash's History Effectively —

Need to move away from history | grep -i

Emacs as Cargo —

Came across this odd section in a “leaving Emacs for vi” document and it has a really interesting description of the history of FSF/GNU, Linux, and the evolution of Free Software. Seems out of place in this document but is worth reading.

Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best Friend —

Brazil gets it. They could be the international version of Silicon Valley in the next five years…

MIT Backs Brazil's Free Software over Microsoft —

I’m seriously considering considering moving to Brazil. That country is really starting to get their shit together and the gov seems close to the people.

Microsoft's first explicit anti-GNU/Linux ad —

From Oct 23, 2000 issue of the German language magazine c’t

How I learned to stop worrying and love the command line, part 1. —

Introduction to being a complete bad-ass.

Open Sores Software Development —

“Save Money, Save Time, Save Your Ass”

Eclipse Java-GNOME Demo —

Demo of 100% free Java/Eclipse natively compiled with gcj. This is slated for Fedora Core 4.

MSFT refuses to give 15 XP licenses for tsunami relief related work —

I almost puked when I read this. I hope there’s just been a mix up or something.

A Sneak Peek at GNOME 2.10 —

Looks like a nice little upgrade..

MilkMint GTK2 Theme (for GNOME) —

A nice and simple theme for GTK2/GNOME desktop environments (click thumbnail image to see larger screenshot).

CNet: Red Hat tries again with Linux enthusiasts —

Decent coverage of recent Fedora activity. Things should start kicking up here now that Fedora Extras CVS is available and Seth Vital is taking a more active role.

Experimental Culture —

A look at the past, present, and possible future of GNOME culture.

Tuning the Linux Kernel with a Genetic Algorithm —

Good idea!

Torvalds: A Solaris skeptic —

Linus on Solaris going OSS.

Gish —

Supposedly kick ass video game for OS X, Linux, and Windows. Free demo available.

Optimize Me Harder —

“Nobody really modifies the source of open source software.” — somebody didn’t get that memo; possibly all of australia..

gyum - Graphical User Interface for Yum —

Cool. This is one of the most frequent requests on yum-devel. Not sure who’s behind this though because I don’t remember seeing it discussed on the mailing list.

bugzilla.redhat.com: Bug 127369 —

Best bug report I’ve ever seen in my life.

RE: fedora core 3 goals. —

Icon’s fictitious #redhat IRC transcript relaying some of the issues surrounding the Fedora project from the community’s POV. This is a few months old. I hope some of this has been cleared up.

1.2 Terabyte Linux based media PC for $2000 —

Sorry, no one is getting christmas presents from me this year.

GNU make Manual —

All on one page :)

Fedora Core 3 Installation Notes —

Instructions for getting a FC3 installed and up to snuff.

Red Hat Magazine —

I hope they keep this semi-technical. First issue looks pretty good.

Fedora Core 3 Screenshot tour —

This is a really good idea.

Netcraft Results for beta.search.msn.com —

Maybe Balmer could include the fact that msn search runs on Linux in his next “Get The Facts” campaign.

Build your own search engine with ht://Dig —

when you can’t afford a google appliance…

Linux not ready for mass market —

probably true. shrug..

FC4 - Thoughts about the future. —

Seth Vital provides a list of things that need to happen for Fedora to be successful moving forward. Note that most of these have been problems that received little attention since Fedora 1.

Ballmer: Comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX —

for some reason, anytime I’m reading ballmer, I always get that charlie-brown-on-the-phone-voice in my head. — Wah wah.. Wah wah wah wah, wah wah…

The Novell-Merkey Case (1998) —

Some guy is trying to buy the GPL off the Linux kernel by contacting individual copyright holders and offering them cash.

Sam's Teach Yourself Emacs in 24 Hours —

yeah whatever… I’ve been trying to learn emacs for years.

The Hole Hawg —

Neal Stephenson on UNIX.

Mac Takes Honors as Best Unix Desktop —

“KDE and GNOME have both gotten much better, but let’s get real. They’re not even in the same ballpark.” — Ouch. True though…

A Tao of Regular Expressions

Patent Theory —

Tim Bray with an objective look at something that’s hard to talk about without using the words “bullshit” or “fukt” or “broken”. We need more people like Tim. I tend to just bitch.

SCO's McBride warns of open source 'wild west' —

Protect your intellectual property now or risk having your business sacked by open souce-touting bandits!

Secure programmer: Prevent race conditions —

Some really good info on various methods of dealing with synchronization between processes on *NIX based systems.

SCO CEO admits IP license revenue disappointment —

imagine that.

Linux cannot compete with Longhorn —

History of WinFS (hint: OFS)

Doom 3 for Linux Released —

‘bout time.

Ten Commands Every Linux Developer Should Know —

ctags/etags, strace, fuser, ps, time, nm, strings, od/xxd, file, objdump

Synergy —

“share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems” via PhotoMatt.

Red Hat Executives Blog: The Latest Joke from Redmond —

Red Hat Exec Michael Tieman’s comments on Microsoft’s weird move into the open source mindview.

GNOME: We've overtaken Windows, bring on Apple —

Title is a bit misleading. GNOME feels they have reached Windows' level of functionality (I’d agree) and are now shooting to bring the featureset in line with Apple’s OS X.

GmailFS - Gmail Filesystem —

“..provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium.” – Maybe I will be able to put these 7 Gmail invites to good use after all.

Microsoft slammed over misleading Windows Linux claims —

“The ad contained a graph comparing the cost in US dollars between Linux running on two z900 mainframe CPUs and a Windows Server 2003 image running two 900MHz Intel Xeons chips.” Since when are mainframe chips only 10 times more expensive than x86 chips?

The Joel on Software Forum - Explain why emacs is popular? (Not a troll) —

After using Emacs for three years, I think I finally need to learn how to use it. This has some good pointers.

Ohio LinuxFest —

Conference for Linux enthusiasts of all kinds. Right down the street from me at OSU.

Patents and Linux [ongoing] —

Tim Bray on all the recent news about linux’s 283 patent infingements.

BayStar-SCO Agreement Falls Apart, Legal Action Threatened —

“In the first quarter of 2004, SCOsource realized only $20,000 and in the last quarter the revenue from IP licensing came to a mere $11,000.”

Fedora People