dkg's blog

I'm playing with btrfs to get a feel for what's coming up in linux filesystems.

One of the nice features of a distributed version control system (DVCS) like git is the ability to tag specific states of your project, and to cryptographically sign your tags.

liw recently wrote about test-driven development: This all sounds like a lot of bureaucratic nonsense, but what I get out of this is this: once all tests pass, I have a strong confidence that the software works.

I use USAA for some of my finances.

Curious about these shiny new things i keep hearing about, i set up a test desktop system using using systemd as the init system (yes, that means using systemd-sysv in place of sysvinit -- so i had to remove an essential package for this to work).

I've got a Debian GNU/Linux lenny installation (2.6.26-2-vserver-amd64 kernel) running on a Dell Poweredge 2950 with BIOS 2.0.1 (2007-10-27).

I recently set up debian on a Thecus N8800Pro.

jrollins and i recently did a bunch of cleanup work on debirf, with the result that debirf 0.30 can now build all the shipped example profiles without error (well, as long as debootstrap --variant=fakechroot is working properly -- apprently that's not the…

I spent part of today looking at packaging Peter Gutmann's CryptLib for debian.

Is there a way to access a MySQL database over the network from PHP and be confident that the connection is actually using SSL, and the server's X.509 certificate was successfully verified?

I used to maintain a membership with IEEE.

Let's say you set up a machine using an encrypted disk with LUKS (debian-installer's partman makes this wonderfully easy!).

A friend just pointed me to Liberating Knowledge: A Librarian's Manifesto for Change by Barbara Fister, an academic librarian who also happens to write mystery novels.

Someone recently pointed me to some economic/statistical models that were designed for eviews (a proprietary tool).

i suspect a lot of people are used to forwarding TCP sockets with SSH -- for example, to connect locally to a mysql daemon that runs only on the loopback interface of a remote machine (this is debian's default mysql-server configuration): ssh -N -T -oExit…

i've been on an IPv6 kick recently, getting dual-stack systems up and working for a bunch of folks.

Debian NYC will be holding a workshop next week: What's in a Package?

Roland Mas writes an interesting article about decentralized naming, in which he says: Monkeysphere aims at adding a web of trust to the SSL certificates system, but the CA chain problem seems to persist (although I must admit I'm not up to speed with the…

If you're not using ssh-agent to authenticate yourself to SSH servers, you should be.

Apparently, live.com thinks that any browser coming from a ppc architecture is a mobile device.

A year ago, i wrote about how New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) requires the use of Internet Explorer to apply online (and it even appears to require IE just to download the PDF of the application!)

I'm helping out on the talks committee for debconf 10 this summer in NYC (so yes, i'm going to be here for it, even though i don't have that little badge thingy).

i'm aware that people don't always take proper measures during mass OpenPGP keysignings.

This is the story of a weirdly unfriendly/non-compliant IMAP server, and some nice interactions that arose from a debugging session around it.

We're going to have a Bug-Squashing Party at the end of January 2010 in New York City.

I was trying to dump a large Logical Volume (LV) over ethernet from one machine to another.

I've been using virtual machines (KVM, these days) as isolated environments to do things like build packages as root.

I've just revoked my signature over the Ubuntu Code of Conduct 1.0.1.

So not even 3 months out from RMS's sexist Gran Canaria “virgins” remarks, we have another powerful leader in the Free Software Community making sexist remarks in a talk to developers (this time, it's Mark Shuttleworth).

Modern daemon implementations can be run in a variety of ways, in a range of contexts.

I maintain several xen machines.

The other, better-known and wiser Dan Gillmor (disclosure: we don't just share names, we're related) has started a new project called Mediactive.

I have a little old Canon SD200 point-and-shoot, which is a decent camera. unfortunately, i've (ab)used it quite a bit, lugging it everywhere in my pocket or in a bag and even sending it up in a kite (and, uh, bouncing it off the ground on the way back do…

Enrico posted a neat trick to track the SSH host keys of debian machines, thanks to Zobel.

Last week at eurocrypt, a small group of researchers announced a fairly serious attack against the SHA-1 digest algorithm, which is used in many cryptosystems, including OpenPGP.

Providing city services only to users of specific proprietary software is bad public policy.

I just noticed Matthew Palmer's Insane/Brilliant idea of the day: he proposes to use large sets of USB serial adapters with a sheevaplug as a cheap serial console server.

So i'm a couple hours late for Ada Lovelace Day (in my time zone at least), but i wanted to mention Leslie Pack Kaelbling, an excellent technologist who has also had a significant impact on my life.

I live in the USA.

I'm supporting a medium-sized (\~70 regular clients and a half-dozen servers) LAN.

Recently, several people noticed that GnuTLS behavior did not match its documentation with respect to two significant security concerns, both regarding X.509 certificate validation: Certificates with MD5 digests were considered acceptable for validation.

I'm supporting a class of high school students who are new to programming, and will be learning some python.

One very convenient feature of Apple's hardware is the ability for their workstations to enter target disk mode.

Poking around the web site for Law in Contemporary Society, a class taught this semester by Eben Moglen, (who is counsel for the Free Software Foundation and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center), i found Felix Cohen's Trancendental Nonsense and the…

I just ran across Jordan Sissel's sysadvent project, where he posted one article about systems administration each day from the 1st of December to the 25th.

I've been playing around with an eeePC 900, which is very well-supported by debian.

Ever thought that there should be an automated way to handle ssh keys?

On the testing and unstable systems that i run, i occasionally get a disturbing "there are N newly obsolete packages" message.

A high school student i work with is trying to gather data on the prevalence of mirror-reading (the ability to easily read text that is reversed left-to-right).

The CIO and the Office For Technology of New York State (USA) just released a new report on electronic records strategy, titled A Strategy for Openness: Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State.