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Lazy Reading for 2014/07/06

I was out sick for a few days this week (Norwalk virus ain’t fun), and so there’s a whole lot of links to follow.

Your unrelated link of the week: The 1987 Crystal Light National Aerobic Championship.  Imagine there was no Internet access other than what you can telnet to, and nothing on TV other than this.  That’s 1987.

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In Other BSDs for 2014/02/15

Lots of links, yet again.

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Book Review: Perl One-Liners

No Starch Press noticed that I keep talking about Michael W. Lucas’s BSD-related books, and I’ve linked to Peteris Krumins’s catonmat site before, so they sent a copy of Krumins’s new “Perl One-Liners” book to me.

Stole image right from the site.

 

Here’s the hook for me: Perl was the first language I wrote a program of any real use in.  Years ago, I had the Perl Cookbook.  It was a pretty simple formula, where I’d have a problem.  I’d look it up in the Perl Cookbook.  If there was already a recipe that matched what I needed, I was set.  I ended up having to stuff the book into a binder because the spine broke.

This reference is essentially what the Perl One-Liners book is, though this is less about  programming and more about the solution you need right now. The book realizes this and it’s laid out like a menu.  Flip through the index to find your problem, and then type the answer.  The book even includes a link to a text file that you can copy down and grep for answers – I won’t link to it because it’s not mentioned on the author’s page, though he does include example chapters.

It’s not about learning Perl, and it’s not about technique – these are one-liners, after all.  If you are doing the sort of thing Perl excels at, like text mangling, this will be a book full of tools for you.  I think the author is going to continue in this style; he’s done a lot of one-liner articles and even some previous e-books.

Probably a good idea to make this disclaimer: As with other books, I get no reward for this review, unless you count me having another book in the house.  That’s more of a problem than a benefit for me.

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Book review: Sudo Mastery

If you’ve seen my previous two reviews of Michael W. Lucas’s ‘Mastery’ books – DNSSEC Mastery and SSH Mastery – then you can guess what this will be: his newest book, focusing on a single software topic.  This time it’s sudo.

sudomastery-cover

The one downside of reading this book: I now am aware I’m using sudo wrong.  Perhaps not wrong, but not anywhere near its potential.  Sudo – and I’m not the only person who has experienced this – is used as a “Let’s install sudo so we don’t have to tell anyone the root password”.  Sudo works for that sort of thing, but there’s a lot more possibilities.

Sudo is designed to be deployable across multiple systems, as part of a security policy.  It’s an easy way to create purpose-shaped roles with different users, especially with users that have specialized skills and tasks, like database maintenance.

Obviously I think better of sudo after reading the book; there’s a lot of program capabilities of which I was unaware, but it’s the book that sells them.  Michael W. Lucas’s humor is on display again, to break up some very technical material.  Here’s some bits, pulled out.

Remember that “syntactically valid” is not the same as “does what you want.”

Pressing Q tells visudo to break sudo until you log in as root and fix it. Do not press this button. You won’t like it.

Here I create the TAPEMONKEYS alias for the people who manage backups.

And if Carl tries to configure Oracle on the PostgreSQL server, senior sysadmin Thea needs to have sharp words with him. Probably involving a tire iron.

The book is in-depth enough to cover more complex topics like using sudo and Active Directory, and sudo as an intrusion detection tool, of all things.

The usual reasons to buy a Mastery book are all still there: it specifically mentions working on BSD systems instead of pretending Linux is the only system out there.  It’s available through a DRM-free seller (Smashwords) in addition to Amazon.  It’s a self-published effort, not shovelware.  It’s available now as an ebook, and in physical form soon.  Lucas talks about it on BSDNow 010, too.

I have one last nontechnical note.  Since these Mastery books are working into a series, I’d like to see a whole printed run of visually matching books.  Something with the equivalent of the O’Reilly animals or the Pelican or even Little Blue Books common look and feel.

You know the look even if you don't know the publisher

The takeaway: You should be reading this book if you plan to use sudo in any sort of multiuser environment.  It’s available as an e-book direct from the author, via Amazon, via Smashwords, and possibly Barnes & Noble at some point in the near future.  Physical books are available, and you can buy both forms together, apparently.

And of course this sudo joke.

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Lazy Reading for 2013/10/13

This week just built up and built up.

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Nimona.

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Lazy Reading for 2013/09/29

Moved 20 servers to new hardware this week.  Normally my workplace doesn’t get very active until snow hits.  Normally.  Anyway, going for the long sentences this week.

Your unrelated link of the week: Proper Opossum Massage.  Yes, it’s a serious video, but it shouldn’t be taken seriously.

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Lazy Reading for 2013/09/15

I think I’m finally catching up on the backlog.

Your unrelated link of the week: The Alan Lomax recordings.

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Lazy Reading for 2013/08/25

This week, I’m opinionated on every link.

  • An 80s computer ad that got almost everything correct.  It used to be sci-fi environments were super-clean – now they’re dirty, with ubiquitous electronics.  That’s something that could be picture-blogged to prove, but I ain’t doing it.
  • Bunnie Huang does “exit interviews” when he stops using equipment.  Given his electronics knowledge, he goes into a lot of detail, including pictures through a microscope.  Speaking of this, how has my ancient HTC Incredible survived 3 years of trips into a salt mine?  I don’t know.
  • InterTwinkles, open source group decision making software.  Don’t know how well it works, but it certainly seems like the right idea.  (via)
  • Turning the Apple //e into a Lisp machine, part 1.  They don’t actually get to the Lisp machine part, but it talks about how Apple computers could load data through the audio jack.  I remember doing that with a tape player, too.  It sucked.  (via)
  • kOS.  It’s so minimal that I am not sure what it can do or how to use it, but it’s also so minimal that I’m sure there must be something to it.  (via)
  • Building a Chording Keyboard.  I’ve mentioned the Microwriter and Twiddler before, but this article goes into a lot of detail about the actual construction of a home-made unit.  (also via)
  • Book review: The Healthy Programmer.  It may or may not make you exercise, but it will make you feel a little guilty about sitting and reading the web like you are doing right now.
  • Hyphen, en dash, em dash, minus.  So few people know there’s a difference.  (via)
  • ASCII Art.  History of, examples, and so on.  (via, with video)
  • Five Useful Git Tips.  Git tips come up all the time, but this one is interesting because it’s using “showterm“, which lets you make text-based animations?  movies? to show a work process in a terminal.  I think I may have linked to something similar before, but this is good.
  • How to Avoid the Emacs Pinky Problem.  A neat idea, but some of the suggestions are actually going to make it worse.  (via)
  • Vim: revisited.  Decent ideas, and the links at the end are good further reading.  There, I’ve posted on both sides of the editor issue.  (via)
  • The problem with Vim.  (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: the Scary Godmother Doll.  One of my favorite illustrators, building a doll.  I met the creator years ago in Pittsburgh; she is an astonishingly energetic person.

 

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A book review somewhere else: Network Security Monitoring

Michael W. Lucas has a review up of Richard Bejtlich’s “The Practice of Network Security Monitoring“.  Both of them are long-term BSD users, and Bejtlich, if I remember correctly, was part of the design of Capsicum, the security framework that is serving as a Summer of Code project for DragonFly right now.  So it’s worth looking at his book.  And/or looking at his blog, for those who want more.