Computer SW Unix - Berkeley CSUA MOTD
Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Computer:SW:Unix: [WindowManager(47) ]
Results 1201 - 1321 of 1321   < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >
Berkeley CSUA MOTD
 
WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ
http://csua.com/feed/
2024/12/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
12/24   

2013/10/24-11/21 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54749 Activity:nil
9/18    -------------------------
        < Less wine, more sudo. >
        -------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
2013/4/30-5/10 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54666 Activity:nil
4/30    17:34 <xxx@xxx02:~ $ > uptime
        17:34:40 up 19:10,  2 users,  load average: 1117.31, 1106.06, 1074.05
2013/3/24-5/18 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54638 Activity:nil
3/24    How are people transferring large files to one other person these days?
        When I need to send some videos to my parents, I upload them to
        my SpiderOak account, but they don't have anything like that,
        so I'm not sure how to get videos from them.  Does DropBox do this
        for free?
        \_ DropBox +
        \_ ftp upload to soda, http download from soda, delete file on soda.
        \_ USB Thumbdrive
        \_ files? are we in 1990? everyone uses YouTube. You can even set
           them to be private. If you want convenience, use Picasaweb.
           My goodness, I didn't know people still transferred files.
           \_ It might not seem to be a good idea to pass on family memories
              to later generations in the form of a YouTube link.
           \_ It might not be a good idea to pass on family memories to later
              generations in the form of a YouTube link.
2012/9/24-11/7 [Computer/SW/Languages, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54484 Activity:nil
9/24    How come changing my shell using ldapmodify (chsh doesn't work) doesn't
        work either? ldapsearch and getent show the new shell but I still get
        the old shell on login.
        \_ Scratch that, it magically took my new shell now. WTF?
           \_ probably nscd(8)
2012/9/20-11/7 [Computer/SW/Unix, Finance/Investment] UID:54482 Activity:nil
9/20    How do I change my shell? chsh says "Cannot change ID to root."
        \_ /usr/bin/chsh does not have the SUID permission set. Without
           being set, it does not successfully change a user's shell.
           Typical newbie sys admin (on soda)
           \_ Actually, it does: -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 37552 Feb 15  2011 /usr/bin/chsh
2012/8/30-11/7 [Computer/SW/Apps, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54470 Activity:nil
8/30    Is wall just dead? The wallall command dies for me, muttering
        something about /var/wall/ttys not existing.
        \_ its seen a great drop in usage, though it seems mostly functional.
            -ERic
        \_ Couldn't open wall log!: Bad file descriptor
           Could not open wall subscription directory /var/wall/ttys: No such file or directory
        \_ In theory, wall could be used as a sort of irc system, but maybe it's just fallen
           apart.
           Could not open wall subscription directory /var/wall/ttys: No such
           file or directory
        \_ In theory, wall could be used as a sort of irc system, but maybe
           it's just fallen apart.
2024/12/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
12/24   

2012/7/11-8/19 [Computer/SW/Apps/Media, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54435 Activity:nil
7/11    Story of the first image on the web:
        http://preview.tinyurl.com/cwf2ld2 [motherboard.vice.com]
        \_ It might be the first image available via HTTP all right, but people
           have been downloading GIF's via FTP long before that.  I still
           remember files like sigirl5.gif and dadygirl.gif back in 1990.
           (NSFW, of course.)
           \_ Remember SFTP?
              \_ Yeah, and?  -- PP
2012/7/2-8/19 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54429 Activity:nil
7/2     If I download a software that has GNU GPL and create a search
        engine on top of it and the search engine profits (and I don't
        release the source code nor do I modify or redistribute it), is
        that an acceptable use of GNU GPL?
        \_ Yes.  Even the AGPL allows this if you don't modify the program.
           \_ What if I'm a search engine that uses something that uses
              GNU GPL and I modify it for the company's infrastructure
              like Borg or GFE or BigTable but never release it to the
              world, is that acceptable use?
              \_ Yes.  http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic
2012/5/8-6/4 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54383 Activity:nil
5/8     Hello everyone!  This is Josh Hawn, CSUA Tech VP for Spring 2012.
        About 2 weeks ago, someone brought to my attention that our script
        to periodically merge /etc/motd.public into /etc/motd wasn't
        running.  When I looked into it, the cron daemon was running, but
        there hadn't been any root activity in the log since April 7th.  I
        looked into it for a while, but got lost in other things I was
        working on (Studying for finals and what-not).
        Anyway, I decided to look into it again today and just restarted
        the crond daemon using:
            `/etc/init.d/cron restart`
        And it seems to be working now.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  I
        should have noticed that I wasn't getting any cron daemon emails
        from soda for so long.  Please continue to enjoy using motd.
        Sorry for the service interruption.
        \_ Thank you Josh! Are you guys still giving out awesome
           @csua.berkeley.edu mailing addresses so that future alum
           like yourself can enjoy perks like Amazon Prime
           for students?
           \_ I was able to use this account to sign up for FB
              before the masses, what other perks have you seen?
        \_ Ah that'd explain why my (cron based) motd archiver was broken too.
           -ERic
2012/4/27-6/4 [Computer/SW/Languages/Misc, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54372 Activity:nil
4/27    I wrote a little shell script to collect iostat data:
        #!/bin/bash
        DATE=`date +%m%d`
        DATADIR=/var/tmp/user
        OUTPUTFILE=$DATADIR/$DATE.out
        while true
        do
        date; /usr/bin/iostat -x 1 > $OUTPUTFILE
        done

        Is there a better way to do this? Open source tool perhaps?
        \_ It's the easiest way. If you want to go fancy, Graphite is
           pretty nice for app level stuff.
           \_ Wow, this Graphite?
              http://graphite.wikidot.com
              Do you have it installed?
2012/2/9-3/26 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54305 Activity:nil
2/9     Reminder: support for mail services has been deprecated for *several
        years*. Mail forwarding, specifically .forward mail forwarding, is
        officially supported and was never deprecated.
        \_ There is no .forward under ~root.  How do we mail root and how do
           we get responses?
           \_ root@csua.berkeley.edu is and always has been an alias.
              root@csua.org will reach rootstaff when csua.b.e is down, and
              is the preferred contact.
        \_ Why is there still a 1.4TB volume mounted on /var/mail?
           \_ Because it's currently slightly less work to leave it as-is than
              to figure out how to migrate cleanly and smoothly. Email isn't
              something you just switch off one day.
        \_ I don't think I ever saw an announcement on this.  Anyone have
           a copy for the rest of us to read?
           \_ http://preview.tinyurl.com/7bghw8h -ausman
2012/1/27-3/26 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54299 Activity:nil
1/27    Interesting list of useful unix tools. Shout out to
        cowsay even!
        http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/3428AB/kkovacs.eu/cool-but-obscure-unix-tools
        \_ This is nice.  Thanks.
2011/11/20-2012/2/6 [Computer/Companies/Apple, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54237 Activity:nil
11/20   Are there tools that can justify a chunk of plain ASCII text by
        replacing words with words of similar meaning and inserting/removing
        commas into the text?  I received a 40-line plain text mail where
        all the lines are justified on left and right.  Every word and comma
        is followed by only one space, and every period is followed by two
        spaces.  The guy is my kid's karate instructor which I don't think is
        a computer guy.  The mail header reads "X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.936)"
        which I don't think does this either.  Thx.
        \_ This is sort of uberkerning, which is probably beyond the
           ability of machines. Are you sure he didn't just do it by hand?
           How long is the message?
           \_ I don't know if he did it by hand, but who would manually do
              such a thing?  (I've shot mail to him asking about it and am
              waiting for a reply.)  The text is 40 lines.  I saved the whole
              text in /tmp/justified_mail.txt.
              \_ Ummm, OCD perhaps? This is pretty odd, thanks for sharing.
              \_ Maybe he used groff?  Looks kind of like a manpage.
                 \_ Got words from the sender.  It turns out that he indeed
                    did it by hand.  Amazing.  Thanks for all the responses.
                    \_ can you ask him if he has OCD? Does he like Star Trek?
2011/11/2-8 [Computer/SW/Languages/Perl, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54208 Activity:nil
11/2    Celebrating fifty days of uptime!
        00:16:58 up 50 days, 19 min, 13 users,  load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
        \_ Thanks, jordan!
        \_ I would bitch about the 1, but it is not like anyone else is
           trying to do anything resource intensive with soda.
           \_ The culprit:
             PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
           25757 edilaic   20   0 32088 4284 2052 R  100  0.1  21565:48 perl
           \_ Yeah I saw that too, but it is not like he is slowing anyone
              else down. This is some kind of irc bot, right?
              \_ rodney on irc.csua/#hosers -- it announces nethack deaths.
2011/10/26-12/6 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54202 Activity:nil
10/24  What's an easy way to see if say column 3 of a file matches a list of
       expressions in a file? Basically I want to combine "grep -f <file>"
       to store the patterns and awk's $3 ~ /(AAA|BBB|CCC)/ ... I realize
       I can do this with "egrep -f " and use regexp instead of strings, but
       was wondering if there was some magic way to do this.
       \_ UNIX has no magic. Make a shell script to produce the ask or egrep
          you're looking for and there's your wizardry right there.
          \- re: magic: there are sometimes (relatively) obscure commands
             which do something slightly more painful to do with lower
             level tools, e.g. comm, jot, paste, join, tac, sort -M. I didnt
             know about 'grep -L' until maybe 5yrs ago, and would figure
             out how to do that in (relatively) painful ways.
2011/9/14-21 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54174 Activity:nil
9/13    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do
        eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
2011/9/14-12/28 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54172 Activity:nil
9/12    We've restored CSUA NFS to something vaguely resembling normal
        functionality -- plus, with some luck, we should now have something
        vaguely resembling normal uptime, too!  Ping root@csua.org if you
        notice any problems.  --jordan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \_  Oh, and http://irc.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU is online again.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2011/4/27-7/30 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54096 Activity:nil
4/28    Will wall be fixed?   - jsl
        \_ What's wall?
           \_ An anachronism from a bygone era, when computers were hard to
              comeby, the dorms didn't have net, there was no airbears, and
              when phones didn't come standard with twitter or sms.
           \_ A non useful implementation of twitter.
              \_ Much like twitter itself
                 \_ Sounds like your peer group doesn't use twitter.
                    \_ Twitter isn't as interactive as wall was; it's
                       micro-blogging, not chat.  And most of it sucks.
                       #likethetagsforexample  -tom
                       \_ Some groups get really chatty, and being able to
                          use it over mobile devices is really useful for
                          on the spot hive-mind decisions. (where are we
                          going to eat now? what bar are we meeting at,
                          what did we change our minds about eating etc).
                          My only complaint is that long links are almost
                          always shortened, so be careful what you click on
                          (but that's pretty much the web these days). Clearly
                          YMMV based on your circle, as with all "groupware".
        \_ AGAIN, we don't know *how* to fix it, because no current student and
           no or few alumni for several years have ever used it regularly. If
           you want it fixed, we're willing to do it, but nut up and offer your
           help. Sorry, I've had a bad day. --toulouse (I'm on root)
           \_ I'd rather you guys focus time on providing non-duplicable
              services to the UCB _undergrad_ community at large (eg, focus on
              usenet, actual student help, etc) than attempt to reimplement
              functionality that is done do death by a Free Web App like
              twitter (or any of the social nets out there).  And again thanks
              for keeping soda up and around.
           \_ can you post the root password on motd please? Thanks.
              \_ vahmifqy -- you're welcome
           \_ Is this all it takes?  I did  one of the last major rewrites of
              'wall', I think all that is broken right now is its logging and
              log rotation -ERic (mehlhaff)
2011/4/6-20 [Computer/SW/Mail, Computer/SW/Unix, Industry/Startup] UID:54078 Activity:nil
4/6     My company is evaluating version control systems. Our two candidates
        are Perforce and Subversion. Anyone worked with both and have good
        arguments one way or the other? (These are the only two options we
        have.) We're most interested in client performance, ease of use, and
        reasonable branching.
        \_ I'll be 'that guy'. If perforce and subversion are optins, why isn't
           git? Having not used perforce, I can't say much about it, but svn is
           grossly insufficient for my branching and checkpointing needs. I
           cannot use svn anymore without git-svn.
           \_ svn+trac = nice.  git-svn+trac = OH THE HORROR.
           \_ Corporate standards. (Yes, it's a stupid reason.) -op
           \_ In what way is svn insufficient for your branching needs? All of
              the claims I see about svn not supporting branching well predate
              the merge support added in svn 1.5. I've not used svn and so am
              not able to tell to what extent that merge support works.
        \_ I have used P4win and the mods P4py and what not.  I thought they
           wre great at core focus, but lousy at being customizeable.  You will
           probably go with Perforce tho since the app looks nice on winboxen.
           git for windows is knida amateur looking.
           \_ There is also P4-Emacs at http://p4el.sourceforge.net which
              I've used for a few years.  -- yuen
        \_ State your eng size. This will be one of the most decisive factors.
           Perforce for 5 employees? FORGET IT.
           Subversion for 1000 employees? FORGET IT.
           \_ Try bugzilla on 1000 employees.  Ugh. the horror.
           I've used p4, svn, and git. All have advantages and disadvantages.
           Use the wrong tool for the wrong size, you'll be bitching all the way.
           What people don't realize is that there is something else much more
           important than what you use-- a code-review process.
           \_ We are a group of about 50 developers right now, with plans to
              expand in the coming years and to manage more of our internal
              tools through version control.
              We do code reviews, although we're currently re-evaluating our
              tool choices there as well. Our options are Crucible and Code
              Collaborator. -op
              \_ Go with SVN.  You sound like small shop.
2011/2/18-4/20 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54044 Activity:nil
2/18    Why does the system seem so sluggish lately?
        \_ Slow NFS is basically always the answer. --toulouse
        \_ Any truth to the rumor that soda will be decommissioned this summer?
           \_ Absolutely none. Soda might go down temporarily while disks are
              reorganized and stuff so soda doesn't suffer from such shitty
              performance nearly as much, but no, we've gotta maintain NFS and
              mail anyways, so there's no sense in shutting soda down.
              --toulouse
              \_ Cool.
              \_ I thought you guys were proposing moving soda offa nfs and
                 removing mail except for .forwards?
                 \_ Correct. Soda would be moved off of NFS. We still need NFS
                    for other things though. And 'removing mail except for
                    .forwards' still constitutes a maintenance effort wrt/
                    keeping things running. --toulouse
                    \_ To clarify - this is what is proposed. Receiving mail on
                       CSUA systems (as opposed to forwarding it from CSUA->
                       whatever your .forward specifies) is merely deprecated.
                       --toulouse
2011/2/14-4/20 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:54039 Activity:nil
2/14    You sure soda isn't running windows in disguise?  It would explain the
        uptimes.
        \_ hardly, My winbox stays up longer.
        \_ Nobody cares about uptime anymore brother, that's what web2.0 has
           taught us.  Everything is "stateless".
           \_ You;d think gamers would care more about uptime.
              \_ why do you think i suggested they run a private wow server
                 on the side, it would give them impetus to care about
                 stability
           \_ Seriously?!  Have you ever browsed web 2.0 sites without cookies?
              \_ This ploy to confuse state-passed-into-client vs state-kept
                 -by-server in a discussion about _server_ issues has been
                 ignored.  lern2troll plz.
              \_ Seriously?  You are confusing client and server?
        \_ Soda is not the problem. NFS is. We mount NFS from an OpenSolaris
           box hosting ZFS. We don't have the money to get a proper filer to
           get stuff running smoothly, so we're thinking of moving user data
           local to soda so that the NFS server, which is slightly incompatible
           or something, and prone to shitting bricks, won't be such a problem.
           However, the people capable of doing this, as well as the
           possibility of downtime of services such as usenetwhich we provide
           to the campus, means this'll have to happen at the end of the
           semester (May/June). Also a problem is that the CSUA doesn't have
           a whole lot of IPs, so we bottleneck through a server which will
           cut off access to most other services if it goes down, as it uses pf
           to direct traffic on certain ports to certain internal VMs with only
           internal IPs. --toulouse
           \_ OpenSolaris; is that in danger of going away? I thought oracle
              end of life'd it?
           \_ P.S. We care about the uptime that students and professors
              rely on. Please don't paint us as being careless and incapable.
              --toulouse
           \_ I don't have OpenSolaris experience but I've used ZFS on FreeBSD
              for a file server, and it's been very reliable. --jwm
              \_ So did we. If you ever have heavy load under multiple users,
                 brace yourself for frequent kernel panics. Also, FreeBSD ZFS
                 is ages behind OpenSolaris's, though TBH with Oracle eating
                 Sun, added to our issues with our disk server's uptime,
                 OpenSolaris and ZFS as a whole aren't looking all that
                 attractive for continued use. --toulouse
                 \_ FreeBSD's ZFS does lag behind, but it's plenty functional
                    for what I've done. I can give up some of the new
                    functionality to have stability. --jwm
                    \_ No, no, what I was saying is that under load, FreeBSD's
                       crashed *a lot* when we were running NFS+ZFS on it.
                       Not that OpenSolaris has been a party either, but I
                       personally don't think that NFS+ZFS is a winning combo
                       for stability if you're looking for a free solution.
                       P.S. your tabs are wrong. Note the locations of tabs.
                       --toulouse
                       \_ If FreeBSD crashes that means you aren't running the
                          quality hardware.
                          \_ I doubt that. I don't remember the details but I
                             think this also happened in VMs? In any case, if
                             we could get good hardware a filer would be nice.
                             --toulouse
                             \_ Among other implementations (including
                                Netapp) I run NFS on a Thumper using ZFS
                                and it is very stable with 150 users who
                                are actuall doing things. I think
                                something is wrong with your hardware or
                                your config.
                                \_ That may very well be so. But the only one
                                   who maintained our ZFS+NFS setup seriously
                                   graduated a while ago, and there's not a
                                   lot of interest in maintaining a finicky
                                   setup in the absence of time and money,
                                   when that time could be used more
                                   effectively on class and other stuff. --t
2010/12/13-2011/2/19 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53978 Activity:nil
12/21   Help, all my files are owned by nobody! -ausman
        (yes I emailed root)
        \_ Things should be fine now. As usual, the NFS server caused a cascade
           of errors.
2010/11/18-2011/1/13 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53990 Activity:nil
11/18   ncurses header files are missing..
        \_ Installed. FYI I find it rude that you wouldn't bother to mail root
           and instead complain here, perhaps hoping that someone with root
           might check. I might not have root forever, you know, and I don't
           think many root staff typically check here. --toulouse
           P.S. the specific library installed was libncurses5-dev. If you ask
           for something else please do it through root@csua.
2010/8/9-19 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53915 Activity:nil
8/9     Who is this guy 42949672?  Posted some root's processes for context.
        751  root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    1  0.0   0:24.50 rpciod/0
        5293 42949672  20   0 20412  908  576 S    0  0.0   0:18.82 nrpe
        1    root      20   0 10312  748  620 S    0  0.0   0:08.75 init
        \_ Sounds like -1 (a truncated 4294967295).
2010/5/17-6/11 [Science/GlobalWarming, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53828 Activity:nil
5/18    did somebody say tar ball?
        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/17/tar-balls-key-west_n_579660.html
        anyone else wishing we could just gzip these?
2010/5/4-26 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53816 Activity:nil
5/3     Is it possible to bzip2 on the fly? Like:
        % dump_stuff | bzip2 -stdin > dump_file.bz2
        \_ Yup, it works fine.  You don't even need a flag:
           % dump_stuff | bzip2 > dump_file.bz2
           \_ whoa, why didn't anyone tell me about this, and why is this
              not on the man page. I've been doing the stupid command
              for years:
                % mysqldump > f.sql; bzip2 f.sql
                \_ "If no file names are specified, bzip2 compresses
                    from standard input to standard output."
2010/3/8-30 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53745 Activity:nil
3/8     I have a mod_rewrite question that I think should be straight-
        forward but I think I'm not getting something.

        I have a virtual server with some root, say /home/user/public_html/
        and in there I have two subdirs, say /app1/ and /app2/
        and i want the following:
        http://mysite/app1   -->   /home/user/public_html/app1
        http://mysite/(.*   -->   /home/user/public_html/app2/$1
        so for ex, http://mysite/app2   -->   /home/user/public_html/app2/app2

        So anything that's not "app1" would map into the app2 subdir ...
        but I guess this causes an infinite loop in the processing? Since it
        just keeps prefixing /app2/ onto the path until it crashes? any
        advice? thx -
        \_ IIRC it matches in order. However, the way you have it, it looks like
           http://mysite/app1 or http://mysite/app1/(.* might not be matched by
           your first rule. Perhaps "http://mysite/app1(/.*)?" or something may
           work better (untested though, but you should get the idea)
           \_ ok sure you're right. But my main question is how to get the
              2nd rule to work w/out generating an infinite loop. ie,
              http://mysite      should go to  home/user/public_html/app2/
              http://mysite/foo  should go to  home/user/public_html/app2/foo
              http://mysite/app2 should go to  home/user/public_html/app2/app2
              etc, but w/out infinite loop. possible? thx
                  \_ Oh, I see. You probably want
                     http://mysite/app2 -> /home/user/public_html/app2/
                         as a separate rule, or perhaps...
                         http://mysite/([^/]*)(/.*?) -> /home/user/public_html/app2/$1$2
                         ...maybe? I don't know why it would be rewriting it to a path on
                         your filesystem...it's been a while, but I thought it rewrote
                         URLs, not filesystem paths. I'm just guessing...
        \_ set your root to app2. then alias /app1. no mod_rewrite.
           \_ hurr durr that would make too much sense. D'oh. --!op
2010/1/22-24 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53654 Activity:high
1/22    What's the difference between a job and a career?
        \_ women have jobs, men have careers.
           \_ true statement but one that is sexist and should be
              kept in a private conversation
        \_ A job could be anything that pays mortgage or feed the mouth.
           A career is something that is longer term, most of the time,
           something you do out of choice. People who clean toilets have
           a job. People who have a chance to climb corporate ladders
           have a career.
        \_ Most people have only one career path in their whole lifetime.  Few
           people have two or more.  Most people have several jobs in their
           lifetime.  For example, a person can have jobs and careers like
           these:
           Job 1: software engineer
           Job 2: senior software engineer
           Job 3: flipping burgers at McDonald's because he got laid off at #2.
           Job 4: software architect
           Job 5: flipping burgers at McDonald's because now he likes flipping
                  burgers
           Job 6: supervisor at McDonald's
           Job 7: Owner of a McDonald's restaurant.
           That translates to
           Career 1: software engineering (Jobs 1-4)
           Career 2: fast food business (Jobs 5-7)
           Job 3 is not a career switch because he considered it a temporary
           job.
2009/12/9-2010/1/13 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53586 Activity:nil
12/8    Is there a bash equivalent to tcsh's history-search-backward ?
        \_ There's something similar called... history-search-backward. It
           is a bit more limited, in that it only searches for strings and
           not glob patterns. You may find reverse-i-search to be useful also.
2009/11/13-30 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53523 Activity:nil
11/12   How does one find out if a system has rootkit installed?
        \_ Unix or m$?
           \_ Unix. On M$ I always assume it's compromised.
              \_ Install Tripwire before you plug your server into The Net?
                 The only other answer I can think of is to reinstall the
                 OS from scratch on another server and do an md checksum
                 comparison with your current binaries. You can also look
                 for other signs of infection, like open ports that don't
                 belong there (netstat -o), mysteriously growing filesystems,
                 etc, but a really good rootkit is almost undetectable. Most
                 of them aren't really good though.
                 \_ ObKenThompson:
                    http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
2009/10/27-11/3 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53475 Activity:nil
10/27   http://www.maxgames.com/play/flash-mind-reader.html
        how does this work?
        \_ sh -c 'for ((i=0;i<10;i++)); do for ((j=0;j<10;j++)); do echo "$i$j-(\
$i+$j)" | bc; done ; done' | uniq
        \_ bash -c 'for ((i=0;i<10;i++)); do for ((j=0;j<10;j++)); do echo "$i$j\
-($i+$j)" | bc; done ; done' | uniq
        \_ ksh -c 'for ((i=0;i<10;i++)); do for ((j=0;j<10;j++)); do echo "$i$j-\
($i+$j)" | bc; done ; done' | uniq
           \_ fixd.  above script only works if your sh is really bash.
              -Solaris Geek
              \_ sorry, I somehow lost the k.  Also, works if your sh is ksh93
                 in opensolaris, etc.  Not sure that putback has made it into
                 s10u*
        \- i thought that was pretty clever presentation. thanks for sharing
           the link.
2009/10/1-12 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53416 Activity:nil
10/1    I typed man ls on soda and didn't get a man page.  How can
        I fix this?
        \_ I have this line in my .cshrc:
           setenv MANPATH "/usr/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/X11/man:/csua/man:/usr/share/man"
           setenv MANPATH "/usr/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/X11/man:/csua/man:
           /usr/share/man"
           (I don't even remember whether it came with my account or I added
           it myself.)
                \_ it worked.  thank you.
2009/9/18-29 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix, Finance/Investment] UID:53379 Activity:nil
9/18    In Linux, is there a way for root to change the "nice" value of an
        existing process?  thx.
        \_ Yes. man renice.
2009/9/10-21 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53354 Activity:low
9/10    Is there a web site out there that I can put in a URL and it
        comes back with an estimated monthly traffic, for free? I tried
        going to Comscore but I can't find it.
        \_ <DEAD>www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_details#siteDetails?identifier=cnn.com&geo=US&trait_type=1&lp=false<DEAD>
           \_ check the differences between:
              http://gop.com and http://democrats.org
        \_ Do you know about Alexa?
           \_ Alexa charges an arm and a leg for detailed data. Fuck that
              \_ It is the best free summary stats I have found. Let me know
                 if you find something better (that is free).
                 \_ Yes. Google Ad Planner is free and BETTER. Check
                    it out and let me know what you think.
                    \_ Alexa is free, too, for basic info. The Google stuff
                       looks interesting, but its UU info for where I work
                       (CNET) is way off. Look at the daily unique user count
                       and the monthy numbers. There is no way for this to
                       add up.
        \_ http://www.quantcast.com or http://www.compete.com
2009/9/5-12 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53337 Activity:nil
9/5     Almost to 10 days uptime!  Woo!
        \_ Back down to 10 hours... :(
2009/8/21-9/1 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53297 Activity:nil
8/20    When I use rsync to backup, it's pretty cool except in cases where
        I rename a directory name from the source. Rsync will just do
        a plain copy. Is there a program that'll detect renaming of
        directories (by checking for children files), or at least
        move them to a dated directory?
        \_ Not related but beware of using rsync as a backup tool.
           Consider using something like rsnapshots instead.
           \_ what's wrong with rsync?
              \_ Same reason why RAID is not a backup. If, out of
                 user error, you delete a file then it's gone in
                 both the original and the backup. Combine
                 rsnapshots with rsync and you'll have a better
                 backup solution. This way, you'll retain some
                 history so you can recover files later on.
                 \_ rsync has a --backup option to move unsync'ed
                    files into a backup directory. Did you miss that?
        \_ try this:
           % sync --backup-dir=._090821 --suffix='' --delete -avrb \
                --filter='merge /Users/username/.rsync-filter' \
                src dest
           My rule in .rsync-filter excludes ._* names.
           This will move files into ._090821 so that dest==src
        \_ Huh? Use --delete to make an exact replica on the destination.
           \_ --delete will delete files that you may need later on, that's
              the point of a backup. Make sure to use --backup in
              conjunction with --delete.
2009/8/19-9/1 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53285 Activity:nil
8/18    Hi again, new freebsd guy here again, in bash I was able to go
        LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/foo/lib ./runmyapp
        I managed to do this in tcsh by using setenv in a shell script
        that setenv's the lib path and then executes $1, just wondering
        if there was a way to do it in 1 line from the cmd line as in bash?
        Thanks, btw %2c or %3c worked.  Freebsd, tcsh and vi forever!
        Go Bears!
        \_ env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/foo/lib ./runmyapp
           \_ aha! i was using that but with set instead of env, and once
              with setenv.  I shoulda tried env, thanks!!
2009/8/18-9/1 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53284 Activity:nil
8/18    Is it possible to truncate your path name in your prompt in tcsh?
        Tsch veterans REPRESENT!  I know this is how to do it in bash:
        # truncate path: returns $1 truncated to $2 chars, prefixed with ...
        truncate_path () {
                if [ -z "$1" -o -z "$2" ]
                then
                        echo Usage: truncate_path path length
                        return 1
                fi
                if [ ${#1} -le $2 ]
                then
                        echo $1
                else
                        local offset=$(( ${#1} - $2 + 3 ))
                        echo "...${1:$offset:$2}"
                fi
        }
        But I'd rather use tcsh on my freebsd machine.  Go Bill Joy and BEARS!!
        \_ %c2
2009/8/2-11 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53229 Activity:nil
8/1     What keeps hapening to soda? load of O(1000) then crash?  Is it
        still nfs, even past the new kernel we did just for nfs?
        \_ It's still NFS. Filer plz kthxbai.
           \_ Filer eliminates NFS?
2009/7/28-9/24 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53215 Activity:nil
7/28    Restored basic website functionality.  I also killed user websites,
        because I think the new root staff had set up the website with a
        default config and were not aware they were enabled.  Sorry if this
        causes inconvenience, hopefully they will be restored soon once
        the website is taken in hand. -mrauser
2009/7/22-27 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53181 Activity:nil
7/22    Why does everyone's 'mail last read' date say Jul 19th? even for people
        who don't log in (shell is safesorry)?  Just wondering O mighty unix
        gurus.
        \_ Modification time change when it was copied to new soda.
2009/7/8-16 [Computer/SW/OS/Linux, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53124 Activity:nil
7/7     what happened to our web presence? http://www.csua.berkeley.edu
        not working
    \_ That would be because we've yet to set them up afaik. Steven *does* have
    a job after all. The idea is that we want a separate computer mounting the
    web directories, so that if an exploit compromises the webserver, the shell
    server (soda) itself will be insulated from the attack.
        \_ That would be because we've yet to set them up afaik. Steven *does*
           have a job after all. The idea is that we want a separate computer
           mounting the web directories, so that if an exploit compromises the
           webserver, the shell server (soda) itself will be insulated from
           the attack.
          \_ Ideally I wouldn't be the only one doing this shit :-p --steven
             \_ understood. I can help out. What's the root password?
        \_ can you install Lift?  Word in the radlab is that it's the
           new sexy hotness. http://liftweb.net
           \_ Not a debian package.  Can you install it locally?
2009/7/6-16 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53117 Activity:nil
7/6     Soda is having nfs problems, sorry about the up/downtime.
        I'll be monitoring it and seeing if I can figure out why
        it keeps choking; but NFS is somewhat of a (broken) black
        box... :/  --steven
2009/6/30-7/15 [Computer/HW/CPU, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53101 Activity:nil
6/30    Thanks very much for all the volunteer work on soda!  Two questions:
        1. When will HTTP be up again?
          \_ Probably not this week - 4th and all that.  Next week?
        2. There used to be a web page that describes the historical hardware
           for soda machine.  What's the URL again?  I forgot.
          \_ It's on the wiki now -
                http://wiki.csua.berkeley.edu/index.php/Hardware
                Not up to date with the most recent rev yet
        Thanks again.
2009/6/24-7/3 [Computer/SW/OS/Linux, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53082 Activity:nil
6/24    Debian GNU/Linux 5.0

Ahoy there weary traveler -
This is indeed the brand spanking new Soda.
We'll be enabling logins again soon - just
want to make sure all the infrastructure
is in place and ready for everyone to hammer
on it.  Please direct questions to
politburo@csua.berkeley.edu

Best,
CSUA Root Staff
2009/5/31-6/4 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:53061 Activity:nil
5/30    What's the best way to convert BMP to PDF? I'm tired of a bunch of
        PC shareware that has limitations. I'd prefer UNIX way but don't
        know where to start, and Google hasn't been helpful.
        \_ Imagemagick ("convert").  -tom
2009/5/7-14 [Computer/Networking, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52962 Activity:nil
5/7     What's a good reverse port forwarding for a PC(inside firewall) ->
        Unix, so that I can VNC into the Unix that gets forwarded to
        PC's VNC server?
        \_ http://micrux.net/?p=26
           Syntax, to be executed from the PC behind firewall:
           % ssh -R 5900:127.0.0.1:5901 <destination_server>
           You can also use Putty, by going to Connections->SSH->Tunnels,
           and enter:
                Source port:5900
                Destination:127.0.0.1:5901
                Remote (not Local)
                and finally click on Add
           So the connectivity looks like this:
                PC --ssh--> FIREWALL --ssh--> destination_server
           And the resulting "virtual" connectivity:
                PC:5900 <--- destination_server:5901
           With the "-R" argument the destination_server binds to
           port 5901 which will connect back to PC's port 5900. Hence, it's
           a "reverse" tunnel. Note that this can potentially open up
           a lot of problems for companies and is generally frowned
           upon by network administrators. Please use with care.
           \_ Thanks, this is super useful info in general.
        \_ I do this with inetd and netcat.  Just put a line like this in
           /etc/inetd.conf, and reload inetd:
               5900 stream tcp nowait nobody /bin/nc nc YOUR-PC 5900
           You can also do it with ssh port forwarding (e.g. using PuTTY),
           but then you have to remember to keep your ssh connection open
           all the time.
2009/5/6-9 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52953 Activity:nil
5/6     When I finger my account, it says:
                New mail received Wed May  6 07:13 2009 (PDT)
                Unread since Mon May  4 08:43 2009 (PDT)
        Acutally I haven't accessed my mail for several months, why does
        finger say unread since 5/4?
        \_ stop fingering yourself
        \_ Pretty sure it says that for everyone. Finger says that because mail
           was catastrophically hosed this weekend and steven spent a great
           deal of time moving us over from exim4 to postfix, while preserving
           your mail. Also in doing so he moved NFS to NFS4 on our new disk
           server, so stability should be better in the short term and much
           better in the long term. --t
2009/5/5-6 [Computer/SW/SpamAssassin, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52948 Activity:moderate
5/4     Is mail still down? I don't seem to be getting any and vermouth
        is unavailable. I saw a note saying it was down Sunday, but it's
        almost Tuesday now.
        \_ exim4 decided it wanted to just die. With the same config file and
        everything. Steven spent all weekend and a lot of yesterday migrating
        to a VM. A side effect is that NFS is now no longer on Keg, so crashy
           keg will no longer be a problem. There might still be a few hiccups with
           getting NFS4 working, though. At this point I believe we're just waiting
           for EECS to unblock the port on the firewall for the new machine doing
           mail. We're now using postfix. --t
        keg will no longer be a problem. There might still be a few hiccups
        with getting NFS4 working, though. At this point I believe we're just
        waiting for EECS to unblock the port on the firewall for the new
        machine doing mail. We're now using postfix. --t
        \_ damn, and I'm eager to start processing my 4500 spam messages. -ERic
           \_ well, clearly the email is still coming in. Its up to 4900 spams.
              -ERic
        \_ damn, and I'm eager to start processing my 4900 spam messages. -ERic
        \_ who fixed your 80 column issue? SODA is time-frozen, you know?
2009/4/27-5/4 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52913 Activity:nil
4/27    Git, Darcs, or Mecurial?
        \_ If you do not need and will not want anyone on Windows, Git is OK.
           I'm partial to Mercurial, since it's simple, and doesn't pollute
           my directories with .svn, it just has a top-level .hg directory.
           I hear darcs is good if you want to allow multiple people editing
           the same file, since you can merge different changes within a file.
2009/4/18-23 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52870 Activity:nil
4/17    To those who have a twitter account and also follow people: how do you use
        twitter to read others' tweets? do you just visit their individual
        pages or do you stay logged in and visit http://twitter.com/home ? Thanks.
        /home:
        indiv pages: .
        \_ aren't you supposed to receive updates on your cell phone?
2009/4/7-13 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52814 Activity:low
4/7     In unix version of irc (irssi), how do I scroll back chat buffer?
        \_ page up/page down doesn't work? also try alt a/p
           and /lastlog
2009/3/8-17 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52685 Activity:kinda low
3/8     I'm reading about an old exploit where someone used a buffer overflow
        in a printer daemon to get "daemon privileges," which allowed them
        to use another exploit on the mail delivery program to get root.  I'm
        not sure what daemon privileges are.  Is there some set of priveleges
        that most daemons run on that is higher than user but lower than root?
        What are they?  I've never heard this before.
        \_ It used to be common to run daemons as a user named "daemon".  The
           daemon account doesn't have any special privileges, but if all your
           daemons are running in a single account, anyone who breaks into the
           account gets access to all of them.  Modern systems run each daemon
           as a separate user, so if you break into apache you only get access
           to the "www" account or whatever.
           \_ And to expound, usually these users like 'daemon' and 'apache'
              are given *less privilege* than a normal user - at least to the
              extent that is possible with UNIX permissions. For instance,
              they have no login shell.
           \_ Ok, thanks.  So, I guess the idea here is that the mail delivery
              program was running as daemon, but hadn't dropped root
              permanently?
              \_ Probably the deal was that the mail daemon had a function
                 which runs as root, but only allows programs running as
                 daemon to access it.  So once you can run arbitrary code
                 as daemon, you can run the mail function as root.  -tom
2009/3/7-13 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52683 Activity:low
3/6     Is http://www.cygwin.org a real site or a hoax?  It looks different from
        http://www.cygwin.com and it doesn't mention the latter.  Thx.
        \_ It looks like a mistake -- http://cygwin.org (without the "www") works,
           but http://www.cygwin.org gives you http://sourceware.org instead.
        \_ I dunno why there are no links to Cygwin 1.7 on that site.
           try this: http://cygwin.com/setup-1.7.exe
2009/3/6-9 [Politics/Foreign/Asia/China, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52678 Activity:nil 75%like:52689
3/6     Chinese UNIX Museum:
        http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/06/biography-of-the-las.html
2009/3/3-5 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52671 Activity:high
3/3/9   Happy Square Root Day
        \_ This morning some guy on KCBS AM 740 was playing with this and said
           something like "if you take the square root of every number, they
           don't look so big anymore.  For example, next week the square root
           of my age is just 8.  And the square root of the $838 billion
           stimulus package is just $29 billion."
           No wonder American kids rank last in math among industrialized
           countries.
           \_ i think the sqrt of his iq is also 8.
           \_ Dude needs to go back to school, and age 8 seems like a good
              time to learn about square roots.
              \_ Huh? I don't see anything wrong with his statement.
                 \_ sqrt(838e9) is about 915423.
                    \_ I guess. sqrt(838) =~ 29. (Billion dollars) is the
                       units. Depends on how you look at it.
                       \_ Right, but you need to square root the units too,
                          just like sqrt(10000 m^2) = 100 m.  The answer is
                          the same whether you consider the units to be m^2
                          or (10000 m^2) or whatever.
                          \_ I understand this, but what is the square
                             root of "2 dollars"? This is like asking what
                             is the square root of "2 cows". The original
                             statement said "square root of every number"
                             and not "square root of every quantity". You
                             could argue (correctly) that 838,000,000,000
                             is a number in itself and its root is not
                             29,000,000,000, but what about "838 cows"? What
                             is the square root of a cow? I think the key
                             number is 838 and not 838*(units). You have
                             to be pretty pedantical to not realize that.
                             \_ If your units are billions of dollars than
                                your square root units of ~ 31622 * $^(1/2).
                                  sqrt (838) * sqrt (1,000,000,000) ~=
                                  29 * 31622 ~=
                                  915422
                                  \_ 915422 *what*? Not dollars.
                                   \_ $^(1/2)  Which is 1/31622 of
                                      (Billion $)^(1/2)
                                      \_ Exactly, which is nonsense. So
                                         ignore the units.
                                         \_ If you ignore the units you can
                                            turn it anything you want.
                                            Sqrt($838e9) = $838e9 if my
                                            units are "$838e9" and I've
                                            decided units are meaningless.
                                            \_ You have to use some common
                                               sense here. The square root
                                               of his age (64) is 8, not
                                               8 (years)^1/2.
                                               \_ But by your logic we can
                                                  make the units billions of
                                                  years, and now the the
                                                  square root of 64 is
                                                  252982.
                                Better example: the square root of $1 is 1 if
                                you are ignoring units, but the square root
                                of 100 pennies is 10!  100 pennies = 1 dollar
                                so how can those two be different.
                                $1 = 100c
                                sqrt($1) = sqrt(100c)
                                1 * $^(1/2) = 10 * c^(1/2)
                                The difference is in the units.  1 c^(1/2)
                                is, by definition, 1/10th of 1 $^(1/2).
                                \_ But what is a sqrt($)? or a sqrt(cent)?
                             \_ I guess you're right.  Square rooting a number
                                independently of its unit like this makes no
                                sense, but it is what the original statement
                                said, and really it doesn't sound like he was
                                trying to make sense anyway.  (FWIW, I think
                                sqrt("2 cows") is meaningless too, unless you
                                can come up with a meaning for 1.4 cow^(1/2).)
                       \_ Depends on how good you are at math, actually.
2009/2/26-3/5 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52653 Activity:nil
2/26    If I want to rsync a perforce or svn directory while users
        are checking things in, could I wind up with a corrupted copy?
        \_ sure why not.  if you are really cool, your copy of the svn
           repo is on LVM, and you snap the LVM to copy it.
           \_ It'll seem less cool when you realize you've taken a snapshot
              of a block level device, which only guarantees that this set of
              blocks is not changing.  It doesn't guarantee you that the
              filesystem sitting on top of them is in a coherent state.  What
              if you were in the middle of writing a file and had only written
              half of the blocks in that file when you took your block level
              snapshot?  You're going to need to fsck it.  Go up one *more*
              level to get to your source control system (and whether the set
              of files being written is part of this checkin or that).
              The poster below already mentioned perforce checkpoints.  He's
              right.  In subversion you probably want to make use of
              svnadmin hotcopy when backing up a repository while it's in use.
        \_ Yes, you could. Checkpoint the perforce depo first and then
           sync the checkpoints. There are other options, too.
        \_ I usually do this in Perforce:
           1. Run "p4 changes" to find the latest changelist number at that
              moment.  Say, 12345.
           2. Run "p4 sync //...@12345".  Other uses might be submitting or
              might have submitted new changelists, but that's okay.
           For #1, sometimes I instead get the last changelist of the previous
           day, or the last changelist before the last nightly build started.
           You can also do "p4 sync" by specifying a date and time.  Of course,
           checkpoints or labels are cleaner ways, but my company doesn't use
           those.
2009/2/10-13 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52552 Activity:nil
2/10    I have an sh file that does a mount.. the mount does an
        authentication. I previosly stored the username and password
        from zenity prompts. However, I can't get a return on the password
        field. The following only works on the username:
        mount -t davfs "http://blahblah.com/BLahUser11" /mountdir << EOF
        ${username}
        ${password}
        EOF
        It gets stuck at the password. Any thoughts? thanks
        \_ Expect?
          \_ the username gets passed and a carriage return then a prompt
                for the password is there but the ${password} doesnt get
                put in nor carriage return. so script is stuck
                \_ /usr/bin/expect
                  \_ can't use expect. this is an automated installer on other
                    persons machines. I would have to apt-get expect
                    No way to do it just with EOFs?
                    \_ would "for i in 1; do echo $username; sleep 1; \
                              echo $password"; done | mount -t ..." work?
                       It really depends on how the password is being read.
                        \_ that didnt work... same behavior
                    \_ No, this is one reason tools like Expect were invented.
                       See, e.g.,
                       http://www.noah.org/wiki/Pexpect#Q:_Why_not_just_use_a_pipe_.28popen.28.29.29.3F
                        \_ thanks.. i guess i have no choice :) excellent!
                           \_ Well, that's not to say you couldn't make a very
                              stripped down version of an expect-like tool
                              that does what you want, and ship that. Maybe
                              someone else has already done it.
                                \_ or use Perl Expect or Python Expect.
2009/1/25-29 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52456 Activity:low
1/23    may the awesome rootstaff please apt-get install:
        colorgcc, colordiff, colormake
        thanks!
        \_ Done.  In the future email such requests to root@csua for
           faster response
           \_ totally, understood.  Altho yeah I do like asking for
              it here so people can see whatup, and even comment on
              the sw requests.
           \_ my burning eyeballs thank you.  God. how did we live without
              color*, and grep -color?
              \_ 640x480 amber monochrome that's how.
                 \_ i'm not a sysadmin.
                    \_ Well Played.
                    \_ Or apparently a very old programmer either.
                       Punch cards, baby!
              \_ Seconded. "grep --color=always", where have you been my
                 whole life?
                 ok i just made an alias
                 alias grep="grep --color=always $@"
                 now how do i make it ignore the .svn stuff?
                 \_ --color-auto is probably more What You Want (tm)... fix
                    your termtype.  as for the other part... try something
                    along the lines of --exclude=\*.svn\*
        \_ I kind of like the post to the motd hey root thing.
           Now I know someone installed colorgcc, colordiff, colormake
2009/1/20-26 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52420 Activity:low
1/20    I have a rather common shell-scripting problem, but I am not sure
        how to do it in csh/tcsh.  I want to check the ctime (last
        modified time) of a file.  If it is older than, let say, 1
        hours, do something, older than 3 hours, then do something +
        something else.  Any hints on how to do this?  do i need to
        convert it to epoch to perform such manipulation?  thanks
        \- find or perl
        \_ or stat(1)
        \_ find is an excellent tool for this, especially if you have
           access to a modern find.  Look at the -ctime and -mmin  options
           to it.
           \_ thanks. will work on "find."
2009/1/5-8 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52313 Activity:kinda low
1/3     no hurry but do you know of:
        $ chsh
        Password:
        Enter the new value, or press return for the default
         Login Shell [/usr/local/bin/bash]: /bin/zsh
        failed: Insufficient access
        \_ Yes. For now, email root@csua if you'd like to change your shell.
           \_ oh i'm more interested in the how'd this happen/why, from a
              system analysis/no fault point of view.  was it the ldap?
              \_ Yeah, it's the LDAP. sudo'ing chsh worked last time I tried
                 which, admittedly, was a while ago. We may just move back to
                 passwd and put up LDAP w/ a passwd backend. --t
           \_ The underlying reason is that the way we 'sorry' people
              who need to have their account disabled is by changing
              their shell.  If you can change your own shell, you could
              connect to LDAP directly and change it to be un-sorried.
              So we need to figure out a way to fix that little
              loophole...  that's why changing shell is disabled.  As
              mentioned earlier, email root@csua for shell changes.
2008/12/19-28 [Computer/SW/OS/Linux, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52283 Activity:nil
12/19   what's your favourite unicode api for linux/unix?
        \_ qt, definately.  QtString::Utf8 4tw.
           \_ I don't like their license. - !op
           \_ anything else?
2008/12/9-15 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52218 Activity:moderate 50%like:52280
12/9    Is there a how-to to use csua ftp service?  I used to ftp to
        http://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu but now I have forgotten what exactly needed to
        set it up again.
        \_ fixed for 80 columns.
        \_ Are you trying to ftp as anonymous or as a soda user?
        \_ Ask again in two weeks, when finals are over and maybe the vp can get
           back to you on that. --t
        \_ Ask again in two weeks, when finals are over and maybe the vp can
           get back to you on that. --t
          \_ You're better off emailing root@ with questions like that...
2008/11/24-28 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:52090 Activity:nil
11/23   How do you find the max # of forkable threads in a unix
        environment? Is it system or user based?
        \_ getrlimit, or ulimit -a (in bash)
2008/11/16-17 [Computer/Networking, Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:51999 Activity:low
11/16   Can I use my SBC Yahoo! DSL login name "xxx@sbcglobal.net" and password
        for the DSL at someone else's home?
        \_ Why don't you try it...
        \_ Don't check your email at your mistress' house.
2008/11/12-13 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:51932 Activity:nil
11/12   May be useful if you want to learn UNIX tricks (good for noobs,
        good refresher for others):
        http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/05/2027234
        \_ that was not lol.  and actually a waste of time. lol lol lol lol.
        \_ waste of time.  yawn.
2008/10/31-11/2 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:51769 Activity:nil
10/31   As root, is there a way to make "passwd" give the same "too short"
        and other bad password errors (or at least warn in those cases)? This
        is on linux.
2008/10/31 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/Languages/Misc] UID:51767 Activity:high
10/31   I guess this idiot feels so disenfranchised with the implosion
        of his ideology that he has to spam completely unrelated forums
        with his drivel.  But since he's clearly doing it via some sort
        of script, can root please block him and squish the account?
        \_ Is this an example of the new liberal political order? -emarkp
           \_ no, it's an example of how it's not cool to post 300 lines of
              drivel to the motd.  -tom
        \_ what are you talking about
        \_ Hey, I remember some pretty crazy shit from the lefties on the
           motd back in the day. I might have even posted some of it myself...
2008/10/23-28 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:51654 Activity:nil
10/23   Woman charged with crime for "killing" (deletion really) of online
        character:
        http://tinyurl.com/6lspuv
        \_ she is weak. SHe should have created her own character
           and then do a backstab on his ass. - turin
2008/10/13-16 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:51497 Activity:nil
10/13   Can anyone recommend a decent open source software package to track
        passwords in a global network (Windows+UNIX systems) ... I'm sick and
        tired of waiting days for IT to track down the one person with root
        on some server somewhere.
        \_ its not open source, but we've been using Cyberark
           (http://www.cyber-ark.com it's done the job well enough.   Considering
           what it cost, I bet an open source competitor would not be hard to
           write... -ERic
        \_ LDAP
2008/10/13-15 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:51490 Activity:low
10/12   I got sucked into doing some wedding video stuff using basically a
        handheldsetup and a single finger  holding down the record button.
        I have imported eveerything I have on to my macbookPro and Imovie.
        I would like to try to do at least some cleanup of the shakey images.
        My kodak V1253 is not really designed to do viddeo clips longer than
        a minute at most and i was doing closer to five. Lots of sorefingers
        and wrists as a result.Any inexpensve suggestsions that will at
        provide some marginal imporveent to the videos?
        (* And I  will try and bry a tripod with mext tme )
        \_ such software does not [yet] exist but I see this as a really
           amazing, obviously should have done startup idea that'd really
           take off.
2008/10/9 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:51447 Activity:nil
10/8    http://www.scribd.com/doc/4964973/Worst-Captchas-of-All-Time
        Worst captchas of all time. Some stupid, some funny.
2008/9/7-12 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/Domains] UID:51089 Activity:nil
9/7     Dear Linux DNS experts, how do you find out if a domain has
        published SPF records? Is there a magic command like hostname,
        nslookup, etc that does this? I'm a UNIX noob. Thanks!
        \_  host -t txt $DOMAINNAME     -ERic
2008/9/3 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:51030 Activity:nil
9/3     Okay, my sed and awk skills are obviously not up to par here.
        I want to only see the "500's" in my apache error log, how do I
        do that? I want to see the whole line, not just the 500 error code.
        Never mind, grep " 500 " is close enough.
2008/8/18-21 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:50894 Activity:kinda low
8/18    How long has the command "seq" been around? I just saw it in
        one of my coworkers shell scripts and wish I had known about it
        years ago...
        \_ what does it do?  - bash fan #1
           \_ It prints out a sequence of numbers from FIRST to LAST in
              a specified increment.
           \_ in bash (taken from ksh, I believe), that's
                for ((i=0;i<10;i++)); do echo $i ; done
        \_ soda:~% seq --version
           seq (GNU coreutils) 5.97
           Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
           \- you can also use jot

                                   a hozer guidelines.  Should anyone step
                                   far enough outside the hozing boundaries
                                   I will lobby them for the ability to squish.
                                   -mrauser
                             \_ Auto-deletion directly denies access
                                to the motd and thus prevents the free
                                exchange of ideas that is necessary for
                                a "marketplace of ideas" to function.
                                Auto-posting doesn't directly deny access,
                                and while it may drive people away from
                                the motd, the motd still remains accessible.
                                Thus, I think that auto-deletion, in which
                                you don't know what you lost, is a much
                                worse form of terrorist, than auto-posting,
                                which only makes it harder to find things.
                                Personally, I think both auto-posting and
                                auto-deletion need to be controlled for
                                the motd to function effectively.
        \_ seq shreads.  I use the -w option for naming nodes in a script
           for a linux cluster: for i in $(seq -w 1 200); do echo n$i; done
           will give you node001-node200
2008/7/14-16 [Computer/SW/Languages/Perl, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:50557 Activity:moderate
7/14    Shell Programming question: I want to call a script with 1 arg
        and have it figure out whether $1 is a MAC address or an IP address
        and then do call the appropriate function.  What is the best way
        to do this, given that sh/bash/ksh do not have something like
        the =~ in perl.  Check for exit status of grep, or is there a
        a better way?  For the moment, let's just say the two tests are:
          echo $1 | fgrep : > /dev/null && echo isMAC || echo notMAC
          echo $1 | fgrep . > /dev/null && echo isIP || echo notIP
          and if neither, then Usage()
        I want to avoid requiring the user to either do "-i IP" or "-m MAC".
        Note: this doesn't have to do extensive syntax checking ... it's
        not a security application.  Just trying to save typing.
        \_ You may want to recheck your assumption of bash not having =~.
           \_ Thanks for that information.  I didn't know know about that.
              Although right now it is in sh.  Any portable pure sh ideas?
              I'm really interested in what is the "right" way to do this,
              rather than just coming up with something which works.
              \_ "right" depends on your situation. If you actually need
                 to support old systems, or be portable across many systems,
                 then maybe you should stick with sh. If you know your
                 audience is all going to have bash or whatever (and that
                 is not at all unlikely these days), then I see no good
                 reason to suffer under older, less capable tools.
              \_ Dude, it's a sh script.  If it works, it works.  Seriously.
                 Stick it in a function if it looks too ugly and then forget
                 about it.  If you need something to be maintainable or
                 it's a called enough there is any concern about it being
                 too slow you are going to have to bite the bullet and use
                 a reasonable scripting language.  Otherwise just make it work
                 and move on to something that is worth spending time on.
              \_ I think "right" in this case, means readable and maintainable
                 by the next poor guy that has to come along. Just document
                 your code and you will be fine.
              \- I think one way to distill the question is "how do i get =~
                 in sh" ... would you do "echo $string | egrep <regexp>" + $?
                 to get exit status of the grep ... I think the case approach
                 below is nice and clean as long as you are ok with something
                 like *:*:*:*:*:* for MACs and *.*.*.* for IPs, and dont need
                 "true" regexps.
                 "true" regexps. I wouldnt use awk to test, but maybe if you
                 need to mangle.
        \_ Why would you do this in a shell progam?
        \_ use case:

        found="NO"
        case "$1" in
             *:*)    echo "isMAC"; found="YES";;
             *.*)    echo "isIP"; found="YES";;
             *)      if [ "$found" = "NO" ] ; then
                        echo "NOT MAC" ; echo "NOT IP";
                     fi
                     ;;
        esac
2008/6/12-13 [Computer/SW/Editors/Emacs, Computer/SW/Editors/Vi, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:50233 Activity:nil
6/12    Does emacs or vi include a column paste?  I sometimes have a block
        text I want to insert horizntally next to another block/column.  This
        is common for data plotting etc.  In Microsoft Word has this, I need
        it in a Unix text editor.
        \_ Does M-x picture-mode in emacs work for you?
           \_ Yes, with the commands below, thanks.
        \_ C-x r k runs `kill-rectangle'
           C-x r y runs `yank-rectangle'
           \_ Does this work outside picture mode?
              \_ Yes. There are quite a few other rectangle commands as well.
                 \_ How do you select a rectange?
                    \_ It's defined by point and mark. RTFM for details.
                       \- also valuable in emacs is align-regexp
2008/6/10-13 [Computer/SW/OS/VM, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:50210 Activity:nil
6/10    Is there a handy guide to virtualizing an already running
        physical linux box into an instance of Vmware?
        \_ this probably isn't the "right" way, but I have many times
        just run rsync. ("rsync -vpa root@oldbox:/ /")  on a fresh virtual
        image.  Just make sure the partitions are the same on the virt disk
        as on the real disk and if you are using a new udev, kill the info
        in /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules before rebooting the
        virt).  I have not had any problems doing this.
        \_ I attended a talk where I *think* VMware mentioned a tool they
           provide to do this. Check their web site.
        \_ Yes.  You want VMware's p2v (Physical to Virtual) tool.
2008/6/6-10 [Computer/SW/OS/Windows, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:50172 Activity:nil
6/6     Am I in alone is really hating tabbed web browsing? I cannot stand
        it! If I go to a new site I like to have a new window because I
        might want to see both sites at once or I might want to kill the
        window entirely if it gets hung up. From my POV tabbed browsing is
        not a plus.
        \_ I multitask between 2-3 different things, meaning I need to
           go back and forth on documentation, manpage, various test URLs,
           etc. But then again I'm a very atypical developer since I can
           do many things at the same time. My take is if you're a better
           single tasker, multi-tabs may be too difficult to grasp.
           \_ How can you multitask when you can only see one site at a time?
              Tabs are sort of the antithesis of multitasking.
              \_ You are dense. I'm sure that's not the first time
                 you've heard this. You think everyone should think like
                 you and if not, they're idiots. Dumb fuck. I'm done
                 with you.
              \_ I'm reading a piece of code, then I need to branch off
                 to understand a function, then I need another function,
                 then I need to come back, then RFTM, then email, then
                 calendar, then check news. I don't want to keep opening
                 new windows, so tab seems the best next thing.
                 \_ This sounds like serial tasking to me.
                    \_ Very true, but the cost of context-switch is
                       1/5-1/10 of the original cost of serially changing
                       URLs. Did you even take CS162?
                       \_ Which part of CONTEXT-SWITCH don't you
                          understand? Motherfucker!
                          \_ PP does SMP
                             \_ prev post is a rip-off from a movie
                    \_ Which is what people do.  I don't think you read two
                       pages at the exact same time.  Do you read books by
                       starting each page at the top all at once?
        \_ And lucky for you you can turn it off.
           \_ Of course. I just don't see why this is some 'feature' that
              people seem to get excited about. It would be nice if it
              went away.
              \_ YOU don't see it, but many people do. Majority rules.
                 Yeah yeah, you're smarter and better than everyone else
                 so YOU don't see WHY people want it in the first place,
                 and YOU wish it would go away. What a fucking tard.
                 \_ Yes, the majority usually is right about deciding
                    what's best - from McDonald's to VHS.
              \_ it's not going away.  just don't use it.
              \_ Well, I like it a lot,  I hardly ever want to see 2 sites
                 at once.  I do open up a lot of tabs though.
              \_ Safari now makes it easy to take a tab and make it a new
                 window.  The few times I want two windows at a time it is
                 a nice feature to have.
                 \_ Now *this* is a nice feature.
                 \_ And opera's had this feature for about 5 years.
                    \_ Great.
2008/5/31 [Computer/SW/Apps/Media, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:50105 Activity:nil
5/31    I have a slow wireless router and slow fileserver on my network.
        Is there a video or media player (windows or unix) that is smart
        about caching content while playing it?  I would like to be able
        to hit play on a file from a file share, wait for it to catch
        up for a while because my connection is so slow, walk away for
        a while and come back and view my movie with no annoying skips. thanks.
        \_ To answer my own question, this worked:
           http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=44005#p140567
2008/5/21-23 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:50023 Activity:nil
  5/21  remember the big guy who runs Comic Relief in downtown berkeley?
        he died, at 50, on monday:
        http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=%22rory%20root%22
        http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/rory_root_1958_2008
        \_ "Worst. News. Ever"
2008/5/9 [Transportation/Car/Hybrid, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49912 Activity:nil 53%like:49895 Entry has been invalidated. Access denied.
2008/3/31-4/6 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49622 Activity:nil
3/31    There's this website that I'd like to perform an asshole
        wget operation on it (wget -r --level=3 -k http://site.com
        However, it's got rate throttling and denies me if I fetch
        too quickly. Is there like a "--wait 10" command or something
        I can use with wget? ok thx.
        \_ man wget, look for "--random-wait".
        \_ man wget, look for "--wait".
           \_ Oh man, I can't believe I missed it. Thanks motd!   -op
              \_ Different versions have different features.  Don't do this
                 from soda.
                 \_ I just did a bunch of wgets on soda. Now what?  -op
                    \_ This could be considered a DOS attack.  It's not nice to
                       do that from a shared machine, because you could be
                       prosecuted.
        \_ Look up DOS attack.
2008/3/17-21 [Computer/SW/Security, Industry/Jobs, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49482 Activity:nil
3/17    http://market-ticker.denninger.net
        Former sysadmin says Fed measures not addressing root of problem,
        IBs/banks will eventually be taken to woodshed
        \_ Once again, who cares if he is a sysadmin?
           \_ It dovetails nicely with the background of most of the
              pontificators on the motd.  What's not to like?  We really
              need to get this guy a soda account!
              \_ If sysadmins had run Bear Sterns the company would still
                 be solvent right now.
              \_ He's got tech skills.  I've got tech skills.  Therefore I
                 care what he says about the economy...?  Huh?
                 He may be 100% on the mark but having tech skills does not
                 make his writing on the economy any more interesting.
2008/3/13-17 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49442 Activity:nil
3/12    Unix sysadmin for last 6 months says:  Market in for real hurting
        http://ticker-classics.denninger.net
        http://www.denninger.net/resume.html
        \_ Uhm... so?  He has some points, what does his unix background have
           to do with anything either way?
           \_ the non sequitur is interesting by itself
           \_ maybe he's like all us losers, but in that case, it would be
              interesting if he were right
        \_ This guy hasn't worked since 98?
           \_ i believe he sold his business for $5-15M and is doing smaller
              jobs when he feels like it
2008/3/6-7 [Computer/Domains, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49354 Activity:low
3/6     Starting a Web 2.0, scaling up slowly.  Should we go the
        physical-servers-in-a-colo route, or go for some sort of scalable
        virtual hosting?
        \_ At start?  Do the cheapest thing possible.  When you're ready to
           get something real going hire someone who knows wth they're doing
           to help you if you haven't done a colo before (sounds like not).
           Otherwise you'll be sorry later when you have a pile of useless
           hardware and a broken architecture that can't support your site.
           \_ The person who'll be doing it is me.  I've setup colos before,
              but not in the last 5 years.  I was just wondering if the
              "best practice" for small startup had changed due to new players
              like the Amazon virtual hosting thing.
              \_ How big do you think you are going to be at start?  If one
                 or two machines can handle it, throw one or two machines
                 somewhere cheap and don't worry about it.  There's no best
                 practice for a site that gets in the order of 1000s of hits
                 a day.
             \_ The only best practice you need to worry about at the
                beginning like that is to ensure that your data is backed
                up. If you get enough traffic to warrent it, you can do
                a cost/benefits analysis of hosting vs. colo.
              \_ I am aware of a wide range of startups using Amazon's EC2,
                 usually in conjunction with S3. The advantage is that it's
                 dead easy to add more resources as needed, and I get the
                 impression that it's not too hard to migrate away from when
                 and if you grow to the point where having your own hardware
                 becomes economical. Plus, Amazon has way more resources to
                 dedicate to infrastructure than you do.
2008/2/28-3/4 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49282 Activity:nil
2/28    Is anyone's IMAP password no longer working?
        \_ for the past two or three days, connecting to mead.  :(
        \_ It works for me.  Could you please tell me when you stopped
           being able to log in, and what error message you get?  --mconst
2008/2/6-7 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49077 Activity:nil
2/6     % w | sort | awk '{print $1}' | uniq | wc
2008/1/31 [Finance, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49039 Activity:nil
1/130   Partial Filmography
    * Anal Expedition 11 (Evil Angel Video) (2007)
    * Big White Butt Lingerie Show (Evasive Angles) (2007)
    * Black Assassins (Platinum X Pictures) (2007)
    * Black Dicks In White Chicks 14 (Red Light District) (2007)
    * Blow It Out Your Ass (Elegant Angel Productions) (2007)
    * Cuckold (JM Productions) (2007)
    * Gash Bash 3 (JM Productions) (2007)
    * I'll Take It Black 3 (Red Light District) (2007)
    * My First White Chick (Adam & Eve) (2007)
    * Nasty Universe 3 (Mercenary Pictures) (2007)
    * Nutts 4 Big Butts 2 (Exquisite Pleasures) (2007)
    * Smothered N' Covered 2 (Red Light District) (2007)
    * Squirts So Good 5 (DVSX) (2007)
    * 1 Lucky Fuck 2 (Platinum X Pictures) (2006)
    * 10 Man Cum Slam 15 (Kick Ass Pictures) (2006)
    * 110% Natural 10 (Red Light District) (2006)
    * 5 Guy Cream Pie 25 (Kick Ass Pictures) (2006)
    * 50 To 1 3 (Platinum X Pictures) (2006)
    * Ass Masterpiece 1 (Naughty America) (2006)
    * Belladonna: No Warning 2 (Evil Angel Video) (2006)
    * Big Booty White Girls 4 (Evil Empire) (2006)
    * Big Bubble Butt Anal Sluts 1 (Evasive Angles) (2006)
    * Big Bubble Butt Cheerleaders 5 (Evasive Angles) (2006)
    * Big Butt Teen Flesh 1 (Evasive Angles) (2006)
    * Big Tit Brotha Lovers 8 (Exquisite) (2006)
    * Big Wet Asses 9 (Elegant Angel Productions) (2006)
2008/1/28-2/2 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:49022 Activity:nil
1/28    Quick regex Q: Say I have a line of data, and inside that line I
        have some parts between two symbols:
        This is a line ~of data~ where ~the tildes are my symbols~
        How do I sed this line to get rid of the tildes and anything
        between each pair of tildes? The end result should be:
        This is a line where
        \_ 's/~[^~]*~//g'
           To handle the whitespace the way you request would be trickier
           and would require more knowledge of just how you're using these
           tags.
           \_ Thank you. I'll work with this for now.
           \_ I'm not sure I understand how your regex works.  Wouldn't
              's/~.*?~//g' do the job handling whitespaces as well? - ! op/pp
              \_ nvm.  Just understood what you meant about whitespaces. -pp
2008/1/21-31 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48977 Activity:nil
1/21    Does the "etc" in the Unix directory name "/etc" stand for "et cetera",
        or is it just a coincidence?  Thanks.
        \_ Yes it does.
2007/12/14-19 [Recreation/Dating, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48804 Activity:nil
12/14   My wife would like a gift card for a good sausage, or possibly a day
        spa sort of place.  (Some place relaxing I guess.)  I live in Livermore.
        any ideas?
        \_ Yelp.  Spa.  Search.
           \_ I'm sorry, I don't know what this means. -op
              \_ I think PP means go to http://www.yelp.com enter "spa" and
                 "Livermore, CA", and click search.  Apparently http://www.yelp.com
                 is some kind of customer review site.  -- !PP
        \_ Nob Hill Spa is outstanding (it's in SF, however)
           \_ Is there a Raley's spa?
        \_ I took my wife to Kabuki Springs & Spa for a 50 minute Swedish
           massage for her birthday. http://www.kabukisprings.com
           Highly recommended doesn't even begin to cover it.
           \_ Wow, that sounds perfect, but I'm afraid getting to and from SF
              will negate the stress relief of the massage.
              \_ Combine it with brunch, dinner, a show.... She'll sleep all
                 the way home.
2007/12/13-19 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/Languages] UID:48796 Activity:nil
12/12   Why do I get an error about /etc/tabset not existing when I type reset?
        Is reset no longer the command to use to clear the screen ?
        \_ Try 'clear' like normal people. Or Ctrl-L if your shell supports it.
2007/12/12-19 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48790 Activity:moderate
12/12   In an interview last week I got hit with
        "What is your best quality?"
        "What is your worst quality?"
        I know these are standard interview questions, and I should have
        expected them, but I am pretty sure I flubbed them.
        What are some good responses?
        \_ just do the David Lee Roth style to answering questions:
           let me answer the question this way and then start
           talking about whatever the hell you want
        \_ Best: I never ask stupid fucking questions like this when
                 interviewing people.
           Worst: I hate people who ask stupid shit like this and I
                  would never work for idiots who do.
           \_ More seriously, if you can't come up with a best (or at
              least damn good) quality you shouldn't be interviewing.
              It is a question that gives you a chance to prove you
              actually give a damn about your work and skills.  The
              worst quality question is still a bullshit question and
              deserves all the feces you feel like flinging at it.
        \_ "I respond very poorly to stupid questions."
        \_ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/12
        \_ http://csua.com/Computer/SW/Unix/?page=4
        \_ http://csua.com/2003/09/17/#10220
           (There are no good responses... but there are worse ones.
           At least they only asked you for ONE bad quality.)
           \_ Yeah, my last interview asked for 3.
        \_ I told them the truth, I have fairly poor time management skills.
           If I get wrapped up in one problem, I'll neglect the other things I
           have to do.  I got that job anyway.
        \_ The problem with questions like these aren't that they're dumb.
           They are not.  The problem is that the people asking them usually
           have no idea what a 'good' or 'bad' answer is.  They just ask
           because they were asked the same in the past.  I assume at some
           point in the distant past someone who knew what they were doing
           came up with the best/worst question and it spread like a plague
           from there.  As someone above said, there is no good answer, just
           don't say "my worst trait is <insert felony activity here>" and
           you'll be fine.
        \_ Worst trait: Sometimes I am too much of a perfectionist -or-
           sometimes I work too hard or some other such bullshit. No one
           expects a serious answer to such a question (or at least they
           should not). It is also okay to list an actual negative trait
           that you have that is not that big a deal "sometimes I get
           excited about an idea in meetings and interrupt other people."
           You better have some damn good answers to the "best trait"
           question though.
        \_ I once answered, honestly, that I don't react well to being
           micromanaged, but 1) I didn't really want the job, and 2) I wasn't
           offered the job. --erikred
           \_ But that is the right answer is the manager was a micromanager.
           \_ But that is the right answer if the manager was a micromanager.
              You wouldn't have been happy anyway.  Why would anyone try to
              get a job they wouldn't like?
              \_ In this case, because I was already in a job I didn't like.
                 Realization that the new gig was also what I didn't want hit
                 about midway through the interview.
                 until about midway through the interview.
                 \_ No matter how bad your current job is, don't flee it.  Go
                    to a new job you want to have.  Sounds like you made the
                    right call.
                    \_ Sounds like someone who never really had a job so
                       bad it was affecting your sleep, your health, and
                       other aspects of your life. Sometimes fleeing is
                       the best option.
                       \_ Oddly enough, you're both right. It was the latter
                          kind of job, but I needed the benefits and the
                          salary, and the other job would have been even
                          worse. Fortunately, something much, much better
                          came along two months later.
                       \_ sounds like to you, but incorrect.  the guy who
                          replaced me didn't last 3 months.  fleeing is not
                          a good option.  you just end up at another crappy
                          place.  and you'd miss out on the job you wanted
                          like the other person here posted.  i see zero value
                          in going from one shitty life sucking job to another
                          shitty life sucking job.
                          \_ Sounds like the guy who replaced you was
                             smart enough to flee.
                             \_ He already had another job the whole time.
                                This job was easy for his first three months
                                because I unloaded all the easy but time
                                consuming crap on him.  Once he had to do the
                                real work, it was easier for him to just pick
                                up more hours at his other job.  He didn't
                                flee to another job.  He had one all along.
                                \_ So he knew all along that your job
                                   sucked, but it took you much longer to
                                   figure it out.
                                   \_ No he had no idea until he had to do it.
                                      I kept it during that time because there
                                      were no other jobs available without
                                      taking a dramatic pay cut *and* working
                                      for an equally shitty place.  But I'm
                                      sure you had your choice of great jobs
                                      in the 2001-2004 years because you know
                                      everything.
2007/11/12-16 [Computer/SW/OS/Linux, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48623 Activity:nil
11/12   how do i make a fail safe magical backup for my debian box
        that i can quickly boot from if the box explodes?
        \_ keep a linux live boot cd around for just such an emergency
           \_ And learn about 'dd'
        \_ I was hoping there was something as slick as CCC, for unix.
           \_ You can first duplicate the disk offline with dd, then just
              keep it up to date with regularly scheduled rsync, which
              should work fine as long as you're using a bootloader like
              grub that understands the filesystem rather than lilo.  A
              more elaborate system would be to use a filesystem that
              allows snapshotting, but probably unnecessary in most cases
              if databases aren't involved.
2007/11/12-16 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/OS/OsX] UID:48607 Activity:high
11/12   Server nerds, CCC for mac is totally awesome.  is there somethng
        as cool and friendly for PC or unix?
        \_ Hi.  "CCC" is a free mac program known as "Carbon Copy Cloner".
           If you use a Mac, and have some sort of external usb or firewire
           drive, I recommend you spend 15 minutes downloading it and
           setting it up.  You can easily make a backup set up your data,
           set up incremental backups, and even make a nice bootable image
           of your drive onto your external usb drive, so when the disk
           on your Mac finally fails (all drives fail eventually), it's
           just a few minutes work getting up again (after you replace the
           drive obviously).  I'm not trolling, I'm just describing
           my experience, my Mac is not running a terabyte SAN NAS fiber
           highly available hot swapping RAID, calm the fuck down.
        \_ What is CCC? -dans
           \_ Wow, you are really ignorant.  Stay in school!
           \_ Color Climax Corp. of Denmark.
              \_ Oh, so it's like rsync for people who can't be bothered to
                 learn rsync. -dans
                       \- dont be silly. i'm a "BFUN" [\infra] and probably
                          have looked deeper into rsync than 99% of rsync
                          users [i.e. how to optimize for certain large
                          data sets in scientific computation, see e.g.
                          mutli-round rsync paper], but i use these $5-$30
                          programs to back up my computer ... the calculus
                          is "are these worth $5-$30", not "can i write
                          something similar". ironically your comment echos
                          holob's "http is ftp for idiots".
                          \_ If I'm going to back up data it's because I value
                             it appreciably more than $5-$30.  I've seen
                             elaborate backup systems fail at recovery time
                             because the data was corrupt.  You'll forgive me
                             if I compare a known good one-line rsyncism to a
                             $5 to $30 backup program that may or may not
                             work.  I think you and I are working with
                             different calculuses. -dans
                             \_ This is again typical: 1. you are claiming
                                this isnt that hard 2. You claim you wouldn't
                                trust a program that google will tell you has
                                1000s of satisified users --> 1. do you think
                                everyone else is a moron? or 2. do you not
                                feel you can tell the difference between
                                a review written by a moron/non moron? ...
                                in fact often you can even read the author's
                                writings and judge for yourself ... in fact
                                if you weren't such a pud, you might even
                                if you weren't pud like you, you might even
                                entertain the notion the author is cleverer
                                thn you. and it's a question of whether your
                                than you. and it's a question of whether your
                                "marginal time" to reproduce the functionlity
                                of the $30 software is worth $30 ... not "is
                                the functionality of the software worth $30".
                                The fundamental E_HOLARB is the "center of
                                universe problem": statements he makes
                                "about the world" often are really
                                "about the universe" often are really
                                statements about his state of knowledge.
                                one attendant phenomena is pronoucing things
                                "easy" when you really havent considered the
                                "easy" when you relly havent considered the
                                nuances. does ths sound familiar ["one line
                                rsync"]? you have a lot in common with
                                holob, except i think your head is further up
                                rsync"]? man you have a lot in common with
                                holob, except i think you head is further up
                                your ass ... might be interesting to see over
                                time whether it gets buried deeper or starts
                                to "slide" out.
                                "if the functionality of the software worth
                                $30". man you have a lot in common with holob,
                                (like assuming things where you havent
                                considered some nuances "simple" ... the
                                Fundamental Holarb Diagnosis aka the "center
                                of universe problem" is statements he makes
                                "about the universe" often are really
                                statements about his state of knowledge)
                                except i think you head is further up your
                                ass ... be interesting to see over time whether
                                it is buried deeper or starts to "slide" out.
                                it is gets buried deeper or starts to "slide"
                                out.
                                \_ Partha, if I didn't know how to accomplish
                                   this with rsync already, then, yes, that
                                   would make sense.  In my case, the time
                                   required to reproduce the functionality of
                                   a $30 piece of software is a sunk cost.  The
                                   time to research that piece of software has
                                   a significant marginal cost.  Also, one or
                                   even many good reviews don't offer proof
                                   that the software doesn't have some
                                   obscure, fatal flaw.  I'm not saying that
                                   this is the case for everyone. -dans
                                   \_ You simply are wrong if you think
                                      all one of these backup suites
                                      does is rsync-type functionality.
                                      I'm not interested in assessing
                                      whether this error is due to
                                      ignorance or arrogance etc.
                                      \_ Oh, I have no doubt they do other
                                         things; it's more a question of what
                                         *I* need/how well it handles massive
                                         amounts of data. -dans
                        \_ Do other languages have the 'your head is lodged
                           firmly up your ass' idiom, or is this an English
                           only thing?
                           \- only in pointer-based languages --psb
                              \_ So you are saying dans is difficult to
                                 garbage collect? -- ilyas
                              \_ Are you saying dans is hard to garbage
                                 collect? -- ilyas
                 \_ This is true.  In my experience if you're not a big fucking
                    unix nerd and you spend all day making pretty pictures
                    in Adobe CS, you don't want to worry about the details
                    of rsync and keeping backup restoral incremental sets.
                    In fact even if you are a big fucking nerd you have
                    better things to do.
                    \_ I'll have to check it out.  If only it was invented ten
                       years earlier. -dans
           \_ Color Climax Corp. of Denmark.  Check out its Teenage Sex series.
           \_ Chaos Computer Club
2007/11/5-6 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48537 Activity:kinda low
11/5    sed/awk question.  Let say i have a csv file.  I need to do two things:
        1. insert a comma after first character in the first column
        2. merge 2nd colmun with first, separate by a comma.

        so, original file may look like this
        abc, def, ghi, jkl ...
        it will become
        a\,bc\,def, ghi, jkl

        any idea?
        \_ Stop rolling your own CSV parser!
           http://www.secretgeek.net/csv_trouble.asp
           \_ Sadly the solution he has is .NET, but yeah.  Libraies exist
              for this kind of stuff in every language you would ever use.
              There's no need to reinvent the wheel.
              \_ The advice is good.  I used FasterCSV for Ruby and it's great.
        \_ Hypothetical: the above csv libraries don't exist.  Why use sed/awk
           insead of perl?
2007/11/1-2 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48509 Activity:nil
11/1    What version of Linux/Unix does Samba test on before releasing
        to the public?
2007/10/24-26 [Politics/Domestic/California, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48436 Activity:low
10/24   Animated gif satellite view of the fires
        http://www.osei.noaa.gov/Events/Current/CaliforniaFire.gif
        \_ Wow. I never heard about the one in Mexico.
        \_ bah, it's only a four hour window
        \_ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery
        \_ http://www.signonsandiego.com/firemap
        \_ http://alg.umbc.edu/usaq
2007/10/18 [Computer/Blog, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48378 Activity:nil
10/18   To whoever seriously thought Flickr has 3 9's of uptime, I have
        one thing to say to you:
        http://l.yimg.com/www.flickr.com/images/photo_unavailable.gif
        -dans
2007/10/9-11 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48269 Activity:nil
10/9    It's great that soda's been more or less up for the past few months,
        but I really hate Linux and all this gnu shit... ELinks, crappy vi,
        etc.  I miss links and a tcsh that works.
        \_ What's wrong with the current tcsh on soda?  Why don't you just ask
           root to install links or build it yourself?  Also, barring things
           that actually need to talk to the kernel, e.g. threading libraries,
           why would running a gnu licensed kernel stop you from installing
           non-gnu software? -dans  [formatd]
        \_ ftp ; unzip ; untar ; make install
        \_ Oops, it just went down.
2007/10/4-7 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:48240 Activity:high
10/4    What's the command to create a new login on a Linux 2.6 machine?
I
        already have root password.  I think it's "useradd" or "adduser",
        but it's not in root's path.  Thanks.  -- linux idiot \_useradd
        -g groupname username
            \_  specifically /usr/sbin/useradd.  You shoudl add /sbin and
                /usr/sbin to root's path, if they arent already
                there. -ERic \_ It works!  Thanks.  -- OP
        \_useradd -g groupname username
            \_  specifically /usr/sbin/useradd.  You shoudl add /sbin and
                /usr/sbin to root's path, if they arent already there. -ERic
                \_ It works!  Thanks.  -- OP
        \_ vi, emacs, cat, echo
           \_ meanie
           \_ realist -dans
           \_ ED IS THE STANDARD.  Text editor.
           \_ meanie \_ realist -dans \_ ED IS THE STANDARD.  Text editor.
2007/9/3 [Computer/SW/P2P, Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47877 Activity:nil
9/3     So I was watching the Today Show this morning and in the crowd of
        jackasses trying to get on TV, some dude kept emphatically showing a
        home made sign that simply said, "lemonparty.org." None the wiser, I
        fired up my laptop, curious as to what could possibly be at
        http://lemonparty.org. I wondered why he was smiling so mischievously,
        shaking his sign in the air each time the camera had him in the frame.
        Could it be some family reunion site? A wedding announcement? A site
        devoted to lovers of lemons? Oh no, I would not be so lucky.

        No sir -- or ma'am -- it was a photograph of three geriatric men
        engaged in very passionate adult loving. And by loving, I mean a good
        old fashioned three-way.

        Of course, I couldn't let it go at this. I had to find out more about
        http://lemonparty.org, as it seemed like an inside joke to which I was not
        privy. A friendly google search yielded several results, all informing
        me that http://lemonparty.org is supposedly a shock site, in the ranks of
        loopback.jpg, http://tubgirl.com and goatse.cx. Now, I'm not sure if the
        shock value or http://lemonparty.org packs the same punch as the
        aforementioned peers, but I can only imagine a suburban housewife or
        lonely grandpa typing the web site in as I did, because, well, they
        too had nothing better to do.

        So why am I sharing this? I honestly don't know, other than I needed
        to purge my conscience. I think this was either one of the most
        wonderfully subversive things I've seen on TV in a long time, or one
        of the more disturbing ones (although I doubt there are many young
        kids watching the Today show on Labor Day). But, hey, old guys need to
        get it on, too, I suppose; so lemonparty indeed!
        \_ Yucks!  It's amazing enough that that guy can get it up.
2007/8/31-9/3 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47860 Activity:nil
8/31    Pretend I am going to be on a boat in the arctic.
        I want to upload whale song sound data while I am
        on my terrible internet connection in the middle of
        the arctic.  What would I use?  FTP seems so 80s.
        \_ FTP is a tool that works and does exactly the job you want.
           What's wrong with FTP?
           \_ I am unwilling to open up FTP on my server back
              here in the states.
              \_ Why?  What makes FTP more insecure than any other
                 way to transfer files?
                 \_ It's too annoying to ope nthe proper prots for
                    FTP .  have you ever tried?  if you have,
                    you would agree with me.
                    \_ All 2 ports?  Tom has the right answer below but you
                       can safely use ftp.  The real problem with what you're
                       looking to do is your shakey network connection.  You
                       want to make sure your xfer mechanism has an option
                       to restart from where it left off if you lose your
                       connection.  Ftp can do that.
        \_ sftp/scp/rsync.  -tom
2007/8/26-27 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47759 Activity:nil
8/25    I am running unix.  I have root.  I want to keylog myself.
        How do I do that?
        \_ man script
        \_ no i want to recrod everything typed on my computer. any window.
           any program.
           \_ hack tty drivers to write to a file.
2007/8/24 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47749 Activity:high
8/24    Anybody experiencing login authentication problems?  I cannot login
        using my login and passwd thru ssh on the SECOND attempt and on:
        ie, when I do ssh csua, it works once, but not afterwards.
        Then when I do ssh http://csua.berkeley.edu, it works once, but not afterwards.
        I can STILL login when I use a machine that use ssh authorized public
        keys (with the ssh passwd), but not the unix login/passwd.

        After I login, when I do a passwd, I get the *new* LDAP passwd prompt
        that allows me to change the passwd, but only once.  After that,
        I can no longer access that LDAP prompt (seems like the LDAP server
        is rejecting any requests from a particular host after first attempt),
        but instead I get the *old* unix passwd change prompt that won't take
        *any* of my passwds:

        (current) UNIX password:
        passwd: Authentication failure
        passwd: password unchanged

        After about an hour, if I do passwd, I get the new LDAP prompt again--
        but only once again.  Basically the LDAP prompt comes back in about
        once every hour.

        If an admin is reading this please help.  Seems like the LDAP server
        is down and/or unix passwd is out of sync.  Thanks.          --pchen
2007/8/24 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47748 Activity:nil
8/24    Anybody experiencing login authentication problems?  I cannot login
        with unix passwd thru ssh, although I was able to login using my ssh
        auth keys/cert.  Then when I type passwd to change the passwd,
        I'm getting an LDAP passwd change prompt--but only once: if I type
        passwd again, I get the Unix passwd change prompt.  In any case,
        it won't accept my old passwd nor allow me to change the passwd.
        What's going on?  Also mail is not working (nothing sent nor received).
        I emailed root and get no response yet.  If an admin is reading
        this please help.  Thanks.  -pchen
2007/8/18-20 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/Security] UID:47652 Activity:kinda low 80%like:47603
8/17    hey root you wanna restore /csua/bin/mtd one day?
        \_ did you mail root about it?
           \_ do you really have to mail root when all of
              /csua/bin/ disappears?
              \_ empirical evidence would say, "yes, you do".  -!root
           \_ yeah.
2007/8/18 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47649 Activity:nil
8/17    How to I grep to exclude all lines with more than 1 / ?
        \_ After reading the grep man page:
           grep -v -E '/[^/]*/' myFile
2007/8/13 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/Security] UID:47605 Activity:nil
8/13    hey root would you engage in scrotal inflation?  thanks
        \_ Have you emailed root?  Because the motd.public isn't the preferred
           contact method.
           \_  I did.
            \_ Hey root, i think Spamassassin is dead too.
               \_ I think root is too busy leveling in WoW.
2007/8/13 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/Security] UID:47603 Activity:kinda low 66%like:47566 80%like:47652
8/13    hey root would you restore /csua/bin/mtd ? thanks.
        \_ Have you emailed root?  Because the motd.public isn't the preferred
           contact method.
           \_  I did.
            \_ Hey root, i think Spamassassin is dead too.
               \_ I think root is too busy leveling in WoW.
2007/8/8-10 [Academia/Berkeley/CSUA, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47566 Activity:nil 66%like:47603
8/7     not that you're gonna read this ROOT but you could you restore
        /csua/bin/mtd ? thanks
        \_ ObDansFlamewar
           \_ Huh? -dans
              \_ I guess he means that you're famous for flaming
                 anyone who ever complains about ROOT not doing
                 anything or not fixing things that meet the wants
                 of the alums.
                 \_ Kind of an oversimplification, but whatever. -dans
        \_ There was a setuid script /csua/bin/mtd what I assumed cron
           periodically uses to merge /etc/motd.official and /etc/motd.public .
           I just want root to put it back, and while they're at it,
           make /csua/bin/ sticky.  I mailed root@csua too.
2007/8/7-13 [Computer/SW/Languages/Perl, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47555 Activity:nil
8/7     I'm trying to figure out whether it's possible for get wget to
        authenticate to a web page protected by a login form ('post'
        method to send username/pass, and cookies.)  Cookies don't seem
        to be the problem, with --save-cookies and --keep-session-cookies
        but getting the username/password submitted isn't doing it.  On
        this particular page, getting to a link, let's say 'example.aspx',
        redirects to 'login.aspx?href=/example.aspx'; login.aspx is a
        standard http form.  Anyone ever get this working?  -John
        \_ You want a single wget command or are you scripting this?
           If scripting just hit the logon page first to get your cookie.
           Otherwise you have to recognize you've been redirected.
        \_ Why wget?  Have you tried curl?
        \_ I've been able to get this working using wget's CLI options
           --user=[user] and --password=[passwd] or by posting the
           right form elements for authentication.
           \_ Yeah tried both, no good.  Curl sounds like it might
              work, though.  Thanks.  -John
        \_ If curl doesn't work for you, I've done this in perl before.  It
           isn't that hard with cpan's lwp, cookie libraries, etc.
           \_ Or if you hate Perl, Ruby does a good job too.
              \_ Curl works for submitting the credentials, but I'm having
                 trouble with cookies; the site issues 4 for a normal
                 browser login, but with curl I only get one.  I'll keep
                 plugging.  -John
              \_ How can you hate perl for a hack script like this?
2007/8/6-22 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47542 Activity:nil
8/6     http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wilburjr&search=Search
        Lies lies lies.
        \_ I can't view youtube from work.  What is this?
           \_ boring.
2007/8/1 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/Languages/Perl] UID:47500 Activity:high
8/1     perl/sed/awk/etc question:
        Is there a good way to change every other delimiter or string
        match?  For example change a colon delimited list to a :+, one...
         Apple:12:Pear:2:Orange:9:Plum:7:Banana:22:Mango:2 to
         Apple:12,Pear:2,Orange:9,Plum:7,Banana:22,Mango:2
        (And I dont mean a trick that relies on some fields being
        alpha and some numeric or only a known number of fields).
        \_ How 'bout the straightforward approach
           s/([^:]+:[^:]+):/$1,/g
           \_ That didn't work?!  Am I doing something wrong?
              echo Apple:12:Pear:2:Orange:9 |sed -e 's/([^:]+:[^:]+):/$1,/g'
              Apple:12:Pear:2:Orange:9
              \_ use perl, sed will kill you with quoting.
                 \_ Thanks! perl -pe ... does it!
              \_ One more question, why is there a differene between : and |?
                 I now need to use |.
 echo "Prog 1:61.3:Ch 2:91.0:Num3:83.4" |perl -pe 's/([^:]+:[^:]+):/$1,/g'
Prog 1:61.3,Ch 2:91.0,Num3:83.4

 echo "Prog 1|61.3|Ch 2|91.0|Num3|83.4" |perl -pe 's/([^|]+|[^|]+)|/$1,/g'
Prog 1,,|61.3,,|Ch 2,,|91.0,,|Num3,,|83.4
                 First one works. Second does not.
                 \_ man perlre, search for |
2007/7/23-26 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/Unix/WindowManager] UID:47383 Activity:nil
7/23    shac don't you work at http://foxnews.com?  what the hell
        are you doing?
        http://reddit.com/info/28nfk/comments
2007/7/23-26 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:47378 Activity:nil
7/23    Can anyone recommend a lightweight caching web proxy for unix
        that is not squid? thanks.
        \_ Apache used to have a caching module. The only other non-
           commerical caching proxy I know of is polipo:
           http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo
           I don't know anyone who is using it though.
        \_ What is wrong with squid? -ausman
2007/7/6 [Computer/SW/Unix, Computer/SW/Languages/Perl] UID:47196 Activity:high
7/6     my google fu is weak.  How do I match EOF ( tr or perl or sed or any
        linux tool that will do substitutions in a file)? thanks.
        \_ What are you trying to do?
2007/6/12-14 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:46925 Activity:high
6/12    Inside of a C++ program, I do a "ps | grep usename" for logging
        purposes.  where username = getenv("USER");  Doing this directly is a
        gigantic security hole because someone could set $USER to some command
        line and execute arbitrary code.  What's the best way to make this
        safe?  Is there some standard way to check the input in a case like
        this?
        \_ How about "ps | grep \"username\""?
        \_ man getuid, man getpwuid
        \_ How's your motd logger going?
           \_ I hope OP isn't doing this for a motd logger.  There are much
              easier ways than writing C++.
        \_ Some versions of ps support a -U flag (or similar) that lets you
           pass in the username OR userid. Safest way would be to (1) take the
           username and translate it to the uid via getpwuid, getpwnam,
           &c.; (2) exec ps (w/ the full path) and that uid; and (3) read the
           output in C++. Any otherway is not 100% safe.
           output in C++. Any other way is not 100% safe.
           If your version of ps does not support user filtering, you should
           exec ps (w/ the full path) and read/filter the output yourself.
           Whatever you do, don't use system() and if you are running as root,
           please drop privileges before calling exec().
           \_ Not running as root.  system() is bad, huh?
              \_ Yes. system invokes a shell for you (in some cases csh). And
                 please use a full path, last thing you want is to be running
                 a PFY's hax0r'ed version of ps.
              \_ system() is basically  a wrapper around '/bin/sh -c $command'
                 with all the vulnerabilities and performance hit you get from
                 spawning the /bin/sh -c and what the shell might do with
                 $command.  You're generally safer with fork && exec(command)
                 though then you have to deal with $PATH and massaging the
                 arguments.
                 \_ you should also read up on IFS.
                 \_ you should also read up on IFS. --psb
                    \_ What is IFS?
                       \_ IFS stands for Internal Field Separator, it is
                          what the shell uses to separate elements of the
                          various *PATH variables, among other things.
                          \_ and at the heart of many old skool attacks
                             such as /usr/lib/ex3.7preserve and other
                             insecure popen() problems.
                             insecure popen() problems. --psb
                 \_ Ok, but the command line I'm passing to system is pretty
                    complex.  I don't care much about the performance, since
                    the logging is pretty rare.  But I used "ps | grep $USER |
                    | sort | head" to get only the results I wanted.  Seems
                    like fork exec would in this case would be hard. -op
                    \_ yes it would be.  secure code is hard. insecure
                       code is easy.
                    \_ One possible sol'n would be to implement your filter
                       as a one line perl command and then send the output of
                       ps to that perl command. You would reduce the problems
                       to two fork/execs and would increase your security.
                       But the safest way is still to do as much as you can
                       in C and not in the shell via system().
                       BTW, why do use use $USER from the environment? Can't
                       you read it in using a CLI option or use the current
                       user id via getuid() or geteuid()?
                       \_ Actually, because I didn't know about getuid().
                          \_ I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to do,
                             but I think you can do all of it w/o system()
                             and not too much work in c++. Based on the above,
                             it seems like you could read the output of ps -U
                             [uid] (or equivalent) into a STL string vector,
                             sort the results and take the top 10.
2007/6/8-11 [Computer/SW/Security, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:46892 Activity:low
6/8     I was talking to an acquaintance who said that his workplace was
        slowly evolving to a stated goal of taking superuser privileges
        away from the sysadmins in an effort to maintain a strict CM
        and, I assume in some way, lower costs - possibly by hiring
        trained monkeys to deploy pre-built images. I am curious what the
        IT theories are behind this. Is this a crackpot method of system
        management or is there some established theory behind this? Has
        anyone else seen this happen at their work? What were the results?
        My kneejerk reaction is that this is a Very Bad Thing, but maybe
        there's something to it.
        \_ Depends.  Are they mostly Windows?  Mostly UNIX?  Who still has
           superuser access?  Are they highly responsive?  It can be made to
           work.  But unless it's driven by competent IT management, it could
           be LOTS o' PAIN
           \_ All UNIX. I assume the idea is that if a change needs to be
              made then it is rolled out from some central server
              somewhere and no admins ever touch the individual workstations
              for any reason except perhaps hardware failure.
        \_ CM?
           \_ configuration management
        \_ No, this is in keeping with Best Practices surrounding security,
           especially the notion of "least privelege" which is to say that
           especially the notion of "least privilege" which is to say that
           people should have the permissions they need to do their job
           and no more. I personally think this is fine, but only works
           after an organization reaches a certain maturity and size.
           You need at least enough people so that you can have an on-call
           page rotation for the "root" team and another one for the
           "admin" team. Email if you want to talk about this some more
           this is something I have thought about quite a bit. -ausman
           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege
           http://www.csua.org/u/ivq (Forrester Research)
2007/5/21-24 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:46717 Activity:nil
5/21    Yo root - any chance of reenabling finger (for finger motd@csua)?
2024/12/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
12/24   
Results 1201 - 1321 of 1321   < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >
Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Computer:SW:Unix: [WindowManager(47) ]
.