All Episodes

Listing all 76 episodes

Hard and Symbolic Links

Episode #16 - 2013-11-04 - 10 min

In this episode, I wanted to talk about the differences between hard and symbolic links. We will look at why links are useful, the pros and cons of hard vs symbolic links, then have a look under the hood at inodes and filesystem metadata to see how links actually work.

The IT Disconnect

Episode #15 - 2013-10-07 - 9 min

In this episode, I wanted to do something a little different, rather than highlight a piece of technology, I wanted to talk about how IT should be proactively improving communication with other departments within your organization.

Introduction to Linux Control Groups (Cgroups)

Episode #14 - 2013-10-03 - 20 min

In this episode we are going to review Control Groups (cgroups), which provide a mechanism for easily managing and monitoring system resources, by partitioning things like cpu time, system memory, disk and network bandwidth, into groups, then assigning tasks to those groups.

Crash Course on Common Commands

Episode #13 - 2013-08-20 - 11 min

In this episode, I will give you a crash course on how to use common commands for getting around the filesystem, reviewing running processes, looking at disk utilization, and editing files.

Crash Course on the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

Episode #12 - 2013-08-15 - 7 min

In this episode, I will give you a crash course on the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard gives a great overview of what a UNIX-like filesystem should look like, for example, what directories should exist, and what their contents should be.

Internal Git server with Gitolite

Episode #11 - 2013-07-29 - 13 min

In this episode I wanted to talk about setting up a central Git sever and using Gitolite to manage user access. You might put this on an internal company network, where you and your colleagues can develop together.

Openfire XMPP/Jabber on CentOS

Episode #10 - 2013-07-20 - 14 min

In this episode, I wanted to talk about setting up the Openfire XMPP server on CentOS. Lets say, for example, that you want to improve internal communication around the office, you might want to try an internal XMPP server, because it allows you to quickly chat with colleagues via instant messages.

Yum Versionlock

Episode #9 - 2013-07-03 - 4 min

In this episode, we will look at a method for locking rpm packages at a particular version. For example, that you have a package installed on a server, and that a package update is coming, which will likely break your configuration. You would like to somehow exclude this package from getting updated. We will use a yum plugin called versionlock to solve this problem.

Learning Puppet with Vagrant

Episode #8 - 2013-06-25 - 13 min

In this episode I wanted to introduce you to Puppet. Puppet allows you to quickly automate many sysadmin tasks, like deploying new machines, pushing changes out to existing machines, and helps you verify the configs of existing machines. We will also be setting up development environment for testing and playing around with puppet using Vagrant.

Why you should use a password safe

Episode #7 - 2013-06-18 - 4 min

In this episode we are going to take a look at centralized password management. How a password safe can be a simple and effective tool for you and your team, and why you should be using one.