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  1. modify /etc/skel to ease admin of key-based SSH

    When i set up a new machine these days, I often disable password-based ssh access by setting PasswordAuthentication and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to no in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

    This protects my users (and the machine) from dictionary attacks based on the crappy passwords that humans seem to traditionally prefer. However, /usr/sbin …

  2. Magic SysRq to xen's dom0 on a serial console

    For a normal server running with the kernel console over a serial line, you can get Magic SysRq behavior by sending a "break" signal, followed by the character of the command you want triggered. How does that work for dom0 of a Xen install?

    I've just set up a xen …

  3. trouble with umn.edu (ftp.us.debian.org) mirror?

    is anyone else having trouble accessing the debian mirror at debian-mirror.mirror.umn.edu?

    I'm in the US, and ftp.debian.org is resolving to this host for me, but the host itself is not responding (since last night, if my cron-apt logs are accurate).

    I haven't been able to …

  4. Interpreting vmstat's wait stats on linux 2.6

    I'm trying to figure out if the linux 2.6 kernel's “wait” cycles include cycles waiting on network I/O or specifically just waiting on disk access.

    If network I/O is included, it would change my interpretation of a system with spiking “wait” percentages. Maybe the disk controllers aren't …

  5. Insane clock skew on amd64 host running etch/i386

    My impression was that the i386 debian distribution could run fine on an amd64 processor (though i recognize that it wouldn't get the full benefit of the 64-bit platform).

    I have a machine which i'm trying to do this on, though, and while it's up and running, i'm getting serious …

  6. good OCR tools under debian?

    I have never needed to do Optical Character Recognition (turning scanned documents back into text form), but it appears i may soon need to (in english, FWIW).

    Does anyone have a preferred tool/suite that is packaged for debian?

    A scan of the archive turns up

    • gocr
    • ocrad
    • unpaper
    • clara …
  7. apt warnings about missing public keys

    After running apt-get update on a typically-stable mixed etch/sid machine (which also has experimental in the sources list), i'm getting the following warnings from apt:

    W: There are no public key available for the following key IDs:A70DAF536070D3A1W: There are no public key available for the following key IDs …
  8. tremor-based alsaplayer?

    Does anyone know of a simple, clean, ALSA-output ogg-vorbis audio player that links (statically or otherwise) against the tremor integer-only vorbis decoder? Here's why i want it:

    I recently got a Linksys NSLU2 which i'm happily running debian etch on (with the sid kernel, thanks a million to the debian …

  9. Pros and Cons of secondary MX records

    Many sites use multiple MX records in DNS. But i feel like i'm seeing more and more which just have a single MX record. Why choose the one strategy over the other?

    Given that MTAs are increasingly complicated these days (with various spam filtering techniques), what are some good arguments …

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