Sean’s Obsessions

This article from O’Reilly goes over the impact the Slammer worm had on routers. I’ve commented below…
This article explains a bit about ReiserFS. While ext3 has likely removed the need to choose ReiserFS simply for journalling, Reiser has some performance features that make it attractive for applications that use lots of small files, […]

Last issue of the Linux newsletter out the door.
What do do with my new found free time?
- Study for the CCIE-Written
- Try to get an article in print
- Work on some projects I’ve been putting off
- Spend more time with the family.

… I’m done. More specifically, I’m done with the Linux Newsletter. I guess advertising isn’t what it used to be, so the powers-that-be at Cramsession stopped my newsletter, a few others, and reduced the freqency of some others.
It was fun while it lasted. Thanks to all my readers, especially those of […]

I’ve always been cheap and handled patching of Red Hat systems myself, usually by keeping a local mirror of the updates tree. I recently started using the Red Hat network - $5US per machine per month - to keep about 10 machines in order.
It’s completely web based. I get an email when a […]

Why is it that developers want to turn your firewalls into routers?
I spent a good part of my afternoon trying to convince some developers that the IIS web server should be separated from the rest of the databases (think “confidential information” here). In the event that the web server (which speaks to the Internet) […]

So I figure that I should at least customize this site, make it look *somewhat* different than the default MT theme. Trouble is, I haven’t done any real HTML in ages, I’ve always done my coding and passed it off to the designers.
MT uses CSS. Even though I could ignore them and start […]

This whole SQL worm thing has got me in a knot. Not because it ruined a good Saturday afternoon, but because it points out the ineptitude of admins out there.
I’m not talking about the people who didn’t patch their SQL servers. Keeping up with all the Microsoft patches must be hell. No, […]

It’s amazing that 376 bytes can do some serious damage to the Internet.
This SQL worm that is running around is pretty simple. Overflow. Send. Repeat.
http://www.boredom.org/~cstone/worm-annotated.txt
13:19:05.663164 168.156.112.158.3151 > h24-85-10-25.wp.shawcable.net.ms-sql-m: udp 376
4500 0194 76f7 0000 7811 8eb9 a89c 709e
1855 0a19 0c4f 059a 0180 ed53 0401 0101
0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 […]

People nag me because I haven’t updated my site in ages. Maybe this will shut them up