Tech and other stuff
There is a cool little trick to get the status of a dd operation out of the system. It will provide the status of dd via the err interface. You can do this one of two ways, either background (bg) the operation or perform it in a new terminal or screen.
For OpenBSD, a SIG_INFO (INFO) needs to be passed to the dd process:
pkill -INFO dd
For Linux, a SIG_USR1 (USR1) needs to be passed to the dd process:
pkill -USR1 dd Continue reading “dd, What is the status?”
I often get asked the best way to securely erase a disk or what to use to ensure that a disk has been sanitised to DoD 5220-22-M. A reasonable way to achieve this would be:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/rdsk/c#t#d#s2 bs=10k
or
dd if=/dev/arandom of=/dev/r#d#c bs=10k
This will ensure that random (not completely random, but good enough) data is written to the devices RAW geometry. This would remove all traces of previous data on the disk1 Continue reading “Hard Drive Sanitisation”
The start of May 2013 marks the release of OpenBSD 5.3. Another release brings a swag of hardware improvements along with software features that will give users even more choices when they are building a server, router/firewall or desktop computer. Continue reading “OpenBSD 5.3 Released”
With a few guests coming over tomorrow afternoon for beers in the garage and the Hawks playing on the box, I thought we might need some TV where we are drinking. I thought, no problems, I’ll get the Windows notebook out and set it up in the garage and stream TV from the HD Home Run unit in the lounge room. But I didn’t really want to go and dismantle the notebook or have the good notebook subject to beer and chips so I wondered if I could get the unit streaming to my Linux laptop? Continue reading “HDHomeRun and Linux”
With the whole Google Reader issue (not that I am a user), I got think – some of the facilities that I use on the internet could be taken away, without notice or have an ability to extract my data out of the applications.
It was time that I took some things seriously and roll my data back into my own controlled applications and servers. I was planning on doing this once the NBN rolled on by but with the Google Reader issue and the possibility that NBN won’t roll by due to the ‘I’m no Bill Gates’ lead noalition coalition possibly getting into governement, time was right to act on this at a faster pace and just put up with the speed hit that I will initially find. Continue reading “ownCloud 4.5 Installed”
It has taken a while to find the spare time to edit and produce this clip. It took around 60 hours of work from a rough guess.
We had an excellent time in the Australian outback and just doing this video brought all the memories back as if it was just a couple of months ago. Continue reading “South Australia Tour 2011”
Nginx(8) is the replacement web server for the old patched Apache 1.3 in OpenBSD. As of OpenBSD 5.2, Nginx(8) is still not the primary [default] web server in the BSD release and allows for users to slowly migrate from Apache to Nginx(8) without additional package install. Continue reading “Nginx in OpenBSD 5.2-Release”
All the news around the webs states that Windows 8 has been released. I was meaning to get down to Harvey Norman for the midnight launch (something that I did back when Windows 95 hit the streets) but funnily enough, I forgot.
No big deal really, the internet reminded me, so I went to the Microsoft Windows 8 website to check out how much they were selling upgrades for. I was floored straight away, a total of $40 and a bit of my bandwidth, it was mine. Continue reading “Windows 8 has been released”
The time was right to finally go with a solar array on the Tubsta household. Prices have come down significantly and with NSW turning the tap off on their very lucrative feed-in tariffs (FITs), the market was awash with heavily discounted, high quality gear. Continue reading “Tubsta house finally goes solar”
The OpenBSD project has announced that pre-orders for the up coming 5.2 release of the operating system are now on-line. The release is due to hit shelves and mirrors on 1 November, 2012.
The inexpensive 3-CD sets of OpenBSD 5.2 are $50CDN, Posters $2oCDN and T-Shirts $25CDN. While you are there, you can also make a donation or buy back copies of editions if you have some that you are missing (something that I have done for this order). Continue reading “OpenBSD 5.2 pre-orders are up”