Things n' Stuff Thoughts about the universe in general

יצא לא להסתכל לאחרונה ב-Google Analytics של הבלוג, ודי חשכו עיני – החודש התעבורה על האתר ירדה בצורה משמעותית ביותר מהחודש שעבר. בירור יותר מדודק הראה שבמאי היה לי שיא תנועה באתר ומאז היתה ירידה:

הדבר הבא לעשות היה לבדוק למה, ומסתבר שרוב התנועה באתר שלי בחודשים האחרונים היתה מחיפושי גוגל שהובילו למאמרים על Ubuntu¹², ובהחלט נראה שהתנועה על המאמרים האלה יבשה: בכל יולי היו פחות מ-500 כניסות לכל מאמר.

זה בהחלט סביר, מכיוון שהמאמרים האלה היו על בעיות די זמניות במערכת ההפעלה, אבל בכל זאת – חבל: לקצת זמן היה נראה שלי שהבלוג שלי אינו זוטה 🙂

1. MySQL 5.5 on Ubuntu 10.10 [↩]
2. VirtualBox on Ubuntu 11.04 [↩]

Sometimes the MySQL replication breaks due to some corruption in the binary log files¹. When your binary log files are corrupted, the only option (other then trying to rebuild a database of hundreds of gigabytes) is to try to skip over the corrupted region and get the slave to pick up from where the transactions are valid.

Locating the correct position in the binary log from which the server can carry on is difficult but can be made easier by the mysqlbinlog utility that can scan the binary log files and show you which position is valid using the --start-position to try random positions in the binary log file and see which position will let you read from the file².

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1. I have yet to find a good explanation to why it happens and how to prevent that [↩]
2. because in the binary log transactions can have any size, so they can end and start at any point [↩]

After listening to the virtus/malware discussion on LUG Radio’s new (but apparently one-off) show (check it out at lugradio.org, these guys are hilarious), got me thinking about how much Linux users are exposed to malware.

Lets forget, for the sake of the discussion, the technical attacks¹ as these are relatively easy to handle and Linux operating systems are already pretty well protected against such. The main vector of attack for malware these days is Social Engineering anyway – this is how Mac OS-X users get attacked by malware: you browse a web site, and an image that looks like a a blinking dialog box notifies you that your computer has been infected by a virus and prompts you to download this “fix”.

Most of us, technically inclined users, sneer at this type of “threat”, but most people aren’t technically inclined and there are enough people out there that will be fooled by this practice time and time again. Click the image and a binary gets downloaded to your computer and if it is in the correct format it will get executed.

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1. Such as buffer overflows and such [↩]

Using the Google+ Nick service you can now find me at http://gplus.to/guss77.

Just wanted to let everyone know 🙂

After a long long time in the making, rumors of abandonment and general discomfort in the community, the CentOS people have finally pulled through and bring you the brand new (though by now several months old) CentOS 6.0.

A lot of system administrators have been waiting for this (me included) so I thought I’d give a heads up 🙂

When installing a Linux computer, this is a question I’ve been asked/asked myself many times, and it shall keep on being asked because things are not static and newer operating systems need more and more room as the basic software collection that you expect to get out of the box gets larger.

And the answer? Well – it depends 🙂 Specifically here I’m going to tackle the issue of desktop installs (i.e. the workstation for a single user), and specifically for Fedora – though it shouldn’t be much different for other operating systems in the same class – such as Ubuntu or SuSE.

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המתכון הנ”ל מאוד פשוט אבל מאוד טעים, בעיקר עם אתם מהאנשים שאוהבים הרבה שום – אני בהחלט בקבוצה הזאת 🙂

הרעיון הוא ששיני השום מתבשלות בתנור ונמסות לתוך העוף וזה נותן לכל העוף טעם של שום – המממממ…

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