SSH Overview (23 Jul 2007)

Link: SSH Overview (23 Jul 2007)

Nice article about ssh.”SSH (secure shell) is a program enabling secure access to remote file systems. Not everyone is aware of other powerful SSH capabilities, such as passwordless login, automatic execution of commands on a remote system or even mounting a remote folder using SSH! In this article we’ll cover these features and much more.” polishlinux.org: SSH tricks

What ever happened to Web engineering? (27 Jul 2007)

Link: What ever happened to Web engineering? (27 Jul 2007)

Web pages have become a major functional component of the daily lives of millions of people; you, the Web developer, are in a position to make that part of everyone’s lives better. Does it ever occur to you that today’s Web developers could learn a thing or two from traditional computer programming? What we have today is a generation of Web designers and developers who are attempting to build increasingly sophisticated Web sites without reference to the best practices of software engineerin

Reduce permissions to increase DNS security

Link: Reduce permissions to increase DNS security

Every server process you run on your system provides another potential point of compromise. That’s why it’s so often recommended that you turn off unnecessary services on Windows machines and deactivate unneeded daemons on UNIX operating systems.

You can’t simply turn off all services and daemons, however, as the ability to use your operating system environment would be severely crippled if you did. As a result, it becomes necessary to attempt to secure the operation of the server processes you need.

An example of such a case is a UNIX or Linux DNS server. Just like any other server software, the BIND server daemon named process may occasionally be subject to security vulnerabilities that may allow a malicious security cracker to gain unauthorized access to your system. It is thus important to configure your system to minimize the damage a security cracker can do when he or she exploits such a vulnerability.

Sun Says File Systems are Important Differentiator

Link: Sun Says File Systems are Important Differentiator

Sun Microsystems was originally known as a workstation vendor, and it became best known as a maker of servers and their associated Solaris Unix operating system. But Sun has always been an innovator in file systems as well as operating systems, and three decades of innovation has not changed that. Sun still believes that file systems matter, and its Zettabyte File System (ZFS) and the expanding role it could play in the IT industry are proof of this belief.

Given the features inside ZFS, it comes as no surprise that Sun is excited to see other companies and open source projects pick it up. According to Jeff Bonwick, who is a co-creator of ZFS with Moore and the storage chief technology officer at Sun, the open source FreeBSD variant of BSD Unix already supports ZFS in its distro and the NetBSD is adding ZFS support through Google’s Summer of Code effort, whereby Google pays young nerds to do coding for a summer job. The future “Leopard” version of MacOS X Server also has ZFS support inside of its beta versions, but it remains to be seen if the file system will make it into the final release of Apple’s server operating system.