Unix as a Second Language

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Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 25 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She currently works for TeleCommunication Systems -- a company that builds innovative technologies to make critical connections happen -- where no one else necessarily shares any of her opinions. This blog offers advice for everyday Unix systems administration and some clever ways to approach more challenging problems. Send comments and suggestions to mailto:bugfarm@gmail.com.

by Sandra Henry-Stocker

Trusted Voice

  • How to enforce password complexity on Solaris

    Posted May 12, 2012 - 07:44 pm

    Solaris 10 is the first version of Solaris to provide a complex set of variables for controlling password strength. The /etc/default/passwd file contains a series of parameters -- most commented out when a system is first installed -- that allow you to exercise some fairly rigorous constraints on the passwords your users may select.

  • How to enforce password complexity on Linux

    Posted May 06, 2012 - 08:17 pm

    Enforcing password complexity involves making decisions about how long passwords need to be and whether they must contain a mix of characters -- such as digits, a mix of uppercase and lowercase, or special characters. In general, the rules are not hard to set up, but you need to know both the syntax and the rules to get the outcome you expect.

  • What makes a good password?

    Posted Apr 29, 2012 - 05:02 pm

    Sound advice against the use of bad passwords has been around for decades. Yet I still find people electing to use passwords like pa55w0rd and login123 as if they'd never heard about password cracking programs. Even technical professionals -- programmers, help desk techs and systems administrators -- sometimes assign really weak passwords to their own and other important accounts. It's become painfully obvious to me that telling people to use good passwords isn't enough. We need to clearly define what a good password is -- and never imply that short or predictable passwords are ever OK.

  • A better way to learn Unix

    Posted Apr 22, 2012 - 11:35 am

    If you are still learning Unix or have any involvement in helping others master the command line, here's the book you have been waiting for. The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction (no starch press, 2012) will take you from 0 to 100 in 36 pain-free chapters.

  • What is access governance?

    Posted Apr 15, 2012 - 06:04 pm

    Access governance is more than just the coolest concept since virtualization and cloud computing. It's likely to change the way you manage accounts on your servers. Designed to add clarity and control to questions like "Who has access to the recipe for our secret sauce?", it may be the answer to some of your biggest problems.

  • Fun with shell $ arguments

    Posted Apr 09, 2012 - 10:19 am

    How many special shell $ arguments do you use in your daily work? There may be a lot more of them than you think. Let's look over a bunch of them and examine how they can streamline your scripts.

  • How to keep yourself from losing important files on a Unix system

    Posted Apr 02, 2012 - 05:45 pm

    If you haven't made the mistake of accidentally removed important files, you probably haven't worked with Unix very long. Here are some creative ways of keeping you from making that mistake.

  • Why I Love Unix

    Posted Oct 27, 2010 - 08:48 am

    Sandra Henry-Stocker's long-standing and largely happy relationship with Unix has been an interesting and rewarding trek. If she hasn't helped you to love Unix, let her try just once more.

  • Checking Your arp Entries

    Posted Oct 20, 2010 - 04:45 pm

    you to display the IP address to hardware (MAC) address mappings that a system has built so that it doesn't have to fetch the same information repeatedly for systems it communicates with.

  • Unix How-To: Checking on Collisions

    Posted Oct 13, 2010 - 05:04 pm

    One metric that helps gauge how well your network is holding up to the strain of busy users and applications is the number of packets that slam into other packets, generating what is called a "collision". Let's check out an easy tool for calculating the collision rate for a particular network interface.

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