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  SSH Security and You - /bin/false is *not* security

Backstory While at RIT around 2004 or 2005, I discovered that a few important machines at the datacenter allowed all students, faculty, and staff to authenticate against them via ssh. Everyone's shells appear to be set to /bin/false (or some derivative) on said machines, so the only thing you'll see after you authenticate is the login banner and your connection will close. I thought to myself, "Fine, no shell for me. I wonder if port forwarding works?" Seems reasonable, right? Whatever sysadmin was tasked with securing these machines forgot some...

12,640 0       LINUX SECURITY /BIN/FALSE SSH


  Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?

Yes, even if you can't believe it, there are a lot fans of the 30-years-old vi editor (or its more recent, just-15-years-old, best clone & great improvement, vim). No, they are not dinosaurs who don't want to catch up with the times - the community of vi users just keeps growing: myself, I only got started 2 years ago (after over 10 years of being a professional programmer). Friends of mine are converting today. Heck, most vi users were not even born when vi was written! Yes, there are definite reasons why the vi/vim editing model is just superi...

2,540 0       LINUX VI VIM ADVANTAGE HISTORY


  Useful Bash Scripts

Many people hack together shell scripts quickly to do simple tasks, but these soon take on a life of their own. Unfortunately shell scripts are full of subtle effects which result in scripts failing in unusual ways. It's possible to write scripts which minimise these problems. In this article, I explain several techniques for writing robust bash scripts. Use set -u How often have you written a script that broke because a variable wasn't set? I know I have, many ti...

8,631 0       LINUX COMMAND SHELL BASH ROBUST


  What are some lesser known but useful Unix commands?

A few that come to mind, some less known, some more:xargs or parallel: run things in parallel, with lots of optionssed and awk: more well-known but still super useful for processing text files, and faster than Python or Rubym4: simple macro processorscreen: powerful terminal multiplexing and session persistenceyes: print a string a lotcal: nice calendarenv: run a command (useful in scripts)look: find English words (or lines in a file) beginning with a stringcut and paste and join: data manipulationfmt: format text paragraphspr: format text into pages/columnsfold: wrap lines of textcolumn: form...

8,461 0       LINUX COMMAND UNIX LESS USED


  Vim: revisited

I’ve had an off/on relationship with Vim for the past many years.Before, I never felt like we understood each other properly. Vim isalmost useless without plugins and some essential settings in .vimrc, but fiddling with all the knobs andinstalling all the plugins that I thought I needed was a process that inthe end stretched out from few hours to weeks, months even; and it theend it just caused frustration instead of making me a happier coder.Recently, I decided to give Vim another shot. This time around it wasdifferent – something in my brain switched and now for the first ti...

2,700 0       LINUX SETUP VIM EDITOR QUICK GUIDELINE


  Emacs adventures

I have been using Emacs for over a year now. I actually didn’t learn a lot when I started using it (just the basics to get going and then some relatively common keyboard shortcuts), but lately I have been reading and learning much more about it. I’m so grateful by everything I’ve learned from different people on the net that I wanted to share a couple of things I’ve learned, and a simple major mode for editing AsciiDoc documents.As a long-time VIM user, I feel it’s my duty to make a micro-introduction to Emacs to VIM users (skip this whole paragraph if you...

3,715 0       LINUX VIM EDITOR EMACX SHORTCUTS


  Why Emacs?

PreludeIf you are a professional writer – i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed – Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.Neal StephensonIn the Beginning … Was the Command LineI’m an Emacs user and I’m proud of the fact. I know my reasons for using it (and loving it) for many years now. But many people don’t. I often get asked by various people the same qu...

2,022 0       LINUX USAGE IDE EDITOR EMACS


  Twenty Years of Linux according to Linus Torvalds

Summary: In an interview, Linus Torvalds talks about Linux’s multiple 20th birthdays and life with Linux.The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, started the celebration of Linux’s 20th anniversary at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, but when is Linux’s real birthday? Is it August 25th, when Linus announced the project? October 5th 1991, when 0.02, the first public release was made? I decided to go straight to the source and asked Linux’s creator, Linus Torvalds.SJVN: â€œWhat’...

2,091 0       LINUX INTERVIEW DEVELOPMEN LINUS TONALDS