Softpanorama Solaris Bulletin 2004

[Dec 27, 2004] Solaris Patch Management- Recommended Strategy (PDF) -- a pretty average overview paper. Mostly fluff, but it does raise one important question: when you should upgrade your server instead of patching it. Often enterprises use Solaris 6 and 7 servers while they would be long ago upgraded to Solaris 9.  And Solaris 9 is more secure in principle than, say Solaris 2.6.

Sys Admin Magazine vol 13, No. 10/Solaris 10 x86 on VMware I think Solaris 10 under VMware is a perversion (zones essentially provide 80% of useful virtualization capability) but Peter Gavlin thinks otherwise :-). Moreover imitating Linux zealots experiments he tries to install Solaris on a laptop... I understand that for a writer that might be a not a bad idea to write in windows, while cutting and pasting results from Solaris, but still the same can be done on Solaris alone using Star Office: 

Solaris 10 x86 is indeed very real and very functional. With VMware, it performs well and brings all of the new features that Sun has been proudly promoting. Although getting graphics working takes a bit of work in the VMware environment, the work is well rewarded by the functional end result.

Acknowledgements and Resources

Special thanks to Dan Price from Sun, Juergen Keil, and Scott Omar Burch for advice and guidance on getting the graphics challenges resolved.

For up-to-date information on Solaris x86, see:

http://www.solaris-x86.org 
http://sun.drydog.com 
http://multiboot.solaris-x86.org 
http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/x86-laptops.html 
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/collections/solarisx86.html 
http://www.tools.de/solaris 
http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/eng 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisx86 
http://forum.sun.com/forum.jsp?forum=11 
news://alt.solaris.x86 
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/x86/ 
http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/chitchat/vmware/soltips.html 

A great new resource to Sun users is now available. There is no longer a gag order on Sun employees, and they are saying some very interesting things at httpd:\\blogs.sun.com.

Phil's Solaris hints Some good documents

• Solaris and Japanese
• Solaris and OpenLDAP setup
• How to set up Oracle8i under Solaris.
• How to build a firewall under Solaris (OR linux or *BSD or...)
• How to administer SunScreen, Sun's firewall, from the command line.
• An explaination on swap on RAID1 vs multiple swap partitions
• How to fix the Imake that ships with Solaris
• How to add PHP to solaris 8 apache (The one that ships WITH solaris 8)
• How to set up Corel word perfect under Wabi
• A really quick PPP guide
• How to set up a PPP-PAP Dial-IN server
• Miscellaneous security notes
• A short set of note on printing under Solaris
• Quickie guide to setting up Solaris email in an Exchange environment
• Adding the TrueType(tm) font 'Verdana' to Solaris
• Settings for GRUB bootloader
• How to mount a solaris ISO image

What's New in the Solaris 9 4-04 Operating Environment Please replace sun grep with GNU grep as it supports -P option and thus is more sain that completly crazy old sun implementation. See Freeware Enhancements for information about GNU grep 2.4.2, GNU tar 1.13, GNU wget 1.6, and Ncftp Client 3.0.3 in the Solaris 9 release.

• GNU grep 2.4.2 is a pattern matcher.
• GNU tar 1.13 is an archiver.
• GNU wget 1.6 retrieves files from the Web by using HTTP and FTP.
• Ncftp Client 3.0.3 uses the File Transfer Protocol. This utility is an alternative to the UNIX ftp program.

Solaris Flash

Complete Systems Replication

The Solaris Flash feature provides new installation and provisioning functionality. System administrators can capture a snapshot image of a complete server -- including the Solaris Operating System, the applications stack, and the system configuration -- into a new Flash Archive format. Using this system image, administrators can then replicate reference server configurations onto multiple (clone) servers. Solaris Flash images can be deployed via standard media or over the network via HTTP and NFS. Solaris Flash images can be installed using custom Solaris JumpStart scripts, the Solaris Web Start graphical interface, or Solaris interactive installation.

Rapid Deployment

With Solaris Flash technology, installation time can be cut significantly. Internal tests conducted at Sun have shown that a complete Web server can be set up using the network install feature of Solaris Flash in under three minutes. This installation technology reduces configuration complexity, improves deployment scalability, and significantly saves time and administrative resources for server deployment.

Layered Flash Deployment

Solaris Flash technology provides the ability to layer Flash Archives. You can create partial Flash Archives to install in a variety of ways. This feature increases the flexibility for rapid modular deployment.

For example, you can create one archive that contains the Solaris Operating System files, a second archive that contains the files necessary to run a Web server, and a third archive that contains the files for an NFS server. You can then install the first and second archives to one machine to create a Web server, and the first and third archives to create an NFS server.

By using layered archives, you can increase the flexibility of the Solaris Flash installation while you reduce the disk space required to store Flash Archives. When you install layered archives to a clone machine, one of the archives must contain the Solaris Operating System.

Idleize - Run a Subprocess During Idle Time Only

Idleize is a simple utility which allows you to easily run background tasks during idle time only. It is ideal for running SETI@home, as well as other background tasks such as hardware simulations, compiler test suites, computer graphics rendering, and so on.

• Sun Solaris 2.x SPARC (9k)

Neowin.net - Where unprofessional journalism looks better

Sun Microsystems Inc. will formally launch the next major release of its flagship Solaris operating system at a press event Nov. 15 at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, company officials confirmed Friday. The launch will be part of Sun's quarterly Network Computing product announcement, which is expected to include new product offerings from a variety of Sun's product groups.

Already available in an "Early Access" beta version, Solaris 10 will have a number of major new features, including a new error detection system, a highly scalable file system called ZFS, and a diagnostic tool known as DTrace. The new version of Sun's Unix operating system will also include significant performance enhancements such as a new TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) stack and improved multithreading capabilities.

E-Commerce News Commentary Responding to Readers Accounting for Politics in Technology

I'd buy a Solaris-powered helicopter if I could [Kirk L. Kroeker, "DOJ Bans Linux from US in Wake of iWidget Brouhaha," TechNewsWorld, April 1, 2004], but the point is that a lot of readers seem to be outraged that I'm so clearly biased in Sun's favor. My bottom line on Sun is that I like stuff that works, and their stuff generally does -- even if Sun Press did turn down my latest book.

The more general response to a charge of bias is that I'm for what Unix can do and particularly interested in services to larger user communities. Take a long, hard look at computing science today, and I think you'll agree that most of the really leading-edge research for single systems is taking place in the BSD community, that the Linux people are wreaking miracles of application delivery support across an enormous range, and that both Solaris and Sparc are evolving rapidly toward the Plan 9 view of network integrated computing.  

Slashdot Zones are in Solaris Express (Solaris 10) It's an interesting tool for any company looking at easy consolidation without the prohibitive costs of hardware partitioning.

Linux Overview for Solaris Users (PDF)

• df -k df List file systems in allocation units of KBytes
• nawk awk/gawk Pattern scanning and processing language
• ps -ef ps -aux List process status for all processes running
• pkgadd     rpm -i Add a software package
• pkgrm  rpm -e Remove a software package
• gzcat file | tar -xvf - tar -xzvf file Unbundle a compressed tar file
• cc gcc C compiler
• xterm/dtterm konsole/gnome-terminal GUI terminal program
• lpsched lpd Printer daemon
• tip minicom Serial port access program
• snoop tcpdump Network packet sniffer
• patchadd rpm -U Install a software patch/update
• priocntl -e nice Start a process with a given priority
• priocntl -s renice Change the priority of a running process
• prstat top Actively report process statistics
• useradd adduser Add a user account
• /sbin/swapadd /sbin/swapon Enable swap devices

Download Solaris 9 4/04 ISOs Now available for download, the new features and then  Some of the new features include the addition of "metassist" in SVN for top-down volume creation (backported from Solaris10), the Standard Type Services Framework, and Sun Remote Services (SRS) Net Connect 3.1 has been added to the Solaris bundle. Also, on the JumpStart front the add_install_client is now avalible for x86 PXE boots, and an exciting update, already found in Solaris10, is 2 new JumpStart keywords "filesys" and "metadb" which allow for boot disk mirroring during a JumpStart without using post-install scripts!

Sun plans Solaris subscription pricing CNET News.com - Sun compilers are up to 40 percent faster than the GCC compiler widely used with Linux.

Sun hopes to remain a step ahead of Linux, in particular with new features coming with Solaris 10, due to be released by the end of the year, said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Sun's Operating Platforms Group. Among the new features, all of which apply to Solaris for UltraSparc as well as for x86 chips:

• N1 Grid Containers, a technology formerly called Kevlar, zones or hardened containers that lets a single server be divided up so that it appears to be several independent machines. Several containers share the same version of Solaris, but from an administrator point of view, they appear separate, and as many as 4,000 containers will fit on one instance of Solaris.

• Rewritten software to speed up networking using TCP/IP, which underlies Ethernet and the Internet. The new TCP/IP software "stack" can process networking data at the full speed of 10-gigabit-per-second Ethernet cards, Loiacono said.

• The "NextGen" file system, called ZFS, which uses a 128-bit addressing scheme to accommodate the growth into the exabyte size range that data sets will experience in the next 10 to 15 years, Loiacono said. (An exabyte is a billion gigabytes.) ZFS also makes it easier to administer multiple storage volumes and automatically checks data for errors as it is written or read, he said.

• Policy-based security will restrict access to computing resources, depending on computer user roles. The technology comes from the Trusted Solaris product created for military and intelligence agency customers. About 70 percent to 80 percent of that product's features will move to the standard operating system with version Solaris 10, Loiacono said.

• "Predictive self-healing" will mean that a server can detect recurring problems with a memory bank and automatically switch to another without halting operations or losing data.

• "Dynamic tracing" software, or DTrace, diagnostic software that lets programmers pinpoint bottlenecks but that only degrades performance by less than 1 percent, Loiacono said.

• This summer, Sun will begin selling programming tools called compilers to write software that runs on Solaris for x86 chips, with a Linux version coming later, said Rich Green, vice president of Sun's Developer Platforms Group. Compilers translate a programmer's source code into instructions a computer can understand, and Sun boasts that its compilers are up to 40 percent faster than the GCC compiler widely used with Linux.

The new technology is creditable, Haff said, but with the exception of containers isn't likely to directly compete with Linux, which is used mostly on lower-end servers. "The real value is on the really large systems," he said.

Sun Ultra 5 Primer - OSNews.com The OBP, or OpenBoot PROM/Firmware, is the mechanism that acts much like the BIOS on x86 systems.

The OpenBoot is command-line driven, as opposed to x86 text-based (and some graphical) menu systems in the BIOS. Because of its command-line nature, the OpenBoot is arguably better suited for data canter and remote installations, where control of the system is possible with a simple, low-bandwidth (9600 baud) serial connection. While some x86 BIOS systems allow output to serial console, those systems are rare.

Because of this, it's much more practical (and less expensive in terms of remote management equipment) to administer systems at a remote location, greatly reducing (but not eliminating entirely) the need for hands-on access. On Sun systems, OpenBoot is shown with what's commonly referred to as the "OK" prompt:

ok>

With the OpenBoot, you can halt, interrupt, change boot-parameters, go into diagnostics, perform SCSI and IDE bus probing, and fully control the hardware, all from a 9600 baud serial connection.

Here are a few commands that will help you:

This will check to see what IDE devices are connected to the system.

ok> probe-ide

If you've got a SCSI system (such as the SPARCStation 5), the command is probe-scsi.

This command boots from the CD-ROM drive, such as when you're installing a new operating system.

ok> boot cdrom

To boot from disk:

ok> boot disk

To boot from the default device, use this command.

ok> boot

To reset the system, which also usually boots the system from the default device:

ok> reset

Any time the boot command is issued, it automatically resets the system (regardless of whether an operating system is running or not).

That just scratches the surface of the OpenBoot system, but this should help get your started if you're looking to boot and install the various operating systems covered. One such resource is the OpenBoot 3.x Command Reference Manual [http://d] from the Sun docs site (The OB version for my Ultra 5 is 3.10). There are numerous FAQs available to help answer any questions you might have. How to Get to the OK Prompt If you're using a serial connection, sending a break signal at any time when the system is powered up will bring you to the ok> prompt, even if an operating system is running (the operating system will be "paused")

If you're using the keyboard and screen, the "stop" key from the left vertical row of keys, just above the "props" key (the key used to give someone props; combine with the shift key to give someone mad props) in combination with the "a" key will pause the operating system and bring you to the ok> prompt.

Slashdot Previewing the Next Solaris OS

Re:What about pluggable crypto? (Score:4) by segfaultcoredump (226031) on Friday February 20, @01:05PM (#8341070)

MD5? I prefer the support for BSD style Blowfish password hashes. Just set CRYPT_DEFAULT to '2a' in /etc/security/policy.conf so while the old crypt style sting looks like this: Ely3JjNj4Vjz6 and the md5 hashes look like this: $1$2ZIvIsPP$GqZ5GnNFOm1rgklvylPmP0 the new blowfish strings look like this: $2a$04$TZ3DP5jgu9s7rbXTJ.i5P.lVl5HX1jWx3BRQB8SkAr1 xKsUQIJIcK (now if only i could find a niceacademic paper that discusses the relative advantages of each one) I'm currently moving all of our systems from Solaris 8 to 9 and the support for md5 and blowfish in /etc/shadow was a very nice addition. (Not to mention the extra thread performance, better ldap support (no more nis) and a few dozen other things.

Re:Hope they have Bash, OpenSSL (Score:4, Informative) by Gollum (35049) on Friday February 20, @07:13AM (#8338261)

ssh access is all you really need to execute X11 commands. Install Cygwin and Xfree86 if Exceed is too complex. Then SSH in to the box, and check what your DISPLAY variable is set to (echo $DISPLAY). It should point back to your IP address (or hostname), followed by :0.0 if it is not, do "export DISPLAY=your.ip:0.0" and execute an xterm, or start gnome, or do whatever you want to.

Re:Hope they have Bash, OpenSSL (Score:5, Informative) by 4of12 (97621) on Friday February 20, @08:34AM (#8338633) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 23, @05:38PM)

?? When I do $ ssh -X solarisbox my X network traffic is nicely hidden taken caer of by ssh; the Solaris box puts X traffic onto a fake local framebuffer DISPLAY like solarisbox:10.0 before sending it back to my realbox:0.0. It might be slower than what you suggest, but I think it's a lot more secure. Without ssh doing the job of making your X network traffic secure you'll have to worry about Xauthority. Too many people (and I was one once) get around Xauthority hassles with an $ xhost + and I can't begin to tell you just how Bad that is.

Re:Wishlist - Global file system (Score:1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20, @09:37AM (#8339081)

An article at aces's hardware [aceshardware.com] has managed to pick up some information about ZFS (the zettabyte file system). If it's really as good as it promises (as other rumours indicate), then ZFS+NFSv4 will be an amazing combination.

Re:Wishlist - Global file system (Score:2) by hackstraw (262471) * on Friday February 20, @11:09AM (#8339928)

They do have the poorly documented/marketed QFS which allows for multiple hosts to share a common fibre channel disk array.

Re:devfs (Score:1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20, @08:06AM (#8338466)

Nice, Solaris is getting devfs support . . . just as it is marked deprecated in Linux 2.6 Solaris lack of change is one of the main reasons why it's so damn stable as an OS. They do not want to be like Linux where there is a new API every year. A new API or new low level things are not bad per-se but it's something else that needs to be debugged, something else that needs to be learned and something else that may not be compatible with current software. Case in point: Oracle on Linux, or any commercial application for that matter. The reason Oracle is only certifed for RHAS is because it's very static. They don't have to verify it works with 50 different kernels and 50 different version of GLIBC. When you have to support your software in situations like this it can be costly not only in terms of money and manhours but also performance and proving customer support. This applies to almost any big name commercial software including BEA's WebLogic and IBM's Tivoli suite. That's why Solaris is known for and maintains it's rock solid reputation. Sometimes, staying off the bleeding, or just the leading edge is a good thing.

DTrace (Score:4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20, @07:18AM (#8338283)

DTrace definitely seems to be worth checking out. As the article indicates, more info is available here [sun.com]. As the article does not indicate -- but it seems to be worth mentioning -- DTrace was introduced in a comp.unix.solaris post here [google.com]. Seems pretty damn cool...

Privileges (was Re:cool feature i am using) (Score:3, Interesting) by Nonesuch (90847) <nonesuch.msg@net> on Friday February 20, @10:17AM (#8339435) (Last Journal: Friday September 14, @12:46PM)

Does Linux or BSD have ppriv? Or is this something new? The closest thing to this that I have encountered is the kernel-level "Type Enforcement" in SecurOS, a BSD variant used for Secure Computing firewalls. BSD and Linux can use Systrace, which offers some similar process-level controls (can set execution system call profiles per application). While Solaris has offered file level ACLs forever, they weren't used by default to protect critical system files and very few admins knew to enable them. One of the things I like about Solaris (I still prefer OpenBSD) is the cool little security and debugging tools that are included in the default install -- when you don't have source, "truss" was a godsend, and "dtrace" takes debugging to a whole new level.

Fire Engine (Score:5, Interesting) by zz99 (742545) on Friday February 20, @07:57AM (#8338435)

The register has an old story [theregister.co.uk] about the new TCP/IP stack in Solaris 10, that is good reading. A quick summary of the story: The new stack has: - Efficient at handling multiple NICs - Low CPU usage (30% lower than Linux) - Build for targeting 10/100 Gbps in the future. Has a new construction where it is possible to offload the cpu by routing packet to dedicated packet processing processors. The last part seems like a preparation for the Sun hardware of tomorrow.

cool feature i am using (Score:5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20, @08:08AM (#8338473)

i try with solaris express and I find a cool feature called "ppriv" like this: gta3# ppriv $$ 1124: bash flags = 0x0                 E: all                 I: basic                 P: all                 L: all Ok, so I am root I have all privileges I think but now look at rpcbind, it is runnign as daemon but has less priviliges even than normal processes gta3# ppriv 100182 100182: /usr/sbin/rpcbind flags = 0x2                 E: net_privaddr,proc_fork,sys_nfs                 I: none                 P: net_privaddr,proc_fork,sys_nfs                 L: all see, it does not have privilege to do 'exec'... there are 30 or more privileges and it has only 3. So i guess this means some stack attack will not work against it like exec shell also i can run and see privileges like thids gta3$ ppriv -D -e cat /etc/shadow cat[100619]: missing privilege "file_dac_read" (euid = 77293, syscall = 225) needed at ufs_iaccess+0xd2 cat: cannot open /etc/shadow not sure what this means?

Another intro to Solaris 10 (Score:5, Interesting) by ChrisRijk (1818) on Friday February 20, @08:16AM (#8338519)

Ace's Hardware had a post about Solaris 10 [aceshardware.com] back in November. There is an alternative introduction on the main Solaris 10 page [sun.com] too. Eg: N1 Grid Containers is a breakthrough approach to virtualization with multiple software partitions per single instance of the OS. N1 Grid Containers make consolidation simple, safe and secure. * Superior Resource Utilization. N1 Grid Containers dynamically adjust resources to business goals within and across the container. With little management overhead (less than 1%), it offers over 4,000 containers per system. * Increased Uptime. With N1 Grid Containers, applications are isolated from each other and from system faults. Using Instant Restart, each Container can be restarted in just seconds. Boot time in large systems can be reduced by as much as 70%. * Reduced Costs. N1 Grid Containers simplifies and accelerates consolidation. It also significantly reduces system, admin and maintenance overhead. The containers (previous called Solaris Zones) can also each have their own root password and own IP address, as well as min/max/QoS resource settings.

Re:Another intro to Solaris 10 (Score:2) by gtrubetskoy (734033) * on Friday February 20, @01:45PM (#8341513) (http://www.ispol.com/home/grisha)

breakthrough approach to virtualization I am not 100% certain, but I believe their approach is similar to that of FreeBSD jails or the Linux VServer where in addition to a user id and a process id you also have another id (jail id or context id in FreeBSD and VServer respectively). The point is that it's not breakthrough because FreeBSD and Linux already do this.

Re:Another intro to Solaris 10 (Score:1) by slickwillly (754596) on Saturday February 21, @12:29AM (#8347472)

Actually Linux is not even close to having this capability. This comes from Sun's protected (DoD certified) "Trusted Solaris" and is analogous to having the multiple kernel installations (all with their own domains) on a single 'instance'. It will take nearly a complete re-write of the Linux kernel to achieve the same

DTrace probes (Score:5, Interesting) by haggar (72771) on Friday February 20, @08:19AM (#8338533) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Monday December 30, @12:57AM)

Dtrace probes was be the most important factor for our decision to upgrade all development servers to Solaris 10. We'll mostly skip Solaris 9, actually. The fact is that we need as much insight in our processes as we can possibly get, as every little performance increase helps. Plus, we get to inspect possible sources of instability. Typically our products interact with several third-party products, and the DTrace probes will be very useful in tracking down memory leaks and utilization details in such complex environments.

Sun Microsystems - BigAdmin DTrace

DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for the Solaris Operating Environment. DTrace provides a powerful infrastructure to permit administrators, developers, and service personnel to concisely answer arbitrary questions about the behavior of the operating system and user programs.

The Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide describes how to use DTrace to observe, debug and tune system behavior. The book (below) also includes a complete reference for bundled DTrace observability tools and the D programming language.

• Download the Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) Guide (PDF - 1Mb)
  This is the latest draft of the DTrace answerbook.
  This hefty guide provides both a tutorial introduction to DTrace as well as a detailed reference for DTrace and D.
• Join the DTrace Discussion
  Join the discussion forums to talk about DTrace.
• Introducing DTrace Newsgroup Posting
  Check out this detailed posting and example on using DTrace in the 'comp.unix.solaris' newsgroup. Very helpful!

Solaris 10 features :

• Trusted Solaris security features (labeled security, mandatory access controls (MAC)) which is what allows such flexible administration without the almighty root user.  this is not just the RBAC features from Solaris 9 (which would actually allow the described sub-root concepts, but not all the other goodies that come with real MAC).
• Volume Manager (ex Disksuite) is improved. Yes, it does soft partitions too, in case you're about to ask :)
• Sun worked hard on efficiency, and we now measure, at a given network workload on identical x86 hardware, we use 30 percent less CPU than Linux.
• DTrace is a sweet tool for anyone who's had the chance to run Solaris Express, but a much better description can be found at the source [sun.com].

It would be more than that, at least from what the description suggests. The problem with sudo is that you're often giving suid access to programs that aren't designed to be suid, so someone who was the right entries in the sudoers file can root the machine with ease. Proper privilege separation in the admin tools would mean being able to give someone access to run apt-get dist-upgrade (or whatever it is) without his being able to install his own packages. It would mean letting someone add non-root users but not root users, or resetting passwords but only for users in a certain group. It requires planning when creating admin tools, not a "slap it on" solution like sudo.

Sun's current road map for SPARC -- shows it splitting into 2 distinct roles (as apposed to the current i/s/e suffix Sun gives the CPUs right now.

• The 'Data Facing' chips will continue to be evolutions on the current SPARC theme. US IV (Jaguar) has just been released and following that US IV+ (Panther) will be ready to roll. US V (Millenium) will be a major revision of the architecture but will continue with the same design philosophy and will be targetted at the high end, data facing applications.
• In tandem with that there will be the 'Network Facing' chips. These are the Throughput Computing CMT CPUs Sun has been talking about. Gemini (2 x redesigned USIIi (yes, UltraSPARC 2i) cores on one chip) will be out in the next 12-18 months followed by Niagra (a totally new design, contributed to by Afara).
  
  The recently released US IV dual core CPU seems to be a bit of a mix between the two, Sun are pushing it as their first throughput computing chip, but the first real 'network facing' CMT chip will be Gemini within the next 12-18 months.

Sun's compiler, Forte from SunONE Studio 7.

The speed improvements that forte adds make it very attractive. You can compile almost every open source program using forte 7 including I compiled GNOME and KDE (I wouldn't say they were easy to compile, but still its possible)

gnu make, autoconf, automake, m4,  and is an improvement over the same env with gcc.

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

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Last modified: March 12, 2019