utcc.utoronto.ca on Hacker News

Compiler bootstrapping depends on more than you might think(utcc.utoronto.ca)

6 points by gavinhoward 11 days ago | 1 comments

A blog post by Chris Siebenmann discussing how compiler bootstrapping can be affected by operating system changes and other dependencies.

An unusual way for your DHCP server to run out of dynamic IPs(utcc.utoronto.ca)

65 points by speckx 3 months ago | 16 comments

Sometimes it is the network: a war story(utcc.utoronto.ca)

9 points by srijan4 3 months ago | 1 comments

When su replaced login for becoming another Unix login(utcc.utoronto.ca)

45 points by ankitg12 4 months ago | 11 comments

Notes about reading messages with the Python email packages(utcc.utoronto.ca)

48 points by ankitg12 5 months ago | 4 comments

Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software(utcc.utoronto.ca)

117 points by todsacerdoti 7 months ago | 62 comments

Undo in Vi and Its Successors(utcc.utoronto.ca)

36 points by todsacerdoti 8 months ago | 35 comments

The original vi is a product of its time (and its time has passed)(utcc.utoronto.ca)

29 points by ingve 8 months ago | 35 comments

I prefer to pass secrets between programs through standard input(utcc.utoronto.ca)

36 points by ingve 8 months ago | 19 comments

Log level 'error' should mean that something needs to be fixed(utcc.utoronto.ca)

454 points by todsacerdoti 10 months ago | 276 comments

Blog post by Chris Siebenmann arguing that an 'error' log level should mean something needs fixing, from a sysadmin perspective, prompted by Prometheus Blackbox logging.

Sending DMARC reports is somewhat hazardous(utcc.utoronto.ca)

59 points by zdw 10 months ago | 22 comments

Discovering that my smartphone had infiltrated my life(utcc.utoronto.ca)

18 points by walterbell 11 months ago | 3 comments

Moving from OpenBSD to FreeBSD for firewalls(utcc.utoronto.ca)

192 points by zdw 11 months ago | 127 comments

A surprise with how '#!' handles its program argument in practice(utcc.utoronto.ca)

95 points by SeenNotHeard 11 months ago | 82 comments

We need to start doing web blocking for non-technical reasons(utcc.utoronto.ca)

40 points by birdculture 1 year ago | 21 comments

I wish SSDs gave you CPU performance style metrics about their activity(utcc.utoronto.ca)

58 points by ingve 1 year ago | 37 comments

The early Unix history of chown() being restricted to root(utcc.utoronto.ca)

77 points by kencausey 1 year ago | 22 comments

I have a GPS bike computer(utcc.utoronto.ca)

23 points by speckx 1 year ago | 24 comments

Systemd can be a cause of restrictions on daemons(utcc.utoronto.ca)

101 points by zdw 1 year ago | 103 comments

Some stuff on how Linux consoles interact with the mouse(utcc.utoronto.ca)

7 points by kencausey 1 year ago | 0 comments

Connecting M.2 drives to various things (and not doing so)(utcc.utoronto.ca)

50 points by kencausey 1 year ago | 16 comments

Websites and web developers mostly don't care about client-side problems(utcc.utoronto.ca)

49 points by zdw 1 year ago | 42 comments

Realizing we needed two sorts of alerts for our temperature monitoring(utcc.utoronto.ca)

12 points by bobbiechen 1 year ago | 4 comments

People still use our old-fashioned Unix login servers(utcc.utoronto.ca)

66 points by sugarpimpdorsey 1 year ago | 38 comments

Getting decent error reports in Bash when you're using 'set -e'(utcc.utoronto.ca)

145 points by zdw 1 year ago | 41 comments

Why I write recursive descent parsers, despite their issues (2020)(utcc.utoronto.ca)

110 points by blobcode 1 year ago | 49 comments

Checklists are hard, but still a good thing(utcc.utoronto.ca)

142 points by zdw 1 year ago | 72 comments

What is going on in Unix with errno's limited nature(utcc.utoronto.ca)

61 points by ingve 1 year ago | 38 comments

The "personal computer" model scales better than the "terminal" model(utcc.utoronto.ca)

17 points by zdw 1 year ago | 16 comments

Some bits on malloc(0) in C being allowed to return NULL(utcc.utoronto.ca)

32 points by ingve 1 year ago | 38 comments

The X Window System didn't immediately have X terminals(utcc.utoronto.ca)

97 points by zdw 1 year ago | 58 comments

I feel open source has turned into two worlds(utcc.utoronto.ca)

28 points by sdht0 1 year ago | 1 comments

Python argparse has a limitation on argument groups that makes me sad(utcc.utoronto.ca)

18 points by zdw 1 year ago | 7 comments

In POSIX, you can theoretically use inode zero(utcc.utoronto.ca)

58 points by mfrw 1 year ago | 26 comments

A thought on JavaScript "proof of work" anti-scraper systems(utcc.utoronto.ca)

169 points by zdw 1 year ago | 191 comments

The length of file names in early Unix(utcc.utoronto.ca)

57 points by ingve 1 year ago | 37 comments

The lack of a good command line way to sort IPv6 addresses(utcc.utoronto.ca)

27 points by zdw 1 year ago | 33 comments

The appeal of serving your web pages with a single process(utcc.utoronto.ca)

74 points by ingve 1 year ago | 44 comments

How I install personal versions of programs on Unix(utcc.utoronto.ca)

41 points by ingve 1 year ago | 26 comments

The order of files in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/ matters(utcc.utoronto.ca)

226 points by NGRhodes 1 year ago | 107 comments

If you get the chance, always run more extra network fiber cabling(utcc.utoronto.ca)

212 points by hggh 1 year ago | 223 comments

Some notes on Grafana Loki's new "structured metadata"(utcc.utoronto.ca)

99 points by valyala 1 year ago | 28 comments

JSON has become today's machine-readable output format (on Unix)(utcc.utoronto.ca)

37 points by ingve 1 year ago | 39 comments

The practical (Unix) problems with .cache and its friends(utcc.utoronto.ca)

31 points by ingve 1 year ago | 38 comments

We got hit by an alarmingly well-prepared phish spammer(utcc.utoronto.ca)

181 points by epakai 1 year ago | 114 comments

Thoughts on having SSH allow password authentication from the Internet(utcc.utoronto.ca)

23 points by zdw 1 year ago | 32 comments

The history and use of /etc./glob in early Unixes(utcc.utoronto.ca)

60 points by zdw 1 year ago | 30 comments

There are different sorts of WireGuard setups with different difficulties(utcc.utoronto.ca)

4 points by srijan4 1 year ago | 0 comments

A gotcha with importing ZFS pools and NFS exports on Linux(utcc.utoronto.ca)

7 points by zdw 1 year ago | 0 comments

When power cycling your (x86) server isn't enough to recover it(utcc.utoronto.ca)

101 points by zdw 1 year ago | 49 comments

The long (after)life of some of our old fileserver hardware(utcc.utoronto.ca)

32 points by rbanffy 1 year ago | 11 comments

Maybe we should explicitly schedule rebooting our fleet every so often(utcc.utoronto.ca)

13 points by speckx 1 year ago | 1 comments

Union types ('enum types') would be complicated in Go(utcc.utoronto.ca)

23 points by misonic 1 year ago | 35 comments

Good union types in Go would probably need types without a zero value(utcc.utoronto.ca)

83 points by ingve 1 year ago | 68 comments

Python type hints may not be not for me in practice(utcc.utoronto.ca)

91 points by ingve 1 year ago | 155 comments

The missing text focused programming environment(utcc.utoronto.ca)

5 points by todsacerdoti 1 year ago | 0 comments

IPv6 networks do apparently get probed(utcc.utoronto.ca)

34 points by goranmoomin 1 year ago | 11 comments

I feel that NAT is inevitable even with IPv6(utcc.utoronto.ca)

11 points by deivid 2 years ago | 2 comments

The history of Unix's ioctl and signal about window sizes(utcc.utoronto.ca)

105 points by ingve 2 years ago | 40 comments

Daemonization in Unix programs is probably about restarting programs(utcc.utoronto.ca)

69 points by ingve 2 years ago | 40 comments

Go and my realization about what I'll call the 'Promises' pattern(utcc.utoronto.ca)

79 points by ingve 2 years ago | 55 comments

I wish (Linux) WireGuard had a simple way to restrict peer public IPs(utcc.utoronto.ca)

8 points by zdw 2 years ago | 7 comments

Operating system threads are always going to be (more) expensive(utcc.utoronto.ca)

45 points by ingve 2 years ago | 12 comments

Using rsync to create a limited ability to write remote files(utcc.utoronto.ca)

32 points by zdw 2 years ago | 5 comments

Our slowly growing Unix monoculture(utcc.utoronto.ca)

34 points by matt_d 2 years ago | 39 comments

The web fun fact that domains can end in dots and canonicalization failures(utcc.utoronto.ca)

3 points by speckx 2 years ago | 0 comments

Some thoughts on OpenSSH 9.8's PerSourcePenalties feature(utcc.utoronto.ca)

62 points by jandeboevrie 2 years ago | 60 comments

The uncertain possible futures of Unix graphical desktops(utcc.utoronto.ca)

7 points by rbanffy 2 years ago | 0 comments

The challenges of working out how many CPUs your program can use on Linux(utcc.utoronto.ca)

5 points by telotortium 2 years ago | 1 comments

Prometheus metrics saves us from painful kernel debugging (2022)(utcc.utoronto.ca)

89 points by goranmoomin 2 years ago | 15 comments

SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol(utcc.utoronto.ca)

46 points by speckx 2 years ago | 37 comments

"Out of Band" network management is not trivial(utcc.utoronto.ca)

99 points by DanAtC 2 years ago | 66 comments

Background of Linux's "file-max" and "nr_open" limits on file descriptors (2021)(utcc.utoronto.ca)

28 points by cloudripper 2 years ago | 9 comments

Plaintext is not a great format for (system) logs(utcc.utoronto.ca)

5 points by thunderbong 2 years ago | 1 comments

It seems routine to see a bunch of browser User-Agents from the same IP(utcc.utoronto.ca)

19 points by zerojames 2 years ago | 6 comments

Understanding a Python Closure Oddity(utcc.utoronto.ca)

48 points by ingve 2 years ago | 31 comments

PyPy has been working for me for several years now(utcc.utoronto.ca)

153 points by throw0101c 2 years ago | 56 comments

Go's old $GOPATH story for development and dependencies(utcc.utoronto.ca)

52 points by ingve 2 years ago | 41 comments

The Linux kernel giving CVEs to all bugfixes is sort of predictable(utcc.utoronto.ca)

20 points by zdw 2 years ago | 1 comments

Don't require people to change 'source code' to configure your programs(utcc.utoronto.ca)

29 points by ingve 2 years ago | 22 comments

Some notes on Firefox’s media autoplay settings in practice as of Firefox 124(utcc.utoronto.ca)

103 points by ingve 2 years ago | 88 comments

How I would automate monitoring DNS queries in basic Prometheus(utcc.utoronto.ca)

65 points by zdw 2 years ago | 10 comments

The Linux kernel.task_delayacct sysctl and why you might care about it(utcc.utoronto.ca)

30 points by zdw 2 years ago | 1 comments

Sorting out PIDs, Tgids, and tasks on Linux(utcc.utoronto.ca)

3 points by srijan4 2 years ago | 0 comments

Disk write buffering and its interactions with write flushes(utcc.utoronto.ca)

67 points by ingve 2 years ago | 33 comments

A peculiarity of the X Window System: Windows all the way down(utcc.utoronto.ca)

158 points by ingve 2 years ago | 87 comments

The speed of improvement in servers may have slowed down(utcc.utoronto.ca)

8 points by sysoleg 2 years ago | 0 comments

How to make your GNU Emacs commands 'relevant' for M-X(utcc.utoronto.ca)

58 points by pabs3 2 years ago | 1 comments

Open source culture and the valorization of public work(utcc.utoronto.ca)

8 points by zdw 2 years ago | 0 comments

What ZIL metrics are exposed by (Open)ZFS on Linux(utcc.utoronto.ca)

43 points by rbanffy 2 years ago | 2 comments

Options for genuine ECC RAM on the desktop in (early) 2024(utcc.utoronto.ca)

80 points by ingve 2 years ago | 75 comments

Accidentally making windows vanish in my old-fashioned Unix X environment(utcc.utoronto.ca)

39 points by raid2000 2 years ago | 18 comments

We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is(utcc.utoronto.ca)

213 points by pabs3 2 years ago | 130 comments

Servers are (probably) starting to drop serial ports(utcc.utoronto.ca)

8 points by ingve 2 years ago | 1 comments

The cooling advantage that CPU integrated graphics has(utcc.utoronto.ca)

34 points by ingve 2 years ago | 38 comments

CGI programs have an attractive one step deployment model(utcc.utoronto.ca)

12 points by ingve 2 years ago | 3 comments

Git Branches as a Social Construct(utcc.utoronto.ca)

63 points by ingve 2 years ago | 60 comments

MFA today is both 'simple' and non-trivial work(utcc.utoronto.ca)

24 points by zdw 2 years ago | 16 comments

Web CGI programs aren't particularly slow these days(utcc.utoronto.ca)

79 points by PaulHoule 2 years ago | 57 comments

Ten years isn't long enough for maximum age settings(utcc.utoronto.ca)

86 points by ingve 2 years ago | 35 comments

Email addresses are not good 'permanent' identifiers for accounts(utcc.utoronto.ca)

269 points by throw0101b 2 years ago | 383 comments

Seeing how fast people will probe you after you get a new TLS certificate(utcc.utoronto.ca)

47 points by jyunwai 2 years ago | 19 comments

Why Unix kernels have grown caches for directory entries ('name caches')(utcc.utoronto.ca)

56 points by pabs3 2 years ago | 21 comments

The Unix V6 shell and how control flow worked in it(utcc.utoronto.ca)

37 points by jandeboevrie 2 years ago | 6 comments

Unix Shells and the Current Directory(utcc.utoronto.ca)

71 points by ingve 2 years ago | 19 comments

A peculiarity of the GNU Coreutils version of 'test' and '['(utcc.utoronto.ca)

71 points by ingve 2 years ago | 42 comments

Go modules and the domain expiry problem(utcc.utoronto.ca)

51 points by pabs3 2 years ago | 37 comments

Dup()'s shared file IO offset is a necessary part of Unix(utcc.utoronto.ca)

33 points by ingve 3 years ago | 10 comments

Using extra Firefox profiles to make my life better(utcc.utoronto.ca)

326 points by ingve 3 years ago | 210 comments

Chris Siebenmann's blog post on using extra Firefox profiles, one per site, to keep login cookies for annoying websites while browsing with JavaScript off elsewhere.

OpenBSD PF-based firewalls suffer differently from denial of service attacks(utcc.utoronto.ca)

78 points by mfrw 3 years ago | 25 comments

Keyboard keys and characters(utcc.utoronto.ca)

18 points by ingve 3 years ago | 9 comments

The three modern formats for email forwarded by people(utcc.utoronto.ca)

63 points by zdw 3 years ago | 51 comments

Unix shells are generally not viable access control mechanisms any more(utcc.utoronto.ca)

157 points by ingve 3 years ago | 126 comments

The roots of an obscure Bourne shell error message(utcc.utoronto.ca)

86 points by r4um 3 years ago | 28 comments

The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant(utcc.utoronto.ca)

81 points by ingve 3 years ago | 121 comments

Packaging software is something that takes work(utcc.utoronto.ca)

43 points by pabs3 3 years ago | 18 comments

Unix is both a technology and an idea(utcc.utoronto.ca)

107 points by zdw 3 years ago | 65 comments

CLAs create different issues than making (small) open source contributions(utcc.utoronto.ca)

57 points by pabs3 3 years ago | 39 comments

Some problems with 'first name' and 'last name' fields in data(utcc.utoronto.ca)

33 points by ingve 3 years ago | 40 comments

Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your web pages are served with(utcc.utoronto.ca)

123 points by pabs3 3 years ago | 159 comments