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Udev presentation slides
I gave a talk on the Linux udev device management framework tonight, and posted my slides to the presentation section of my website. Thanks to everyone who came out! I had a blast presenting, and enjoyed meeting some new folks!
$ read more →Securing Linux file systems that don't contain executables
Linux comes with a slew of mount options, several of which are useful for locking down what can and can't happen inside a file system. Three options I find super useful are noexec, nosuid and nodev. The noexec option disables execution for files that reside within a file system, nosuid disables execution of setuid executables inside a file system, and the nodev option instructs the file system not to interpret character or block special files. These options make a lot of sense for file systems such as /tmp, /home and /var, since these file systems typically don't need to contain executables or device files…
$ read more →Ridding myself of cat hair and cat allergies
I have had my cat T-bone for close to 13 years, and she has been with me through the many phases and places of my life. Always chipper and upbeat, her crazy antics are amusing to say the least. But, as much as I love her, I seriously hate how much she sheds and the allergies that I have developed while owning a cat. Since I dig my cat and couldn't bear to get rid of her, I have tried numerous things to reduce the allergens she created…
$ read more →Decoding PCI data and lspci output on Linux hosts
I've been spending some time reading the source code to the Linux QLogic HBA source code, and got a bit curious about how PCI device data was represented by the kernel. I took a number of notes while reading through the Linux kernel documentation, and summarized them in an article titled Decoding PCI data and lspci output on Linux hosts. If you are interested in learning more about how to decode PCI device-nodes, check out the article.
$ read more →Compiling a custom kernel on Fedora and CentOS Linux hosts
I have been experimenting with lxc-containers, which use a number of features in the latest 2.6 kernels (specifically, namespaces). To ensure that I have the latest bug fixes and performance enhancements, I have been rolling my own kernels. This has been remarkably easy, since the Makefile that ships with the kernel has an option to build RPM packages. To build a kernel and create an RPM, you will first need to download and extract the kernel source code: Once the source code is extracted, you can create a kernel configuration file with 'make menuconfig': If you have built a kernel previously, you should run 'make mrproper' to clean up old object and configuration files: If all goes well, you should now have a clean set of kernel source and a kernel configuration file…
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