Linux | Atomic Spin

Developer Tools

5 Unix Commands I Wish I’d Discovered Years Earlier

I've been using *nix systems for quite a while. But there are a few commands that I somehow overlooked and wish I'd discovered years earlier.

Extracurricular Activities

Tracking Down Disk Usage on the Command Line

I created short terminal command that I use to check disk usage by identifying large files and folders.

DevOps & System Admin.

Multiple Ubuntu Installations with Grub

The steps I used to configure a small Grub partition used to chainload multiple Ubuntu installations on separate partitions.

DevOps & System Admin.

Hosting Provider ‘Upgrade’ Changes Stolen CPU

One of our VM's recently had a huge jump in stolen CPU / %steal CPU time. I investigated and found that our VM's CPU allocation had been deprioritized.

DevOps & System Admin.

Linux Encryption in the Cloud using LUKS on Linode

See how I set up Linux encryption using LUKS on Linode with an encrypted root partition. Includes Linode boot process, GRUB, cryptsetup, and dm-crypt.

jRuby

JrSerialPort: Connect to a Serial Port in JRuby via RXTX

Simple but effective JRuby code that simplifies the use of RXTX for basic serial port communications, with sample terminal.

Ruby

Is Your Application Running with Ruby – Slow?

Ruby may not be compiled for optimal performance with RVM. I benchmarked Ruby, and compiled Ruby with optimization flags to improve performance.

DevOps & System Admin.

Useful iptables Port Forwarding Patterns

iptables is a packet filtering tool for configuring nat and port forwarding. Here are some patterns to help setup port and ip address redirection.

Extracurricular Activities

Linux Has Lost the War for My Desktop

I can't afford to update my system at night, then come into work and find that xrandr has suddenly changed its parameter format and my external monitor won't work.

DevOps & System Admin.

Restoring Deleted Files in Linux from the ext3 Journal

With ext3, you can reconstruct (many) deleted files based on entries from the filesystem journal.

DevOps & System Admin.

Creating Encrypted, Offsite Backups with Duplicity

We found a way to create secure, space-efficient remote backups with Duplicity. It supports AWS S3 and other kinds of remote storage with compression and encryption.

Developer Tools

Safe Usage of /bin/rm

Safe use of /bin/rm is important to prevent destroying critical data. A wrapper script for /bin/rm can help prevent accidental deletions.