A simple matter of…

I’ve now left Opsera to run my own Linux infrastructure consultancy company called [http://bitcube.co.uk Bitcube]. I’m looking to do some consultancy, a bit of contract work based around the excellent [http://reductivelabs.com/products/puppet/ puppet]. A product is also in the pipeline although it is very early days for that. One thing I’m very keen on is giving [...]

Just added TLS to my mail server and whilst I was at it, SASL AUTH (via dovecot). The latter was very easy, the former was also pretty simple after I read the big document I’m not authenticating clients via TLS – it’s possible, but SASL AUTH is a better solution for me (you don’t need [...]

Earlier today, I was just finishing off cooking lunch when the electricity went off. Unusually it was the main RCD for the entire house. Fast forward to this evening, I take dinner out of the oven and, oh dear, no outrush of hot air. That’s the second time that the heating element has gone (first [...]

Never has a source control system been more aptly named. git is amazingly cool and powerful, however it also possesses a steep learning curve. I’m now happily using it in a basic fashion – one central repository, an edge repository on my laptop and desktop. You really do need to spend a bit of time [...]

I’m a keen user of email, perhaps _too_ keen. I use email since the person I’m communicating with choose when to read it and when to deal with it. They will also have all the information they need (I hope). This helps efficiency (no interruptions for them and I don’t have to wait for them). [...]

In my day job I end up looking after various Java applications. One of the biggest problems here from my point of view is memory leaks. In a “normal” C program with a memory leak, you’d leak some memory consistently over time – so you can keep an eye on the program, monitor it and [...]

(Mergers and Acquisitions) Well it has finally been done and announced. We’ve [http://www.opsera.com/jsp/News%20Items/Opsera%20acquires%20Altinity.jsp acquired] Altinity, developers of [http://www.opsview.org Opsview]. This is great news, I’ve been a firm believer in this since the start (in fact, I initiated the conversation). I’m really looking forward to work with the Altinity guys and helping Opsview grow as a [...]

Dear Dell (and other manufacturers), If I buy a PC from you (such as a PowerEdge 2950). I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t: turn virtualisation support off in the BIOS or removed it completely pending a BIOS upgrade (HP) turn off power management in the BIOS turn off snoop filtering (as this will have [...]

So, how was Linuxworld? Great! I went as part of the Opsview team and met lots of potential new customers ranging from very small to very large. Opsview is a monitoring system for networks, servers and applications. Based on Nagios, it’s substantially better. The conference went very well, we had a modest stand since we [...]

At the end of this week I’m off to [http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/ LinuxWorld Expo] in San Francisco. I’ll be there as we are now partners of [http://altinity.com Altinity]. Altinity make [http://opsview.org Opsview] – which is a customised Nagios. In particular it is much easier to setup and administer – there are many great features including: * Distributed [...]