Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 61

Two “FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials” reviews

Two new reviews on FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials yesterday.

First, from Justin Sherrill, on DragonflyBSD Digest.

Then on Slashdot, which got featured on Reddit, from Saint Aardvark the Carpeted. (The nice thing about the Internet is, even a carpeted aardvark can make his mark on it.)

I’d like to thank both gentlemen for taking the time to review my latest. Reviews from disinterested third parties can make or break an author.

The post Two “FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials” reviews appeare...

BSDCan 2015 Call for Papers Ending Soon

I just submitted a talk and a tutorial to BSDCan 2015.

If you’ve done anything in BSD technology over the last year more sophisticated than “maintained respiration and blood flow,” you should submit as well.

As a committee member, I can say we are always looking for unusual work. Yes, we all know that Henning Brauer is working on OpenBSD, and Luigi Rizzo is doing something clever with the network stack, and Max Stucchi is pimping IPv6. That’s all well and good, but we always want something outs...

Volunteering Early to Tech Review

Another “write this once so I can refer to it later” post. If I sent you a link to this post, it’s probably because you asked to tech review a book before I’m ready for tech reviewers.

This week, I received several requests from readers who want to do a pre-publication tech review of one of my new books, like Tarsnap Mastery or next year’s FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS. Generally these readers are enthusiastic fans who get confused between “Lucas released a new book” and “Christmas.”

I need fans like yo...

BSDNow Interview now live

Well, that didn’t take long.

My interview yesterday with BSDNow.tv is up, as Episode 68: Just the Essentials. We talk about FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials. Plus my next projects, Networking for Systems Administrators and Tarsnap Mastery, plus my next FreeBSD and OpenBSD books.

And, of course, crushing Peter Hansteen.

Because it’s not enough that I win; others must LOSE.

The post BSDNow Interview now live appeared first on blather.michaelwlucas.com.

Sudo talk now on YouTube

My talk Sudo: You’re Doing It Wrong is now live on YouTube. (Thanks to TJ for letting me know.)

The talk is based on my book Sudo Mastery.

This talk went better than my NYCBSDCon talk. Probably because I hadn’t confused “buzzing with caffeine, adrenaline, and sleeplessness” with “raging tonsilitis.” The Q&A at the end took us wildly astray, and ended with the general conclusion that “Lucas needs to present to mug.org about how to use SSH correctly.”

I gave away a couple books, one Sudo Mastery a...

SMLR on “FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials”

The Sunday Morning Linux Review folks have a review of FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials in show 141. The review starts at about 39:30, but the whole show is worth listening to. As always.

For my own reference, here’s a couple key quotes that I’ll probably use for marketing later. (I either write them down here, or have to go listen to the show again when digging up blurb quotes later.)

“Lucas lays a solid foundation about disks.”

“The devil is in the details, and the details are in the book.”...

Next tech book: Tarsnap Mastery

Now that “Networking for System Administrators” is out for review, it’s time for me to dive into my next tech project: Tarsnap Mastery. Tarsnap is an encrypted online backup service run by Colin Percival, retired FreeBSD Security Officer.

Colin has asked me to write some Tarsnap documentation for years. Now that I’ve moved my personal servers from hardware in my control to “the cloud,” I need a solid backup system. Tarsnap fits the bill nicely. If I have to deploy it and get everything nicely...

“Networking for System Administrators” – Tech reviewers wanted

I’ve completed the manuscript for Networking for System Administrators. I’m now looking for a couple types of technical reviewers: people who know TCP/IP and networking, and people who are likely to read this book.

Normally I’d ask for feedback in a few weeks. But the holiday season is at our throats, and we all need to spend some time fending off the incoming pile of coal, so: I’d need your comments by 5 January 2015. If you can return it to me earlier, that’s fantastic.

If you’re interested i...

“FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials” print available!

You can now get FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials in print on Amazon.

If you buy the print from Amazon, you can get the Kindle version for $2.99. Sadly, that’s the closest thing to a proper print/ebook combo I’ve been able to do.

For completeness’ sake: you can also buy it directly from my CreateSpace store. As sales go, that’s where I make the most money. It’s also the most expensive version. If you want to pay extra so I make more I won’t object, but I will suggest you avoid the middleman a...

FreeBSD fetch(1) broken on SSL links?

I went to download Tarsnap on a FreeBSD 10.0-p12 machine, and got hit with this error:

# fetch https://www.tarsnap.com/download/tars...

Certificate verification failed for /C=GB/ST=Greater Manchester/L=Salford/O=COMODO CA Limited/CN=COMODO RSA Certification Authority

34380830376:error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed:/usr/src/secure/lib/libssl/../../../crypto/openssl/ssl/s3_clnt.c:1179:

fetch: https://www.tarsnap.com/download/tarsnap-...