Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 74
March 21, 2013
“DNSSEC Mastery” status, dates, and acknowledgements
Monday night, I sent DNSSEC Mastery to copyedit. If all goes well, it’ll be back at the beginning of next month. Making corrections from copyedits is a quick task.
The copyedit-ready manuscript has been uploaded to LeanPub, so if you’re one of the early purchasers, it’s in your account for you. The manuscript is now technically correct.
I’m going to a writer’s workshop on 5 April. If all goes well, I’d like to have the ebook available before I go. That would also let me hand it to the print lay...
March 18, 2013
Absolute OpenBSD 2/e preorders from OpenBSD.org
You can now preorder AO2e directly from OpenBSD. They don’t give a discount, but proceeds go towards supporting and improving OpenBSD.
Conveniently, you can preorder the OpenBSD 5.3 CD set as well.
If you’ve already ordered through my Web page, that’s great. The OpenBSD folks also take straight-up cash donations.
March 13, 2013
Diagnosing “+Limiting icmp unreach response from…” with tcpdump
Anyone who has run a FreeBSD server for any length of time has seen these messages in their daily security emails. (You do read those, right?)
+Limiting icmp unreach response from 296 to 200 packets/sec
+Limiting icmp unreach response from 337 to 200 packets/sec
+Limiting icmp unreach response from 318 to 200 packets/sec
+Limiting icmp unreach response from 535 to 200 packets/sec
+Limiting icmp unreach response from 332 to 200 packets/sec
+Limiting icmp unreach response from 328 to 200 packets/sec
W...
March 12, 2013
Tech Book Contracts
Several tech authors recently contacted me for advice about problems with their publishers. (No publisher in particular, mind you.) Apparently I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m considered an expert. I’m writing this post so I can point these people at it later.
If you’re a tech author thinking of asking for my wisdom: this is basically it.
None of this is anything against any particular publisher or any particular writer.
This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on...
March 11, 2013
Some “Absolute OpenBSD 2/e” dates
No Starch intends to send AO2e to the printer on 22 March 2013. This would give a “bound book date” of approximately 12 April. Books would be in their hands roughly 19 April. They’re really good about shipping books to purchasers as soon as possible.
Note that DNSSec Mastery should be available in ebook form about then. Not only do I have two books coming in 2013, I have two books coming in April 2013.
All dates are subject to change based on the whim of the printer, phase of the moon, gasoline...
February 27, 2013
First review of “Absolute OpenBSD 2e”
I asked Michael Dexter of callfortesting.org to give me a blurb for the front of the print edition of the new Absolute OpenBSD. Which he was kind enough to do, based on a preliminary PDF.
Then he posted this.
Apparently the book does not completely suck. Always nice to know.
February 25, 2013
Any Firefox add-on people out there?
I’ve had really good luck asking random people to do work for me, so I’m going to try it again.
RFC6698 defines the DANE protocol for attaching information to DNSSEC-secured DNS. Notably, you can validate SSL certificates via DNS. This is a game-changer. The key here is the TLSA DNS record.
Web browsers don’t support this yet, but there is the Extended DNSSEC Validator Firefox add-on at os3sec.com, with source at github.
If you have the newest version of the add-on installed, sites like https://...
February 22, 2013
Absolute OpenBSD blurbs
One of the tasks on an author’s to-do list is gathering blurbs for the new book. A blurb is blatant promotion from a name a reader might recognize. Preferably a name that has some bearing on the topic of the book. You frequently see this in fiction, where the first couple of pages are other people saying “this book is fantastic! It cured my leprous bulemia!” Most often it’s multiple authors each saying nice things about the others’ books.
“Nice,” I think. “They’re doing each other favors. It’s...
February 20, 2013
DNSSEC Tech Reviewers Wanted
Last night, I finished the first draft of DNSSEC Mastery. If you’re one of my fans who wants to see the existing work, a pre-pub version is now available on LeanPub.
Now I’m looking for people familiar with DNSSEC on BIND to read the book and tell me where I’ve screwed up.
This book is for an established DNS administrator who wants to deploy DNSSEC. I assume you know what named.conf is, why you don’t put PTR records in a forward zone, and so on. The goal is not to get 100% of the people 100% th...
February 18, 2013
Fan Art
From Michael Dexter:
https://twitter.com/michaeldexter/status/303218384357711872
For the record, the “Absolute” in the titles of some of my books is because it’s a good strong word. It has nothing to do with the vodka company. That doesn’t mean I can’t laugh maniacally.
