OH: … mit dem Katalog und dem starken Verdacht, dass “geplant” das
optimistischste Wort im deutschen Verwaltungsdeutsch ist #sysadmin #Grundschutz
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Archaeology is the art of working out what people were thinking from what they left behind.
System administration is the same, except that the people were usually us.
A log store with a search box is a library with no catalogue: everything is there, and you have to know the title.
.
.
.
Libraries without a catalogue do exist. They are called attics, and the things in them are found mainly while looking for something else.
Logs are a lot like the universe: vast, mostly empty, and every so often something in them is on
fire.
I guess [privacysafe] [dot] [social] is an instance safe to block?
Just receiving spam from there..
lol
$ rm -Rf /usr/bin/javaws
$ ln -s <new java shit> /usr/bin/javaws
How Tos like that ensure that there will always be a little wtf surprise at a customers site when they blindly trust those.
“Why is java -version telling something different than javaws --version“
I am really curious if AI will make the problem worse or not.
At the end, a human, not fully understanding what they are doing, is entering something to a shell and hits enter. 🤷
Habe eben die interne Telefonwarteschleife in der Firma gegen den Angry Birds Theme Song getauscht. So als #sozialesExperiment. Mal sehen ob das die Laune der Anrufer hebt 😂
Einer der wenigen Momente in denen man sich als #sysadmin mal “kreativ” austoben kann. Glücklicherweise ist unsere Geschäftsführung immer für #Schabernack zu haben 😎
Wir haben noch eine Stelle zu besetzen: Als System-Administrator:in (Linux, Ansible) für unsere SaaS-Plattform @pretix@pretix.social sowie zahlreiche interne Tools in unserem Ops-Team mit großartigen Kollegen. 30-40h/W, fully remote (in .de), bunte Mischung aus Tagesgeschäft und Projekten, strukturiertes Gehaltsmodell mit Minimum bei 4.895 € brutto plus Benefits.
Alle Infos:
pretix.eu/about/…
Meeting Renzo Davoli at Linux Day brought me back to 20 years ago. “My” FreeOSZoo: web.archive.org/web/…
Rund um die PHP-Lücke fällt mir eigentlich nur noch eines ein: “Sex sells”! Da werden vermeintliche IT- und Digital-Experten aus dem letzten Loch gepult, die dann etwas vom Weltuntergang erzählen und noch 1 bis 2 Allgemeinsätze hinterherschieben. Das war es. Der Informationsgehalt ist nahezu null.
Die eigentlichen Helden tun in der Zwischenzeit ihre Arbeit! Still, heimlich, im Hintergrund. Das sind zum einen die Entwickler, die den Patch erstellt haben, und zum anderen die jeweiligen Sys-Admins, die schnell und besonnen reagiert haben. Bei ihnen sollten wir uns alle bedanken!
Die einen stellen sich breitbeinig in die Sonne, geben ein wenig Blabla von sich und lassen sich feiern. Der Rest macht einfach nur seinen Job!
Many of you are starting to explore NetBSD, and it’s a great idea.
Why don’t you also consider to use it for your online presence?
Make Your Own Internet Presence with NetBSD and a 1 euro VPS - Part 1: Your Blog
Then on Saturday night at 20, your favourite provider hits you up with an email: ‘Ok, syspatch-ed the physical server and rebooted, all good. I’m here if you need anything’.
They’re truly inimitable.
Thanks, @OpenBSDAms@mastodon.bsd.cafe !
Anyway, this week has also brought many really positive things.
Yesterday morning I had a meeting with a public institution. The people in charge are really good, both technically and as human beings. We’ve known each other for almost 20 years, and we’ve been working together ever since.
“The institutions above us are pushing to move everything to closed solutions. We see things differently.
We’ll keep running our email with open source solutions, just as we’ve done until now, without problems. We’ll keep using LibreOffice, providing Open Source operating systems on the PCs in our libraries, managing our files and collaboration with systems like Nextcloud.
We don’t want to depend on closed clouds run by third-party companies.
We want our consultants working on our machines, looking after our data. Not their consultants working on their machines, with our data inside, which effectively becomes theirs.
Can you keep supporting us?”
I had a late lunch.
But the photos of my lunch should make it pretty clear what my answer was, and how happy I was to give it.
They’re not refusing to move forward. They’re refusing to follow the trend of locking themselves into someone else’s cage.
Luckily, the world is also full of really good people.
Ok, looks like this is the week of funny experiences.
Customer: “I had an AI check our server and it says the SSH port is open and that’s not very secure.”
Me: “Yes, you asked us to open it so you could access the server via SFTP (actually, you wanted FTP, but we discussed it a bit and found this compromise). Don’t worry, it’s only accessible from your IP and you land in a dedicated FreeBSD jail. From there, you can only access the ‘exchange’ directory on your server, where you can upload and download files without affecting the application.”
(NB: I had suggested a VPN, but they declined because it was too complicated.)
Customer: “Yes, but maybe it’s still insecure. Can’t we close it?”
Me: “No, unless you want to lose access to that directory.”
Customer: “Ok, thanks.”
One hour later:
Customer: “Hi, I think we’ve found a solution. We’ve just created an app (!!!) with AI that lets us access the files anyway, but more securely than SSH (!!!). Can we install that and close SSH? Oh, and not in the dedicated jail, but directly in the application’s jail, because it needs access to the application’s files.”
Me: “Frankly, I trust SSH in a dedicated jail, restricted by the firewall, a lot more. I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Customer: “Ok, thanks.”
Half an hour later:
Customer: “Ok, now it’s secure. I had another AI check it and it found some security issues, but it fixed them all. Can you install it and disable SSH?”
Me: “I strongly advise against it. I can see problems coming.”
Customer: “Ok, thanks.”
One hour later, my phone rings.
Their internal IT guy (who has access to the machine, which, after all, belongs to them) had given the AI the login credentials to go ahead with the operation.
Except the AI had managed to lock itself out via the firewall, without even starting the app. And now they couldn’t get back in.
Fortunately, I had my own access, via VPN, to a separate jail that the AI hadn’t touched (or even considered).
Customer: “SORRYSORRYSORRYSORRYSORRY! From now on, we do things your way.”
Well, at least it ended well.
PS: The customer knows I’m sharing this story and agreed to it.
Heads up for fellow Linux admins: CVE-2026-99999 (dubbed “PwnEscape”) is out, and it is a nasty one (CVSS 9.3).
Despite being called a KVM escape, the actual bug lives in the host IPv4 networking stack. Untrusted CHECKSUM_PARTIAL offload metadata from a guest can overwrite already-validated packet headers during ip_do_fragment(), leaking host memory or allowing a guest-to-host escape.
Mainline patches landed Oct 14, and stable backports are out. Check your hypervisors and reboot!
I got a call from someone I don’t know.
“Hi. We have a FreeBSD server. It’s been working perfectly for years, but it hasn’t been updated since then. We asked AI to update it, but now it won’t boot anymore. It didn’t even make a backup before starting. The AI keeps trying things, everything is down, and we’ve already spent over €500 in tokens. Can you help us?”
“Sure. €500, plus the time it’ll take me to try to fix it. Assuming it can still be fixed and nothing important has been deleted.”
“That much?”
Some silence.
“Well, I hope AI takes your job away!” And he hung up.
Believing that autopilot automatically makes you an invulnerable professional pilot will ruin far more people than job losses will.
I don’t know if AI will take my job away, but it’s already cost them €500 and, probably, their server.