The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 17— Use your favorite editor
Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 19 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with some changes to update the...
What our system maintenance this past weekend says about Linux
I've been thinking a lot about the system maintenance I performed on Saturday, February 22. Prior to that day, I thought about what needed to...
Keeping time with chrony
“Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” -- Chicago, 1969 Perhaps that rock group didn’t care what time it was...
How I recovered from another self-inflicted problem
And how I got there in the first place. Those of you who read my articles and books know that I do updates frequently to...
Updates fix KDE Plasma issues
If you've been reading Both.org for a few months, you'll know that I have two favorite desktops. I like Xfce for it's no-nonsense user interface...
Filelight — my new favorite Linux tool
I like to explore all corners of my Linux installations. Sometimes I find interesting and useful new (to me) tools that -- for some reason...
Fixing Ansible playbooks
I've been using Ansible for several years to perform different tasks on my many physical and virtual hosts. It's an excellent tool for defining the...
How I reverted to Name Service Switch (NSS) for name resolution — And why
There are problems with the new systemd-resolved resolver and that gives us some good reasons to keep or revert to the NSSwitch resolver. The Domain...
New book announcement
I'm currently working on a new book that will be available in July 2025, "systemd for Linux SysAdmins: All You Need to Know About The...
Using the dmesg command
As a SysAdmin I frequently need to access the kernel log to obtain information of various types. This can range from searching for why a...
How Linux keeps time
Knowing the exact time is important to computers for many reasons. A GPS, which is a computer, needs to know the exact time so it...
How to get a clean screen — on the command line
After some time using terminal sessions they can get a bit cluttered with previous commands and their output data streams. At other times, I want...
How to do updates on the command line
Keeping your Linux computer as safe as possible from various types of cyber attacks is only possible if you perform updates regularly and upgrade to...
The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 16 —Find the simplicity
Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 18 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with some changes to update the...
The secrets of the usermod command
Most SysAdmins use a diverse set of commands, but it's usually the same set of commands. And, most frequently, the same set of options for...
Using htop to manage your Linux system
I use a lot of tools in my daily SysAdmin role. One of the most important ones in my toolkit is htop. The htop program...