Skip to content

A new server, and a few more words about LetsEncrypt.

UNIX

Back in April some jackass promised that there would be a follow-up post about migrating bsd-box.net to use the LetsEncrypt CA.
Oh right, that was me.

As usual life interfered, but here's the followup: The bsd-box.net server has been replaced with a shiny new machine, LetsEncrypt is still my CA of choice for this system, and a bunch of other things have changed. More below the jump.

Continue reading "A new server, and a few more words about LetsEncrypt."

A few words about Lets Encrypt

UNIX

Most if not all readers of my blog are probably aware of the Lets Encrypt project, which officially exited Beta this month.  
For those of you not familiar with it, the basic premise is "It's the goddamn 21st century, and there is no reason every website shouldn't be available over HTTPS. We're giving away certificates for free, and giving you an automated tool to acquire and renew them. You have no more excuses!"

Most of you also know I was originally quite skeptical of this project: I'm not a huge fan of trusting third-party programs with my cryptography, and I like to ensure that I'm maintaining control of the impotant bits (like private keys) at all times. The final implementation however appears to be well-designed and reasonably secure, enough so that I have used it for this year's certificate renewal on bsd-box.net.
What follows is a brief description of the Lets Encrypt process on FreeBSD: Its successes, its failures, and some thiings I may be submitting patches for in the near future.

Continue reading "A few words about Lets Encrypt"

The Problem of the 9-to-5 Sysadmin

UNIX

Tom Limoncelli (yes, that Tom) recently wrote a blog post that came to my attention by way of Twitter in which he lamented his bank's scheduled downtime and the implications of routine "weekend work" in terms of an organization's respect for the time and work-life balance of its sysadmin staff.

This was posted the "Rants" section of his blog and is obvisouly ment to be taken as slightly tongue-in-cheek alongside the idea that every sysadmin in geekdom's creation would really rather be watching the Star Wars movie, but it's broadly representative of an attitude I've seen emerging more and more in our profession: That sysadmin work should be viewed as a 9-to-5 gig. I in turn ranted a little bit about that on Twitter, but I think it merits following up with a longer form discussion, so let's have a blog post before the end of the year!

Continue reading "The Problem of the 9-to-5 Sysadmin"

Racism, Violence, and Mental Health

Politics

 For those of you living under a goddamn rock, a white dude walked into a predominantly black church and shot the place up. He killed 9 people.

That's really not what I've decided to spend my lunch hour talking about though: I want to talk about mental health in the context of mass violence. So if you want to hear about that go ahead and click through to the rest of this entry, otherwise move along on your merry way.

Continue reading "Racism, Violence, and Mental Health"