Sysadmin Hacks
- Date:
Jul 13, 2025
- Author:
Mark Galassi
Contents:
- 1. Motivation and plan
- 2. Personalize your system
- 3. Simple backups
- 4. ssh and git setup and explorations
- 5. The basics of networking
- 6. How to get insight into a network
- 6.1. Before we start
- 6.2. interfaces: the network devices our packets go through to get out
- 6.3. routing: how to get from here to a remote host
- 6.4. changing routes: choosing special routes to reach some hosts or nets
- 6.5. traceroute: what gateways do you pass going from here to there?
- 6.6. ping: see if a host is alive
- 6.7. nmap: what hosts are on this network? and what services do they offer?
- 6.8. nmap: a script to make a visual map
- 6.9. pnscan: looking at open ports
- 6.10. telnet: an ancient command with an interesting modern use
- 6.11. host: the Domain Name System
- 6.12. ssh: logging in to another computer
- 7. Cloud backups
- 8. Modern packaging
- 9. Packaging python
- 10. Creating virtual machines
- 11. Container basics
- 11.1. Motivation and plan
- 11.2. Prerequisites
- 11.3. History and concepts
- 11.4. Starting small: chroot
- 11.5. Using mock to build RPMs and other packages
- 11.6. Simple examples of docker
- 11.7. Specific pre-existing containers
- 11.8. Sharing files between host and container
- 11.9. Container orchestration
- 11.10. Creating your own container
- 11.11. Thoughts on docker
- 11.12. Nomenclature
- 11.13. A grabbag of small tricks
- 11.14. Additional resources
- 12. Services with containers
- 12.1. Motivation and plan
- 12.2. Prerequisites
- 12.3. Concepts
- 12.4. Installing the infrastructure
- 12.5. Installing jenkins docker image
- 12.6. Install rocketchat docker image
- 12.7. Prepare a web app docker image using flask
- 12.8. Putting it all together with docker-compose
- 12.9. A more complex application to animate updating of maps
- 12.10. Adding that fourth project to our docker-compose setup
- 12.11. Putting the flask containers behind nginx
- 12.12. Additional resources
- 13. Cloud virtual machines
- 14. Setting up collaboration tools
- 15. Installing Snipe-IT
- 16. Installing Archivesspace
- 17. Splitting audiobooks
- 18. Learning the notmuch email system
- 18.1. Motivation, prerequisites and plan
- 18.2. Tutorial from official notmuch website
- 18.3. Trying the tutorial that uses gmailieer
- 18.4. Other tutorials
- 18.5. notmuch-emacs
- 18.6. some command line things I used
- 18.7. A bit on filtering
- 18.8. The problem of sending messages with long lines
- 18.9. A rabbit hole that came from using afew to tag lists
- 19. The old UNIX FAQs
- 20. Appendix: How to build the book
- 21. Copying and legal matters