apt-sources downloads a current list of Debian mirrors and benchmarks them, then writes an /etc/apt/apt-sources file for you, thus giving you an up-to-date and fastest-possible source of downloads.
There's a nasty vulnerability in recent SSL libraries that an Apache-based worm is currently exploiting. The patch is obviously the most critical on machines that are running secure Apache sites. But if you don't like vulnerabilities, and you shouldn't, go get your distribution's latest updates.
I pulled the IDE CD-ROM drive out of my main Linux box today and replaced it with a SCSI model, mostly because I like to keep a spare IDE CD-ROM drive loose and I had a couple of Toshiba 4X CD-ROM drives in my closet. I don't use the CD-ROM drive in my Linux box very much, so a 4X is fine. Plus, making my Linux box into an all-SCSI system means I can compile out all the IDE support in my kernel if I ever feel ambitious.
I've been reading an unauthorized biography of rms. Interesting. The guy's so idealistic he still really, really annoys me, but he's a typical, old-fashioned activist. Blaming an activist for being idealistic and unrealistic (and unreasonable) is like blaming a dog for barking. Yeah, it's annoying, but it's what dogs and activists do.
Now here's something that seems interesting and useful. The two times I want to cluster are when I'm rendering video (ick) or compiling something massive like KDE or Mozilla (quadruple ick).
So what's so special about this server? It's running Debian 3.0 on XFS, which is SGI's industrial-strength journaling file system. It's faster than ext3, more feature-complete than ReiserFS, and it's been reliably shuffling bits as part of SGI's IRIX operating system for the better part of a decade. You know you want it.
You can pick up a 35-meg ISO image that installs Debian and grabs everything else you want off the 'Net over here.
I've had arguments at work with one of the managers as to whether Linux is up to the task of running an enterprise-class Web server. When I mention my record with Linux running this site, the manager dismisses it, never mind that this site gets more traffic than a lot of the sites we run at work. So I went looking this afternoon for some sites that run on Linux, Apache, and PHP, like this one does.
A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in a large number of versions of BIND. CERT released an advisory over the weekend. I haven't seen this on most news sites yet.
