September 2009

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I recently switched my primary mouse from a Logitech V450 to a much simpler Logitech RX650. The RX650 is a basic OEM mouse. It is larger than the V450 and doesn’t have the useful space below the mouse to store the compact USB receiver. It only has a range of 1.5m from the receiver, compared to 10m for the V450. So why did I switch? Because the RX650 uses 27 MHz for communication, whereas nearly every other cordless mouse on the market today, including my old V450, uses 2.4 GHz.

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Firefox has a very annoying “feature” – it remembers any HTTP authentication tokens for as long as Firefox remains open. Any by “open”, I mean “the browser is running”, not “the tab/window is open”.

Why is this bad? For several reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

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Using Webmin on a smartphone

Although I administer most servers via SSH, I also use Webmin. Webmin is convenient for almost any simple administrative task, and is often better for some jobs. For instance, it is the easiest way I have found to browse Postfix email queues. Perhaps most importantly, it can save you from having to learn yet another daemon’s unique configuration language and syntax.

It can also be very handy if you have to fix something from your smartphone, where the command line isn’t always the best choice of tool. Enter: the Virtualmin Mobile/iPhone Theme.

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You really shouldn’t allow SSH logins via password. This is doubly true for root. On most of my hosts we allow SSH for normal users with a password, but restrict root to SSH keys only. And we always protect against brute force attacks with fail2ban.

If you aren’t already using SSH keys and SSH agent, you should. SSH agent forwarding allows for secure sideways authentication. For example:

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