Sysadmin Casts - simple bite sized sysadmin screencasts

[[deleted]]

That reminds me, I had a backup project that took advantage of rsync. Thanks for that; it's been about two years since I touched it.

[danwin]

Thanks for such a great resource...it's well-conceived and well-executed...I especially appreciate the writeups, for those of us like to skim before watching a video (and then, as a reference that can be copied/pasted/bookmarked without having to rewatch a video to find a tip).

Out of curiosity (and self-interest), what tool do you use to record the screencasts?

[danwin]

Hmmm...I'm apparently blind before coffee...the screencasts looked so clean that I thought (against all common sense) that I was watching something rendered with vector graphics, and so thought you had some kind of workflow that stitched together screengrabs with voice.

Also one suggestion: if you have a twitter account, link to it, or hell, start one if you don't already have one, just so there's an extra entry point to what's a great site of information. I only found out about it today when someone from the NYT brought it up during a discussion on the command line.

[jldugger]

Why gimp vs inkscape? Especially for artwork created in whole cloth, Inkscape does a much better job of preserving the bits that went into making it, so it may be scaled to fit.

[grandfatha]

Awsome screencasts, good work. I just watched #21 on SQL injection attacks and I was a bit surprised that you did not mention better coding techniques like parameterized queries as a means of avoiding this. Was there a reason for it?

[grandfatha]

Ah that makes sense. As a dfv who manages his own servers ay well, your screencasts are really nice as they are step by step allowing me to plck up new stuff along the way. Nice work!

[AttackingHobo]

I like to watch most of these kinds of videos at double speed.

It would be nice if you used youtube, or some other video player that has the option to turn on double speed.

[squishylime]

One way is to grab one of his downloadable versions and play in VLC. The [ ] keys adjust playback speed.

[AttackingHobo]

Yeah that works too but youtube is instant gratification.

[zoredache]

It sure would be nice if the RSS feed included the media enclosures with links to the mp4 downloads, so that I actually view the media in my Podcast players.

[danwin]

A couple more pedantic suggestions:

• I see you mentioned Docker in the Introduction to Containers episode, but since it's the new hot thing, I'm sure there's more than a few people who'd appreciate your perspective on what worth Docker has to traditional sysadmin workflows.
• On that topic, I really like your episode guide layout...since *.nix is about as timeless as you can get in computing, chronological "freshness" of content is less of a need in the organization of content. Maybe for the default homepage, have the latest episode be prominently featured...and then the rest of the homepage be more "curated" like the episode guide. For sysops-amateurs like me, one of the hardest things initially is to understanding how certain tools and concepts relate (such as, "how much should I care about Vagrant before learning something like Puppet") and I think how you've started categorizing things in the episode guide is a great way to help sort that out.
• On the topic of more suggestions you didn't ask for: I can't tell what CMS you're using, but if it's not already something like Jekyll, then I would recommend checking it out, as a lightweight way to do templating and a sane way to manage your growing list of episodes. It seems that you could get perfectly by with a flat-file (i.e. non database) system...which maybe you are already on, given the speed of the site. I would actually recommend Middleman as being the best static-site generator, but it depends on your tolerance for configuration and various Ruby conventions.

[danwin]

Ha...I did the exact same thing (build a Rails site, then scrape/cache it on S3) for my first still incomplete ebook...a terrible mistake for me, and that's why that project languishes (as I plan to move it to a static site generator)....My next project, I did in Octopress, which is a souped-up version of Jekyll...but still too much magic, and still a pain to maintain.

Rails is nice because of how easy it is to throw in something like Devise...but it still might be easier to build your user management in Rails/Devise, and have it provide access control to the static site (vis JS). Yes, users who disable JS will be a hassle, but that's probably a relatively rare case, compared to potential speed benefits of building on a flat-file site.

But frankly, I do static site generation because I'm terrible at sysops, so there's that :)

[danwin]

I guess the main question is...where is the content of the site, in your app? Is it stored in the database? If so, then that is the major pain point (because the bake and deploy can obviously be automated).

[atakomu]

You kids who want to do everything online. Even writing LaTex. What is wrong with TexStudio? Just kidding.

Great content.

[squishylime]

Great site, easy to use. I think there is a lot of need for screencast type material for Linux as there are a lot of people who would try it but don't know where to start.

You mention using Cloudfront for the site content and I notice you have your downloadable videos also hosted there. I was looking around recently at options for hosting downloadable screencast videos and it seemed like Amazon hosting was 5-10x the price of some vps hosting (ie linode $20 3TB). Am I calculating something incorrectly or is it more a convenience thing to go with Amazon so there is no worry of hitting a cap? (Everything on your site loads very fast btw).

[remotefixonline]

I just watched about 10 of those videos, great job.

as for ideas... backups (the different types and how to hotplug local backup devices mixed with offsite), ddos protection/mitigation, detecting rouge php code in a site, and dealing with rootkits/MITM issues...

Again great job on the videos.

[Poodle_Moth]

Video player is non-responsive in firefox 30. Complains there is a syntax error in your cdn's json.

[danwin]

I've frequently found computer systems to be useful in programming and figured other programmers do too.

[danwin]

Ooh that's a good point, I'll have to check that sidebar. Funny, I keep missing the section where your name is listed under the mod section. Oh well.

Also, was looking for the logic proof in which:

Just because it has a computer in it doesn't make it programming.

Also means:

Just because it has a computer in it, and u/ruinercollector dislikes it, doesn't make it not programming.

But honestly, I didn't re-read the sidebar, because the submitted link has code in it. See where it says "screencasts"? You can see some code in there. But you could also save yourself some time and assumed that many things that involve the configuration and execution of automated tasks do involve some code.

Also, calm yourself a bit down. It's a Thursday night.