BSD Hacks: 100 Industrial Tip & Tools

by Dru Lavigne

Overview

In the world of Unix operating systems, the various BSDs come with a long heritage of high-quality software and well-designed solutions, making them a favorite OS of a wide range of users. Among budget-minded users who adopted BSD early on to developers of some of today's largest Internet sites, the popularity of BSD systems continues to grow. If you use the BSD operating system, then you know that the secret of its success is not just in its price tag: practical, reliable, extraordinarily stable and flexible, BSD also offers plenty of fertile ground for creative, time-saving tweaks and tricks, and yes, even the chance to have some fun."Fun?" you ask. Perhaps "fun" wasn't covered in the manual that taught you to install BSD and administer it effectively. But BSD Hacks, the latest in O'Reilly's popular Hacks series, offers a unique set of practical tips, tricks, tools--and even fun--for administrators and power users of BSD systems.BSD Hacks takes a creative approach to saving time and getting more done, with fewer resources. You'll take advantage of the tools and concepts that make the world's top Unix users more productive. Rather than spending hours with a dry technical document learning what switches go with a command, you'll learn concrete, practical uses for that command.The book begins with hacks to customize the user environment. You'll learn how to be more productive in the command line, timesaving tips for setting user-defaults, how to automate long commands, and save long sessions for later review. Other hacks in the book are grouped in the following areas:

• Customizing the User Environment
• Dealing with Files and Filesystems
• The Boot and Login Environments
• Backing Up
• Networking Hacks
• Securing the System
• Going Beyond the Basics
• Keeping Up-to-Date
• Grokking BSD

If you want more than your average BSD user--you want to explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, create useful tools, and come up with fun things to try on your own--BSD Hacks is a must-have. This book will turn regular users into power users and system administrators into super system administrators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596552565
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/24/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	450
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Dru is an instructor at Marketbridge Technologies in Ottawa and the maintainer of the Open Protocol Resource. In her non-existent spare time, you can find her shooting Remic's Rapids or cycling through Gatineau Park.

Table of Contents

	Credits	vii
	Preface	xiii
Chapter 1.	Customizing the User Environment	1
1.	Get the Most Out of the Default Shell	1
2.	Useful tcsh Shell Configuration File Options	6
3.	Create Shell Bindings	9
4.	Use Terminal and X Bindings	12
5.	Use the Mouse at a Terminal	16
6.	Get Your Daily Dose of Trivia	18
7.	Lock the Screen	22
8.	Create a Trash Directory	24
9.	Customize User Configurations	28
10.	Maintain Your Environment on Multiple Systems	36
11.	Use an Interactive Shell	40
12.	Use Multiple Screens on One Terminal	44
Chapter 2.	Dealing with Files and Filesystems	49
13.	Find Things	49
14.	Get the Most Out of grep	53
15.	Manipulate Files with sed	57
16.	Format Text at the Command Line	60
17.	Delimiter Dilemma	65
18.	DOS Floppy Manipulation	68
19.	Access Windows Shares Without a Server	75
20.	Deal with Disk Hogs	78
21.	Manage Temporary Files and Swap Space	83
22.	Recreate a Directory Structure Using mtree	86
23.	Ghosting Systems	91
Chapter 3.	The Boot and Login Environments	96
24.	Customize the Default Boot Menu	96
25.	Protect the Boot Process	101
26.	Run a Headless System	104
27.	Log a Headless Server Remotely	108
28.	Remove the Terminal Login Banner	111
29.	Protecting Passwords With Blowfish Hashes	114
30.	Monitor Password Policy Compliance	117
31.	Create an Effective, Reusable Password Policy	124
32.	Automate Memorable Password Generation	128
33.	Use One Time Passwords	132
34.	Restrict Logins	136
Chapter 4.	Backing Up	140
35.	Back Up FreeBSD with SMBFS	140
36.	Create Portable POSIX Archives	144
37.	Interactive Copy	148
38.	Secure Backups Over a Network	151
39.	Automate Remote Backups	153
40.	Automate Data Dumps for PostgreSQL Databases	159
41.	Perform Client-Server Cross-Platform Backups with Bacula	162
Chapter 5.	Networking Hacks	169
42.	See Console Messages Over a Remote Login	169
43.	Spoof a MAC Address	172
44.	Use Multiple Wireless NIC Configurations	175
45.	Survive Catastrophic Internet Loss	180
46.	Humanize tcpdump Output	183
47.	Understand DNS Records and Tools	189
48.	Send and Receive Email Without a Mail Client	195
49.	Why Do I Need sendmail?	200
50.	Hold Email for Later Delivery	203
51.	Get the Most Out of FTP	206
52.	Distributed Command Execution	209
53.	Interactive Remote Administration	212
Chapter 6.	Securing the System	216
54.	Strip the Kernel	216
55.	FreeBSD Access Control Lists	225
56.	Protect Files with Flags	231
57.	Tighten Security with Mandatory Access Control	237
58.	Use mtree as a Built-in Tripwire	240
59.	Intrusion Detection with Snort, ACID, MySQL, and FreeBSD	245
60.	Encrypt Your Hard Disk	256
61.	Sudo Gotchas	261
62.	sudoscript	264
63.	Restrict an SSH server	269
64.	Script IP Filter Rulesets	272
65.	Secure a Wireless Network Using PF	275
66.	Automatically Generate Firewall Rules	279
67.	Automate Security Patches	283
68.	Scan a Network of Windows Computers for Viruses	286
Chapter 7.	Going Beyond the Basics	291
69.	Tune FreeBSD for Different Applications	291
70.	Traffic Shaping on FreeBSD	296
71.	Create an Emergency Repair Kit	302
72.	Use the FreeBSD Recovery Process	305
73.	Use the GNU Debugger to Analyze a Buffer Overflow	309
74.	Consolidate Web Server Logs	313
75.	Script User Interaction	318
76.	Create a Trade Show Demo	322
Chapter 8.	Keeping Up-to-Date	327
77.	Automated Install	327
78.	FreeBSD From Scratch	331
79.	Safely Merge Changes to /etc	336
80.	Automate Updates	340
81.	Create a Package Repository	344
82.	Build a Port Without the Ports Tree	347
83.	Keep Ports Up-to-Date with CTM	350
84.	Navigate the Ports System	353
85.	Downgrade a Port	357
86.	Create Your Own Startup Scripts	360
87.	Automate NetBSD Package Builds	364
88.	Easily Install Unix Applications on Mac OS X	367
Chapter 9.	Grokking BSD	371
89.	How'd He Know That?	371
90.	Create Your Own Manpages	374
91.	Get the Most Out of Manpages	378
92.	Apply, Understand, and Create Patches	381
93.	Display Hardware Information	386
94.	Determine Who Is on the System	390
95.	Spelling Bee	393
96.	Leave on Time	397
97.	Run Native Java Applications	399
98.	Rotate Your Signature	402
99.	Useful One-Liners	404
100.	Fun with X	407
	Index	411