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:	9780596006792
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/17/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	447
Product dimensions:	5.92(w) x 8.92(h) x 0.99(d)

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; About the Author; Contributors; Acknowledgments; Preface; Why BSD Hacks?; How to Use this Book; How This Book Is Organized; Conventions Used in This Book; Using Code Examples; We'd Like to Hear from You; Chapter 1: Customizing the User Environment; 1.1 Introduction; 1 Get the Most Out of the Default Shell; 2 Useful tcsh Shell Configuration File Options; 3 Create Shell Bindings; 4 Use Terminal and X Bindings; 5 Use the Mouse at a Terminal; 6 Get Your Daily Dose of Trivia; 7 Lock the Screen; 8 Create a Trash Directory; 9 Customize User Configurations; 10 Maintain Your Environment on Multiple Systems; 11 Use an Interactive Shell; 12 Use Multiple Screens on One Terminal; Chapter 2: Dealing with Files and Filesystems; 2.1 Introduction; 13 Find Things; 14 Get the Most Out of grep; 15 Manipulate Files with sed; 16 Format Text at the Command Line; 17 Delimiter Dilemma; 18 DOS Floppy Manipulation; 19 Access Windows Shares Without a Server; 20 Deal with Disk Hogs; 21 Manage Temporary Files and Swap Space; 22 Recreate a Directory Structure Using mtree; 23 Ghosting Systems; Chapter 3: The Boot and Login Environments; 3.1 Introduction; 24 Customize the Default Boot Menu; 25 Protect the Boot Process; 26 Run a Headless System; 27 Log a Headless Server Remotely; 28 Remove the Terminal Login Banner; 29 Protecting Passwords With Blowfish Hashes; 30 Monitor Password Policy Compliance; 31 Create an Effective, Reusable Password Policy; 32 Automate Memorable Password Generation; 33 Use One Time Passwords; 34 Restrict Logins; Chapter 4: Backing Up; 4.1 Introduction; 35 Back Up FreeBSD with SMBFS; 36 Create Portable POSIX Archives; 37 Interactive Copy; 38 Secure Backups Over a Network; 39 Automate Remote Backups; 40 Automate Data Dumps for PostgreSQL Databases; 41 Perform Client-Server Cross-Platform Backups with Bacula; Chapter 5: Networking Hacks; 5.1 Introduction; 42 See Console Messages Over a Remote Login; 43 Spoof a MAC Address; 44 Use Multiple Wireless NIC Configurations; 45 Survive Catastrophic Internet Loss; 46 Humanize tcpdump Output; 47 Understand DNS Records and Tools; 48 Send and Receive Email Without a Mail Client; 49 Why Do I Need sendmail?; 50 Hold Email for Later Delivery; 51 Get the Most Out of FTP; 52 Distributed Command Execution; 53 Interactive Remote Administration; Chapter 6: Securing the System; 6.1 Introduction; 54 Strip the Kernel; 55 FreeBSD Access Control Lists; 56 Protect Files with Flags; 57 Tighten Security with Mandatory Access Control; 58 Use mtree as a Built-in Tripwire; 59 Intrusion Detection with Snort, ACID, MySQL, and FreeBSD; 60 Encrypt Your Hard Disk; 61 Sudo Gotchas; 62 sudoscript; 63 Restrict an SSH server; 64 Script IP Filter Rulesets; 65 Secure a Wireless Network Using PF; 66 Automatically Generate Firewall Rules; 67 Automate Security Patches; 68 Scan a Network of Windows Computers for Viruses; Chapter 7: Going Beyond the Basics; 7.1 Introduction; 69 Tune FreeBSD for Different Applications; 70 Traffic Shaping on FreeBSD; 71 Create an Emergency Repair Kit; 72 Use the FreeBSD Recovery Process; 73 Use the GNU Debugger to Analyze a Buffer Overflow; 74 Consolidate Web Server Logs; 75 Script User Interaction; 76 Create a Trade Show Demo; Chapter 8: Keeping Up-to-Date; 8.1 Introduction; 77 Automated Install; 78 FreeBSD from Scratch; 79 Safely Merge Changes to /etc; 80 Automate Updates; 81 Create a Package Repository; 82 Build a Port Without the Ports Tree; 83 Keep Ports Up-to-Date with CTM; 84 Navigate the Ports System; 85 Downgrade a Port; 86 Create Your Own Startup Scripts; 87 Automate NetBSD Package Builds; 88 Easily Install Unix Applications on Mac OS X; Chapter 9: Grokking BSD; 9.1 Introduction; 89 How'd He Know That?; 90 Create Your Own Manpages; 91 Get the Most Out of Manpages; 92 Apply, Understand, and Create Patches; 93 Display Hardware Information; 94 Determine Who Is on the System; 95 Spelling Bee; 96 Leave on Time; 97 Run Native Java Applications; 98 Rotate Your Signature; 99 Useful One-Liners; 100 Fun with X;