In my article on unattended upgrades I described how to set up an Ubuntu system to install security upgrades automatically. This is convenient for small setups, but in an enterprise environment you typically want to perform some QA before applying the change. A better solution is to have your monitoring …
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Keeping Your Server Secure With Unattended Upgrades
When operating servers, you're responsible for keeping them up to date with the latest security fixes. Ubuntu comes with a mechanism that installs updates automatically so you don't have to worry about it. Obviously, this is meant for personal servers operated by hobbyists where convenience is more important than availability …
read moreInstalling Oracle's JDK on Debian/Ubuntu
Due to licensing issues, Linux distributions don't ship Oracle Java packages anymore. In many cases, that doesn't matter since you can just use OpenJDK. But if you do need Oracle's JDK, Debian packages are a bit more convenient than handling tarballs because they integrate nicely with the rest of the …
read moreManaging Docker Container Updates
When running a Debian/Ubuntu-based server, it's relatively easy to figure out whether updates need to be installed. Tools based on apt work very well in this regard and even offer advanced features like unattended updates. Not so with services running in Docker containers.
When working with Docker, you typically …
read moreEnabling Hibernate Support in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
In this article, I'll show you how to enable hibernate support in Ubuntu 14.04 ("Trusty Tahr") by making a "Hibernate" menu entry appear in Unity's global system pulldown menu. The Ubuntu developers disabled this a couple of years ago because hibernate didn't work reliably on all systems - proceed at …
read moreMirroring an Apt Repository
When setting up a Hadoop cluster using Debian packages, it's often useful to work with a local mirror. In this article, I'll walk you through creating an apt mirror for Cloudera's Hadoop distribution.
There's quite a few advantages in having a local mirror, all of which should be familiar to …
read moreInstalling Ubuntu 13.04 on my Dell Precision M65
A few days ago I bought a larger and faster disk for my Dell Precision M65 notebook. If it wasn't for the new disk, I would have never tried the latest Ubuntu (13.04, aka "Raring Ringtail"), because 12.04 worked fine for me. Feature-wise I haven't noticed a lot …
read moreUpgrading my Eee PC to Ubuntu 12.10
Ubuntu 12.04 on my Dell Precision M65
After upgrading my Eee PC to Ubuntu 12.04 "Precise Pangolin", I also upgraded my Dell Precision M65 notebook. Like with my Eee PC, in previous versions little worked: Unreliable suspend, no hibernate, no WiFi, and frequent X freezes. This time though, things have really improved.
For the first time …
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