Author Archives: Robert Small

Grep one file against another

Posted on Jan 21, 2014 by Robert Small

This came in handy the other day, I was looking to grep a list of things I needed against a list of things I had available. I’d quite forgotten I knew how to do this until it suddenly sprang on … Continue reading →

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Building stronger networks

Posted on Nov 12, 2013 by Robert Small

This post is at least half inspired by the massive force of water that descended on the Chicagoland region in the summer. What I realised very quickly is that the roads and the water drainage systems were not designed to … Continue reading →

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Troubleshooting connectivity

Posted on Oct 1, 2013 by Robert Small

One of the things that I’ve discovered over years of troubleshooting vast and various connection problems is that it’s almost impossible to jump to the right conclusion about a problem. There are always things that surprise you, always aspects that … Continue reading →

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Understanding RAID levels

Posted on Aug 6, 2013 by Robert Small

Why is RAID so difficult to understand? Probably because the algorithms are pretty complex and there are so many levels to RAID. Possibly because it sounds complicated, most likely because it’s too easy to get lost in the details and … Continue reading →

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Why users should never hear of the ping command.

Posted on Jun 10, 2013 by Robert Small

As harsh as it sounds this is partially because of the ‘give a mouse a cookie and he’ll try to use it as an umbrella at which point you’ve done him more harm than good’ scenario. If you give a … Continue reading →

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Recovering a hardware RAID from failing disks

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Robert Small

Recovering hard drives from a failing RAID is never fun. By the very nature of RAID you don’t really have a chance to just pipe files off a disk so you’re in for some work. The fear with drive failure … Continue reading →

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Setting up a Windows 7 Virtual Machine for Cisco SDM and CCP

Posted on Apr 2, 2013 by Robert Small

I recently had to build a Windows 7 Virtual Machine for use with Cisco’s SDM and Cisco Configuration Professional. As you may be aware this requires some specific versions of the required software. It seemed to helpful to link to … Continue reading →

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Cleaning up dead processes

Posted on Mar 2, 2013 by Robert Small

Sometimes programs are written badly, maybe by you, maybe by other people. Sometimes you end up running those programs. Sometimes these programs leave hanging processes, either waiting for user input that will never come or expecting something somewhere to happen … Continue reading →

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Using remote trigger files to start a file transfer

Posted on Feb 21, 2013 by Robert Small

The Concept Sometimes you want to start file transfers when you’re ready. You’re generating some files and you want the transfer to start immediately after the generated files are done. The Server The script to sit on the server is … Continue reading →

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Finding duplicate files or the wonderful tool called fdupes

Posted on Feb 1, 2013 by Robert Small

The tool The tool itself is a pretty simple one and it works on Linux, Unix and MacOSX and it’s designed to find duplicate files within a set of directories. Installing With Linux/Unix your chosen distro’s package manager should have … Continue reading →

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