Top all-time · #1228
Jan-Piet Mens
Personal blog · jpmens.netsystemsprogramming
Jan-Piet Mens's personal blog at jpmens.net covers systems and programming. Since 2012, 56 different Hacker News readers have linked it 81 times, most often “The Unix Magic Poster”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (27) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Jan-Piet Mens's blog covers SSH, Ansible, DNS, BIND and IoT protocols. HN commenters link posts on SSH certificates, AuthorizedKeysCommand, Ansible output and the history of dig's comment syntax.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called "a great blog" and its BIND 10 architecture post "a good overview"; recommended for protocols and IoT; Unix Magic poster "pretty good".
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 27 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Unix Magic Poster7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-04-09
- A shell command to create JSON: jo6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2016-03-05
- Hesiod DNS Directory Service4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-04-05
- Jo – a shell command to create JSON (2016)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-12-10
- SSHd and AuthorizedKeysCommand2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-03-26
- Parents, children, CDS/CDNSKEY records, and dnssec-cds2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-21
- I Care about Ansible2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-06-21
- DNS open zone data (2021)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-16
- Alter Ansible's Output on Debugging2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-16
- How do your servers talk to you? (2014)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-04-03
What Hacker News says?
You can always host your own SSH CA pubkey server. It is called an “AuthorizedKeysCommand” in `/etc/ssh/sshd_config`. https://jpmens.net/2019/03/02/sshd-and-authorizedkeyscommand...
Comment linking /2019/03/02/sshd-and-authorizedkeyscommand/
on “If you’re not using SSH certificates you’re doing SSH wrong (2019)”Submitted The Unix Magic Poster as a story · 666 points
HN discussionWell, ansible by default runs with paramiko which is a python implementation of SSH protocol. It will also keep connections open for multiple commands. It also has a pull mode and it also has a fireball mode which uses 0mq: http://jpmens.net/2012/10/01/dramatically-speeding-up-ansibl... However, you're not forced to use this. In the beginning, you can just seed your CentOS or debian with a Kickstarter or seed file a…
Comment linking /2012/10/01/dramatically-speeding-up-ansible-runs/
on “Salt: Like Puppet, Except It Doesn’t Suck”Submitted Jo – a shell command to create JSON (2016) as a story · 325 points
HN discussionIt's a damn shame it took until this article for me (and it appears some others) to learn about the console and the debugger; those seem like massive time savers! My own biggest helper has been to use "ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=yaml" wherever "ansible-playbook" is called ( https://jpmens.net/2021/03/12/alter-ansible-s-output-on-debu... ). It makes the verbose output much more readable and is especially handy for tasks…
Comment linking /2021/03/12/alter-ansible-s-output-on-debugging/
on “Ansible Techniques I Wish I’d Known Earlier”Submitted An iOS app update that annoys me as a story · 261 points
HN discussion> @jpmens @svnr2000 ; was chosen as a comment in zone files because that's what the PDP10 and other macro assemblers used in those days. * https://twitter.com/paulvixie/status/659934566883328000 Via: * https://jpmens.net/2015/10/28/the-semicolon-in-zone-master-f...
Comment linking /2015/10/28/the-semicolon-in-zone-master-files-some-history/
on “How to use dig”Submitted Rediscovering CardDAV as a story · 188 points
HN discussionStraight from the source: > @jpmens @bortzmeyer @PowerDNS_Bert @kolkman The ";" was the comment delimiter in the TOPS-20 word, hash was dragged in by the UNIX types * https://twitter.com/svnr2000/status/659062798681546752 See also RFC 883, "Domain Names - Implementation and Specification": > ; Semicolon is used to start a comment; the remainder of the line is ignored. * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc883 V…
Comment linking /2015/10/28/the-semicolon-in-zone-master-files-some-history/
on “How to use dig”Submitted It used to be simpler to teach Unix as a story · 173 points
HN discussionAnother option is to stand up a DNS server that knows how to do something like BIND 9's Response Policy Zone [0][1]. Although figuring out how to propagate RPZ changes to them isn't exactly straightforward (more on this below), if you're using BIND, you can set up views that match certain clients and provide one mix of RPZs to one set, and another to another set. On updating RPZs in a view (warning: BIND 9-specific…
Comment linking /2011/04/26/how-to-configure-your-bind-resolvers-to-lie-using-response-policy-zones-rpz/
on “Adblock via /etc/hosts”Submitted TOTP Codes in the Terminal as a story · 103 points
HN discussionI find this SSHD snippet to be extremely useful in enterprise network, notably with OpenLDAP. Also the most dangerous but flexible way to authenticate a user. https://jpmens.net/2019/03/02/sshd-and-authorizedkeyscommand...
Comment linking /2019/03/02/sshd-and-authorizedkeyscommand/
on “The order of files in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/ matters”Submitted One gotty(1) Web terminal per user as a story · 31 points
HN discussionhttps://jpmens.net/2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/
Comment linking /2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/
on “Annotated Unix Magic Poster”Submitted Blast from the past: Facit A2400 terminal as a story · 21 points
HN discussionhttps://jpmens.net/2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/
Comment linking /2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/
on “Annotated Unix Magic Poster”Submitted How do your servers talk to you? (2014) as a story · 20 points
HN discussionMore things about Ansible vault that are a shame: - no file encryption, only YML - no separate values, only entire file - OMG it's s...l...o...w... - password based instead of certs - only one password - password cannot even stored in an env var More: http://jpmens.net/2014/02/22/my-thoughts-on-ansible-s-vault/
Comment linking /2014/02/22/my-thoughts-on-ansible-s-vault/
on “Git-secret – store private data in a Git repo”Submitted A shell command to create JSON: jo (2016) as a story · 14 points
HN discussion> Is there an option to tell all applications that they should not bypass it? Yes there is. If your internal recursive DNS servers return an NXDOMAIN for "use-application-dns.net", then Firefox will stick with gethostbyname(3) (or whatever). See: * https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/configuring-networks-di... If you’re using NLnet’s unbound(8) as a recursive DNS server, it’s possible to use the “local-zone” direct…
Comment linking /2011/04/26/how-to-configure-your-bind-resolvers-to-lie-using-response-policy-zones-rpz/
on “What’s Next in Making Encrypted DNS-over-HTTPS the Default”Submitted A shell command to create JSON: jo as a story · 11 points
HN discussionDon't call it "server manifest". It'll confuse people. You mean "inventory". You can dynamically populate "facts" and "inventory". See: https://github.com/ansible-provisioning/ansible-provisioning http://jpmens.net/2013/06/18/adapting-inventory-for-ansible/ Especially for ec2 there is many modules that allows you to do that too. You can easily specify an inventory file which you populates dynamically. There is also…
Comment linking /2013/06/18/adapting-inventory-for-ansible/
on “AnsibleWorks Raises $6M”Submitted Looking Up Words with DICT as a story · 8 points
HN discussionTo be fair, dma has been in the base system for a long time. Now (well sometime in the future) I can remove half of my Ansible role for setting up dma on my systems, just skipping disabling sendmail. I learned about dma here, a great blog btw! https://jpmens.net/2020/03/05/simple-solution-for-outgoing-m...
Comment linking /2020/03/05/simple-solution-for-outgoing-mail-from-a-freebsd-system/
on “Mail: Make The Dragonfly Mail Agent (dma) the default mta”Submitted The Dot in Domain Names as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere’s also Hesiod (HS) records: https://jpmens.net/2012/06/28/hesiod-a-lightweight-directory...
Comment linking /2012/06/28/hesiod-a-lightweight-directory-service-on-dns/
on “Alternative DNS Roots”Submitted SSHd and AuthorizedKeysCommand as a story · 4 points
HN discussionA good overview of BIND 10's architecture: http://jpmens.net/2012/12/21/completely-different-bind-10/ It seems that all apart from the performance critical parts are written in Python 3.1
Comment linking /2012/12/21/completely-different-bind-10/
on “Why is BIND 10 written in C++ and Python?”Submitted A shell command to create JSON: jo as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
