About this site

I am Chris McGowan. I spent my working life writing software, and these days I look after the Linux side of a school part time: the directory, the file server, the lab machines, and the parts nobody notices until they stop working. Two decades of that produces a lot of configuration and very little explanation, which is the gap this site is meant to close.

Why write it down

Because the person who inherits this will not have the context, and because the person who built it will not remember. A line in sssd.conf that took three days to find in 2013 is an incomprehensible incantation in 2026 unless somebody wrote the sentence “this is here because the directory has two providers and the second one is read-only” next to it.

So the bias throughout is: boring technology, written down, with the actual file in the text. If a post does not contain the configuration it is talking about, it is not finished. That makes for long posts and short arguments, which is the trade I want.

What is here

• Projects — the LDAP admin tool that does the daily directory work, a GUI designer for tkinter, and a dependency-free CSV parser in C.
• Setting up a Linux school — the whole stack: identity, homes, mounting, quota, archive, and the annual cycle.
• A domain, a site, and an inbox — the hosting and mail side of this site, including the apex-only catch-all and the routing check.
• Real-time programming notes — deadlines, jitter, isolation and measurement, which is the other half of the work.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, out of date, or was right in 2015 and is not now, mail is the fastest route and it is genuinely welcome. The posts carry the version of the software they were written against, so the age of the advice is visible rather than implied.