From Peter Busser’s email to the RSBAC ML:

I have compiled a number of RSBAC and Adamantix packages for Debian Sarge . This allows Debian Sarge users to benefit from some of the Adamantix features…

Adamantix started like Hardened Debian. Using well tested and stable Debian base, they added a lot of modern security stuff: PaX , SSP , RSBAC , making the distro one of the best choices for servers. I was involved in the early stages of the project but stopped contributing, because I was short of time. Still I’m following their progress and I’m happy to see good stuff going to the mainstream Debian also.

For homework: Chicken – Scheme-to-C compiler – CHICKEN is a compiler that translates R5RS Scheme into portable C using a technique developed by Henry Baker (“Cheney on the M.T.A.”).

Via Stu’s Diary :

AccessFS from Olaf Dietsche allows the system administrator to restrict access to a network port based on uid/gui, so that daemons no longer need to run as the root user:

# mount -t accessfs none /proc/access
# chown www /proc/access/net/ip/bind/80
# chown mail /proc/access/net/ip/bind/25

A small fast HTTP server written in (mostly) Ruby that can be used to host web frameworks directly with HTTP rather than FastCGI or SCGI.

Examples already working with Camping .

See also: Mongrel RDoc pages

Acording to Web Hosts that support Ruby on Rails : Hardfocus Media Full-service hosting in Japan. cPanel, Ruby on Rails, FastCGI, PHP, MySQL, etc. (Support in English). Hm, who are Hardfocus Media? Who is providing this service? And 1000 yen/month seem pretty expensive for me. Are they just using the Rails wafe or are they some long time players? More investigation needed…

A relatively unknown webserver from LiteSpeed Technologies claims to be six times faster than Apache with a PHP interface that is 50% faster than mod_php…Litespeed webserver is available in 3 editions, the standard edition being free (for both personal and commercial use).

And it can launch RoR applications . Maybe not so hot news, because we already have quick fastcgi capable web server like lighttpd . Still some alternative is good.

RailsCron is a way to execute background tasks using your Ruby on Rails environment. The RailsCron object is an ActiveRecord, so you can manipulate it in familiar ways.

• RailsCron SVN Repository

Shovel is a customized SwitchTower deployment file to setup config files on TextDrive in order to make it easier to start running Rails with lighttpd. It could also be modified to work with other shared hosts who run lighttpd .

Q: I am experiencing a heavy slowdown of the entire dom0 and all other domUs if one domU gets under heavy load.Is there any way to tighten this domU by adjusting something like scheduling?

A: You can use elevator=cfq as the command line option for both the dom0 and domU kernels in grub.conf and /etc/xen domU config files respectively. This will force the use of cfq as the default scheduler. By default anticipatory is the scheduler in dom0 and noop in domU. Alternatively:

echo "cfq" > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

Via Exploration Age

The issue of Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in web applications has been getting a lot of attention lately due to hacks on high-profile sites such as LiveJournal…The attached file ( html_escaper.rb ) makes it easy to protect your Ruby on Rails applications from these attacks…

…The distribution of a file to a large number of hosts is a time consuming task, even if the size of the file is modest…Using cooperative methods where each client that already has downloaded the file serves another client, this time can be reduced…

Some pureman p2p solutions:

• Ruby: p2p.rb
• Shell: uP2P
• Python: TinyP2P
• Perl: MoleSter

And something more serious, true solution: Cooperative remote file copy [crcp] is a cooperative version of the well-know rcp program.