Monospace Mentor

I'm Jochen Lillich, a greybeard geek and IT operations black belt. #DevOps trainer and mentor. German living in Ireland. Likes #Linux, #Ruby and #MechanicalKeyboards. He/him.

Website: https://monospacementor.com
Live stream: https://monospacementor.com/live-stream/
Blog: The Monospace Mentor (npub1ew3…enxe)

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NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

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Last Notes

2026-05-21 12:47:01 CEST

⭐️ Interesting project: https://github.com/wojtczyk/trust
TRUST – Coding Rust like it's 1989

2026-02-13 18:29:02 CET

New Basic Linux System Administration post in The Server Room: "What happens when Linux runs out of PIDs?" https://community.monospacementor.com/t/354
If you'd like to benefit yourself from our community's valuable DevOps/SRE knowledge, consider becoming a TSR member: https://monospacementor.com/devops-learning-community/

2026-01-16 18:29:01 CET

The Adapter pattern makes incompatible interfaces work together. Wrap third-party APIs to match your application's expected interface. Changes to external services stay contained. #DesignPattern #SoftwareEngineering

2025-11-15 23:18:16 CET

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Since you're at it already, try out the EURkey layout. It's great.

2025-10-24 09:24:48 CEST

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IMHO this is less about how to do moderation but about the delusional "no politics in the workplace".

2025-10-20 19:03:53 CEST

In my conversations with junior engineers, the issue of work hours comes up often. There's a lot of bad advice out there, for example "You need to work 80-hour weeks to get good." I wrote an article on why that's silly.
➜ https://monospacementor.com/2024/04/working-hours/

2025-10-13 18:41:44 CEST

#Linux can lock accounts after login failures. For example, edit `/etc/security/faillock.conf` to set `deny=5` (lock after 5 failures) and `unlock_time=900` (15-minute lockout).
🔗 Learn more in my course: https://monospacementor.com/courses/linsys-1/
#SysAdmin #SystemAdministration

2025-09-08 09:46:38 CEST

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Sweet! Well done.

2025-08-27 18:29:01 CEST

Tip for Linux shell beginners: Execute a second command only if the first one was successful.
`command_1 && command 2`
Background: This compound command uses the result code returned by `command_1` with the "shortcircuit" behaviour of the "logical AND" `&&` operator.

2025-08-04 18:29:01 CEST

Linux shell tip: Make a quick backup copy
`cp originalfile{,.bak}`
This command copies `originalfile` to `originalfile.bak` using brace expansion for the name suffixes "" (nothing) and ".bak".

2025-07-19 18:35:16 CEST

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I have no idea. I studied CS in the early 90s, and there weren't any taught back then.

2025-07-19 18:29:13 CEST

2025-07-06 13:07:47 CEST

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Me in 2004: This OS is constantly distracting me from my work. Time to switch to Mac OS X.
Me in 2020: This OS is constantly distracting me from my work. Time to switch away from macOS.

2025-06-24 12:55:35 CEST

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It's definitely possible to achieve that with QMK. See "Lighting Layers" on https://docs.qmk.fm/features/rgblight.
You've nerdsniped me into setting this up for myself.
@npub1jjw…2z5l

2025-04-09 18:29:01 CEST

Zulip is underrated as a chat platform. Its automatic threading makes it so much easier to catch up on previous conversations than it is on Slack, Teams or Discord. Zulip is ideal for asynchronous communication in a distributed team, and 100% #OpenSource!
Check it out: https://zulip.com/

2025-03-11 18:29:01 CET

Almost every Linux CLI tool that requires you to edit a file will consult the `EDITOR` environment variable to spawn the editor you prefer. If you want to use `nano` instead of `vim`, set it as your default editor like this:
`export EDITOR=nano`

2025-03-04 18:29:00 CET

I code in the Linux shell with tools that follow the Unix philosophy, "Do one thing, and do it well". One of these tools is `ripgrep`. It's like `grep`, but searches recursively by default, and can filter file types (`-trb` for Ruby).
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

2025-02-10 18:29:00 CET

You might be familiar with the Linux shell aliases that you can use to run complicated commands by typing a more convenient one.
But did you think of using aliases to automatically fix typos? For example, why not save yourself from going "Gerp" by defining `alias gerp=grep`?

2025-02-06 13:16:09 CET

I just set up a monthly donation to Mozilla to support #Firefox. It's such an important part of my desktop and mobile toolset that it makes sense for me to support it financially as well.

2025-02-04 19:14:29 CET

Today, I spent hours trying to install #Bluefin on an older laptop. The process always failed with "Failed to write boot loader configuration". I tried vanilla #Fedora Silverblue; same result. Finally, I installed Fedora Workstation and booted it successfully.
Following a tip found on the Bluefin Discord, I did "fwupdmgr refresh && fwupdmgr update", boosting the UEFI firmware from something like v54 to v379. And just now, the Bluefin installer says "Complete!"
Always update the BIOS first.

2025-02-04 10:37:18 CET

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That's good to hear.
That being said, I find it confusing when someone posts about a personal initiative on their org's website.

2025-01-31 15:07:30 CET

LIVE NOW! Time for my weekly DevOps/SecOps/SRE office hour. If you have any questions about #Linux, #SystemAdministration, #Ruby, #DevOps, or any other engineering topic, join the live stream and ask them!
https://www.twitch.tv/monospacementor
https://www.youtube.com/@monospacementor
#AMA #SysAdmin #LearnLinux #LiveStream #LiveCoding

2024-12-13 18:08:48 CET

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Please elaborate.

2024-10-14 10:03:39 CEST

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What is it about Mastodon that makes people go "Let's respond with the worst take I can think of"? @npub1k2f…6yk2

2024-09-05 21:27:00 CEST

Tabs vs spaces has always been a controversial topic. Thankfully, #vim isn't biased in any way.
To convert spaces to tabs, use `:set noexpandtab`, then `:retab!`.
Convert tabs to spaces with:
:set expandtab
:set tabstop=4
:set shiftwidth=4
:retab

2024-08-29 21:27:00 CEST

2024-08-28 09:41:01 CEST

Not only can you use `tail -f <file>` to continuously output a file (a service log, for example) while it's being written, you can even filter specific keywords in the process:
`tail -f myfile | grep <keyword>`

2024-08-27 21:27:01 CEST

Did you know there are variants of common Linux shell tools that have decompression function built in? For example, instead of first uncompressing a file to then view it in `less`, you can simply use `zless`.
There's also `zcat`, `zgrep`, `zcmp` and`zdiff`.

2024-08-14 21:27:01 CEST

The shell command list you get with `history` is numbered. You can repeat a specific command with `!<number>`. A bit convoluted.
What I do more often is repeating the previous command with `!!`. For example, when I forgot to use `sudo`, I simply go `sudo !!`.

2024-08-07 21:27:00 CEST

Linux shell tip: Make a quick backup copy
`cp originalfile{,.bak}`
This command copies `originalfile` to `originalfile.bak` using brace expansion for the name suffixes "" (nothing) and ".bak".

2024-08-05 12:41:30 CEST

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Making EU citizenship stronger than nationality when it comes to voting. I like it.

2024-08-05 11:13:43 CEST

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That's obviously because you are not even a 2nd-class citizen. Are you proposing to get the right to vote where you only have residency?