Top all-time · #1472
Tom Limoncelli
Personal blog · everythingsysadmin.comsystemscareer
Tom Limoncelli's personal blog at everythingsysadmin.com covers systems and career. Since 2010, 49 different Hacker News readers have linked it 92 times, most often “Everything Sysadmin: Our books”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-07-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (26) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters point to Tom Limoncelli's everythingsysadmin.com for systems administration reading, mainly his books, plus posts on pipes, TOML vs JSON, timetravelpdb and team practices.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 26 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Everything Sysadmin: Our books5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-11-01
- Python is better than Perl64 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-01-23
- Avoid using the term "Cloud Computing" except when being ironic3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-06-16
- Google's BBR fixes TCP's dirty little secret3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-07-24
- The Limoncelli Test (Joel test for Sysadmin Teams)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-07-25
- Super Wi-Fi is better than just "super"2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-12-27
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-09-06
- Introducing the Python Time Travel Debugger2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-04-01
- Unix Commands I Abuse Every Day2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-05
- The .feedback scam2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-06-28
What Hacker News says?
Google actually does have a systematic solution: fault injection. Google's systems are designed so that you can (manually, if you have the right privileges) tell an RPC to fail regardless of whether it would otherwise have succeeded, and then test the response of the system as a whole. The problem is that these failure cases are exercised much less frequently than the "normal execution" code paths are. For example,…
Comment linking /2012/09/devops-google-reveals-their-di.html
on “Post-Mortem for Google Compute Engine’s Global Outage on April 11”Submitted The .feedback scam as a story · 559 points
HN discussionOk, here are some example pipelines: A simple virus scanner in one line of pipe: https://everythingsysadmin.com/2004/10/whos-infected.html And a bunch of pipe tricks that are oh so wrong but oh so useful: https://everythingsysadmin.com/2012/09/unorthodoxunix.html
Comment linking /2012/09/unorthodoxunix.html
on “For the Love of Pipes”Submitted Unix Commands I Abuse Every Day as a story · 392 points
HN discussionThe first quote is difficult to describe for me, but let's call it "poetic", as my brain is too fried to think of a better term for it. Basically, my interpretation of what he's saying is: if your bakery isn't tech-savvy, even at a basic level, they could be getting killed by reviewers (or some other bogeyman) online without knowing it. The second quote is pretty easy to support with sources. Google has three _offic…
Comment linking /2011/01/python-is-better-than-perl6.html
on “The Rise of Developeronomics”Submitted The Limoncelli Test (Joel test for Sysadmin Teams) as a story · 78 points
HN discussionI feel like engineering is used in the very broad sense, but books/blogs by Tom Limoncelli (et al) helped me a lot in the past in better planning and structuring the systems I worked with. https://everythingsysadmin.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are some great engineering blogs?”Submitted Avoid using the term "Cloud Computing" except when being ironic as a story · 66 points
HN discussionFor Python my coworker (and friend) Tom has a great project called timetravelpdb: http://everythingsysadmin.com/2014/04/time-travel-pdb.html explains a bit on it, the repo is https://github.com/TomOnTime/timetravelpdb Basically it's an extension of pdb that allows you to jump back and forth in time.
Comment linking /2014/04/time-travel-pdb.html
on “Leaving Mozilla”Submitted Your computer room will overheat next weekend as a story · 51 points
HN discussion"There is a new TLD called .feedback. It is a scam and ICANN should be ashamed of approving it. The people that run .feedback have pre-registered 'for free' 5,000 major companies. As a result you can go to sites like http://www.google.feedback/ and http://www.gandi.feedback/ and http://www.stackoverflow.feedback/ and more." From: https://everythingsysadmin.com/2017/06/the-feedback-scam.htm... Previously on HN: https…
Comment linking /2017/06/the-feedback-scam.html
on “Tusk – Short-lived anonymous feedback”Submitted Python for Perl programmers as a story · 40 points
HN discussionWould this list of books be a good starting point? http://everythingsysadmin.com/books.html
Comment linking /books.html
on “Ask HN: How do I learn how to become a good sysadmin?”Submitted Google's BBR fixes TCP's dirty little secret as a story · 25 points
HN discussionIt would be helpful if you could tell me where you got the impression that I was encouraging use on cloud-storage services. Was it in the README? the code? a post I made on my blog? I ask because I'd like to correct that doc/post/etc. so that others don't get the same impression. Tom Limoncelli http://the-cloud-book.com http://everythingsysadmin.com P.S. Blackbox was written to safely store the occasional secret fil…
Comment linking /
on “Blackbox: Safely store secrets in Git”Submitted We can solve the terrorist encryption problem with this one simple solution as a story · 22 points
HN discussionI think Stack Exchange has a secret weapon which will likely greatly improve their backend systems. Tom Limoncelli, who used to work at Google as a Site reliability engineer (SRE), now works at Stack Exchange [1]. He pretty much wrote the bible for sysadmins entitle " The Practice of System and Network Administration " [2]. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing more posts like this! [1] http://everythingsysadmi…
Comment linking /2013/09/the-team-im-on-at-stack-exchan.html
on “Homegrown DevOps Tools at Stack Exchange”Submitted Small regional conferences lead to deeper communities in tech-oriented people as a story · 14 points
HN discussionOn the topic of learning ops, I want to second my recommendation from another thread for "The Practice of System and Network Administration" and "The Practice of Cloud System Administration" These books focus on principles, rather than specific technologies, and I love them for it. http://everythingsysadmin.com/books.html
Comment linking /books.html
on “Ops School – Comprehensive Program to Become an Operations Engineer”Submitted What I learned at LISA '16 as a story · 9 points
HN discussionDo your "traditional" programmers want to deal with all the practices listed at http://everythingsysadmin.com/the-test.html ? Do your "traditional" programmers want to develop the sort of skill listed at http://www.sage.org/field/jobs-descriptions.html ?
Comment linking /the-test.html
on “Why Stack Exchange Isn’t in the Cloud”Submitted "DRM-Free" Scares the shit out of me as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI'm a programmer, but believe it's important to be well-rounded. To balance my programming skills with sysadmin skills, I've started reading "The Practice of System and Network Administration": http://everythingsysadmin.com/aboutbook.html http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration... The book was praised by multiple HN commenters ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1665915 for example), and I'm g…
Comment linking /aboutbook.html
on “Happy Sysadmin Day”Submitted Apple's livesteam outage was easily preventable as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI agree that JSON isn't a very good syntax for humans to produce. But I think Tom Limoncelli has already written most that needs to be said: http://everythingsysadmin.com/2015/06/toml-vs-json.html I prefer yaml for deep nesting over toml, though. But whatever the config syntax, comment-preserving parsing would be very nice for config files.
Comment linking /2015/06/toml-vs-json.html
on “Armor – Simple HTTP server, supports HTTP/2 and auto TLS”Submitted Introducing the Python Time Travel Debugger as a story · 6 points
HN discussionYes, very constructive. A more detailed reply: 3) really? the core of devops is to be data-driven in your decisions. how can you decide if you are maintaining the right uptime if you don't measure it? 8) I agree with you, as does the text. I think you may have reversed what I wrote. 9) The good ones write so that they "think before they do". On a larger team it is important to communicate what you are about to do, o…
Comment linking /2011/04/apt.html
on “The Limoncelli Test (Joel test for Sysadmin Teams)”Submitted A powerful VIM command I never knew about until now as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI can't improve on this: http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/06/avoid-using-the-term-c...
Comment linking /2011/06/avoid-using-the-term-cloud-com.html
on “68% of the Fortune 100 are Clueless”Submitted Usenix LISA has changed a lot in the last 5-10 years (Call for Participation) as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
