Zwischenzugs
zwischenzugs.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2017
Ian Miell writes about Linux, DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, bash and software team culture.
What HN saysCommenters recommend his multi-part "Anatomy of a Linux DNS Lookup" series and an annotated Docker explainer, and mention his blog as a career-path example.
66HN people shared it
14linked it in comments
134stories submitted
7.0Kstory points
4 months agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Anatomy of a Linux DNS Lookup7 people · 181 points · first shared 2018 · 49 comments on HN
- 2Five Things I Did to Change a Team's Culture7 people · 23 points · first shared 2018 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Why Are Enterprises So Slow?5 people · 297 points · first shared 2018 · 135 comments on HN
- 4‘AWS vs. K8s’ Is the New ‘Windows vs. Linux’5 people · 216 points · first shared 2019 · 110 comments on HN
- 5My 20-Year Experience of Software Development Methodologies4 people · 229 points · first shared 2017 · 107 comments on HN
- 6GitOps Decisions4 people · 7 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
- 7Things I Wish I'd Known About Bash3 people · 813 points · first shared 2018 · 268 comments on HN
- 8Git log – The good parts3 people · 341 points · first shared 2018 · 83 comments on HN
- 9If you want to transform IT, start with finance3 people · 296 points · first shared 2021 · 150 comments on HN
- 10Practical Shell Patterns I Use3 people · 150 points · first shared 2022 · 67 comments on HN
- 11Show HN: Project Management as Code with Graphviz3 people · 132 points · first shared 2017 · 64 comments on HN
- 12Unprivileged Docker Builds – A Proof of Concept3 people · 114 points · first shared 2018 · 119 comments on HN
- 13The Halving of the Centre: Covid and Its Effect on London Property3 people · 12 points · first shared 2020 · 3 comments on HN
- 14Software Security Field Guide for the Bewildered3 people · 9 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 15Bash History Shortcuts You Will Use3 people · 8 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
zwischenzug · 2018-09-26
I gave up on formal career advancement (ie climbing the greasy pole) and followed my technical interests, trying to have fun where possible, but also with an eye to its marketability.
I ended up starting a blog (https://zwischenzugs.com/) and wrote a few books. It's all made my career far more fun and given me more control. As a by-product I'm better paid too. But that was not the aim.
belter · 2021-06-04
Follow up:
Anatomy of a Linux DNS Lookup – Part II
https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/18/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup-part…
Anatomy of a Linux DNS Lookup – Part III
https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/07/06/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup-part…
Anatomy of a Linux DNS Lookup – Part IV
https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/08/06/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup-part…
Anatomy of a Linux DNS Lookup – Part V – Two Debug Nightmares
https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/09/13/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup-part…
corndoge · 2021-04-15
I recommend the series "Anatomy of a Linux DNS lookup"[0].
Everything you never wanted to know.
https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/08/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup-part…
xc100 · 2018-08-22
Best overview of containerization is here (the video parody is actually funny, perhaps NSFW):
https://zwischenzugs.com/2016/04/12/hitler-uses-docker-annotated/
kaderno · 2021-05-27
Ian Miell's blog https://zwischenzugs.com
raesene9 · 2024-05-28
For an even earlier reference (2015) "the most pointless docker command ever" https://zwischenzugs.com/2015/06/24/the-most-pointless-docker-command-…
This is a by design part of Docker's operation. What's perhaps a little more surprising (though it shouldn't be) is that anyone with create pod rights in a k8s cluster can do this by default on every worker node in the cluster. (unless the cluster operator or provider has implemented additional controls)
throwaway19937 · 2021-12-19
If it's an enterprise (https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/10/02/why-are-enterprises-so-slow/) the latter will be a much easier sell to management. Paying for support is a given but contributing developer time will require many approvals from different departments if it can be done at all.
5e92cb50239222b · 2021-06-27
Here's a decent overview if anyone is interested in details.
https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/08/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup-part…
nbaksalyar · 2019-06-01
Thank you, this is very timely: recently I got a cold email from an acquisition editor too and been researching this fascinating topic of writing tech books. :)
Some more helpful resources I found:
- Advice to Prospective Book Authors from Scott Meyers (of Effective C++ fame): https://www.aristeia.com/authorAdvice.html
- "I wrote a book" by Tryggvi Björgvinsson: https://dev.to/trickvi/i-wrote-a-book-lfg
- "Writing a technical book" by Ian Miell: https://zwischenzugs.com/2016/05/15/writing-a-technical-book/
- Then there are some good discussion about this topic on HN. You can try searching by keywords like "ask hn + writing a book", e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14300932
chrismorgan · 2018-04-11
Read up on https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/03/26/git-log-the-good-parts/, it’s good and practical stuff.
I recently aliased `git history` to `git log --graph --all --simplify-by-decoration`, and have `glog` as `log --graph` (and so seldom use `log`).
If you’re earlier than Git 2.12 or so, you’ll need to add --decorate to get the branch and tag names shown.
murrayb · 2018-01-11
Nice application, thanks.
There really needs to be a way to change the order of to-do's.
What happens to deleted to-do's? Gone forever?
Also CodeOwl combined with graphviz (as shown here- https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/18/project-management-as-code-with-gr… would be very cool- to-do list -> dependency diagram with colours updating as items are checked off...
miduil · 2018-09-25
Really cool, I like the documentation on the website - would be nice if the README was actual HTML though.
Does that mean I can build container images within a running container (for example the GitLab-CI) without doing a stunt like docker-in-docker or fakechroot/fakeroot?
What are you using instead of fakeroot? I've seen people like [zwischenzugs][0] using User Namespaces - which makes it impossible to be run within a container. Author also points out that kaniko still requires you to use root, not sure if the situation has changed with gVisor support, at least a related issue [1] hasn't been marked as resolved.
Have you investigated into creating reproducible containers?
Thank you in advance!
[0]: https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/04/23/unprivileged-docker-builds-a-proof…
[1]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/kaniko/issues/105
Edit: Why the downvote? Am I misunderstanding something?
nikisweeting · 2020-09-08
Here's my full bash reading list:
- ShellCheck: life-changing BASH linter and testing toolkit https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck
- 30 interesting commands for the Linux shell – Víctor López Ferrando https://www.lopezferrando.com/30-interesting-shell-commands/
- 7 Surprising Bash Variables https://zwischenzugs.com/2019/05/11/seven-surprising-bash-variables/
- anordal/shellharden https://github.com/anordal/shellharden/blob/master/how_to_do_things_sa…
- barryclark/bashstrap https://github.com/barryclark/bashstrap
- BashPitfalls : Greg's Wiki http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls
- Common shell script mistakes http://www.pixelbeat.org/programming/shell_script_mistakes.html
- Comparison of all the UNIX shells http://hyperpolyglot.org/unix-shells
- Defensive Bash Programming https://www.kfirlavi.com/blog/2012/11/14/defensive-bash-programming/in… or https://jonlabelle.com/snippets/view/markdown/defensive-bash-programmi…
- Bash FAQ and Cookbook https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ
- Detecting the use of "curl | bash" server side …