My poor Mandrake Linux box--formerly hush.joecheng.com--was hacked into this week. Whoever it was decided to mess with my config files and damn if I know how to fix 'em (other than a clean format and reinstall). I'm not sure exactly how they got in, but I haven't installed any updates or patches since I set the thing up, so I'm sure there was plenty of fertile ground to exploit. Good thing I wasn't really using the box for much, and all my data was pretty easily recovered.

By the way, I don't think I like Mandrake. I'm no expert on Linux distros (or any other *nix topic) but it just feels like an old version of Red Hat. So if I decide to reinstall Linux it'll be Red Hat 9... all the hipsters seem to like it.

Strangely enough, this is also the week my server xenia.mit.edu, which has been rocking pretty steady for seven years (with occasional upgrades), bit the dust; I think it's a burned-out power supply but haven't had a chance to give it a full inspection.

In both cases, no data was lost, and assuming the repairs go well on xenia I'll have not one but two clean servers to toy with. Hmmm... might be time to start playing with Jini...