This summer I set up my own server at home.  I did a LOT of research and reading about becoming a sysadmin (or a mini-sysadmin), and I’m still doing a lot of reading and research.

The number one thing I’ve learned, though, is that the internet is still a scary place.

Reading system logs I can see how many bots and web crawlers are out there just constantly – every second of every day – trying to force their way into any internet-connected device. I don’t have anything sensitive stored on it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have hundreds of (failed) attempts to login as root (administrator) in my logs every day.