Adminspotting

Links for August 13, 2009

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:00:00 +0000

How S.M.A.R.T. are your disks?: GSmartControl is a graphical user interface for smartctl (from Smartmontools package), which is a tool for querying and controlling S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data on modern hard disk drives. It allows you to inspect the drive's S.M.A.R.T. data to determine its health, as well as run various tests on it.
VMware Workstation 6.5.1 build-126130 and Linux kernel 2.6.29: With the attached patch you can persuade your VMware Workstation to work on the newest Linux kernel 2.6.29.

Links for August 02, 2009

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Transparent dynamic reverse proxy with nginx: A while back I wrote about using Apache as a dynamic reverse proxy. Anyone who has done even minimal research into web servers knows that Apache is the swiss army knife. It trys to be everything for everyone, and like a swiss army knife may not be as good as a more refined too at least as far as efficiency is concerned.

Links for June 23, 2009

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Have you never seen a Cisco crash?: It is not common see a Cisco crash: Software forced crash, Bus Error, Software watchdog timeout, and so on
Cisco Developer Contest: the ten finalists: Do you remember Cisco Developer Contest started on October 14, 2008? During this period, nearly 900 registrants from 75 countries have take part to the challange, but only 10 finalist teams are enjoying with the second (last) phase. Now, during the second phase of the contest, started from May 15, 2009, until August 15, 2009, the top-10 finalists will work with Cisco to bring the applications to maturity using Cisco resources on Cisco virtual AXP blades. After a final judging period, a winner will be announced in October 2009. These finalists come from four different continents: * North America: Team Cupertino Systems, Team Service Enabled Networks and Team SNAT * Europe: Team MADnetwork, Team Bugsbernie and Team RSDevs * South America: Team Jin Jin and Team Campuser * Asia: Team Ideate and Team Enhancers

Links for March 19, 2009

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Managing your log files: In this tutorial we'll begin by taking a peek inside a few log files to get a hint about the kind of stuff you'll find there: then we'll move on to examine some tools for summarising and managing the files.
10 Ways to Automatically & Manually Backup MySQL Database: There are several ways to backup MySQL data. In this article we

Links for March 18, 2009

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Automate User Provisioning with Windows PowerShell, Part 2: In the April 2009 issue of TechNet Magazine, Don Jones continues his four-part series looking at how you can use Windows PowerShell to create a real-world user provisioning script. And he demonstrates these techniques in his latest video screencast.
Desktop to Datacenter - Part 7 - Failover & Migration of VMs: Whether you are a small IT shop learning about virtualization or a company designing a datacenter, watch these short videos to get you up to speed on what Hyper-V can do for you. This video is Part 7 - Failover & Migration of VMs.
Redhat on Hyper-V: In this interview, Vijay Tewari explains what Microsoft has done and planned for the future to support Redhat Linux on Hyper-V. He also shows Redhat in action on server 2008 R2, a glimpse of what is coming next.

Links for March 16, 2009

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Convert maildir to mbox: So how did I convert the maildir to mbox? I used formail which is provided by procmail.
My Live Migration Demo from last week: In this Live Migration demonstration I show a virtual machine failing from node to node without client PCs losing connectivity as well as failing the underlying disk from node to node without the virtual machine seeming to mind.
Troubleshooting Client Deployment Issues : A common client deployment issue that I
How System Center Helps Reduce IT Costs: They talk about System Center's role in reducing IT infrastructure costs and touch on desktop and server optimization, referring to some key documents that can be found on the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Optimization Web site.
Postfix Configure Multiple ISP Client SMTP Authentication: How do I support multiple ISP accounts (smarthost) in the Postfix SMTP client for relaying email?
Using ATA Over Ethernet (AoE) On Debian Lenny (Initiator And Target): This guide explains how you can set up an AoE target and an AoE initiator (client), both running Debian Lenny. AoE stands for "ATA over Ethernet" and is a storage area network (SAN) protocol which allows AoE initiators to use storage devices on the (remote) AoE target using normal ethernet cabling.

Links for March 13, 2009

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Installing Linux with Virtual Box: How to install a virtual machine to try out a Linux distribution.
Parallelizing Jobs with xargs: The GNU xargs command that comes with Linux and the one distributed with FreeBSD support a -P option through which one can specify the number of jobs to run in parallel.
MSOL's Administration Center: MSOL is a set of online enterprise applications: Exchange, Sharepoint, Office Communications and Live Meeting. Lori Sloan shows how to get the most out of MSOL's Administration Center.

Links for March 12, 2009

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Postfix Configure Client SMTP Authentication ( Smarthost Authentication ): My ISP requires that mail from my dynamic IP to our small business email addresses uses their outgoing SMTP servers. This is probably done to reduce abuse and spam but now I'm not able to send email and local Postfix log file displays authentication failure message. How do I relay mail through my mail ISP servers using Postfix SMTP under Linux / UNIX like operating systems?
Project Middleman: The Middleman System (mdm) is a set of open-source utilities that help you parallelize your shell scripts.
Fedora Directory Server on RHEL 4 and 5, Pt. 1: The purpose of this article (first of a series) is to share with you some technical information about how to get things going. How, exactly, do you get RHEL 4, and RHEL 5 to utilize Fedora Directory Server
Exim4 SMTP Auth for the Real World: I tried several times to get SMTP authentication working for use in a modern environment with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. For starters, I don't want to have to authenticate every client on my LAN. Clients coming from my home subnet should be trusted by IP and should not have to authenticate. Secondly, I want to be able to relay mail from any client if that client authenticates via TLS from anywhere on the internet. Hopefully this will save other people some time and sanity.
DS Restore Mode Password Maintenance: There comes a day in nearly every administrator
Linux tip: Finding rootfs during boot: As a Linux administrator, you may encounter rootfs errors like cannot mount rootfs and kernel panic when you try to reboot a server after attaching volumes from external storage or even after installing a new Linux operating system.. This article outlines the Linux booting process on an x86 platform, shows why this problem happens, and offers four tips to avoid it or fix it.

Links for March 11, 2009

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Desktop to Datacenter - Part 5 - Powershell Management: Whether you are a small IT shop learning about virtualization or a company designing a datacenter, watch these short videos to get you up to speed on what Hyper-V can do for you. This video is Part 5 - Powershell Management.
Understanding and configuring PAM: The Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) API exposes a set of functions that application programmers use for security-related functions like user authentication, data encryption, LDAP, and more. In this article, get a basic guide to the PAM model on Linux, see how to configure PAM, and learn how to design a sample PAM login application in 10 easy steps.
HowTo install iotop on Debian Etch: Unfortunately, iotop requires Python >= 2.5 and a Linux kernel >= 2.6.20 to work, and even if the installation is very simple as presented in my last post, getting it to run on older distributions might not be so easy. This post will show how you can run iotop on debian etch, describing how we can solve the dependencies and make iotop run just fine on etch.

Links for March 09, 2009

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Free PowerShell EBook: PowerShell MVP and prodigious PowerShell blogger Keith Hill has converted his very popular Effective PowerShell blog series into a FREE Ebook.
Logfile Check on Linux: In Operations Manager 2007 R2 we have the possibility to monitor Linux and UNIX machines. In this post I will show some ideas how to monitor file size on a linux machine.
Download details: System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 VHD: This download comes as a pre-configured VHD. This download enables you evaluate Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 SP1.
iopp: howto get i/o information per process: We all know and love vmstat, but wouldn
Desktop to Datacenter - Part 3 - Understanding Integration Services: Whether you are a small IT shop learning about virtualization or a company designing a datacenter, watch these short videos to get you up to speed on what Hyper-V can do for you. This video is Part 3 - Understanding Integration Services