mariusv.com

How to Setup AWS S3 Access From Specific IPs

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 13:08:50 +0000

Recently I had to setup some restricted permissions for some S3 buckets, and a requirement for the project was that we needed to grant (POST/DELETE) only from a specific IP and deny for a specific IAM user.

How to debug TIME_WAIT in logstash-forwarder

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 12:30:50 +0100

Howdy peeps :-) I know is a long time since my last post here and that the site looks more like deserted island but I want to assure you dear reader that I'm not dead just yet just that I'm covered with work :-P .

AWS IAM user grant billing access

Tue, 30 Jun 2015 22:07:40 +0100

For the first time in 8+ years of using AWS I had to give access to a IAM user to Billing on the AWS Console. At the beginning I though meh, this will be a easy peasy task so I went ahead and created the Billing Group to which I added the Policy

Flapjack add contact and all script

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:20:10 +0000

As I said before, here at Odobo we implemented Flapjack with Sensu as monitoring notification routing & event processing system. Everything went nice and well till the point when I had to add more then just one person (myself) :-) . So because I strongly believe that if a task needs to be done more then once then you should automate/script it, I put together this small ruby script which basically creates an Contact if doesn't already exists, assigns a Media (email) and also assigns ALL the Entities enlisted in Flapjack.

Ubuntu force fsck on boot

Thu, 11 Dec 2014 19:44:10 +0000

This is a small rant because I deal with this every single day of my sysadmin life :-) .

OpenStack and dnsmasq config

Sun, 23 Nov 2014 12:53:10 +0000

So today I was fighting with an OpenStack environment where for some reason it would not read the dnsmasq config and apply the rules I specified in there. After few hors of fight and glancing at the logs and googling I could not find the issue..everything looked ok just that the DNS server would not be applied to the VMs.

Firefox History Audit with a simple bash script

Sat, 22 Nov 2014 17:30:10 +0000

Today I was reading around and I came across this blog Raymii.org where I found the script in the link sadly the script is not working as is expected due to some small misses in the script and the author doesn't have a comment function so I decided to modify a bit the script and use it for a small Security Audit I had to do.

Using Gmail with Flapjack to send notifications

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:50:20 +0000

One of the biggest pains in monitoring is the alerting & routing system. Now as you saw yesterday the routing issue was fixed by introducing Flapjack but the alerting issue was still in place as for some reason Gmail SMTP doesn't like Flapjack so is refusing to send any emails and in my case I had to use Gmail as a relay. After trying to make Flapjack work with Gmail I decided to take a different route and implement Gmail SMTP in Postfix and in Flapjack use the localhost settings for postfix.

Sensu monitoring and Flapjack

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 23:23:20 +0000

While researching for a monitoring notification routing & event processing system, I came across Flapjack, an alert notification router that works with check execution engines like Nagios and Sensu. Despite Sensu having built in notification and rollup, using these features can have various drawbacks that aren't immediately apparent. The latest iteration(1.0) of Flapjack was built from the ground up to focus on alert routing. The Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well really appeals to me, so I decided to look into this tool more and implement it in production.

Sensu monitoring PostgreSQL

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:15:20 +0000

Today I was working on implementing Sensu in one of my clients infrastructure to monitor OpenStack infrastructure and the production one and because of the awesomeness of the automation was pretty much just a matter of minutes to deploy and implement it and the only issue I had was with the PostgreSQL plugin because I was not able to install the pg gem due some dependencies issues in Ubuntu 14.04 (pretty sure this issue is replicable in older versions of Ubuntu but this customer is using Ubuntu 14.04 for most of the infrastructure). After looking around on how to fix this issue I came up with this solution:

Apache2 issues after upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:09:20 +0100

So few days ago I decided to start the upgrade of all my Freelance customers servers from Ubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 14.04 not just for security reasons but mostly because most of them are running Docker and everybody knows that docker runs much better on Ubuntu 14.04.

OpenVas6 OMP issues on CentOS

Fri, 23 May 2014 18:32:20 +0100

The OpenVAS folks have provided install instructions for installation on a variety of Red Hat flavors that can be found here. I know they released a virtual appliance with everything up and running. However I wanted to try out the new release on my own Cloud Server. The install instructions for CentOS did not quite get me there. After I followed the instructions on the OpenVAS site I hit the Greenbone UI at https://IP:9392. When I tried to log in a red error message came up that said the OMP service was down. OMP stands for OpenVAS Management Protocol. It is for doing things like starting / stopping scans and creating / deleting users. After fixing the error and getting the service up and running I decide to write this blog so I don't forget and also maybe this helps somebody else to spare some time when they hit the same issue. Also working on writing a small Ansible playbook just to make it easier to deploy.

Install Apache Solr 4.7.1 on Ubuntu

Mon, 07 Apr 2014 19:26:46 +0100

So the task of the day was to install latest version of Solr (4.7.1) and to be sincere I was struggling a bit due to the fact that there is no .deb or repository from where you can install it out of the box. After finishing the installation I decided to write this article just in case some other people will have the same "challenge" and not to forget :-) (planing to write a ansible playbook with this).

Bash auto completion in iTerm2 OSX

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 19:30:02 +0000

After trying every solution suggested by other mac users out there on how to get auto completion in iTerm2 I almost give up because nothing worked for me due to the new version of Bash I managed to find on the MacPorts Wiki the only solution who worked for me.

MySQL must not swap

Thu, 30 Jan 2014 22:27:02 +0000

MySQL must not swap. This can be managed via /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, this value determines how aggressive is the system in term of swapping. Default is 60, for MySQL server 0 is recommended. Setting 0 does not mean that you never swap, the system will only swap to prevent out of memory.

Going to FOSDEM

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 21:52:02 +0000

Every year I can't miss FOSDEM, it has become a tradition for me and like last year the trip is sponsored by Rackspace UK which I want to thank with this occasion for their generosity. If you don't know what FOSDEM is then you must have been living under a rock for the past 13 years so here is a Wikipedia link which will help with a fair description and the history of FOSDEM . If any of you will be there and want to have a beer/talk you can find me on Saturday in the room H.1309 for the Configuration management talks. Will be there the whole day as for me this is one of the most interesting talks. Sunday will be in room UA2.114 for NoSQL talks

SSH copy id on OSX

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 19:13:46 +0000

One of my challenges with using a mac was the lack of ssh-copy-id and in the beginning I wasn’t missing it that much because I was playing with my own Cloud servers in which I inject the SSH Key on build but once I needed to connect on other servers I started missing this neat tool so I started searching to see if there is an alternative for OSX because running this cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@machine "mkdir ~/.ssh; cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys” every time wasn’t quite an option I managed to find out that there actually exists the same tool for OSX ssh-copy-id .

How to install chef on OSX Maverick

Tue, 10 Dec 2013 21:43:25 +0000

Few days ago I was tempted to update my work Mac to OSX Maverick (10.9) so I went ahead and upgraded even if I got lots of co-workers saying that my laptop will not boot up anymore because of the amount of Corporate Security software we have installed on it. Well the upgrade went pretty much fine (few glitches but nothing which I could not hack my way around) but for some reason the upgrade removed Chef from it so I had to re-install but for my surprise the curl -L https://www.opscode.com/chef/install.sh | sudo bash command failed to install because of Unknown OS :-) and asking me to open a ticket with OpsCode which is not quite my view on fixing issues. After few minutes of Googling I found out that there is already a ticket open regarding this issue for OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion and one of the comments already has a small workaround for OSX 10.8 so I went ahead and applied the solution provided for 10.8 but changing to 10.9 and it worked.

How to install ruby19 using MacPorts

Sun, 20 Oct 2013 10:35:25 +0100

I got as a work laptop a MacBook Pro and after configuring the whole environment exactly with what I need and make it work/look as close to my CrunchBang without nuking OSX from it. I encountered many challenges and one of them was installing Ruby 1.9+ and make it the default version using MacPorts. Looking on internet I saw many people had this issue and most of them decided to go with the hackish way of doing things (by creating a symlink to the new installed version of ruby), I was tempted to choose the same path but as many of you know I'm pretty stubborn so I like things working the proper way :-)

Suffer Today, Enjoy Tomorrow !?!

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 21:03:06 +0100

In school, I had a number of strict and unpleasant teachers (well, who doesn't? It seems that they are all born that way). They made our lives hell during tests or submissions or just whenever they were having a bad day. They had favourites among students (or some might say, their snitches in the class to know who was gossiping behind their backs; to think they had so many concerns other than teaching) and students they despised. The favourites' favourite teacher was the teacher whose favourites they were; the despised(s'?) ones' most despised teacher was the teacher who despised them.

Cannot open AlsaMixer

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:50:06 +0100

If you use CrunchBang Linux or upgraded from Debian Wheezy (now stable) to Debian Jessie (testing) for sure you got problems with pnmixer, alsamixer , aplay etc.

Remote log access via SSH with Python using Paramiko module

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:00:52 +0100

The problem - On my day to day job here at Rackspace Cloud I need to view/download log files from remote servers on a regular basis. The task of having to SSH to multiple servers just for getting log files was aching for some automation. This led me to Paramiko module, it "implements the SSH2 protocol for secure (encrypted and authenticated) connections to remote machines", bravo! just what I needed. Download Paramiko module here or just run pip install paramiko and then use this code to get the logs :

Bandwidth Monitoring Script

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:00:52 +0000

If you want to monitorize your bandwidth on your Rackspace Cloud Server or any other server all you have to do is to run this script and the script will automagically send you notifications when you will reach the limit you established.

Fixing the GRUB after update on Rackspace Cloud servers

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 21:00:52 +0000

Everybody knows by now the fact that if you upgraded your Ubuntu GRUB to version 2 you are asked if you want to keep the local version of the menu.lst or if you want to replace it with the developer version. If by any chance you choose to replace it with the developer version on Rackspace Cloud then after reboot your server will not boot up anymore because GRUB2 is using UUID to avoid unreliable BIOS mappings then you will have to put your server in rescue mode and then:

Cisco VPN client Debian problems

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:00:52 +0000

After installing CISCO VPN Client on my Debian Wheezy box I started having problems with updating the system . The problem is caused because CISCO VPN Client assumes that Debian has installed by default chkconfig which is not installed by default. Uninstalling the client and then installing it back and installing chkconfig will fix only the problem when your CISCO VPN Client GUI flickers on the screen for a moment, but vanishes before you can see the error. To fix the problem where you can't update your system or install any packages all you have to do is to edit vpnagentd_init located in /etc/init.d/vpnagentd_init

Why Debian is the best distribution?

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 21:00:52 +0000

Few days ago somebody asked me why do I use Debian and why do I think is the best distribution out there. After explaining for around 30 minutes I decided to put my thoughts about this in here just in case somebody is wandering why to choose Debian GNU and not other derived from Debian distributions.

Schedule Images Rackspace NextGen servers

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 21:00:52 +0000

I created a small script to help people out there to take schedule images after your NextGen servers using cron. Basicaly the script is using python nova client to take the images and it checks if the image was successful or not. If the image will be successful you will get an email that the image is done but if the image failed you will get an email with stating that you have to open a ticket so somebody can delete the failing image .

Date when a package was installed

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:41:52 +0100

Howdy...I know is a long time since I wrote something in here but I was really busy with some personal projects and relocating in U.K so I have a good excuse :-P . If some of you are asking why the heck did I chose to move in London the answer is pretty simple...I came here because from 1st of October 2012 I started working for Rackspace U.K and I'm really proud to be one of the over 900 rackers here in London. I didn't even started work yet because I'm still accommodating in the company(and for this I have to say thank you to everybody from the onboarding team and all the AWESOME rackers who helped us to understand what is Rackspace and why Rackspace is different then other companies out there) I could write thousands of pages about how great company Rackspace is and how proud I am to be part of this big Family of Fanatical Supporters but then some of you will think that I moved in Marketing and everybody knows my opinion about Marketing(sorry if there are some from Marketing who reads my blog(I doubt that)) so all I'm gonna say is just that Rackspace IS F*cking AWESOME(please excuse my language but this is the truth) :-D .

Kill Idle Linux Users

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 20:41:52 +0100

Every once in awhile somebody asks me how to log off a dead user. This is how you discover the inactive session using the w command:

HAPPY SYSADMIN DAY

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 02:12:46 +0100

In case you weren’t paying attention in the last few weeks, today is the 13th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. It’s always the last Friday in July. A good reminder to not make changes on Fridays so you can stay out drinking with your colleagues. So happy SYSADMIN DAY to all of us :-D

How to scroll in GNU screen

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 01:38:43 +0100

Today a friend of mine and future colleague asked me how to use scroll(mouse wheel or synaptic touchpad) in GNU screen and because I was busy fixing other things I told him is doable but I didn't told him ho to do it :-) The fix does not work well when you are using multiple windows inside a single screen especially when using split mode but for the times you use one window per screen its pretty handy.

Songs of the week — 06.29.2012

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 03:20:11 +0100

I haven’t listened to all that much new music of late, and that - combined with my busy days - are the cause of the missing posts and sadly the missing posts part will continue because I have a lot of things to do..but the music part I'll change it starting from now :-)

Boot is full

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 21:00:58 +0100

Did you ever tried to upgrade your Ubunu server and got this error The upgrade needs a total of 15.7M free space on disk '/boot'. Please free at least an additional 9324k of disk space on '/boot'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean'. but sadly apt-get clean didn't worked? I had the same problem on 145 of my Ubuntu servers and this is how I solve it:

Extract one table from MySQL dump

Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Few days ago a friend of mine asked for help to extract a specific table from a very big DB and so I reminded that 5 years ago I wrote a perl script with that purpose. Here you can find the script(the name is export.pl) and a bunch of other tools for sysadmins and not only(I'll update the repo daily so keep an eye on it) here is a direct link so you can wget it :-) . I’ve tested it on Linux, but it should work from Windows as well if you have Perl installed.

Top 10 Anime

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:40:25 +0100

This weekend I've done a Anime marathon and I decided to do My top 10 Anime. After reading manga all my life I decided to watch a anime and I started with Akira, all I can say now after a delightful weekend is that I'm really sorry the weekend has ended and I didn't manage to see even 1% of all the anime I wanted but what I've seen made me to make this top and maybe if someone has any suggestions I'm open to see more awesome Anime movies or series.

Solve the Dropbox filesystem monitoring issue

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:16:56 +0000

Once Dropbox throws you an error that says Unable to monitor filesystem. Please run: echo 100000 | sudo tee /proc/sys/fs/inotify/maxuserwatches and restart Dropbox to correct the problem." you'd better adjust settings in sysctl.conf file, to keep changes after reboot.

Check if your server is about to run fsck soon

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:03:24 +0000

Couple of weeks ago I updated my debian server. And when I restarted it, it didn’t came up. To make things worse, the EC2 Console interface didn't helped too much so I couldn’t see what’s really going on. I presumed that the system isn’t responding because of some kernel panic. After a while, I gave up for that night in hope the in the morning the EC2 Console would be sorted out. To my surprise, the EC2 Console was still out of work, but the server was up again. Apparently, the system wasn’t stuck on kernel panic, but on fsck'ing the hdd's. So in order to avoid such problems in the future I looked for a way to tell when the system is going to run fsck after the next reboot .

Difference between TCP and UDP

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:10:51 +0000

I wrote this article because I see a lot of sysadmins who don't know there is a difference between TCP and UDP protocols.

Recovering deleted files from the handlers

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:29:05 +0000

On compromised servers it is very common for the exploit to delete its self/logs to hide its presence.

Review of 2011

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:59:37 +0000

As we celebrate the new year, watch and remember the biggest moments of 2011 by Google

Track your Gmail address and fight spam

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:50:35 +0000

One of the biggest e-irritants I have is that my email address gets "sold" to companies to spam me with promotions by businesses I use (and they deny it). This trick should help identify those buggers.

To those who say Google+ is dead, dying or a failure

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:07:43 +0000

Please try this:

Deep Purple epic concert

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:52:37 +0000

I'm walking back to my place from the Deep Purple concert and I'm a bit disappointed because of the Ian Gillan's voice, I mean I know he is old and all but what the heck when you see you can't keep up with your own band then quit. The biggest surprise for me was when I entered in the concert hall and I saw the hall full with chairs...I understand the fact that danish people are lazy but c'mon Deep Purple are known as the loudest band in the history and for god sake is a ROCK CONCERT you don't go to listen the band who practicaly invented modern hard rock music and show by sitting silently on the chairs like children's in the school. Was a one and a half hour concert and in all this time I had to stay on my chair(that made me go crazy but when in Rome, do as the Romans do) at one point my butt felt asleep so I hope that this long walk will wake it up :))

New life update

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:49:50 +0000

I'm currently listening to all of my Deep Purple music right now (not just the Christmas stuff) while writing up the new website for some clients of mine and a API. I mentioned about Deep Purple because they are coming tomorrow at Casa Arena in Horsens Denmark and I'm GOING :D . Yeah I enjoy the life in Horsens. I finally had the chance to meet Mud Morganfield and talk with him and I got a signed vinyl album of The Goo Men and all of this was only possible because of the good friends from KulisseLageret so all I wanna say is a big THANK YOU guys.

Zombie Code

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:51:44 +0000

If there's anything I hate more than dead code, it's zombie code. Dead code is code that's remained in the system even though it's no longer really used. It might be small, like unused imports, instance variables and methods. It can be whole classes that make up entire features no longer used. The biggest PITA is when you're not really aware of the fact the code's dead and unused, sitting there and occupying precious bits, and stumble across it as part of a task, trying to understand how it influences what you want to do next. Whenever I recognized something that looks like dead code but I'm not entirely sure, I find it pretty easy to delete it quickly, once I take a look in the version control logs and see when it became no longer in use and why. Zombie code is code that was never alive, and so couldn't really become dead. It's the undead code – code that died right when it was committed. Code that never ran or never worked. The are two reasons I hate zombie code more than "plain" dead code.

Eclipse Meets Vim And Emacs

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:53:15 +0000

Here's a great tool named Eclim which brings Eclipse to vim and there's an emacs port as well. I've tested for both vim and emacs and I think vim version is better than the emacs version. Emacs version needs work. I'm jealous.

My one week without “Social Media”

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:27:59 +0000

It may be hard to imagine in today's world, but there was once a time when computers didn't exist, cell phones didn't exist. If you go back far enough, there was even a time the written word didn't exist.

Data replication using lsyncd

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:51:46 +0100

One of my favorite Linux utilities I've discovered recently is lsyncd, a live syncing (mirror) daemon. Following the traditional Unix philosophy, it does data replication simply and it does it very well. Using some fancy inotify magic, lsyncd will spawn one or more processes to synchronize the targets after changes have been made.

This, really touches my heart..

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 17:06:09 +0100

The seas shall run dry, And the rocks melt into sands, Then shall I love you still, my dear, When all these things are done.

Revolve Magazine has reborned

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:31:53 +0100

I’m happy to announce that yesterday I finally managed to fully launch Revolve Magazine newest website. We (and when I say we I'm referring at the Revolve Magazine team) are launching our new website but will soon realease some more. We actually have another 2 services/websites in beta testing and a android app.

Connecting to Amazon EC2 server using ssh config file

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:54:42 +0100

I’ve recently moved my blog on the Amazon EC2 cloud infrastructure which has been an interesting process (more posts coming !)

Split ISO image into multiple archives

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:36:56 +0100

The best solution for you, and it's really easy! Just use the default GNU tools tar, split and cat. There is absolutely no need for any fancy gui tools or (god forbide!) software that you have to run in Wine!

OUTSTANDING...I'm speechless

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:48:36 +0100

I believe that this is the first singer in the history of mankind that her fans sing more beautifully than her that she is entirely astonished and her eyes are asking them all,"Who came to listen to whom here?"

Do not try

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:57:34 +0100

I am a senseless way. Do not try to follow me, you worry me and I will hurt you. Do not try to speculate ... you will remain deeply disappointed by my circular aim. Do not try in any way to love me. It would be the biggest mistake of your life! Do not try to lie. Even if you succeed, you will believe you... Try to accept, criticism, see, feel! Then you could tell me what you want from me ...

Songs of the week — 09.19.2011

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:00:02 +0100

Actually, I haven’t listened to all that much new music of late, and that — combined with my busy days — are the cause of the missing posts. But I’m through with all that… for last week anyway. :)

Songs of the week - 09.13.11

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:57:21 +0100

Hmm… I really don’t have anything cool to say about my collection of favorite songs this week. I guess they’re just what I listened to and enjoyed. Hope you do too!

Sneak preview on my new projects and life

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:42:26 +0100

As many of you know I live in Denmark now, Horsens to be precise. And while I was thinking of what my next hub would be about and how they, whoever “they” are...always tell you to write what you know...I thought I would start write about my new projects and the "news" from my brand new life :).

Sneak preview on Google+

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:37:24 +0100

This new features will be from this week on google+ (in your face facebook :P )

Google launches GOOGLE+ or are you ready for the new Facebook?

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:34:31 +0100

Ladies and gentlemen Google+ is here, or somewhere here, in the presentations, on YouTube, but not in front of me. After today’s loud announcement all over the net I ended at Google+. Or Google Wave? I’m not sure because everything’s the same. It’s like a Déjà vu to me. When Wave was launched it was presented like something that would revolutionize the way people communicate. After such an uproar and the longest presentation video I had ever watched, trying to test this service ended on the initial wave page, where beside the video was info that the service was in the test phase and access was given to only a limited number of users. When I finally got access I had nothing to try, my contacts weren’t there. Today I logged in with my Google account on this new service just to find similar message. You get the point here. I wonder how my social life on Google+ would look like? Probably all alone and waiting for my friends to come to the party, one on every 3 hours. I’m sure my friends will come and go. I see that the Google guys somewhat realized the point of social life creating these “circles” (which is not something new, Facebook has this). Realized that not everyone is like them and not everyone wants to index the entire world. However, if you’re interested to get yourself on the invitation waiting list this is the place. The search giant’s new social project will be omnipresent on its products, thanks to a complete redesign of the navigation bar. The familiar gray strip at the top of every Google page will turn black, and come with several new options for accessing your Google+ profile, viewing notifications and instantly sharing content. The notification system is similar to how Facebook handles notifications, complete with a red number that increases with each additional notice.

Your drive in the cloud with Amazon Cloud Drive

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:11:07 +0100

With the launch of Cloud Drive and Cloud Player , Amazon has jumped the gun and pulled attention away from its rivals Google and Apple.

In love with my new Kindle 3

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 07:24:18 +0100

When the original Kindle released, I didn’t bite. I decided to wait until version 3. That wait ended this past week. My new Kindle 3 arrived on Thursday. It was worth the wait.

Ping a Specific Port

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 22:31:03 +0000

In the last 2 days I often heard the question: „Can you ping a specific port of a machine, and if so, can you provide an example?” and now I will answer to this question here.

Disable F1 in gnome-terminal

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 09:53:05 +0000

I know I have been pretty silent for a while, what can I say it has been busy. I did want to drop this little tip though. I use vim and gnome-terminal a LOT, so I hit ESC quite frequently. Being so close to the F1 key can be hazardous as I tend to mash the ESC key several times. I have no idea where I picked up the habbit of hitting ESC multiple times but its something I have done for a long time and I don’t see me retraining myself any time soon.

101 Reasons why you can't find your system administrator

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 08:34:28 +0000

They are hiding under the stairs
. They are on holiday for the first time in 5 years
. They are in the cellars conducting the rituals to keep the machines running
. They are in hospital suffering from an overdose of caffeine
. Taken away by the police after killing the last user who asked a stupid question
. You have a system administrator ?
. You walked past the table they were gibbering under
. The Sysadmin has built a maze with the door to their office at the center
. You are the system administrator
. You missed seeing the system administrator asleep under their desk
. The admin is chained to their desk in a dungeon only the CEO has the key for
. The admin's off explaining to the management why they need an assistant.
. The admin is suffering so bad from sleep deprivation that they may as well not be there for all the sense you can make of the words they are saying.
. You are afraid that the admin will use you as a punch bag so you are searching for them, but desperately pray that you don't find them.
. The admin came to work disguised as a tea boy to avoid talking to users
. The admin electrocuted themselves whilst installing some cabling near the main power cable. Since the admin's body is the only thing keeping the power flowing, the management boarded up the body and pretended they still had a system administrator
. The admin is stuck in a lift shaft pulling network cable to another floor
. The admin is getting Jolt out of their under-floor cache
. The admin is hiding on the roof
. The admin is looking up the BOFH excuse of the day.
. The admin is out buying some caffeine.
. The admin is busy installing xfishtank on the main file server.
. The admin is out buying refills for the Nerf(TM) crossbow.
. The admin is locked in the computer room playing Deathmatch.
. The admin is booted to DOS and is playing doom across the network.
. The admin went to Stop&Go; to get ANOTHER case of insert favorite caffeinated beverage here
. The admin went to the room with padded walls that nobody dares open when the door's closed
. The admin managed to find time to sleep for an hour or two
. The admin just found out he had a two-month-old child, and is getting re-acquainted with his SO (and the new child)
. The admin is playing netrek
. The admin is in the hospital after being severely injured by a falling soda can mountain
. The admin is closeted with boss trying to explain why (s)he uploaded a user to seven.rings.of.hell.com
. The admin is at the hospital having his/her fingers splinted after typing 100 times "NO, you cannot use your old address after our domain name changes. Please go read the announcements that we have been posting for the last three months."
. The admin is catching twenty winks under the floorboards, tread gingerly
. The admin is watching the building electrician trip a circuit breaker that will reduce the company 'frame to rainbow-colored slag
. The admin is out by the turnpike waiting for a case of Jolt to bounce out of the truck after it hits the speed bump
. The admin is out back beating a luser into corn mash who asked "When will the system be back up" one time too many
. The admin finished a double shift and is out back wondering what that big burning ball in the sky is
. The admin is busy packing up to go to a site that has contemporary hardware
. The admin is engaged in a staring contest with a pack of evil dogs
. The admin is on the phone trying to talk his wife out of buying a house without ISDN
. The admin is sitting under the desk, hysterical at what the (l)user just asked
. The admin is at the pub, it's all too much
. The admin is standing behind you, holding an axe
. The admin resigned in disgust five minutes ago
. The admin is in a meeting with the boss to discuss poor user response times
. Just look up at the ceiling (Think 'Aliens')
. The admin can't be reached via phone or e-mail because (s)he is too busy on Usenet telling everybody how busy (s)he is or thinking up 101 reasons why (s)he can't be found
. The admin is hiding under a table so that (s)he will not be the one sitting for hours watching Ultrix reinstall from a single-speed CDROM because the users who inexplicably have root access have destroyed the file system again during a misguided attempt to "improve" /etc/rc by repartitioning the disk at boot time "so that it doesn't forget".
. We have a 'secure room' here - bloody great lock on it. I hide in there
. The Grey Wall(tm) has fallen on them and no one has noticed their absence. [clunk....clunk...help!....anyone?]
. They've gone to find some more coffee. Sysadmin has left the building!
. They've snapped, started muttering about "this damned post office", and left for the nearest gun store
. They're out on an interview
. They're seeing a therapist who doesn't have any computers in their office, a non-threatening place
. They've gone to a computer museum to beg for parts for the PDP-10s running the place (ala Compuserve)
. They're out looking for an ad in any media where DEC mentions OpenVMS
. They're planning where to be on 01/01/2000, when all of the MVS systems, and some older minis in mission-critical applications like process control turn to crap. They may be shopping for a bomb shelter if SAC's launch control systems only have a two-digit year.
. They're at a travel agent's, booking a vacation to friendlier place, like Iraq
. They're out fomenting rumors that the Windows 95 cd-roms have the Church of Scientology's copyrighted teachings hidden on the disk
. They're meeting with Guido, to put out a contract on the parties that started the open systems myth
. They've gone to Oklahoma City, to enroll in the FAA's Air Traffic Controller training program, to start a less-stressful career
. They're seeing a commodities broker, to arrange direct deposit of their paychecks into buying coffee bean futures.
. /pub/lunch
. Look better. He/She is probably in the basement somewhere behind the modem racks
. The admin finally took a day off
. It's 9 AM. He/she is not working that late.
. Vendor demonstration
. Convenience store across the street opened
. Pizza delivery is at the front door
. The admin is sleeping under the floor tiles
. The admin is on some floor, in some wiring closet, trying to fix things
. The admin is in the dumpster behind the building trying to get rid of some frustration by using a sledgehammer on the Macs
. The trauma induced by repeated attempts to install Solaris 2.5 pre-beta on an Intel system has forced him to seek psychotherapy
. The admin is still trying to come down from inhaling too much tape head cleaner
. The admin is out chasing the rodents off of the twisted pair/power lines
. The admin has gone home to sleep (1st time in x days)
. The admin has been convicted of computer crimes
. What was your username?
. The admin is emptying the bit buckets
. They finally caught him/her for that big site-massacre (s)he thought (s)he'd gotten away with
. ObReason n+x: Your system administrator is walking in circles outside saying "TUESDAY? They want it by TUESDAY? TUESDAY?"
. rcp $FAV_RESTAURANT:$FAV_FOOD /dev/stomach
. The admin is hiding in wiring closet
. The admin is outside having a smoke because it's illegal in the building
. The admin is on the roof of the building, contemplating jumping
. The admin is on the roof of the building, contemplating which users to throw off
. The admin is on the roof of the building, contemplating traffic
. The admin is on the roof of the building, contemplating
. The admin is in his/her manager's office, trying to explain why the manager gets lots of calls from lusers who can't find the Sysadmin
. The admin is in his/her manager's office, trying to explain why the "real" (programming) work doesn't get done. Manager doesn't understand -- when he gave you this job, he said it would only take a couple of hours a week....
. The admin is in luser's office, trying to explain why "export VAR=xxx" from one xterm window doesn't have any effect on the other windows. "But they're all on the same Xstation -- what's the problem?"
. The admin is down in the administrative offices fixing one of their DOS boxes
. The admin is out getting a caffeine fix
. There's more caffeine than blood in his veins, and he was last seen hopping down the hall pretending he was a pogo stick
. The admin is too busy playing with the Web
. ...reading news
. ...sleeping
. ...reading other peoples email (not that I do this...)
. ...installing the latest Xgame on the main fileserver (this is real cool)

Help me understand

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:34:28 +0000

“Help me understand…” – I HATE that phrase. It’s a plea for someone else to be responsible for your ability to comprehend. That’s not my problem to solve.

Perl script for remote ssh login

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 08:55:39 +0000

It can be a bit tedious having to keep logging into remote servers to perform repeated tasks, so I have created a template script that allows me to configure a series of commands to be issued remotely.

Fork you ! or how the social coding can help you

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 08:53:26 +0000

With github and bitbucket coming around, a lot of new usages appears for the developpers: it's now easy to get feedback on your code/modifications, and to get help from others by, for instance, forking repositories.

Sense

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:42:52 +0000

This image makes me think of the video clip of Takin’ Back My Love by Enrique Iglesias and Ciara. I fail to see the logic behind the different attacks : she drops his paintings and clothes into the swimming pool, while he barely spills the milk on the floor. WTF ? *No clue on where this image first appeared, so I won’t be able to give proper credit.

Release Party Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze by SbLUG

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:51:36 +0000

As the new version of Debian GNU/Linux is about to be launched in 5 days, the Linux User Group in Sibiu is preparing a traditional release party for the well known distribution at Haller Cafe on 5th February 7 PM local time. The event will be divided in 3 parts: contributions to the Debian GNU/Linux project, beer & comments on Squeeze and possible some bowling in the end.

Monitor MySQL restore progress with pv

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:36:49 +0000

The pv command is one that I really enjoy using but it's also one that I often forget about. You can't get a much more concise definition of what pv does than this one:

Bash script to create MySQL database and user

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:29:27 +0000

Here is a little script I made to quickly and easily create users and databases for MySQL. I only use this for development, for actual deployed applications you would probably want to be more specific about the privileges given:

How to determine linux distribution

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 13:20:30 +0000

I work with a wide variety of client server deployments, and sometimes it isn’t obvious(via uname) what distribution and version a server is running. Here is a quick list of common files which contain that information:

Keep track of packages you have installed

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:03:04 +0000

During development on a linux system, you probably install many packages using your favorite package manager. When you have to use a new system, or reimage your current one, it can be a pain to remember all the packages you had setup. One solution is to keep a list of the packages installed after the OS load, and then periodically generate a list of what has been added since.

Migrate Linux Servers Across Cloud Providers

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:45:08 +0000

I wrote a shell script to assist in migrating an entire Linux CentOS 5.X server. The script should work with most Red Hat based Linux distributions such as Fedora, but I have not officially tested it. I only tested with CentOS and Ubuntu. The shell script can be used to move a server instance to a different physical server, or even move a server to a completely new data center or provider. I recently tested the script by moving a server instance of CentOS 5.5 x64 on Slicehost to Rackspace Cloud Servers successfully. It should also work migrating to Linode or Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. The script takes the entire source server and rsyncs everything that is important, to a destination server, excluding certain naughty directories such as /boot, /proc, /sys, /tmp, and /dev which should not be transferred. Make sure the destination server is a completely fresh install of the exact same operating system as the source. Also, the source and destination servers should be running the exact same kernel version, or else you may experience strange things like “Could not load /lib/modules/SOME-KERNEL-VERSION/SOME-MODULE-NAME”. The script automatically handles housekeeping such as installing rsync on both the source and destination servers. It also attempts to stop services on the source that should not be running when rsyncing to provide a consistent snapshot. You may modify the services the script stops on the source, currently it handles all the major popular services; Lighttpd, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL, ProFTP, and Postfix.

Perl Script to hunt and kill selected PIDs

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:47:14 +0000

If you ever run a selection of applications or processes and regularly get lock-ups due to a lack of processing power or RAM. This script allows you to add a selection of non-essential apps to a list which can be knocked-out if resources are running low.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released with complete free Linux Kernel

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:59:28 +0000

The Debian project has been working in removing non-free firmware from the Linux kernel shipped with Debian for the past two release cycles. At the time of the releases of Debian 4.0 Etch and 5.0Lenny, however, it was not yet possible to ship Linux kernels stripped of all non-free firmware bits. Back then we had to acknowledge that freedom issues concerning Linux firmware were not completely sorted out.

postfix - mailbox size limit and message size limit

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:55:32 +0000

Postfix is my MTA of choice. I use it for my mailserver because its simplicity , security and sendmail-compatible (the widely used smtp in the world but not as secure). It is also extensible by plugging other servers for various purposes (antispam, antivirus,database etc).

Mounting NFS volumes from a Solaris server on a Linux Client with root access

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:03:58 +0000

If you are having trouble mounting nfs volumes on a Solaris 10/11 server from a linux client, here is the secret voodo chant:

Better Network Performance

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 11:26:24 +0000

As we all know a basic install of any OS is never tweaked out for performance but setup for general use. One of the biggest problems in the Linux (CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, I have not tested other OS’s) is the network is never really tweaked up.

Backup and Synchronize your Bookmarks with Dropbox

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:18:35 +0000

Dropbox is a great application for keeping your bookmarks of iceweasel ( or firefox ) at a safe spot. Type in your URL bar about:config and search for browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML . Doubleclick it so that the Value will become true. Now close iceweasel ( firefox ) and go to your profile folder ( check ~/.mozilla/firefox ). The profile folder xxxxxxxx.default is the profile folder name for the default profile, where xxxxxxxx represents a random strung of characters. Their you will find a file bookmarks.html. Move this file to your Dropbox folder and create a softlink back to your profile folder. Everytime iceweasel ( firefox ) is closed the most recent bookmarks.html will be written to your Dropbox folder...

Free public DNS servers list

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:22:48 +0000

Here is a list of public DNS servers which are free for everyone to use. There are several reasons why you would want to use alternative DNS servers, such as speeding up your browsing experience and improving your security, but the most obvious one? is as a backup solution when your ISP servers are down.

The ABC's of Unix

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 10:04:43 +0000

A is for awk which runs like a snail, and B is for biff which reads all your mail.

Back up your important files

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 07:12:17 +0000

Once you have got your distro setup all nicely, backup all your important config files !!

Debian stop MTA start up at boot and other services

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 07:12:05 +0000

I always get this with wireless and MTA when booting Debian due to the way I configure my network card.

Count from one to ten in binary

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:58:11 +0000

Counting in binary:

What you think about the new face?

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:34:17 +0000

[What you think about the new face?](http://polldaddy.com/poll/4053887/)[customer surveys](http://polldaddy.com/features-surveys/)

Redirecting Apache traffic to a maintenance page

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 08:41:36 +0000

Here’s a simple solution to redirect users to a maintenance page in Apache. This rewrite rule can stay in your config ( < VirtualHost > or .htaccess) all the time; all that you need to enable it is to create the file maintenance.html.

Setting up SSH host shortnames

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:22:47 +0000

Here’s an example setup to create SSH host shortnames. On your local computer, add the following to ~/.ssh/config :

The Linux directory structure

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 10:11:33 +0000

Just open up a terminal and have a browse through these directories to get an idea of where everything is.

Take a Screenshot and Make it Public using Dropbox

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:00:49 +0100

If you already have Dropbox you already know that it has a Public folder where you can save files for everyone to download. If you are using the GUI version of Dropbox you can even right click on the file and get a public link to hand out. Although this works great, we can automate this process and make it easier.

Optimize all tables from all databases

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:56:29 +0100

The following command will optimize all of your databases' tables within MySQL. It is important to optimize tables to reduce data fragmentation.

10 Things to Remember When Installing Linux

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:29:39 +0100

Not the usual bunch!

OpenVMS and network information

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 07:24:52 +0100

If you don’t know where to look, OpenVMS networking information can seem to be confined inside a mysterious black box. It doesn’t have to be.

Using multiuser sessions in GNU Screen

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 17:58:45 +0100

GNU Screen is a fantastic utility; however, if you want to use multiuser sessions – that is to share your screen session with another user – you’ll have to set it up.

How much memory is in the box? (all UNIX, OpenVMS)

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:05:25 +0100

How much memory is in this machine? It would seem that answering this question ought to be easy; it is – but every system has the answer in a different place. Most put an answer of some sort into kernel messages reported by dmesg (AIX apparently does not). Most systems have a program for system inventory which reports a variety of things, including memory. Rather than go into great detail about each one, we’ll just put these out there for all of you to reference. Each environment has multiple commands that give available memory; each command is listed below. Without further ado, here are a few answers to this burning question:

The English language in 24 accents

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:35:46 +0100

This guy is brilliant, he can speak English with 24 different accents and he’s doing it pretty well. The actual thing starts at 1:00. Enjoy!

Find duplicate files

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:25:16 +0100

How to find those files that have different names but exactly the same content?

Linux quick, easy, file sharing server with one command

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:27:06 +0100

Don’t install a server, just issue one command!

Wireless IEEE 802.XX Standards

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:54:09 +0100

Practically everybody has at least one Wireless enabled laptop or desktop, so what do all those IEEE specifications mean?

Python script to backup mysql databases on Debian servers

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:12:36 +0100

Here’s a short python script I must have knocked up some time ago – and totally forgotten – hopefully it’ll be of some use to others….

Asterisk – setting the caller id through an ldap lookup

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:20:44 +0100

Having just upgraded to asterisk 1.6, I was faced with the problem of callerid lookup no longer working. We’d previously used the external LDAPGet module to lookup against our internal LDAP directory – but the module doesn’t compile in 1.6, so here’s a quick and dirty workaround which requires you have ldap-utils installed on your server.

How to know which process is going to be the “next”

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:48:40 +0100

If the memory runs out the kernel just use an agent which will try to free some memory by killing those processes which are both old and fat (i.e. use a lot of memory for too long). Every process comes with a score which is constantly updated by the kernel. You can view the score by lurking in /proc/$PID/oom_score.

Block brute force attacks on your SSH server

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:32:55 +0100

-A INPUT -i eth0.103 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set --name SSH --rsource -A INPUT -i eth0.103 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -m recent --rcheck --seconds 30 --hitcount 4 --rttl --name SSH --rsource -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset -A INPUT -i eth0.103 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -m recent --rcheck --seconds 30 --hitcount 3 --rttl --name SSH --rsource -j LOG --log-prefix "SSH brute force " -A INPUT -i eth0.103 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -m recent --update --seconds 30 --hitcount 3 --rttl --name SSH --rsource -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset -A INPUT -i eth0.103 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

Sort web server logs to find top users

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:00:32 +0100

Sometimes there is a very quick need to determine what user(s) are causing high load to a particular page. Instead of tailing high-speed logs and giving yourself a headache, Throw in a one-lined piped cat command to give you the info you’re after without the foreplay. cat /path/to/access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail

(OpenVZ) Setting timezones across all VPS`S

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:30:07 +0100

All of servers that I manage are currently based off of the Phoenix, Arizona, USA Timezone. This script allows this conversion from each HN (Host Node):

Cisco Virtual Private Network with Network Manager

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:19:15 +0100

NetworkManager has pluggable support for Virtual Private Network software, including Cisco compatible VPNs using vpnc. In a terminal type: aptitude install network-manager-vpnc network-manager-vpnc-gnome After installing network-manager-vpnc and the gui (network-manager-vpnc-gnome) for xfce4 or gnome. Left click the NetworkManager panel icon and select VPN Connections>Configure VPN...

Dropbox and Xfce (Thunar)

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:43:29 +0100

Thunar Dropbox is a plugin that adds context-menu items from dropbox into the Thunar file manager. So if you use Xfce and dropbox can find a installation .deb on maato's softwarebakery site.

Security question stupidity

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:54:34 +0100

I just needed to create a Yahoo! account for someone who wanted to be able to access some of my photos. This required creating security questions and answers, and as usual the questions available to pick from were really awful. It just got stupider, though, when I tried to pick answers that I would be able to remember. (Many security questions are horrible because their answers change over time.)

Fighting Dell’s customer support service…

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:55:23 +0100

For a few weeks already, I’m fighting with Dell’s customer support to get an Optiplex PC at work properly repaired. One of the USB ports from a system in our public computer rooms at the university, was broken. My colleague called Dell’s support service and they promised us to send a new front panel with USB port. A few days later, still nothing had arrived, so I called them again. This time they promised us to send a technician the next day in order to repair the machine.

Convert VOB to AVI using ffmpeg

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:05:28 +0100

Suppose you have a myVideo.vob and you want to convert to avi format. Open a terminal and execute the following command $ ffmpeg -i myVideo.vob myvideo.avi Possible errors: 1 "ffmpeg: symbol lookup error: ffmpeg: undefined symbol: avcodec_channel_layout_num_channels" Solution: $ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/ && ffmpeg -i myVideo.vob myvideo.avi If this doesnt solve the problem then retry that after installing the libavcodec52 and libavutil49 packages: $ aptitude install libavcodec52 libavutil49

PacketTracer and Linux

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 07:43:44 +0100

There is a bug with PacketTracer which seems relatively minor but can cause a lot of frustration to users.

Who’s abusing your Wordpress website?

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 00:26:36 +0100

I wanted to know what IP addresses were hitting my website. I’d done this before and it only took a moment or two to recreate the following commands. Still, here it is for future reference:

System Administrator Inspiration

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:34:26 +0100

How do I become a better systems administrator?

Basic configuration of Cisco IOS with SSH

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:40:50 +0100

Here is my very basic configuration of a Cisco router running IOS. Just remember to change all {VARIABLE} to the correct value including the {} part.

Difference between SIGTERM & SIGKILL

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:45:50 +0100

Sending signals to processes using kill) on a Unix system is not a new topic for most systems administrators, but I've been asked many times about the difference between kill and kill -9.

A geek`s perspective on cloud hosting

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:14:59 +0100

The term "cloud hosting" has become more popular over the past few years and it seems like everyone is talking about it. I'm often asked by customers and coworkers about what cloud hosting really is. Where does traditional dedicated hosting end and cloud begin? Do they overlap? Who needs cloud and who doesn't?

No sound problem in Ubuntu

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:01:30 +0100

One after another 17 days have passed.. till today my laptop was completely silent when i booted into Ubuntu. But now, just 10 mins back, after a lot of hit and trial with driver model, I could make my laptop speak. Here's what I did. Though I specified this as ubuntu problem in title, it the problem of alsa; it's not recognizing your device.

Saving Keystrokes With Bash

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:38:39 +0100

Bash is a wonderful fully featured shell that provides a multitude of ways to cut back on your keystrokes. One of my favorite features, which I don’t see used often enough, is brace expansion. Simply put, brace expansion lets you specify multiple similar arguments without retyping the commonalities. Let’s take a look at how this is accomplished.

Grep Sed and Awk

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:37:30 +0100

In this post I will list commands that I use and include at least one of grep,sed or awk. cat filename | grep "phrase" Search line containing phrase in file

Verify IPv4 address in php using regex

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:07:58 +0100

A simple function in php to verify IPV4 Address. It is completely based in regex and does full ip verifying. It tests the ip for; 1. Need 4 numeric blocks separated by a dot. 2. Each numeric block must noot exceed 255. 3. Shouldn't contain space. So remember to trim before calling this function.

Dropbox for BlackBerry is here (beta)

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:51:01 +0100

Given Dropbox is available for so many other devices, this latest bit comes with less surprise. That said, it is good news nonetheless. Dropbox has just announced the beta of their BlackBerry app. The catch so far, the app is available in a limited beta, which means you may or may not get access right now. In other words, if you are a BlackBerry user and want Dropbox—stop reading and hit the read link below. Otherwise, the BlackBerry app remains as what we have come to love with Dropbox including a free account that offers 2GB of storage and being able to access your files from a wide variety of devices.

Split and merge pdf files in Ubuntu

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:41:31 +0100

The easiest way to split, merge or edit pdf files in Ubuntu is to use pdftk utility. This rather old (latest version was released in 2006) but still simple and powerful program can be installed in Ubuntu (Debian or any deb-family Linux distribution) by the following command in terminal:

Back from FLOSSCamp 2010

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:31:49 +0100

I am back home after FLOSSCamp 2010 and swamped with work, having to prepare a lot of servers, updates and shit. But tomorrow I go to montains :D so BBL in 6 days .

I am going to FLOSSCamp 2010

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:17:05 +0100

I can't miss FLOSSCamp, it has become a tradition and everybody will be there. It will happen at Poiana Secuilor, near Predeal. If you don't know what is a FLOSSCamp for us, here is a description: an offline meeting for FLOSS contributors from all Romania, no matter their project affiliation, where we spend a week-end in the middle of the nature, with talks, distro-wars, camp fire, beer, grilled food, fun time and so on (a flamewar is so much better face to have with a beer in hand...).

Happy SysAdmin Day!!

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:14:22 +0100

Secretaries, the unsung heroes of any office and corporate structure have their own "holiday" where we show our appreciation with fruit baskets, flowers, and ideally ; An Excellent Lunch on the Boss's American Express Platinum.

(nginx) 413 Request Entity Too Large

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:29:10 +0100

If you’re getting 413 Request Entity Too Large errors trying to upload with Nginx , you need to increase the size limit in nginx.conf . Add client_max_body_size xxM inside the server section, where xx is the size (in megabytes) that you want to allow.

What is cloud computing in simple terms..

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:48:16 +0100

Cloud has been making a lot of noise and almost every tech (or tech related) person knows about it or at least heard of it. Now for those who have just heard about it but do not know what it means here is a quick definition from Dave Neilsen, the founder of Cloud-Camp. He says, "For something to be called cloud, it should have these properties :

RackSpace Cloud new server script

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:00:38 +0100

I've found myself setting up lots of servers over at RackSpace Cloud lately. It seemed look a good idea to automate everything instead of leaving it up to myself to remember everything you have to do each time.

Creating a “bash alias” with an argument

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:26:34 +0100

While setting up and testing the anti virus/spam filter of a mail server I usually send a lot of “test spam” to myself and that involves a pretty long line that needs to be typed in every time, and changed for every mail account i test. I want to make an alias for this using an argument containing the email address, but bash makes it hard if not impossible to do so with an alias. Fortunately it allows you to create an function instead.

Things you do NOT want your System Administrator to say.

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:57:29 +0100

Uh-oh.....
. Shit!!
. What the hell!?
. Go get your backup tape. (You do have a backup tape?)
. That's SOOOOO bizarre.
. Wow!! Look at this.....
. Hey!! The suns don't do this.
. Terminated??!
. What software license?
. Well, it's doing something.....
. Wow....that seemed fast.....
. I got a better job at Lockheed...
. Management says...
. Sorry, the new equipment didn't get budgetted.
. What do you mean that wasn't a copy?
. It didn't do that a minute ago...
. Where's the GUI on this thing?
. Damn, and I just bought that pop...
. Where's the DIR command?
. The drive ate the tape but that's OK, I brought my screwdriver.
. I cleaned up the root partition and now there's lots of free space.
. What's this "any" key I'm supposed to press?
. Do you smell something?
. What's that grinding sound?
. I have never seen it do that before...
. I think it should not be doing that...
. I remember the last time I saw it do that...
. You might as well all go home early today ...
. My leave starts tomorrow.
. Ooops.
. Hmm, maybe if I do this...
. "Why is my "rm *.o" taking so long?"
. Hmmm, curious...
. Well, my files were backed up.
. What do you mean you needed that directory?
. What do you mean /home was on that disk? I umounted it!
. Do you really need your home directory to do any work?
. Oracle will be down until 8pm, but you can come back in and finish your work when it comes up tonight.
. I didn't think anybody would be doing any work at 2am, so I killed your job.
. Yes, I chowned all the files to belong to pvcs. Is that a problem to you?
. We're standardizing on AIX.
. Wonder what this command does?
. What did you say your (l)user name was...? ;-)
. You did what to the floppy???
. Sorry, we deleted that package last week...
. NO! Not that button!
. Uh huh......"nu -k $USER".. no problem....sure thing...
. Sorry, we deleted that package last week...
. [looks at workstation] "Say, what version of DOS is this running?"
. Oops! (said in a quiet, almost surprised voice)
. YEEEHA!!! What a CRASH!!!
. What do you mean that could take down the whole network?
. What's this switch for anyways...?
. Tell me again what that '-r' option to rm does
. Say, What does "Superblock Error" mean, anyhow?
. If I knew it wasn't going to work, I would have tested it sooner.
. Was that your directory?
. System coming down in 0 min....
. The backup procedure works fine, but the restore is tricky!
. Hey Fred, did you save that posting about restoring filesystems with vi and a toothpick? More importantly, did you print it out?
. OH, SH*T! (as they scrabble at the keyboard for ^c).
. The sprinkler system isn't supposed to leak is it?
. It is only a minor upgrade, the system should be back up in a few hours. (This is said on a monday afternoon.)
. I think we can plug just one more thing in to this outlet strip with out triping the breaker.
. What is all this I here about static charges destroying computers?
. I found this rabbit program that is supposed to test system performance and I have it running now.
. Ummm... Didn't you say you turned it off?
. The network's down, but we're working on it. Come back after diner. (Usually said at 2200 the night before thesis deadline...)
. Ooops. Save your work, everyone. FAST!
. Boy, it's a lot easier when you know what you're doing.
. I hate it when that happens.
. And what does it mean 'rm: .o: No such file or directory'?
. Why did it say '/bin/rm: not found'?
. Nobody was using that file /vmunix, were they?
. You can do this patch with the system up...
. What happens to a Hard Disk when you drop it?
. The only copy of Norton Utilities was on THAT disk???
. Well, I've got a backup, but the only copy of the restore program was on THAT disk....
. What do mean by "fired"?
. hey, what does mkfs do?
. where did you say those backup tapes were kept?
. ...and if we just swap these two disc controllers like this...
. don't do that, it'll crash the sys........ SHIT
. what's this hash prompt on my terminal mean?
. dd if=/dev/null of=/vmunix
. find /usr2 -name nethack -exec rm -f {};
. now it's funny you should ask that, because I don't know either
. Any more trouble from you and your account gets moved to the 750
. Ooohh, lovely, it runs SVR4
. SMIT makes it all so much easier......
. Can you get VMS for this Sparc thingy?
. I don't care what he says, I'm not having it on my network
. We don't support that. We won't support that.
. ...and after I patched the microcode...
. You've got TECO. What more do you want?
. We prefer not to change the root password, it's an nice easy one
. Just add yourself to the password file and make a directory...

Radiotray radio player for Ubuntu

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:47:41 +0100

Just came across smart Ubuntu online radio client: radiotray. As it comes from its name radiotray sits in Ubuntu’s system tray and just plays online radio (see the screenshot taken on my Ubuntu Lucid Lynx). You can of course stop playing or select different channel (there are four channels coming by default). I found this utility useful when working as it doesn’t required to keep in RAM such monster like amarok just for listening the radio. Nice and simple application.

I can't beleive people still do this....

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:20:43 +0100

It's 2010. We have cars that park themselves, my cell phone can do more than my first computer, America have a black president with a funny name. What does all that add up to? We live in the future. Yet still, after all this progress, there are some people that haven't learned to include an error message in a ticket. Users, please understand this. Yes, we IT people are amazing. We can clear unclearable printer jam. We know a dieing hard drive just from the sound of it. We even know how to install and use iTunes. It may look to you like we are wizards, technomancers. We are not. There's no magic in this. We just know what to look at. If there's an error message, that's usually a good place to start.

Why VPS will take over the planet?

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:38:46 +0100

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) provide a chunk of computing power, coupled with storage space and networking. Many commercial hosting providers offer “dedicated shared hosting”, meaning they split up a machine into multiple chunks and rent them out individually. Often customers receive “root-level” access to their VPS, which are designed so that root in one VPS cannot touch another VPS running on the same hardware.

Update your RSS reader

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:00:08 +0100

I've changed the location of this RSS feed to the following:

dpkg selections to backup and install packages

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:55:38 +0100

Sometimes you want to be able to install packages on another machine without the hassle of a long apt-get install command or having to write down every single package you've installed.

Finding files over a set size with find & awk

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:34:56 +0100

This is a really great simple way to find files on the filesystem that are over 200k in size.

Quick PF sync

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:27:16 +0100

This is a small bash script for syncing PF rules ant tables from one firewall to another (if changes are made to fw1, this script is running on fw2). The script requires ssh keys to be generated and configured for autologin. The script also saves backups of old configs when replacing them.

Backup and restore MySQL from shell

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:28:11 +0100

Backup is a VERY important thing. I’m unfortunately not the best to remember it myself and it’s been costly.. But it is also very nice to dump all tables to a file and move it to another server and restore it with a simple command (after you have created the database of course).

Nginx vs Apache = 1 - 0

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:48:05 +0100

I spent the better part of the evening converting several sites belonging to a friend of mine from Apache to Nginx. Previously the front page of the biggest site (written in Joomla) took anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds to load. If request load got even moderately heavy, Apache would quickly exhaust the 256MB of memory available in the VPS and the site would become permanently unavailable as processes were killed by the kernel, requiring the VPS to be restarted.

Wordpress cache and Nginx

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:21:47 +0100

WP Super Cache is a very good tool for speeding up your WordPress installation while at the same time reducing server load. However, WP Super Cache uses mod_rewrite to handle requests, which is not compatible with Nginx. For it to work with Nginx we need to create a few rewrite rules in the server config file.

Nginx Error: Increase server_names_hash_bucket_size

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:08:49 +0100

During an initial server build with Nginx, I was having trouble starting the web server. Testing the Nginx configuration, the reported error was:

Rackspace Cloud vs. Amazon EC2

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:31:33 +0100

Rackspace Cloud, or Amazon EC2, which is best? This is just a quick performance comparison using SysBench. The following products where tested.

How to sync your djbdns zones with rsync

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:21:08 +0100

I wrote earlier about publishing zones with djbdns. That post didnâ€™t cover zone sync between djbdns servers. This small guide assumes weâ€™ll be syncing all zones between two servers, s01 and s02.

Distributed filesystem with GlusterFS

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 09:11:01 +0100

This setup contains two GlusterFS-servers and one client, named s01, s02 and c01 in the examples below. Data stored in the mount point on c01 will be destributed to s01 and s02.

How to djbdns

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:18:47 +0100

This is how to publish a simple zone with djbdns, I will be doing this on Ubunut 9.10. Start by installing djbdns.

Install latest kernel in Ubuntu 10.04

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:32:15 +0100

This short walkthrough describes how to get the latest linux kernel working under Ubuntu Linux without having to compile it yourself.

OpenVZ and IPv6 configuration

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:24:20 +0100

I have not found any recommentation to configure IPv6 for Debian/Lenny/Ubuntu OpenVZ hosts. The OpenVZ project always lacks a bit of documentation when it comes to v6, so here is how you get it working with venet devices.

Automate your nmap scans

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:55:28 +0100

Whipped this up for work, figured I'd share with the world, since it's decently useful. Stick it in cron nightly, needs to run as root. It will run a diff on what it sees and email you if there are new ports/hosts that pop up on your networks.

Importance of RAID

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 07:46:14 +0100

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is a key technology to mission critical / business servers which aim for the highest possible uptime on their servers. While S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) hard disk technology can warn of an impending disk failure, there is no guarantee that it will give any sort of warning before a total failure.

Cleaning off a Hacked Site

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 08:34:54 +0100

It seems people underestimate the value of security. Most sites that I check on are running old versions of popular web applications (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, vBulletin, phpBB, etc.) and itâ€™s downright scary. These applications, due to their extreme popularity, are huge targets for hackers. Many succeed, too. They have such large codebases that sometimes the developers slip up and leave security holes open.

Resyncing slaves with slaves

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:53:30 +0100

When dealing with replicated setups with two or more slaves sharing a master, it appears as if a lot of people overlook the obvious. You donâ€™t need to take your master down to resync a slave. I was hoping I wouldnâ€™t need to post about this, but I see people taking down their masters when they have perfectly healthy slaves way too often to let it slip.

Drunk or Tired

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:57:14 +0100

As system administrator, the occasional all-nighter is necessary to fix things that go wrong. We also know that the majority of errors can be traced to human error â€“ including those that affect server stability.

How to choose your web framework

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 10:33:09 +0100

Choose a web framework is a complicated issue. Evaluating different technical issues is mandatory. You need to bear in mind programming languages, ORMâ€™s, testing frameworks, how to make logging and so on. But other non-technical aspects like experience, kind of project and deadeline are important too. Performance and scalability are important, no doubt, but perhaps only is the application is growing up.

Nowadays is easy to find different and good web frameworks like Rails, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, TurboGears, Django, Quixote or Spring. My personal advice is to evaluate two or three at least to take a right decision.

Here you have a small summary with issues to bear in mind before choosing a web framework:

Install Apache and PHP 5 on FreeBSD

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:07:42 +0100

Install Apache with PHP5 support on FreeBSD is easy when you use the port system. First you must install PHP 5 with mod_php support for Apache:

CHRONOS backup script is HERE

Fri, 14 May 2010 23:46:23 +0100

Finally i had some time to finish my backup script...you can find sources and the script in the link...I wait for your feedback :D

Compile FFmpeg on Ubuntu Karmic

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 19:13:15 +0100

Install the following packages:

Rent a SysAdmin

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:50:44 +0100

No money / time for a fulltime system administrator ? Of maybe you need extra help besides your current system administration ? Rent a SysAdmin for a parttime price.One fixed price a month, every day administration on your servers / workstations. -changes will be made outside office hours. -support outside office hours. -reports. -All software always up-to-date.

How to encrypt and decrypt a password protected file

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:29:02 +0100

The files can be password protected, so you can carry them in a flash memory, and if you loose the flash, you do not have to worry about your info, as it will not be readable.

Stop me if YOU can

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:14:23 +0100

Lazy sysadmin..poor puppet

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 03:29:31 +0100

Iâ€™ve been lazy :D at maintaining my servers recently and decided to start playing with puppet reports. First I started with something simple that helps me to find on which machines my manifests have some failure.

Bash script to update remote RHEL distributions

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:01:35 +0100

This bash script will help you to update all servers if you have more then 2 ;) it is very handy

Help give an name

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:30:38 +0100

I need your HELP to give an name to my full backup script :D it is my very old script now i will resurrect him and i want to make the script public and for that I need an name :D

Remove PDF passwords and encryption

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:47:06 +0100

Have you ever gotten a pdf with one of those annoying passwords? A while back I bought an e-book and it came with a password. Its really annoying especially if I want to read it on a mobile device. Anyway if you are annoyed as much as I am fear no more.

System and Network Administrator's Tasks

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:53:49 +0100

I have been thinking about this, and came up with my own list of System/Network Admin truths. I struggled with the word truths, and instead of refering to my list as System and Network Admin truths, I see this list as a list of tasks or responsibilities that if maintained on a daily basis, will help System and Network Administrators to reduce downtime and ensure that they are better prepared to deal with issues when they occur.

Atom&ION board replaces my old fileserver

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:59:38 +0100

I've got myself a Zotac ION ITX A board (with an Atom 330) to replace my old home fileserver's hardware (P4). This worked out well, but there are some traps:

How to install dig on CentOS

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:46:30 +0100

Simple one this, but it could be hard to find if you donâ€™t know how!

Shrink or resize logical volumes LVM on RHEL

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:43:48 +0100

By default RHEL, CentOS, Fedora use all available space for the LV â€œLogVol00â€³, which means that to shrink the partition you must first boot from the CenOS CD enter rescue mode then check the file system, resize the file system and then finally resize the LV. Worth noting this guide should work for just about any distro using LVM2, however the LV name will most likely be different, this guide also assumes you want to resize you LV to 10G, if you donâ€™t obviously change the size.

Ping entire subnet

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:19:42 +0100

Wrote a quick bash script to find which ipâ€™s on our subnet return a ping.

How to create ramdisk in Ubuntu/Linux

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:40:57 +0000

I hope many of you will agree that sometimes itâ€™s really good idea to have some small amount of RAM mounted as a filesystem. It may be necessary when running some bash or perl script that handles, say, thousands of small files so itâ€™s much more effective not to waste computer resources on reading/writing data on hard disk but keep those files directly in memory. This idea is known as Virtual RAM Drive or ramdisk and can be setup in Ubuntu or almost any other Linux distribution using the following commands under root (to become root in Ubuntu use "**sudo -s**â€œ):

Howto protect services like SSH against brute force using only IPtables

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:24:59 +0000

Port Knocking is an approach that helps protecting your services ports from attacks the most famous brute forced would be SSH , the port knocking method depends that the client trying to connect will first attempt to connect to a predefined ports which will enable connection to your secured service port for 5 seconds , here is a simple script to set this kind of protection

Monitoring MySQL Replication with Munin and mk-heartbeat

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:52:36 +0000

We use Munin and MySQL Replication from our production systems for hot standby purposes. But how to know if replication breaks?

Enabling IPv6 Support in nginx

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:38:34 +0000

This is going to be a really short post, but for someone it could save an hour of life.

Automatic "zombie" processes killing (shell script)

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:41:22 +0000

Here is a shell script example that can be run by cron for automatic killing of zombie processes in Linux system:

How to block/allow packets sent by specific Operating System with iptables?

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:37:22 +0000

Question**: How can I block traffic coming from specific operating system in Linux? In other words, how can I block traffic from Windows users on my firewall and allows other people?

Regenerate the Apache SSL key and certificate on Debian Lenny

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:41:52 +0000

The default, self-signed certificate used by Apache 2 is called snakeoil, it's generated based on the hostname (as reported by hostname -f) to files /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem and /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key when the ssl-cert package is installed. Here is how to regenerate the key and the certificate in case the hostname is changed:

Cloud Computing - Is it really changing the World?

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:03:32 +0000

Cloud Computing is the network storage of your software applications and data in secured sites. Its main theme is to satisfy the fast growing computing needs of the users. Some of the major examples are Google Docs and Google Apps which provide common business applications online and accessible from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on their servers.

Linux and Windows OpenVPN HOWTO and tutorial, including VPN routing

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:26:21 +0000

OpenVPN is a popular Windows/Linux VPN Server/Client pair. I think thereâ€™s a separate GUI available for it if youâ€™re so minded. This howto will cover command line usage only.

Resume partial file transfers

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:47:07 +0000

I work primarily with UNIX and Linux machines and scp is my main choice to transfer files with. It is both convenient, short and secure.

Grant remote access to MySQL

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:46:55 +0000

Here is a small tutorial if you want to grant remote access to a DB on your server.

Netfilter/iptables split access with multiple ISPs

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:42:09 +0000

The article focuses on using the standard iproute2 tool to allow the box to attempt to balance traffic over multiple uplinks with multiple default routes. While relatively easy to set up, it has a few problems:

Linux script to collect system statistics and send to your email

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:57:30 +0000

This script I use to daily send me the system statistics on my gentoo server. It will also reformat the output to replace tabs with 5 spaces so it will display nicely on your email client. On mail.app the fonts Monaco and Inconsolata displays nicely, but the default font does not.

Root Login Email Notification

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:06:51 +0000

Configuring your server so that when someone logs in with root or su, your server will notify you via email.

Ubuntu Linux convert DHCP network configuration to static IP configuration

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:16:32 +0000

My friend wanted to know how to change or convert DHCP network configuration to static configuration. After initial installation, he wanted to change network settings. Further, his system is w/o GUI system aka X Windows. Here is quick way to accomplish the same: