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March 2, 2022 – 2:00 pm

Books have been written on the subject of awk and sed. Here’s a small sample of commands I put together over the years that are useful for everyday system administration tasks. Most of these tasks …

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Networking

Unix and Linux network configuration. Multiple network interfaces. Bridged NICs. High-availability network configurations.

Applications

Reviews of latest Unix and Linux software. Helpful tips for application support admins. Automating application support.

Data

Disk partitioning, filesystems, directories, and files. Volume management, logical volumes, HA filesystems. Backups and disaster recovery.

Monitoring

Distributed server monitoring. Server performance and capacity planning. Monitoring applications, network status and user activity.

Commands & Shells

Cool Unix shell commands and options. Command-line tools and application. Things every Unix sysadmin needs to know.

Computers Kill

April 23, 2008 – 3:28 am
sniper soldier

Computers kill. That’s right: according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, some 2,600 die every year in car accidents because they got distracted by their cell phone, a GPS gadget, an MP3 player, or …

AI Research: Playing Mind Games

April 23, 2008 – 3:26 am

The news of Artificial Intelligence research always attracted my attention. I myself was a fan of new technology, especially I am a gamer as well and my friends, looting and trading diablo 2 items for …

Filesystem Monitoring

April 21, 2008 – 11:43 am

Filesystem monitoring and notification tool for users.

Your unsecured Wi-Fi network

April 21, 2008 – 2:43 am
wireless access point ap

Network World reports this week that, according to a study by Accenture, some twelve percent of computer users are connecting to some else’s unsecured Wi-Fi networks. So here’s the question I wanted to discuss: is …

Convert MySQL table to CSV file

March 27, 2008 – 4:41 pm
mysql_0002

CSV is a field-separated format that can be easily imported into a spreadsheet application. Usually the separator field is a comma. However, sometimes it is easier to select a more unusual character (like “@” for …

Installing and Configuring Ganglia

March 25, 2008 – 4:19 pm
storage barrels cluster hpc

Ganglia is a distributed performance monitoring application used primarily for tracking status of high-performance compute (HPC) clusters. Ganglia is a royal pain in the ass to install and configure even for a seasoned Unix sysadmin. …

Dealing with ReiserFS bad blocks

March 24, 2008 – 6:42 pm
linux_penguin_0001

The following is a procedure for recovering a ReiserFS filesystem with bad blocks. If this is a system FS and cannot be unmounted, the box needs to be booted from the latest version of Knoppix …

ReiserFS Filesystem Recovery

March 21, 2008 – 3:55 pm
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The this is a description of a method for recovering ReiserFS filesystems from failed disks with bad blocks, when other recovery methods (reiserfsck) will not work. For this example, the failed server is called node1 …

Log Monitoring with Swatch

March 11, 2008 – 1:43 pm
binoculars watch security rifle gun

Swatch is a Perl-based log monitoring tool that can match regular expressions and perform automated actions. The tool is useful for monitoring system log files in real time with an option to run external commands …

Linux User Activity Management

March 9, 2008 – 2:59 pm
sniper soldier

The following is a detailed look into managing Linux users and the system resources they utilize. Disabling user access; halting, killing, and re-nicing user processes; controlling disk space allocation are all points covered by this …

Veritas Cluster Troubleshooting

February 27, 2008 – 1:26 am
hard_disk_drive_hdd_0003

Veritas cluster server is a high availability server. This means that processes switch between servers when a server fails. All database processes are run through this server – and as such, this needs to run smoothly. Note that the oracle process should only actually be running on the server which is active.

Veritas HSM Maintenance

February 12, 2008 – 11:22 am
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When resizing a VXFS filesystem on a server that has HSM running, it is necessary to place HSM in maintenance mode for that particular filesystem. Failing to do so may cause the VFS resize operation …

Protected: SuSE Mail Transfer Agent Configuration

February 7, 2008 – 3:48 am

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Korn Shell Arrays

January 24, 2008 – 11:13 am
shell_001

Here are a few useful examples of how to use data arrays within Korn shell. Arrays are a great tool for storing user input and other data for quick, on-the-fly access. If, for example, you …

A simple text string search script

December 13, 2007 – 1:52 pm
shell

Sometimes you need to locate a text string in various configuration files. You don’t know which files. You can just use “grep *”, but the output is rather messy and you can only search in …

Upgrade procedure for phpBB2

November 1, 2007 – 11:09 am
computer_security_0002

The following is an example procedure for upgrading phpBB2 bulletin board software running under Linux. This procedure allows to retain forum customization.

Download “Changed files only” package from http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php
Tar cvf and gzip the entire phpBB2 installation …

Linux performance tuning

August 22, 2007 – 2:40 pm
linux_penguin_0001

Linux Performance Tuning
April | May 2007 | by Jaqui Lynch
Note: This is the second article in a two-part series. The first installment was published in the February/March issue.
In last issue’s article I introduced basic Linux* …

MySQL query cache

August 17, 2007 – 11:15 am
mysql

Query cache can significantly speed up database operations for identical search queries. This is particularly useful for Web server applications, where multiple requests for the same data are a regular occurrence.
To enable query caching on …

MySQL LOAD DATA Syntax

January 2, 2007 – 8:33 am
Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) pod swimming over coral reef, Ogasawara Island, Japan

Using LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE is a much faster way to insert lots of data into a table than using INSERT. The only preliminary step is to format the input file with unique field separators.
In …

Configuring eMule for Best Performance

December 27, 2006 – 12:22 am
emule_logo1

“eMule is a peer-to-peer file sharing application that works with both the eDonkey network and the Kad network. The distinguishing features of eMule are the direct exchange of
sources between client nodes, fast recovery of corrupted …

Creating table indexes in MySQL

November 21, 2006 – 6:32 pm
logo_mysql

Creating an index for specific columns in a database table can greatly speed up search operations. This is important for any database query that use WHERE in the SQL string. Below is a practical example …

Windows XP Desktop

November 20, 2006 – 12:34 am

A few screenshots of my Windows XP to supplement my collection of KDE and Sun Java Desktop screenshots.