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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.

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

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

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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.

Exceed session quits after login

September 29, 2006 – 12:05 pm
istock-18586699-monkey-computer

The following problem is encountered occasionally in most flavors of Unix and versions of Exceed. A user was able to use Exceed without problems to connect to the same Unix server just the other day. …

Contacting the sysadmin from command line

September 28, 2006 – 11:10 pm
colorful shells

If you are a sysadmin, communicating with your users is an important aspect of your job. Phone, e-mail, SMS, and various service request systems are commonly used by most businesses. The problem with all these …

The correct MySQL GRANT syntax

September 21, 2006 – 12:18 pm
mysql_0001

It is surprising how many people run into problems trying to use the GRANT command: everything from not being able to access a database table to losing admin access to MySQL altogether. There’s a bunch …

Palm TX: Review, Software, and Configuration

September 3, 2006 – 7:12 pm
Palm_TX_3_screen

Recently I got a Palm TX and so far I like everything about it. Except for the $300 price tag. Built-in Wi-Fi card and a larger screen that can operate in landscape mode are the …

Changing time

May 11, 2006 – 12:12 am
time clock watch

Unix systems record several time parameters associated with files. Sometimes you might need to set time parameters on a file to a particular value. Or you might need to modify a file without changing any …

Distributed password cracking with Medussa

May 10, 2006 – 2:43 pm
Security concept: Golden closed padlock on digital background, 3d render

Medussa is a password cracking application that supports distributed processing. One node acts as the Medussa server and the rest of the nodes are running the client application. The server node, in addition to running …

Mountpoint permission problem in Solaris

May 4, 2006 – 6:45 pm
sun_solaris_0002

The following condition was originally discovered in OpenSolaris 11 (Bug ID: 4697677). This problem occurs when you do mkdir -m 700 on a mountpoint before mounting it. This superceeds whatever permissions you might give to …

Managing your MP3 collection

May 3, 2006 – 10:40 am
storage barrels cluster hpc

Remember all the MP3s you ripped or downloaded sitting in that big directory somewhere on your hard drive? Getting those files organized by genre, performer, or album can be daunting task if the MP3s are …

Informix database migration on HP-UX

May 1, 2006 – 10:51 am
construction loader

Rather than rebuilding an Informix database on the new HP-UX server, it possible to migrate the existing installation from the old server. The database resides on raw disks with transparent volumes that are not visible …

Creating large AIX JFS filesystems

April 21, 2006 – 12:01 pm
hard drive disk

A quick note on creating large JFS filesystems on AIX: if the filesystem is 64Gb or might be expanded to over 64Gb any time in the future, make sure the NBPI (Number of Bytes Per …

Monitoring Veritas VM problems on Solaris

April 20, 2006 – 4:41 pm
solaris-logo

Several Veritas VM and system logs can be used to monitor and diagnose problems with the Volume Manager. An automated script can be used to grab the last few lines from these logs whenever a …

Timeline Plots with GNUPlot

April 13, 2006 – 10:52 am

GNUPlot is an open-source versitile data plotting and mathematical charting application. Timeline plot is the most common type of a plot you would generate. It also seems that it’s one of the more capricious features …

Simple network monitoring with ping

April 11, 2006 – 10:12 am
computer_security_it_privacy_0002

In the Spring of 2005 Comcast experienced a major DNS outage. Since then many Comcast users have switched to DNS servers that belong to Verizon and other ISPs. Comcast started taking a lot of flak …

Solaris One-Liners

March 21, 2006 – 12:41 pm
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Useful Solaris commands for system administrators

CUPS printing on Solaris 10

February 28, 2006 – 12:08 pm
sun_solaris_0002

Download the Companion CD for Solaris 10 GA on: Solaris 10 Companion cd download

Generating complex SQL queries with shell scripts

February 21, 2006 – 9:08 am
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It is sometimes necessary to use complex select and insert queries with dozens of variables. Writing such queries by hand is a tedious process and the chance of making a mistake is high. A few …

NFS-mount “Permission denied” error

February 16, 2006 – 11:27 am
keys_security_lock_01

NFS is a relatively uncomplicated functionality of any Unix system. However, from time to time you are bound to run in the “permission denied” error while trying to NFS-mount a filesystem. Everything seems to be …

Protected: Notes on Electronic Security

February 7, 2006 – 12:05 pm

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Wget Google image collector

February 1, 2006 – 1:07 pm
dump truck

Google Images is an extremely useful tool for webmasters, designers, editors, and just about anybody else who’s in a hurry to find just the right photo or clipart. However, this Google tool has a couple …

PHP Web Development Software

January 23, 2006 – 12:48 am
shell

ASP.NET developers have been spoiled by intuitive but inflexible GUIs and IDEs. These Microsoft tools (and various third-party add-ons) make your life as a programmer relatively painless; but only as long as you don’t try …

Accessing Samba server in DMZ

January 22, 2006 – 2:04 pm
Security concept: Golden closed padlock on digital background, 3d render

This note explains how to access a Samba server located on the “orange” DMZ subnet from a Windows PC on the “green” LAN. The problem for Samba is caused by the firewall blocking NETBIOS responses. …

Find and Replace in MySQL

December 28, 2005 – 11:34 am
mysql-logo

A simple one-line command to perform find and replace operations in MySQL: