Every system administrator has learning experiences that need to be shared to help others. Here are some lessons that I learned as a solo system administrator for a small growing company. I was lucky to have the following experiences before…
Navigating Postgresql with Psql command line can be frustrating until you have a quick cheat sheet of simple commands used for typical navigation. Once you get these commands memorized, you can quickly do nearly anything with just a few keystrokes.…
While postgresql is a great database with lots of features that you would normally only get in an enterprise database, navigating through it on the command line the first few lines can be a bit of an experience. So, I…
Postgresql is a great SQL database with lots of great features that you can install for free with just a few quick tasks. First, we need to get the yum repo from postgresql website, use yum to install it and…
If you don’t have a CDN and would like to improve the performance of some of your webpages, you can easily do it using Apache File Cache Module. Apache’s file cache module allows you to specify specific images and files…
Cannot Run Nagios Service Commands – Could not open command file Error After installing Nagios, everything may appear to be up and running just fine until you attempt to run a service command such as “Re-schedule the next check of this…
Most IT Network Administrators are tasked with putting a content filter into place to resolve a myriad of HR issues. Several years ago, I selected a SonicWall NSA to do this for my organization because it did a good job…
Get Detailed Performance Information from Apache You may be looking for a microscope into your Apache httpd service to see how many users you have using it, get performance information, and see the current individual Apache httpd processes and what…
Alert Yourself of Cyber Attacks Ok, this article will not alert you to all cyber attacks, but I wrote this script to help me identify huge changes in traffic to my websites and while it isn’t perfect, it has done…
Configure Passive FTP Server with VSFTP Firewalls attempting to protect their workstation clients behind them make it nearly impossible to use active FTP for transferring files because the firewall will not allow the server to initiate the data port to…
MySQL stores user’s password in a crypto format. It wasn’t too long ago that the default length of the crypto password was stored in a 16 character length. More recently, MySQL has changed their password length capability scheme to up…
I have always been a proponent of using the proper backup tool for the each problem. In Linux, you have many, many options from cp, rsync, tar, cpio, dd, gzip, etc… and each has its place, benefits, and drawbacks. Coming…
The Apache access log is one of the most important files that you can use to create reports on your visitor’s behavior to your website. I often use Awstats (See: http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ ) and other reports on my Apache access_log files. …