Category: Linux

Troubleshooting Sendmail

Check Your IPAddress to see if it is black listed

Sometimes, you think you should be receiving email from your linux host but the email messages never come. You have verified the email address, you have installed different email program variants, sendmail, mail, mutt, etc…, and yet the messages still…

Configure ODBC for MySQL on CentOS

Migrate Users from MySQL to MySQL

We have already installed ODBC drivers for Oracle and PostgreSQL in prior articles.  In this article, we will install ODBC drivers on CentOS to connect us to an MySQL database.  The general idea is similar to the steps we followed…

Configure Sftp with User Jails

So, at your organization there is a high likelihood that you will need to create an FTP server to allow your customers and vendors to send you files.  While having an ftp server is useful and all, the old standard…

Killing Linux Processes

Killing Linux Processes with TERM Signals

From time to time, if you are a Linux Administrator, you will have to kill a linux process.  The linux kernel has at least 32 signals.  Amongst those 32, you may recognize some of the more common ones:  SIGTERM, SIGHUP,…

Benchmark Your Webpage with Siege

Benchmark Your Webpage with Siege

A few articles ago, I wrote about using the “apachebench” or “ab” utility to benchmark your website (see:  apachebench).  Ab is a great tool, but since then, I have found and fallen in love with a new tool for benchmarking…

Monitor Apache Usage

Monitor Apache Processes at http://uptimemadeeasy.com

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…

Monitor Apache Processes

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…

Resolve Passive FTP Data Port Problems

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…

Setup NTP on CentOS Linux

Set Your Server's Clock with NTP

What is NTP? NTP (Network Time Protocol) is the time protocol that most servers in the world use to keep in sync.  Most companies will have a local NTP server that they keep in sync with an external timing source…

Install VNC Server on Linux

Connected with VNC

Setup a Remote GUI on Linux Using VNC Server There are some times when having a remote GUI console can be very helpful.  You may want to use the GUI interface for configuring the machine or to use applications.  I…

Linux Snapshot Backups

Creating Linux Snapshot Backups

Uptime vs Database Backups Backups of your database can be an enemy to your system uptime.  Doing a filesystem dump of your database tablespace files will require that it occur while your database is down so that you don’t have…

MySQL Master / Slave Replication

Master Slave MySQL Replication Summary Master / Slave replication in MySQL is a great way to store an exact replica of your database on another machine in another location as part of a disaster recovery plan.  Before setting up Master…