Benjamin Cane - A Systems Architect writing about Linux Systems Administration

Benjamin is a Systems Architect working in the financial services industry focused on platforms that require Continuous Availability. He has been working with Linux and Unix for over 10 years now and has recently published his first book; Red Hat Enterprise Linux Troubleshooting Guide.

In addition to writing about Linux; Benjamin is the creator of Automatron, an infrastructure monitoring and automated remediation application used to create self-healing infrastructure. Benjamin has also spoken at SaltConf 2014 where he presented; Using SaltStack in High Availability Environments.

This article will show both BASH code and utilities that can be used to prevent a cron job from having multiple running instances

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2015-09-22 13:20:00

This article is a quick and practical reference for tcpdump, it covers the basics and dives a little bit into advanced usage. This article should cover everything a systems or network administrator needs to get started and troubleshoot issues quickly

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-10-13 14:50:00

Understanding Exit Codes and how to use them in bash scripts

When writing a script that calls other commands, how do you know if they were successful or not? The answer is exit codes, exit codes are important and this article describes how to use them in your scripts and understand them in general.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-09-02 14:45:00

Removing packages and configurations with apt-get

Removing an installed package with apt-get isn't as straight forward as you would think. This article walks you through removing a package the right way to allow for re-installation later and how to fix when an install will not deploy configuration files.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-08-18 14:45:00

Using salt-api to integrate SaltStack with other services

This article will walk you through using salt-api as an entry point for other services to call SaltStack to initiate actions within your infrastructure.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-07-17 00:00:00

8 Tips for creating better bash scripts

This article covers some simple bash scripting best practices that can be used to improve the quality of your shell scripts.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-06-06 07:00:00

Using Saltstack to update all hosts, but not at the same time

This article describes several methods of updating salt minions and how to roll out those updates at different times to avoid taking down all hosts at the same time.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-05-19 05:20:00

This article covers the Linux kill command and how it sends signals to terminate processes. Also why you should avoid using kill -9.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-04-01 08:55:00

This article covers how to secure and encrypt redis traffic by using stunnel. Redis does not by default support SSL encryption, by using stunnel you can forward all redis traffic through a specified SSL tunnel.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-02-18 08:50:00

Converting files from Windows format to Unix format with dos2unix

This article explains what end of line characters are and how to use dos2unix to convert files that contain Windows EOL characters to a Unix format.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-02-11 08:00:00

SaltStack: Getting redundancy and scalability with multiple master servers

A how to article on setting up multiple saltstack master servers for redundancy and scalability. With SaltStack you can easily setup 2 or more master servers in a round robin configuration to provide high availability and scalability to your infrastructure automation tools.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-02-04 08:00:00

8 examples of Bash if statements to get you started

This article shows examples of how to use BASH if statements in scripts and command line. This is a good starter tutorial for those who haven't quite mastered BASH yet.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2014-01-27 08:00:00

RackTables is an interesting IT inventory tracking system that can be used to track IP addresses as well as the hardware they are attached to.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2013-10-14 07:20:46

A lot of sysadmins don't realize you can use grep without cat, this article should settle that. It also shows some other grep tricks.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2013-08-19 08:00:43

An indepth guide on how to create and modify users and some simple tips that make user administration less of a nightmare

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2013-06-24 14:00:20

An article that discusses when it is appropriate and when it is not appropriate to use the rc.local file. A file that has been depreciated in some Linux distributions.

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2011-12-30 09:30:25

This article shows a simple method to validate whether or not a cronjob ran on both Red Hat/Fedora based and Debian based Linux Systems

Written by Benjamin Cane at 2011-11-02 20:00:06

Books I've Written

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Troubleshooting Guide

Identify, capture and resolve common issues faced by Red Hat Enterprise Linux administrators using best practices and advanced troubleshooting techniques

What people are saying:

Excellent, excellent resource for practical guidance on how to troubleshoot a wide variety of problems on Red Hat Linux. I particularly enjoyed how the author made sure to provide solid background and practical examples. I have a lot of experience on Red Hat but still came away with some great practical tools to add to my toolkit. - Amazon Review

Paperback Kindle Safari Books

Latest Articles

Using stunnel and TinyProxy to obfuscate HTTP traffic

Using stunnel to create an SSL tunnel to a TinyProxy HTTP proxy

Using salt-ssh to install Salt

Using SaltStack's ability to run agentless over SSH to install the salt-minion agent

Creating a swap file for tiny cloud servers

What is swap, and how to use a swap file to add memory to low memory cloud servers

Create self-managing servers with Masterless Saltstack Minions

Using Saltstack's Masterless Minion architecture to create self-managing infrastructure

Using Travis CI to test Docker builds

Walk-through on getting started with Travis CI and how to use Travis CI to test Docker builds

Getting started with Docker by Dockerizing this Blog

This article covers the basic concepts of Docker and how to Dockerize an application by creating a custom Dockerfile

Preventing duplicate cron job executions

This article will show both BASH code and utilities that can be used to prevent a cron job from having multiple running instances

Building Self-Healing Applications with Saltstack

This article will explore creating an application that detects errors and corrects them by integrating Saltstack's API

A Quick and Practical Reference for tcpdump

This article is a quick and practical reference for tcpdump, it covers the basics and dives a little bit into advanced usage. This article should cover everything a systems or network administrator needs to get started and troubleshoot issues quickly

Understanding Exit Codes and how to use them in bash scripts

When writing a script that calls other commands, how do you know if they were successful or not? The answer is exit codes, exit codes are important and this article describes how to use them in your scripts and understand them in general.

Removing packages and configurations with apt-get

Removing an installed package with apt-get isn't as straight forward as you would think. This article walks you through removing a package the right way to allow for re-installation later and how to fix when an install will not deploy configuration files.

Using salt-api to integrate SaltStack with other services

This article will walk you through using salt-api as an entry point for other services to call SaltStack to initiate actions within your infrastructure.

8 Tips for creating better bash scripts

This article covers some simple bash scripting best practices that can be used to improve the quality of your shell scripts.

Using Saltstack to update all hosts, but not at the same time

This article describes several methods of updating salt minions and how to roll out those updates at different times to avoid taking down all hosts at the same time.

Using sysdig to Troubleshoot like a boss

An introduction to sysdig, a new tool for advanced system troubleshooting.

Understanding the kill command, and how to terminate processes in Linux

This article covers the Linux kill command and how it sends signals to terminate processes. Also why you should avoid using kill -9.

Getting around the Linux directory structure with the cd command

An overview of the Linux directory structure and how to move around it with the cd command.

Sending redis traffic through an SSL tunnel with stunnel

This article covers how to secure and encrypt redis traffic by using stunnel. Redis does not by default support SSL encryption, by using stunnel you can forward all redis traffic through a specified SSL tunnel.

Converting files from Windows format to Unix format with dos2unix

This article explains what end of line characters are and how to use dos2unix to convert files that contain Windows EOL characters to a Unix format.

SaltStack: Getting redundancy and scalability with multiple master servers

A how to article on setting up multiple saltstack master servers for redundancy and scalability. With SaltStack you can easily setup 2 or more master servers in a round robin configuration to provide high availability and scalability to your infrastructure automation tools.

8 examples of Bash if statements to get you started

This article shows examples of how to use BASH if statements in scripts and command line. This is a good starter tutorial for those who haven't quite mastered BASH yet.

Using rsync to synchronize a local and remote directory

An introduction to rsync and instructions on how to setup an automated rsync copy between two hosts

Yum Plugins: Verifying packages and configurations with Yum Verify

An introduction to Yum Plugins and Yum Verify

Installing Redis and setting up Master - Slave Replication

A guide on how to install Redis and setup Master - Slave replication between two or more Redis instances

Managing DNS locally with /etc/hosts

An article that explains what the heck the /etc/hosts file is and how you can use it to manage DNS locally

5 Bash for loop examples to make command line tasks more efficient

Examples of bash for loops that can make any shell users life easier

Install RackTables and start tracking your IP address inventory

RackTables is an interesting IT inventory tracking system that can be used to track IP addresses as well as the hardware they are attached to.

Symlinks vs Hardlinks and how to create them

An article that explains the differences between symlinks and hardlinks and how to create them

Changing the default nice value for a user or group

How to make a niceness value default for any user or group using /etc/security/limits.conf

Remote Command Execution with SaltStack

A guide on using the Remote Command Execution abilities of SaltStack

Understanding a little more about /etc/profile and /etc/bashrc

What is the /etc/profile and /etc/bashrc files? What do they do? Read more to find out.

Setting process CPU priority with nice and renice

How to set a CPU priority (niceness) value with the nice and renice commands

Getting started with SaltStack by example: Automatically Installing nginx

A walkthrough on installing and setting up SaltStack using nginx as an example usecase

Finding the OS version & Distribution in Linux

A simple trick on finding out the OS version and Distribution of a Linux system you have command line access to

Reading files in reverse with tac

A cool trick that shows how to read files in reverse with the tac command

Grepping a file without using cat, and other grep tricks

A lot of sysadmins don't realize you can use grep without cat, this article should settle that. It also shows some other grep tricks.

SSH: Disable Host Checking for Scripts & Automation

How to disable SSH host checking for both scripts and lazy users

Adding and Modifying Users and Groups in Linux

An indepth guide on how to create and modify users and some simple tips that make user administration less of a nightmare

mkisofs: Repackaging a Linux Install ISO

Repackaging a Linux installation DVD using mkisofs

ssh-keygen: Creating SSH Private/Public Keys