Backups are important, whether you are backing up your databases or your wedding pictures. The loss of data can ruin your day. While there is a huge list of backup software to choose from; some good, some not so good. One of the tools that I have used for years is rdiff-backup. rdiff-backup is a Full Article…
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Removing Files and Directories with rm and rmdir
Normally on this blog I tend to write about more complicated tasks or fancy Linux tricks and completely overlook some of the most basic tasks that a SysAdmin needs to know. Today I have decided that I will make my blog a little more comprehensive and add some posts with some of the basics. Along Full Article…
Adding and Troubleshooting Static Routes on Red Hat based Linux Distributions
Adding static routes in Linux can be troublesome, but also absolutely necessary depending on your network configuration. I call static routes troublesome because they can often be the cause of long troubleshooting sessions wondering why one server can’t connect to another. This is especially true when dealing with teams that may not fully understand or know the remote Full Article…
Websphere MQ Cheat Sheet for System Administrators
IBM’s Websphere MQ is a middle-ware application that allows two applications to pass messages back and forth without having to integrate with each-other directly. Websphere MQ is a fairly popular application in the enterprise especially for those running many java based programs. Today’s article is a copy of my personal Websphere MQ cheat sheet. This cheat sheet is Full Article…
Creating a local Yum Repository
When it comes to package management on Red Hat based systems Yum (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) is my preferred method. It’s a quick and easy way of installing desired rpm’s and their dependencies as Yum will automatically resolve dependencies before installation. Most Red Hat based distributions include a public facing Yum repository that you can configure yum to use Full Article…
How to force GPFS (or other tools) to connect via an alternate ssh port
Recently I have been playing with the Global Parallel File System, which is a clustered file system from IBM. When setting up a cluster you can configure GPFS to utilize SSH/SCP to send administrative tasks to the other nodes in the cluster. The problem I ran into was that in my environment I do not run SSH Full Article…
10 nmap Commands Every Sysadmin Should Know
Recently I was compiling a list of Linux commands that every sysadmin should know. One of the first commands that came to mind was nmap. nmap is a powerful network scanner used to identify systems and services. nmap was originally developed with network security in mind, it is a tool that was designed to find Full Article…
Mitigating DoS Attacks with a null (or Blackhole) Route on Linux
In a world where the Anonymous group is petitioning the US Government to make DDoS attacks a legal means of protest; For internet facing systems the thread of Denial of Service attacks are very real. The cold harsh reality of DoS attacks are that there is no way to stop them. While there are services out there Full Article…
Installing MySQL on Ubuntu/Debian
MySQL is the most popular open source relational database management system (RDBMS) in the world. MySQL is used by everyone from the simple small business website to the large internet giants like Facebook, Google or Amazon. In fact the contents of this page are even stored within MySQL. Installing MySQL is a fairly common task Full Article…
NFS: Setting up a basic NFS file system share
While there are many distributed file systems out there; especially with the rise of cloud & virtual computing. The Network File System or NFS protocol has by far held its title as an easy to use, fast to implement and very efficient distributed file system. In today’s article I will be covering how to set Full Article…