A few days ago I finally got my copy of Running Xen. I was anxious to see how the information would be presented. I can tell you I was not disappointed. Continue reading

Bonnie is a great tool to use to benchmark your file system. Just a quick tip on using bonnie. Continue reading

After more testing I have narrowed the issue that I left off with to a problem with the yum conf inside of the chroot. Continue reading

At work I am just beginning the process of migrating from a hosted dedicated server to a Xen instance on a new server we have. Our dedicated server runs centos, and has WHM cpanel installed. So I figured it would be a good thing to have cpanel again as several people are familiar with it, and we do host a few random websites for people still. Cpanel does not support debian to my knowledge so Centos 5 sounds like the best way to go. Continue reading

Recently I ordered a server with Debian etch. Unfortunately during testing I noticed that startx was on the system, along with a whole slew of other junk that I don’t generally want on a fresh server. I wanted to remove all of the cruft but I didn’t have the exact package list. Continue reading

Im not a big fan of cpanel but I do manage a server that runs it. Recently some update was pushed down that caused about 50% of my users to not be able to access mail. It all boiled down to a permission issue that the cpanel scripts /scripts/mailperm did not take care of. Their scripts do not correct the permissions of the virtual user maildirs. Continue reading

If you use multiwan with pfsense and like me you have issues making outbound ftp connections try disabling the userland FTP-Proxy application on the LAN interface. It may stop you from being able to do active ftp connections but at least you can use ftp. With it enabled I was unable to make any outbound ftp connections active or passive.

Ok I hate printers. If anyone has an aged dell 1700 series printer that prints out pages that say to replace the imaging drum over and over (even after replacing it) then you will like this tip. Continue reading

Had some planned maintenance on one of our servers this weekend. After bringing the server back up I forgot to start searchd for sphinx. Don’t want that to happen again so I wrote a quick init script for searchd. Continue reading

System performance analytics seems to be a frequent question on forums and mailing lists. Finding out why something is slow is generally nontrivial as there are many factors to consider. I have found the sysstat package to be an invaluable tool when looking at system performance. Specifically the command sar gives a wealth of information. Continue reading