We’ve run into problems remotely running some applications via X. Even when the app runs OK, it is quite sluggish. We also had trouble running in secondary X sessions, which is the default behavior of vncserver. Most apps acted just fine; however, some apps got confused about what desktop to use. We tried VNC, though, […]
Using a Full Desktop with VNC
A is for at
The at command is your willing and punctual servant for odd jobs, reminders and one-offs. A more footloose sibling of steadfast cron, at is used to schedule a task to run once at a given time. Then all is forgotten. The following examples and file paths are true for Red Hat Linux, and more or […]
B is for bash
Bash is a huge subject! The purpose of this article is demonstrate & explain some of the basics so you can write shell scripts and work at the command line more effectively. See also our article on Aliases and Functions in bash for ways to customize your environment. I recommend highly the bash man page!!! […]
C is for ch ch ch changes….
C is an extremely useful letter of the alphabet in Linux, especially when paired with an h. With these letters one can chown, chmod, chroot, and change lots of other things. One can even chkconfig. ***************************** chown – change ownership of a file. ***************************** Nothing too exciting to report here, but there are a couple […]
D is for df, du, dd
These three classic Unix utilities like to get their hands dirty with file systems. **************************************************** df – display disk space usage on mounted filesystems **************************************************** Every newbie sysadmin learns df right off the bat; it displays mounted file systems and the disk space usage on each. By default (in linux) it displays the statistics as […]
E is for Ext3fs Part 1
The ext3 filesystem now installs as the default file system in most Linux distributions. Essentially ext2 with journaling, ext3 retains the stability and robustness of ext2 while adding the much needed journal for high-availability. Part 1 of this article will discuss some filesystem basics and Part 2, some tips for working with the Linux native […]
E is for Ext3fs Part 2
In Part 1 of this article, we discussed some basics of the ext* filesystems in Linux. In this section we’ll have some good old filesystem fun. The most commonly used tools for working with Linux filesystems are mke2fs (create ext2/ext3 filesystem), tune2fs (adjust filesystem parameters) and e2fsck (check and repair filesystem.) ADD JOURNAL TO EXT2 […]
F is for Find
One-liners illustrating the use of the find command abound on the world wide web. The command’s operation is straight forward, but it has so many options that the man page always makes for fascinating reading. The find command is your friend whenever you need to *find* files based on name, size, file type, creation/access/modification time, […]
G is for grep
Like using the word “grok” in conversation, saying “grep” out loud brands you a SuperGeek, at least in the mundane reckoning of members of the “normal” population. They don’t understand that grep is simply an odd concatenation of the phrase “grab regular expression”; and even if they did know, it would mean nothing to them. […]
H is for Head, Tail, or Split the Difference
Head, tail and split are three of the most commonly used utilities on GNU/Linux systems for the manipulation of text files. They are tiny, sharp, and all possess some handy options of which even the experienced user may be unaware. Head returns the first lines of a file or standard input. By default, it outputs […]
Using MSInfo
Do check out msinfo32.exe. Virtually everything that you would want to know about the system configuration of a Windows machine will be revealed with this command. Msinfo32.exe is located under /Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/MSInfo (at least on our system). If you wish to dump the report to a file, use: msinfo32 /report reportname.txt It takes […]
Monitoring Systems With Zabbix – Initial Configuration – Part 4
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Run make [root@srv-1 zabbix-1.1beta8]# make Making all in src make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/zabbix-1.1beta8/src’ Making all in libs make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/zabbix-1.1beta8/src/libs’ Making all in zbxcommon . . . gcc -g -O2 -o zabbix_sender zabbix_sender.o ../libs/zbxcommon/libzbxcommon.a -lresolv -lnsl make[3]: […]
Monitoring Systems With Zabbix – Initial Configuration – Part 5
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 The agent files also end up in /usr/local/bin by default: [root@srv-1 zabbix-1.1beta8]# cd /usr/local/bin/ [root@srv-1 bin]# ls zab* zabbix_agent zabbix_agentd zabbix_get zabbix_sender zabbix_server [root@srv-1 bin]# ls -l zab* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 179347 Apr 18 10:56 zabbix_agent -rwxr-xr-x […]
Monitoring Systems With Zabbix – Initial Configuration – Part 6
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 When first logging on to Zabbix, the login name is admin, and the password is blank: Change the admin password as soon as you can: Use configuration/hosts to add a host. Make sure you link with the correct […]
Monitoring HTTP Connections
Here is a perl script that determines the number of HTTP connections on a server, and displays the rusults on one of the seven segment displays on the NetAdminWorld console: open (HC, “ssh -p <port> root\@example.com ‘netstat | grep http | wc -l ‘|”); while (<HC>){ $count=$_/6 } use IO::Socket; my $sock = new IO::Socket::INET […]
Monitoring and Automatic Recovery of Services with Monit
Monit is a small, easy to configure monitoring system for *nix systems that will attempt to restart services that have failed. Grab the tarball, extract, configure, make, and make install: [usr-1@srv-1 ~]$ tar -xzf mon*4.7*.gz [usr-1@srv-1 ~]$ cd mon*7 [usr-1@srv-1 monit-4.7]$ ./configure checking for gcc… gcc checking for C compiler default output file name… a.out […]
Logging Performance Monitor Counters to SQL Server – Part 1
There are 4 parts to this article: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 On Windows Server 2003, Perfmon counters can be logged directly to a SQL database. Let’s do that. Create a database on your SQL Server. We called the database pmon: We’ll create a device for the database with […]
Logging Performance Monitor Counters to SQL Server – Part 2
There are 4 parts to this article: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 Use Windows NT authentication: Do not dynamically determine the port. Uncheck and make sure port 1433 is used: Change the default database to pmon: The rest of the defaults are OK: Click finish, and the summary screen […]
Logging Performance Monitor Counters to SQL Server – Part 3
There are 4 parts to this article: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 Click Test Data Source, and if all is happy, a window showing the results of the ODBC connectivity test will pop up: Another summary of the ODBC connection: Let’s use our perfmon database. In performance monitor, create […]
Logging Performance Monitor Counters to SQL Server – Part 4
There are 4 parts to this article: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 After you close out the settings, the counter log should be started. If not, then start it: Add the counters from the database by clicking on the log icon from System Monitor and selecting the database via […]
