There is a problem with Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 that affects some systems (including ours). Microsoft has documented this problem here. It turns out there is a dependency between two services that start at the same time. If you are unlucky enough to finish one before the other, you can’t log on and see […]
Recovery From Msgina.dll Errors With Windows 2000 Service Pack 3
NT 4.0 MCSE Certification will not expire
For those of you out there who have an MCSE in NT 4.0, but haven’t been motivated to upgrade your certification, Microsoft has decided not to expire the certification. Instead, they will offer separate certifications for Win2k and XP. Check it out here.
MySQL installation and initial configuration
Uncompress the source: [src]# tar -xzf mysql-3.23.40.tar.gz Change to mysql source root, and add mysql group and user: [src]# cd my* [mysql-3.23.40]# groupadd mysql [mysql-3.23.40]# useradd -g mysql mysql Run configure, specifying installation directory as /usr/local/mysql: [mysql-3.23.40]# ./configure –prefix=/usr/local/mysql creating cache ./config.cache checking host system type… i586-pc-linux-gnu . . . Remember to check the platform […]
Backing up and restoring MySQL databases
To back up MySQL, log on as the root user and run: mysqldump –opt -u user -p dbname > {path}/backup.sql To restore the database run: mysql -u user -p dbname < {path}/backup.sql
Changing the root password on MySQL
Many distributions of Linux have an option to install MySQL. In this case, or even if you compile MySQL, the default password is blank. MySQL can also run on Windows boxes. When you install MySQL, make sure that you set the root password. You can do this: root@u-1:/home/u-1# mysql -u root mysql Reading table information […]
Using phpMyAdmin to Administer MySQL on Red Hat 8.0
One excellent MySQL administration tool is phpMyAdmin. The installation is straightforward, just extract and follow Documentation.txt. One gotcha is that it requires an Apache server with php support, and MySQL, of course. It is fairly easy to install Apache and MySQL, but getting everything installed in the right order to run a PHP web site […]
Using Perl With MySQL
To communicate with MySQL via Perl, use the DBI and DBD-MySQL modules. With Red Hat 8.0, just install perl-DBD-MySQL-2.1017-3 and perl-DBI-1.30-1 off of the CDs. Why would you want to do such a thing? Well, say you had a tab delimited text file: sam 33 red sarah 32 blue ed 23 black russell 13 yellow […]
Checking the Root Filesystem without Rebooting
I’m not making any guarantees about this or even recommending it, but this is a procedure you can use to fsck a Linux root filesystem in a situation where a reboot is impossible but you suspect filesystem corruption. Example: Remote web server suspected of having filesystem corruption. Can be taken out of service for maintenance […]
Power Management Console
We are creating a lab of 16 servers here at NetAdminTools.com to test various configurations in a simulated enterprise environment. One of the first problems we needed to solve was remote power management. If you are running a data center, you should seriously consider a commercial product like the APC MasterSwitch. We don’t have that […]
Serial Port Multiplexer
As we mentioned in the Remote Power Console article, we have a lab of 16 servers that we are using to test various configurations we will use in articles for NetAdminTools.com. We needed a way to access the consoles of the servers via a serial port, but we didn’t want to plunk down $500 or […]
Aliases & Functions in Bash
You might save some time and have a little fun by putting some aliases and functions in your .bashrc file. You can put functions or aliases in .bash_profile or .bashrc in your home directory. But by using .bashrc instead of .bash_profile, they’ll be read in not only when you log in, but whenever you start […]
Adding Swap Space on the Fly in Linux
Sometimes in the course of a system’s existence you find that the swap partition you set up at install-time just isn’t enough anymore. Maybe you’re upgrading your system to RedHat 7.1 from a version of RedHat that used less swap in relation to physical RAM. Perhaps you’re running Oracle. Or maybe you’re adding more memory […]
Linux Kernel 2.4.9 Released + some tips
You can get it from the mirrors here: kernel.org/mirrors or here: kernel.org. Check our our article on compiling the Linux kernel. One trick we’d like to remind you of from the article is to use “make oldconfig” to migrate your old .config file (usually in /usr/src/linux). You will be asked about just the options that […]
Aliases & Functions in Bash
You might save some time and have a little fun by putting some aliases and functions in your .bashrc file. You can put functions or aliases in .bash_profile or .bashrc in your home directory. But by using .bashrc instead of .bash_profile, they’ll be read in not only when you log in, but whenever you start […]
Kernel recompile
Before you do anything else, make sure you have a way to boot the OS. Make a bootdisk and test it. Get the source for the kernel and put it in /usr/src. cd /usr/src tar -xzf <kernel source file name> The kernel source lives in /usr/src/linux. Linux is usually a symbolic link to the source […]
Determine version of running kernel
uname -a You’ll see something like this: Linux u-1.signalq.com 2.4.6 #2 SMP Sat Jul 14 09:02:08 PDT 2001 i686 unknown
Using RPM
One task that we often do is remove rpms that are installed by default. In this example, we will find out what rpm apache uses and we will uninstall it. What we need to do is find the name of the apache package: [root@srv-3 RPMS]# rpm -qa | grep apache apache-1.3.19-5 [root@srv-3 RPMS]# So, we […]
Linux From Scratch Version 3.0 Released
For those of you who wish to learn more about how a GNU/Linux system is put together, or if you want to have more control over your GNU/Linux system, check out Linux From Scratch (LFS). The commands for building a system from scratch are provided, as well as step-by-step instructions and explanations. Simply download the […]
Automated creation of GNU/Linux systems w/ XML spec file
I’ve mentioned Linux From Scratch in previous articles. I’ve discovered another tool related to this project that rocks called ALFS, or Automatic Linux From Scratch. ALFS puts all of the specifications for compiling a linux system into an XML document and generates most of a Linux From Scratch system automatically. There are a couple of […]
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
For those of you managing GNU/Linux systems, you are certainly familiar with the wide range of filesystem heierarchies and utility locations. This makes it difficult to move between different vendors’ distributions. This is changing, in a large part due to the FHS standard. Check it out: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/