Ok so in my other posts I have given you a way to get an ISO image to get Cacti running please note that it runs on CentOS through the rPath. If you want to quickly get a cacti server up and running then download the image.

Apple Mac OS X Users - I suggest that you think of Cacti as more of an appliance and installing it on OS X Server will not only be a bit more complex but the constant upgrading of updates may break your install after you spend a lot of time going through the trouble to get things running properly. Instead I suggest that you build a VMware/Parallels image so that it is more transportable in the future. We have found traveling from tradeshow to tradeshow that this works great, back ups are easier as well. I also suggest that you look at creating this in Ubuntu as this is the next easiest server OS and everything is detailed to getting this up and running with tons of plugins.

If you want to build the cacti monitoring server from scratch then read below. Please note th…

So I recently started on building an OpenSolaris NAS device and wanted to check out the internal HDD drives. I needed to format the drives and also get the IDs of the drives to add to ZFS pool here are some directions iostat -En Formatting the Solaris drives is done with this /usr/sbin/format < /dev/null checking the mounted partitions df -h I will be posting a ton of information soon on how to go from start to finish with an OpenSolaris NAS device.

So this is a pretty easy task to accomplish.

From the command line switch to the directory where your app is located. Enter the following command script/generate mailer notifier This will create a model called notifer.rb, a folder under the views folder called notifier, it will create other files as well but these are the main two to be concerned with.

In views/notifier is where we will be creating erb templates to be the actual email that gets sent out to the end user.

In the notifier model, you'll want to setup functions that you will call from your controller in order to send the email. Here are a couple of examples I have created for my user email functions class UserNotification < ActionMailer::Base def password_reset_code(user) @recipients = "#{user.email}" @from = "Domain.com " @subject = "Your requested a password reset." @sent_on = Time.now @body = { :user =< user } end d…

Recently I had to do a small project that involved creating a learning tool - virtual flash cards. I used the jQuery plugin Cycle to provide the animation effects for the "stack" of cards and I also used another jQuery plugin called quickFlip.

Basically I created a way for the user to grab a glossary from a specific course and then I used php and mysql to loop through the results each time generating the following div tags:
<div class="quickFlip"> <!-- Front of card --> <div class="quickFlipPanel front-card"> <h4 class=""> <p class="quickFlipCta" style="text-align: center; color: #ff0000;">Click here to flip the card over.</p> </h4> </div> <!-- Back of card --> <div class="quickFlipPanel back-card"> <h4 class=""> <div style="text-align: center; width: 615px; height: 100px;"> <div> …

Recently I was working on a project where I had some GIT repository files and also Apple HFS+ Extended attributes. I struggled for what seemed hours trying to figure out how to remove all of the .DS_File and .git. I remembered that there was rsync which I could use to EXCLUDE files. Now I am sure this could have been much cleaner and I am sure I will repost another in the futre but here are my command for. Remember to look at the files using the: ls -la Look for any of the files that begin with "." and here are the commands I used. rsync -r --exclude '._*' source_folder/ destination_folder/ I was in the folder already which had the source and folder hence the lacking of the "/" before the source and destination.

Here is another script: rsync -r --exclude '.git*' source_folder/ destination_folder/

I am sure almost everyone know this already but when I first started working with Linux and Unix I needed help and had to have and expert show me how to do this. I even have to pull up my notes every now and again.

User this command to compress a folder using gzip and tar tar -cvzf /destination/file_name.tar.gz /source/folder_name Now you can un zip/tar it with this command tar -xzf /folder/file_name.tar.gz There are a ton of switches you can use for this. I am just doing an archive and putting it in the folder for rsync server to pick it up for archival.

Recently I had to figure out a way to get RoR scripts to run from nightly crontab scripts, it took me a little while to get it working but here is the script that we ended up using to get it working. Results may very and of course if you have problems remember that permissions are usually the first place to look, then look at the path of both the folder and using "which" to make sure cron can get to the program/application.

0 9 * * 1 cd /path/to/application_root/current/ && /usr/bin/rake email:excel RAILS_ENV=production
This will run at 12:09 on Monday each week. It is running from the current directory so that we can always have the latest version of code. Have fun and note this is on Ubuntu linux.

I know that all of the vi people are going to blast me for this but I like nano much better for quick and dirty editing. So when it comes to editing the crontab here is a quick way to change the terminal editor.
EDITOR=nano crontab -e You should be able to substitute any editor in the place of NANO, Mac OS X has PICO which I think is the same as nano.

What is you could run a single script each night automatically and have the files from one server automatically copy to another for backup. Most people use a third party application for this or have copy scripts.

The point of this Rsync script is to sync the files that have changed so that we don't make more work then is needed. This will compare the files from the source to the target then once if finds the files that need to be copied it will compress the files and then copy them to the destination server. I set up the script to run on a regular basis.
0 3 * * * rsync -avz --password-file=/password_file /path/to/folder/ USER@server.com::path/to/folder/ This will run every midnight at 12:03AM, archive mode + compress, use a password file, syncing source folder with destination folder with username.

Look for the directions on how to setup a rsync server. Also note that this should work fine on Mac OS X but I have not fully tested it on the OS.

So if your like most web programmers you have a mysql database running your site. You need to backup your database or get a copy of the database each night. Most providers give you backups already and this is probably the script they use.

Make sure that you have a user that can do the following permissions (Select + Lock_tables + Show_view). If these minimum permission are available the mysqldump will fail. 0 1 * * * mysqldump --opt DB_NAME -u USER --password=PASSWORD > /path/to/file/DB_NAME_`date +\%m`-`date +\%d`-`date +\%Y`.dump The nice thing about this is that it will append the data and time to the end of the file for archive. Be careful with trying to dump all of the databases at once. I have found that it is best to space the CRONTABs about 5 minutes apart each night during slow time.

Now if you want to automate this completely then check out my rsync jobs which will then copy the mysql dump to an archival system. Also check out the script that you can use to send informat…

When you have a development MySQL server and a production server sometimes it comes in handy to move a copy from production to development. Usually it requires a mysqldump then scp to the other server and then loading the data. Here are some scripts you can use to issue single command:

Here are the normal command that we would have had to use:

Dump the database mysqldump --opt database_name -u root -p > database_name.dump Copy the file scp /path/to/file.dump user@server.com:/path/to/file.dump Then importing the data mysql database_name -u root -p < database_name.dump Now for a single command: This assumes you don't need to have SSH and the ports are open mysqldump db-name | mysql -h remote.com db-name This is done over SSH mysqldump db-name | ssh user@remote.com mysql db-name This should save some time and make sure you have access to run the commands on both machines.

Ok so this was a bit tricky but I knew it would work and this is not for everyone out there. Remember this is a subdomain and I got a wildcart SSL from GoDaddy (look up my instructions for installing a GoDaddy certificate.

I am using Ubuntu 8.10 server for this and not many changes from the standard install. I want to support multiple sites through 443 on the same IP.

Go to /etc/apache2/ports.conf Here is what I have, your might be a bit different # If you just change the port or add more ports here, you will likely also # have to change the VirtualHost statement in # /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default NameVirtualHost *:80 Listen 80 <IfModule mod_ssl.c> # SSL name based virtual hosts are not yet supported, therefore no # NameVirtualHost statement here NameVirtualHost *:443 Listen 443 </IfModule> Then setup the virtual host files just like normal. Here is the open close headers for this <VirtualHost *:443> .... </VirtualHost>

So I wanted to create a automated FTP uploader for the project I was working on. I set a CRONTAB to execute it and then hooked up a database as well.

Here is the code: #!/usr/bin/php -q <?php #script used for uploading file to a server //------ Begin Programming $ftp_server = "subdomain.server.com"; $ftp_retries = "5"; $ftp_delay = "3"; $ftp_user = "user"; $ftp_pass = "password"; //This worked on the server $source_directory = "/home/user/videos/flv/"; $remote_directory = "/httpdocs/movies/"; //mysql connection define ('DB_User', 'user'); define ('DB_Password', 'password'); define ('DB_Host', 'x.x.x.x'); define ('DB_Name', 'db_name'); $dbc = mysql_connect (DB_Host, DB_User, DB_Password) OR die ('Could not connect to MySQL Server: ' . mysql_error() ); mysql_select_db (DB_Name) or die ('Could not select the database: ' . mysql_error…

Once you have a ffmpeg server built here are some recipes for creating output

Flash content ffmpeg -i input_file -vcodec flv -b 666k -s 380x286 -ar 22050 -ab 24 -f flv output-file.flv JPG image snapshot taken from the 2nd second of the video ffmpeg -i input_file -r 1 -s 380x286 -ss 2.00 -vframes 1 -an -f image2 output-file.jpg iPhone output ffmpeg -i input-file -vcodec libx264 -vpre hq -vpre ipod320 -b 768k -bt 768k -s 320x240 -threads 0 -title techIT -f mp4 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k output-file.mp4 I am sure you can setup some other settings you want for the output.

The goal of this project was to build a video converter for a website kind of like YouTube. Look for more posts on this and extra modules like php-cli scripts and much more.

Let's get going with a FFMpeg installation. I stated with a clean Ubuntu 8.10 Server machine with nothing but ssh server installed.

Add the EXTRA mediabuntu to the list of sources. (on one line) wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list Generate the key apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update Then install the codecs from mediabuntu apt-get install w32codecs If you have a 64-bit system then use this apt-get install w64codecs Install updates and upgrades apt-get update apt-get upgrade Install optional plugins. (should be one line) apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev zlib1g-dev libfaad-dev libfaac-dev libmp3lame-dev libtheora-dev libvorbis-dev libxvidcore4-dev libschroedinge…

I had to dig these instruction up from archives bow that I switched to Ubuntu 8.10. Everything should still work perfectly fine.

Check to see if Ruby and Gems are already installed on your machine. gem list --local If you nothing happens then you need to install Ruby on Rails and then the gems which should be posted or will be soon. If your getting a list of gems look for mongrel or mongrel_cluster. If your not seeing the gems then you need to install them sudo gem install mongrel sudo gem install mongrel_cluster Once you get them installed now you will need add a user for the service. /usr/sbin/adduser -r mongrel Now we need to create the folder for the mongrel config files mkdir /etc/mongrel_cluster Now we need to copy the mongrel_cluster information to the init.d directory so it can execute. NOTE: this line is very long so it will be on 2 lines and also please note that version change to please check or use auto complete to get the most recent version. cp /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8…

Here is a quick set of instructions for building a SVN server on Linux CentOS 5.2. I used it for a while unit I created one on Ubuntu 8.10

Check to see if SVN/Subversion is install on your box which svn If it is not installed then please install the application before continuing. Continue if already installed. cd /etc/init.d/ /sbin/chkconfig --add svnserve Now we want to make the configuration for the SVN Serve daemon so it starts when it is rebooted. nano svnserve Now that the editor is up paste the information below into the file. #!/bin/bash # # /etc/rc.d/init.d/subversion # # Starts the Subversion Daemon # # chkconfig: 2345 90 10 # description: Subversion Daemon # processname: svnserve # pidfile: /var/lock/subsys/svnserve source /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions [ -x /usr/bin/svnserve ] || exit 1 ### Default variables SYSCONFIG="/etc/sysconfig/subversion" ### Read configuration [ -r "$SYSCONFIG" ] &amp;&amp; source "$SYSCONFIG" RETVAL=0 p…

Replication is having the data from a Master unit copy to the backup unit(s) automatically. In this demonstration I actually used a Linux MySQL to replicate to a Mac OS X Database server every 5 minutes.

Let's say you have 2 MySQL servers (Production and Read-Only Backup). How would you get the information automatically from the production unit to the backup unit.

I believe that the my.cnf is typically in the same place across all NIX OSes. nano /etc/my.cnf Make sure and check the location of the my.cnf file and that you have mysql installed. This will not work for MySQL 4.x version and it has been a few months since I have built thing but everything should work fine. I also recommend before you do anything that you make sure and backup your databases before you begin.

Edit the my.cnf file using either VI or Nano I always use nano even though it is not better then VI
#Example MySQL config file for very large systems. # # This is for a large system with memory of 1G-2G where the s…

Recently I spent hours trying to track down the connection problems with a new image. Turns out that the person wanted the MS RDP connection on another port for security reason. I spent hours trying to fiddle with every setting. Here are some quick notes on how to make the change.

Click on the Start button, then click on "Run...", Then in the box type
regedit An explorer window will open and it might even open to the correct folder of settings if not then navigate to the following path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp From there you should see the setting for PortNumber Double click on it and then change the radio button to Decimal and change to the port that you want it to exist on.

So there is always a problem when you try and do 64-bit. Here is how I got the Adobe Flash running on Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit.

Run thing in the terminal. sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
It worked for me but if not then you will have to keep looking for more directions

Most people will add some additional repositories to their Ubuntu here are some notes on adding this but a complete list of instructions can be found at the link below

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

Run this command for Ubuntu 8.10 (I had to make this 2 lines but it is one line) sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output- document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
Then run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update
You may be asked to accept this package even though it cannot be authenticated. This is normal; typing "Yes" means you trust Medibuntu.

While there are lots of Virtual Machines like the VMware Workstation for Linux it cost money after 30 days. Another cost affective Virtual Machine by Sun Microsystems. This one is free and has a reasonably easy install. This is how I installed it. This is installed on Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit.

Get the software (hopefully it remains a stable link in the future)

http://dlc.sun.com/virtualbox/vboxdownload.html#linux

Reading the VirtualBox documentation it looks like you have to APT-GET a few programs before installing and some other changes to the Permissions. sudo apt-get install dkms
I also have some problems installing this above and had to run the following per directions from terminal sudo apt-get install -f
Once you find the correct version you need to download it. You will notice that it is a .deb package. To install the .deb package you need to run the following command: sudo dpkg --install virtualbox-2.1_2.1.4-42893_Ubuntu_intrepid_amd64.deb
You might find that you have some problems b…

I thought some people out there might want some directions on how to install VMware Workstation on an Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit system. Also since it doesn't use a apt-get to install.

VMware Workstation 6.5 allows you to virtualize multiple operating system on your Linux desktop. The VM images should be interchangeable between windows and Mac OS X VMware Fusion 2.x.

1) Once you get the software from www.vmware.com put it on the desktop. The open terminal and run the commands below. sudo sh VMware-Workstation-6.5.1-126130.x86_64.bundle
The install should open up and begin to install. Once it has completed you can find the application in the Applications / System Tools

I came across this nice article pointed out by a friend, Brandon Burke. It has to do with Multiple Select drop down box in a form. You can use this select box to you guessed it, select multiple items. You'll need jQuery and the asmselect js code.

Here is a link to one of many examples.
First Example

Also here is the main article.
Main Article

So after spending about half a day trying to get a website running on Mac OS X Leopard I thought I would post a few notes that might help you in the future. Special thanks to Layton W. for his additional notes.
NOTE - these commands are very long so make sure to get it all on one line.
Basics for Starting a Mongrel on Mac OS X Leopard sudo /usr/bin/mongrel_rails_persist start -p 8000 -e production --user admin -c /Library/WebServer/web_site
Basics for Stopping a Mongrel on Mac OS X Leopard sudo /usr/bin/mongrel_rails_persist stop -p 8000
Log files for Mongrels /private/var/log/mongrel_rails_persist.log Well hope this help you to get your applications up and running on OS X Leopard.

The newest version of Snow Leopard has PEAR but the last version of Leopard (10.5.x) did not come with PEAR. As a web developer I use PHP with PEAR. This is how I got it working with just a few commands.

I found that is it easiest to navigate to the location where the files need to be like this cd /usr
Then if it isn't already created. Make a local folder mkdir local cd /usr/local
Now download the PEAR from the php.net curl http://pear.php.net/go-pear > go-pear.php sudo php -q go-pear.php
While it was installing I left everything default not changing to typing anything. On the last part where it wanted to change the php.ini file I said no, do not alter. Below are the directions for changing it.
PHP changes
By default Mac OS X has a php.ini.default file which is best to make a copy cd /etc cp php.ini.default php.ini
Now edit the file. nano php.ini
NOTE: I used the CTRL+W in nano to find the "include_path". I then added to the path. .:/usr/local/PEAR
Now you need to res…

Setting up ESXi - After setting up the server to enable the SSH using the following directions:

1. At the console of the ESXi host, press ALT-F1 to access the console window.

2. Enter unsupported in the console and then press Enter. You will not see the text you type in.

3. If you typed in unsupported correctly, you will see the Tech Support Mode warning and a password prompt. Enter the password for the root login.

4. You should then see the prompt of ~ #. Edit the file inetd.conf (enter the command vi /etc/inetd.conf).

5. Find the line that begins with #ssh and remove the #. Then save the file. If you're new to using vi, then move the cursor down to #ssh line and then press the Insert key. Move the cursor over one space and then hit backspace to delete the #. Then press ESC and type in q to save the file and exit vi. If you make a mistake, you can press the ESC key and then type it :q! to quit vi without saving the file.

6. You can either restart your host or run ps | grep inetd …

I recently wanted to add my windows servers to my cacti monitoring system. Here are some directions on how to get that going.

1. Go to Start | Control Panel, and double-click the Administrative Tools applet.

2. Open the Services console, and select SNMP Service.

3. On the Agent tab, specify the types of applications that you want the server to report through SNMP by selecting the check box of each required application type.

4. On the Traps tab, specify the SNMP trap destinations to which the server will send trap notifications. (Trap destinations are the management systems that need to receive SNMP management notifications from the server.) The community name acts as a combination password and identifier, so you must specify at least one SNMP community name on the Traps tab.

5. On the Security tab, specify the hosts from which the server will accept SNMP packets, and configure the allowed actions for specific communities.

I recently built a secondary DNS to replace a failing until. It was pretty straight forward but took me a little bit to figure it out. I hope this helps you get it done faster.

To setup a DNS secondary you need to make sure that the NAMESERVER and ZONE TRANSFER are setup to allow the secondary server to transfer the information. Here are some good directions.

1. Primary DNS - Open the Forward Lookup Zones on the site you wish to sync with the secondary server. Right click on the DNS entry and goto Properties. Under the properties click on the Name Server. Then add your Secondary DNS name server IP address to the list. Then goto Zone Transfers and click the checkbox and choose the radio button for Only to servers listed on the Name Servers tab. Then save the information.

2. Secondary DNS - Open DNS MMC and then Right Click Forward Lookup Zones. Click on the New Zone.... The Wizard will show up. Click Next button then choose Secondary zone, then Next. Type your Zone Exactly the same as …

These are directions I had to find through the web to format new disks that I install to an existing system.

This will show you all of the attached drives on the system fdisk -l
fdisk utility

First, you will need to run the fdisk command in order to partition the disk. For this example, I only want to create one ext3 partition. Here is an example session: fdisk /dev/hdb Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable. The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4865. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Command (m for help): n Command action e extended …

I use Subversion/SVN all the time to keep track of the project as we build them. Here are some notes on how to make your own SVN server so that you can do the same.

First you might want to check and see if the SVN software has been installed using the command which svn
If it comes back with a path then it has been correctly installed if not then run this command to install the latest version sudo apt-get install subversion
Now that the software has been we need to create the service in the init.d folder cd /etc/init.d/
Add the subversion SYSTEM user to the machine useradd --system subversion
Add the repositories folder to the system. Some people say make a folder in the home directory, I like to put it into the /var directory mkdir /var/repositories
Now we need to create the service file nano svnserve
Paste the below text into the editor and then save it. #!/bin/sh -e # # svnserve - brings up the svn server so anonymous users # can access svn # # Get LSB functions . /lib/lsb/init-fun…

I am learning the ruby on rail quite rapidly so when I wanted to get rolling on Ubuntu Linux I found the following nice to haves and some stuff I always install. apt-get install libopenssl-ruby apt-get install ruby apt-get install ruby-dev apt-get install irb apt-get install rdoc
Run this if you want Rails 1.8 installed. apt-get install rubygems1.8

One day a while back I wanted to figure out where all of the accounts were list on the machine. I looked everywhere and finally came across the information and thought I better write it down.

User Account informaton is located: /etc/passwd
Group names are kept in /etc/group

I don't know about most people but usually I like to have these additional modules added to my Apache/PHP installation.

This is the main set of compilers we will need to build the packages. apt-get install build-essential
We use the below for PEAR mail when we do mass emails and or HTML emails apt-get install php-pear
We use the below more for Ruby on Rails applications but you never know when you want to run a SQLite DB instead of the mysql DB. also included are the header to compile the RoR. apt-get install sqlite3 apt-get install libsqlite3-dev
We use the below again mostly for Ruby on Rails but no system is complete without XML capabilities. apt-get install libxml2-dev
Image magick is great for generating a ton of thumbnails or converting pdfs to images for the web. Here are the libraries to get it working. You will also need this if you are going to install Ruby rmagick. apt-get install libmagick9-dev
Updated 2010 for Ubuntu 9.x apt-get install imagemagick apt-get install lib…

So this one is very easy to do and works very well for most installations. It is using the VSFTP Service. apt-get install vsftpd
Then change the following in the file /etc/vsftpd.conf anonymous_enable=NO local_enable=YES write_enable=YES chroot_local_user=YES
Now you need to reboot the service /etc/init.d/vsftpd start This works very well with user accounts on the machine.
UPDATE: I had some problems with people posting files and the permission where always read only for websites. Just add this to the CONF file and things should work better chmod_enable=YES

So here is a great guide to installing MySQL on Ubuntu 8.10 Server and creating a user account to access the database.

Installing the software if not already installed. apt-get install mysql apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev
Make sure that set the "bind-address" in /etc/mysql/my.cnf is set to the ip address of the computer.
Once installed you will need to create the accounts in order to log in from remote. INSERT INTO user SET Host='localhost', User='admin', Password=password('SOME_PASSWORD'); INSERT INTO user SET Host='%', User='admin', Password=password('SOME_PASSWORD');
Once inserted into the database simply upgrade the permissions. GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'admin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'SOME_PASSWORD' WITH GRANT OPTION; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'admin'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'SOME_PASSWORD' WITH GRANT OPTION; To be honest I recommend you then restart the mysql s…

While this is most likely not all finished I recently had to put together a PHP/Apache install and here are some notes on this. Extra software you are probably going to want to have [code lang="shell"]apt-get install php-pear[/code] We have a need for pdf creation for another project so I also install imagemagik essentials [code lang="shell"]apt-get install php5-curl[/code] Let's start with the locations of everything. Root as root for any of the command below.

Location of the virtual hosts files like .html, .php /var/www/vhost/
vhost configuration files for Apache /etc/apache2/sites-available/
Once you copy your vhost files to that location then you need to make a link to the other folder ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/SITE_CONF /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/SITE_CONF
Getting the mods up and running. Like above we use the linking of the mods from one folder to another ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/MODS /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/MODS
Here are the mods t…

Well I always seem to need these notes for setting up the NFS server for Ubuntu so here they are. Also I found NFS to be a great storage share for anything related to backing up or moving around files. I even use it for VMware and databases.

NFS Installation
Run this as root apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap
When configuring portmap do not bind loopback. If you do you can either edit /etc/default/portmap using the following: nano /etc/default/portmap
Restart Portmap using the following command /etc/init.d/portmap restart
NFS Server Configuration
NFS exports from a server are controlled by the file /etc/exports. Each line begins with the absolute path of a directory to be exported, followed by a space-seperated list of allowed clients.
You need to edit the exports file using the following command nano /etc/exports
Here are the mounts for our infrastructure /mnt/left_raid/nfs 10.10.1.0/255.255.255.0(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
Now you need to restart NFS server using the…

So when I was running 64-bit Unbuntu 8.10 I noticed that the network dropped from the machine for no reason what so ever. The machine was fine just that the network gave out. I found this little explanation and the solution which I am going to try out and see if it works.

Originally found here: http://www.nnbfn.net/tag/ubuntu/

Here is the Exerpt: CRITICAL: cannot initialize libpolkit

Here is the posting:

The error is triggered by the update-modt cron job which runs ever 10 minutes.

This is a bug in Intrepid. console-kit-daemon requires PolicyKit as a dependancy, but Intrepid (Server AMD64) does not install it when it installs console-daemon-kit.

The simple fix is to install policykit.
sudo apt-get install policykit
Next run of the update-motd job and the error is gone.

So I have this secure shopping cart RoR project. I want people to simply navigate to the web address but when they get there I want them to automatically be moved over the the SSL version. I was looking for a simply solution one that I could very easily implement without changing much of the code of the site. Here is how I did it.
In Apache Virtual Host file on the *:80 config I have this set. <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName subdomain.domain.com Redirect / https://subdomain.domain.com/ ServerAlias subdomain.domain.com </VirtualHost>
This will direct any of the information coming in on the port 80 over to the 443/https portion of the website. Make sure you have the HTTP portion configured properly.

I was in the process of build a NAS device and needed to enable the SMB sharing so that Windows users could drop files onto the device. I needed to figure out a way to get it working on my ubuntu 8.10 server here are my notes from the setup.
Install the service sudo apt-get install samba
SMB Configuration
We now have to modify the SMB settings from the command line nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
The file out of the box has almost everything turned off. I left the default information alone and added the following part to (2) sections:
Under the Global Settings area [global] add the following: #Modified by Arthur Gressick security = user encrypt password = true map to guest = bad user guest account = nobody create mask = 0644 directory mask = 0755 ## done
Now under Share Definitions Paste the following #Modified by Arthur Gressick [nas01] comment = NAS Share path = /mnt/right_raid/smb read only = no browseable = yes ## done
Setting up SMB User
It is best practices to use…

The main purpose of this project was to build a server which could collect information from all of the outlying server and bring them to a central repository system. I like to use it for webserver so that I can have lets say 3 different flavors of linux running legacy systems. Backing those up is very cumbersome so having a CRONTAB job to automatically sync the files back to a central unit makes it much easier to restore them should anything happen to that server. Below is the information on how I created this on Ubuntu 8.10. I am sure it can be changed a bit to work on other systems.
Let install a couple of software apps on the server apt-get install rsync apt-get install xinetd
1. Edit /etc/default/rsync to start rsync as daemon using xinetd. nano /etc/default/rsync
Now look for the following code below and change. RSYNC_ENABLE=inetd
2. Create /etc/xinetd.d/rsync to launch rsync via xinetd. nano /etc/xinetd.d/rsync
Now paste the information below: service rsync { disable …

The standard installs I do for CentOS don't come with SNMP installed. I used the GUI to get the SNMP then do the following commands:
Rename the default configuration file mv /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf /etc/snmp/snmpd.bak
Create new file with your own SNMP configuration vi /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
Paste the following information into the terminal window ########################################################################### # # snmpd.conf # # - created by the snmpconf configuration program # ########################################################################### # SECTION: System Information Setup # # This section defines some of the information reported in # the “system” mib group in the mibII tree. # syslocation: The [typically physical] location of the system. # Note that setting this value here means that when trying to # perform an snmp SET operation to the sysLocation.0 variable will make # the agent return the “notWritable” error code. IE, including # this token in the snmpd.…

If you forgot to add in the ssh server so you can log in remotely then you can follow these directions for installing SSH to access your computer remotely.
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
You should be good to now log into the machine from remote login ssh USERNAME@IP_ADDRESS
Once in you might need to set the ROOT password which is disabled by default sudo passwd root

If you have an additional network adaptor or need to change the ip address of an adaptor follow these command to change the information.

Modify: /etc/network/interfaces auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 10.10.1.101 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 10.10.1.0 broadcast 10.10.1.255 gateway 10.10.1.1 # dns-* options are implemented by the resolvconf package, if installed dns-nameservers 10.10.1.250 dns-search domainname.com
Setting up the DNS service, modify: /etc/resolv.conf search domainname.com nameserver 10.10.1.250 nameserver 66.35.209.135
Modify the hosts file in /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost 10.10.1.101 subdomain.domainname.com subdomain # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts ::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback fe00::0 ip6-localnet ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters ff02::3 ip6-allhosts
After this has been changed then restart the network a…

I found these commands very useful when adding users and group via the command line.

If you want to add a new user to the system. This is a standard user
adduser username
Add existing user tony to ftp supplementary/secondary group with usermod command using -a option ~ i.e. add the user to the supplemental group(s). Use only with -G option usermod -aG www-data tony
Change existing user tony primary group to www: usermod -g www tony
UPDATED
Adding a group is done similarly with this command addgroup groupname
Add user to group can also be done like this adduser username groupname

After you typically install the Ubuntu server operating system you usually want to install the latest updates. Here are some handy commands to run which will help out.

Update the system apt-get update
Upgrade apt-get upgrade
Update Manager Core apt-get install update-manager-core
Do release update do-release-upgrade

When I installed Ubuntu 8.10 Server I didn't set the right time zone and needed to change it after I was finished installing the operating system. I found this handy little command for changing the timezone which can be run without a gui. You will need to run this as root or sudo. dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

So recently I want to setup a cacti server to read all of the ubuntu server and found some directions on how to install and configure the SNMP service on my Unbuntu 8.10 Server.
sudo apt-get install snmpd snmp
After you install the software you need to make a changes to some of the config files.

/etc/default/snmpd - Take out the 127.0.0.1 and save the file SNMPDOPTS='-Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -I -smux -p /var/run/snmpd.pid 127.0.0.1'
/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf file to the following.

#com2sec paranoid default public com2sec readonly default public #com2sec readwrite default private syslocation Location syscontact name@email.address.com
Make sure and restart the snmp server
/etc/init.d/snmpd restart

I had to get a SSL certificate for a web site of mine yesterday. I decided to get another SSL certificate from GoDaddy. Here are my notes for getting the certificate.

I went ahead and created a folder to make all of my work in so that I could zip it up later or have the Rsync server grab it and save it in the main infrastructure.

mkdir /root/certificate_godaddy
This will generate the randomized string create the csr.
openssl genrsa -out domain_name.key 1024
This will create the CSR for GoDaddy which will you will need to copy and paste into their site. If you are going to be requesting a Wild Card SSL make sure that the NAME is *.domain_name.com
openssl req -new -key domain_name.key -out domain_name.csr
Now log into the GoDaddy site and paste the contents from the above CSR into their site. When you get the email back I suggest putting the 2 files they give you in the same location as you created the above. You will most likely have the following files.
domain_name.com.crt gd_bundle.cr…

These directions are for creating the mongrel cluster on the Ubuntu system. Make sure you have all of the gems installed before you complete the installation. All instructions are for ROOT user or you can sudo all of the commands below. Make sure an either run as root or sudo all commands. I am going to run as root

We will need to install a compiler on the system before you continue.
apt-get install build-essential
You can then install ubuntu software for the mongrel_cluster
apt-get install mongrel-cluster
Now that it is installed we will need to configure each site to have a file located in the /etc/mongrel_cluster folder. here is an example of a configuration
user: www-data cwd: /var/www/vhost/subdomain.website.com/current log_file: /var/www/vhost/subdomain.website.com/shared/log/mongrel.log port: "8000" environment: production group: mongrel address: 127.0.0.1 pid_file: /var/www/vhost/subdomain.website.com/shared/pids/mongrel.pid servers: 3
This will start up 3 mongrels li…