Last Xenful Comments

Published on June 29, 2007 under Tech Blog

One of the biggest things I regret is not utilizing Xen more. I've finally been admitted to Amazon's EC2 Limited Beta, just two days before I leave, so not enough time to actually do anything fun. However, I think Xen is an ideal infrastructure aid for SMEs in particular. The ... Read more.

The Gentoo test

Published on May 24, 2007 under Tech Blog

I have a love-hate relationship with Linux. I love it because if there is a problem, I can actually tinker and find the problem and fix it. But I hate it because I like to tinker. Recently I've been doing a fair amount of Django programming -- enjoying every minute ... Read more.

Lightweight Detection

Published on Jan. 23, 2007 under Tech Blog

I love my Snort, I really do.  But sometimes, I just don't need all the extra overhead -- sometimes the resources on a server are somewhat, limited.  Looking for a solution I stumbled upon PSAD , a way to detect port scans.  Since port scans are often one of ... Read more.

Automated MySQL Backups

Published on Jan. 22, 2007 under Tech Blog

Historically I've used the ever-so-popular AutoMySQLBackup script.  While it seems to work just fine, I've decided to give another solution a whirl.  This solution, provided through Zmanda, seems to be less hackery and more enterprise.  The instructions are very clear, and the backup test went as planned.  Looks  like ... Read more.

S3's Super Backups

Published on Jan. 22, 2007 under Tech Blog

My buddy Ian  mentioned Amazon's S3 service, and the potential for using it for fun webapps.  While utilizing it for webapps will have to wait a few months, I was able to use it as a cheap backup for my home server (pictures, documents, etc,.) -- and my server ... Read more.

MySQL Compat

Published on Nov. 15, 2006 under Tech Blog

I've run into this error quite a few times, might as well toss blog entry about it: ERROR 1064 at line 17: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1' at line 7 One likely reason this comes about is because the data being ... Read more.

Where the 'f is my Diskspace

Published on April 5, 2006 under Tech Blog

Logs spiraling crazy, we run out of disk space all the time. A nifty trick to find where the disk went is to issue: du -cks * |sort -rn |head -11 This returns where the disk usage is, and makes finding the bloated log a lot easier. Read more.

Very Remote Backups

Published on June 22, 2006 under Projects

Status: Backing up across the states has worked decently well, but due to several changes a more dedicated backup solution is in order. Desiring something quick, simple and inexpensive, research revealed a company that would perfectly fit the requirements. iBackup was a perfect substitute – ... Read more.

Domain Remame

Published on June 1, 2006 under Projects

Status: Before we grow any further, a new DNS scheme is in order. Following the pattern of: citycode.domain.com – shouldn't be too hard. A slightly stressful rename of the PDC (just one so far, still small) was in order. After that (and client computers re-associated), the ... Read more.

Quickie Backups

Published on Feb. 1, 2006 under Projects

Status: All is well for some disasters, but what happens if our entire office burns down? SSH+rsync to the rescue, again. I first setup the PDC and webapp server to backup to the file server on a regular basis (PDC: incremental every day, full on Saturday). ... Read more.

New File and Webapp Server

Published on Jan. 13, 2006 under Projects

Status: Time has come to upgrade a few servers in the office. An older P4 2.8 was being used as a webapp server, and that needs to go. The resource utilization wasn't too much of an issue, however the computer was aging. Plus, it wasn't strictly ... Read more.

Generating a Self-Signed SSL Cert

Published on May 11, 2007 under Notes and Tutorials

I have the need to generate an SSL cert (Apache2) about once every 3 months. And since I'm cheap, I don't ever actually *buy* one, I just self-sign it. And every time I forget the commands needed. So, here they are, for my reference only. 1) Generate Private Key ... Read more.

Lighttpd As Apache's Sidekick

Published on Dec. 12, 2006 under Notes and Tutorials

So, you have a web server. So, you have PHP. So, you want to make it a little quicker? The following are a few ideas to let you do that. First, let me share my experiences. I have always been wondering "what would a digg do to my site." I ... Read more.

Make Dynamic Crap Static

Published on Dec. 7, 2006 under Notes and Tutorials

Let's say one page on your site is getting hit hard. And I mean, it was digg'd or something. If the page resides on some CMS or blog, and each request is being processed by PHP and resulting in requests to your database, crap is gonna hit the fan. Well, ... Read more.

Resize a Xen Image

Published on Nov. 8, 2006 under Notes and Tutorials

So, you've got a few Xen images around, and they are starting to fill up. How do you add a few more gigs to 'em? root@tpe:/# xm shutdown vm01 root@tpe:/# cd /xenimages root@tpe:/xenimages# dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024 count=1000000 >> vm01.img root@tpe:/path/to/images# resize2fs -f vm01.img ... Read more.