Configuring djb’s dnscache on Interworx Servers for Speed
The control panel we use, Interworx, comes with djbdns as its DNS server. djbdns is actually a suite made up of several separate servers, the two main ones being tinydns for iterative (non-recursive)...
View ArticlePuppet – Use It For More Than Just Servers
I use virtual machines at work and home to test and experiment with various things. After setting up a new virtual machine, I install some of the programs I use on a daily basis like emacs, gawk, ack,...
View Article64 Bit CentOS Installing 32 Bit Packages
When you do a fresh install of x86_64 CentOS 5, you might be surprised and annoyed to find yum trying to install 32 bit packages on your 64 bit server. You’ve got a 64 bit processor and operating...
View ArticleRunning a Public Mirror
We run the Nexcess public mirror for distros and software our servers and employees use. Running our own mirror reduces our bandwidth usage since the traffic for updates and installations of our CentOS...
View ArticleViewing A File With All The Special & Control Characters
Sometimes I want view a file and see all the tabs replaced with a tab character and see line endings clearly marked. This might be because I’m trying to parse the file somehow, writing a regex to match...
View ArticleSorting The Output Of du
du is a utility to tell you the disk usage of files or directories. Usually when people run it, they want the output in a human readable format like 314M, 2.7K, and 161G which are a lot easier to read...
View ArticleHow Does a Server Know it Needs an fsck?
Shutdown uncleanly If you’ve ever had to hard restart a Linux server, you know when it starts up you’ll see a message about your system being shut down uncleanly and it will do an fsck. But, how does...
View ArticleChanging The Timezone In CentOS From The CLI
Red Hat’s documentation on how to change the timezone tells you to use a GUI to change. As a sysadmin, I’m not going to install a gigantic GUI to change a timezone on a server. The correct way to...
View ArticleTLS 1.2 and openssl 1.0.1e Frequently Asked Questions
As we’ve upgraded a lot of our servers to openssl 1.0.1e we’ve seen a handful of problems with APIs or payment gateways. The companies whose API is being used say they don’t support openssl 1.0.1e...
View ArticleRecent Exploit using Fake Magento Extensions
We are publishing this post in the hope that all Magento users can utilize this information to determine if their site has been compromised and take the steps required to correct the problem. We were...
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