Saving some typing and time with SSH configs

If you are like me, then you may find yourself connecting via SSH to multiple machines a lot during the day. There is an easy way to make short cuts to save you remembering ip addresses, user names, or other things.
This tutorial is for people using Linux primarily, people using Windows should be able to save 'sites' in putty or what they use.

There are multiple ways to achieve this, the first is probably more common, adding an alias into .bashrc or .profile

alias sshserver="ssh user@serverhost"

This works, but you need a new alias or each server you run. It can be handy if you want to login to multiple servers or run multiple commands
eg

ALLHOSTS="127.0.0.1 10.40.1.3 10.33.6.95"
for ihost in $ALLHOSTS ; do ssh root@${ihost} "/etc/init.d/apache2 restart" ; done

This would login to all 3 IP addresses, restart apache and log out.

The second method would be more for just logging to do general work. You need to edit a file in your ~/.ssh/config and add configuration options. If this file does not exist, feel free to create it, chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config , and it will just work.

Some examples would look like this

Host backupspace
HostName backupspace.rimuhosting.com
User root

Host server1
Hostname 10.40.1.99
User root
Port 1022

Host staff
Hostname 10.40.2.33
User lizq
ForwardAgent yes

If you want that connection to stay alive longer you can add options like this

ServerAliveInterval 30
ServerAliveCountMax 120

There are a ton of configurations, you can find most in this page http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=ssh_config&sektion=5

Once those are setup, you can run them like this

ssh server1

This will log you into server1 config on IP 10.40.1.99 with username root and port 1022. It will save you from typing the alternative of ssh -p1022 root@10.40.1.99 , and it also works just fine for scp also.

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Installer updates, Glassfish, Confluence and more…!

One of the services we provide includes maintaining a set of installer scripts for automating common tasks and setups our customers like to use. Those help you by taking the pain and time out of getting setup and serving the content you want to publish.

From our tracking system some of the most significant changes include...

  • Glassfish installer updated for v3.1.2
  • Confluence installer updated for v4.2.2
  • Jboss installer updated for v7.1.1
  • Roundcube installer updated for v0.7.2
  • PostfixAdmin installer tuned and tweaked

Feel free to use those and the other scripts we have made available. You can browse them at http://proj.ri.mu/ anytime. If you don't find what you need listed there, or if you need a hand setting things up please let us know how we can help.

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May 2012 RimuHosting newsletter

RimuHosting server specials and news

Intel released their new dual processor Sandy Bridge platform, 'the fastest server CPU you can get in a reasonably priced server'.  And of course we are now making those available to our customers.  Pricing from $369.00/m.

Intel have been busy.  They also released (and we are now offering) their new faster, cheaper, bigger 330 series Intel SSDs.

Our customers asked for it, so we are happy to announce our cloud-y per-minute server billing.  Scale up or down; add and remove servers; only pay for what you use for the time you use it.

In Dallas we are now using bandwidth pooling.  We add up the data transfer allowance on all your servers there.  And only measure traffic leaving the network.

We just updated our list of VPS-on-dedicated servers.  These RimuHosting-unique servers offer the flexibility and ease of VPS hosting, but on your own dedicated hardware.  Great pricing.  Consider this option if you need lots of disk space, or more CPU Ghz.

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Call for ‘startups start here’ stories

For the last 9 years we have been helping start ups launch and run their services.  It is great to have a job where we get to help customers onto their path to Internet fame and glory.

We are now looking to tell the stories of some of these start ups.  If you have bootstrapped a new site with us we would love to feature you in a post.

This would be a great way to promote your site.  And we think it will make a good resource to help others see some of the challenges your faced (with your product, business and technical) and how you overcame them.  We will give a $100 credit for every published story.

If you are interested, post a bit about your business here.  Or contact us directly via email.  We will select a few stories to tell and conduct a simple email interview with you. Continue reading

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Setting up Domains Keys (DKIM) on Postfix

This is a quick and fairly painless way of setting up DKIM, on a postfix server. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a method for associating a domain name to an email message, thereby allowing a person, role, or organization to claim some responsibility for the message and helps verify that your mail is legitimate. This will help your email not get flagged a spam or fraud, especially if you are doing bulk emailing or important emails.
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New drive options: bigger, faster Intel SSDs!

Intel recently released their new generation of 330 series SSD drives.  These take over from the well regarded X25-M SSD drives.  But add more capacity.  Better performance.  And lower cost per GB!

Our new Sandybridge dedicated servers come with SATA3 which helps maximize the 330 series drive performance.  Data sheets show that over SATA 3 (at 6Gb/s) these drives can achieve 450+ MB/s, and ~25k IOPS.

We now offer the larger capacity 120GB and 180GB Intel 330 SSD (Sandforce based) options replacing both the original Intel X25-M 80gb option.

The SSDs are ideal for customers with performance critical IO loads.  Primarily: databases on sites with many concurrent users.  The low latency and very high throughput reduce overall server load.   And let you maximize other resources besides IO (like CPU and bandwidth).  This has the cascade effect of allowing your services to do more work on the same hardware.   Combine with plenty of RAM and our new Sandybridge CPUs and the  SSDs are hard to beat.

The SSDs are available for order on any of our Dallas-based dedicated servers.  Select the model that best suits you at http://rimuhosting.com/order/startorder1.jsp?hom=t-ded-dal

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Mysql Master/Master Replication & File sync for quick easy scaling or load balance

A lot of our customers often need a quick easy way to scale up without moving to a new host or changing IP, or even just want an overseas copy of their site, so this is a brief tutorial on how to duplicate your server, and have the database and files replicate between the 2 instances.

First, order your second VPS. This will work between data centers, around the world, or even within the same data center no problems at all. Make sure the disk size is the same size on both VPS. Install the new VPS with a copy of the old one, you can do this in your rimuhosting panel. This step is not overly necessary, but may save you setup/config and initial data transfer.
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Intel Dual Sandybridge servers avilable

Intel-Sandy-BridgeWe are pleased to announce the immediate availability of powerful new dual processor servers running Intel Sandybridge E5-2620 or E5-2630 CPUs. These impressive machines are built on the popular Supermicro platforms using the X9DR-f motherboard

This new platform will enhance any large scale dedicated or virtualized deployments with access to 24 hyperthreaded cores and support for 128GB RAM or more in a 1U form.

Anandtech have shown about 40% speed boosts over the previous generation E5560 processor for common server loads, up to 70% increases for some computationally intensive tasks.  They say:

Our conclusion about the Xeon E5-2690 2.9 GHz is short and simple: it is the fastest server CPU you can get in a reasonably priced server and it blows the competition and the previous Xeon generation away.

The servers are available for ordering in Dallas at http://rimuhosting.com/order/startorder1.jsp?hom=t-ded-dal in the dual CPU section under "2 x 2012 Sandy Bridge Xeon"

You can configure the server with up to 96GB of memory.  There are dual power supply and redundant power options.  Plus our standard option of private networking.

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Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin

We are delighted to offer the latest release of Ubuntu Server, codenamed Precise Pangolin. That is available as an reinstall option or for order on all our VPS and dedicated server ordering pages.

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Keeping your hosting panel updated

From time to time hosting control panels (Such as Plesk) get updated by their creators. Those updates may often include patches to critical vulnerabilities, so its a good idea to keep track of those.

We try to keep our customers informed. One example is a recent notification from Parallels affecting some older versions of Plesk.

However it is a great idea to keep track yourself. We recommend signing up to the relevant announcement channels. Some handy examples are below.

Plesk email anouncements or rss feed

Virtualmin Profesional issue tracker

Webmin email anouncements or Webmin/Usermin community support

If you have questions at any time about enhancing the security of anything to do with your server please do get in touch with us

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