Month: September 2009

  • One Java init script to rule them all

    Need an init script for a Java service? Like tomcat, liferay, or jboss? Regular Linux init scripts often don’t work so well. e.g. Java apps typically want to be run by a particular user (e.g. tomcat or liferay). e.g. They may require a ‘special’ shutdown mechanism (e.g. with Tomcat sending a signal to a particular…

  • Has your VPS been hacked?

    If you use any pre-packaged software, it always pays to sign up to their mailing list or security advisory list. This means if any exploits or updates happen, you are on the ball and up to date. Today we had an email from a customer whos front page had been replaced. I noticed it was…

  • Rimuhosting does Software Freedom Day

    Well I’m sure most geeks out there have heard of Software Freedom Day, it was the same day as Talk like a Pirate day!  I’m glad however that most people forgot ‘Talk Like a Pirate’ day however, since a good portion of the NZ Rimuhosting staff were helping out at the local SFD. John, Paul,…

  • Is your VPS slow to login at all? Applications not running so fast?

    Often we will get customers emailing in saying that things are just running ‘slow’. Often when we login the first thing we notice is after the password has gone through it just hangs for a fair while before login. This is usually a sign that its trying to do a reverse DNS lookup and failing.…

  • Safe rm prevents accidents! try it!

    I found this the today http://www.safe-rm.org.nz/ , and having had the odd accident im most definitely going to be installing this on my own server! What is safe-rm? Safe-rm is a safety tool intended to prevent the accidental deletion of important files by replacing /bin/rm with a wrapper, which checks the given arguments against a…

  • New website release coming up

    Heya guys Well this is a special release just for you guys who watch the blog. It seems the dev guys have been hard at work and put together a couple of new websites designs! We are just tweaking it a little but thought we would give you a nice sneak preview of both of…

  • Got Backups?

    Backup your data.  That’s something that’s repeated over and over and yet too many people don’t really take it to heart.  If you’ve lost data in the past, I be that you’re backing up now like it’s a religion.  If you’re not backing up, maybe you’ve never lost any data or maybe it’s just something…

  • We’re a Team

    We see lots of different problems every day as Liz noted the other day.  It’s really quite varied work that we do and you can go from resetting a password one minute to setting up load balanced proxy servers the next.  There’s always a fun and challenging problem right around the corner. The most important…

  • libc6 vs libc6-xen problems with applications segfaulting

    We recieved the following email this morning which may be a problem from time to time with other users, so i thought I would share this. Subject: Seg faults on apache mysql and a couple of other less import programs. Probably need a fresh install. Message: Hi I have a serious problem with my VPS…

  • Domain Name Confusion

    This is something we see time and time again.  It is fair to say, unless you have had a bit of experience with it, can be a bit confusing. So here is a breakdown of the domain name components.. Registrar This is the business you pay a yearly fee to register your domain name.  i.e.…