Category: Linux & Server Administration

  • mod_flvx – flv movies working with apache/apache2

    Want to do some streaming of flv on your site? heres how! cd /usr/local/src wget http://people.apache.org/~pquerna/modules/mod_flvx.c apxs -i -a -c mod_flvx.c if apxs does not exist, then apxs2 should. If neither do then install the apache dev packages Debian based distros use apt-get install apache2-prefork-dev The module load will automatically be created for you usually,…

  • Setup mail hosting on Debian Squeeze and other distros using postfixadmin

    Postfix is our favorite mail server. We find it’s easy to configure and performs really well. When asked at a recent conference talk, Eric Allman the creator of Sendmail, said he would use Postfix if starting today. Many people ask us if there is an easier way to setup and manage email address and aliases,…

  • Debian v6.0 (Squeeze) released

    Debian is one of our most popular distros.  Being very well suited for servers.  Debian 6.0 (aka squeeze) is now released.  It is a good option for a stable distro, with a good support life for package updates.  And right now it has a great, fresh set of new server-side app versions. Squeeze is available…

  • Plesk 10 – redirect problem

    We have a few people using Plesk 10, and there has been one notable bug with new installs and upgrades. Plesk has decided to redirect after the login to the server https://hostname:11444/relay Whilst this is fine if your hostname is a valid domain name that points to your server, this can be problematic for new…

  • Resolving ‘My website is slow’.

    We recently had a customer whose website was taking a long time to load. When we checked it was loading fine.  And we could not really find any issue with load on the server. Then we used the excellent firebug plugin for firefox to check what elements (css, js, imgs) the site was loading.  And…

  • Tomcat 7 released, installer updated

    Tomcat is one the most popular Java servlet/JSP containers. Tomcat 6 has been out since 2006 and the Tomcat team has just announced the first stable release of Tomcat 7. At the time of writing version 7.06 is the latest stable release. Tomcat 7 implements the Servlet 3.0, JSP 2.2 and EL 2.2 specifications. Along…

  • Setting up Monit + with tomcat

    We get asked a lot by customers to install and setup monit. Its not an overly hard task, in fact its pretty darned easy. Monit is brilliant for monitoring and restarting services when they are down, it can alert you or just restart after 5 failed connects/attempts. It handles everything from disk space, to memory,…

  • Older versions of debian and updates

    We have come across several users who run older versions of debian. This is usually fine, sometimes for some reasons users are unable to update for some time but require a package to be installed. This is where the fun begins…

  • Updating old installs – Plesk – and other nasty issues

    When choosing a VPS often people go with the distro that suits them best, usually one they find easy to manage. Whilst this is fine, you also need to remember that at some stage in the future you will need to reinstall or upgrade. Debian/Ubuntu based distros seem to scale and upgrade versions fine with…

  • Virtualmin on the command line

    We often encourage our users to use software which is better, and does things in a standard way. When it comes to control panels we prefer Virtualmin. It works with the distro you are using and the packages that come with it rather than setting up things in its own odd way and tieing you…