RimuHosting Blog

Tag: Linux

  • Linux permissions, package management, chattr

    A customer emailed in today with a fresh install and was having problems with a basic upgrade. I tried running a yum update from the Webmin control panel, and got this error for the ‘rpm’ package: Updating : rpm [ 73/147]Error unpacking rpm package rpm-4.4.2.3-18.el5.i386 error: unpacking of archive failed on file /etc/cron.daily/rpm: cpio: rename…

  • Small Shell Script for monitoring

    A customer wanting to do basic monitoring , i had a google and found the following script which is very handy. #!/bin/bash # # Script to notify admin user if Linux,FreeBSD load crossed certain limit # It will send an email notification to admin. # # Copyright 2005 (c) nixCraft project # This is free…

  • checking the checksums of your binary packages

    Occasionally you just want a bit of piece of mind about your server or Linux install. You may suspect there is somebody who has hacked your computer or even something changed by a package install that shouldn’t have been. Heres a couple of ideas on how to do a quick ‘health’ check on he md5sum…

  • Adding timestamps to your bash history

    Often we’ve had boxes compromised, or commands run that we have no idea who did it and at what time. Its very frustrating, especially when we have no idea if a customer did it, one of the staff, or if a box was compromised. Glenn found this little snippet which is now default in all…

  • sshmnt installation and useage for backups

    So you want to use sshfs to do a backup? We have had a couple of customers unsure what to do when the sshfs command is not found. Its not too hard to do. Debian based VPS can just run apt-get install sshfs Centos doesnt come with it by default and you need to install…

  • Problems with HDDs, so Rimuhosting.com gets a hardware upgrade

    Procrastination is a horrible thing. A few weeks back Carl here setup a brand new Nehalem server for us to pop the RimuHosting website onto. RimuHosting had been running on one of our lowest speced Core 2 servers for couple of years now. And it had been doing pretty well. But hey, why not upgrade?…

  • Does your VPS have MD5 enabled for passwords?

    We recently discovered that the way we install a VPS differs slightly from the usual CD install. This is not something we do specifically but something that can be improved on in the set-ups of CentOS5.3. When you install from a CD it automatically enables MD5 encryption in passwords (which should be the norm), however…

  • 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…

  • 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.…