RimuHosting Blog

Tag: Linux

  • Using swap within a VPS

    In a virtual environment, disk io can be about the most expensive operation there is. And swap (virtual memory) depends on that heavily. By default we configure a small swap partition for each VPS server so conditions where memory is exhausted can be detected more consistently,

  • Checking a potentially hacked machine and reinstalling packages when you break things

    Sometimes you may see something odd go past in the logs, on the screen, or something might just seem a bit ‘off’ somehow. Its a good idea when this happens to just double check that things are as they should be, verify packages, binaries, check logs etc Here are a few things i find helpful…

  • Could not perform immediate configuration on already unpacked ‘util-linux’.Please see man 5 apt.conf under APT::Immediate-Configure for details

    Today we had a customer who had somehow broken his apt package manager doing an upgrade from the looks. I googled and found the same error in many places, most resorting to reinstalling or purging the package to clear it, or reinstall. The error looked like this

  • Centos 6 released for VPS usage @ Rimuhosting

    We now have Centos 6 available for our new and existing customers to install if needed. There appear to be no major differences other than newer versions of software, and no problems installing it or gotchas. You can read the release here http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS6.0 If you already have an older VPS and want to reinstall ,

  • Package management using apt-get

    Our support team receives a few queries each day about managing packages under Linux. All our installs have the APT toolset installed. We have a guide on some of the basic uses listed on our HowTo page. There are a a number of uses which can make life easier which I will detail below, but…

  • Easy web server Load-Balancing with HAProxy

    Configuring load balancing between multiple web servers may seem challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. HAProxy is a great lightweight tool that is easy to setup and has a large number of rich features for managing and serving content. Lets look at a simple scenario using two application or web servers n2 and n3,…

  • Storage Clustering Part 2: GlusterFS

    GlusterFS is an interesting solution for providing redundant network attached storage clusters. Some features include… trivially easy for basic setups supports virtually any file-system no need to mess with kernels can work across commodity network hardware suitable for enterprise deployment has commercial support available GlusterFS can scale well also, its simple configuration based storage is…

  • Easy IP failover (Debian squeeze)

    Say you have a bunch of servers on a fast private network, running a busy web site. And you need a gateway server so you can reach those from the outside world. You might run a proxy on a gateway server to expose that. However there could be a problem accessing your site if that…

  • Storage Clustering Part 1: An Introduction

    John and I have recently been looking at server clusters, and how they can be provisioned to best fit our customers needs. This post is the first in (hopefully) a series on the results of that research. To start with in this post I would like highlight some common questions about big storage options. If…

  • Jira Issue Tracker install script

    Recently I posted about a script to install Confluence. At the same time I was working on an install script for the Jira® issue tracker (also from Atlassian®) as the underlying setup is quite similar and they are often used together. Jira is great for keep track of issues while providing a lot of tools…