RimuHosting Blog

Tag: Server administration

  • Using libcloud with RimuHosting

    Libcloud.org has merged our RimuHosting driver into their Python library.  All of our api functionality isn’t included in that driver, but there are a number of handy things that you can do via just a smattering of python code.  I’m going to write a few articles on this topic to demonstrate some of the cool…

  • 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…

  • Announcing the RimuHosting REST-ful API

    Announcing the RimuHosting API The RimuHosting API is an programmable interface to manage some of RimuHosting services. It lets you do things like setup new VPSs, add memory or disk to existing VPSs, check your data transfer usage, grab host server load stats, reboot servers, and most other actions that until now you could only…

  • 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…

  • Unsure who is sending spam? Try this

    Anyone who has hosted peoples websites before, has had  either a blog hacked, or some guy thinking he is going to send mass mailouts using PHP or similar happen. Its extremely hard to trackdown and deal with, and yet it can get your server listed at spam service denying legitimate email from getting through. This…

  • 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…