RimuHosting Blog

Tag: sysadmin

  • Distro upgrade as a service

    For several years we have worked with customers to upgrade dozens of servers (primarily Debian and Ubuntu) from old (sometimes ancient) distro versions to the latest, stable versions. We are now offering this distro upgrade as a service. The upgrade steps are as follows: We collect systems information to ensure your setup is updatable (e.g.…

  • VM backup and download

    VM backup and download

    The following code snippet uses our https://github.com/pbkwee/s2i project to let you create a backup image of a Linux server, encrypt it, and then make it available for download (or transfer it directly to a remote server). s2i requires PHP, and can make use of PHP’s built in HTTP server. You will need sufficient disk space…

  • Modernizing your ancient server distro

    RimuHosting has now been providing VM servers for over 15 years. Back in the day the state of the art distros we setup for customers included 32-bit Debian 3- and Ubuntu 6-based servers. Things have moved on.  By default all new orders are setup with 64-bit distros.  And Debian is up to version 9, while…

  • Using Ansible to manage your VPSs – Part One

    Ansible is a system to automate the updating of server configurations and other administration tasks.  In this post I’ll explain what’s necessary to get started with Ansible, creating a configuration structure, telling Ansble about your hosts and running ad-hock commands on multiple hosts. Ansible is useful when you have 3 or more VPSs and need…

  • Don’t let the OOM killer stop MySQL

    Many of our customers are successfully using MySQL (or MariaDB) databases on their servers, and they usually run fine as installed and do not need any special attention. However, occasionally problems can occur with MySQL, and this may indicate that some manual tuning is required. One scenario is when the system is short of memory,…

  • Jobs at RimuHosting!

    RimuHosting is looking for experienced Linux sysadmins to provide support to our hosting customers as well as to help build and maintain our global hosting infrastructure.

  • $50 hosting credit for server migration

    I’d like to offer a USD 50 hosting credit to anyone ordering a new server with us where that server is currently hosted elsewhere. Get started now, order a fast VPS with a ton of memory at a pretty decent price using our Launchtime ordering system. Why order a server with RimuHosting?  We’re run by…

  • Keeping Tabs on Successful Logins

    There are a number of things that any sysadmin should be doing (or is already doing) to keep tabs on the systems they manage. One of the things that I do which is quite simple (read: quick and dirty) is having my server send me a message anytime a user logs into the server. I…

  • Be at Linux Conf in Wellington, or be square

    RimuHosting: Proudly supporting LCA2010 Linux Conf down under will be in Wellington from Monday 18 January to Saturday 23 January 2010. This is right on our door-step (well an 8 hour drive down SH1 from Cambridge, at least).  So there will be a few Rimu-ites heading down.  And have signed up to be a sponsor…

  • External MX Records

    I see this particular problem about once or twice a day it seems and probably have for as long as I’ve worked at Rimu. Sometimes customers opt to have their email handled via a 3rd party mail service (google apps, for example).  If the hostname of your server is example.com and you’re trying to send…