Linux News
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January 2, 2003 - Issue #113TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Sean’s Notes
2) Linux News
The Life of a Sysadmin
HP to Support Mandrake
NT and VMS, the Story
Interview with Bob Toxen3) Linux Resources
Hacking SQL Server
Dell Servers and Linux
Mozilla Key Bindings
Rsync Tutorial
Autofs Tutorial4) App o’ the Week
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1) Sean’s Notes
I’ve always found that the beginning of the new year is fairly slow at work. Maybe it’s the people on vacation, or that everyone is still stuffed from the holiday eating. Regardless, there never seems to be much going on, meaning that it’s the perfect time to do some year end housecleaning.
Linux boxes, as reliable as they are, require some periodic maintenance to extend their life and prevent problems. Once a year, though, it’s a good idea to do some more thorough work, and to get it all out of the way at one time.
First off is to make sure you’ve still got an accurate list of your machines. Are the boxes that should be on warranty still on warranty? Cables (especially network) labeled clearly? Great. Inspect the fans as best you can, make a note of any that aren’t running smoothly. While you’re walking around, run tests on your UPSes, if applicable. It’s shocking to find out how many people just plug in a UPS and are later surprised when there is a power outage, and the dead battery did nothing to keep the systems alive.
Next, have a look at your cron jobs. Cron is the daemon that takes care of running jobs at specified times. Like UPSes, cron jobs are often put in and forgotten. Often, the jobs outlive their purpose, and either fill logs with noise, or waste resources since their output is never used. Cron logs to syslog, so records of jobs should be in /var/log/cron. If you don’t know what a particular job does, or can’t explain the choice of time to run, then that’s a candidate for further investigation. While you’re checking into your cron jobs, make sure the email output is going to a human’s mailbox! Usually, if a cron job has any output, then that’s a sign of an error, or a misconfigured job. Either way, it deserves some looking at.
Even though there are scripts that rotate logs for you, it’s good to check in on them. Are you keeping enough (or too many) logs? Are the monthly logs building up too quickly, requiring a change to weekly rotation? Should you stop logging something entirely? These are all good questions to ask yourself as you look through your logging system.
While you’re looking at all your machines, make note of operating system versions. Maybe it’s time to upgrade that Red Hat 6.2 box? Limiting the number of variants that you have to work with means less overall work. Often, vendors drop support for older versions. Now is a good time to list all the systems that need upgrading, or will need it within the next 12 months.
Now that the yearly work for your boxes themselves is done, it’s time to take a look at how you do your job. How do you monitor services? Control access? Maintain configurations? While each of these are major undertakings, now is a good time to identify where your shortfalls are, and start planning to fix them.
Also look at yourself. Where do you want to be next year? What skills do you want to improve? Now might be the time to set some goals, such as “improve my shell programming”, or “become familiar with the kernel”. Maybe this goal might involve taking a course, or taking some certification exams. Part of this might involve talking to your manager to ask for funding, so think about what information you’ll need.
We’re probably used to watching over disk and CPU, but there are often some little things that go by the wayside. Once a year, while it’s slow, is a good time to get all those tasks out of the way. It’s also a good time to review the way we do things, and set some goals for the upcoming year.
Long live the Penguin,
Sean swalberg@cramsession.com
2) Linux News
The Life of a Sysadmin
The article that this Slashdot story refers to is an interview with a system administrator from an ISP, who gives his views on the job. Not only is the article interesting and informative, but the comments from Slashdot readers offer extra insight into the profession.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid/12/31/2318236&mode=n ested&tid&threshold=-1
HP to Support Mandrake
“France’s MandrakeSoft has teamed up with Hewlett-Packard in the open source camp’s latest foray into the desktop PC market. The agreement, announced on Tuesday ahead of the LinuxWorld Expo, will see HP build and promote Mandrake Linux-based desktop PCs for European and North American businesses.”
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2103462,00.html
NT and VMS, the Story
This news item is more of a history lesson about the evolution of Microsoft Windows NT and its VMS roots. Unix and VMS also share a history. It’s interesting to see where various OSes draw some of their features from.
http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?IssueID&ArticleIDD94
Interview with Bob Toxen
Bob Toxen wrote an excellent book on Linux security, called “Real World Linux Security”. Here is an interview with him.
http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id09
3) Linux Resources
Hacking SQL Server
While this article is more geared towards Microsoft SQL Server, the principles apply to all SQL platforms. Unless you inspect your input before you send it off to the server, you might be opening yourself up to some serious attacks.
http://www.securelyspeaking.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article& sid4
Dell Servers and Linux
Though Dell claims support for Red Hat, there really isn’t a whole lot of information on their web site. This page, maintained by one of the lead people on Dell’s Linux team, has links and resources to help you get your Dell PowerEdge (which really are sweet boxes) up to speed.
http://www.domsch.com/linux/
Mozilla Key Bindings
My efficiency with Mozilla shot through the roof after reading this page. Included are all the key bindings for the various platforms, which will save you some time instead of having to constantly use the mouse.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/mozkeylist.html
Rsync Tutorial
Rsync is an excellent tool for keeping files up to date between multiple machines. It can be a bear to use, especially if you’re new to the whole Unix thing. This tutorial walks you through the setting up of an rsync server, and the basic usage of the client.
http://perso.club-internet.fr/ffaure/rsync.html
Autofs Tutorial
If you’re new to the whole Unix thing, the concept of having to mount and unmount floppies and CDs might strike you as odd. There are ways around that, namely the use of “autofs”. This tutorial walks you through setting it up.
http://www.linuxhq.com/lg/issue24/nielsen.html
4) App o’ the Week
Tired of running IOS on your Cisco 2500 routers? How about giving Linux a shot?
http://www.mcvax.org/~koen/uClinux-cisco2500/index.html
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