Recently after installing a fresh new copy of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, I found that root ssh access was set to without-password by default now. What that means to you is that if you are trying to ssh to your server with your root account and password, you will receive an access denied error. In order… Read More
Recently I ran into an issue with upgrading a Dell PowerEdge 4400 BIOS. This specific server is currently running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and I needed an easy way to update the bios while in Ubuntu or Debian. The official option from Dell consist of a windows based bios update tool. Obviously that is not going… Read More
Previously I wrote and article detailing how to Monitor HP RAID Array on Debian, unfortunately since that writing I have found a fatal flaw in it’s methodology. While our automated monitoring system using cciss-vol-status will in fact report a failed drive/array, it’s flaw lies in not reporting a predictive drive failure. The hpacucli tool is… Read More
If you’ve ever looked into high-availability, you are well aware that there are probably one hundred different solutions. In this article we will show you our no nonsense solution using software called UCARP. Using this simpler approach you will have a pair of hosts each of which is prepared to take over a single Virtual… Read More
If you have installed Bind DNS Server on Debian or Ubuntu, you probably noticed that all the output will be redirected to /var/log/syslog. We like to have our logs separate for each daemon, so in order to make that change we will need to add some configuration to bind9. First in /etc/bind/named.conf you will need… Read More
If your are creating a custom log and would like to use logrotate, then this tutorial is for you. In this example I will show you how I am using logrotate to rotate a custom log created during Unison File Synchronization. The log file I will be rotating is at: /var/log/unison.log. We will also create… Read More
If you have ever patched a software package, for example Postfix using this tutorial, then you probably noticed that on the next apt-get update, apt reports that the package needs updated. Of course we don’t want apt to update the package we just patched so in comes the package hold. You probably know there are… Read More
If you are like me then one of your biggest pet peeve’s with Nginx is its lack of authentication methods like those so easily accessible in Apache. Beyond that, if you would like to add an authentication method to Nginx, it will typically require a recompile. If you are running Debian or Ubuntu then I… Read More
This was brought to my attention in 2012 when Ubuntu 12.10 was released. Many people were complaining about the unity lenses and their far reaching affects(the inclusion of online shopping results in searches and online search “feature”). Since then we have had the PRISM debacle as well as many other highly publicized stories regarding our… Read More
In order to install VMware Tools On Ubuntu 12.04 you will be employing a two step process. First you will need to right click on the Virtual Machine in vSphere and choose “guest” > “Install/Upgrade VMware Tools” pictured left. Next you will need to run the following commands in terminal. This procedure works for every… Read More