I Just Joined SAGEI Just Joined SAGE
I’ve just joined SAGE AU – the System Administrators Guild of Australia [1] . I’ve known about SAGE for a long time, in 2006 I presented a paper at their[...]
Author: etbe
BIND StatsBIND Stats
In Debian the BIND server will by default append statistics to the file /var/cache/bind/named.stats when the command rndc stats (which seems to be undocumented) is run. The default for RHEL4[...]
The Date Command and Seconds Since 1970-01-01The Date Command and Seconds Since 1970-01-01
The man page for the date command says that the %s option will give “seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC“. I had expected that everything that date did would give output[...]
Moving a Mail ServerMoving a Mail Server
Nowadays it seems that most serious mail servers (IE mail servers suitable for running an ISP) use one file per message. In the old days (before about 1996) almost all[...]
Mobile FacebookMobile Facebook
A few of my clients have asked me to configure their routers to block access to Facebook and Myspace. Apparently some employees spend inappropriate amounts of time using those services[...]
Shelf-life of HardwareShelf-life of Hardware
Recently I’ve been having some problems with hardware dying. Having one item mysteriously fail is something that happens periodically, but having multiple items fail in a small amount of time[...]
Links May 2008Links May 2008
The Daily WTF has published an interesting essay on why retaining staff is not always a good thing [1]. The main point is that good people get bored and want[...]
CPU Capacity for VirtualisationCPU Capacity for Virtualisation
Today a client asked me to advise him on how to dramatically reduce the number of servers for his business. He needs to go from 18 active servers to 4.[...]
Hosting a Xen ServerHosting a Xen Server
Yesterday I wrote about my search for a hosting provider for a Xen DomU [1]. One response was the suggestion to run a Dom0 and sell DomU’s to other people[...]
Xen HostingXen Hosting
I’m currently deciding where to get a Xen DomU hosted. It will be used for a new project that I’m about to start which will take more bandwidth than my[...]