Website goes offline for 3 months

On the 6th of Mar, while performing routine maintenance on my server, bash commands suddenly stopped working. 1 2 3 4 $ pwd -bash: pwd: command not found $ ls -bash: ls: command not found At that point in time, apache web server was still running. I took the risk and asked for the server to be ...

Software Versioning

I have recently started managing yet another server. The server is running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and therefore support is good for another 5 years. Just to be safe, I double checked the openssl version after updating to make sure that it is not vulnerable to heartbleed. # openssl version OpenSSL ...

unrar

I am quite surprised to find that linux has quite poor support for rar files. I have tried both unrar-free as well as the non-free version but both fail spectacularly at decompressing password protected multi-part archives. A few seconds into decompressing, an error message pops up claiming the ...

mysql optimization

Recently did quite a lot of mysql related administration. Found quite a few ways to optimise that may make future administration easier. 1) If you are going to add/drop databases very frequently, you might want to add innodb_file_per_table=1 into your my.cnf config file. This will allow mysql ...

happy monthiversary

After more than half a year of tweaking + trial and error, I think I have finally pinpointed the cause of my server crashes. Nope, nothing to do with kernel stability, nothing to do with crond or any other service. Probable cause is hardware related, the pcb for the barrel connector power input ...

Problems with FTP

1) No copy feature. There is no way to duplicate the file the file on the server for backup, testing or any other purposes. You have to download the file and upload it to another location, which is quite a hassle especially for large number of files. One would think that this is a common ...

Server cluster for $500

Already have one, seven more needed. Just joking. Looks real nice with all the LEDs and stackable case.Cable management will be a nightmare though. 8 ARM CPUs, 16 cores clocked at 1.4Ghz. Unfortunately, no practical use for me. Unless someone wants to find the next largest prime number.

cloudflare

Finally decided to try out cloudflare to see if my site would load faster. I had already created an account ages ago but was hesitant due a a few reasons. 1) Changing DNS will affect my MX records and during transition period, my emails might be lost if settings are wrong. 2) Complicated setup ...