Caleb Collins

Caleb Collins

Walk without rhythm and we won't attract the worm.

Posts by Category

FreeBSD

apache

Apache proxy to a different port

Sometimes you may need to redirect a simple URL like jira.company.com to something like jira.company.com:8080 for easier access. A simple Apache Proxy will s...

aws

Install AWS CLI on OSX

You are going to need to make sure you meet a few requirements to install the CLI tools but you should already have most in place. Python 2 or Python 3.3+ Pi...

firewall

Redirect ports with IPtables

For whatever reason you may want to remap a high port to a low port. Here is how you can do it with IPtables. In this example we are going to remap 23420 to ...

freebsd

Make a FreeBSD 7.0 DVD

The goal here is to make 1 single DVD out of the 3 FreeBSD 7.0 installation CD’s. First we need to fetch all 3 of the ISO’s. For this example I am pulling ...

gnu plot

GNU plot your SAR data

So recently I had to assemble some sar data into some nice graphs that the higher ups could understand. So I decided to write out a small script to graph o...

homebrew

Install homebrew for Mac

This one is really simple but people ask me how. So you can either visit http://brew.sh and follow the directions or just kick off this curl request.

linux

Set default timeout for bash

Create the following in the /etc/profile.d/tmout.sh TMOUT=900 readonly TMOUT export TMOUT Now chmod 755 that file and your good to go.

Test CPU

This is the quickest way to do a quick CPU test. Just download the latest kernel source and run. make oldmenuconfig Just hit enter for all then make a shell...

mac

MacPorts and osX

Install a port port install port_name Install pre-compiled binary port port pkg port_name Create osX DMG file from port port dmg port_name Create RPM file...

Windows 7 64bit and Macbook Pro (osX)

So the first hurdle I had to overcome was a bad bootable disc that was given to us from Microsoft. Whenever I used the CD they gave us in my macbook I woul...

mail

Sendmail to Postfix

Stop your current MTA service sendmail stop Install Postfix yum install postfix Set Postfix to be new MTA alternatives --set mta /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix...

Use mutt to check mail

Simple connection test to verify your mail setup. mutt imaps://server.yourdomain.com Obviously you can change the protocol and specify the username after yo...

Mail only works on localhost

This happens quite often with new users or admins who are not familiar with mail setups. Postfix (/etc/postfix/main.cf

mysql

Log vsftpd to MySQL

First lets build the pam_mysql package. There is more then one way to do this I just decided to use a SRC RPM I found for FC9. wget http://rpm.pbone.net/inde...

Import a plain CSV file into MySQL

This assumes you have already created the required table with all of the correct fields. Also this assumes you are using , as the field separator.

Create a simple MySQL index

Here is how you can create a MySQL index. Be aware of where you are using indexes they can be just as beneficial as they can be disastrous to performance.

Change MySQL open file limit

This one used to get new techs because they would see the error message and think the file limit error was pertaining to the kernel and not MySQL. You can ad...

MySQL unauthenticated user

Often time you will see stacked MySQL queries with the listing of “unauthenticated user”. This is a known bug in MySQL right now where it cannot perform a va...

network

ICMP address mask

So I recently had a customer who needed to have the address mask reply and request disabled for his server. On linux this sysctl value is not the same as F...

ntp

php

plesj

Get PHP5, PSA 7.5.4, & Horde to work

You will need to perform the following to allow Horde on PSA 7.5.4 to work with PHP5. pear upgrade DB cp /usr/share/pear/DB.php /usr/share/psa-horde/pear/DB....

plesk

Change domain name in Plesk

You do not need to migrate data to change a domain name in plesk just do from the control panel and it will changes all required aspects. Domains -> doma...

Change the TTL for a domain in plesk

To lower the TTL for a domain in Plesk simply go to the domain or server section and choose DNS. Next choose the SOA icon and from there you can lower the TT...

redhat

Set service to start on reboot

Come across this one all the time still. To set a service from init.d to start on reboot you can doo the following. First list the service that are available...

sar

GNU plot your SAR data

So recently I had to assemble some sar data into some nice graphs that the higher ups could understand. So I decided to write out a small script to graph o...

security

Check for POST spam abuse

Just use a quick 1 liner like this to get some info on what IP has been trying to POST the most and to what script. grep POST /home/httpd/vhosts/*/statistics...

Deny certain users access to a console

Add the required pam_access line to your system-auth or login file in the /etc/pam.d directory. This needs to be the first auth line to override the previous...

Kill all processes for a user

Sometimes you need to kill off any running processes do you can remove a exploited account. Here is a simple quick way. Using pkill

Check for DoS or DDoS connections

This is just a quick snippet to see what is going on with connection on your server. We are checking port 80 in this example but you can replace 80 with what...

spamassassin

Using Spamassassin with Webmin

It appears that some versions on certain mirrors do not include the spamassassin webmin module. You can get this from their site as it is now part of the d...

ssh

ssl

Check SSL expiration date

Nifty little script for doing a simple SSL verify. OpenSSL #!/bin/bash [ $# -ne 1 ] >> { printf "%s: site:port\n" $0; printf "Usage: %s www.example.com...

Fun with OpenSSL

Here are some quick one liners to do a laundry list of things with openssl. openssl s_client -connect domain.com:443 or for more info openssl s_client -stat...

storage

Extend LVM partition

This is really easy and is something every linux admin should know. In this example we are going to extend it to be 500MB. If I wanted to add 500MB then I wo...

MegaCLI cheat sheet part 1

Here are some quick commands that I have to use on a daily basis for RAID automation issues. You can either keep -aall in there or if you have more then on...

Expand array with MegaCLI

Recently I needed to add 2 more 1tb drives to my current RAID5 x3 1TB setup. This was all done with a hotswap cage and no downtime. I will show you how I a...

Report current disk usage

This is good for trying to chase down which directories are eating up the most space and give you a file with the report sorted by size in MB.

sudo

svn

vsftpd

vsftpd with SSL

First lets generate the PEM file. openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:1024 -keyout /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.pem -out /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.pem Now lets ad...

Log vsftpd to MySQL

First lets build the pam_mysql package. There is more then one way to do this I just decided to use a SRC RPM I found for FC9. wget http://rpm.pbone.net/inde...

webmin

Using Spamassassin with Webmin

It appears that some versions on certain mirrors do not include the spamassassin webmin module. You can get this from their site as it is now part of the d...

windows

Windows 7 64bit and Macbook Pro (osX)

So the first hurdle I had to overcome was a bad bootable disc that was given to us from Microsoft. Whenever I used the CD they gave us in my macbook I woul...

Windows needs LS

For some reason no matter how many times I have worked with windows I still find myself typing ls. I just make a ls.bat with the following to squash my short...