Keep MySQL Alive

I wanted to have a cron job that would check if MySQL was still running and if not to start it again. The following got me started with an hourly check: 0 * * * * ps -ef | grep mysqld | grep -v grep >> /dev/null || /etc/init.d/mysql start

"Crontab -e Returns a Number" Problem

I sometimes find on a certain machine that when I change to a bash shell and try to edit the crontab with # crontab -e instead of getting my vi editor I just get a number returned, for example: # crontab -e3839Obviously something to do with how the... » More

Testing a SpamAssassin Install

SpamAssassin can be checked by feeding a text file into it and piping the result out to another text file. Amendments can be made to the input file to check for effectiveness. Consider using the 'GTUBE' phrase as a trigger to increase the score... » More

Adding Perl Modules

Using CentOS5/RHEL5 I needed to add some perl modules for SpamAssassin. Note sure how important this first step is but I:# cd /root/.cpan/sources# wget ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/MIRRORED.BY # perl -MCPAN -e shellwhen asked about configuration I said... » More

htaccess examples

Temporarily take site down for maintenance Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^111\.111\.222\.111 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/index.html$ RewriteRule $ /index.html or Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine... » More

Slow SSH Logins

On a new server install on CentOS 5.1 I was getting very slow logins. Trying ssh with the -v (verbose) option showed that: debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,gssapi-with-mic,passworddebug1: Next authentication method:... » More

Xen

I had a problem installing a new virtual machine using Xen and virt-manager on CentOS 5.1.I could not choose a network device as the drop-down list/menu was empty. From the bug at the following page:http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=2516 I downloaded... » More

PHP 5.2.0 Upgrade and Issues

In the official yum repositories for Red Hat/CentOS for RHEL5 / CentOS 5.1 the current version of PHP is (at time of writing) 5.1.6 however when trying to install the Magento e-commerce application required PHP version 5.2.0 or higher.To upgrade PHP to... » More

Nagios and Checking Squid

After installing Nagios I created three files to define all the services I wanted to monitor:hosts.cfghostgroups.cfgservices.cfgSquidI used the check_squid code from http://workaround.org/squid/nagios-plugin/adding the relevant details to each of my 3... » More