A linux primer

This guide is meant to provide information to those that may still be teething on linux and are not yet familiar with the differences it has with other operating systems. I am also going to cover some of the basic things that should be done about security and the often overlooked importance of backups. Since most of my articles are targeted at people within the hosting industry I am going to write the guide slanted more towards that group. If you have any more ideas or suggestions as to what I should add to this article please give me some suggestions! I am going to gradually try to add some more information, like in the area of how to use ssh.

*Updated August 8th* Fixed some typo’s and added a little bit more (more…)

Increasing TCP IP Efficiency

Okay, Well… This script is not a security script, nore a load balencing script. But it is a very useful script if you get high traffic or are hosting a Game Server. I’ve Had CounterStrike Server player ping go down as much as 50ms after running this script.

So what you want to do is log into your server’s shell, and create a file (nano filename.sh). Once you create the file, you need to put this code in the file;

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Installing zend optimizer

cPanel’s /scripts/installzendopt generally works if you run the cPanel control panel. If you do not the Zend website has an installer which is basically the same thing and works great. If you do not want to search the site I have provided a mirror of the files below. If you do please use version http://eth0.us/files/ZendOptimizer-3.2.8-linux-glibc21-i386.tar.gzas it is compatible with php5 and php4
Updated August 2007

Zend optimizer is a plugin to php which allows a server to read zend encoded files as well as serve as a platform to install zend modules such as eaccelerator.

I have a local copy of the files:

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://eth0.us/files/ZendOptimizer-3.2.8-linux-glibc21-i386.tar.gz
tar -zxf 3.2.8-linux-glibc21-i386.tar.gz
cd 3.2.8-linux-glibc21-i386
./install

Now just hit enter a few times until it is done and you are done! It is as easy as that.

Add an ip address

This is a quick guide on adding IPs to a system manually. I would only suggest it if you are not using a control panel, such as cpanel, that has a feature to adds ips. If your main ethernet device is eth1 instead of eth0 simply substitute eth1 for eth0. Other then that should be pretty simple to follow, this should work on any standard redhat/centos based system.

Login as root then do the following to add a new ip address to any linux redhat based system. If you have cpanel there is a nice little ip management script that just lets you do it via WHM. For those without cpanel do the following: 

cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
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Change the mysql directory

While not all datacenters do there are some that by default partition the system in a less then ideal manner. I have had to deal with quiet a few clients who have filled up their /var partition due to mysql being stored by default on the partition. This is a short little guide to show you how to move mysql to another parition on the system. I have another guide that shows you how to parition a drive for mysql but many times it is not possible to repartition a drive and it is a lot easier to simply move it to another live parition. I would make sure and leave mysql in the old place, or at least a backup copy, for a few days before deleting it to make sure all of the data was transfered fine. If you want to move to a partition other then /backup/ simply change backup to home or the partition name anyplace you see it. In addition to the space considerations moving to a different drive can also have a profound positive influence on the system performance.

First edit the my.cnf:

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Install subversion version management system (cvs replacement)

Subversion is a program much like cvs that allows for version management. Though I am not extremely familiar with it I was asked to install it on a redhat enterprise 3 update 6 server. The following rpms should work great as long as you have it running the latest according to up2date. If you have RHEL4 you can apparently just do up2date -l subversion. Anyways simply download and install these rpms:

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Compile php 4.4.1 from source

cd /usr/local/src/
wget http://ve.php.net/get/php-4.4.1.tar.gz/from/us2.php.net/mirror
tar -zxf php-4.4.1.tar.gz
cd php-4.4.1
up2date libpng-devel libjpeg-devel freetype-devel freetype libjpeg libpng

ln -s /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 /usr/lib/libjpeg.so
ln -s /usr/lib/libpng.so.3.1.2.2 /usr/lib/libpng.so

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Optimizing host.conf and sysctl.conf

Well, here is another net-based optimization script i have for you. It also is not a masterpiece, but when you include this with everything else, this small addition is the topping to the cake.

#!/bin/sh
cp /etc/host.conf /etc/host.back
echo “# Lookup names via DNS first then fall back to /etc/hosts.” > /etc/host.conf
echo “order bind,hosts” >> /etc/host.conf
echo “# We have machines with multiple IP addresses.” >> /etc/host.conf
echo “multi on” >> /etc/host.conf

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Possible backup solutions

There are many different backup solutions that we can deploy for you to ensure they your data is safe. They start at the cheaper options and go up, depending on what level of paranoia you have will determine which you should go with. Each of them has their own advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of the option that you choose it is always advisable to download the site to your local computer occasionally, especially if the site contains very important information. This information was originally for use with Total Server Solutions but it is a good general guide for people thinking about backups.

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DNS recursive

For who have recently notice that now DNSreport do verify if your DNS is recursive lookup or not, here is the tip on how to set it up.

open you named.conf and add before options { the follow lines:

acl “trusted” {
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx;
yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy;
};

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