Slice Administration

Latest Article:

Speed up resizes - Part 2

In the first part of this how-to we looked at how resize time is extended when a slice hosts many small files or many files that are being updated during the resize.

In this second part we look at the effect on resize time of large, constantly-updated files and how to mitigate it.

Slice Admin:

Memory Management with Free: Monitoring of memory gives an easy and instant overview of the state of your Slice. Use 'free' to give you basic details of RAM usage.

System monitoring with top: Using top gives a real-time overview of system processes and shows precisely what is using system resources.

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Using ServerDensity to monitor a slice: You have a number of options for monitoring your slice. Commercial services like ServerDensity can be easier to set up and maintain than free monitoring applications.

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Installing and configuring fail2ban: Let's look at installing and configuring fail2ban which can help in securing our Slice from multiple login attempts.

Capturing packets with tcpdump: Tcpdump is a powerful network debugging tool which can be used for intercepting and displaying packets on a network interface.

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Speed up resizes - Part 1: This guide will help you shorten slice resize times, slice moves, and slice backup times.

Speed up resizes - Part 2: In this second part we examine another use case and look at the resize process in general.

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Scanning:

Scanning for rootkits with chkrootkit: Regular scanning of your Slice is an important part of being a sysadmin. Automated scans are even better.

Scanning for rootkits with rkhunter: Continuing the rootkit scan of our Slice, we can get even stronger results by using rkhunter as well as chkrootkit.

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Recovery:

How to use Rescue Mode: Rescue Mode grants you full access to a non-bootable slice's filesystem. You can use it to modify problem configuration files or to use scp to copy data from the slice to a remote location.

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SFTP:

Secure FTP Transfers: Using FTP to transfer files to and from your Slice can cause issues with security - let's look at SFTP as a safe and secure method.

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DNS Records

Introduction to dig: Creating new DNS records is one thing, but what if you want to check them before they are fully propagated?

Verifying DNS configurations: If you've gone through our e-book on configuring DNS this article helps you verify your settings.

Using dig with external nameservers: Checking your DNS on external servers after your changes have propagated.

Getting more out of dig: Looking at other information dig can return about a domain.