How to mount a USB drive in Turnkey Linux
I like Turnkey Linux, which is a collection of pre-built server appliances based on Ubuntu. When you need a server fifteen minutes from now, it’s about the only way you can make it happen. But as far...
View ArticleI could ping my router, but not the rest of my network
I don’t know what happened, but my Ubuntu Linux server crashed hard the other night. And when I brought it back, the rest of the network couldn’t see it. I could ping my gateway (router), and the...
View ArticleHP open-sourcing Web OS is a gutsy move
HP announced this week that it’s not going to sell Web OS–the operating system it bought the remnants of Palm to get–and plans to open-source the platform, as well as re-introduce tablets based on it...
View ArticleUpgrade update
My new fire-breathing dragon of a server is sitting idle at the moment. I would have liked to have had it up and running today, but now I’m starting to realize why it took me so long to migrate off my...
View ArticleHow to start over with MySQL in Debian
I got my new 64-bit web server up and running today. Now the main task that remains is to get my data moved over to it. I talked myself into going with an Apache setup, since one program I want to run...
View ArticleCutting Apache preforks seems to help small web servers
I’ve had a ton of downtime this week (this seems to be the busy time of year for my web server), but I think I traced the problem to a known issue. My server has a 1.5 GHz single-core CPU and 1 GB of...
View ArticleA minor (but vital) Apache performance tweak
My problems seem to have become more rare since I started blocking spambots and tuned PHP and Apache but last night my server ran out of memory again and started timing out. It turns out I still had a...
View ArticleFour simple steps to optimize WordPress
A couple of years ago, I stood up a WordPress server. I made no effort to tune it, let alone turbocharge it, which is a decision I later came to regret. If your site gets more than a few hundred hits...
View ArticleTag your imported WordPress content with Simple Tags
Unlike many bloggers, I blogged for a decade before moving to WordPress. That meant I had a pile of old posts with no tags on them. One of the nice things about WordPress is that you can use the tags...
View ArticleDROP DATABASE wordpress;
This week, I doubled back down in earnest to get my webserver running on the hardware I bought a year ago. After getting Apache, PHP and MySQL installed on the box and playing together nice, I...
View ArticleMaking gradual improvements, starting with whatever bugs you the most
A long project can be paralyzing at times, making it hard to figure out where to start. A trick that I learned in model railroading is to just work on whatever small percentage of the project that...
View ArticleUse Apachebench to test your webserver optimizations
If your web server is slow and you want to fix it, it’s nice to be able to quantify what you got. Enter Apachebench, which is part of Apache and probably already on your server. Usage is tricky. The...
View ArticleA meeting secret weapon: the potato
One of the security podcasts I listen to–I’m not sure which one, but this sure sounds like Liquid Matrix–gave some advice the other week about meetings: Bring a raw potato. With any luck, you won’t...
View ArticleSecurity flaws in security tools are all too common
Fireeye runs a bunch of its processes as root, a practice that’s been a no-no since the late 1990s, and they’re more interested in litigation than they are in working with the guy who discovered it....
View ArticleResources for learning SQL
Whether you’re a sysadmin, an analyst, or use a computer for something else professionally–even if you’re not a database administrator or developer–SQL is a useful skill to know. I’ve gotten by for 20...
View ArticleCutting Apache preforks seems to help small web servers
I’ve had a ton of downtime this week (this seems to be the busy time of year for my web server), but I think I traced the problem to a known issue. My server has a 1.5 GHz single-core CPU The post...
View ArticleA minor (but vital) Apache performance tweak
My problems seem to have become more rare since I started blocking spambots and tuned PHP and Apache but last night my server ran out of memory again and started timing out. It turns out I still had a...
View ArticleFour simple steps to optimize WordPress
A couple of years ago, I stood up a WordPress server. I made no effort to tune it, let alone turbocharge it, which is a decision I later came to regret. If your site gets more than a few hundred The...
View ArticleTag your imported WordPress content with Simple Tags
Unlike many bloggers, I blogged for a decade before moving to WordPress. That meant I had a pile of old posts with no tags on them. One of the nice things about WordPress is that you can use the tags...
View ArticleDROP DATABASE wordpress;
This week, I doubled back down in earnest to get my webserver running on the hardware I bought a year ago. After getting Apache, PHP and MySQL installed on the box and playing together nice, I...
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