Technology

FTP concept finalized

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My selection of vsftpd as our FTP server of choice for our new production system is now complete. We will use it for just passing information onto vendors. We will have another one we use for internal use.

The next step of this project is to configure RSYNC. I am looking into that now. I hope to have some information before I go on vacation, but work is piling up so I am not sure.

I need to coordinate with Keith to verify the configuration for the Local Director’s we will use to load balance the FTP site is almost ready.

Secured Commuting

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I work in New York City. I take the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to work every day. Because of this I have to pass through Penn Station twice a day. It is a peaceful commute most of the time. Ever since 9/11 their has been a significant presence of police and national guard troops in NY Penn station. Right after 9/11 you would see troopers ever 20 feet or so stationed around the place. Even thought they probably would be useless if something major happened it made you “feel safe”. as time went by you saw less troopers. There was always some, but noticeably less. In the past month or so I have noticed again more troops. One thing different is that they now carry M-16 riffles. In the past they had pistol’s only. Again I don’t mind the idea of armed troops around. They are not rounding people up en mass or anything. They are just making a show, or that is what it feels like.

All these troops hanging around brings up the question of if something did happen would these guys be any useful at all? And do people know that something is possibly going on that they armed the troops with riffles now instead of pistols? I was just wondering.

The only thing that did get me a bit nervous was the bomb sniffing dog unit at my train station for a few months in the beginning of 2002. The first few days were weird, then you got used to the K-9 unit just hanging out there during the morning commute.

The changing world we live in!!!

FTP on linux @ home online!

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So I took the information I learned at work with building an FTP server on red hat and went home and built one. I sort of hope I secured it well enough. I checked things out and it looked good, but their is always something you forget.

The next step is to customize the configuration enough so I can use it at work in a production environment. Gus and I are sitting down tomorrow to look at it.

Robocopy is coming along well also. I am going to replicate an entire website tomorrow with a developers help. I need someone to test it after I am done.

System automation

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I have always been a user enviornment type of guy. What I mean by that is I have worked at companies dealing with corporate users, and the desktops and servers that service them. My current job requires me to do that as well. Another aspect of my job also requires me to operate several websites and all the infrastructure that goes along with it. It is much different than corporate user systems. It is very challenging, but also allot of fun.

One problem we are working on is how to release updates to a system with over 8 web servers located in 2 locations (going on 3), each having a varying degree of importance. I am working with robocopy. it is a free utility in the Windows 2000 Resource kit. It allows you to take a file or directory structure and sync it with another file or directory structure. For our uses I will select a master server, and make all changes and releases on that, then robocopy all informaiton out to multiple servers. It works. I have tried it on some user directories when I needed to move data over file servers. It preserved the security levels and everything. I need to check and see if I can script this in a way that I don’t get prompted for a password when running a sync between two servers on two different windows domains. Also I believe it will work with UNC paths, but I need to try that also.

Robocopy and other great tools are tucked away in the Win2k resouce kit. If you do any windows administration, you should have this kit.

My next task involving multiple copies of data is creating a redundant FTP server. I am looking at 2 Red Hat Linux machines that RSYNC between themselves to mirror the data. We would place both servers behind a Cisco Local Director and load balance the traffic the way we would load balance a web site.

The advantage of doing these sync scripts is to take the human element out of udating things. You get continuity. We like to do the same thing with desktop updates. If you have 50 computers you don’t want some people walking around and manually updating things. You would get configuration differences between the machines. An installation package would make all the machines get the software in the exact way. Of course we actually do our desktop system updates the manual way right now. I am working on an automated system for that as well for our new office.

Besides all this reasearch going on, I have all the normal requests for things. Also we are having issues with the new Super Micro server and linux. I was not planning on running linux on this machine anyway, but I wanted to know if it would work. Keith is working through the problems.

Internet On!!!

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My internet came back on at home a bit after I got to work. I was pinging it and it came up. It went back down for a few minutes again and then went back up. The people at Road Runner called me to check if it was up. They said they fixed it remotely. They don’t say they can do that when you call. I guess I had a low signal problem or something like that. Lets just hope it stay’s up

The research I did at work on FTP on red hat has been very productive. I am about ready to setup FTP on my home linux server this weekend. Their are just a few things I want to sort out first.

Not sure if we are going out drinking tonight or not. I will know later.

No cable modem

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The unthinkable has happened. Worse than no phone or TV, I have no internet access! I woke up this morning and went to check the weather and I found myself without internet access. Now I have had my cable modem go out before. In baton rouge it went out almost every week for like 5 minutes. The last time I lost my cable modem it was down for a week. That is why I am so concerned. These moron’s can’t do anything over the phone so for any problem they send a tech out. I should be thankful that I got an appointment for tomorrow (friday) because going a holiday weekend without it would have been bad.

This blog is being written now while I goto work on thursday morning, but I have no idea when it will get posted since my web server is down due to this outage.

I should get used to no access. When I am on vacation in 2 weeks I won’t have cell, pager, or internet access for the entire week. That will be interesting.

We have FTP, almost!

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I have worked out allot of the problems with hosting an ftp server on linux. I have a red hat 9.0 machine setup with users configured. It actually works. The last thing I need to do is security on the public folder I created for our applications directory. We have a space to keep needed app’s that may be downloaded. I need to setup a real test machine and get users onto it before I feel confident. The next major phase is to setup another FTP server on linux and sync them together with RSYNC. I also need to sync a windows machine the same way. If all that works, I have a working solution for our secure FTP site for a perspective client we have.

Of course someone may ask for SFTP and then I have to rethink the whole solution!

must learn read hat flavored linux

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I am slowly picking stuff up. Not nearly as fast as I would like or need, but there is only so much time in the day not taken up by work that needs to get done before I learn.

Today I am going to try and pick up as much as I can about linux ftp. I need to look at the config files of an existing server to compare what I want to do.

I also need to do MRTG, but that is less important than the FTP project.

All the other standard work stuff also needs to get done today also. I have a 2pm meeting with our telecom provider about installation of our long distance T-1’s. I also need to call a telecom provider that wanted our business to let them know they didn’t get it. I am actually pissed at them for showing up to just talk to Gus because I didn’t return the guys phone call in a few hours. Sales guys take note, I am busy. So are other people. If I don’t want to call back in 5 minutes, I am not going to. Get over it. If I need or want you, I will call you. Some sales guys are cool about that, others are dumbass. If you are a dumbass I am not dealing with you.

My computers & Blogging stuff

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I realized yesterday that I wrote a bunch of blog entries. I decided to write an entry on on topic, or group of topics. So if I want to discuss a few things at once I will have multiple entries broken down for your reading enjoyment.

I am back into my routine of writing on the train. that is how we got the morning and afternoon posts yesterday. I just forget to post when I get to work and just have to post time-stamp things later on. I tried to use the thinkpad for blog entry’s. I found a bug in w.bloggar. Well I think it is a bug. The dam thing wont work on my laptop. I use it once after install and then it crashes every time I try to open it after that. I just gave up on Monday. My powerbook works great, and it is light. I can do without the thinkpad some days during the week.

Yes I do have two laptops. You are reading correctly. I have my own personal Apple Powerbook G4 12″. it is the little powerbook. It is awesome. I am new to the mac’s. I have only had a mac since last july. The other machine is my company issued Thinkpad T31. It has a bright screen and weight’s around the same as the Powerbook even though it is bigger in shape. It is also an awesome machine. The down side is that as much as I tried, I cannot get any windows laptops to go into and out of standby and hibernate modes properly. The mac usually works. Also the smaller mac is easier to open on the train.

Then we have desktops. I have 3 computers at home (not counting the laptops). I currently have an AMD Atholon XP 1500+ computer running Windows XP Pro. That machine is my main desktop computer. I don’t use it nearly enough anymore, but I bought it in December 2001 when my desktop was my main computer. This box is tricked out even though I don’t utilize it that much. It has a gig of ram, 180gig hard drive, etc.

My next two machines are used as servers. I have my old desktop, A Pentium III 800 with 780megs of ram. I use that to test different things on. It used to be my windows 2000 server. Then I have an old Dell Dimension desktop that I think has Pentium III 700 in it. That is now my main server running Red Hat 9.0.

While I am on the topic of my computer gear I can say that I am using a Linksys DSL Cable router with 802.11g wireless built in. That gives me fast wireless while I am on my Powerbook!

There you have it. I am trying to shrink down the size or amount of stuff I have so it doesn’t look so bad in my living room. I just put the AMD computer into a new smaller & cooler looking case. The other two are already in mid tower cases so I am not sure what I can do with those.