Web/Tech

FTP concept finalized

by

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

by

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!

by

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

by

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!!!

by

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

by

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!

by

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

by

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.

3ware vs Promise

by

Ok if you are not a tech person you will have no idea what I am talking about, but today I give a new type of IDE RAID card a try. We currently use Promise IDE RAID cards and enclosures for some lower end data storage needs. We don’t run database servers on them, but we do store huge amounts of images and static web pages on them. They perform well so far. We really have not given them a head to head speed test Vs SCSCI RAID. The reviews I read say they are slower but not by that much. My big concern has been swapping drives out if/when they go bad. If that is simple and they are close to the speed of SCSI, I am sold. Why? They are like half the price of SCSI.

We are primarly a windows company but recently we have been doing more and more linux. the servers we are getting that use the promise IDE RAID are having issues with the newer versions of Red Hat. That is a problem with linux. the really new hardware does not work with the really new versions of the OS. Dam read hat is coming out with a new version every 6 months or less.

To solve our problem we are looking at a company called 3ware. They also make IDE RAID cards. Gus said he knows people who like them and run Linux. Since if I don’t listen to him, I get hit I decided to try one out. Well he doesn’t hit me, but he does get my blood pressure up 20 extra points by pulling some sort of prank!

I will have reviews hopefully by tomorrow.

Vmware & System changes

by

So I had this novel idea about VMware. what if I installed windows 2000 pro, or XP as a virtual client. Then put all the dangerous software in that client. That way if Kaza or limewire screwed up my install it would only mess up the virtual client and not my computer. I could have my own downloading system, within my normal system. It sounds good. I am trying it out on my desktop at home. I put windows 2000 pro in a virtual machine. I will see if things work out ok.

Keith had to rebuild Gus’ desktop server yesterday. Not sure what happened to it, but it got fried. We also had some problems with 2 rackable systems servers. They are these really small rack servers with IDE RAID. we got 4 servers in a bundle used for like $800. The worked fine for like 8 months but now we had 2 issues with one box, and 1 issue with another box. We are probibly going to take them out of production.

Our new DBA is kicking ass. He is forcing sweet security changes to our DB design. I think it is great. Besides fixing a lingering problem we have had, it also fixes a mind set. That is more important to me. It gets developers to realize that things are not done for their convience, but for best performance and security of the production systems. If someone is upset about stricter rules in handleing prodction code, there is no debate, they have to deal with it. It is a breath of fresh air for me. Gus has been pushing for this for as long as he has been here. We have seen great strides in this “production is more important that people” pheonominon in the past 3 months. It is no longer me being a pain in the ass to everyone. It is a bunch of us being a pain in the ass to everyone.