CentOS continuous release repository
October 2nd, 2011
CentOS is a project run by volunteers who take the source RPMs behind Redhat Enterprise Linux or RHEL and turn it into a binary compatible free version of the OS. Because it is run by volunteers the CentOS project can sometimes fall behind in it’s releases. To address the need for timely updates the CentOS team has created a Continuous Release (CR) repository. The purpose of a CR repository is to deliver bug fixes and security updates for existing users before an ISO image of the latest point version is ready.
Scheduling system maintenance cron jobs in CentOS/RHEL 6.x
September 5th, 2011
CentOS 6.x has changed how the default system maintenance cronjobs are scheduled. These are the cron jobs responsible for things like rotating logs and indexing files on the filesystem. That is routine jobs that are best scheduled to run at off peak times when the server is not busy doing more important things like serving money making websites. So how do you go about changing the timing of cron jobs on CentOS or RHEL 6.x?
Upgrade to PHP 5.3 on CentOS 5
July 25th, 2011
By default CentOS 5 comes with PHP version 5.1. This is an ancient version of PHP and incompatible with modern Content Management Systems (CMS). This point is driven home with the recent release of WordPress 3.2 that requires a minimum of PHP 5.2.4. Because WordPress is such a popular CMS and CentOS such a popular web server operating system it seems like a good time to write about updating PHP to version 5.3.3 on CentOS 5.
CentOS Linux: Secure password-less SSH access
July 23rd, 2011
Secure Shell or SSH is used to access a remote Linux based Virtual Private Server (VPS) or dedicated server. Using SSH you can log into the remote server’s command line interface to carry out server administration tasks. SSH connections are encrypted so its safer than using alternate methods like telnet. But because SSH is so widely used it is often the target of malicious individuals looking to compromise your server. So it’s important to secure SSH access to your server.
Automating incremental backups with Rsnapshot
July 17th, 2011Previously I wrote about using rsync to efficiently backup your server. Automating rsync backups is easier when you use a collection of perl scripts called rsnapshot. Rsnapshot is designed to maintain backups taken at different times. These backups are called snapshots and, apart from the very first one, they all tend to be incremental in nature taking up very little disk space and bandwidth.
