Previously 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.
command line utility
Using rsync to efficiently backup files
Rsync is a Linux command line program for synchronizing directories and files on different computers. Rsync will maintain an exact copy of the remote directory on your local computer. It does this by downloading all the files once and then only downloading the files that have changed the next time you run it. This way your bandwidth usage is minimized and the time taken to make backups is also reduced.
CentOS Linux: Setting timezone and synchronizing time with NTP
Learn how to set the correct timezone and synchronize time with NTP servers on your CentOS box.
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Renewing your DHCP lease and IP address in Linux
DHCP is widely used to assign IP addresses to computers on a network. Most home Internet connections are assigned IPs via DHCP by the Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you are using Linux as your Operating System and want to force a renew of your DHCP lease/DHCP assigned IP address you can do so via the Linux command line.
Monitoring bandwidth usage with vnStat under CentOS Linux
vnStat is a very simple utility that can track the amount of bandwidth used by your web server. It works by monitoring the received and transmitted bytes counters of your network interface and logging the data in a database. In this post I look at how to install vnStat and a web-based front end on a CentOS Linux web server.