I came across another great Unix Support site that I thought I would share with you. Brandon Hutchinson is a Senior Unix Engineer who started to document his work for reference by himself and coworkers. The site is http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/ and he has also started to wiki to better manage changes and allow others to contribute. His wiki is here http://brandonhutchinson.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Main_Page and is well worth checking out.
I am sorry for the lack of posts here, I recently changed positions which has kept me fairly busy. I just started at MIT in their application infrastructure services group and have been focusing on my new position more than my blogs. This weekend I started reading and came across a post from Kris at Geekbits3 that was relevant to me and I am sure will be relevant to all admins that manage a large number of UNIX hosts.
On most Corporate networks, telnet is disabled and ssh is required for connectivity between Unix hosts. SSH requires a password and depending on how it is configure, could also require a key phrase.
Kris outlines a secure configuration of connecting to your hosts with SSH that eliminates the need for a password or an SSH key phrase. This process needs to be followed on all of your servers, however once in place will increase your efficiency and provide you with extend remote support on all of your servers.
Here is an overview of Kris's post ......
Passwordless Login For SSH
I've recently set-up a new backup server, I wanted to be able to automate backups from my workstations to the server. I will be using OpenSSH
(scp) as the transfer agent between the workstations and the server. By default the OpenSSH server asks for a password every time you login, therefore automation is impossible, without a bit of tweaking.
Creating an environment where passwords are unnecessary can be achieved using public-key cryptography
There are a number of steps that need to be completed, on both workstation and server, to achieve password-less logins. I have written the required server commands within the `ssh' command, to simplify the process. You will need to have a working OpenSSH server, and user login before beginning.
I have had a couple inquiries and suggestions after my last post however I have had no real written contributions. The one bright spot is a note that I received from Kris at Geekbits3. Kris is a system administrator and blogger from Australia that publishes a great blog that focuses on Unix and Linux management. Kris is passionate about technology, system administration and sharing her tips, tricks and documentation.
She has written many posts on FreeBSD, OpenBSD VMWare on Ubuntu and a couple on windows support. If you are currently supporting a Linux community, I would encourage you to check out her blog at http://geekybits.blogspot.com/
I came across a great little Linux/Unix blog that is worth checking out. It's called the Linux Screw and there is plenty of great Linux and Unix content, presented in a nice clean looking blog, with plenty of graphics.
Check it out ......
In the last few months Microsoft has published a lot of content on their Technet Webcast Weblog. I have provided links to most of the new content which includes information on Sharepoint, Windows Server 2008, and the Communications Server:
SharePoint 2007 Podcasts - Collaboration, Content Management, Search
TechNet Radio: Network Access Protection (NAP) for Windows Server 2008
New Short-Format Audio Podcasts for Office System Productivity
New Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Virtual Labs
SharePoint & Office Open XML Short Format Webcast Express Pilot
24 Hours of Exchange Webcast Series
Technet Audio PodcastsIf you are supporting Microsoft Infrastructure and would like to learn more about their newer products then the Technet Webcast Weblog is a great starting place.
I wanted to share my thoughts with you on a couple of sites. One site I have mentioned before the other is new to me. The sites are The ITIDIOTS and The Daily Cup of Tech. Both sites have a tremendous amount of content for folks looking to refine their technical skills.
The ITIDIOTS is a great podcast/videocast with many training videos and screencasts for people working in IT or studying for their MCSE exams. They also touch on pc, mac, ipod and zune topics.
The Daily Cup of Tech has a great series on server failures that they labeled the Server Failure Lesson. The Daily Cup of Tech blog also had a contest for the best tool and resource ideas for a small 32 MB USB drive. Here is the link to their USB Contest and a great list of PC Repair tools that fit on a 32mb USB Drive.
There are 6 new Microsoft Security Patches coming out next week. Four patches affecting Windows with a Maximum Severity rating of Critical that will require a reboot, another patch that also impacts Windows with a criticality of Moderate and one patch that affects Microsoft Office with a criticality rating of important.
Here is the link to the Microsoft Security Response Center June 2007 Advance Notification and for more information about each patch, follow this to the technet link that outlines the impact to each product and Operating System.
As a Technical Manager responsible for many enterprise level applications and servers, I would occasionally have to interview System Administrators. I developed a series of questions that I would ask each candidate, concentrating on what they have been doing recently, what their interests are, and then move on to technical skills.
One question that I ask each candidate is to explain "RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5". For those of you that need a refresher or are a little fuzzy on the answer, here is some help ......
RAID storage explained by ZDNet's George Ou -- Since I've been doing a lot of coverage of storage technology both for the enterprise and for the home lately, I thought I should give an explanation of what RAID storage is. I won't go in to every RAID type under the sun, I just want to cover the basic types of RAID and what [...]
Do you need more storage ?
Are you looking for a somewhat portable NAS device ?
Check this out ...... Interop '07: NetGear shows 3 terabyte hardware RAID-based NAS (it's a Web server too) by ZDNet's David Berlind -- Here in Las Vegas at Interop 2007 while roaming the show floor prior to the start of the event, I bumped into the folks at the NetGear booth who were preparing to announce several products at the show. But the one the grabbed my attention was the latest ReadyNAS network attached storage device. [...]
Here are a couple of links that the folks supporting UNIX environments may find useful .....
Sys Admin Blogs:
http://esofthub.blogspot.com/ My SysAd Blog -- UNIX
http://aplawrence.com/artindex.html Information and Resources for Unix and Linux Systems
http://unix-news.blogspot.com/ Nothing but Unix
http://uadmin.blogspot.com/ Unix Admin Corner
Sun, AIX and HPUX Links:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/solSysadminGuide/ Solaris OE Guide for New System Administrators
http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpux11i/cache/324545-0-0-0-121.html
