inside the mind of a linux admin

Moving Array and Virtual Disks from One System to Another

This article applies only to PERC 2/SC, 2/DC, 3/SC, 3/DCL, 3/DC, 3/QC, 4/SC, 4/DC, 4e/DC, 4/Di, and CERC ATA100/4ch controllers, and specifically for Dell PowerEdge servers. Be VERY careful when making any modifications to any disk array, as data loss is always possible. After some planning and preparation, it is possible to migrate array and […]

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dstat: a powerful system administration tool

As a system administrator, I’m always looking for new tools to make my job easier. I’ve been using ‘dstat’ now for about 3 months, and it’s something I don’t know how I lived so long without. This tool is quite versatile and informative, and interacts directly with the kernel to give you a nice colorful […]

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Finding & Deleting Linux Core Dump Files Safely

Linux sometimes dumps a huge file when a script crashes. These core files can build up and eat away valuable disk space. Some other methods of deleting core files will damage your server. Here are a few simple commands I use to find and delete these core dump files safely. Deleting files on Linux can […]

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Perl module install Out of memory and core dumps

Encountered this gem when I was attempting to install an overly simple/normal perl module (HTML::Template, though all will fail as a result of this). This actually has nothing to do with cPanel, the kernel, or CPAN. Instead, you’re actually hitting a PAM ulimit that is exhausting all of the available reserved memory required to install […]

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Ubuntu 10.10 Beta (Maverick Meerkat) Released

Erik

Saturday, September 4, 2010

ubuntu linux

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The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Maverick Meerkat Beta is the beta release of Ubuntu 10.10, bringing with it new features for the next version of Ubuntu. This is a beta release. Do not install it on production […]

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RAID: Rebuilding a Foreign disk by hand

While replacing a bad drive with a drive that used to be part of another RAID array configuration, the RAID refused to automatically rebuild, thinking that I might want to import the configuration from this disk (or that there’s data on there that I might need). Simply inserting the drive doesn’t make the controller rebuild […]

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