SITE LOGGING & MONITORING
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© copyright 2002 |
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Thursday, March 7, 2002 |
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Radio vs Jive posting A little while ago, I experimented with Jive, a Java based forum discussion system with an open interface and a cool NNTP gateway. When posting to a forum from the web based interface, Jive has a nice Preview button that let me check the actual (embedded tags and all) look of my message before posting it. I'm missing this feature with the current version of Radio: I publish a first version, proof read the published version on the radio weblog, then usually edit the last message from Radio's home page since I'm prone to typos and tend to write in layers (not to mention my cat managing to click the Post to Weblog button before I'm finished).
I hope Dave and his crew will incorporate a Preview feature in a future version of Radio. |
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Virtual PC for Mac inclined sysadmins
Virtual PC 5.0.2 Improves Performance (07-Mar-2002; 1.2K) [TidBITS] The new release runs really faster on my MacOS X 10.1.3 system. Memory allocated to the virtual machine is still capital though, one never seems to have enough of it. When I first heard of Connectix Virtual PC, a few years ago, I thought of it as a fashionable software for suits who wanted to look cool with Apple designed workstations while being able to run 'business' applications from time to time. Well, a couple of Powerbooks and releases of MacOS later, I am now using a Macintosh as my main workstation, and I've found out that Virtual PC is a great tool to emulate any i386 based operating system. This enables me to test admin scripts on several linux and bsd distros without actually bothering any live production server. I've read that Byte.com's Moshe Barr is running SuSE Linux S/390 over an Hercules mainframe emulator on his favorite Linux PC.
More modestly, thanks to Virtual PC and a PC-DOS virtual machine, I can run LDOS 5 or LS-DOS 6 on a fake TRS-80 Model 3/4 system, and it is still way faster than the 4 Mhz glorious original :-). |
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Network sniffers are always bad news
SwitchSniff. For those who think switched Ethernet environments are sniff-proof, the author offers this warning. [Linux Journal]Got to remember to check the switches settings and documentation next time I'm around a server room. Come to think of it, in manageable switches, SNMP communities might be a little too talkative. Checking hosts for network interfaces in promiscuous mode on a regular basis, with a tool like ifpromisc from the chkrootkit suite may not be a bad idea as well (ifconfig might be compromised already - or is this paranoia ?). 4:05:11 PM  comments:
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Widget woes Jon's Radio pages feature a nice subscriptions widget that displays the list of rss feeds Jon is currently subscribed to.
Following Jenny Levine's illustrated howto, I tried to install a copy into s l a m ' s home template, with the unsatisfying result displayed below the calendar widget. I'll have to ask Jon if he has any idea since my present knowledge of Frontier scripting is close to zilch. [Discussion] |
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Exploring Radio's features
Speaking of effectiveness, I've already spent almost 2 days trying Radio's rather diverse array of functions, meanwhile reading the whole (gasp) online documention. I tinkered with templates to give s l a m its outlook, and created categories to organize posts. I already have about a hundred questions in need of answering. I also have clients and servers in need of my attention, so my Radio fact finding story will have to wait a little more for publication. |
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System logs meet web logs Tangled in Jon Udell's threads for quite some time, I reckon it was inevitable that I became first intrigued then fascinated by web logs in general, and Dave Winer's & co. Radio UserLand in particular. My current project involves designing software services and tools (some open sourced) to monitor server farms operation thru host log files. Since I need to share a lot of information and procedures with other sysadmins, in the most transparent possible way, I'll give weblogging a try as a knowledge management tool.
Will s l a m turn into an effective K-Log, as defined by UserLand's John Robb for WriteTheWeb ? |
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last updated: 10/20/02; 9:57:56 PM.
