[TriLUG] Server Maintenance

[Magnus]

On Friday, August 1, 2003, at 08:17  AM, Hite, Danny wrote:

> Disaster recovery options,

You could read several good books on the subject.  This is far too 
broad a subject to get a quick answer to on a mailing list.

> Backups,

For free software, check out AMANDA.  For commercially supported 
software, check out BRU.

> Security Updating,

Simply patching your system is a good start, and for that I recommend 
that you install apt-get or yum on your machine and use those tools to 
update your system regularly.  Both of these tools are fairly automatic.

Security is a process, though, and patching alone is not enough.  
Again, entire books have been written on this subject and it is too 
broad a subject to address quickly on a mailing list.

> Daily log checking,

There are some programs that claim to do this, but in the end I've 
found I prefer to just page through my logs once or twice per day, 
skimming through and looking for things that stand out.  Doing that in 
combination with one of the automated log analysis tools would be a 
good idea to consider.

> other tips, rescue disks, etc...

What you're asking for is a book on Linux administration.  There are 
many good ones out there between $35 to $60 in price.  Or you could 
take a few weeks of training for 100x that price.  Of course going the 
other direction there are many good documents out there for free (see 
the Linux Documentation Project, as well as the great docs that came 
with those Red Hat CD's).

> Server 1 is used for a www.phpbb.com installation and apache of 
> course. It
> also uses sendmail to delivery email messages RE: the phpbb forum. This
> server is on the DMZ/SSN of my firewall with only port 80 forwarded 
> from
> external to DMZ/SSN. SMTP is enabled outbound ONLY for sendmail.

You'll save yourself a lot of reading time if you switch your MTA from 
Sendmail to Postfix.  Did you happen to catch the Postfix classes that 
TriLUG hosted recently?

> The backup software I use is Veritas' NetBackup. I do know that there 
> is a
> client for *nix so I will probably look into that.

Wow you have some deep pockets.  You'll have no problems affording 
those books.  Or a consultant to handhold you through this transition 
(*wink*)

> Sorry if I am asking WAY too many question in this email, but in the 
> end I
> guess that I really am asking is 'What is the best way to keep a Linux
> server "purring like a kitten"?'

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0672317559
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0072226315
http://www.tldp.org/

--

C. Magnus Hedemark
http://trilug.org/~chrish
PGP Key fingerprint = 984D 9A88 3D60 016F BE01 1506 60FB 85E1 9ABD 96F6
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