VPS Administration

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The future - a.k.a. What now?

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So what does that mean for usefuljaja.com?

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Basic administration is a skill that must be mastered if you are to have a happy VPS.

There are many methods for administering a VPS starting with using the command line to web based tools.

As with all aspects of administering a server, try to learn the basics before using web based applications - there may come the day when the web server is not working.

Many aspects of server administration can be automated and indeed, should be automated. These aspects are dealt with and explained in the admin tutorials.

VPS Admin:

Automatic update and upgrade: Timely security updates are the bread and butter for a sysadmin. Have your VPS email you when updates are available.

Assign custom sudo privileges: Learn how to create another administrator but not give them access to all the commands as the sudo user.

System Monitoring:

Memory Management: Frequent monitoring of memory usage gives an easy and instant overview of the state of your VPS.

System monitoring with top: Using top gives a real-time overview of system processes and exactly what is using system resources.

System monitoring with munin: Munin provides graphs of system resources. An easy way to tell how your server handles resources over a particular time period.

Scanning for rootkits with chkrootkit: Scanning for rootkits is essential for the integrity of your VPS. Automated scans with chkrootkit are even better.

Scanning for rootkits with rkhunter: Continuing the scanning of our system for rootkits gets even stronger results when combined with rkhunter.

VPS Backup:

Tar and untar: Introducing compressing and uncompressing files and folders using the command line into, and from, different formats.

More Tar and untar: Add and extract files and folders from existing tar archives without uncompressing them first and other advanced techniques.

Please feel free to contact me with any suggestions or ideas of your own.

PickledOnion