Tips and Tricks

SSH Timeouts

Do you work in an environment where you bounce through a bunch of firewalls? Do you hang out on idle ssh connections that often times get dropped after a certain amount of idle time? I do and it has always annoyed me. To the point that once I connect to a box that I will be coming back to, I will run top and move on. Well, not anymore. You can set your SSH client to automatically send a bit of data over your connection every X seconds.

Monit Tricks

Recently I had a chance to do a little monit foo with a co-worker for a rather interesting project that we will hopefully be sending off into the intertubes. For one part of this project, I got the chance to get my hands dirty with my old friend monit. Monit, for those that don’t know, is a UNIX system administrators dream. Here’s a brief run down of what monit can do from the web site:

Setting up a silent DNS master server

Recently, I have begun the process of moving my domains from the DNS servers at my previous employer. They have allowed me to continue hosting my domains there as I still send them a spam feed of unknown addresses from my various domains. Yes spammers, keep that mail coming. Its only doing you good, I promise 😉 The main reason for the change is that the former employer is locking down the admin access to a standard that as a non-employee, I can no longer get to the admin interface.