You can display the current root password for mysql (if the host is running ensim), by using the following command.

# ensim-python -c "import sys;sys.path.append(\"/usr/lib/opcenter/mysql\");import mysqlbe;print mysqlbe.read_mysqlpass()"


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We ran into an issue when installing Fantastico. After clicking the installation button, everything seemed to download just fine, but every time you go back to the Fantastico link it says it is not installed.

It turns out, Fantastico uses wget to download files. wget is called with the ‘-P’ option, which is not honored in the recent version of wget. In order to get around this, I found the following post useful: http://www.netenberg.com/forum/index.php?topic=5430.0

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We have all been there before. Your server crashed, nothing indicates what happened. You check /var/log/messages and all you see is.. well.. nothing. With no sign of what happened, or indication of why it happened you are left to.. wait until it happens again.

On Red Hat based systems, you have an answer. NetDump (diskdump may work as well, more on that another time). Below we will explore the steps required to setup and test netdump.

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If you have a dedicated Linux server, this list is for you. Below are a few items you need to do, to ensure your 2008 will be a bit brighter.  This list is by no means comprehensive, but hopefully gets you started in the right direction this year.

• Check your backups and perform a full system backup (or setup a backup routine! Now!).

If you have backups configured, validate they are actually being run. Check the last date / time of the backups to ensure they are running as expected. If possible, test the restore process.

Perform a full system backup and copy this backup offsite, to a provider like rsync.net

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Here was the scenario I faced. RHEL4 machine will not boot (according to data center), receives various library not found errors on bootup (Later, I found these errors were from an intruder who tried to install a rootkit, and it didn’t go so well. Most of /bin was corrupt).

The data center recommends that the operating system be reloaded onto a separate disk, which will become the primary, and then mount the old disk as a different mount point for reference / restore. The data center reloaded the operating system, and the customer then found our services online and asked for assistance.

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When running a ‘yum check-update’, I would receive an error. The error continued even after running ‘yum clean all’.

The error is shown below:

# yum check-update
Setting up repositories
core 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
updates 100% |=========================| 1.2 kB 00:00
extras 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 1.0 MB 00:00
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in ?
yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])

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