Category Archives: sysadmin

systems administration type things

Expanding LVM Partition on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with VMWare

power off VM edit settings in vmware client to expand hard drive to desired size (i went from 15G to 40G) power on VM parition the expanded area (/dev/sda3 in my case) fdisk /dev/sda Create a physical volume for LVM: … Continue reading

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Graphing wind speed and direction using rrdtool and Wunderground.com XML Feeds

Create windspeed RRD data file: rrdtool create sbwind.rrd \ –start 1127253600 \ DS:wind:GAUGE:600:U:U \ DS:gust:GAUGE:600:U:U \ RRA:MIN:0.5:1:600 \ RRA:MIN:0.5:6:700 \ RRA:MIN:0.5:24:775 \ RRA:MIN:0.5:288:797 \ RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:600 \ RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:6:700 \ RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:24:775 \ RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:288:797 \ RRA:MAX:0.5:1:600 \ RRA:MAX:0.5:6:700 \ RRA:MAX:0.5:24:775 \ RRA:MAX:0.5:288:797 Create … Continue reading

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ubuntu in the cloud

ubuntu 9.10 server install screenshot

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extract email addresses from ms word document [pc only]

i was looking for something to extract email addresses from a text file – as in someone forwarded me an email with many addresses in the To: field – so with this you just copy & paste the original message … Continue reading

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phpmyadmin with lighttpd on ubuntu

original reference: http://www.krizka.net/2008/02/05/how-to-quickly-install-lighttpd-mysql-and-php5-on-ubuntu/ Just execute the following commands as root (access can be gained through sudo /bin/bash) sudo aptitude install lighttpd mysql-client mysql-server php5-mysql php5-cgi phpmyadmin sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi userdir sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd start sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start That is it, you … Continue reading

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ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 upgrade on a dell latitude x1

from: http://quefyx.com/2009/05/26/upgrading-ubuntu-9-04-jaunty-to-9-10-karmic-on-eee-pc-seashell/ Make sure the APT repository is updated: sudo apt-get update Make sure Update Manager is installed and up to date (which it should be): sudo apt-get install update-manager Now run the Update Manager from Terminal: sudo update-manager -d … Continue reading

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freebsd 7.0 on a dell vostro 1400 /sbin/dmesg output

i purchased a dell vostro 1400 to use as a freebsd development-on-the-go machine only to discover that neither the physical or wireless ethernet is supported. here’s the /sbin/dmesg output: Copyright (c) 1992-2008 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, … Continue reading

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memory consumption

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migrating a LVM based xen domU to a file based image

1) shut down the domU 2) from the dom0, mount the LVM volume: % /dev/vg0/web.isber /mnt/web.isber 3) use dd to convert the LVM volume to an image file % [vm2:~]# dd if=/dev/mapper/vg0-web.isber of=/lots-of-storage/web.isber-disk.img 4) you can now copy or move … Continue reading

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migrating a cacti installation to a new platform

when you migrate cacti to a new machine if the platform is different then your .rrd files will no longer work. the workaround is to export all of the .rrd files to .xml on the source host and then convert … Continue reading

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