20May 2012 by Asim Zeeshan 2 Comments

Freshclam daemon not running

CentOS, How to, Linux
Normally, I have two things on every Linux box so that I know whats going on NAGIOS monitoring (nrpe) Logwatch Today, I got something in my logwatch email and it was strange because just the other day, I upgraded the clamav to latest version using epel reo. [code title="This is what I got in logwatch today" highlight="3,4,5"] --------------------- clam-update Begin ------------------------ The ClamAV update process (freshclam daemon) was not running! If you no longer wish to run freshclam, deleting the freshclam.log file will suppress this error message. ---------------------- clam-update End ------------------------- [/code] It appears that the latest version has some permission issues on the log file because when I try to run freshclam on command line I get this [code]root@cpanel [~]# freshclam ERROR: Can't open /var/log/clamav/freshclam.log in append mode (check…
Read More
19May 2012 by Asim Zeeshan No Comments

Install htop

CentOS, How to, Linux, Reviews, Tips and Tricks, Ubuntu
[caption id="attachment_1147" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="htop - an alternative to linux top"][/caption] htop is a sleek utility that allows you to interactively view processes running in a linux box. I can safely say its a good alternate to 'top' To install htop just run this after installing epel repo [code]yum install htop[/code]
Read More
19May 2012 by Asim Zeeshan No Comments

Installing EPEL repo

CentOS, How to
Installing EPEL repo in CentOS is simple, if you do not know what EPEL is, read more about it here. [code]rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm[/code] To configure epel or disable it use [code]nano /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo[/code] and then switch the config enabled to 0 (or vice versa) Don't forget to do the following [code]yum clean all[/code]
Read More
23Apr 2011 by Asim Zeeshan 1 Comment

vzfree utility to check memory usage in OpenVZ VPS

How to, Linux, OpenSource, Resources, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu, Virtual Private Server
From the official blog post Gee. It has been a while since I’ve last written here, and it will be a while again for my next post as I will be on holidays from next Monday (visiting families in Hong Kong and Taiwan). Let me share one small utility program that I wrote quite a while ago. We all know that the Linux command free(1) is pretty useless inside an OpenVZ VE, even those with meminfo virtualised. So I basically wrote this little util to grab the data from the dreadful user_beancounters and format them into something useful. It’s written in C and only depends on libc so it’s pretty light weight. It also does a little bit of analysis instead of just dumping the data, which I will explain…
Read More
28Mar 2011 by Asim Zeeshan 2 Comments

Find memory consumed by currently running processes on Linux?

CentOS, How to, Linux, OpenSource, Resources, Reviews, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu, Virtual Private Server
I always had the question (when I am running plenty of scripts on a linux box as to what is eating up all the memory? Finding memory consumed by current running processes in your favorite linux distro. Luckily, I found a great Python utility (scriplet to be exact). (more…)
Read More
16Aug 2010 by Asim Zeeshan 6 Comments

NAGIOS 3 with notifications on twitter

Experiments, How to, Linux, OpenSource, Resources, Social Networking, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Virtual Private Server
I have been experimenting with NAGIOS3 on Ubuntu (I will write a how-to-install on NAGIOS later) and it has served me very good in monitoring my 7 VPS from different providers in different part of the world. I have already recorded 3 hours of downtime from ThrustVPS which is a great deal for me. I now know which VPS has the best time and which ones have hiccups (e.g. my 2Host VPS gave me two unreachable notifications but the VPS was running and still reports the uptime as 4 days). Since I use twitter more, even when Im on the road, notifications via email is a bit slow for me. Luckily I found a great tutorial online to do that. (more…)
Read More
25Jul 2010 by Asim Zeeshan 1 Comment

Not getting a package on Ubuntu?

How to, Resources, Reviews, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu, Virtual Private Server
If you are not getting a package on Ubunu using apt-get then chances are that it has not been updated in the /etc/apt/sources.list file For example, the following should be there in the sources.list file if you are running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (codename lucid) [code] ## main & restricted repositories deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-updates main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-updates main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security main restricted ## universe repositories - uncomment to enable deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid universe deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid universe deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates universe deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates universe deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu lucid-security universe [/code]
Read More
23Jul 2010 by Asim Zeeshan 1 Comment

How to install byte-unixBench on Ubuntu

How to, Resources, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu
From UnixBench project homepage: UnixBench is the original BYTE UNIX benchmark suite, updated and revised by many people over the years. The purpose of UnixBench is to provide a basic indicator of the performance of a Unix-like system; hence, multiple tests are used to test various aspects of the system's performance. These test results are then compared to the scores from a baseline system to produce an index value, which is generally easier to handle than the raw scores. The entire set of index values is then combined to make an overall index for the system. Some very simple graphics tests are included to measure the 2D and 3D graphics performance of the system. Multi-CPU systems are handled. If your system has multiple CPUs, the default behaviour is to run…
Read More