Zac Garrett

It’s hard to remember the number of times I’ve went to update this site and just drawn a blank. Writers block is a horrible state that happens to just about everyone. Skribit is a way to get around that. It allows your readers to suggest ideas and then vote on them. It is about the best idea for a widget I’ve seen in a long while. However it is still in public beta and has its flaws. Continue Reading »

After a year of using Serendipity it is time to go with something else. I’ve converted the site to Wordpress and created a WP theme out of my old s9y template. For the most part you should not notice too much different. Since I did start from near scratch with this theme it should be fairly lightweight. I might be missing some WP specific styles, but I’ve got it looking fairly good.

Links to posts are going to change quite a bit from the old version. At the moment I’ve not taken the time to use lighttpd rewrites as of the moment. I would suggest not bookmarking anything for the next few days as they will likely break.

For RSS subscribers nothing should change. I’ve been running feedburer for a long time and it should continue to work. You might want to verify that your feed is pointing to http://feeds.zacgarrett.com/tech-geek.

If you notice any massive problems please feel free to contact me.

It has been nearly a month since my first encounter with Media Temple and it is time to look back at their service. Can this hosting actually be good enough to look over the initial reaction? Continue Reading »

Earlier today I decided that I needed to upgrade the server to the latest version of Apache and PHP. To do this it requires you to compile both of the packages and then install them. Well, that is how it works if installing the software by command line. The issue was that the server I was working on uses cpanel/WHM. This puts a little kink in the system. Continue Reading »

Yes, I’ve done something I said I would never do; put ads on one of my sites.

I’ve thought about creating a way for people to just hide the ads, but have not implemented it as of the moment. So if you do not wish to see the ads you can use a firefox extension to do so. Both adblock and noscript will allow you to remove them.

Oh yeah, you can send all hate mail to Dan as he talked me into adding the ads.

One of the most crucial parts of a web server is the HTTP daemon. This is the part of the server that serves up web pages to visitors. These pieces of software have been highly tooled and can handle a ton of traffic. The problem for a VPS lies in their memory consumption and CPU utilization. We will take a look at the three most common web servers today: Apache, IIS, and lighttpd. Continue Reading »

When someone asks what is the best Linux distribution out there it is very hard to answer. The reason is everyone has different opinions and almost anyone you ask will give you a different answer. This is usually due to the person’s experiences with a certain distro.

If you have never ran Linux before, I would suggest running it at least a week prior to paying for any type of server you have to manage. If you do not want to dedicated a server just to this function there is a wonderful technology of virtual machines. VMs allow you to have multiple operating systems on top of your primary machine. Continue Reading »

In today’s world most web sites do not need the www in front of the domain name. There was a point in history that this was necessary, but this should no longer be the case. To fully understand we need to understand a little of the history of DNS. Continue Reading »

For the last year and a half or so I have been managing a Linux Virtual Private Server or VPS for short. During this time I have found several tools that have came in quite handy and sometimes even saved money.

Most of these tools should work on any Linux box that is setup in a similar fashion as a virtuozzo VPS.

VPS Info

This tool allows you to monitor the status of your VPS via the web. The
script puts a ton of tools into an easy to use web based interface. It
was created by Doug Robbins along with the servint staff.

Please note
that this tool should be in a password protected directory as it has
quite a bit of information that a malicious person could use against
you.

loadavg
Another
tool created by Doug Robbins that monitors the load average on the
server. Its quite handy to see exactly when your server is loaded down
so you can monitor the status when you are away. You can quickly find
problem times for your server and it helps diagnose the issues.

vnStat
If
you need to monitor bandwidth usage this tool can quickly and easily to
it. It is a command line program that has many options to monitor
bandwidth usage at any point in time.

APF and BFD
Advanced
Policy Firewall (APF) and Brute Force Dector (BFD) are truly a
necessity in todays world of technology. These tools will protect you
from getting hacked and just secure your server in general.

You can find a good tutorial on installing these at webhostgear.

I may update this list and add some other neat Linux tools to it to help keep your server secure.

I currently manage two virtual private servers or VPS’s of very similar stats, but one is Windows and the other is Linux. Both servers use around the same amount of bandwidth each month. Yet, the Windows server takes more work to keep it working. I spend at least 10 hours on Windows to one on Linux, most of the time on Linux is for optional upgrades and not necessary management.

The Windows server is far less stable and is constantly having
problems. IIS’s application pools have so many problems its not funny,
they really are not made for servers with a small amount of RAM. The
server uses up 90% of the memory at almost every second, its nuts.
Windows eats memory on the servers just like on the desktop.

On
the other side of the coin there is Linux. Apache with php and mysql
works great with a small amount of RAM on a server, it is optimal for
this situation. The server’s only major problem was when a database for
user tracking was not being cleaned out. This was my fault and not the
server. Once I found the problem was resolved it sped right back up and
runs like a charm.

It takes about twice as many resources to
run the same traffic on Windows than on Linux. This does not even take
into account the price of the software, only the hardware necessary to
support the server. There might be some settings I am missing on
Windows, but I have read just about every article I can find on the
subject. Thats another factor, you have to read much more for Windows.

I
can see why network admins like Windows, you have to always be around
because the servers crash. With Linux once the server is up and running
you can almost forget about it.