jmoiron.net Admin Wiki

This wiki is a place to document administration tasks (be they large or small) so that they become easy and repeatable. Tasks should be explained just enough so that the meaning behind each step is understood, but not so much that it becomes more work to walk through the task than it is to read the documentation.

Todo

  • monitoring service? ping/something?
  • stats for vivi/apforums
  • SoftwareIdeas

Code

Architecture

Configuration

DNS

Setting up DNS properly is actually not very straightforward. Be sure to read documentation on DNS basics (like what A and CNAME records are, etc) before setting yours up. The tools below check out your DNS & mail setups for anything that might be glaringly wrong (like your mail being an open relay); they catch a lot of errors and some of them make recommendations (from relevant RFCs) for where different values should lie.

checkers

  • Pingability's DNS Report: Similar to dnsstuff's, but free/less annoying. Seems to have some issues with my zealous anti-spam mail setup.

  • DNS Report: A kind of lint for a complete DNS setup.

  • dnscheck.se: Very nice technical overview of every step being taken, but does not do heuristic checks on different values (that timeouts or serials are similar to RFC recommended values).

docs/articles

WIP

Some ideas

  • Hacking on (moin styles, trac css, the django admin site)
  • Configuring "postfix" for ... (backup mail servers, "sasl + tls", virtual domains and wildcards, "spamassasin", "clamav", sender reverse dns verification)

  • Creating a new development environment (svn + svn-dav on apache2, trac)
  • Administration configuration workflow (cfengine vs plain old svn repo for config files)
  • DNS explained (how to pass the test)

  • Things that generate noise (awstats, rrdtool, cacti, nagios, et al.)
  • Benchmarking and analysis of performance gains vs maintainability issues for various configurations (mod-gzip, mod-python vs cgi vs fcgi, apache vs lighttpd, what db to use, etc)
  • Load balancing across interfaces and systems, increasing server capacity, vpn nets to friendlies across the internets, tor servers, media sharing, and general debate over what the role of this server is (existential crisis)
  • The Project to Make a "Concurrent RANCID" w/ Configuration Management using twisted and stackless

How to use this site

A Wiki is a collaborative site, anyone can contribute and share:

  • Edit any page by pressing GetText(Edit) at the top or the bottom of the page

  • Create a link to another page with joined capitalized words (like WikiSandBox) or with ["quoted words in brackets"]

  • Search for page titles or text within pages using the search box at the top of any page
  • See HelpForBeginners to get you going, HelpContents for all help pages.

To learn more about what a WikiWikiWeb is, read about WhyWikiWorks and the WikiNature. Also, consult the HelpMiscellaneous/FrequentlyAskedQuestions page.

Interesting starting points:

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FrontPage (last edited 2009-10-16 00:50:51 by localhost)

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