Racker Hacker Words of wisdom from a server administrator

I found myself pretty darned frustrated when my arrow keys didn’t work in iTerm in vi/vim or other ncurses-based applications. However, give this a shot in an iTerm if you find yourself in the same predicament:
export TERM=linux
Then open something in vi/vim or run an ncurses application. It should let your arrow keys work [...]

If you receive the following error, your PIX does not have a key set up for use with SSH:
Type help or ‘?’ for a list of available commands.
pix>
Cannot select private key
Regenerating the key can be done by executing the following:
conf t
ca zeroize rsa
ca generate rsa key 1024
ca save all
write mem
reload

Installing snort from ports on FreeBSD is pretty straightforward, but there are some ‘gotchas’ that you need to be aware of. Here’s a step by step:
Compile snort form the ports tree:
# portinstall snort
– OR –
# make -C /usr/ports/security/snort install all
You will be asked about which support you want to add to snort, so be [...]

Installing mysql on FreeBSD from ports is one of the oddest installations I’ve ever completed. Here’s the step by step:
Get it compiled:
# portinstall mysql50-server
– OR –
# make -C /usr/ports/databases/mysql50-server install clean
Once it’s installed, copy my-small.cnf, my-medium.cnf or my-huge.cnf to /usr/local/etc/my.cnf:
# cp /usr/local/share/mysql/my-small.cnf /usr/local/etc/my.cnf
Enable mysql in the rc.conf:
# echo “mysql_enable=\”YES\”" >> /etc/rc.conf
Install the authentication tables:
# [...]

If Redhat, CentOS, Fedora, or any other similar OS provides the following error:
# ifup eth1
Device eth1 has different MAC address than expected, ignoring.
Check that someone didn’t put an IP in as a hardware address:
DEVICE=eth1
HWADDR=10.240.11.100
NETMASK=255.255.224.0
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
If they did, then fix it with the correct configuration directive:
DEVICE=eth1
IPADDR=10.240.11.100
NETMASK=255.255.224.0
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet