Thanks btw

Also, PHPMyAdmin has some useful stats in the ’show runtime information’ link. The suggestions on the page are not too useful but much easier to read than the command line output.

I wonder if you used a RAM disk as your tmpdir if that would help?

regards

or

awk {’print $2′}

It’s a weird language.

@robot_terror: I was the ‘critical man’ at my previous job, and my boss wasn’t the least bit concerned. I’d asked for him to hire someone else so that the company wouldn’t head south if I was hit by a bus. Also, I needed help getting everything done. One of the problems with the ‘learning to sail’ idea is that if the manager is a micro-manager, it can be a huge issue for the tech person to work around.

@Nicholas: Excellent point! I’ve used my own equipment in the past for jobs, and when I’ve left, my previous employer was fairly upset when he had to piece things back together.

Another thing to watch out for if you’re the business owner: If you’ve taken shortcuts on costs, be careful the tech hasn’t put critical infrastructure on his own gear. Not that you’d be able to find this out easily until he’s gone and he switches it all off (dns, smtp relay, etc)….

Good article.

@tim.howe: You’re welcome! That is a good point - by making .qmail immutable, users in Plesk may try to change settings, but they won’t ever take effect. In fact, Plesk won’t even throw an error when they attempt to make a change! I suggested it in the original post just in case someone might change a setting that would throw out all of your custom changes.

Thanks again, Tim.

Mar 30 04:55:35 hostname xinetd[4220]: START: smtp pid=19223 from=XXX.YYY.53.75

(I changed the hostname and changed part of the IP address for privacy reasons)

Can anybody help drive another nail into spam’s coffin? I would love to get something juicy like “/var/qmail/mailnames/[DOMAIN]/[USER] logged in from unknown” … it would be nice to know which account(s) is/are compromised. Thanks.

outtput from ‘mysqladmin variables | grep table_size’:
| max_heap_table_size | 201326592 |
| tmp_table_size | 201326592 |

so, both values ARE equal….

When interviewing a replacement consider early morning, too. Often times a tech person will be the kind that rolls in late and stays late. Or, interview at Starbucks or some other off-premises site.

More importantly, as soon as possible, rid your business of the “critical man” vulnerability and hire a team of technical folk or dig in and learn how to “sail the ship” yourself in a crisis. The team of technical people can keep each other honest and provide balance to technical decisions. It also dilutes the power of the single tech and forces the publicizing of technical secrets.

Regarding the “learning to sail,” a small businessman once told me he makes himself learn the critical pieces of all the jobs his employees do “just in case.” He pointed out that no one was more motivated than him to keep the business afloat, so having to depend solely on others was a disaster waiting to happen.

And good job mentioning sudo and ssh keys… so often these are forgotten.

In addition, don’t be a jerk when letting somebody go. Former employees *will* be consulted by others in the technical community about your company. They might be your future employees or customers. Your former employees will not have all good things to say about you but do not add fuel to the fire by handling the process incorrectly.

Finally, consult a human resources expert or lawyer before firing an employee. Know your rights and responsibilities and do not be surprised by the events that follow.

@rackerhacker:
Do you realy using the original qmHandle on Plesksystem?? You should better use mailqueuemng ( qmHandle stolen by parallels :p )