Just in case some of you out there enjoy nomenclature and theory behind Linux filesystems, here’s some things to keep in mind. The modification time (mtime) of a file describes when the actual data blocks that hold the file changed. The changed time (ctime) of a file describes when the metadata was last [...]
I recently came across a server that was throwing this error into its message log:
ntpd_initres[2619]: ntpd returns a permission denied error!
It would only appear about every five minutes on the server, and restarting ntpd didn’t correct the issue. I stopped ntpd entirely, but the error still appeared a few minutes later.
After examining the running [...]
By setting a certain bash environment variable, you can limit which commands are kept in the .bash_history file. The following options can be passed to the HISTCONTROL environmental variable:
ignorespace - omits commands beginning with a space
ignoredups - omits commands that match the previously run command
ignoreboth - combines ignorespace and ignoredups
erasedups - removes previous lines [...]
Installing new hardware may mean that new kernel need to be loaded when your server boots up. There’s a two step process to making a new initrd file:
First, add the appropriate line to your /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf which corresponds to your new kernel module.
Next, rebuild the initial ram disk after making a backup of [...]
Last week, I found myself with a server under low load, but it couldn’t make or receive network connections. When I ran dmesg, I found the following line repeating over and over:
ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet
I’d seen this message before, but I headed over to Red Hat’s site for more details. It turns [...]