It Works On Linux

Cacti is a monitoring tool that creates historical graphs of network and server metrics such as bandwidth utilization or load average. While utilities such as MRTG have been doing this for decades, I’ve found that Cacti really sets itself apart from the pack with it’s template based administration that can make it easy

Quick installation hints:

I won’t bother documenting the entire install process because you can find good documentation on Cacti’s site here. Many Linux distros now have cacti as an available package, but you will usually still need to set up the MySQL database yourself. Generally, you’ll need the following as prerequisites:

1. A working MySQL server (either on the same host or remote)
2. The net-snmp utils (snmpwalk, snmpget). There should be a package for this in any major distro.
3. RRDtool.
4. Apache + PHP.

So what does cacti do for you? Well, “out of the box” cacti will give you templates to monitor most common devices for the usual metrics (network, cpu, memory).

After you’ve started trending the basics over time, you can move on to more specialized data collection. Check out the the http://forums.cacti.net/index.php for templates and addons that others in the community are using cacti for.

Links:

• Official Site
• Advanced Cacti magic
• Official Forums
• Cactiusers.org

It looks like there is reason to hope that AMD is serious about improving Linux support for ATI video drivers. The just released Catalyst drivers include the some of the advanced tools and options that you’ve all grown to expect from that -other- video company (including AIGLX support). Unfortunately, they’re not planning to include support for older cards (like the one I’m using as I type this), but that would be just too good to be true, right?

ATI/Linux users, go ahead and check them out here.

For more info on the driver release, check out this artice.

This book by Thomas Limoncelli (everythingsysadmin.com) is full of practical and pertinent advice for the typical sysadmin. There are “literally” a ba-jillion books out there on time management. Most of them will offer up some techniques to maximize your productivity through a couple of key principles. They involve elements such as: Figure out how you’re spending your time; Prioritize your schedule and eliminate tasks so that you’re spending your time on what you should.

Where Limoncelli’s books stands apart, is that it is written entirely from the perspective of intrepid system administrator (primarily from a Linux/Unix admin’s point of view). The most significant thing Read the rest of this entry »

While it is common knowledge that the vast majority of compromised computer systems in the world run windows, this article discussing details of an anti-phishing investigation done by eBay shed interesting light on the importance of compromised Linux machines.

What eBay discovered was that a large portion of the web servers running phishing sites turned out to be compromised Linux servers and desktops whose operators had no idea they had been compromised. Interestingly enough, they credited the use of Linux by the phishers to the platforms stability as a server (Well, thanks…I guess?). Read the rest of this entry »

In case you haven’t seen last week’s Compiz-Fusion Community News update, there was a new alternative to the CCSM (CompizConfig Settings Manager) that they’re calling Simple-CCSM. This has the potential to solve 50% of my current complaints about Compiz-Fusion.

Don’t get me wrong, I too think Compiz-Fusion is one of the greatest things to happen to the gui since Xerox gave the mouse to Apple. My major knock against the current offering is that the plethora of configuration options can leave the new users confused. Also, every distro tends to use their own configuration which can make knowing what options are enabled on any given system a bit of guesswork.

The new CCSM-simple will be a good chance for distros to standardize on a more predictable default set of effect and features, while allowing the seasoned enthusiasts to continue to customize to their heart’s content in the classic CCSM. This is a big win in my book. And this new option comes just in time as compiz-fusion is to be turned on by default in the upcoming Ubuntu 7.10 release.