Setup a Linux Server or VPS » Tips and Tricks

New Server or VPS Install Tweaks

admin — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 01:50:57 +0000

As many of you know setting up a new vps or dedicated server can be a time consuming process, where you copy and paste the same commands and updates over and over again. If this sounds like something you do, I have created two scripts for you that fully automates this process.

The scripts are a txt file so make sure you take a look at it in a browser just to make sure.

** These two scripts are designed for CentOS 5.x 32 or 64bit.

From the SSH prompt run either of the following depending if you are on a dedicated server or vps.

If Dedicated Server:

cd /root
wget http://scripts.rubyringtech.com/setupserver.txt
mv setupserver.txt setupserver.sh
chmod 777 setupserver.sh
./setupserver.sh
reboot

or for a VPS

cd /root
wget http://scripts.rubyringtech.com/setupvps.txt
mv setupvps.txt setupvps.sh
chmod 777 setupvps.sh
./setupvps.sh

reboot

Hope this helps make basic setup much easier.

Better Network Performance

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:10:28 +0000

As we all know a basic install of any OS is never tweaked out for performance but setup for general use. One of the biggest problems in the Linux (CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, I have not tested other OS’s) is the network is never really tweaked up.

However running a few simple commands and updating a single file can produce a massive increase in performance.

** Please note that there are other issues that can cause poor performance **

Example Bad Network Cable, Cheap Switch, Overloaded Router, and others.

Run the following commands from the prompt.

mv /etc/sysctl.conf sysctl.bak
cd /etc
wget http://www.setupalinuxserver.com/files/sysctl.conf.txt
mv sysctl.conf.txt sysctl.conf
/sbin/sysctl -p
/sbin/sysctl -w net.ipv4.route.flush=1

You should see a performance increase right away. Please let me know if this helps you out or not.

Delete Files Older Than x Days

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:47:30 +0000

The find utility on linux allows you to pass in a bunch of interesting arguments, including one to execute another command on each file. We’ll use this in order to figure out what files are older than a certain number of days, and then use the rm command to delete them.

Command Syntax

find /path/to/files* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

Note that there are spaces between rm, {}, and \;

Explanation

The first argument is the path to the files. This can be a path, a directory, or a wildcard as in the example above. I would recommend using the full path, and make sure that you run the command without the exec rm to make sure you are getting the right results.
The second argument, -mtime, is used to specify the number of days old that the file is. If you enter +5, it will find files older than 5 days.
The third argument, -exec, allows you to pass in a command such as rm. The {} \; at the end is required to end the command.

This should work on Ubuntu, Suse, Redhat, or pretty much any version of linux.

Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/delete-files-older-than-x-days-on-linux/

Blocked at AOL

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:10:35 +0000

AOL as we know is still a large ISP, but a massive pain in the butt to hosting providers because one piece of spam and bang your IP is blocked.

This is a simple test to tell if AOL has you blocked. First SSH into your server or vps the run this following command.

telnet mailin-01.mx.aol.com 25

If you get a response your not blocked, if no response well you are. Then you have to go down the fun path of fixing this.