Archive for the ‘Server-admin’ Category

Between Oracle and the various GNU/Linux distributions the damn Java ball has been dropped!
Really unprofessional from both sides, I don’t care for the technicalities, both sides screwed up and your users are suffering.

Basically along with Oracle’s security update 29 the terms that allow Linux distributions to distribute the Sun JRE and JDK have been removed. This required Debian/Ubuntu/Mint to remove the package as per this bug report.

So what the hell are our Java options for production servers?

Continue reading ‘Oracle (Sun) Java JDK for Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint’ »

Posted by gavingc on December 20, 2011 at 21:45 under Server-admin.
3 Comments.

Web application war files can quickly grow. Here are some of the options to deploy a war to production.
Continue reading ‘Many ways to skin a war file’ »

Posted by gavingc on July 4, 2011 at 02:59 under Server-admin.
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All my systems have been upgraded to Squeeze for a couple of months now. Initial impression was that there are lots of nice new toys and the GNU tools and base Debian system feel even more solid than ever. However KDE is more flakey and slower than I have seen a GNU/Linux desktop in a while. There are also missing features in some KDE programs that were yet to be ported (to plasma I presume) at the time that Debian froze the KDE version.

Continue reading ‘Tweaking Debian Squeeze’ »

Posted by gavingc on May 13, 2011 at 19:41 under Server-admin.
1 Comment.

…because the rsync support for backupninja (or at least the Debian one) is a bit naff…or I just simply do not understand it. Very true if a little surprising since all the other backupninja handlers have always worked very well for me. Backupninja is wonderful for creating a backup system, run these shell commands, hotcopy those databases, rdiff-backup the result and rsync or duplicity all that somewhere else. Wonderful stuff now lets fix rsync.

P.S: if you do know how to make the supplied rsync handler work then please post a comment.

Continue reading ‘Backupninja rsync handler’ »

Posted by gavingc on April 7, 2011 at 16:54 under Server-admin.
2 Comments.

If you use Tomcat occasionally you may want the package installed but not have it startup at boot time.
These notes are for Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) and the supplied Tomcat 6 package.

Continue reading ‘Prevent Tomcat Starting at Boot’ »

Posted by gavingc on April 7, 2011 at 16:37 under Server-admin.
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My VPS host rolls their own Xen custom kernel but I wanted to run the Debian distribution supplied kernel simply so that it gets updated by the Debian security updates.

Continue reading ‘Running a custom or distribution kernel on a VPS’ »

Posted by gavingc on August 25, 2010 at 17:09 under Server-admin.
8 Comments.

Although I have been running servers from various connection for several years now there is something very exciting and special about my first commercial VPS.
Continue reading ‘VPS, vps, vps! Yes my first VPS.’ »

Posted by gavingc on June 23, 2010 at 11:00 under Life, Server-admin.
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Concrete5 calls its self a CMS, but it looks more like a powerful website builder to me! It’s not in Debian Lenny but it is php and I’m dying to try it when I have a need to build or rebuild a web site. Also the team sound like folks after my own heart, commercial open source software done right, so check it out if you have a chance! I certainly will report back here when I do.

Posted by gavingc on April 22, 2010 at 23:19 under Server-admin.
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Well looks like the first post needs to be about how to setup a blog off all things!
It should be so simple really…these things have been around for ages!
But no complications ensue, after much mucking about and trying to use both Trac and B2evolution I ended up with the very commonly used WordPress.

Continue reading ‘Setup a not so simple blog for the coder’ »

Posted by gavingc on December 14, 2009 at 23:09 under Server-admin.
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