Debian Administration

This is a short HOWTO on setting up a backported Postgresql 9.1 database with streaming replication on Debian Squeeze.

sudo is an essential tool in an environment where there are multiple server and system administrators. By default sudo will log to syslog, and it is very straight-forward to isolate the logging to a local file which can be useful.

Newer GRUBs can handle a /boot partition which is btrfs, so you need not have a separate /boot partition formatted as ext3/4.

Western Digital's My Book Live runs on Debian Lenny. It is a pretty nice NAS missing one critical feature for which many people ask on-line: The ability to sit behind a home LAN router and update a dynamic DNS entry as many routers can do.

Redmine is a web-based project management system, often called a forge, built using the Ruby on Rails framework. It provides bug/issue tracking, time tracking, wiki pages, gantt charting and calendar, multiple project support, and role-based access control for users to name a few. This article will cover the process of installing Redmine on Debian Squeeze using MySQL for data storage, Thin for serving Ruby, and nginx as the outward-facing server.

When you're developing performance-critical code you will most likely receive performance increases in one of two ways; via the selection of the most appropriate algorithmic solution, or via the expense of additional hardware. Here we'll look at an interesting alternative - optimising via compiler flags.

fabric is described as a simple library and command-line tool for performing application deployment and system administration tasks. Here we'll take a look at using it to deploy simple applications remotely.

This article takes you through the necessary steps to extend a raw libvirt storage volume that is part of a libvirt storage pool on a Debian Squeeze GNU/Linux system. A libvirt storage volume is essentially a virtual raw hard-disk image that is used by a virtual machine.

I have long wished for the ability to install a Debian system specifying both the package list and the exact versions of the packages installed. dpkg --get-selections | ssh newhost dpkg --set-selections is useful but always chooses the latest version, and especially when using testing or unstable, it is sometimes necessary to temporarily downgrade a package from the latest version available.

In an ideal world you'd never need to change the password associated with a user account without using passwd, but there are times when it is helpful to script such things.