Posts Tagged ‘directory’

Howto Fix “sysstat Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa no such file or directory” on Debian / Ubuntu Linux

Monday, February 15th, 2016

sysstast-no-such-file-or-directory-fix-Debian-Ubuntu-Linux-howto
I really love sysstat and as a console maniac I tend to install it on every server however by default there is some <b>sysstat</b> tuning once installed to make it work, for those unfamiliar with <i>sysstat</i> I warmly recommend to check, it here is in short the package description:<br /><br />
 

server:~# apt-cache show sysstat|grep -i desc -A 15
Description: system performance tools for Linux
 The sysstat package contains the following system performance tools:
  – sar: collects and reports system activity information;
  – iostat: reports CPU utilization and disk I/O statistics;
  – mpstat: reports global and per-processor statistics;
  – pidstat: reports statistics for Linux tasks (processes);
  – sadf: displays data collected by sar in various formats;
  – nfsiostat: reports I/O statistics for network filesystems;
  – cifsiostat: reports I/O statistics for CIFS filesystems.
 .
 The statistics reported by sar deal with I/O transfer rates,
 paging activity, process-related activities, interrupts,
 network activity, memory and swap space utilization, CPU
 utilization, kernel activities and TTY statistics, among
 others. Both UP and SMP machines are fully supported.
Homepage: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.godard/

 

If you happen to install sysstat on a Debian / Ubuntu server with:

server:~# apt-get install –yes sysstat


, and you try to get some statistics with sar command but you get some ugly error output from:

 

server:~# sar Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa20: No such file or directory


And you wonder how to resolve it and to be able to have the server log in text databases periodically the nice sar stats load avarages – %idle, %iowait, %system, %nice, %user, then to FIX that Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa20: No such file or directory

You need to:

server:~# vim /etc/default/sysstat


By Default value you will find out sysstat stats it is disabled, e.g.:

ENABLED="false"

Switch the value to "true"

ENABLED="true"


Then restart sysstat init script with:

server:~# /etc/init.d/sysstat restart

However for those who prefer to do things from menu Ncurses interfaces and are not familiar with Vi Improved, the easiest way is to run dpkg reconfigure of the sysstat:

server:~# dpkg –reconfigure


sysstat-reconfigure-on-gnu-linux

 

root@server:/# sar
Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (pcfreak) 15.02.2016 _x86_64_ (2 CPU)

0,00,01 CPU %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
0,15,01 all 24,32 0,54 3,10 0,62 0,00 71,42
1,15,01 all 18,69 0,53 2,10 0,48 0,00 78,20
10,05,01 all 22,13 0,54 2,81 0,51 0,00 74,01
10,15,01 all 17,14 0,53 2,44 0,40 0,00 79,49
10,25,01 all 24,03 0,63 2,93 0,45 0,00 71,97
10,35,01 all 18,88 0,54 2,44 1,08 0,00 77,07
10,45,01 all 25,60 0,54 3,33 0,74 0,00 69,79
10,55,01 all 36,78 0,78 4,44 0,89 0,00 57,10
16,05,01 all 27,10 0,54 3,43 1,14 0,00 67,79


Well that's it now sysstat error resolved, text reporting stats data works again, Hooray! 🙂

How to delete “Temporary Internet Files”/Content.IE5 with DEL and RD commands on Windows 7 / 8 folder contents – Clean Up Temporary files and folders to speed up and free disk space

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015

7logo_clean-up-windows-commands-tips-and-tricks-how-to-clean-up-windows-pc-manuallyI
've been called urgently today by miss Jenia Pencheva who is the president of Christian Air Ticket Agency GoodFaithAir, her personal computer caused her quite a lot of headache, I've previously fixed it once and she was happy with that thus when she experienced problems she give me a call for remote IT support :).

She explahed her PC was unable to boot normally and in order to have some Windows she ended in Safe-Mode with Networking state. This problems caused her business losses as during PC in Safe mode the screen resolution even though with networking and she couldn't use the flight ticket ordering systems  to purchase her customers new tickets.  I've earlier installed TeamViewr on her PC so after Logging on the PC, I've immediately realized the Hard Disk was almost full (less than 1Giga free on C: Drive – where Windows install lived)

After a thorough investigation on which directory is occupying most of disk space (110GB) with a nice program called SpaceSniffer which is perfect for finding lost space on your hard disks, I've found System for ticket reservation Amadeus CRS (Computer Reservation System) was causing the disk full-full troubles.

spacesniff-visualize-disk-data-in-windows-nice-check-large-directories

I've found troubling directory  was:

C:Users\goodfaithair\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5

To solve it I first tried to Clean up Internet Explorer Cache (I've checked ticks Temporary Internet files, Cookies, History, Download History, Form Data, InPrivate Filtering Data).

clean-up-Microsoft-Internet-Explorer-browser-cache-IE-7-8-9-10-11

Then I used Microsoft Windows embedded clean manager (cleanmgr.exe) to run disk clean up, however Desk Clean Up managed to clear up only about 1Giga and on the computer HDD which is 150Gb still on Windows installation drive C: only 1.5GB were free.
diskcleanup-ms-windows-7-8-screenshot-free-disk-space-tool
Besides that the system was having a second trouble as there were some failed updates (Computer was not shutdown properly but shutdown during Windows Update) and this was making the machine to enter Safe-Mode, I was fixing the system over TeamViewer session so after restart I had no way to see if Windows boots Normal or Safe-Mode after restart, thus to find out whether Windows was in Safe-Mode after another restart I've used below PowerShell one-liner script:

check-whether-windows-is-working-in-safe-mode-gwmi-powershell-screenshot

PS C:> gwmi win32_computersystem | select BootupState

BootupState
———–
Fail-safe with network boot

Note that possible return results from above command are:

Normal boot
Fail-safe boot
Fail-safe with network boot

I've been struggling for a while (had to restart it multiple times) until finally I managed to make it boot in normal mode. Because PC was failing to apply some Windows Update, thus dropping by in Safe-Mode each time. To solve that I had to go and Delete two of the last Applied updates (KB2979xxxx files).
 

Control Panel ->  Program and Features -> View Installed Updates


MS-Windows-7-8-9-uninstall-updates-Patches-Control_Panel_screenshot_fix_unbootable_problems-because-updates
I've restarted and since I couldn't see the screen on Windows boot-time, I don't know what really happened but the PC booted again in Safe-Mode, and I thought the classical way to fix PC booting in Safe-Mode with SFC command will help:

C:> sfc /scannow

but for my surprise this helped not as the system continuously booted in Safe-Mode, to fix the Windows PC always booting to Safe-Mode, I had to change it running msconfig and unticking Safe Mode field

C:> msconfig

windows-always-booting-to-safe-mode-fix-howto-services-msc-screenshot

Then I tried to delete Temporary Internet Files with below DEL cmd line
 

C:> del "C\:Users\MyName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files*.*"


To finally succeeding in manually delete huge Temporary Internet FilesContent.IE5 folder, I had to use good old RD (Remove Directory) command.

 

C:> RD "C:Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5" /Q /S

I used also following dels command to delete other common locations where Windows stores temporary files

For those who like to batch DeletingTemporary Internet Files and most common Temp locations to be cleaned on Windows boot I recommend you schedule a start of (clean-temporary-internet-files-content_ie5_folder.bat) on every PC boot.

To Clean-up other common Temporary file locations that could take you disk space the command line way run in new Administarator privileged command prompt:
 

cls
cleanmgr /sageset:99
del /F /S /Q "%systemroot%temp*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%systemroot%Prefetch*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:Documents and SettingsDefault UserLocal SettingsTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:Documents and SettingsDefault UserLocal SettingsTemp*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:Documents and SettingsDefault UserLocal SettingsHistory*.*"
 
del /F /S /Q "C:Documents and Settings%UserName%Local SettingsTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:Documents and Settings%UserName%Local SettingsTemp*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:Documents and Settings%UserName%Local SettingsHistory*.*"
 
del /F /S /Q "C:Documents and Settings%UserName%Local SettingsApplication DataTemp*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:Documents and Settings%UserName%Local SettingsApplication DataTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5
*.*"
 
del /F /S /Q "C:AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsHistory*. *"
del /F /S /Q "C:AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary Internet FilesLowContent.IE5*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary Internet FilesTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary Internet FilesTemporary Internet FilesLowContent.IE5*.*"
 
del /F /S /Q "C:Users%UserName%AppDataLocalTemp*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:Temp*.*"
del /F /S /Q "C:Users%UserName%AppDataLocalMicrosoftW indo wsTemporary Internet FilesLowContent.IE5*.*
del /F /S /Q "C:Users%UserName%AppDataLocalMicrosoftW indo wsHistory*.*
 
 
::Rem: No need to duplicate the following section for each registered User
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%Cookies*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%recent*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%Local Settingscookies*.*"
 
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%Local SettingsHistory*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%Local SettingsTemp*.*"
del /F /S /Q "%homepath%Local SettingsTemporary Internet FilesContent.IE5*.*"
 
cleanmgr /sagerun:99

Note that in some cases running above commands might left you loose some sensitive data and in case where Internet is slow cleaning temporary files, might have impact on surfing also you will loose your history so be sure you know what you're doing as you might loose sensitive data.

Finally I've run MalwareBytes to clean up the PC slowness caused by Spyware and other left Malware I've run MalwareBytes, RogueKiller, AdwCleaner, RKill, TDSSKiller in order and I found and removed few Malwares as well.

That's all, hope you learned something new. Enjoy!
 

How to find and Delete Duplicate files in directory on Linux server with find and fdupes command

Monday, March 16th, 2015

search-duplcate-files-linux-command-and-graphical-tools-how-to-find-duplicate-files-on-linux-mac-and-windows-os

Linux / UNIX find command is very helpful to do a lot of tasks to us admins such as Deleting empty directories to free up occupied inodes or finding and printing only empty files within a root file system within all sub-directories
There is too much of uses of find, however one that is probably rarely used known by sysadmins find command use is how to search for duplicate files on a Linux server:
 

find -not -empty -type f -printf “%s\n” | sort -rn | uniq -d | xargs -I{} -n1 find -type f -size {}c -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum | sort | uniq -w32 –all-repeated=separate

If you're curious how does duplicate files finding works, they are found by comparing file sizes and MD5 signatures, followed by a byte-by-byte comparison.

Most common application of below command is when you want to search and get rid of some old obsolete files which you forgot to delete such as old /etc/ configurations, old SQL backups and PHP / Java / Python programming code files etc.

If you have to do a regular duplicate file find on multiple servers Linux servers perhaps you should install and use  fdupes command.
On Debian Linux to install it:

root@pcfreak:/# apt-cache show fdupes|grep -i descr -A 4
Description: identifies duplicate files within given directories
 FDupes uses md5sums and then a byte by byte comparison to find
 duplicate files within a set of directories. It has several useful
 options including recursion.
Homepage: http://code.google.com/p/fdupes/

 

root@www.pc-freak.net:/# apt-get install –yes fdupes

To search for duplicate files with fdupes in lets /etc/ just run fdupes without arguments:

 

root@pcfreak:/# fdupes /etc/
/etc/magic
/etc/magic.mime

/etc/odbc.ini
/etc/.pwd.lock
/etc/environment
/etc/odbcinst.ini

/etc/shadow-
/etc/shadow


If you want to look up for all duplicate files within root directory:
 

root@pcfreak:/# fdupes -r /etc/
Building file list /

 

You can also find duplicate files for multiple directories by just passing all directories as arguments to fdupes

 

root@pcfreak:/# fdupes -r /etc/ /usr/ /root /disk /nfs_mount /nas


The -r argument (makes a recursive subdirectory search for duplicates), if you want to also see what is the size of duplicate files found add -S option

 

fdupes -r -S /etc/ /usr/ /root /disk /nfs_mount /nas

 


If you want to delete all duplicate files within lets say /etc/

 

root@pcfreak:/# fdupes -d /etc/

fdupes is also available and installable also on RPM based Linux distros Fedora / RHEL / CentOS etc., install on CentOS with:
 

[root@centos~ ]# yum -y install fdupes


There is also a port available for those who want to run it on FreeBSD on BSD install it from ports:

 

freebsd# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fdupes
freebsd# make install clean


If you have a GUI environment installed on the server and you don't want to bother with command line to search for all duplicate files under main filesystem and other lint (junk) files take a look at FSlint

FSlint-2.02-search-for-duplicate-and-lint-files-linux-gui-tool

If you're looking for a GUI cross platform duplicate file finder tool that runs on all major used Operating Systems Mac OS X / Windows / Linux take a look at dupeGuru

 

Play Dune2 on Debian Linux with dosbox – Dune 2 Mother of all Real Time Strategy games

Saturday, March 1st, 2014

medium_1809-dune-ii-the-building-of-a-dynasty_one_of_best_games_ever_linux_windows.gif

Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (known also as Dune II: Battle for Arrakis in Europe is a game that my generation will never forget. Dune 2 is the "first" computer Real Time Strategy (RTE) game of the genre of the Warcraft I and Warcraft II / III and later Command and Conquer – Red Aleart, Age of Empires I / II and Starcraft …

dune2-unit-destroyed

I've grown up with Dune2 and the little computer geek community in my school was absolutely crazy about playing it. Though not historically being the first Real Time Strategy game, this Lucas Inc. 
game give standards that for the whole RTE genre for years and will stay in history of Computer Games as one of best games of all times.

I've spend big part of my teenager years with my best friends playing Dune2 and the possibility nowadays to resurrect the memories of these young careless years is a blessing.  Younger computer enthusiasts and gamers probably never heard of Dune 2 and this is why I decided to place a little post here about this legendary game.

dune-2-tank-vehicle - one of best games computer games ever

Its worthy out of curiosity or for fun to play Dune 2 on modern OS be it Windows or Linux. Since Dune is DOS game, it is necessary to play it via DOS emulator i.e. – (DosBox). 
Here is how I run dune2 on my Debian Linux:

1. Install dosbox DOS emulator

apt-get install --yes dosbox

2. Download Dune2 game executable

You can download my mirror of dune2 here

Note that you will need unzip to uanrchive it, if you don't have it installed do so:

apt-get install --yes unzip

cd ~/Downloads/
wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/dune-2.zip

3.  Unzip archive and create directory to mount it emulating 'C:\' drive

mkdir -p ~/.dos/Dune2
cd ~/.dos/Dune2

unzip ~/Downloads/dune-2.zip
 

4. Start dosbox and create permanent config for C: drive auto mount


dosbox

To make C:\ virtual drive automatically mounted you have to write a dosbox config from inside dbox console

config -writeconf /home/hipo/.dosbox.conf

My home dir is in /home/hipo, change this with your username /home/username

Then exit dosbox console with 'exit' command

To make dune2 game automatically mapped on Virtual C: drive:

echo "mount c /home/hipo/.dos" >> ~/.dosbox.conf

Further to make dosbox start each time with ~/.dosbox.conf add alias to your ~/.bashrc 

vim ~/.bashrc
echo "alias dosbox='dosbox -conf /home/hipo/.dosbox.conf'" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Then to run DUNE2 launch dosbox:

dosbox

and inside console type:

c:
cd Dune2
Dune2.exe

dune2-first-real-time-strategy-game-harkonen-screenshot

For the lazy ones who would like to test dune you can play dune 2 online on this website

Windows how to check which process locks file command – A M$ Windows equivalent of lsof command

Monday, February 23rd, 2015

windows-how-to-check-which-process-locks-file-command-a-ms-windows-equivalent-of-lsof-command

I've had a task today to deploy a new WAR (Web Application Archive) Tomcat file on Apache Tomcat server running  on Windows server 2008 R2 UAT environment.
The client Tomcat application within war is providing a frontend to an proprietary Risk Analysis application called Risiko Management (developed by a German vendor called Schleupen).
The update of WAR file was part of a version upgrade of application so, both "Risk Analysis" desktop standalone server RiskKit and the Web frontend was developed by Schleupen had to be updated.
In order to update I followed the usual .WAR Tomcat Javafile upadate Tomcat process.

1. Stopped Tomcat running service Instance via services.msc command e.g.
 

Start (menu) -> Run
 

services.msc

 

stopping-tomcat-application-howto-stop-service-ms-windows-screenshot
 


2. Move (by Renaming) old risk-analysis.war to risk-analysis_backup_2015.war

and also rename the automatically Tomcat extracted folder (named same name as the WAR archive file directory – D:\web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps\Risiko-Analysis\ to :\web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps\Risiko-Analysis_backup_2015, i.e. run:
 

C:\Users\risk-analysis> D:
D:\>
D:\> CD \Web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps\

D:\Web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps> move risk-analysis.war risk-analysis_2015.war
D:\Web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps> move  
Risiko-Analysis\  Risiko-Analysis_backup_2015\


But unfortunately I couldn't rename it and I got below error:

move-windows-command-access-is-denied-tiny-screenshot

Also I tried copying it using Windows Explorer Copy / Paste but this didn't worked either, and I got below error :

cant-move-risk-analysis-tomcat-java-application-error-ms-windows-screenshot

3. Finding what Locks a directory or File on M$ Windows


Obviously, the reason for unable to copy the directory was something was locking it. Actually there are plenty of locked files many running applications like Explorer do. A good example for all time locked file is Windows (swap file) pagefile.sys – this is Windows Linux equivalent of swap filesystem (enabled / disabled with spapon / swapoff commands)

Having the directory locked was a strange problem, because the Tomcat process was not running as I checked closely both in Windows taskmgr GUI interface and manually grepped for the process with tasklist command like so:

 

d:\>tasklist /m|find /i "tomcat"


tomcat7.exe                   4396 ntdll.dll, kernel32.dll, KERNELBASE.dll,

For people like me who use primary Linux , above command shows you very precious debugging information, it shows which Windows libraries (DLL) are loaded in memory and used by the process 

 

(Note that when Tomcat is running, it is visible with command)
 

D:\> wmic.exe process list brief | find /i "tomcat"
526          tomcat7.exe          8         4396       49           156569600


Just for those wondering the 156569600 number is number of bytes loaded in Windows memory used by Tomcat.

After tomcat was stopped above command returned empty string meaning obviously that tomcat is stopped ..

BTW, wmic command is very useful to get a list of process names (to list all running processes):

 D:> wmic.exe process list brief

get-all-process-names-in-command-line-with-windows-wmic-command-screenshot

Well obviously something was locking this directory (some of its subdirectories or a file name within the directory / folder), so I couldn't rename it just like that.
In Linux finding which daemon (service) is locking a file is pretty easy with lsof command (for those new to lsof check my previous article how to how to check what process listens on network port in Linux), however it was unknown to me how I can check which running service is locking a file and did a quick google search which pointed me to the famous handle part of SysInternals tools.
The command tool Handle.exe was exactly what I was looking for. 

handle-sysinternals-tool-to-windows-see-all-locked-files-and-what-is-locking-them-ms-windows-screenshot

To get list of all opened (locked) files and see which application has opened it just exec command without arguments, you will get
plenty of useful info which will help you to better understand what Windows OS is doing invisible in the background and what app uses what.

handle-command-part-of-sysinternals-witout-any-arguments-display-opened-locked-files-in-windows

handle is pretty much Windows equivalent command of Linux lsof

To get which file was locked by Tomcat I used handle in conjuntion with find /i command which is pretty much like Linux's grep equivalent

 

C:\TEMP> Handle.exe | FIND /I "Tomcat"
   1C: File  (RW-)   D:\Web\Apache-Tomcat-7.0.33\webapps\Risk-Analysis\images\app


Alternatively if you have sysinternals and prefer GUI environment you can use SysInternals Process Explorer (press CTRL + F) and look for a string:

process-explorer-toolbar-find-what-is-locking-a-file-or-directory-windows

Next to handle I found also another GUI program (Internet Explorer extension) WhoLockMe, that can be used to show you all running programs and locked files by this programs.
WhoLockMe is pretty straight forward to use, though it shows GUI output you have to run the command from cmd line. Below is sample output screenshot of wholockme.


who-lock-me-windows-screenshot-see-which-files-running-programs-are-locking-on-ms-windows

 

To Install Wholockme 


Unzip "WhoLockMe.zip" in a directory (for exemple : "C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe")
Launch "Install.bat" or execute this Windows registry modification command :
 

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe\WhoLockMe.dll"


To Uninstall WhoLockMe – if you need to later:

 

Execute command :
 

regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe\WhoLockMe.dll"


Reboot (Or Kill Explorer.exe).

Removes the "C:\Program Files\WhoLockMe" directory and its contents.

Probably there are other ways to find out what is locking a file or direcotry using powershell scripts or .bat (batch) scripting. If you know of other way using default Windows embedded commands, please share in comments.

 

How to deb upgrade PHP 5.3.3-7 / MySQL Server 5.1 to PHP 5.4.37 MySQL 5.5 Server on Debian 6.0 / 7.0 Squeeze / Wheezy GNU / Linux

Thursday, February 12th, 2015

how-to-deb-upgrade-mysql-server-5.1-to-mysql-5.5-php-5.3-to-php-5.4-5.5-upgrade-howto-on-old-stable-debian-squeeze-wheezy

I've been still running Debian Squeeze 6.0 GNU / Linux on few of the Linux / Apache / MySQL servers I'm administrating and those servers are running few Wordperss / Joomla websites which lately face severe MySQL performance issues. I tried to optimize using various mysql performance optimization scripts such as mysql-tuner.pl, Tuning-primer.sh and Percona Toolkit – a collection of advanced command-line tools for system administrators and tech / support staff to perform a variety of MySQL and system tasks that are too difficult or complex to perform manually. Though with above tools and some my.cnf tunizations I managed to achieve positive performance improvement results with above optimizations, still I didn't like how MyQSL served queries and since the SQL server is already about 5 years old (running version 5.1) and the PHP on sever is still at 5.3 branch, I was advised by my dear colleague Anatoliy to try version update as a mean to improve SQLserver performance. I took seriously the suggestion to try upgrade as a mean to resolve performance issues in this article I will explain in short what I had to do to make MySQL upgrade a success

Of course to try keep deb installed software versions as fresh as possible possible deb packagse, I'm already using Debian Back Ports (for those who hear it a first time Debian Backports is a special repository for Stable versioned Debian Desktop and Servers  – supporting stable releases of Debian Linux) which allows you to keep install packages versions less outdated (than default installable software which usually are way behind latest stable package versions with 2-5 years).

If you happen to administer Stable Debian servers and you never used BackPorts I warmly recommend it as it often includes security patches of packages part of Debian stable releases that reached End Of Support (EOS) and already too old even for security updates to be issued by respective Debian Long Term Suport (LTS) repositories.

If you're like me and still in situation to manage remotely Debian 6.0 Squeeze and its the first time you hear about BackPorts and Debian LTShttps://wiki.debian.org/LTS/ to start using those two add to your /etc/apt/sources.list below 3 lines

Open with vim editor and press shift+G to go to last line of file and then press I to enter INSERT mode, once you're done to save, press (ESC) then press : and type x! in short key combination for exit and save setting in vim is 
 

Esc + :x! 

 

debian-server:~# vim /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://http.debian.net/debian squeeze-lts main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian squeeze-lts main contrib non-free
deb http://http.debian.net/debian-backports squeeze-backports main

If you haven't been added a security updates line in /etc/apt/sources.list make sure you add also:

 

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free


Then to apply latest security updates and packages from LTS / Backports repository run the usual:

 

debian-server:~# apt-get update && apt-get –yes upgrade
….

If you need to search a package or install something from just added backports repository use:

 

debian-server:~# apt-cache -t squeeze-backports search "mysql-server"
auth2db – Powerful and eye-candy IDS logger, log viewer and alert generator
torrentflux – web based, feature-rich BitTorrent download manager
cacti – Frontend to rrdtool for monitoring systems and services
mysql-server-5.1 – MySQL database server binaries and system database setup
mysql-server-core-5.1 – MySQL database server binaries
mysql-server – MySQL database server (metapackage depending on the latest version)

 

To install specific packages only with all their dependencies from Backports while keeping rest of packages from Debian Stable:

 

debian-server:~# apt-get install -t squeeze-backports "package_name"

In same way you can also search or install specific packages from LTS repo:

 

debian-server:~# apt-get search -t squeeze-lts "package_name"

debian-server:~# apt-get install -t squeeze-lts "package_name"

Latest mysql available from Debian BackPorts and LTS is still quite old 5.1.73-1+deb6u1 therefore I made an extensive research online on how can I easily update MySQL 5.1 to MySQL 5.5 / 5.6 on Debian Stable Linux.
 

Luckily there were already DotDeb deb repositories for Debian LAMP (Linux / Apache  / MySQL / PHP / Nginx ) running servers prepared in order to keep the essential Webserver services up2date even long after distro official support is over. I learned about existence of this repo thanks to a Ryan Tate's post who updates his LAMP stack on TurnKey Linux which by the way is based on slightly modified official stable Debian Linux releases packages

To start using DotDeb repos add in /etc/apt/sources.list (depending whereh you're on Squeeze or Wheeze Debian):

 

deb http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all

or for Debian Wheezy add repos:

 

deb http://packages.dotdeb.org wheezy all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org wheezy all

 

I was updating my DebianLatest MySQL / PHP / Apache release to Latest ones on (6.0.4) Squeeze so added above squeeze repos:

Before refreshing list of package repositories, to authenticate repos issue:

 

debian-server:~# wget -q http://www.dotdeb.org/dotdeb.gpg
debian-server:~# apt-key add dotdeb.gpg

Once again to update my packages from newly added DodDeb repository

 

debian-server:~# apt-get update

Before running the SQL upgrade to insure myself, I dumped all databases with:

 

debian-server:~# mysqldump -u root -p -A > /root/dump.sql

Finally I was brave enough to run apt-get dist-upgrade to update with latest LAMP packages

 

debian-server:~# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Calculating upgrade… Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mysql-client-5.1 mysql-server mysql-server-5.1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libaio1 libmysqlclient18 mysql-client-5.5 mysql-client-core-5.5 python-chardet python-debian
The following packages will be upgraded:
  curl krb5-multidev libapache2-mod-php5 libc-bin libc-dev-bin libc6 libc6-dev libc6-i386 libcurl3 libcurl3-gnutls libcurl4-openssl-dev libevent-1.4-2
  libgssapi-krb5-2 libgssrpc4 libjasper1 libk5crypto3 libkadm5clnt-mit7 libkadm5srv-mit7 libkdb5-4 libkrb5-3 libkrb5-dev libkrb53 libkrb5support0 libmysqlclient-dev
  libxml2 libxml2-dev locales mysql-client mysql-common ntp ntpdate php-pear php5 php5-cgi php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-imagick php5-mcrypt
  php5-mysql php5-odbc php5-recode php5-sybase php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl python-reportbug reportbug unzip

50 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 51.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 1,926 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y

As you see from above output above command updates Apache webservers / PHP and PHP related modules, however it doesn't update MySQL installed version, to update also MySQL server 5.1 to MySQL server 5.5

 

debian-server:~#  apt-get install –yes mysql-server mysql-server-5.5

You will be prompted with the usual Debian ncurses text blue interface to set a root password to mysql server, just set it the same as it used to be on old upgraded MySQL 5.1 server.

Well now see whether mysql has properly restarted with ps auxwwf

 

debian-server:~#  ps axuwwf|grep -i sql
root     22971  0.0  0.0 112360   884 pts/11   S+   15:50   0:00  |                   \_ grep -i sql
root     19436  0.0  0.0 115464  1556 pts/1    S    12:53   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe
mysql    19837  4.0  2.3 728192 194552 pts/1   Sl   12:53   7:12  \_ /usr/sbin/mysqld –basedir=/usr –datadir=/var/lib/mysql –plugin-dir=/usr/lib/mysql/plugin –user=mysql –pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid –socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock –port=3306
root     19838  0.0  0.0 110112   700 pts/1    S    12:53   0:00  \_ logger -t mysqld -p daemon.error

In my case it was running, however if it fails to run try to debug what is going wrong on initialization by manually executing init script /etc/init.d/mysql stop; /etc/init.d/mysql start and look for errors. You can also manually try to run mysqld_safe from console if it is not running run:

 

debian-server:~# /usr/bin/mysqld_safe &

This should give you a good hint on why it is failing to run
 

One more thing left is to check whether php modules load correctly to do so issue:

 

debian-server:~# php -v
Failed loading /usr/lib/php5/20090626/xcache.so:  /usr/lib/php5/20090626/xcache.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Failed loading /usr/lib/php5/20090626/xdebug.so:  /usr/lib/php5/20090626/xdebug.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory


You will likely get an exception (error) like above.
To solve the error, reinstall xcache and xcache-debug debs

 

debian-server:~# apt-get purge php5-xcache php5-xdebug

Now PHP + MySQL + Apache environment should be running much smootly.

debian-squeeze-wheeze-update-install-mysql-sevver5.55-620x344-howto

Upgrading the MySQL server / PHP library to MySQL server 5.6 / PHP 5.5 on Wheeze Linux is done in very much analogous ways all you have to do is change the repositories with above wheeze 7.0 ones and to follow the process as described in this article. I haven't tested update on Wheezy yet, so if you happen to try my article with wheezy reports and got a positive upgrade result please drop a comment.

Linux: List last 10 (newest) and 10 oldest modified files in a directory with ls

Tuesday, April 8th, 2014

An useful thing on GNU / Linux sometimes is to list last or oldest modified files in directory.

Lets say you want to list last 10 modified files with ls from today / yesterday. Here is how:
 

ls -1t | head -10
my.cnf
wordperss_enabled_plugins.txt
newcerts/
mysql-hipo_pcfreakbiz.dump
NewArchive-Jan-10-15.zip
hipo_pcfreakbiz-mysqldb-any-out-1389361234.tgz
Tisho_Snimki/
wordpress/
wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1.1
wp-cron.php

 

To list 10 oldest modified files on Linux:

 

ls -1t | tail -10
    my.cnf
    pcfreak_sql-15_10_05_2012
    mysql-tuning-primer*
    tuning-primer.sh*
    system-administration-services.html
    blog_backup_15_07_2012.tar.gz
    www-files/
    dump.sql
    courier-imap*
    djbdns-1.05.tar.gz


Cheers 😉

Find all hidden files in Linux, Delete, Copy, Move all hidden files

Tuesday, April 15th, 2014

search-find-all-hidden-files-linux-delete-all-hidden-files
Listing hidden files is one of the common thing to do as sys admin. Doing manipulations with hidden files like copy / delete / move is very rare but still sometimes necessary here is how to do all this.

1. Find and show (only) all hidden files in current directory

find . -iname '.*' -maxdepth 1

maxdepth – makes files show only in 1 directory depth (only in current directory), for instance to list files in 2 subdirectories use -maxdepth 3 etc.

echo .*;

Yeah if you're Linux newbie it is useful to know echo command can be used instead of ls.
echo * command is very useful on systems with missing ls (for example if you mistakenly deleted it 🙂 )

2. Find and show (only) all hidden directories, sub-directories in current directory

To list all directories use cmd:

find /path/to/destination/ -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type d

3. Log found hidden files / directories

find . -iname ".*" -maxdept 1 -type f | tee -a hidden_files.log

find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 type d | tee -a hidden_directories.log
4. Delete all hidden files in current directory

cd /somedirectory
find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type f -delete

5. Delete all hidden files in current directory

cd /somedirectory
find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type d -delete

6. Copy all hidden files from current directory to other "backup" dir

find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec cp -rpf '{}' directory-to-copy-to/ ;

7. Copy and move all hidden sub-directories from current directory to other "backup" dir

find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec cp -rpf '{}' directory-to-copy-to/ ;

– Moving all hidden sub-directories from current directory to backup dir

find . -iname ".*" -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec mv '{}' directory-to-copy-to/ ;

 

find text strings recursively in Linux and UNIX – find grep in sub-directories command examples

Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

unix_Linux_recursive_file_search_string_grep
GNU Grep
is equipped with a special option "-r" to grep recursively. Looking for string in a file in a sub-directories tree with the -r option is a piece of cake. You just do:

grep -r 'string' /directory/

or if you want to search recursively non-case sensitive for text

grep -ri 'string' .
 

Another classic GNU grep use (I use almost daily) is whether you want to match all files containing (case insensitive) string  among all files:

grep -rli 'string' directory-name
 

Now if you want to grep whether a string is contained in a file or group of files in directory recursively on some other UNIX like HP-UX or Sun OS / Solaris where there is no GNU grep installed by default here is how to it:

find /directory -exec grep 'searched string' {} dev/null ;

Note that this approach to look for files containing string on UNIX is very slowThus on not too archaic UNIX systems for some better search performance it is better to use xargs;

find . | xargs grep searched-string


A small note to open here is by using xargs there might be weird results when run on filesystems with filenames starting with "-".

Thus comes the classical (ultimate) way to grep for files containing string with find + grep, e.g.

find / -exec grep grepped-string {} dev/null ;

Another way to search a string recursively in files is by using UNIX OS '*' (star) expression:

grep pattern * */* */*/* 2>/dev/null

Talking about recursive directory text search in UNIX, should mention  another good GNU GREP alternative ACK – check it on betterthangrep.com 🙂 . Ack is perfect for programmers who have to dig through large directory trees of code for certain variables, functions, objects etc.

 

Install VMWare tools on Debian and Ubuntu Linux – Enable VMWare Fullscreen and copy paste between OS host and Virtual machine

Wednesday, May 28th, 2014

install-vmware-tools-on-debian-gnu-linux-and-ubuntu-howto

If you need to use Virtual Machine to run some testing on heterogenous Operating Systems and you have chosen VMWare as a Virtual Machine. You will soon notice some of Virtual Machines functionality like copy between host operating system and Virtual Machine, true fullscreen mode and most importantly Copy paste between your host operating system and VMWare is not working. I'm not too much into Virtualization these days so for me it was truely shocking that a proprietary software like VMWare, claimed to be the best and most efficient Virtual Machine nowadays is not supporting copy / paste, fullscreen and copy between host and guest OS.  For those arguing why I'm using VMWare at all as it is proprietary and there is already free software Virtual Machines like QEMU and Oracle's VirtualBox its simply because now I have the chance to install and use VMWare 9 Enterprise on my work place at HP with a free Corporate license – in other words I'm using VMWare just for the sake of educating myself and would always recommend VirtualBox for those looking for good substitute free alternative to VMWare.

Before trying out VMWare, I tried Virtualbox to emulate Linux on my HP work PC running Windows with VirtualBox I was having issues with keyboard not working (because of lack of support of USB, no full screen support and lack of copy / paste between OS-es), I've just recently understood this is not because Virtualbox is bad Virtualization solution but because I forgot to install VirtualBox Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack which allows support for USB, enables copy paste and full screen support. The equivalent to Virtualbox Oracle VM VirtualBox in VMWare world is called VMWare-Tools and once the guest operating system is installed inside VMWare VM, its necessary to install vmware-tools to enable better screen resolution and copy paste.
 

In Windows Virtual Machine installation of vmware-tools is pretty straight forward you go through VMWare's menus

 

VM -> Install Vmware-tools

install-vmware-tools-on-linux-guest-host-os-debian-redhat-screenshot

follow the instructions and you're done, however as always installing VMWare-tools on Linux is little bit more complicated you need to run few commands from Linux installed inside the Virtual Machine to install vmware-tools. Here is how vmware-tools is installed on Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint and rest of Debian based operating systems:

  1. Install Build essentials and gcc You need to have this installed some developer tools as well as GCC compiler in order for the vmware-tools to compile a special Linux kernel module which enables extra support (integration) between the VMWare VM and the installed inside VM Linux distro

apt-get install --yes build-essential gcc
...

2. Install appropriate Linux headers corresponding to current Linux OS installed kernel

apt-get install --yes linux-headers-$(uname -r)
....

3. Mount CD (Virtual) Content to obtain the vmware-tools version for your Linux

Be sure to have first checked from VMWare menus on menus VM -> Intall Vmware Tools
This step is a little bit strange but just do it without too much questioning …


mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/
umount /media/cdrom0/
mount /media/cdrom
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom/
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/

 

Note that /dev/sr0, might already be mounted and sometimes it might be necessary to unmount it first (don't remember exactly if I unmounted it or not)

4. Copy and Untar VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz

cp -rpf /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz /tmp/
cd /tmp/
tar -zxvvf VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz
...

5. Run vmware-tools installer

cd vmware-tools-distrib/
./vmware-install.pl

You will be asked multiple questions you can safely press enter to answer with default settings to all settings, hopefully if all runs okay this will make VMWare Tools installed
 

Creating a new VMware Tools installer database using the tar4 format.
Installing VMware Tools.
In which directory do you want to install the binary files?
[/usr/bin]
What is the directory that contains the init directories (rc0.d/ to rc6.d/)?
[/etc]
What is the directory that contains the init scripts?
[/etc/init.d]
In which directory do you want to install the daemon files?
[/usr/sbin]
In which directory do you want to install the library files?
[/usr/lib/vmware-tools]
The path "/usr/lib/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program is
going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want?
[yes]
In which directory do you want to install the documentation files?
[/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools]
The path "/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program
is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you
want? [yes]
The installation of VMware Tools 9.2.0 build-799703 for Linux completed
successfully. You can decide to remove this software from your system at any
time by invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl".
Before running VMware Tools for the first time, you need to configure it by
invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl". Do you want
this program to invoke the command for you now? [yes]
Initializing…
Making sure services for VMware Tools are stopped.
Stopping VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
Guest operating system daemon: done
Unmounting HGFS shares: done
Guest filesystem driver: done
[EXPERIMENTAL] The VMware FileSystem Sync Driver (vmsync) is a new feature that creates backups of virtual machines. Please refer to the VMware Knowledge Base for more details on this capability. Do you wish to enable this feature?
[no]
Before you can compile modules, you need to have the following installed…
make
gcc
kernel headers of the running kernel
Searching for GCC…
Detected GCC binary at "/usr/bin/gcc-4.6".
The path "/usr/bin/gcc-4.6" appears to be a valid path to the gcc binary.
Would you like to change it? [no]
Searching for a valid kernel header path…
Detected the kernel headers at "/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/build/include".
The path "/lib/modules/3.2.0-4-amd64/build/include" appears to be a valid path
to the 3.2.0-4-amd64 kernel headers.
Would you like to change it? [no]
The vmblock enables dragging or copying files between host and guest in a
Fusion or Workstation virtual environment. Do you wish to enable this feature?
[no] yes
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-root/modules/vmblock-only'

No X install found.
Creating a new initrd boot image for the kernel.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-4-amd64
Checking acpi hot plug done
Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
Switching to guest configuration: done
VM communication interface: done
VM communication interface socket family: done
File system sync driver: done
Guest operating system daemon: done
The configuration of VMware Tools 8.6.10 build-913593 for Linux for this
running kernel completed successfully.
You must restart your X session before any mouse or graphics changes take
effect.
You can now run VMware Tools by invoking "/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox-cmd" from the
command line or by invoking "/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox" from the command line
during an X server session.
To enable advanced X features (e.g., guest resolution fit, drag and drop, and
file and text copy/paste), you will need to do one (or more) of the following:
1. Manually start /usr/bin/vmware-user
2. Log out and log back into your desktop session; and,
3. Restart your X session.
Enjoy,
–the VMware team
Found VMware Tools CDROM mounted at /mnt. Ejecting device /dev/sr0 …

.To make sure vmware-tools compiled modules are loaded into Linux kernel inside VM, restart the Virtual Machine. Once Linux boots again and you login to gnome-terminal to check what is vmware-tools status (e.g. if properly loaded) run:

service vmware-tools status
vmtoolsd is running

install-vmware-tools-on-debian-gnu-linux-and-ubuntu-virtual-machine-screenshot

This method of installing works on Debian 7 (Wheezy) but same steps should work on any Ubuntu and rest of Debian derivatives. For Redhat (RPM) based Linux distributions to install vmware-tools after mounting cdrom drive following above instructions you will have an rpm package instead of .tar.gz archive so all you have to do is install the rpm, e.g. launch smth. like:

rpm -Uhv /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.i386.rpm
Cheers 😉