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Local Blogger Writes the World Posts

Published by NiteMayr on May 20, 2011

He’ll be giving flying elbows in the clouds now, RIP Randy Macho Man Savage, OH YEAH

On Being Busy

Published by NiteMayr on May 17, 2011

It’s been too long; I’ve been so busy.  I guess I’ll recap what I’ve done in these two years plus.

 

  1. Fixed over 100 incorrectly configured linux boxes so that they would actually send their admin the output of the logwatch command.
  2. Reconfigured the same to use ClamAV correctly and with consistent settings instead of the hodge-podge that they were.
  3. Built a custom monitor for a series of servers that allowed non-techs to determine if the servers in question were up or down.  I’d come back to this
  4. Built a scripted installer for a 21 server farm, taking a 10-20 minute process down to a single command line. I’d come back to this too.
  5. Fixed the log backup system that had been in place for months.  It’s still there now, but it needs to change.
  6. Got really into replacing complex manual functions with Bash scripts.
  7. Built the data import system for a whole client.  SUPER complex and modular, didn’t use most of the code anywhere else save for the functions method.
  8. Got to know cron really well.
  9. Got to know ssh -t “command” really well
  10. Got lost in the weeds of random apps for random functions, the environment was becoming to large and entrenched to be managed remotely via a central console.
  11. Built an extensible console for managing the environment in part.
  12. Build Cache flushing tools
  13. Learned how to compile bash apps at the command line using shc http://www.datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/sources/shc.html
  14. This gave birth to a number of cool tools, remote fail-over tools that interacted with Cisco devices for example.
  15. The Web Console built earlier evolved and got better and better.
  16. Built automated localized monitors that could restart hung applications before remote monitors could catch the outage.
  17. Built automated localized monitors that could restart hung applications and NOT cause two systems to restart simultaneously.
  18. Installed DD-WRT a few times, lots of fun.
  19. Gave up some weekends
  20. Gave up some sleep
  21. Gave up Family Time
  22. Gave up Long Weekends
  23. Built a custom log handler for Apache logs, produced delightful daily csv from an environment, imported this into MySQL and created views to deal with that.
  24. Tried to hit the gym
  25. Got too busy for the gym.
  26. Trained up a replacement.
  27. Left things running okay.