Articles in the system_administration category

1. Installing MySQL On Mac OS X Via Terminal

   Posted on April 20, 2007 in System Administration

   Note: This install occured on a Mac mini. If you are using a Power PC based system, make sure you get the proper version of MySQL.

   Important commands: hdiutil, installer, wget

   Download

   For some reason, MySQL's main page has become nearly unreadable. Therefore, you might find it easier to go …

2. Server Naming Conventions

   Posted on April 18, 2007 in System Administration

   Every machine needs a name. As soon as the second server is ready to go, the name SERVER no longer seems like a great idea. When deciding how to name servers, there are two primary conventions: functional names and unique names.

   Functional Names

   Functional names take the job assigned to …

3. Courier authdaemond Breaks On Hidden Whitespace

   Posted on April 15, 2007 in System Administration

   A buddy of mine was recently setting up a new installation of Courier with virtual user support via MySQL. He ran into an issue when trying to get authdaemond to connect to a remote MySQL installation. No matter what he changed in authmysqlrc, the following kept appearing in his mail …

4. Command Logging is Vital to System Administration

   Posted on April 14, 2007 in System Administration

   If you're like me, it probably seems obvious that command logging is an important part of system administration. Any change I make, whether it's on a router or server, is logged somewhere. Although folks give plenty of reasons why they don't use tools like sudo for super-user functions (inconvenience and …

5. Preparing Mac OS X For Production Remotely

   Posted on April 13, 2007 in System Administration

   Note: I recently had to prepare a Mac mini for use as a network testing device. The system was installed in a remote location and only reachable via SSH.

   Important commands: hdiutil, installer, softwareupdate, shutdown

   When preparing a system for production, there are three main tasks that need to be …

6. Adding Mac OS X Users Remotely

   Posted on April 11, 2007 in System Administration

   Important commands: ditto nicl nidump passwd

   If you're like me, you might be occasionally called upon to remotely manage a few Mac OS X systems. The environment I'm working in only allows SSH access to these systems, so everything must be done from the command line.

   Unlike Linux and most …