10 open source storage solutions that might be perfect for your company

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-open-source-storage-solutions-that-might-be-perfect-for-your-company/

1: Samba

Samba provides secure, stable, and fast storage (as well as print services) for all clients using the SMB/CIFS protocol (all versions of DOS and Windows, OS/2, Linux, and many others). If you plan to host storage for a variety of platforms, you will not get by without Samba. It's the glue that holds heterogeneous platforms together. In fact, many storage appliances depend upon Samba to get the job done. And now that Samba has nearly seamless integration with Microsoft Active Directory, the solution is all the more flexible.

2: NFS

NFS—the Network File System—was created in 1984 to allow computers to access file systems on remote machines as if they were mounted locally. What's nice about NFS is that it allows you to create a set-it-and-forget-it distributed file system. One caveat: The setup can get a bit complex and you must set up both server and client. NFS is available for every Linux distribution on the planet and can be installed from either the command line or the distribution's package manager.

3: File Server

File Server is a dedicated Linux storage distribution that uses Samba, Webmin, Pydio, SSL, and much more to create an outstanding storage solution without having to piece it all together yourself. One of the best features of File Server is that you can set it up as both a standard Windows-compatible storage solution and as a web-based file solution. With the help of Pydio, you can enjoy an incredibly easy -to-use web interface to store your files.

4: Ceph

Ceph is a distributed object store and file system "designed for excellent performance, reliability, and scalability." In other words, this is storage for the big boys; small shops need not apply. Ceph is the solution you want when you're looking for massive data storage. It also works seamlessly with block storage—so you can use it on a storage cluster for scalability.

5: FreeNAS

FreeNAS is another storage-based Linux distribution that can be installed on nearly any platform to create an outstanding storage solution. It features replication, encryption, data protection, snapshots, file sharing, an easy-to-use web-based interface, and a powerful plug-in system. FreeNAS provides a versatile solution that any platform can connect to and any business can enjoy.

6: Openfiler

Openfiler makes it easy for you to deploy both storage area networking (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS) with all the bells and whistles your company needs. Openfiler offers a community edition and a commercial edition. The commercial edition is ideal for iSCSI Target and Fibre Channel Target stacks and features high availability cluster/failover as well as block-level replication for disaster recovery.

7: ZFS file system

ZFS file system is one of the better file systems to use when considering a storage solution. It offers excellent scalability and data integrity. When you're installing most Linux distributions, you can choose the file system you want to use. If setting up a Linux storage solution, ZFS will go further to ensure data integrity than any other file system. If you do decide to dive into ZFS, make sure you do plenty of research and understand what it does and how it works.

8: OpenMediaVault

OpenMediaVault is an open NAS solution built on Debian that features services like SSH, (S)FTP, SMB/CIFS, DAAP media server, RSync, and BitTorrent client. OpenMediaVault offers a massive plug-in system—so if it doesn't have what you need, you can add it with ease. This might well be one of the best out-of-the-box storage solution experiences you'll ever have. It's that easy to use. OpenMediaVault also enjoys full-on UPS support.

9: Lustre

Lustre is a "scale-out architecture distributed parallel filesystem." It's lightning fast and can handle petabytes of data and tens of thousands of nodes. The description alone should indicate that Lustre is designed to address large-scale storage needs. Since 2005 Lustre has been consistently used by half of the top 10 supercomputers on the planet. Ideal industries for Lustre include meteorology, simulation, oil and gas, life science, rich media, and finance.

10: Linux

I cannot, in good conscience, list the best open source storage solutions without including Linux itself. Why? Because most Linux distributions can easily serve as an effective storage solution. Of course, depending upon your size, you may need to tweak various aspects or turn to an enterprise distribution (such as Red Hat or SUSE). But for network storage, Linux has you covered.

10 Linux GUI tools for sysadmins

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-linux-gui-tools-for-sysadmins/

What are some good GUI tools that can simplify your Linux sysadmin tasks? Let's take a look at 10 of them.

1: MySQL Workbench

MySQL Workbench is one of my favorite tools for working with MySQL databases. You can work locally or remotely with this well designed GUI tool. But MySQL Workbench isn't just for managing previously created databases. It also helps you design, develop, and administer MySQL databases. A newer addition to the MySQL Workbench set of tools is the ability to easily migrate Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, Sybase ASE, PostgreSQL, and other RDBMS tables, objects, and data to MySQL. That alone makes MySQL Workbench worth using.

2: phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is another MySQL administration tool... only web based. Although it doesn't offer the bells and whistles of MySQL Workbench, it's a much more user-friendly tool. With phpMyAdmin you can create and manage MySQL databases via a standard web browser. This means you can install phpMyAdmin on a headless Linux server and connect to it through any browser that has access to the machine.

3: Webmin

Webmin is a web-based one-stop-shop tool for administering Linux servers. With Webmin you can manage nearly every single aspect of a server—user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing, security, databases, and much more. And if what you need isn't included with the default installation, a massive number of third-party modules are available to take up the slack.

4: YaST

YaST stands for Yet Another Setup Tool. It enables system configuration for enterprise-grade SUSE and openSUSE and serves as both the installation and configuration tool for the platform. With YaST you can configure hardware, network, and services and tune system security, all with an easy-to-use, attractive GUI. YaST is installed by default in all SUSE and openSUSE platforms.

5: Shorewall

Shorewall is a GUI for configuring iptables. Yes, there are other GUIs for tuning the security of your system, but many of them don't go nearly as deep as Shorewall. Where an app like UFW is one of the best security tuners for the desktop, Shorewall is tops for the server. With this particular security GUI, you can configure gateways, VPNs, traffic controlling, blacklisting, and much more. If you're serious about your firewall, and you want a GUI for the job, Shorewall is what you want.

6: Apache Directory

Apache Directory is about the only solid GUI tool for managing any LDAP server (though it is designed particularly for ApacheDS). It's an Eclipse RCP application and can serve as your LDAP browser, schema editor, ApacheDS configuration editor, LDIF editor, ACI editor, and more. The app also contains the latest ApacheDS, which means you can use it to create a DS server in no time.

7: CUPS

CUPS is the Linux printer service that also happens to have a web-based GUI tool for the management of printers, printer classes, and print queues. It is also possible to enable Kerberos authentication and remote administration. One really nice thing about this GUI is its built-in help system. You can learn nearly everything you need to manage your print server.

8: cPanel

cPanel is one of the finest web-based administration tools you'll use. It lets you configure sites, customers' sites and services, and quite a bit more. With this tool you can configure/manage mail, security, domains, apps, apps, files, databases, logs—the list goes on and on. The only drawback to using cPanel is that it's not free. Check out the pricing matrix to see if there's a plan to fit your needs.

9: Zenmap

Zenmap is the official front end for the Nmap network scanner. With this tool, both beginners and advanced users can quickly and easily scan their network to troubleshoot issues. After scanning, you can even save the results to comb through them later. Although you won't use this tool to directly administer your system, it will become invaluable in the quest for discovering network-related issues.

10: Cockpit

Cockpit was created by Red Hat to make server administration easier. With this web-based GUI you can tackle tasks like storage administration, journal inspection, starting/stopping services, and multiple server monitoring. Cockpit will run on Fedora Server, Arch Linux, CentOS Atomic, Fedora Atomic, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

How to find out files updated in last N minutes

Issue
How to find out files updated in last N minutes?

Resolution
It is simple. Use the following command:
Syntax:
find -cmin -N
where N is the number of minutes
Example:
find /suresh/home/songs/ -cmin -10
Tip:
If you would like to see path of the file's directory then use the ls command along with the above command:
find /suresh/home/songs/ -cmin -10 ls

Install APC (Alternative PHP Cache) in RHEL/CentOS 6/5 & Fedora 20-12

http://www.tecmint.com/install-apc-alternative-php-cache-in-rhel-centos-fedora/

APC (Alternate PHP Cache) is an free and open source cache for PHP code. The main goal of this module is to provide robust framework for caching and optimizing PHP code.

Install and Enable PHP APC in Linux

The instructions provided here shows how to install and enable APC caching for PHP on RHEL 6.5/6.4/6.3/6.2/6.1/6/5.8/5.6, CentOS 6.5/6.4/6.3/6.2/6.1/6/5.8/5.6 and Fedora 20,19,18,17,16,15,14,13,12using PECL command to download from the repositories.

Install Dependency Packages for APC

First, we need to install required packages called pecl, phpize and apxs commands, to install APC using YUMpackage manager tool.

yum install php-pear php-devel httpd-devel pcre-devel gcc make

Install APC Using PECL

Now we have all the needed packages to install APC. Here we use PECL command to install it. Please select default settings when asked.

pecl install apc

Sample Output :

WARNING: channel "pecl.php.net" has updated its protocols, use "pecl channel-update pecl.php.net" to update
downloading APC-3.1.9.tgz ...
Starting to download APC-3.1.9.tgz (155,540 bytes)
.................................done: 155,540 bytes
54 source files, building
running: phpize
Configuring for:
PHP Api Version:         20090626
Zend Module Api No:      20090626
Zend Extension Api No:   220090626
config.m4:180: warning: AC_CACHE_VAL(PHP_APC_GCC_ATOMICS, ...): suspicious cache-id, must contain _cv_ to be cached
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1974: AC_CACHE_VAL is expanded from...
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1994: AC_CACHE_CHECK is expanded from...
config.m4:180: the top level
config.m4:180: warning: AC_CACHE_VAL(PHP_APC_GCC_ATOMICS, ...): suspicious cache-id, must contain _cv_ to be cached
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1974: AC_CACHE_VAL is expanded from...
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1994: AC_CACHE_CHECK is expanded from...
config.m4:180: the top level
Enable internal debugging in APC [no] :
Enable per request file info about files used from the APC cache [no] :
Enable spin locks (EXPERIMENTAL) [no] :
Enable memory protection (EXPERIMENTAL) [no] :
Enable pthread mutexes (default) [yes] :
Enable pthread read/write locks (EXPERIMENTAL) [no] :

Enable APC PHP Extension

Run the following command to enable APC extension in Apache configuration.

echo "extension=apc.so" > /etc/php.d/apc.ini

Restart Apache Service for APC

Restart the Apache service to take new changes.

service httpd restart
OR
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Verify APC Installation

Create a file phpinfo.php in Apache web root directory. For example /var/www/html/phpinfo.php.

# vi /var/www/html/phpinfo.php

Add the following code to it. save and close.

Open any browser and type the following URL. You will see APC enabled configuration similar to below.

http://localhost/phpinfo.php

PHP APC Configuration Screen

Enable PHP APC administration

To enable APC administration panel, copy the following file.

cp /usr/share/pear/apc.php /var/www/html/

Now open the file apc.php with VI editor.

# vi /var/www/html/apc.php

Now set the username and password in the file apc.php as shown below.

defaults('ADMIN_USERNAME','apc');       // Admin Username
defaults('ADMIN_PASSWORD','Set-Password-Here');  // Admin Password - CHANGE THIS TO ENABLE!!!

Type the following URL in the browser. You will get administration panel of APC.

http://localhost/apc.php

Some screenshots of APC Administration panel for your reference.

Vies Host Stats

APC View Host Stats Overview

System Cache Entries

APC System Cache Entries Overview

User Cache Entries

APC User Cache Entries Overview

APC Login Screen

APC Admin Login Screen

APC Version Check

APC Version Check Overview

Upgrade APC using PECL

To upgrade, just execute following command it will download and upgrade APC.

pecl upgrade apc

Uninstall APC using PECL

If you like to remove it, then simple type the following command to uninstall APC completely from the system.

pecl uninstall apc

Setting Up High-Performance ‘HHVM’ and Nginx/Apache with MariaDB on Debian/Ubuntu

http://www.tecmint.com/install-hhvm-and-nginx-apache-with-mariadb-on-debian-ubuntu

HHVM stands for HipHop Virtual Machine, is an open source virtual machine created for running Hack (it’s a programming language for HHVM) and PHP written applications. HHVM uses a last minute compilation path to achieve remarkable performance while keeping the flexibility that PHP programmers are addicted to. Till date, HHVM has achieved over a 9x increase in http request throughput and more than 5x cut in memory utilization (when running on low system memory) for Facebook compared with the PHP engine + APC (Alternative PHP Cache).

HHVM can also be used along with a FastCGI-based web-server like Nginx or Apache.

Install HHVM, Nginx and Apache with MariaDB

In this tutorial we shall look at steps for setting up Nginx/Apache web server, MariaDB database server andHHVM. For this setup, we will use Ubuntu 15.04 (64-bit) as HHVM runs on 64-bit system only, although Debian and Linux Mint distributions are also supported.

Step 1: Installing Nginx and Apache Web Server

1. First do a system upgrade to update repository list with the help of following commands.

# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

System Upgrade

2. As I said HHVM can be used with both Nginx and Apache web server. So, it’s your choice which web server you will going to use, but here we will show you both web servers installation and how to use them with HHVM.

Installing Nginx

In this step, we will install Nginx/Apache web server from the packages repository using following command.

# apt-get install nginx

Install Nginx Web Server

Installing Apache

# apt-get install apache2

Install Apache Web Server

At this point, you should be able to navigate to following URL and you will able to see Nginx or Apache default page.

http://localhost
OR
http://IP-Address

Nginx Default Page

Nginx Welcome Page

Apache Default Page

Apache Default Page

Step 2: Install and Configure MariaDB

3. In this step, we will install MariaDB, as it providers better performance as compared to MySQL.

# apt-get install mariadb-client mariadb-server

Install MariaDB Database

4. After MariaDB successful installation, you can start MariaDB and set root password to secure the database:

# systemctl start mysql
# mysql_secure_installation

Answer the following questions by typing y or n and press enter. Make sure you read the instructions carefully before answering the questions.

Enter current password for root (enter for none) = press enter
Set root password? [Y/n] = y
Remove anonymous users[y/n] = y
Disallow root login remotely[y/n] = y
Remove test database and access to it [y/n] = y
Reload privileges tables now[y/n] = y 

5. After setting root password for MariaDB, you can connect to MariaDB prompt with the new root password.

# mysql -u root -p

Step 3: Installation of HHVM

6. At this stage we shall install and configure HHVM. You need to add the HHVM repository to yoursources.list file and then you have to update your repository list using following series of commands.

# wget -O - http://dl.hhvm.com/conf/hhvm.gpg.key | apt-key add -
# echo deb http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu DISTRIBUTION_VERSION main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hhvm.list
# apt-get update

Important: Don’t forget to replace DISTRIBUTION_VERSION with your Ubuntu distribution version (i.e. lucid, precise, or trusty.) and also on Debian replace with jessie or wheezy. On Linux Mint installation instructions are same, but petra is the only currently supported distribution.

After adding HHVM repository, you can easily install it as shown.

# apt-get install -y hhvm

Installing HHVM will start it up now, but it not configured to auto start at next system boot. To set auto start at next boot use the following command.

# update-rc.d hhvm defaults

Step 4: Configuring Nginx/Apache to Talk to HHVM

7. Now, nginx/apache and HHVM are installed and running as independent, so we need to configure both web servers to talk to each other. The crucial part is that we have to tell nginx/apache to forward all PHP files to HHVM to execute.

If you are using Nginx, follow this instructions as explained..

By default, the nginx configuration lives under /etc/nginx/sites-available/default and these config looks in/usr/share/nginx/html for files to execute, but it don’t know what to do with PHP.

To make Nginx to talk with HHVM, we need to run the following include script that will configure nginx correctly by placing a hhvm.conf at the beginning of the nginx config as mentioned above.

This script makes the nginx to talk to any file that ends with .hh or .php and send it to HHVM via fastcgi.

# /usr/share/hhvm/install_fastcgi.sh

Configure Nginx for HHVM

Important: If you are using Apache, there isn’t any configuration is needed now.

8. Next, you need to use /usr/bin/hhvm to provide /usr/bin/php (php) by running this command below.

# /usr/bin/update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/php php /usr/bin/hhvm 60

After all the above steps are done, you can now start HHVM and test it.

# systemctl start hhvm

Step 5: Testing HHVM with Nginx/Apache

9. To verify that hhvm working, you need to create a hello.php file under nginx/apache document root directory.

# nano /usr/share/nginx/html/hello.php       [For Nginx]
OR
# nano /var/www/html/hello.php               [For Nginx and Apache]

Add the following snippet to this file.

and then navigate to the following URL and verify to see “hello world“.

http://localhost/info.php
OR
http://IP-Address/info.php

HHVM Page

If “HHVM” page appears, then it means you’re all set!

Conclusion

These steps are very easy to follow and hope your find this tutorial useful and if you get any error during installation of any packages