I recently ran into an issue when running the output of tail -F file.log through a series of multiple grep instances. One level of grep worked fine and I saw the output in real time. However, once I added a second level, I would get nothing for minutes after, then sudden output (at first I thought my… Read more »
HOW TO: Using dig(1) to Find DNS Time to Live (TTL) Values
The dig(1) command is a handy DNS information and troubleshooting tool. It can be used to grab a host or domain’s TTL (time to live) values. This information can be critical to planning a DNS cut over, and how long to leave the old server on. In most circumstances I’d recommend running a low (5… Read more »
HOW TO: FreeBSD rc.d Script for Atlassian Confluence
Below is a simple but effective script to bring Atlassian Confluence under control of FreeBSD’s rc.d script system. This is designed for Confluence in standalone configuration, ie; with its own dedicated Tomcat instance. This script allows you to enable Confluence, and when enabled it will start up with your server (after Apache HTTP and MySQL… Read more »
HOW TO: CPU, Disk, Network and Memory Usage Reporting via FreeBSD’s bsnmpd(1) and bsnmp-ucd(8)
Out of the box, FreeBSD’s default SNMP daemon bsnmpd(1) does not support the UCD-SNMP-MIBs which is where all the “good stuff” like CPU, disk, network and memory that us sysadmins like to monitor. Adding this module is as easy as installing the bsnmp-ucd port and doing a quick update to bsnmp’s config file: $ cd… Read more »
SOLVED: Apache HTTPd Crashes or Goes Offline Exactly At Midnight
After updating Apache httpd on a server running FreeBSD, it went offline at exactly midnight the following night, producing a log entry like this in httpd-errors: [Tue Aug 10 00:00:01 2010] [notice] SIGHUP received. Attempting to restart [Tue Aug 10 00:00:01 2010] [notice] seg fault or similar nasty error detected in the parent process The… Read more »
SOLVED: FreeBSD vmware-guestd6 Port Fails To Start
I also to run across this error when working with certain FreeBSD VMs (FreeBSD 7 and 8.0, 8.1). I think the vmware-guestd6 port is missing a dependency. Here is the problem: $ /usr/local/etc/rc.d/vmware-guestd start /usr/local/etc/rc.d/vmware-guestd: WARNING: failed to start vmware_guestd Not too helpful and the logs don’t show anything either. If we try to manually… Read more »
SOLVED: FreeBSD vmware-guestd6 Port Install Error
I seem to run across this error when working with certain ESX based FreeBSD VMs (FreeBSD 7 and 8.0, 8.1). My suspicion is that the VMWare tools image that gets mounted when installing the guest tools is mismatching what the port expects, depending on the server’s copy of VMWare Tools. $ cd /usr/ports/emulators/vmware-guestd6 $ make… Read more »