Category Archives: SysAdmin

Keeping script kiddies at bay with mod_evasive and iptables

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Simone

mod_evasive is a nice Apache module that helps to protect your server against DoS attacks. However, when a client is blocked, it will keep on using resources on your server. Even if the request will result in a 403 error, … Continue reading →

Posted in SysAdmin, Tips'n'Tricks | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Serendipity to WordPress

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Simone

I’ve moved a couple of my blogs from Serendipity to WordPress (mostly because I’ve discovered that Serendipity has some issues with newer PHP setups, but also because I’m getting lazy and WordPress’ admin panel is nicer than s9y’s ). Luckily … Continue reading →

Posted in Software, SysAdmin | Tagged , | 36 Comments

LogMiner 1.23

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Simone

Version 1.23 of LogMiner, my Apache/IIS log analysis package, is now available. This release mainly fixes some build problem on modern distributions. Also it finally includes the cleanup function I was talking about some days ago…

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Perplexed about Ubuntu’s sudoers configuration

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Simone

Recently I’ve been administering my first Ubuntu machine and I already feel a bit perplexed about its security setup. The issue is that by default, the root account password is locked in Ubuntu and you are encouraged never to use … Continue reading →

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mod_tunnel for Apache 2.2.x

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Simone

mod_tunnel is a simple Apache module that can be used to create TCP tunnels using your Web server. It is useful to expose services which can be reached through a proxy, bypassing firewalls. After only 4 years since the previous … Continue reading →

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Don’t shout at your hard drives!

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Simone

It appears that hard drives don’t like it… It also proves that some sysadmins have far too much time to spare.

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Who’s linking to your site?

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Simone

If you’re using LogMiner to analyse your Apache/IIS logs, here’s an easy recipe to be notified of sites that send visitors your way. First, let’s define a Pg/PLSQL function to extract the new referrers: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748CREATE TYPE new_referrer AS (   … Continue reading →

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lm_sensors config for Asus T3-P5945GCX (P5L13L motherboard)

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Simone

I’ve just installed the latest Mandriva 2008.1 RC on this fine Asus barebone. Everything went fine, except that the output of sensors showed too many ALARM messages for my taste… so, here’s how I’ve modified the pre-installed sensors.conf to set … Continue reading →

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LogMiner: purging old accesses

Posted on January 26, 2008 by Simone

I’ve just committed a function to easily purge old data from LogMiner’s database, useful to prevent it from growing too much. It’ll appear in the next version, but since its release might still be far from now, here’s the code … Continue reading →

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Mac OS X version statistics through CFNetwork analysis

Posted on December 7, 2007 by Simone

Recently I needed to gather some statistics about the distribution of the different Mac OS X versions installed by users of a certain application. Since the application has an update-check feature, I thought I’d use the web server logs to … Continue reading →

Posted in SysAdmin | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments