Using Amazon’s EC2 infrastructure is a real pain in the butt. It’s confusing and the documentation isn’t really all that helpful in many cases. So I propose something simple.. Call it a shameless plug, but it’s about supporting the family. Sign up for EC2 through my eStore and you’ll get all the support you need. …
Category: Tips and Tricks
Recovering space on your hard drive
There are many articles about dealing with recovering space on your computer / hard drive / Storage and they all talk about the same things. This article isn’t going to so much focus on that, but simply focus on the not so obvious things you can do. As a rule of thumb, there are always…
Backup your Linux Server configuration for a really fast restore
Every once in a while, we have to build a server. You’ve spent the time installing and configuring everything and you want a snapshot for Posterity’s sake. Here’s how to do it quickly. This little command will simply take a snapshot of everything of importance and for the most part allow you to restore your…
EC2 Instances, the pitfalls and how to avoid them.
So I decided to take the plunge into moving my mailserver from Linode to EC2 considering it made more sense after doing some math. The reality is Linode is an excellent VPS host and I still have many machines with them (and highly recommend them), but the reality is at some point, it doesn’t become…
Is Firefox preventing you from going to a website because of the port it’s on? [Solved]
Every once in a while, we need to go to a website that has a non-standard port. For example, the address might look like this: https://localhost:888 (This would be for the 3ware management interface for example). In Mozilla Firefox, you’ll get a screen that looks like this: [singlepic id=63] Obviously, this can be a real…
How to Bind utorrent to a specific ip and route it out a vpn for better speed. [Solved]
Torrent technology is an amazing in the sense it uses swarms of users to serve and share files you may be trying to download. It’s been implemented by many companies and is a very bandwidth efficient format to get your files served to you faster. Whenever I download CentOS DVDs, I use utorrent and other…
Finding out the Backbone Provider of an ISP, VOIP Provider, or any SaaS provider [SOLVED]
It’s amazing how all the providers out there refuse to tell you who they’re connected to. This is very prevalent amongst VOIP providers as well as quite a few SaaS providers. You want to know who they’re connected to so you can make a decision on whether or not they’re going to be reliable. So…
How to use Cron. The linux / unix Scheduler
Cron as it is called is a very powerful tool. It’s simply a scheduler that allows you to do a multitude of tasks at any given time. It’s been around since the beginning of time and is built into every linux, unix, bsd distribution out there. Even Microsoft has a version of Cron, albeit it’s…
Looking for a PBX? Consider the Cloud.
I’ve spoken of the virtues of a cloud PBX on many an occasion. The reality is for the last 8 years, I’ve been running my phone system / PBX in a cloud for many reasons. The most important is redundancy. The system has had no downtime except for when I was applying maintenance upgrades. My…
Considering a Mail Client with the features you need? Consider Thunderbird.
I’ve used them all. From the command line clients to the web mail services and even others such as Outlook, Pegasys, Apple Mail, and all the usual offerings. Here are a few things to consider. 1. You want a mail client that has the ability to accept Add-Ons. This is one important piece of advice…