I decided that the dual exhaust thing was not my bag and not worth the price for me ( to each their own ) so I did a dump with a flow master 40 – end result is below:

I’ll have some more modifications coming for my truck in the next few weeks, but figured this was a great start

I needed to create a backup for a site that I run today on another server and decided to automate it.

That’s how this script came into being: http://dev.larmeir.com/scripts/server_backup.sh.txt

This script is stupid simple and you can look at the comments on each line of the script and modify it for your own purposes.

I was going to write rotation logic into it but got tired and wanted to go to bed lol! But hey, it’s functional.

You can set this up to be a cron job and it will backup your websites, tar, gzip them, and scp them off to a remote server. It also does the same for your mysql databases.

To make this work, all you have to do is have a passphrase-less key on the remote server using key based auth.

Hope someone else finds this useful as well! – Dustin

Earlier this week I picked up a 2005 Chevy Silverado which will be my hobby/project vehicle.

I’m a computer geek by trade so wanted to do find a hobby that had nothing to do with technology and figured mechanics might be a great relaxer.

Here’s my plans for the Truck over the coming months:

Install a new Radio – I’ve already pulled the dash and loosened the connections so this will be easy when I do this in a couple of weeks.

Performance exhaust system – Not sure which direction I’m going with this one yet, but plan on install a bolt-on performance muffler and possibly dual pipes depending on the deals I can find.

Cold Air-Intake – I’m going to install a air intake to increase horse power and fuel economy.

Exterior Customizations – Not sure what I’ll do with this but may install custom grill, better headlights, a towing hitch, etc.

I think the end results will be pretty satisfying

Being a manager of a cutting edge support team myself, I’ve come to realize that there are several things you can do to keep yourself from falling behind and to keep your skills up.

Listed below are some tips that I’ve found useful in my own professional life:

1. Let go of your technical ego – Yes, that’s right. As a manager your role has shifted into leadership. This means that the people who work for you will more than likely know a lot more about the technologies than you do – It’s OK!

2. Keep yourself engaged with technical projects – If you’re slipping behind, get involved in a technical project related to the technology that you want to understand better. If this is not a option, take some time outside of work and study up ( I.e. read up on it, build a working lab, etc.)

3. Don’t be afraid to ask – If you’re unsure how something works then ask someone who knows! This is related to letting go of your ego and letting your subject matter experts fill in the blanks.

4. Do the work as often as possible – I get on the floor and work with the team as much as I possibly can. By doing the work when possible, you’ll be more familiar with the latest technologies and processes, you’ll earn the respect of your team, and you’ll feel good about yourself!

5. Love what you do – If you do not have a passion for managing and want to do the technical work, get back into it. If your managing and not doing so with passion you’ll negatively impact the team and create a miserable experience for yourself.

6. Decompress – Take some time and get away from technology for a bit ( I.e. Weekend fishing trip, vacation, hobby, etc.)

These tips work well for me but may not be a perfect fit for everyone – I do hope that someone benefits from my experience though!

- Dustin

My grill brings out the cave man in me -  Nothing better than cooking some meat on the open flame!

Shown above are seasoned/marinated crosscut ribs with a nice char on them. Sooooo tasty

There’s nothing that comes in the Shiner family reunion box that I don’t like.

Shiner beer rocks!

This guide will go over a basic installation of Munin on a CentOS 6.x or RedHat Enterprise 6.x server.

Per Munin’s site “Munin is a networked resource monitoring tool that can help analyze resource trends and “what just happened to kill our performance?” problems. It is designed to be very plug and play. A default installation provides a lot of graphs with almost no work.”

I personally deploy it on my own Linux systems for resource monitoring. Let’s jump into the installation:

1. The first step is to install the RedHat EPEL rpm which adds the EPEL repo:

# rpm -ivh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/6/ppc64/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm

2. Next, you’ll need to install the required packages via yum:

# yum install -y munin munin-node

3. Once installed, we need to configure the munin-node via the /etc/munin/munin-node.conf and alter the following values:

user root
group root

For security reason, I like to change this to a less risky user such as apache I.e.:

user apache
group apache

You can also alter the listening address and port that the service runs on:

# Which address to bind to;
host *
# host 127.0.0.1

# And which port
port 4949

I generally leave this setting alone as my servers run behind a firewall that blocks external access to the port.  If you are exposed to the internet (I’d at least run iptables) then I’d change the bind address value to 127.0.0.1

4. Now that the node is configured, the next step is to adjust the following values in /etc/munin/munin.conf:

# dbdir /var/lib/munin
# htmldir /var/www/html/munin
# logdir /var/log/munin
# rundir  /var/run/munin

You can simply uncomment these values and adjust the htmldir accordingly dpending on where you would like the files to be generated.

Example is below:

dbdir /var/lib/munin
htmldir /var/www/vhosts/somedomain/htdocs
logdir /var/log/munin
rundir  /var/run/munin

The host tree should be adjusted as well:

# a simple host tree
[enter.yourservernamehere]
address 127.0.0.1
use_node_name yes

You can set a custom name for your server where indicated above.

5. Once the munin.conf has been updated, next you’ll need to adjust the permissions on the html directory. In the example above I set my html directory to /var/www/vhosts/somedomain/htdocs so to allow munin to write to it I’ll change ownership to the correct user:

chown munin:munin /var/www/vhosts/somedomain/htdocs

6. Now you can start the munin daemon with the following command:

# /etc/init.d/munin-node start

Once done you can verify the service with ps and netstat:

#ps aux | grep munin
apache   17835  0.2  0.8 141140  8480 ?        Ss   07:51   0:00 /usr/sbin/munin-node
root     18186  0.0  0.0 103220   844 pts/0    S+   07:52   0:00 grep munin

# netstat -anp | grep munin-node
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:4949                0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      17835/munin-node

In the example above, you can see that the daemon process is running and that it is listening on tcp port 4949.

7. Now we’ll need to use chkconfig to have the service load on startup:

# chkconfig munin-node on
# chkconfig --list | grep munin
munin-node         0:off    1:off    2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off

That covers the basic installation process and you should be up and running. If you set the html directory to a existing website, you can access it there.

In my case, I setup a dedicated subdomain for my installation and set the html directory to the document root and setup http basic auth to prevent someone from snooping.

I’ll share my nginx configuration for those who use it:

server {
listen      80;
server_name munin.somedomain.com;
access_log /var/www/vhosts/munin.somedomain.com/logs/access.log;
error_log /var/www/vhosts/munin.somedomain.com/logs/error.log;
rewrite_log on;
root    /var/www/vhosts/munin.somedomain.com/htdocs;
index   index.php index.html index.htm;

location  /  {
auth_basic            "Restricted";
auth_basic_user_file  /var/www/vhosts/munin.somedomain.com/auth/.htpasswd;
}

# Enable FastCGI on unix:/tmp/php-fpm.sock
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass   unix:/tmp/php-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index  index.php;
fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include        fastcgi_params;
}

# Deny hidden file types
location ~ /(\.ht|\.git|\.svn) {
deny  all;
}
}

If you have any questions feel free to comment – Dustin

I’m really looking forward to 2012!

2011 was a great year and I have no complaints looking back.

God bless everyone!

- Dustin

Click on the image to zoom in – This is still very alpha, very ugly, and not that fancy.

I’ll keep working on it though and turn it into something more useful

I decided to go buy Battlefield 3 from Gamestop so I went there, picked up a slightly used copy, took it home, then fired it up. I was pretty excited as several friends said it was much better than Call of Duty MW3.

It would not work when I tried to run it on Multiplayer mode – It turns out that Gamestop is placing used games on the shelves without the activation codes being reset and not telling anyone. This means that paying customers are inconvenienced by either having to return the game or having to call EA support.

So….. On Christmas eve, I was on the phone with EA support getting this squared away which was pretty annoying. They were very hesitant to help at first ( I completely understand due to piracy concerns) but their service was stellar and they issued me a new code.

I can’t say enough for the service that EA gave to me and it’s refreshing to see a business still giving great customer service out there.

I just hope Gamestop pays attention to this post and does the right thing for their customers….