Servers

How Fast Are Your Disk?

Tyler Bishop 0 Comments

http://www.linuxinsight.com/how_fast_is_your_disk.html

I came across this utility on Web Hosting Talk and felt that a bunch of good benchmarks would be cool. Almost all of these benchmarks are with near idle disk.

Fujitsu 160GB 2.5″ 7200RPM
Intel ICH9R No Raid

seeker /dev/sda
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/sda [152627MB], wait 30 seconds.............................
Results: 58 seeks/second, 17.06 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  172 MB in  3.02 seconds =  57.01 MB/sec

4 x 320GB 7200RPM WD RE3
3ware 9750 512MB Raid 10

seeker /dev/sda
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/sda [610330MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 80 seeks/second, 12.42 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  560 MB in  3.01 seconds = 186.29 MB/sec

4x 72GB 10K SCSI
IBM 6i + BBU Raid 5

seeker /dev/sdb
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/sdb [210018MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 111 seeks/second, 8.96 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  260 MB in  3.02 seconds =  86.19 MB/sec

4x 72GB 10K SCSI
HP 641 + BBU Raid 10

seeker /dev/sda
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/sda [35328MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 117 seeks/second, 8.54 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/cciss/c0d0
/dev/cciss/c0d0:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  206 MB in  3.10 seconds =  66.42 MB/sec

8x 320GB 7200RPM SATA
Dell Perc 5i 512MB Raid 5

seeker /dev/sda
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/sda [35328MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 117 seeks/second, 8.54 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  740 MB in  3.00 seconds = 246.48 MB/sec

2x 72GB 10k SCSI
IBM 6i + BBU Raid 1

seeker /dev/sda
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/sda [70007MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 118 seeks/second, 8.42 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  150 MB in  3.02 seconds =  49.66 MB/sec

2x 15k Maxtor Maxline SCSI
Compaq Smart Array Raid 1

seeker  /dev/cciss/c0d0
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/cciss/c0d0 [70089MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 178 seeks/second, 5.61 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/cciss/c0d0
/dev/cciss/c0d0:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  206 MB in  3.01 seconds =  68.48 MB/sec

4x 300GB Seagate Cheetah 15k
Adaptec 5405 Raid 10

seeker /dev/sda
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/sda [571392MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 198 seeks/second, 5.03 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  1236 MB in  3.00 seconds = 411.95 MB/sec

4x 146GB Seagate Cheetah 15k
Dell Perc 6i Raid 10

Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15, http://www.linuxinsight.com/how_fast_is_your_disk.html
Benchmarking /dev/sda [278784MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 208 seeks/second, 4.80 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda
 Timing buffered disk reads:  888 MB in  3.00 seconds = 295.57 MB/sec

Intel x25-m 80GB SSD
Intel ICH10R

seeker /dev/sdc
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15
Benchmarking /dev/sdc [76319MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 5074 seeks/second, 0.20 ms random access time
hdparm -t /dev/sdc
/dev/sdc:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  668 MB in  3.00 seconds = 222.47 MB/sec

How To: Config Server & Firewall Installation Guide

Tyler Bishop 0 Comments

I’ve written this guide to help you you through installing and configuring CSF – Config Server Firewall, a popular alternative to APF. CSF comes with LFD and works with or without cPanel.

CSF Install Guide and How To

CSF – Config Server Firewall is a stateful packet inspection firewall, login/intrusion detection and security application for Linux servers. What does that mean in English? Simple – it’s a program that can greatly improve your dedicated server or VPS’s security. Such firewalls are suggested by cyber crime experts for smart city cybersecurity and privacy installations.

It’s a firewall – so it can block/restrict ports you don’t want open, and prevents someone from using any port they want if they did break in.
It has intrusion detection – so it will scan the log files and monitor failed login attempts, such as FTP password guessing and block the IP.
Those are the 2 big things I like about CSF – and it has a nice interface for the non techie person, on cPanel servers.

http://www.configserver.com/cp/csf.html

If you have another firewall installed, like APF, CSF can help you automatically remove the existing firewall and install theirs instead. Keep in mind it won’t migrate over your configuration.

Installation

Installation is quite straightforward:

Login as the root user to SSH and run the following commands.

rm -fv csf.tgz
wget http://www.configserver.com/free/csf.tgz
tar  -xzf csf.tgz
cd csf
sh install.sh

If you would like to disable APF+BFD (which you will need to do if you have
them installed otherwise they will conflict horribly):

sh disable_apf_bfd.sh

That’s it. You can then configure csf and lfd in WHM, or edit the files
directly in /etc/csf/*

Installation Completed

Don’t forget to:

1. Configure the TCP_IN, TCP_OUT, UDP_IN and UDP_OUT options in the csf configuration to suite your server

2. Restart csf and lfd

3. Set TESTING to 0 once you’re happy with the firewall

csf is preconfigured to work on a cPanel server with all the standard cPanel
ports open. It also auto-configures your SSH port if it’s non-standard on
installation.

You should ensure that kernel logging daemon (klogd) is enabled. Typically, VPS
servers have this disabled and you should check /etc/init.d/syslog and make
sure that any klogd lines are not commented out. If you change the file,
remember to restart syslog.

Now – login to your cPanel server’s WHM as root and go to the bottom left menu. If already logged in then reload the page. In Plugins – you will see:  ConfigServer Security&Firewall

The firewall is STOPPED by default – it is not running. We need to configured it, and then take it out of Test Mode.

Click on Firewall Configuration

ETH_DEVICE =: Set this to eth+

TCP_IN/TCP_OUT/UDP_IN/UDP_OUT = : These are the ports you want to leave open for your server to operate. If you change the default SSH port make sure to add it here. Also add any other services you might have running such as Shoutcast or game servers. By default most of the ports used should already be configured.

MONOLITHIC_KERNEL = : 0 Only change this to 1 if your firewall will not start – otherwise leave it as it.

LF_DSHIELD = 0: Change this option to 86400. This is an automatic updated list of known attacking IPs. Enabling this will stop them from being able to connect to your server.

Spam Protection Alerts

If you want to add some spam protection, CSF can help. Look in the configuraiton for the following:

LF_SCRIPT_ALERT = 0 change this to 1. This will send an email alert to the system administrator when the limit configured below is reached within an hour.

LF_SCRIPT_LIMIT = 100 change this to 250. This will alert you when any scripts sends out 250 email messages in an hour.

Configuration Complete – Almost

Scroll down to the bottom and click on Change to save the settings. Then click Restart csf+lfd

You should see a big page of ACCEPT and near the bottom you should see:

csf: TESTING mode is enabled – don’t forget to disable it in the configuration

Starting lfd:[  OK  ]

Click on Return

Now TEST all your services to make sure everything is working – SSH, FTP, http. After you do a few quick tests go back into the Firewall Configuration page.

TESTING = 1 change this to 0 and click Change at the bottom. Then Restart csf+lfd

That’s it, the firewall is successfully installed and running!!
Firewall Status: Running – you should see this on the main CSF page in WHM.

Uninstallation

==============
Removing csf and lfd is even more simple:

cd /etc/csf
sh uninstall.sh

How To: VNCServer on Fedora

Tyler Bishop 0 Comments

“Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a desktop protocol to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard presses and mouse clicks from one computer to another relaying the screen updates back in the other direction, over a network.” -WikiPedia-

This article describes in brief how to configure VNC server instances for one or multiple users on a remote machine, how to use VNC to start graphical applications on boot and finally how to enhance security by connecting to the server through encrypted SSH tunnels.

Prerequisites

A user account should exist on the remote machine.
The RPM packages xorg-x11-xauth, vnc-server and vnc should be installed on the remote machine and your workstation respectively.

yum install -y xorg-x11-xauth vnc-server vnc xsetroot xterm

Setting up the server

I assume that we have setup a remote user account, named “Tyler” and we want to start an X session through VNC for this user.

In Red Hat based distros in general, all we have to do is define the VNC server instances in /etc/sysconfig/vncservers. These will be started by the vncserver initscript. This has to be done as root. Edit this file so that it contains the following:

VNCSERVERS="1:tyler"
VNCSERVERARGS[1]="-geometry 1024x768 -depth 16"

With these we define that a vnc server instance should be started as user Tyler on display 1 and we also set some options for this server such as resolution and color depth. Each VNC server instance listens on port 5900 plus the display number on which the server runs. In our case, Tylers’s vnc server would listen on port 5901.

For multiple vnc instances /etc/sysconfig/vncservers would look like this:

VNCSERVERS="1:tyler 2:albatros 3:leopard"
VNCSERVERARGS[1]="-geometry 1024x768 -depth 16"
VNCSERVERARGS[2]="-geometry 800x600 -depth 8"
VNCSERVERARGS[3]="-geometry 1024x768 -depth 16"

These would listen on ports 5901, 5902, 5903 respectively.

User Configuration

There is one more thing that needs to be done on the remote machine. User Tyler’s vnc password needs to be set. So, as user Tyler give the command:

# su -l Tyler
# vncpasswd
# exit

We are prompted for a password. This is the password that we will use when we connect to Tyler’s vnc server instance. This password is saved in /home/Tyler/.vnc/passwd.

Start the VNC server

After the initial configuration is done we restart the vnc service. As root:

# service vncserver restart

To make VNC server to start on boot:

# chkconfig vncserver on

More User Configuration

After the VNC service is started, some new files are created in /home/Tyler/.vnc/ directory. These include Tyler’s vnc server log file, pid file and an X startup script. As user Tyler we edit the script in order to customize some settings. The default /home/Tyler/.vnc/xstartup script contains some commands that are executed when the VNC server is started. These include:

xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
twm &

xsetroot in this case sets the background color.
vncconfig is a supplementary program that can be used to control the vnc server. Apart from this, when run without arguments it acts as a helper application and its main purpose is to provide support for clipboard transfers between the client (vncviewer) and the vnc server.
xterm starts an xterm terminal.
twm starts the X server’s default window manager. We probably want to change that to a more user friendly window manager, eg fluxbox.

The VNC server, apart from letting us control a remote machine using a graphical interface, it serves as a way to start graphical applications on boot. For example, I want my favourite p2p program, amule, to start on boot. So, I add this to the /home/Tyler/.vnc/xstartup script. This is how my xstartup file looks like:

xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" -e ./menu &
amule &
fluxbox &

menu is a script of mine that is executed when xterm is started.
Remember to put the “&” symbol after each command, so that it goes to the background and the xstartup script continues on.

Restart the VNC service for the changes to take effect. As root:

# service vncserver restart

Connect to the VNC server

In our example, Tyler’s vnc server listens for connections on port 5903. So, open this port in the remote machine’s firewall.

We connect to the remote machine using a vnc viewer. Having installed the vnc package, connect to to the server with the following command:

# vncviewer 192.168.0.1:5903:3

The general usage is :

vncviewer [Server's IP]:[Port]:[Display]

We are prompted for the password and eventually connect to the server. Closing the vncviewer’s window, does not affect the server or the programs we run on it. If we reconnect everything will be there.

Special Note: There is no need, actually it’s pointless and could give you some trouble, to logoff from your remote X session. If this happens, generally you need to restart the VNC service on the remote machine to get your remote desktop back. If you want to stop working on your remote desktop, just close the vncviewer’s window and you are done.

Security

The VNC protocol is not a secure communication protocol. The use of a vnc password provides security at the level of server access (it’s vulnerable to brute-force attacks though), but the whole VNC session is transmitted in the clear, without encryption. The easiest, but most effective, way to secure our connection to the VNC server is to connect through an encrypted SSH tunnel. This way the whole session will be encrypted.

The rest assume that you have the SSH server up and running on your remote machine (server.example.com) and you know what SSH tunnels are.

So, what we are going to do is to create an encrypted tunnel, and connect to our VNC server through it. We also want this tunnel to be automatically closed as soon as we shut down vncviewer. All this is done with the following command:

# ssh -f -L 25903:127.0.0.1:5903 [email protected] sleep 10; vncviewer 127.0.0.1:25903:3

This is what it does:

  • -L 25903:127.0.0.1:5903 forwards our local port 25903 to port 5903 on the remote machine. In other words, it creates the tunnel.
  • -f forks the SSH session to the background, while sleep is being executed on the remote machine. This ssh option is needed because we want to execute the following command (vncviewer) in the same local machine’s terminal.
  • vncviewer connects to the forwarded local port 25903 in order to connect to the VNC server through the encrypted tunnel.

The sleep command is of major importance in the above line as it keeps the encrypted tunnel open for 10 seconds. If no application uses it during this period of time, then it’s closed. Contrariwise, if an application uses it during the 10 sec period, then the tunnel remains open until this application is shut down. This way the tunnel is automatically closed at the time we close vncviewer’s window, without leaving any SSH processes running on our workstation. This is pure convenience! More information can be found at the Auto-closing SSH Tunnels article.

Using SSH tunnels to conect to your VNC server has two advantages:

  1. The whole session is encrypted.
  2. Keeping port 5903 open on your remote machine is no longer needed, since all take place through the SSH tunnel. So, noone will know that you run a VNC server on the remote machine.

Further Reading

I recommend that you read the man pages. Everything is in there:

# man vncserver
# man Xvnc
# man vncconfig
# man vncviewer
# man ssh

Optimizing a Server: prelink

CoreCount 0 Comments

When most people think about server optimization, it’s almost always a question of tuning MySQL, deciding how many HTTPD processes should be running, limiting the maximum connections to the server, and installing a caching proxy like Varnish or Squid.

While all of these optimizations should be performed, they’re not the only optimizations we can perform on a server. In fact, there’s something simple that can improve performance of the system globally, without any configuration!

When a program is run, there are a few things that have to happen before it can actually start doing work. First, the program is loaded into server memory. Next, ld.so processes the binary, loading all of the libraries (.so files, shared objects) that it needs–a step called dynamic linking. Finally, the program will start running from its main() function.

While there’s not much that can be done to speed up loading the binary into memory, other than getting faster disks, the dynamic linking step can be made faster. How? With prelink.

prelink is run on every binary and library on the system, pre-computing the locations of all of the libraries, so that they can be loaded into the same place in memory (barring no conflicts) every time a program starts. This significantly reduces the amount of time needed for the dynamic linking step of the program loading process, allowing programs to reach execution much faster.

To install prelink, run:

yum install prelink

Next, force prelink to pre-link all binaries on the system right now by running:

/usr/sbin/prelink --all

All programs on the system are now prelink'd. The prelink package adds a cron job that runs daily to check for any binaries that may have changed since the last prelink run, and updates them as needed.

Enjoy faster process start up times, thanks to prelink.

Why not to use a downloaded my.cnf part II

Alex Underwood 0 Comments

In case you don’t recall or weren’t reading when it was put up, I did an article on why a downloaded my.cnf is a bad idea. It’s time for a bit of appending to that. I am cranking out my usual support tickets helping little old ladies with their sites about their pinochle groups (no not really) when I get a support ticket from a client who is having issues with their databases not working properly.

Naturally, being the curious sort I am and them being a paying client, I log into the server and start examining things. The first thing I do is try to do a database check. This doesn’t go over too well, I get a bunch of errors about “corrupt .frm files.” Naturally my curiosity is piqued at this point, so I go and start looking through /var/lib/mysql/hosts.err file. What is extremely odd here is that there it is super short, and there is nothing there really. At this point I decide to log into mysql and try rotating out the log file. It indicated that the operation had completed successfully, so I am a bit baffled at this point. Looking in the my.cnf, it appears that someone downloaded a web based my.cnf and stuck it on the server. It also appears that the logs are going somewhere else at this point. After examining the correct logs, I find a bunch of errors about the .frms being corrupted. I then start looking for the MYIs so that I can see if I can rebuild the .frms with them. To my dismay I find out there are no MYIs for the DBs here just the .frms.

After updating the client on what I’d found, I start looking over the net for an answer. It turns out that if InnoDB doesn’t have the engine started it will default to MyISAM databases, which is where the .frms came from. Definitely getting closer at this point, so I start looking at the engine statuses and of course InnoDB is disabled.

After this the picture is starting to come into focus a bit more, something in the my.cnf was changed and it broke everything. But what? I had noticed that the server was running MySQL as root when I had done “ps aux | grep mysql” earlier so I had a suspicion. Referencing another server I confirmed what I thought and found out that a line was missing.

user=mysql

The net downloaded configuration didn’t have a set MySQL user, root didn’t have permission to access the file and therefore it wouldn’t load the InnoDB files and in turn the InnoDB engine. A single line was missing and this production server was likely down for hours while they tried to figure out what happened. The internet is not a substitute for knowing what you are doing. Yes it can help you in this regard, but at the same time it is not a substitute for knowledge or competency. I once had an instructor tell me there is no crib sheet for life, it rings as true now as it ever did when he said it.

IO scheduler tuning in Linux

Alex Underwood 0 Comments

This is my personal FS box. It consists of 4X200GB SATA drives on an Adaptec AAR-2810 controller in RAID10. I am using bonnie++ to benchmark. The reason I am throwing this up is that when I switched schedulers to deadline with 3 drives in a RAID5 on this system (I changed to a 10 later) it picked up about 5% by going to a deadline scheduler in sustained writes. If you notice in this case while I had a few small gains aggregately I lost a significant amount of performance at one point or another compared to the default scheduler. Then again, this array has write performance at a level typical of a single drive if not a little slower. It makes up for it in the fact that it has roughly double the read of a typical drive, which can be far more important depending on the application. Since it’s just a dump box anyways I’m not overly concerned about IO. Check the results out and post your opinions. I will probably add other tuning specifics at a later date. Please note this does not under any circumstances make CFQ my preferred scheduler; it just means it was better in this case.

cfq (default)

Version 1.03e ——Sequential Output—— –Sequential Input- –Random-
-Per Chr- –Block– -Rewrite- -Per Chr- –Block– –Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
FS01.robotone 1000M 34694 88 39045 27 19030 8 36912 68 63545 12 496.2 1
——Sequential Create—— ——–Random Create——–
-Create– –Read— -Delete– -Create– –Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 19929 100 +++++ +++ 32373 99 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
FS01.robotonet.com,1000M,34694,88,39045,27,19030,8,36912,68,63545,12,496.2,1,16,19929,100,+++++,+++,32373,99,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++

echo deadline > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

Version 1.03e ——Sequential Output—— –Sequential Input- –Random-
-Per Chr- –Block– -Rewrite- -Per Chr- –Block– –Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
FS01.robotone 1000M 30986 88 38772 31 16724 7 29545 56 62167 11 482.5 1
——Sequential Create—— ——–Random Create——–
-Create– –Read— -Delete– -Create– –Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 20401 99 +++++ +++ 26963 99 29849 99 +++++ +++ +++++ +++
FS01.robotonet.com,1000M,30986,88,38772,31,16724,7,29545,56,62167,11,482.5,1,16,20401,99,+++++,+++,26963,99,29849,99,+++++,+++,+++++,+++

echo anticipatory > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

Version 1.03e ——Sequential Output—— –Sequential Input- –Random-
-Per Chr- –Block– -Rewrite- -Per Chr- –Block– –Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
FS01.robotone 1000M 33134 94 38153 28 17225 8 30326 58 65073 10 346.8 0
——Sequential Create—— ——–Random Create——–
-Create– –Read— -Delete– -Create– –Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 19071 94 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
FS01.robotonet.com,1000M,33134,94,38153,28,17225,8,30326,58,65073,10,346.8,0,16,19071,94,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++

echo noop > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

Version 1.03e ——Sequential Output—— –Sequential Input- –Random-
-Per Chr- –Block– -Rewrite- -Per Chr- –Block– –Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
FS01.robotone 1000M 29617 86 39779 27 16359 7 29197 57 62977 10 496.6 1
——Sequential Create—— ——–Random Create——–
-Create– –Read— -Delete– -Create– –Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 20130 99 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
FS01.robotonet.com,1000M,29617,86,39779,27,16359,7,29197,57,62977,10,496.6,1,16,20130,99,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++

The sendmail that just wouldn’t

CoreCount 0 Comments

Today, I came across the strangest problem I’d ever seen in years of administering sendmail. Normally, sendmail is very much set-and-forget, taking care of emails without any problems. Obviously, today wasn’t normal.

No, not at all. The server had sendmail installed, and properly configured, but wouldn’t send any emails. It’s as if it wasn’t even running. 

ps -fea | grep sendmail

Nope, no sendmail. So, let’s start sendmail and check again.

/sbin/service sendmail start

Uh oh. The usual start up messages didn’t appear. Checking if sendmail was running again showed 0 sendmail instances.

After looking through /var/log/message and finding nothing about sendmail anywhere, as well as a stubbornly empty /var/log/maillog, I decided the sendmail binary must be corrupt so issued

yum reinstall sendmail

After yum downloaded and installed the new RPM, I was sure that sendmail would start right up without any problems. I start the service and… nothing happens.

Out of frustration, I decided to run sendmail on the terminal and see where it was failing.

[root@server ~]$ /usr/sbin/sendmail
bash: /usr/sbin/sendmail: No such file or directory

Well, that couldn’t be right. bash had even auto-completed that for me. sendmail had to be installed, as all the other files where there. Wait a minute….

[root@server ~]$ ls -l /usr/sbin/sendmail
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 May 30 11:51 /usr/sbin/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/mta

Most modern servers include alternatives to help manage different programs that provide the same feature. This is accomplished through the /etc/alternatives directory that has symlinks to the actual binaries, as well as /var/lib/alternatives to configure the entire system, which is managed by /usr/sbin/alternatives.

The only problem on the server turned out to be a broken link, /etc/alternatives/mta, which was pointing to a nonexistant qmail installation. The entire problem was fixed by issuing

/usr/sbin/alternatives --set mta /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail

I wasn’t happy with this, as it wasn’t “autoconfigured” by alternatives automatically, so I copied /var/lib/alternatives/mta from an identical server that only has sendmail running and ran

/usr/sbin/alternatives --auto mta

alternatives properly detected sendmail, fixed the symlinks in /etc/alternatives and sendmail successfully launched.

Dell really impressed me today

Tyler Bishop 0 Comments

I gotta say that over the years I feel that Dell has burned a hole into my heart producing cheapo equipment just to make the sale.   Well in the past 2-3 years it seems that Dell has really kicked the quality of their product line up a few notches.   Today I was working with a client on our Managed Colocation service, we needed to order his servers so we went ahead assembled them on the website then called dell.

To my surprise the business sales rep was quick to load up the saved cart and begin to check it over with us.   After we made sure everything was listed correctly the rep instantly told us that he could save $600 on the R710 and $400 on the R610, We didn’t even begin to haggle him.   After we agreed on that pricing we then made the one and only request to get more for our money, we asked for idrac enterprise on both servers for free, our wish was granted instantly.

Typically we buy all of our servers through a reseller but for this particular client I felt ordering direct would be a much better experience for them and it paid off.  I have to give my congrats to Dell on earning back my trust in there sales team, I’m absolutely happy to work with them and to use there new servers.

On a side note for any one looking at buying a new OEM server the R610/R710 are absolutely phenomenal buys, and they come with the newest intel E5600 series CPUs.
Update: June 17th 2010.

Dell shipped the servers 2 days ago (Wednesday) they some how got the incorrect address and sent them to the entirely wrong state, thankfully we caught it and had them redirected to the correct destination.   I think this is terrible on dells part, not to mention they confirmed the address multiple times.

Update: June 21st 2010.

The servers in fact arrived at the WRONG address.  After several calls to dell with no resolution I contacted one of my Business reps at dell and within an hour received a call with an “upgraded” server being shipped overnight to the CORRECT address.  They added a 2nd CPU and 15k SAS disk vs 7200 SATA Disk.
We will see when it gets here if it was worth the wait, the other server is scheduled to arrive tomorrow without issue.