Resources

Technical notes from Linux and FreeBSD infrastructure work

Practical guides, troubleshooting notes, and operational references from production infrastructure work with Linux, FreeBSD, networking, web servers, databases, backups, monitoring, and security.

Systems Linux, FreeBSD, and production infrastructure
Workflows Troubleshooting, monitoring, backups, and security
Format Practical notes for technical readers

Practical notes from A-Team Systems' work with Linux, FreeBSD, networking, web servers, databases, backups, performance, monitoring, and production infrastructure operations.

All Tech Blog Articles

Page 5 of 6, ordered newest to oldest.

Review: Velocity Solo x2 PCIe 2.0 x2 SATA 6 Gbps

Add an SSD to your already full 1U rackmount server! Recently A-Team Systems deployed a number of 1U rackmount servers with four hot-swap SATA bays, all...

  • FreeBSD
  • rackmount
  • SSD
Published
Reading time
1 minute

SOLVED: _openpam_check_error_code(): pam_sm_acct_mgmt(): unexpected return value 4

While diagnosing a server that I couldn’t SSH into using my LDAP account I ran into the below errors. I had seen it before but couldn’t remember what...

  • FreeBSD
  • LDAP
  • PAM
Published
Reading time
1 minute

Intranet Server Security & Maintenance

Do internal servers really need to be monitored, maintained and updated like a public facing Internet server? There are two aspects to this question, the...

  • Internet
  • Intranet
  • maintenance
  • monitoring
  • security
Published
Reading time
4 minutes

SOLVED: Output of Multiple Greps Are Delayed or Missing (No Output) When Tailing a File

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...

  • grep
  • tail
  • UNIX
Published
Reading time
1 minute

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...

  • DNS
  • UNIX
Published
Reading time
1 minute

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...

  • Atlassian Confluence
  • FreeBSD
  • rc.d
Published
Reading time
1 minute

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...

  • FreeBSD
  • SNMP
Published
Reading time
1 minute

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...

  • Apache HTTPd
  • UNIX
Published
Reading time
2 minutes

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...

  • FreeBSD
  • port
  • VMware
Published
Reading time
1 minute

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...

  • FreeBSD
  • port
  • VMware
Published
Reading time
1 minute

SOLVED: Performance Issues With FreeBSD ZFS Backed ESXi Storage Over NFS

Update November 14th, 2016: This is an old article but my recommendation to hack the NFS file still stand even given how inexpensive small SSDs are. An...

  • ESXi
  • FreeBSD
  • NFS
  • VMware
Published
Reading time
3 minutes

Goodbye MB/GB/TB, Hello MiB/GiB/TiB

Since the popular rise of the personal computer users have asked the time old question: “Why does my 100 gigabyte hard drive only give me 93 gigabytes...

  • partitioning
Published
Reading time
1 minute

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