Let's get started !
Checks for software updates
A priority is to keep your system updated and patched (especially with those related to security). It's a good attitude to spend some time every day reading forum about systems security! It could be necessary to modify system configuration scripts and to apply these new changes. To keep your system up-to-date there are different package system such as RedHat RPM (used by RedHat, Fedora, CentOS...) and Debian dpkg (used by Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint...). Both systems keep a database of all the software installed in your system; you can use their specific tools to keep your system update. Checking for available updates is good ... but for the installation you need to pay some more attention as the behavior of your system can be unexpected (cause of incompatibility or bugs in the updates !!). Better to test the updates within a sandbox before applying to a production environment (VM are perfects for such type of tests).
Perform Disk Management
Check for any disks and RAID issues (it's better to have a monitoring system that inform you whenever there is a new issue instead of discovering it too later!!). There are some basic commands you need to know and use daily, such as du ("disk usage": is a standard program used to estimate file space used under a particular file system), df (display the amount of available disk space for file-systems), fdisk (to manage disk partitions),...
- several application use the /tmp folder as a cache. Sometimes (often) the "cache" is not cleaned properly and the system become unresponsive!! /tmp folder can have several folders in it ... to check the folder size better to use the du command with the "d" option (after d I placed a 1 "the number", not the letter l "the letter" ;) ) which allows you to select how much to dig within the tree: du -h -d 1 /tmp
- monitor the system using nagios or other system monitoring software to be alerted when the free space is running low. You can also install SNMP and send traps to an SNMP manager.
Perform Data Backup
It can be scheduled daily or weekly using many different tools); you need to have a good Disaster Recovery Procedure (DRP) in case you have to restore data or a totally damaged systems!!! In these days of Ransomware: for more information read my post about Ransomware.
The most easy tools are TAR and CPIO but they need to be tuned and can be tricky. You can implement several backup procedure such as: Full, Incremental, Differential.
The most easy tools are TAR and CPIO but they need to be tuned and can be tricky. You can implement several backup procedure such as: Full, Incremental, Differential.
Perform Data-Base check
If you have to manage a data-base server (MySQL for example) you can use the command line shell or many other different tools such as: MySQL WorkBench, MySQL WebMin module (less powerful than WorkBench in my opinion but still a complete tool), phpMyAdmin (my favorite web tool, really easy to use and it handles every aspect of managing a MySQL database server).
Perform Server Load control
You need to check CPU, memory, I/O, network devices. To perform such control you can use a monitor software or command line tools such as top (that display system resources and information) ps (that display all the systems process...you can use a combination of ps and grep to filter what you are searching for)...
Check your log files
you need to periodically check log files (/var/log) and system messages. When you really know your system, it will be quite easy to find an issue checking how big are getting your log files or how often they get "rotated" !!
User and group management
It could be necessary to add or remove user, to change their group or the user disk quota. Other than command line there are many different tools helping you in this task.
Verify network performance
It often happens that this task is handled by monitoring software or external devices (manageable switches that send log information to an SNMP server)
No comments:
Post a Comment