Author: tony

For those who pay attention to the little details, the default hostname in Ubuntu 16.04 can be a constant source of irritation. Something like ‘dell-laptop-3344’ just won’t do for a hostname when you’re used to more sensible and exotic stuff. So, how do you get back control (and sanity)?   Changing the hostname is one…

System administration is a vital part of managing infrastructure today, whether you are a seasoned sysadmin or a humble developer trying to juggle many hats simultaneously. Normally, the way to go about it is the command line, which happens to be the most powerful offering in a Linux system.   However, for many people, the…

Samba is a file-sharing service that can connect two or more computers on a network- you can even share files between Linux and Windows machines. But what happens when you get a new coworker who needs to be added to the share?   This article assumes that you already have a Samba server set up…

If you’re a BitTorrent user on Ubuntu, you’re very likely looking for a good BitTorrent client. The default Transmission client in Ubuntu 14.04 / 16.04 does the job, but that’s about all it does. It doesn’t have as many conveniences as we’ve come to expect from the likes of u-Torrent, for example, and the interface…

Introduction to Installing htop on CentOS 7 Many sysadmins know about top, the standard process management and activity monitor that comes on most Linux systems. But there are times when top does not provide the information you’re really looking for, or you want something that updates more frequently as the state of your system changes.…

If you’re running CentOS you’ll feel the need to know the version you’re running, sooner than later. It might be that you installed CentOS very long ago and since then have upgraded many times, or maybe you’ve taken over the system from someone else and need to know the current version. Perhaps you’re a developer…

When it comes to configuring network interfaces in CentOS 7, the weapon of choice is the ip command. For instance, to get all the information regarding the currently configured interfaces, you can issue:   $ ip address show   There’s even a nifty shortcut, in the true spirit of the Unix world:   $ ip…

In networked systems, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is pretty common. Despite being a mouthful of a term, the basic idea behind DHCP is pretty simple.   The DHCP server in a network maintains a list of possible IP addresses with it. As soon as a new device joins the network, it asks for an…

If you’re a sysadmin, you know how scary losing a root password can be. Don’t worry, though. If you lose or forget the password to your MariaDB or MySQL database, you can reset it in a few easy steps.   First, you’ll need a few things:   A Linux server running MariaDB A sudo-enabled user…

phpMyAdmin is a very popular tool for administration of relational databases like MySQL and MariaDB. However, it doesn’t come installed by default. In this article, we’ll see how to install phpMyAdmin on CentOS 7. Why choose phpMyAdmin over the command line? All that phpMyAdmin does can be done over the MySQL command line as well.…