Scenario / Question: How do I monitor a remote linux system using Nagios Solution / Answer: Use th NRPE daemon to execute Nagios plugins on the remote server and report back to the monitoring host server. NRPE Remote Server Installation and Setup Create Nagios user account on remote server to be [continue...]

Scenario / Question: How do I setup freeNX on a remote server system and connect to it. Solution / Answer: Installing the freeNX server software on the remote server machine and using the NoMachine freenx client to connect to it from you local machine. Installing freeNX Server: On the server you [continue...]

Scenario / Question: How do I check my hard drive for bad blocks and if any bad blocks are found add them to the bad block inode to prevent them from being allocated in the future. Solution / Answer: Run fsck and have it run bad blocks program. This allows fsck to fix any bad blocks that are [continue...]

Scenario / Question: Sound stops working and I get the error PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused Solution / Answer: Find out if anything is blocking sound, kill the processes and restart pulseaudio Blocking Sound: Run the command to see what processes are using sound: # fuser -v [continue...]

Scenario / Question: How do I remove a third party boot loader from the MBR Solution / Answer: Erase the first 512 bytes of the harddrive to remove the bootloader Erase MBR Using a linux boot cd: # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 Windows dos boot disk: fdisk /mbr Windows XP recovery [continue...]

Scenario / Question: How do I install software packages using rpm. How do I list what software packages are installed. How do I list information about a package. How do I list files associated with a package. How do I remove software packages I do not need. How do I verify an installed package [continue...]

The linux top command is the Command Line equivalent to Task Manager in windows. Question / Scenario: How do I determine CPU and Memory utilization, based on running processes. Answer / Solution: Use the TOP command in linux. TOP Top command provides a real-time look at what is happening with [continue...]

Scenario / Question: A drive has failed in my raid 1 configuration, and I need to replace it with a new drive. Solution / Answer: Use mdadm to fail the drives partition(s) and remove it from the RAID array. Physically add the new drive to the system and remove the old drive. Create the same [continue...]

Today we will cover links or in the Windows world, shortcuts. Linking lets you refer to a file or directory, and you can refer to file or directory using a different names. The command for creating a link in linux is the “ln” command. Linux has different types of links called symbolic [continue...]

Scenario / Question: How do I find out the last reboot or shutdown time and date of a linux system. Solution / Answer: The utility called LAST will provide the last reboot or shutdown time and date, and also list the sessions of users logged in at a specific date and time. LAST Reboot There are [continue...]