[Box-Admins] My daily rituals (was RE: Welcome Steve and Casey)

Steven Elkins sgelkins at gmail.com
Sat Feb 5 22:37:05 UTC 2011


No, I don't take it as directed at me.  I think it's important to to say
what I have time to do.  If it isn't enough, fine, no worries.  I can commit
to 10 minutes every few days.  What I can't promise is that if there's a
problem, I'll always have time to investigate and/or fix it.  Often I would
be checking just before leaving for work.

Thanks for the summary of responsibilities.  A lot of it sounds like a job
for a script run via cron (or whatever), with saved reports and/or email to
this list.

Cheers,
Steve

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Ken Causey <ken at kencausey.com> wrote:

> Please don't take this as directed at you Steve, because it definitely
> is not, but I'm going to take the opportunity of your mention of 'on the
> weekend' to explain something that I think is obvious, and probably
> really is, but maybe is not at the top of everyone's awareness.
>
> For good or bad the box-admins team work is 24/7.  In practice it
> doesn't often add up to that much time but first of all you never know
> when disaster in its various forms will strike.  Furthermore I think it
> is essential that every single day the server status is checked.
>
> Here is a quick summary of what I do every single day, yes 7 days a week
> every week (OK, every once in a while I miss a day):
>
> login to the server via ssh as root
>
> uptime
>  Look at the days of uptime, is the number surprisingly small like 1
> day or less?
>  Look at the number of logged in users.  If it's not 1 (yourself) then
> see who it is and have some confidence they aren't doing anything
> nefarious.
>  Look at the load average, is it in the normal range?
>
> df
>  Any significant changes in disk usage?
>  Is it time to do some cleanup and make space?
>
> free
>  Any significant changes in RAM usage?
>
> ps auwx
>  Quickly glance through the process list looking for anything unusual.
> This task can lead to other inquiries when there are a lot of qmail
> processes running or anything else seems unusual.  Only experience will
> help judging what is unusual.
>
> top (then hit the $c key to see the full command line which is essential
> in identifying squeak processes)
>  This is another way to look at the process list in particular
> monitoring the memory and cpu levels and as with the rest of this
> checking if things are more or less normal.
>
> Further every day I visit source.squeak.org
>  If the front page comes up I'm satisfied all is probably normal.
>
> And bugs.squeak.org
>  I check the manage page where I can quickly see any recent signups.
> We have someone who seems to test their anti-captcha technology and
> signup with semi-random but consistent account names and user names but
> they never actually do anything with the accounts.  I delete them
> whenever I see them.  After that I check the bug list page with no
> filtering and no project set so I can always see all changes in case
> anyone is fooling around.
>
> And that's usually it.  It probably doesn't take even 10 minutes most
> days.  But doing it every day is essential in catching problems before
> they become more serious and simply to have the knowledge to judge that
> a change has occurred.
>
> This is nothing new to anyone I suspect, basic Linux admin 101, but I
> thought I should say it aloud to make sure.
>
> Ken
>
> > -------- Original Message --------
> > Subject: Re: Welcome Steve and Casey
> > From: Steven Elkins <sgelkins at gmail.com>
> > Date: Sat, February 05, 2011 2:31 pm
> > To: Ken Causey <ken at kencausey.com>
> > Cc: box-admins at lists.squeakfoundation.org, casey.obrien.r at gmail.com
> >
> >
> > I've been moderating squeak-dev for some time.  If there's something that
> I
> > can do (1) on the weekend and (2) not too time-consuming, I might be able
> to
> > help.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Steve
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Ken Causey <ken at kencausey.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Welcome to the box-admins mailing list.  Feel free to introduce
> > > yourselves (again perhaps) if you like; if you have any particular
> > > interest or thoughts related to managing the community services please
> > > contribute.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Ken
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment
> > before starting to improve the world.       -- Anne Frank
> > Paradise is exactly where you are
> > right now...only much, much better.    -- Laurie Anderson
>
>


-- 
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment
before starting to improve the world.       -- Anne Frank
Paradise is exactly where you are
right now...only much, much better.    -- Laurie Anderson
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/box-admins/attachments/20110205/6adbbf95/attachment.htm


More information about the Box-Admins mailing list