This covers typical Linux commands used in web hosting.

Telnet vs. SSH

Telnet is an insecure way of accessing the server command line and is therefore not an option. SSH (Secure Shell) is a secure replacement for Telnet which gives the same type of access.

Accessing SSH

SSH can be accessed by an applet included in certain cPanel themes. It is preferable to access through an SSH program installed on your own computer.

Mac OSX users can open a terminal window and enter ssh -l username yourdomain.com

Useful commands

When using SSH you are accessing the server’s command line (Similar to MSDOS).
Here is a short list of commonly used commands:
(tip: when using Putty you can use the “right click” to copy and paste commands and information)

man
Display command manual (use: man [command])
To exit from the manual use the ‘q‘ key.

logout
Logout of SSH

exit
Logout of SSH

Ctrl + C
End current command

dir
Directory listing

ls
Better directory listing with more options (type “man ls” for more information. Note: The “l” is an “L”
ls -al is what I normally use.

cp source.file destination.file
Copies a file from one location to another

mv source.file destination.file
Moves a file from one location to another.
It copies it to the new location and deletes the original one

chmod
Changes the permissions on a file.
I prefer doing this through FTP and would recommend that for newbies as well.

chown
Changes the User and/or Group ownership for a file.

tar -cpzf filename.tar.gz
Tar (compress a number of files into one file) the current directory
Replace “filename” with an appropriate name.

tar -xzpf filename.tar.gz
Untar (uncompress a number of files out of one file) a file
Replace “filename” with the file’s name.

lynx
Lynx is a text based browser installed on the server that can be accessed via the command line or by cron.

cd /home/username
Navigate into a directory on the server (~ Navigate to your home directory, you can use “~” as part of the path: cd ~/public_html.
Replace “/home/username” with the appropriate directory.

whereis [function]
The easiest way to find the actual path to perl, sendmail, etc
Replace “[function]” with the function name e.g. “sendmail”.

rm
Remove/delete (use rm -r to delete recursive directories. Type “rm –help” for full help, there is no way to undelete)

top
List running processes and check server load (type h for help and q to exit the “top” display.

mysqldump -u[Username] -p[Password] [Database Name] < filename.sql
Dump a SQL file into a MySQL database. Note the “<”.
Replace “[Username]” with the database username (generally controlpaneluser_databaseuser). Replace “[Password]” with the database password and replace “[Database Name]” with the database name. Finally change “filename.sql” to the correct filename/location.

mysqldump -u[Username] -p[Password] [Database Name] > filename.sql
Dump a MySQL database to a SQL file. Note the “>”.
Replace “[Username]” with the database username (generally controlpaneluser_databaseuser). Replace “[Password]” with the database password and replace “[Database Name]” with the database name. Finally change “filename.sql” to the correct filename/location.

mkdir directory_name
Make directory
Replace “directory_name” with the directory you want to create’ name.

ln -s real/path [link name]
Create a symlink to a path
Replace “real/path” with the physical (real) path to the file. For example /home/user/downloads. Also replace “[link name]” with what you would like the symlink to be called. To remove the sym link use “rm [link name]“.

pico [filename]
Easy to use text editor to edit files
Replace “(filename)” with the filename to open e.g. “pico file.txt”
vi and vim are also available on many servers.

wget http://www.example.com
Wget can grab files from a web site or even the entire website in its directory structure and copy them to your server. Type man wget to see all of your options.

Tip: How to install and uninstall a program in Safe Mode

Contents of file.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer]
@=”Service”

Also worth noting: Run > Net Start msiserver

Vendor/Ethernet/Bluetooth MAC Address Lookup and Search 

I tend to search on the blog for this link, but I can never find it. That is because I never linked it here. So, here it is.

Wikipedia listing of TCP and UDP ports.

I usually expect to find it on the post about using a different Remote Desktop ( RDP ) port: Changing Remote Desktop Port.

That should be enough key words for my searches.

Cloud Services
discussion led initially by Tim Whitehorn from http://www.ServiceU.com

SignUsUp.com going out of business.

Wireless syncing to phones: https://www.nuevasync.com/

Issues with single sign-on:

ServiceU looking at OpenID

Online Storage:

S3

Waula – Video

Smugmug (they were comped a pro account as a church) site matches church site

    Microsoft SkyDrive and LiveSync

GDrive potentially leaving Rumorware status

Podcasting:

    Off site servers with iTunes

    AMSI – http://www.flycast.fm

Mosso.com – allows multiple server technologies (Windows/Linux) for ASP, .net, PHP , etc on same service

Dreamhost.com – Lots of storage and some good features. Free for non-profits, I can get you a discount if you are interested (post in comments)

site5.com

—–

Church Management Software

We sort of drifted into this topic as the next time period started up

ACS Technologies – See Jeff

http://ArenaCHMS.com – My church is using ArenaCHMS

https://www.fellowshipone.com

—-

Firewalls

Focusing primarily on free options, but some mention of other options.

Christ Fellowship is doing a Round Robin connection through 2 Comcast accounts and reliable AT&T connections.

FreeBSD

• Packetfilter
• Squid Proxy (Dan’s Guardian)

PFSense http://www.pfsense.com/ – FreeBSD based firewall system

SonicWall http://www.sonicwall.com/ – not free.

OpenDNS http://www.opendns.com/ – Free options available. Not really a firewall, but provides DNS filtering.

Others mentioned: Cisco PIX and Astaro (Astaro has a free version you can install to test on your own hardware or you can get one of their appliances)

—-

Open Source Software Discussion

Impromptu Open Source Conversation and IT Management

Asterisk (SwitchVox) PBX phone system (Christ Fellowhip starting to use), there is a church tying Asterisk to Arena and other church management systems for call center style autodialing.

http://www.spiceworks.com/ IT Management

http://www.sysaid.com/

—-

Crafting an IT Strategy

Getting IT connected into ministry

• Making staff comfortable
• Making staff competent

Getting the IT in the church connected

• Breaking down silos to make teams work together

Strategy is hindered by a firefighter situation

Strategy is not looking at a tool, but going toward a goal.

• What is a proper IT goal?

Shortcut to Norton Symantec Antivirus Rapid Release Definition Updates

Direct link to symrapidreleasedefsi32.exe

Also of interest, a link to the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool. Someone just handed me a laptop that is 7 months out of date.

If you are missing a CD entitled “Where Nothing Can Go Wrong” please let me know.
The cleaning crew found it.

Now I can delete that email.

In spite of all these printers located in each of the office areas we still have several dozen expensive, slow, noisy, and lousy printers on everyones personal desk as well. Why bother walking 10 feet when you can get less for more.

My problem with printers is that they soon get to the point that the more-expensive-than-gold ink gets clogged in one of the color channels and I have a dead $40 cartridge that has provided me with $2 worth of value over its pitiful life.

A West Virginia Blogger has posted about cleaning your print cartridge with WD-40. Found via Lifehacker where there are many more cleaning suggestions in the comments.

So, without further ado, I will post it here as well (note: I am not using the port mentioned here).

Notes: You can change the listening port for remote desktop
Then connect on that port

To set up remote desktop on port 3053 instead of 3389

Using regedit (if you don’t know what that is then don’t do this) change:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\System
\CurrentControlSet
\Control
\TerminalServer
\WinStations
\RDP-Tcp
\PortNumber
to 3053 (or bed in Hexadecimal).
Reboot Windows to make sure the setting took properly
Open port 3053 on the Windows firewall

Set the IP address so that a future reboot would not give me a new IP.

Open 3053 on the router’s firewall and point at the IP set for the computer.

To test it I connected to my home computer and then had it connect back to the computer here using domain.com:3053 and it worked. It was dead slow, but it worked.

Just a note that even a fast internet connection gets sluggish when you are connecting both directions over RDP.