Oct 19

Breaking free of dynamic DNS hosts

Posted in Uncategorized

For the longest time, I’ve been paying DynDNS to host one of my “fun” domain names. Oddly, I had all of the common subdomains pointed at my server in a datacenter, complete with its own static IP address, instead of at some home server in a closet on residential DSL/Cable. It’s just that I really like to be able to access my home computer when I’m out and about, so I had a single subdomain set aside for use with a dynamic IP. DynDNS gave me that ability by allowing me to set any or all of my subdomains to the ip of any box that is running their automatic update client, so I set the update client to change only that one subdomain.

This presented a couple problems:

  1. I had to pay extra for DynDNS to manage my domain and make dynip changes to just one subdomain
  2. I couldn’t set up different username/password combos for different subdomains, so I couldn’t give subdomains to friends unless I gave them my DynDNS username and password

Recently, I had to retire my server because of cost vs. income issues, so I went to the only company I could think of off the top of my head that would give me as much hands-on experience with a VPS as is available in today’s market, Linode. Click here to read more.. »

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Mar 4

Server migration over!

Posted in Server Administration, Software, Software Configuration

I finally got all of the game servers for the gaming clan I’m a member of moved from our old server to the new one. Moving the game servers was actually the easy part. All you have to do for them is move the configs, plugins, and any custom maps or other game content. Unfortunately, we also had some MySQL databases to move.

The first thing I have learned from this experience is that when you have a large (300MB in our case) database, PHP scripts that are waiting for a phpMyAdmin Export will hit the script execution time limit. If a webhost limits you to backing up your databases with phpMyAdmin, then they either expect you to have a very tiny website that will never take off, or they aren’t doing their job right.

And the second thing? The command line will save you, and is actually much faster. Click here to read more.. »

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Feb 24

Things that help me will help you!

Posted in Network Administration, Server Administration, Software Configuration

I’ve found a lot of help when it comes to the things I’ve run into trouble with.  Of course, Google is always a great first resource, along with manual pages, how-to books and other web and paper resources.  But, when there is a really unique problem that you just can’t find an answer to, where do you turn? Click here to read more.. »

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Feb 22

So, what’s up?

Posted in Personal Information, Site Information

Wow,

It is amazing how things will get in the way of the best laid plans… and when your plans weren’t particularly well thought out, it seems that things creep up in even more severe ways.
Click here to read more.. »

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Feb 10

A comment on things to come.

Posted in Personal Information, Site Information

Howdy, folks!   I’m Matt, and I want a job in an Information Technology field… maybe a network or systems administrator position.  I love learning about the enterprise hardware and software that is used to run these huge data systems.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to really learn what you need to know to do a job like this.  There aren’t many good college courses that cover this sort of thing, and it seems that all the really good sysadmins learned what they know on the job.  This is a great option if it is offered to you, but that tends to happen rarely, and it seems to be reserved for those who were there in the beginning to set the system up.  Everyone else is just a CS student who got the junior position knowing little to nothing about hardware issues in the datacenter, but can probably crank out a decent java applet.  Even those CS majors have to learn on the job from their superiors, Google, and their own mistakes.

I like to find old enterprise equipment, hook it up in my basement, and get it running.  I even have a server colocated in a local datacenter so I can test my abilities out in the wild, which is how this site gets to you.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to show you what I’m doing to learn what I’ll need to know when I finally get that IT job.

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