Defining Chaos In Order

It’s been a good one this year.

It’s good to be a Systems Administrator!

Matti About me cake, fun, nucleus

And I bet you’ve never heard of SysAdmin Appreciation Day! Here’s why we deserve it:

• We keep your Facebook/Netlog/Twitter running, 24/7
• We’ll make sure you can receive e-mail, 24/7
• We will protect your e-shop, 24/7
• We’ll tweak servers for maximum performance, 24/7
• We’ll protect your other servers with firewalls, 24/7
• We’ll make sure you can call using Voice-over-IP, 24/7
• We’ll make sure you can call, period. (Yes, this runs on actual servers too, not just over the air – 24/7)
• We’ll keep businesses going by providing seemless IT integration, 24/7
• We’ll work on holidays, nightshifts, peak hours, … Heck, we’re even on standby while having sex. 24/7
• We’ll protect your private, sensitive information you so freely enter into webforms, 24/7
• We’ll hack into our own systems, to detect security leapholes before anyone else will, 24/7
• We’ll encrypt your data on e-payment, 24/7
• We’ll work 24hour-straight shifts, surviving on a mere combination of Coffee, M&Ms and Coca Cola, 24/7

Just imagine the power we have. Fear us. Because, all your base are belong to us.
Feel free to add to the list in the comments!

*Edit: it was a good one, with lots of pretty cakes!

Matti Tech appreciation, sysadmin, sysadminday

This applies to a Windows Plesk server, running any kind of 8.x Plesk. First of, change your IP address through RDP in the Network Settings of Windows, then it’s time to update Plesk – like this.

Update Host’s IP address in Plesk
update psa.ip_addresses set ip_address = ‘<new-ip-address>’ where ip_address=’<old-ip-address>’

Changing DNS records for all hosts:
update psa.dns_recs set host = ‘<new-ip-address>’ where host = ‘<old-ip-address>’;
update psa.dns_recs set displayHost = ‘<new-ip-address>’ where displayHost = ‘<old-ip-address>’;
update psa.dns_recs set val = ‘<new-ip-address>’ where val = ‘<old-ip-address>’;
update psa.dns_recs set displayVal = ‘<new-ip-address>’ where displayVal = ‘<old-ip-address>’;

Then run the following command:
websrvmng.exe --reconfigure-all

This will rebuild all Plesk-generated configs (in this case, for Apache) according to what’s known within Plesk. This way, you can fairly quickly change the main IP address of a server, without a lot of hassle. However, this does not update the DNS config files.

The following should, in theory, also be possible:
websrvmng.exe --change-ip-address --new-ip-address=<new-ip-address> --old-ip-address=<old-ip-address>

Next, you have to start the command that rebuilds the DNS config, based on what’s known within Plesk (as the websrvmng.exe does not update DNS records). The downside: the command needs to be entered for each domain in Plesk, so here’s a script to make this slightly easier:

<?php
	$conn = mysql_connect("localhost:8306", "admin", "<plesk-pass>") or die (mysql_error());
	$dbconn = mysql_select_db("psa", $conn) or die (mysql_error());
 
	$sql = "SELECT * FROM domains AS d";
	$result = mysql_query($sql) or die (mysql_error());
 
	$output = "";
	$newline = "\n";
	while ($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)) {
		$output .= "DNSMng.exe update ". $row->name . $newline;
	}
 
	echo $output;
?>

This will generate all the commands, so you can copy paste them to a “execute.bat” file, and save that in the Plesk/Admin/Bin folder, so it can now execute the DNSMng.exe executable for each and every domain.

Matti Plesk apache, dns, dnsmng, Plesk, websrvmng

Matti Webdevelopment control, marketing, psychology

About 9 months ago, I was toying with the idea to automate downloading my favorite TV-shows using BitTorrent. Just like millions of others, I downloaded my shows through ThePirateBay or MiniNova manually each week, and it was turning into a drag. I figured there had to be an easier way to do this. Read more…

Matti About me development, FeedMyTorrents, fmt, lamp, torrents

Definately worth the watch.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. (source)

You’ll lough out loud, and actually learn something about how our current education is limitating our powers of creativity. :-)

Matti Tech education, Humor, TED

It’s out! Enjoy the cool HTML5 features, and improved performance!

Matti Webdevelopment browser, firefox