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So, the first thing we found out about Sebastian, our new 11 week old bully is…. the bastard bites… A LOT! I mean, yes he’s a puppy and I’ve been around plenty of puppies but damn! We couldn’t pet him because his way of loving back was BITE BITE BITE! Those little razor sharp shark puppy teeth and bully jaws… OMG, this is going to be an adventure but before I get too far ahead of myself…. Our friend told us that we could use our carrier for a bit as a crate until we had time to purchase one. We put him in it for the night on day one. Ahem, night one. Nope, this isn’t going to work. It was tighter than a horse in a transfer trailer… poor guy. He dealt with it on night one but the next day we got him one. We made sure we got one that would be sufficient when he’s grown to full size but has an adjustable partition wall to keep him in a smaller area for now. While crate training any puppy you do not want to give them too much room. Dogs that are training need to feel that they do NOT want to relieve themselves in their own home. If you give them too much room, they will feel that the other end of the crate is sufficient for a bathroom and WILL take advantage of it instead of holding it for when you walk them next. Now back to Sebastian and his wicked ways… The little turd burglar wouldn’t let us pet him without feeling his love through his razor-like mouth. Although he picked up ‘sit’ immediately, the only time we could reward him with a pat or rub was if he was eating his treat

Recently my company sent me to the RH124 class for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For the most part it was a ‘yawner’ because it was 1) GUI driven and I’ve avoided Linux GUI for so long (mainly because when I first started working with Linux GUI was all but useless) and 2) it was 90% based on things I already knew. I needed to take it as a prereq for RH135 so I took advantage of it either way. The class was hosted at Red Hat headquarters in Raleigh which definately was like a sort of ‘Holy Grail’ location for me. (Also a side note to avoiding the GUI is that most of the time as a SA, you will be in a remote shell window and not confronted with a GUI. Most Admins turn GUI off to save resources [Microsoft is just now catching on to this concept with Windows 2008 Server] and also if the GUI goes kaput… you can still do your job and work around it until you can get it back online.) Flash forward to present and I find myself attending the RH135 class. This is the class of commandline driven System Administration of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and a lot more advanced than the prereq class. With 135 there is an included exam for RHCSA certification which was my goal the entire time. The exam is on Friday and I’m hoping to do well. 🙂 My predecessor at work was our #1 Linux guy after he was sent off to obtain certification when we began using RHEL for one of our applications that he was primary support for. Since he has now left the organization and I’ve been handed his system/s, I’ve had to rely on my years of Linux (self taught) knowledge

Well, Kind of a new plan. I still have the good ole’ habit of abandoning this place because I stay too busy with all the new things I have to keep myself involved in for whatever reason at one time or another. Nevertheless (<– my most abused word lately), my latest point of interest that I’ve thrown myself into is actually beneficial in every aspect. Curious yet? I figured as much. I finally decided actually DIET. No, I’m not on ‘Jenny Craig’ or ‘Weight Watchers’ or any other shop around diet plan. I’ve collected enough common sense information and have decided to do the ‘Jason Diet’. No, this is not some new fangled, new aged crazy crash diet. This is basically a diet at it’s simplest form that most people seem to have forgotten…. <top secret> and Discipline. I do not track Carbs, Sodium, Vitamins, Fats, Trans Fats, Glucose, blah blah blah… or any other sophisticated sounding words. I track 1 thing. Waaaaaait for itttttt. Waaaaaait for ittttt. Calories. YES! Calories! <not so top secret anymore is it?> Remember those? My diet plan is simple and there are a few more parts that come into play over all to assist with the diet (which I will get to) but overall. The only thing I pay attention to day and night is my calorie intake for the day. Calories are simple. (yes yes I know there are also ‘calories from fat’) but we’re not going there just yet. The goal of this diet is pretty simple. Take in less calories in a day/week than you actually burn. Your body burns calories just to operate normally (BMR) as well as everything you do all day/night. So you basically figure what you burn in a day and take in less than that magic

I started a post about a subject that I figured would be touchy. I gave an example of something to lead into it and turned this entire post into the beast you find below. So I’ve now rewritten the intro to this series of sentences and will just let you fall directly into the mess below. I will address the original topic later to anyone that feels they still can return. 🙂 Healthcare: Although I like the concept of public healthcare for everyone just because they are born and live here in the United States, I cannot agree that there is a way to do it that doesn’t make things worse on the support side of that spectrum. I am a firm believer in you should earn what you get and other than gifts out of love, charity, or kindness along the way… no one should get a free ride. This isn’t a system that I decided to believe DUE to the debate of public healthcare but one that I had for all aspects of life that I apply to the debate. I don’t believe one group of persons should pay the way for everyone else. I think that when you punish success by slipping the bill to those that have busted their humps to get what they earn that eventually the Socialism cycle starts generating less and less productive people for two main reasons. “1) Why work so hard to have a larger than fair chunk taken away and given to others.” and “2) Why work so hard when there are other people that will take care of me.”. This isn’t something that happens immediately but over long periods of time and generations. A good example of #2 is for a lot of the persons that REMAIN on Welfare. Now

In this second part of HTAULB we will be visiting the topic of how to automate MySQL database backups. Although I will be the first to admit this is completely simple and a very nice way of accomplishing this task, I will also advise that it is not the most secure. I would not recommend this to anyone sharing a server or its resources with other people. You will be hard coding your SQL password into a script and although you could restrict ‘Read’ permissions from anyone else seeing it, I will advise against it on any shared machine. Now, on with the show! If you haven’t read the first part of this series please go back and do so, I’ll wait…. Back? Took you long enough. I had you read that because we will be doing some of the same tasks in order to automate the SQL backups. You will need to go to the location in which you are keeping your .sh scripts. (We use /bin here at IAmRoberson) Use the editor of your choice to edit the file using the name of your choice for the script’s name: Add the following line for each database you wish to make a sql dump from. mysqldump -u username -h localhost -p(password) databasename | gzip -9 > /var/backups/nameoftargetfile-$(date +%Y%m%d).db.sql.gz Exit from the editor and chmod the file to 766. (see previous post for exact syntax.) Add an additional line in the crontab like you did for (part 1) of this exercise.   You are done! Go back up some stuff now! – Jason   Did this article help you any? Please feel free to leave feedback.

I recently redesigned my home setup and wanted to automate my backups for my web servers and SQL server. I run Ubuntu 9.10 using a semi-typical LAMP configuration. For those of you unfamiliar with LAMP it is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Your first step is to determine what you want backed up. For me the /var/www and /etc/apache2 directories were my primary targets. After that you need to write a Shell script to tar/gz that directory and put it into a folder where you wish for your backups to reside. I will say the smartest thing to do is to eventually copy these files to a different location than the drive/box you’re backing up so a physical drive failure won’t take your backups with them and make this entire process moot. Sounds easy right? It is, and I’ll show you just how easy it really is. After you’ve determined what you want backed up you need to write that shell script. Here is how to accomplish that: From a command console on your Linux box, change to the directory you wish for your .sh script to reside. For example: /bin/ Fire up your CLI editor of choice and edit a file that will become your shell script. For me this is VIM so I would type the following: vim backup_script.sh Add the following lines, substituting my locations and file names with your own: cd /var/backups/ tar -czf web_backup.$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz -C / var/www/  -C / etc/apache2/ The first line changes the directory to where you will drop the backup file. I know you can do this several ways but this way you can see each step of what is being accomplished. The second line creates a tar.gz named web_backup(today’s date).tar.gz from the /var/www and /etc/apache2 directories. Exit

  I’m not sure what got me thinking about it but all of a sudden I’d gotten a wild hair to look at new bikes. Maybe it’s been a couple random great weather days or the bikes I’ve seen on those days but I’ve gotten my spring bike fever and have been itching to ride. After looking around a bit I settled on a bike that fit what I needed in power, comfort, and design as well as what I wanted in look and aesthetics. The bike I became fascinated with in my search is the 2009 Ninja 650R. My first bike and the one I am migrating from is a Kawasaki ZR-7S. I love this bike. Kawasaki did a good job and designing the ZR with power and comfort but it was time for me to step up to something a little more modern. The 650R comes with digital display, fuel injection, a clock (you don’t understand how valuable this can be), and a little more zip to it even with a listed 100cc less between your legs. Here are pictures of my bikes, both the 2001 ZR-7S and the 2009 Ninja 650R respectively.   Although the perspectives are a little skewed with the pictures you may be able to tell that the ZR7 is a little bigger. The dry weight on the Ninja is listed as 40lbs lighter than the ZR7 and although it feels a lot lighter than that, I’m thinking a lot of the weight difference (in how it feels) is due to a lower center of gravity as well as the fact that I’ve gotten use to wrestling with the weight and possibly have strengthened a few muscles in the couple of years I was maneuvering the ZR7. One thing I do notice immediately is

I’d say that the title was a joke initially but in all reality it pretty much boils down to that. Insurance ([to avoid] Death) and the Obama sodomy squad looking to take as much from people as they can (Taxes). I’ve tried time and time again to give this guy the benefit of the doubt but he’s not really leaving me many options at this point. The current healthcare legislation is getting to a point to which I cannot hold my tongue any longer. Obama and his cronies, wanting to help, are trying to give everyone in America healthcare. While I can respect the notion I cannot however respect his approach. For those of you who are not paying close enough attention, here is what they are trying to push through and why it should tick you off: I. A Public Option: – Government run healthcare. For those of you unfamiliar with this concept look at our current government run programs for seniors or veterans. In fact, try talking to anyone that is using either of these options more than for checkups. Some would say that the Federal government has yet to successfully run a program like this on a smaller scale much less what they are proposing now. I personally would like to add that whether they CAN do it or not… they shouldn’t. It’s not their job nor duty as a Government. It puts their paws too far into the business infrastructure of the country. This is how and why the government keeps growing to its ungodly and unnecessary size and stealing more and more power to control individuals. The federal government should do very few things. Examples of these few things are: 1) Protect our outlying borders from foreign enemies. 2) Regulate State to State interests and

I find myself saying it more and more lately… The more I dislike all of the Socialism the current President and his administration are trying to infuse into our current Economy, the more I also realize that I like the president himself. Last night’s Letterman makes a perfect example of why… Recently former POTUS Jimmy Carter made the jackass comment that the outburst/s made against the current Administration’s Healthcare bill is due to racism. C’mon, can’t someone that once qualified as the most powerful man in the world do something better than jump on a cheesy bandwagon? Everyone that disagrees with Obama’s changes are being called racist. I would expect this from Sharpton or Jackson but Carter!?!?!?! Really? Well the POTUS himself last night debunked Carter saying… “I think it’s important to realize that I was actually black before the election.” People voted for him because they liked him. Some didn’t because they didn’t. I didn’t because his policies scared me and all in all… they still do but as a person… I think he’s gotta be pretty cool to hang out with. For the love of God I hope his Healthcare bill gets blown apart or changed drastically. I disagree with his solutions for several other issues but I would still love to have the invite to a ‘Beer Summit’ with him. The man has a sense of humor and that’s what I appreciate most in people. In today’s society everyone gets too whiny and ‘sue happy’ if someone doesn’t agree with them or isn’t PC enough. I’ve watched Obama deflect a lot of criticism with much style instead of getting his presidential boxers in a bunch. Hooray to you President Obama. I have been formulating my public approach to this healthcare bill and proposal and will be posting

What I’ve done is created a monster. A hateful resenting beast that forgives only itself. What I’ve allowed is my mind to slip to the recesses of where it has made a home in my far past. A comfort zone is where I lay, paralyzed by hurt and instability. 3’s they come in 3’s, and what would life be like for everyone else if I laid down mine? I wonder what everyone’s eulogy for me would consist of… I lay awake at night thinking hurtful thoughts… thoughts that only hurt me. Thoughts that may or may not be or have been but my mind finds comfort in my self inflicted pain. Things transpiring before my eyes as if I were there. Why? How? When? Who? This monster laughs at my pain. If you could see me at any given moment right now you would see me smiling. I am not happy but I am smiling. If you intentionally hurt me right now you would see me smirk then a chilling grin and then a smile. It is my demon not me, for I am gone right now… Leave a message and I may call you when I return. – Jason Roberson