Welcome to my blog. I write Instruction Guides, How-Tos, and Tips & Tricks on Linux, Database, Hardware, Security and Web. Visit Best of the Blog section to get started.

You can login to a remote Linux server without entering password in 3 simple steps using ssky-keygen and ssh-copy-id as explained in this article.

ssh-keygen creates the public and private keys. ssh-copy-id copies the local-host’s public key to the remote-host’s authorized_keys file. ssh-copy-id also assigns proper permission to the remote-host’s home, ~/.ssh, and ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.

This article also explains 3 minor annoyances of using ssh-copy-id and how to use ssh-copy-id along with ssh-agent.
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OMSA is a web based application to manage DELL PowerEdge Servers. Using OMSA you can perform proactive system monitoring, system diagnosis, troubleshoot hardware issues and configure RAID etc., You can also view and manage hardware’s embedded system management (ESM) log using OMSA.

This is an jumpstart guide that explains how to install Dell OMSA on Linux. I have also provided few screenshots of DELL OMSA web application.
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Photo courtesy of B Naveen Kumar

dmidecode command reads the system DMI table to display hardware and BIOS information of the server. Apart from getting current configuration of the system, you can also get information about maximum supported configuration of the system using dmidecode. For example, dmidecode gives both the current RAM on the system and the maximum RAM supported by the system.

This article provides an overview of the dmidecode and few practical examples on how to use dmidecode command.
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This is a guest post written by SathiyaMoorthy.

Using ramfs or tmpfs you can allocate part of the physical memory to be used as a partition. You can mount this partition and start writing and reading files like a hard disk partition. Since you’ll be reading and writing to the RAM, it will be faster.

When a vital process becomes drastically slow because of disk writes, you can choose either ramfs or tmpfs file systems for writing files to the RAM.

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Nagios is hands-down the best monitoring tool to monitor host and network equipments. Using Nagios plugins you can monitor pretty much monitor anything.

I use Nagios intensively and it gives me peace of mind knowing that I will get an alert on my phone, when there is a problem. More than that, if warning levels are setup properly, Nagios will proactively alert you before a problem becomes critical.

Earlier I wrote about, how to setup Nagios to monitor Linux Host, Windows Host and VPN device.

In this article, I’ll explain how to configure Nagios to monitor network switch and it’s active ports.
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When you call DELL customer support for any help, they will ask for either Service Tag or Express Service Code. You also need service tag to download drivers and documentations from DELL support website.

When you have physical access to the system, you can easily identify the service tag affixed on the body of the server. DELL support site shows the exactly location of the service tag and express code stickers for various DELL equipments.

When you don’t have physical access to the server, you can get the same information remotely from the OS level. Using Windows or Linux command line you can easily get DELL service tag as explained below.
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In our previous articles, we discussed how to setup ssh key based authentication to perform ssh and scp without password under the following three scenarios:

1. OpenSSH to OpenSSH
2. OpenSSH to SSH2
3. SSH2 to SSH2

In this article, I’ll explain how to perform ssh and scp from SSH2 (local-host) to OpenSSH (remote-host) with no password.
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GNU Midnight Commander (mc) is a powerful text based file manager for Unix.  mc gives an jumpstart for Windows power-users who would like to transition to Unix.  It also has several advanced features to keep experienced Unix users happy.  mc can run from any Unix terminal. If your terminal can execute vi, you can execute mc to view the midnight commander user interface. Midnight commander supports mouse when you are running it under xterm.
 
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This article is part of the ongoing Productivity Tips for Geeks series. cd is one of the most frequently used command during a Unix session. In this article, I’ve provided 6 cd command hacks, which will boost your productivity instantly and make it easier to navigate the directory structure from command line.
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This article will explain the sequence in which the following files are executed:

• /etc/profile
• ~/.bash_profile
• ~/.bashrc
• ~/.bash_login
• ~/.profile
• ~/.bash_logout

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