Category Archives: Linux

Backup your Gmail

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Todd Huss

Update 2017: I recommend using GMVault for backing up Gmail. It’s free, open-source, actively maintained, and relatively easy to setup if you’re technically inclined. Like all hosted services, you should never depend on one provider to both manage your data … Continue reading →

Posted in Cloud Computing, Linux, OSX, Systems Administration, Technical | 1 Comment

Storing Git repositories in Amazon S3 for high availability

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Todd Huss

At VolunteerMatch we’re experimenting with using Chef Solo to manage Amazon EC2 servers. The catch is that if a server is going to rely on Chef to boot up, then the Chef Recipes (which we’re storing in a Git Repository) … Continue reading →

Posted in Cloud Computing, Java, Linux, Source Control, Systems Administration | 2 Comments

Production MySQL performance tuning

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Todd Huss

For the past 9 years I’ve been working almost exclusively with MySQL (with a little PostgreSQL thrown in) and while I don’t do nearly as much DBA work these days, I still find myself troubleshooting a query or tuning my.cnf. … Continue reading →

Posted in Database, FreeBSD, Linux, MySQL, Systems Administration | Comments Off on Production MySQL performance tuning

Standalone Migrations: Using Rails migrations in non Rails projects

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Todd Huss

Update 8/7/2010: Standalone migrations is now a gem (sudo gem install standalone_migrations) so disregard the outdated installation instructions below Update 7/8/2009: With the latest batch of contributed patches standalone migrations now works just like Rails migrations Update 12/26/2008: I switched … Continue reading →

Posted in Database, Java, Linux, MySQL, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 5 Comments

Moving to 64 bit Ubuntu

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Todd Huss

After 3 Ubuntu upgrades on my primary workhorse (a Lenovo Thinkpad z61t) I decided it was time for a fresh install to remove all the cruft. In the past I’ve always used 32 bit Ubuntu (even though my laptop is … Continue reading →

Posted in Desktop, Java, Linux | 1 Comment

Keeping Rails running at Dreamhost Part 2

Posted on January 24, 2007 by Todd Huss

Update 2/2/07: Per Thomas’ comment I’ve released the code below as the dreamhost rails plugin. Update 1/25/07: People have reported difficulties copy and pasting the dispatch.fcgi source code from this blog post so here is a dispatch.fcgi to download. Make … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Systems Administration, Web | 10 Comments

Comparing Amazon EC2 with VPS and dedicated hosting

Posted on November 30, 2006 by Todd Huss

I’ve been reading all the great things about Amazon EC2 (or Elastic Compute Cloud) and lots of pricing comparisons with VPS and dedicated hosting. I finally got an EC2 account and tinkered a bit and there’s a big difference between … Continue reading →

Posted in Database, FreeBSD, Linux, MySQL, Systems Administration | 9 Comments

Trafeoffs of aggressive filesystem partitioning

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Todd Huss

Most systems administrators will tell you it’s important to partition your install into anywhere from 4-7 discrete patitions (or slices if you’re in the BSD camp). While I think it’s good advice in certain cases, the headaches of mis-guessing disk … Continue reading →

Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, Systems Administration | 2 Comments