• When is it time to leave your VPS/VDS Cloud Hosting Provider?


    When Is It Time to Leave Your VPS, VDS, and Dedicated Server Provider? Choosing the right hosting solution—be it Virtu........
  • 2024 Buyer's Guide: How to Choose and Buy the Best VPS/VDS for Your Needs - Tips and Strategies


    In today’s digital landscape, finding a reliable and secure Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) goes beyond just comparing specs and prices. With increasing concerns over data privacy, security breaches, and government surveillance, the wisdom of choosing your VPS/VDS provider based on juri........
  • Linux dhcp dhclient Mint Redhat Ubuntu Debian How To Use Local Domain DNS Server Instead of ISPs


    If you are running a local DNS server like named/bind and don't want to use the ISPsupplied DNS servers that are announced via a DHCP request (using dhclient) then the solution is simple. The reason should be obvious, but normally running your own DNS server will provide a more reliable, and fast DNS response and you won't have to worry about filtering as much (unless your upstream filters or proxies outgoing DNS requests). Edit /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf........
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    The reason for doing this is that the installer doesn't seem to work properly for LUKS and the server installer doesn't even support LUKS anymore. When you use the GUI install on Desktop for LUKS it won't boot and will just hang after you enter your password. So the only reliable way is to do it ourselves. 1.) Make a default minimal install of Ubuntu 2.) Have a secondary disk on the server or VM. 3.)........
  • Centos 6 / 7 / 8 How To Change Default nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf when using DHCP / dhclient


    First we need to create dhclient.conf if it doesn't exist or edit it: vi /etc/dhclient/dhclient.conf #add this line at the top add the IPs as commas they will be the highest priority nameservers and whatever your ISP gives you will be used after these one (good for DNS backup) prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1,10.10.25.8; After you restart your network or run dhclient again you should see the contents of........
  • Avocent 8020 KVM Java Icedtea Viewer


    This command in Debian/Ubuntu/Mint will get everything need installed for most Java based KVM viewers: sudo apt install icedtea-netx The following additional packages will be installed: ca-certificates-java icedtea-netx-common openjdk-8-jre openjdk-8-jre-headless It seems every other updated version of Java or Icedtea breaks things and I will save the frustration of Java for another post.........
  • VPN Account Buyers Guide and General Info


    What matters most about VPNproviders in 2024? We are highly suspicious of VERYLARGE VPN providers that have LOW PRICES and HUGE DISCOUNTS. The suspicion is that for those who know what costs are involved to purchase thousands of IPs and servers are not small. At the prices that many of the big mainstream providers offer, it is likely unprofitable or barely profitable. Then, how are those companies making money or is that even the goal? There use........
  • badblocks in Linux to check/verify if a hard drive/HDD is good or bad


    I like badblocks and don't know a better more reliable way of checking the drive. If there are no errors from badblocks and dmesg doesn't produce any SATA related errors, the drive should be good (for now at least). I also prefer to do read and write mode, yes it takes ages but it is really the best way of doing it. This gives me the most confidence in knowing that a drive, especially a new one is at least OK at the moment. To test in read only mode........
  • mdadm how to add a device to an array after a failure


    This array is a RAID 1 and in this case 1 of the 2 drives failed (a WD drive and I've found them to be the weakest and most unreliable of any brand and are easily damaged/DOA when shipping them). mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdb1 The above assumes the array you want to add to is /dev/md0 and the device we are adding is /dev/sdb1 *One thing to remember is to make sure the partition you are adding is the correct size for the array. You can also g........
  • How To Test If Your Hard Drive Is Good/Signs of dying hard drive


    I like dd, although it only reads it, usually a read test of the entire disk will uncover if your hard drive is bad in some parts. This is a good thing to do at least once a month, a lot of times bizarre program behavior, laginess and crashing/unnmounting problems etc.. are due to a failing disc and SMART won't know it or indicate a problem: We must also remember there's never a guarantee, I've found that ever since we moved to larger and more platters per drive with 1TB drives........
  • Santrex Review Scam Complaint - Stole My Money Fraud


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  • VPS Server Scam/Review/Complaint List


    These are the only two I've encountered but here is the low-end and note my story is not at all unique. In my case I was scammed out of money and did not receive any service at all from either company. Santrex Review/Scam/Complaint Santrex never provided any working server, I believe it was just a dummy management Solus server because the server said it was booted but never connected to the console. I complained to them and eventually the support adm........
  • Ubuntu 10.04 Linux is still not ready for the Desktop world


    I am a huge fan of Linux and the idea of OpenSource but I've said it many times, there are still hurdles in today in 2010 for Linux as a Desktop. Linux is still intended for servers at its very core. This can be changed succesfully though, as Apple has shown us with Mac OS X based on FreeBSD. Half of the issue is lack of driver support and the other half is the Linux Kernel and Window Manages, KDE and GNome still both don't cut it (but they're getting closer). I'll........
  • nginx - the ultimate load balancer


    You can find it for free at http://nginx.org/ I find nginx is simpler to setup than pound (it's not hard but I found it unintuitive and annoying), it seemed to make some basic setups overly complicated with the config file syntax. nginx on the other hand is perfectly suited in everyway, it is even simpler to setup and seems to be the most stable and most efficient any load balancer. I would go as far as to say that a good nginx setup is more relia........
  • Become your own ISP!


    Become your own ISP!http://waverider.com/ I would link to the exact product I am mentioning but it's under Products/5.8Ghz because I can't find the exact URL because of their annoying javascript and frames (you'll see what I mean). The exciting thing is that this unit can supposedly be up to 72mbit, it is NOT line of sight and the range is up to 20miles. I wonder how real world speeds and range would actually be and if it is reliable. I j........
  • Adventures in pre-paid SIM Cards and data GPRS/Edge/3G in China with China Mobile in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and other cities


    This really is a difficult and confusing process for non-Mandarin speakers, but here's what I've done and learned so far: You can purchase an "M-Zone" China Mobile pre-paid SIMCard from almost anywhere but I tried to purchase mine from Suning (a large electronics dealer) hoping they would be able to help me or answer my questions but my plan didn't work out at all. At Suning once I found someone who spoke some English they gave me the 55 RMB M-Zone China Mobile P........
  • Clustered/Distributed Network Filesystems, Which Ones live up to the hype?


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  • Rackable Systems and their Microslice Clustered 1U Servers


    Ithink there has been a lot of negative press towards Rackable Systems. We will give their new solution credit that it is marketed very well, and comes prepackaged and ready to go. But let's cut through the hype of both sides, the people who love this concept and the people who hate it. What Rackable Systems have done is a first, to minimize space, power and costs into small servers. This is great, and many companies have already built their own servers based........
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    At this time we can't resolve Enom's website and all DNS requests to their 4 primary name servers are failing, although the hostnames themselves still resolve: Name Server: DNS1.NAME-SERVICES.COM Name Server: DNS2.NAME-SERVICES.COM Name Server: DNS3.NAME-SERVICES.COM Name Server: DNS4.NAME-SERVICES.COM Name Server: DNS5.NAME-SERVICES.COM You would really think Enom, bein........
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