NewSourceMedia Blog » Web Servers

Upgrade Server Settings Sync Problem with Perallels Plesk

admin — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:12:27 +0000

Once I upgraded my server increasing RAM from 500 MB to 1 GB and disk space from 20 GB to 30 GB, my plesk panel was out of sync. I check that my server was upgraded viewing Godaddy's default control panel and also logging in to my server via SSH from the terminal running df -h to check disk space and free -m to view memory total / usage. The server had been upgraded so now I had to go about fixing the Plesk pannel to refresh. I spent way too much time on the phone with tech support until they pointed me over to their chat service to get in touch with their VDS experts. Their expert find a refresh button buried in the pannel under the following path: Tools & Utilities > Server Tools > Services management I clicked the green arrows labeled refresh on the lop left. That worked so I thought. The home screen now showed accurate info; however the health monitoring was still out of sync. After sufring around on the web, I found a script on my server that needed kick in the rear. Here's the command I ran in the terminal that forced Plesk into rescanning my server settings: /usr/local/psa/bin/sw-engine-pleskrun /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/scripts/setup-health-monitor.php

Top 10 useful SSH terminal commands.

admin — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 02:30:29 +0000

Now that you have a virtual server setup, you can enjoy the benefits of managing your server as root (super admin). With root level access, you can send commands to your server using a bash terminal. Here are the common commands:

man - stands for manual. Very useful command if you are just getting started with Linux. You can invoke 'man', followed by any other Linux command (cd, for example) and it will display detailed description and list of all available options.
cd - cd is short for 'change directory'. Allows browsing between different folders of your VPS.
cp, mv, rm - great commands for basic file management. You can copy (cp), move (mv) or remove (rm) files/folders this way from your server.
grep - grep permits you to print lines that match a particular pattern. Useful if you are looking for a phrase or or line in a large text file (logs, for example).
ls - allows you to list the content of a directory. Using "ls -la" will also show you hidden files/directories (those starting with a dot) and additional attributes, such as permissions and ownership.
chown, chmod - every file or directory has its own ownerhip rights - user and group. With "chown" you can modify those parameters and "chmod" gives you the ability to change permissions (read, write, execute) for the owner, group and the rest of the users, accessing that file/directory.
nano, vi - "nano" and "vi" are probably the two most popular Linux text editors. You may find "nano" easier to use, while "vi" appears as the preferred editor among more experienced.
top, ps - "top" provides you with a periodic update (every five seconds by defaut) of running Linux tasks, while "ps" takes a snapshot of all current processes and prints it on your screen.
df -h, du -hs - shows you the current overall use of your disk in gygabytes (df -h)."du -hs" calculates the total size of a directory in a human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G).

Here are two bonus commands for checking DESK SPACE and RAM usages: To check out the disk space usage on your server, execute this command: df -h And to see the memory usage: free -m

Change the permissions of a file in SSH

admin — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:31:05 +0000

To change the permissions of a file in SSH, once you have logged in, you can use the CHMOD command. Here are a few common examples of CHMOD: chmod number filename

chmod 600 example.html - This will give the file read and write permissions by the owner only (-rw-------).
chmod 644 example.html - This will give the file read and write permissions by the owner and read by everyone else (-rw-r--r--).
chmod 700 example.html - This will give the file read, write and execute permissions by the owner only (-rwx------).
chmod 755 example.html - This will give the file read, write and execute permissions by the owner, read and execute permissions by the group and others (-rwxr-xr-x)
chmod 666 example.html - This will give the file read and write permissions by everyone(-rw-rw-rw-) (NOT RECOMMENDED)
chmod 777 example.html - This will give the file read, write and execute permissions by everyone (-rwxrwxrwx) (NOT RECOMMENDED)

Changing the ownership

To change the ownership of a file in SSH, you can use the CHOWN command. e.g: chown owner filename

chown user example.html


chown user:group <directory-name>

chown apache avatars

How to backup MySQL Database via SSH

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:44:53 +0000

First you log in using your terminal application by typing the flowing SSH command: ssh yourusername@hostname-or-ipaddress After that, you will be prompted to enter your password. As you enter your password, the text will be hidden. Next we should switch to the "root" user. You can do so by typing the following in your terminal window: su - root You will have to enter a password once more. Now navagate to where you would like to store your MySQL database file. For an example of changing the directory to the "public_html" direcotry, type this: cd /var/www/html_public Now you can back up your db here using the following command. This command will backup all of your databases. I also chose to compress them after the pipe "|" as a gzip file. Type the following but be sure to change the user name and password to your info: mysqldump -u yourusername -p yourpassword --all-databases | gzip >databasebackup.sql.gz You can also target single database using the following: mysqldump -u yourUserName -p yourDBName | gzip >databasebackup.sql.gz

SSH Color Definations For File and Folder Names

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:12:40 +0000

I’ve always wondered what the directory text color representations were after I logged in to my server via SSH. I did a Google search and found that the colors are references to document states: Here’s a simple color chart below:

Executable files: Green
Normal file : Normal
Directory: Blue
Symbolic link : Cyan
Pipe: Yellow
Socket: Magenta
Block device driver: Bold yellow foreground, with black background
Character device driver: Bold yellow foreground, with black background
Orphaned syminks : Blinking Bold white with red background
Missing links ( the files they point to) : Blinking Bold white with red background
Archives or compressed : Red (.tar, .gz, .zip, .rpm)
Image files : Magenta (.jpg, gif, bmp, png, tif)

Side Note: You can also list file and folder permissions by using this command: ls -al /var

Flash and SEO. Why not?

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:43:12 +0000

Google learns to crawl Flash Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files... Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html How to SEO Flash • Search Engines and Flash • Requirements for Successful Use of Flash • SEO Flash Programming • Example: Making Flash Home Page Spiderable • Scalable Inman Flash Replacement Source: http://www.hochmanconsultants.com/articles/seo-friendly-flash.shtml Here are a few comments on this topic from SearchEngineGuide.com: “Stoney, You hit the nail on the head and pounded it down with one stroke. I completely agree, I have turned down clients in my own business due to flash sites. Now that I am with an agency I find Flash more common, as many of the businesses are big enough and niched enough where they feel that they don't need SEO for their website. Oddly enough they are often right. Unfortunately SEO can have a big effect on PPC marketing, and most of these accounts suffer from bad keyword quality scores and thus higher click costs in AdWords.” “Susan: I disagree slightly. Mostly because it all comes down to the intent. Building a flash only website for Ozzy Osbourne is fine, but e-commerce is not. I think you know what I mean” “ Working on seo for hotel sites, I've come across some stunning creative sites designed with Flash. If the designers had thoughtfully used the Flash applications to "wow" site visitors, ie embedding in otherwise SE-friendly pages, it could be a win-win situation. Perhaps all of you have seen the June info about making Flash SE-friendly. ( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html )” Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/why-i-still-wont-seo-flash-websites.php And from SearchEngineJournal.com: “Disney does it. And so does Oprah. Even my favorite pizza place does it... Granted these are extreme cases of sites which use flash extensively, but there are other cases where even a little flash can be improperly used. There are also cases where flash is not only appropriate, it is recommended. The question then becomes how to best use flash without affecting search engine rankings” “Yeah this article doesn’t help a bit. I thought after reading I would be able to find a solution for my all flash website for seo purposes. Thefwa.com is an all flash website, they rank no.1, they didn’t follow your mumbo jumbo about not using too much flash” (Note from Alex: TheFWA.com does not rank no.1. They rank 31,905. Still not bad for an all flash site.) Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/flash-and-seo-using-flash-on-websites/2247/ Cool online tool that will probe a flash file: http://www.flashprobe.com/

A list of htaccess Tutorials

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:30:56 +0000

First off, here are a few samples. The first thing you will need to do is add these two lines at the top of your .htacccess file: Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on RewriteRule: Say you've change from using html files to dynamic PHP files. Instead of changing your nav links to point to php files, you can force all url path that end with .html to .php like so: RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ $1.php RewriteCond (Rewrite Condition) If you have query string in the page and you want them to be carried over to the new page, you have to set a rewrite condition for query strings. The example below first sets the query condition in line one and than redirects from one web page a new web page using in line two. It uses this bit of text "(.+)" to grab the query and "%1" to pass it to the new page: RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (.+) RewriteRule ^webpage.php /new_webpage.php?%1 Convert url directory paths to a query string. RewriteRule (.*) /index.php?paths=$1 Convert url directory paths to a query string using custom folder paths. This one only does it if you're under directory "sell". So if users are under "/sell/computers/mac/" you can send "computers/mac" as the category and do a split on the "/" slash to seperate them. RewriteRule ^sell/(.*) /sell.php?category=$1 ErrorDocument : Here's how to customize or ignore your error messaging. You can do this by targeting a file like this: ErrorDocument 404 /dir/home.html ErrorDocument 403 /custom_error_message.html Here are a few more site I found helpful. Custom HTTP Errors via htaccess: http://perishablepress.com/press/2008/03/18/custom-http-errors-via-htaccess/ Custom dynamic redirecting and rewriting http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php

Disable or Enable Directory Browsing or Indexing

admin — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:22:11 +0000

How to disable directories from browsing or indexing to hide images, and other files from visitors. This give you total control of your web folders to block unwanted viewing using .htaccess files with Apache

Disable or Enable Directory Browsing or Indexing in .htaccess file

Browsing or indexing is an option that allows the contents of a directory to be displayed in the browser when the directory does not contain an index page. For example, if you make an http call to a directory such as http://yourdomain.com/images/, it would list all the images in that directory without the need for an html page with links. We will need to create a blank file called ".htaccess". You can name it "htaccess.txt" while your editing it, then rename the file to ".htaccess" after the file is on your web server.

Disable Directory Browsing or Indexing

Type or copy and past the following line of text in to your blank file. Note: I add the work "All" so that every folder in that directory follows the same rule.

Options All -Indexes

Enable Directory Browsing or Indexing

You can reactivate it by adding the following line to your .htaccess file:

Options +Indexes

Once this is added, the directory will fully index again.