Dynamic DNS IP Retrieval Script

You ever try connecting to your system at home, using a domain name (that has been setup using Dynamic DNS), only to find out that your ISP has, yet again, changed the public IP address to your house? This is very common with DSL setups, but still is a factor with other internet connections such as FIOS, Cable (also known as High Speed Internet, and most definitely dial-up (since dial-up isn’t really used much anymore, I’m not covering that). Of course, there’s those Dynamic DNS providers, which I also use. For example, there’s no-ip.com; with Dynamic DNS applications for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, however, they do not really work all that well with my ISP. My ISP public IP changes a good 12 times a day (no kidding!). No-IP just can’t keep up with my public IP changes, which sucks, cause I pay for that. I’ve written a small shell script to at least notify you when your public IP address has changed, so that, if your dynamic DNS has not propogated, you will at least be able to connect using the IP address. Continue reading Dynamic DNS IP Retrieval Script

Clearing (but not deleting) log files

Sometimes, as a Systems Administrator, or SysAdmin, there are times we need to clear out the log files, without actually deleting them. As a smart Sys Admin, you normally wouldn’t need to do this, but as I am currently involved in supporting customers and their Linux machines, I run into some pretty neat stuff (neat as in special). I’ve had a few issues where someone actually runs out of disk space on / (root filesystem) due to the /var/log directory being full.

First off, you might run the df command only to realize that, maybe, you have used 97% of the partition up, in this case / (root filesystem). More times than not, this is usually due to your /var/log directory. Make sure though, I’m presuming that you already know that your /var/log directory is full. To find out what is taking up the most space (you should already know why, and thus you are viewing this possibly because you are having issues with a full filesystem), you would need to run the df command. Continue reading Clearing (but not deleting) log files