Questions tagged [maintenance]

38 questions
131
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3 answers

How to renew an expired keypair with gpg

What is the best way to renew a gpg key pair when it got expired and what is the reason for the method? The key pair is already signed by many users and available on public servers. Should the new key be a subkey of the expired private key? Should…
Jonas Stein
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50
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1 answer

Systemctl remove unit from failed list

How can I remove a unit from the systemctl --failed list without rebooting the machine? Background: I have, amongst others, the following entry in the list: ● [email protected] loaded failed failed OpenVPN service for intranert This…
Richard Neumann
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34
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4 answers

What doesn't need defragmentation? Linux or the ext2 ext3 FS?

Why don't you have to defrag a Linux system? Because it's using the ext2/ext3 file system, or because it's Linux? That's relevant, for I have a double boot system (W7 / Ubuntu) and a common partition (NTFS) that can be accessed by both system. If…
xyz
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10
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7 answers

How to tidy up the .keywords file on a gentoo system?

One can select testing packages on a gentoo stable system by adding a line with the following syntax to keywords list: cat /etc/portage/package.keywords =dev-python/ipython-0.13.2 ~amd64 # and many lines later =dev-python/ipython-0.14.1 ~amd64 # and…
8
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1 answer

Linux tool to track directory space over time

Are there any common Linux tools that track disk space over time, not just a filesystem overall, but for example, so I could easily see which directory trees swelled up and shrunk historically? The problem happens on servers which seem to keep…
Marcos
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8
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1 answer

How to find out what turned off the computer?

Yesterday, after getting back home I found out my computer is turned off. Since it appeared it was cold shutdown (a lot of disk repairs were shown during boot up) I am wondering what was the cause. For this particular shutdown I probably won't…
greenoldman
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6
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1 answer

Remove unnecessary configuration folders

Many applications create a hidden folder in /home/user. I've tested many applications that I later uninstalled. Is there a way to check which folders have been left behind in my home folder by applications no longer installed on the system?
To Do
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4
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1 answer

How to become a Linux source code maintainer?

According to this link, when changes to the Linux source code are submitted, they are reviewed by a hierarchy of maintainers, eventually concluding with Linus himself. How does one become such a maintainer? (Context: I'm teaching a class about the…
user372803
4
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1 answer

Can servers be synchronised to share the same configurations?

I have three VPS' running on separate hosts. They've had CentOS 5 installed on them at various points and I assume all run with slight variations of Webmin, PHP, MySQL etc. I've started to notice slight differences in how each server does tasks that…
James
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3
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2 answers

Small company Linux server maintenance update practices

What is a secure update plan for web-facing servers when the person tasked with administration cannot allocate significant time to testing each updated package for breakage? Of course I want to update the LAMP stack regularly for security reasons,…
dotancohen
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3
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1 answer

What causes wtmp to be cleared?

I noticed that on one of my machines the last command returned nothing. I determined the cause of this to be an empty /var/log/wtmp file. What would cause this to be empty? I assume the "tmp" means temporary, but what and where decides how temporary…
qq4
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3
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1 answer

List all keys with SHA-1 in the gpg keyring

After reading a paper about "First Chosen-Prefix Collision on SHA-1 and Application to the PGP Web of Trust", I wonder how many SHA-1 keys are left in specific key rings. How to list all keys in a gpg key ring, which use SHA-1?
Jonas Stein
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3
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1 answer

How to recompile everything efficiently on a Gentoo Linux system?

After the upgrade from gcc-5.x to gcc-6.4 all Gentoo Linux users were advised to run emerge -e @world which will recompile all packages on a system and takes on my i7 with 16 GB around 30 h in theory. This will work in some simple situations, but…
Jonas Stein
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3
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1 answer

List all packages on a Gentoo system, which were not recompiled since a date

A system change (like gcc, perl, python, qt... update) can demand that many packages have to be rebuilt. This ends often in a world rebuild with # emerge --ask --emptytree --verbose @system # emerge --ask --emptytree --verbose @world In a world…
Jonas Stein
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2
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1 answer

Halt purpose: What does "you can perform low level maintenance" mean?

About halt in Linux in these places: What is the difference between the shutdown, halt and reboot commands? Understanding Shutdown, Poweroff, Halt and Reboot Commands in Linux What is halt command in Linux? Indicate the following: halt is usually…
Manuel Jordan
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