[lonesome_wolf2000]

Hello.

I'm back again.....lol .....with more problems.


As some of you know, I'm partial admin to a local ISP.
I have been reading up on some Linux Material as well as some other topics.

Please remember that the ISP I work for consists of about 600+ users, 2 employees (Me, and the guy who makes out the bills).
And we live in a town of about 11-1200 people.

There are other owners in the business but it is really the 2 of us that keep things going. The other guy runs a repair shop and leaves the technical stuff up to me.

I'm no professional AT ALL!! :P

I am trying to learn as much as I can, however, my duties here at work seem to be......out of place???

Here's the situation.



I'm here at the ISP office 6 days a week. I handle tech calls from users having problems, as well as troubleshoot/fix some machines that users bring in to me.

As far as Administering the server, I handle new account signups, managing directories/ setting up new websites, troubleshoot maildirectory problems/account usage, etc.

During my time working here, I was giving a list of commands that were designed to make the admin job a little easier.

These commands scripted out nearly everything i needed to do listed above. From setting up new users to deleting them to adding new domains.



There is one other guy that my bosses call on to handle major problems/updates/etc. He is offsite as he works for some larger networking company. They just pay him so much money per call to do what they want him to.

I was doing some reading involving things to watch out for/do's & don'ts/tips & tricks involving keeping the server going. I figured since i'm the only one that is hired to do this kinda job (in office), I should be the one to do what needs to be done from day to day.

I'm unable to find where (nor how) to configure the ip tables at nor anything else that may be able to be tweaked to help speed things up.

Any Ideas?


Also, here's some more background... When I was hired for this job, no one was able to tell me how things were configured, what settings for each user did what, etc. I was left in the dark. I've read up on standard installs of Linux Mandrake, Apache Server, and Routing how-to's, but nothing seems to match up to the system..... everything's out of place (probably for security) and no one will tell me where they are.

The guy I replaced basically told me to just sweep the floor and deal with the customers and you wont have to worry about anything. Which is fine, but I don't feel that the title 'admin' is fitting too well to my job and I know some users are having difficulties.....and when it breaks, it's up to me to fix it. And with just a few custom scripts I may not be able to.....

Am I just being way over paranoid?
Do I need to dig further into the system?

I'm starting to feel really in the dark about some concepts.


In other words.......I need job security!! Anyone got pointers?

[codejockey]

First of all, kudos for wanting to do more than just "run the scripts". Running the scripts is fine as far as it goes, but the truth is it doesn't go very far. We've all had to deal with tech support that had no real idea what they were doing, and just ran through a series of canned responses and procedures.
OK, that said, a couple of questions by way of clarification:

(1) which ip tables are you trying to modify (routing tables, ipchains/masquerading tables, host/domain tables, etc.)?

(2) what makes you think you need to modify them (what problem are you trying to solve)? -- you allude to performance issues -- is this the problem?

There are also a few commands that may help you to locate files on your system:

which -- searches your PATH for the location of a file and prints it (optionally all locations) on stdout. At the command line, try which httpd to find the location of your http server, for example. Drawbacks: you must know the name of the file you are searching for; only searches locations in your PATH environment variable.

type -- a Bourne/Korn/Bash shell built-in; displays how the specified word would be interpreted as a command; useful for identifying aliases and options that you may not be aware of. For example, at the command line try type ls; on my system, the output is: ls is aliased to `/bin/ls $LS_OPTIONS' which shows that ls is aliased and uses the environmental variable LS_OPTIONS whenever I execute it. Drawbacks: not available in all shells.
apropos -- displays list of commands related to the one you specify. At the command line, try: apropos route to see the commands (and man page references) for commanding related to "route".

find -- searches specified directory tree for files matching specified pattern. For example, at the command line try: find / -name "*route*" and wait a bit. You should see a list of every file on your system that contains the word "route". Note: you must use the double quotes.

You are not being paranoid (and a paranoid admin is probably a good thing, anyway!). The more you learn, the better you will be able to do your job, and to help those that depend on you. Don't fall for the line that "you don't have to know anything, the scripts/programs/IDE/compiler (fill-in-your-favorite here) will take care of everything". Besides, someday you want to be the guy writing those scripts, not just running them.

Hope this helps.

[lonesome_wolf2000]

Thanks for the info much appreciated, believe me.


The ip tables i was referring to would be the routing tables. I have heard from a reliable source that many of our users sometimes have trouble accessing certain websites.

I.E. User types in " www.website.com " waits.....waits....and either it will show up or they have to hit the refresh button

The same user tried it on another service and it opened instantly. This tells me that there could be a bottleneck here somewhere.

Right now the only service that our business offers is dial-up internet; which is fine for our area, however, wireless & cable internet have moved into town, and we are slowly losing customers to these faster technologies.

I have talked to several others involved with the business and right now I don't see us offering anything new in the near future.

So every user is golden to us. And I think once i figure this stuff out, things should go much smoother.

I'll check out those commands and then post back with results.

Thanks Again.

[lonesome_wolf2000]

Ok, here's what I got:



which httpd:: gave me a single path.....to sbin/httpd directory


type ls:: gave me "ls is aliased to 'ls -F --color=auto'"

apropos route:: gave me:

-NETLINK_ROUTE [rtnetlink] (4) - Linux IPv4 routing socket
-NETLINK_ROUTE [rtnetlink] (7) - Linux IPv4 routing socket
-in.rdisc [rdisc] (8) - network router discovery daemon
-route (8) - show / manipulate the IP routing table
-routed (8) - network routing daemon
-traceroute (8) - print the route packets take to network host

[sysmxm]

I just joined. From personal experience, I would like to suggest that you check out what has been done to make your server(s) recoverable. Since you are there day-to-day, you may very well have a daily (or weekly!, monthly! etcra) task to swap and label a tape or cdrom, or maybe there are backups going on some other way (direct to a second hard disk?)

As far as keeping the place operating, knowing what backups are made, and at least something about them will go far when something breaks (difference between recovery in a few hours vs many days or going out of business.

You are supporting 600 accounts. I am supporting ... I don't know ... 54 machines, but I have a team to pull me out if I screw up. Documenting some of the basics may be helpful, especially if you are generally on your own - be ready to help the consultant if he has to come in for a recovery.

Hope this was helpful without being scary..

[lonesome_wolf2000]

Yes the posts were all helpful.


As far as the backups go. There is a backup server. It backs up to tape every hour on the hour.

[lonesome_wolf2000]

btw... welcome to TSG