System

Hello there,

One of the biggest problems of especially system administrators is whether the devices under their responsibility are hardware and software stable. For example, to check if a web server is currently running, it will either check the web page or connect to the server and check the services. However, nowadays, with many applications under the name of developed IT Monitoring, we are able to monitor our system resources with up-down, service, disk, cpu, ram, bat files, and many other control points.

An easy way to keep tabs on your system is through the program top. The top is a little app that can display the processes currently running, how much RAM, processor and how much CPU time they are taking (just like ps aux). First, let’s start off by starting it up.

[root@rd ~]# top

This should bring up a nice looking program that shows us much of what ps aux shows us but updated every second. You can change the time between updates by pressings, then typing in the seconds between updates (Note: you can use decimal numbers like 0.5). To switch to command mode display, hit c, and to sort by CPU time hit T.
The top is very useful in tracking what your resource hogs are, and what your RAM and Swap usage is. Play with it, the top’s a neat little program.

Formatting the new disk

Use the following command to format Linux partitions using ext2fs on the new disk:

mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdb1

To check the disk for bad blocks (physical defects), add the -c option just before /dev/hdb1.

If the new disk will have more than one Linux partition, format the other partitions with mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdb2, mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdb3, and so on. Add the -c option if desired.

Note: With older distributions, the command mkfs -t ext2 -c /dev/hdb1 didn’t check for bad blocks under any of Red Hat, Debian or Slackware, contrary to what the man page stated. This has now been fixed.

A list of Ms-Dos commands and their usage

Attrib Sets the attributes of a file attrib +H -R +S -A new.txt -Sets new.txt to be hidden and a system file, but not read-only or archive
cd Change directory cd C:/data
CLS Clears the screen
Copy a file/ directory copy C:/note.txt C:/data/new.txt
del Delete a file del new.txt
deltree Deletes a directory and all subdirectories DELTREE c: temp
dir Lists all files in a directory
echo Prints to screen echo hello edit Opens to edit program
fdisk Opens the fdisk (disk wiper) program
find Displays all lines in a file containing search term find “hello” new.txt
format Formats a drive format a:
path Sets where dos should look for programs PATH c: windows;c: windows command

One thing to remember about controlling pests, spyware and malware is. . .  there is safety in numbers.  Just as three musketeers are stronger than one, three spyware programs are better than one!

Like it or not, spyware is on your computer.  In fact, according to a National Cyber Security Alliance/AOL study, more than 91% of all PCs connected to the internet are infected with some form of spyware.

Spyware is software or hardware that is installed on your computer without your knowledge.  It gathers information about you to be used by whoever controls the spyware.