How to check whether name servers (NS) are propagated in Domain Name Server (DNS)?

Occasionally sysadmins/devops migrate their server to a new server with a new IP address due to server lag/ data loss, you name it. Here our domain name will point to the old IP address. It sometimes take a couple of days to fully get propagated.

There are some network tools like nslookup`/`dig that can help in checking DNS propagation. Let's say your name server (NS) is ns1. example.com:

nslookup - ns1-5-61-24-199.parsdev.net

At prompt type your domain and hit enter:

nillkin24.ir

If it resolves to what you expected then it works. It should give you something like:

Server:     ns1-5-61-24-199.parsdev.net
 Address:    5.61.24.199#53

NOTE: it may still take a while to propagate to the rest of the internet, that's out of your control.

Using dig:

dig @ns1-5-61-24-199.parsdev.net nillkin24.ir

It prints lots of information, you should see ANSWER SECTION with a result like below:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
 nillkin24.ir.       14400   IN  A   5.61.24.199

If you see the correct IP address, it means that it has properly cached by remote name servers.

#sysadmin #nslookup #dig #ns #dns #name_server

You are on a server and all of a sudden you need your public IP address. You can do it using cURL and terminal:

$ curl ifconfig.co
 142.17.150.17

The website will just spit out the IP address with no bullshit around it! It is more specifically used by sysadmins.

#linux #sysadmin #curl #ifconfig #ifconfigco

View open ports without netstat or other tool:

# Get all open ports in hex format
declare -a open_ports=($(cat /proc/net/tcp | grep -v "local_address" | awk '{ print $2 }' | cut -d':' -f2))
# Show all open ports and decode hex to dec
for port in ${open_ports[*]}; do echo $((0x${port})); done

#linux #ports #netstat #tcp #open_ports #sysadmin

How to truncate a log file in Linux:

> logfile

or

cat /dev/null > logfile

If you want to be more eloquent, will empty logfile (actually they will truncate it to zero size). If you want to know how long it "takes", you may use

dd if=/dev/null of=logfile

(which is the same as dd if=/dev/null > logfile, by the way)

You can also use:

truncate logfile --size 0

to be perfectly explicit or, if you don't want to

rm logfile

(applications usually do recreate a logfile if it doesn't exist already).

However, since logfiles are usually useful, you might want to compress and save a copy. While you could do that with your own script, it is a good idea to at least try using an existing working solution, in this case logrotate, which can do exactly that and is reasonably configurable.

#linux #sysadmin #truncate #dd #dev_null #logfile

To get on going processes in mysql client and see which queries are taking longer use:

SHOW PROCESSLIST;

It will show you a table with list of all connection from different hosts (if applicable) and their PID number. You can use this number to kill a process that consumes your server CPU, Memory, etc.:

KILL <pid>;

#mysql #client #kill #processlist #sysadmin #dba #linux

watch linux command is used to run a command at regular intervals.

The command below is the simplest form of watch:

watch YOUR_COMMAND

For instance:

watch df -h

The command above runs df -h (check disk space) every 2 seconds by default.

In order to change the interval:

watch -n 5 df -h

-n or --interval specify update interval in second. The command will not allow quicker than 0.1 second interval.

In case you want to see the differences in your output command use -d or --differences. It wil highlight
when part of your command output changes. For example in our command if disk space usage changes we will see
the new result highlighted.


SIDE NOTE: -h in df command will show a human readable format of disk space in mega byte.


#linux #sysadmin #watch

To make a user as sudoer use usermod as below:

usermod -aG sudo username

If it gives error that sudo group does not exist, use groups to see list of users, it maybe root like below:

usermod -aG root username

#linux #sysadmin #usermod #sudo #sudoer #root

1. List all Open Files with lsof Command

> lsof
 COMMAND    PID      USER   FD      TYPE     DEVICE  SIZE/OFF       NODE NAME
 init         1      root  cwd      DIR      253,0      4096          2 /
 init         1      root  rtd      DIR      253,0      4096          2 /
 init         1      root  txt      REG      253,0    145180     147164 /sbin/init
 init         1      root  mem      REG      253,0   1889704     190149 /lib/libc-2.12.so

FD column stands for File Descriptor, This column values are as below:
- cwd current working directory
- rtd root directory
- txt program text (code and data)
- mem memory-mapped file


To get the count of open files you can use wc -l with lsof like as follow:

lsof | wc -l

2. List User Specific Opened Files

lsof -u alireza
 COMMAND  PID    USER   FD   TYPE     DEVICE SIZE/OFF   NODE NAME
 sshd    1838 alireza  cwd    DIR      253,0     4096      2 /
 sshd    1838 alireza  rtd    DIR      253,0     4096      2 /

#linux #sysadmin #lsof #wc #file_descriptor

Delete elasticsearch indexes older than 1 month:

#!/bin/bash

 last_month=`date +%Y%m%d --date '1 month ago'`
 old_es_index="faxplus_*-$last_month"
 echo "Deleting ES indexes $old_es_index..."
 curl -X DELETE 'http://localhost:9200/myindex_*-20180520'
 echo ''

NOTE: asterisk in curl command will be anything in between of myindex_ and -20180520. For example myindex_module1-20180520.

#linux #sysadmin #bash #script #es #elasticsearch #DELETE #purge

space=$(df -k / | tail -1 | awk '{print $4}')
 echo "free disk space is $space"

 if [ $space -lt 510000 ]
 then
   echo $(date) + " - Purge elasticsearch indexes..."
   curl -X DELETE "http://localhost:9200/your_index_name_*"
   echo ''
 else
   echo $(date) + " - disk space seems OK"
 fi

Put this in a crontab and you are good to go.

#linux #sysadmin #bash #script #df #elasticsearch #es

nethogs is used to monitor network traffic. You can see which processes use the most bandwidth and hogs the network.

Installtion on debian:

apt-get install nethogs

You can give the nethogs a network interface to see what's going on under the hood:

nethogs eth0

The output would something like:

PID USER       PROGRAM                                                       DEV        SENT      RECEIVED
9023 root      python                                                        eth0        6.083     175.811 KB/sec
20745 root     python                                                        eth0        2.449      45.715 KB/sec
11934 www-da.. nginx: worker process                                         eth0      131.580      20.238 KB/sec
25925 root     /usr/bin/python                                               eth0        3.674      10.090 KB/sec

When nethogs is open, you can press r in order to sort based on RECEIVED or press s to sort based on SENT packets. To change the mode that it is shown for KB/sec press m multiple times and see the output.

#network #sysadmin #linux #nethogs #nethog #network #eth0

How to check MongoDB replication lag in Icinga2 and get notified when it is over 15 seconds?

We assume here that you have a replica set in place. First download the python script for our nagios plugin:

cd /usr/lib/nagios/plugins
 git clone git://github.com/mzupan/nagios-plugin-mongodb.git

Now the Icinga2 part. You first need to create a command for replication lag check:

cd /etc/icinga2/conf.d/commands

Create a new file replication_lag.conf:

object CheckCommand "check_replication_lag" {
     import "plugin-check-command"
     command = [ PluginDir + "/nagios-plugin-mongodb/check_mongodb.py", "-A", "replication_lag" ]
     arguments = {
         "-H" = "$mongo_host$"
         "-P" = "$mongo_port$"
     }
 }

Create a new file in services folder called replication_lag.conf:

apply Service for (display_name => config in host.vars.replication) {
     import "generic-service"
     check_command = "check_replication_lag"
     vars += config
     assign where host.vars.replication
 }

This service gets enabled where it finds replication in host config. Now in secondary mongoDB hosts configuration add the below part:

vars.replication["Secondary DB"] = {
     mongo_host = "slave.example.com"
     mongo_port = 27017
 }

#sysadmin #icinga2 #mongodb #replication #replication_lag #nagios_plugin