Day to day admin on a Linode

I usually change the CPU oil every 20,000 gig or so (just to be safe).

Good admin's script it then forget it. Unless I get an email saying something needs attention, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to it (ymmv).

I know some admin's love to pour over those logs, but really, it's like looking at a wind screen after a long evening drive in the country and being surprised there's smashed bugs.

Only thing that jumps the queue is zero day exploits (or other severe security patches), those get patched when they're announced.

Long as those nightly emails saying "project "xyz" backup successful" keep rolling in, there's not that much to worry about.

I know this isn't particularly helpful but I have mine configured to check for and automatically install security related updates (and email me when it happens), and have Linode Backup enabled for backups.

I often go weeks without logging into the server via SSH and it doesn't cause trouble, but when I'm on I try to run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, which of course is only applicable to Debian/apt based distros.

Soo I think as long as you configure everything correctly it shouldn't give you much trouble.

@jerzzp:

I know this isn't particularly helpful but I have mine configured to check for and automatically install security related updates (and email me when it happens), and have Linode Backup enabled for backups.

I often go weeks without logging into the server via SSH and it doesn't cause trouble, but when I'm on I try to run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, which of course is only applicable to Debian/apt based distros.

Soo I think as long as you configure everything correctly it shouldn't give you much trouble.

Are these scripts custom made or are there general admin scripts available that I can tailor to my particular details?

I am assuming you sign up to an email list for whatever flavour of Linux you are using?

https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/servergui … dates.html">https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/automatic-updates.html For automatic apt updates. It's a built in feature but you have to configure it. It updates & sends out the emails.

I don't subscribe to an email list really, but I keep an eye on things.

Thanks for the help! I have heard nothing but good things about Linode but jumping from a managed solution to an unmanaged one is a pretty big jump. But I think anything I learn will be beneficial in the long run so its all good.

I don't like having updates automatically installed. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes an updated package will cause problems. I set up cron to run a script like this periodically (this is for CentOS, but it should be easy to modify for any other distro). When it e-mails me that updates are available, I log in and apply them manually.

You could also subscribe to the distro's security update mailing list (CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu) to get notices.

Yeah, if you're running anything absolutely critical I wouldn't have automatic updates.

I've configured it to only install security updates, and it emails me when that happens and I also have monitoring of services setup.

In 4+ years I've never had a security update cause me any downtime or grief, but even if it did, I'd be notified right away.

Even when installing updates manually you take that risk, you're just able to deal with it on the spot. I suppose I run the risk of not being around to fix a problem as it comes up, but again I'm not running anything that can't suffer a little bit of downtime.

(If I were it'd be HA anyways)

I use apticron (http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/apticron) to receive emails about security updates. That's the only maintenance I do in my VPS.

Thanks for all the responses! Much appreciated. Great forum.