{"id":9148,"date":"2019-04-27T00:05:46","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T00:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/?p=4148"},"modified":"2019-05-03T07:14:57","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T07:14:57","slug":"useful-sysadmin-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/useful-sysadmin-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"Useful sysadmin skills I’ve taught myself recently"},"content":{"rendered":"

GMass is a lean operation, and not only am I the product manager, but I’m also the sysadmin, which means maintaining and keeping watch over a dozen servers<\/strong>. I’ve been managing servers in some capacity for over 20 years now, but here are a few skills I taught myself in the last month<\/strong> that have increased my productivity<\/strong> and made me feel more like a sys-ninja<\/strong> than a sys-admin.<\/p>\n

1. Tailing a log file<\/h3>\n

GMass generates tons of logs.<\/p>\n

There’s IIS log files from our web server, but\u00a0also internal logs created by a plethora of worker EXEs<\/strong> that do everything from sending mail merge campaigns<\/strong> to syncing stats<\/strong> with the campaign reports that you see. I used to open up a log file in Notepad<\/strong>, and then a few minutes later, close it and re-open it<\/strong>, so I could see what progress has been made in those few minutes. No longer. Now I’ve switched to Notepad++<\/a> which has a handy “tail” feature<\/a>. Every few seconds, it checks for changes to the open file and refreshes it. Now I can just stare at my screen and watch the log file scroll by. I feel like Chloe from 24<\/em>.<\/p>\n

2. View just certain lines of a log file<\/h3>\n

I often want to see just log file lines that match some particular string. For example, if I have an abuser on my hands, I’ll isolate the IP address of the abuser, and want to see the web server log file lines matching just that IP address. I used to use Notepad’s “Find” function and search for the IP and scroll through all the matching hits. What’s proven to be much easier is using Notepad++’s “Find all in current document” feature<\/a>, which isolates just the lines that match a particular string. No more endless scrolling through gigs of logs.<\/p>\n

3. Query your text log file like it’s a database table<\/h3>\n

This has been a huge boon for my sanity. Microsoft has a little-known tool called Microsoft Log Parser Studio<\/a> which lets you write SQL SELECT queries against any log files, even ones that haven’t been generated by IIS.<\/p>\n

4. Search for text inside images<\/h3>\n

I take lots of screenshots.<\/p>\n

There’s an error on the server? Screenshot it, so I can research it later.<\/p>\n

Buying something from a shady website? Screenshot it as evidence of my order and the refund policy.<\/p>\n

Booking travel on Expedia? Screenshot it, because their email confirmations never seem to arrive.<\/p>\n

However, after collecting a plethora of screenshots over the years, they’re pretty useless unless I can search them. At the end of 2018, Dropbox released a search function that finds text inside images<\/a>. Since I already use Dropbox to store all my screenshots, this made searching my screenshots a breeze. I did have to upgrade my account from Plus to Professional<\/strong>, and went from $10\/month to $20\/month, but totally worth it.<\/p>\n

5. Emergency notifications\u00a0that wake me up when I’m asleep<\/h3>\n

I’ve used an iPhone as my primary mobile phone for the last five years, mostly because my wife insisted I make the switch<\/strong> because she has one and this way my texts appear the more desired blue instead of the less desirable green. Turns out this wasn’t the best decision as a sysadmin, because Apple’s ecosystem is so “closed”<\/strong>. I need my phone to wake me up when there’s a big problem, like if GMass is entirely down, or if Gmail has made a code change that has broken the GMass extension. I searched and searched and even posed this question on reddit<\/a>, and the home-grown cheap solution I settled on was an Android-based solution. Only Android was capable of doing what I wanted because Android apps are able to read text messages and take actions based on them. iOS is “closed”, meaning a third party non-Apple app has no visibility into text messages. So, I use Android’s FireAlert 2 app<\/a>. I tell it what string to look for in a text, and if found, it sounds an alarm that could wake a sleeping bear during hibernation. I no longer wake up every morning in a rush to check my phone to make sure the servers are up. I can rest confidently knowing that I (and my wife and baby) will be woken up with the screeching sound of a 1,000 decibel alarm<\/strong> if anything goes wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GMass is a lean operation, and not only am I the product manager, but I’m also the sysadmin, which means maintaining and keeping watch over a dozen servers.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2432],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sysadmins"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\r\nUseful sysadmin skills I've taught myself recently<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/useful-sysadmin-skills\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Useful sysadmin skills 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