There are many people and companies that due to the coronavirus crisis (Covid-19) are being forced to adopt different forms of remote working these days. As an architect of cloud solutions (Cloud Computing) and freelance system administrator I have been working this way successfully for many years, so some of them are asking me during the last days advice on what strategies to follow and what useful applications exist to manage to telecommuting efficiently. That is why I decided to go a step further and write this article in which I compile a series of recommendations and tools that I hope will help many people who are forced to perform their work remotely from home in these new coronavirus era. However I also hope all those people and companies that see an opportunity in all this and choose to bet definitely for remote work, either partially or fully, will find it useful too.
Linux remote control from your smartphone via SSH button widgets
In this post I will tell you about an Android app that is extremely useful to run commands remotely on a Linux computer: Hot Button SSH Command Widget. This application allows you to launch conveniently any command you want on a remote computer through SSH only with the push of a button on the screen of your mobile phone or tablet. This not only will facilitate automation of repetitive tasks, but also is very interesting from the perspective of security for the same reasons I exposed in my Automatically lock/unlock your screen by Bluetooth device proximity post. It will allow you for example to lock and unlock the screen without having to type your password again and again in sight of other people.
How to exclude your own [dynamic] ip from Google Analytics
In my 5 ways to exclude your own visits from Google Analytics post I discussed the 5 main methods that exist to prevent visits you make to your own websites are tracked by Google Analytics, each with its pros and cons. However, I found it necessary to further expand the first of those methods, which in my opinion is the best possible way to exclude your own internal traffic from Google Analytics based on your IP address, whether fixed or dynamic. It allows you not only to block yourself but also filter the activity of all members on your own team or company, which is of utmost importance to avoid any interference with data collected from real user activity.
And I say Google Analytics because it is the main actor in this market, but this same method is perfectly suitable for any other web analytics tool like Piwik, Clicky, OWA, Clicktale, StatCounter, Kissmetrics, Mouseflow and many others.
Fatrace command: how to know in real time which processes are writing to a file
It is usually easy to know which process or processes are writing to a given file in Linux, since we either know its origin and its nature beforehand (for example the Apache access_log), or we can easily find it out with the fuser or lsof commands. However, sometimes it will happen that although we know the role and purpose of a file, there are so many applications accesing it simultaneously that it is very difficult to know which of them is the one that reads/writes the most or does so in a precise moment. Knowing this would be very useful to learn for example why a log file is growing excessively or which application is making an abusive use of system resources, either by mistake or intentionally.
15 most useful Linux commands for file system maintenance
One of the most common and tedious tasks of a sysadmin is to prevent file systems become completely full, because when a server runs out of space the consequences are unpredictable. Depending on how you structured the root file system and if it is divided into different partitions or volumes, those consequences will be more or less severe, but in any case undesirable.
5 ways to exclude your own visits from Google Analytics
It is quite annoying that our Google Analytics traffic statistics are adversely affected by our own visits or those of any member of our team (internal traffic). Even more in early stages of websites, while still receives little traffic and our activity is a greater percentage compared to the total activity. Not only modifies appreciably the number of visits per se, but also the number of page views per visit, bounce rate and average time spent per user among many other parameters. This makes sense, as it is when we spend more time reviewing each and every one of our web pages or performing unfinished development tasks.
1-click automatically open a Keepassx database
Those who use the tool KeePassX (KeePass clone for Linux and Mac OS X) to safely save passwords and login details at one single place will have seen many times on the need for rapid access to their repository of passwords with a single click. However, by default when accessing KeePassX none repository is open, or one is open that does not correspond to the one we want to check, so often it’s necessary to browse the file system to locate and select the corresponding file. If in addition to a master password we use a key file to improve security, we have to repeat the same process over and over again to locate and select the key file.
How to know how many cores and processors has a Linux box
The simplest and shortest method to measure the number of processors present on a Linux box, which is also widely extended as it’s part of coreutils is: