I called a popular hosting provider today to talk with them about getting a client's server order straightened out, as my client wasn't able to make progress on a few issues. However, the account was set up in my client's name only, which made the provider reluctant to assist me. I can understand that from a security standpoint, they can't hand out information on the phone to just anyone, but still, the account rep sounded like I was wasting his time and couldn't wait to get off the phone.

(FYI the account was set up in the client's name so that they bill the client, not me.)

So here are some tips:

Tip for developers: When your client gets web hosting, make sure that you are listed as the technical contact (or a secondary technical contact), and that your client is listed as the administration & billing contact. This may require you being on the phone while the client places the order, or perhaps they can email server specs (provided by you) to the sales rep. Or I guess you could set up the order & then have the sales rep contact your client to switch the billing from you to them.

Tip for hosting providers: If a new client's webmaster calls about an order, treat them like a new customer, not some prank caller.

I do more & more Linux work from the shell, and it's starting to grow on me. ;)

I used to search through files using this command

find . | xargs grep -s 'keyword'

but now & again get errors like xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option

So I found this command works instead

find . -printf '"%p"\n' | xargs grep -s 'keyword'

or you can make a handy shell script (e.g. search.sh) like this

#!/bin/bash

find . -printf '"%p"\n' | xargs grep -s "$1"

and then search files like

search.sh 'keyword'

I was unable to temporarily stop AVG antivirus in Vista until I saw this tip from highmastodon:

1. Shut down AVG Control Center by right-clicking the AVG icon in your taskbar & choosing Quit.
2. Now click the Vista start button and type "AVG" in the search box. AVG Control Center should appear.
3. Right-click AVG Control Center and choose "Run as Administrator"
4. Now you can open up AVG Control Center, double-click Resident Shield, uncheck "Turn On Resident Shield", and save the changes.

So apparently if I start a blog post but don't submit it within an hour or two my session times out & I lose the post. Nice.

Anyhow, performance has been terrible with VS2008 inside of Virtual PC. CPU is pegged, 30 seconds to load pages, you know the drill.

So here are some tips to improve performance.

1. Don't use Virtual PC. Instead, run VS2008 on VMWare or your own computer, and have it access all CPU cores.
2. Get good hardware. Quad-core CPUs, 3+gb RAM, fast disks (especially in a RAID 0 arrangement).
3. Install the VS2008 Performance Patch. It didnt' help me, but it might help you.
4. Make sure your anti-virus is ignoring your VM & compile folders.
5. Change your <compilation tempDirectory="" /> to point to a very fast drive, like a RAM drive.
6. Ensure VS2008 is running multiple parallel builds under the Tools->Options->Projects & Solutions->Builds & Compilation. The default is only 1 build at a time, but you can run more if you have a multi-core CPU.

SliceHost and Affordable Linux Hosting

I'm trying out a new provider, SliceHost, for the upcoming Portland Open Coffee Club and Portland Open Beer Club web sites. SliceHost provides fast & affordable Linux VPSes with a variety of distros to choose from.

The one downside (for me at least) is that the distros come with nothing installed. Well, I shouldn't say nothing (since SSH is on there), but no database, no web server, no ftp, no PHP, no mail. I was surprised when I first uncovered this, since I ordered an Ubuntu 8.04 server VPS & figured it would have a normal LAMP stack installed. But no, it's a minimal Linux install. That's so if you have specific needs, you can install exactly what you want & avoid installing anything you don't. But if you're more of a programmer than a sysadmin ... well, you may want to check out RimuHosting for a VPS. Great support, nice VPSes, good upgrade path, & the boxes are ready for your PHP code.

Or if you want a bit more hand-holding, you can go with GoDaddy or Dreamhost. GoDaddy's support is meh, but they're easy to get started with and are fine for a small site. Dreamhost has better support, but recently I had a really bad performance experience with them & canceled my account.

So anyhow, this wasn't supposed to all be about affordable Linux hosting providers -- I was also going to mention securing SSH. 

Securing SSH

I've been following PickledOnion's great Ubuntu setup guide, and it mentioned securing SSH by moving it to a different port (other than port 22). You can basically edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config, change the port number at the top, and then restart ssh with /etc/init.d/ssh restart.

Note: once you change the port, don't log out of SSH right away! Instead, open a new SSH window & try connecting to your box on the new port. If it doesn't work, you can go back to your previous still-open SSH window & troubleshoot.

Another option in /etc/ssh/sshd_config is to disallow root access, which is definitely a good idea. Although, if you end up SUDOing users so they have access to everything, then it doesn't protect as much as you think, since someone who can log in as you could do almost as much damage as root, including editing /etc/ssh/sshd_config to switch the ports to something different and allow root back in.

An additional way to secure SSH is to edit your firewall to block most IPs from accessing SSH, and block any unneeded ports. I'll refer you to the setup guide again ... scroll down & you'll see the section on iptables.

BTW, experienced Linux admins probably already know the above tips (plus more!), but I figured there's a lot of people getting into Linux admin work these days, so some basic admin knowledge doesn't hurt.