Coredump

Er, not really. Just trying to find out what sites are frequently visited, then attempt to tune the proxy to efficiently cache these sites. Eherm.

Dowloaded squidview to Maui. It’s a nice real-time Squid access.log viewer, with reports even for individual users, etc. But it’s not really what I need. I want cumulative reports on top sites and users, how long users stay on a site, what sites are denied, where does the proxy miss, stuff like that.

Downloaded and installed SARG — the Squid Analysis and Report Generator. I edited the SARG cron entries to email daily reports to me and set the weekly and monthly reports as HTML. Note that these scheduled jobs are to be run as root. Gave SARG a test run, looking fine, generated a report for the day. Cool.

For the rest of the day, I tried to make sense of the network infrastructure. The place has 11 servers (Web, mail, LDAP, SMS, AV, PDC, SQL), six of which run Linux (from RH7.3 to RH9). It has two leased line connections, one from the Agriculture and Fisheries Research and Development Information System (AFRDIS) and the other from the Philippine Research, Education and Government Information NETwork (PREGINET). It has two dedicated video-conferencing materials. It has wireless, fiber and copper backbones connecting the campus. It also provides internet access to the Science Community.

I don’t want to be overwhelmed, so I focus on my tasks. There are other things to tackle, but I’m reserving that for later, once I get the lay of the land.

Problem: internet access on the network is getting slow.

Possible causes: a filled-up proxy cache; lots of users accessing at the same time; a poorly tuned cache.

Solution: tune the proxy.

Requested for a user account to the proxy server. Her name’s Maui — the proxy, that is. Turns out the current admins access Maui as root. Bad, bad. So I made off with the user account, asked for the root account and promptly disabled SSH login through it, create a sudoers file, added my user account to the wheel group, and enabled that group to sudo.

Back at my workstation, I fired up puTTY SSH (nice tool, puTTY — will try to do a review on it later on) and got into Maui. (Er, for the feminists out there, I’d like to remind you that the naming conventions of the servers are not mine. I would have preferred “Liv” or “Natalie” or even “Paris”. *shrugs*)

The squid.conf looks pretty lean, but the cache_mem directive is a bit too large, so I set it down. The ACL is a bit rudimentary. Will have to check the access log to see what sites the users are visiting. No, this isn’t to snoop on users, but to determine a metrics so frequently visited sites can be cached more efficiently.

Took me the rest of the day groping Maui. She’s not a complex system, just boilerplate RH9 Linux 2.4.20-8. Memo to self: upgrade Maui and her components.

The sun was up when I stepped out of the shuttle service vehicle. It was my first day at work; I was early; things were looking up.

After less than a month of applying for this new job, taking the exams-and-interviews route, and actually getting it, I’ve finally made it here.

My contract terms-of-reference include management of several servers, maintenance of a website, evaluation of open source content management systems, and the eventual redesign of the corporate intranet. (The pay was less than what I expected, but to be fair, I’d go for this one because of several other factors other than compensation.)

So I tucked in to my cubicle — sheesh! after copious readings of Dilbert, I end up cooped in one! — and set up my workstation. Nothing much: it’s got Windows XP on a Pentium 4 with 1GB memory and a 40GB hard disk. Will have to repartition the hard disk and install Linux for dual boot. (I miss my Compaq Evo desktop with a TFT monitor, though.)

Alrighty then: everything is in place. Off I go.

“Brainbench is offering all tests for free from 1 - 14 July 2004,” read an email. I have nearly forgotten having a Brainbench account until that message. But at the words “FREE” and “ALL”, I swiftly clicked on the given link and opened it on a new tab. Nothing like freebies to get me going.

(I completely forgot my Brainbench account password so I had to have it mailed to me, but after that, I was in.) Hmmm… what tests to take? I proceeded to their Job Role Center to select a exam track for particular job roles. “Network Administrator” and “Web Administrator” sounded nice, so…

A couple of exams later, tadah!

Whew! I was hot! Funny how Google comes through when you’re in a bit of a conundrum. Hehe.

Now, I’m not implying that I cheated. It did say in the exams that I can consult online or print documentation, but I only did that when I had head-scratchers, like “What is the advantage of RIP version 2 over the first one?” I couldn’t find an answer to that off the top of my head. Even Mr. Google was a bit ambiguous about that, and other questions along that line.

Anyway: the free tests were God-sent. I’m in the process of beefing up my resume for this new job I’m targetting. I know that web-based exams still have far to go on being credible as certifications go, but still, the exams I took could be a gauge of some sort — they were not peanuts, at least for me, and passing them was an achievement.