What I do in case nothing is working and I want to repair my system?

/etc/init.d/psa stopall
umount -a
xfs_check /dev/md1
xfs_repair /dev/md1
xfs_check /dev/md5
xfs_repair /dev/md5
xfs_check /dev/md6
xfs_repair /dev/md6
xfs_check /dev/md7
xfs_repair /dev/md7
xfs_check /dev/md8
xfs_repair /dev/md8
mount /dev/md1 /mnt
mount /dev/md6 /mnt/var
mount /dev/md5 /mnt/usr
mount /dev/md7 /mnt/home
mount /dev/md8 /mnt/srv
chroot /mnt
/etc/init.d/psa start

Obviously, the above commands must match the existing partitioning on your root server.

How to see the last commands in the system for the current user (or any user)?

less ~/.bash_history

or

history

Note: These two will work ONLY is history hasn’t be set to 0 (like for instance issuing a >.bash_history or export HISTSIZE=0

How can I allow ftp upload resume?

vi /etc/proftpd.conf
/etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Who is using the memory?

top

Where to tune Apache?

/etc/apache/httpd.conf
/etc/apache/server-tunning.conf

Where are Apache logs?

/var/log/apache2

How can I show IPs in case of the bot attack?

netstat -nt

Show unique ips TCP

netstat -anp |grep ‘tcp’ | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Show unique ips UDP

netstat -anp |grep ‘udp’ | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

How can I ban an IP in IP tables?

iptables -I INPUT -s 217.218.36.11 -j DROP

How can I backup the MySql database?

mysqldump –user=admin –password=SSSS –create-options database_name > /tmp/database_name.sql
or
mysqldump -user=admin –password= SSSS –all-databases -p –create-options | bzip2 -c > databasebackup.sql.bz2
or
mysqldump -uadmin -pSSSS –all-databases –create-options | bzip2 -c > databasebackup2.sql.bz2

Note: It is strongly recommended to stop MySQL prior to launch the commands above.

How can I import the MySql database?

mysql -uadmin -pSSSS database_name < /tmp/database_name.sql

Note: If the –create-options parameter has been given when the databases were dumped, databases will be automatically imported when importing

How can I rebuild the Webalizer stats?

rm -f /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
touch /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
chown root:root /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
chmod 644 /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
stat -f /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
cd /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/statistics

How can I restart the MySql?

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

How can I do remote backup?

/usr/local/psa/bin/pleskbackup all ftp://username:password@backup.onlinehome-server.info/httpdocs/backup.file

What about a complete big backup?

/usr/local/psa/bin/pleskbackup all allbackup.file
tar czf /srv/www/vhosts backup

How to tar a folder (with all sub-folders and files)?

tar czf /volumes/myexternaldrive/backup01.tgz myfolder

How do I extract a file?

tar -xzvf MyArchive.tgz Source_file
or
tar –extract –gunzip –verbose –file=MyArchive.tgz Source_file
tar xzvf /volumes/myexternaldrive/backup01.tgz myfolder/subfolder/thefiletorestore

How to install SOAP extension for php 5?

rpm -Uvh ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/SuSE-Linux/i386/update/10.2/rpm/x86_64/php5-soap-5.2.0-12.x86_64.rpm

How to launch an sql against the database?

mysql -uadmin -pparola baza_date < /srv/www/vhosts/domeniu.com/httpdocs/clean.sql

What version of Linux I am using?

cat /proc/version
cat /etc/issue

or version specifc:

cat /etc/redhat-release
cat /etc/debian_version

Root viruses check – Rhunter

wget http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/rkhunter/rkhunter-1.3.4.tar.gz
tar -xzvf rkhunter-1.3.4.tar.gz
cd rkhunter-1.3.0.tar.gz
./installer.sh –layout /usr/local –install

add RHunter in cronjob
vi /etc/cron.daily/rkhunter.sh
and add
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/rkhunter -c | mail -s “RKhunter Scan Details” email@domain.com
exit 0

Root viruses check – chkrootkit

wget –passive-ftp ftp://ftp.pangeia.com.br/pub/seg/pac/chkrootkit.tar.gz
tar xvfz chkrootkit.tar.gz
cd chkrootkit-/
./chkrootkit

netstat -an |grep “[.:]${465}[^0-9.]”
netstat -e -p
netstat -a |grep 4000

netstat -e -p -n -a | grep 465
ps ax | grep 3456

How to change the SSH port?

vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config (change to the port 8993)
/etc/rc.d/sshd restart

How to limit the wrong longins (3 mins SSHD)?

iptables -A INPUT -m tcp -p tcp –dport 8993 -m state –state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m tcp -p tcp –dport 8993 -m state –state NEW -m limit –limit 2/min –limit-burst 2 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m tcp -p tcp –dport 8993 -j DROP

How to list applications connected to Internet and the ports used?

netstat -lptu

How to search a file?

find / -name pleskbackup

or faster if you’ve created an indexed database of files. First run updatedb (and have it scheduled to run from time to time, daily if there aren’t many files or weekly if there are many files) and once the database has been created (and updated) you can simply type: locate filename

For full paths of commands in your path you can use: which filename

How to find the biggest files in the HDD?

du -a /var | sort -n -r | head -n 10
find . -type f -size +500000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk ‘{ print $9 “: ” $5 }’
rm -rf /fisier

How to deactivate ZMD?

/var/lib/zmd/zmd.db
ps -axfu | grep parse-metadata
kill -9 32323
rm /var/lib/zmd/zmd.db
/etc/init.d/novell-zmd start

How to find the users with rights to log into the system?

cat /etc/passwd |grep -v nologin | cut -d: -f1

Who is logged in the system?

w
who -a
users
last (includes also users that have logged since the last time the database has been initialized)
grep sshd /var/log/messages

Bad cases, harddisk is crashed, no boot (needs physical access to the server)

fsck -fCV /dev/md1
mount /dev/md1 /mnt
chroot /mnt
lilo (kinda obsoleted, grub is the standard bootloader nowadays)
exit
umount /mnt

How to check the harddisk partitions?

fdisk -l

How can I see errors in logs?

tail -n 500 /var/log/messages
tail -f /var/log/messages
tail -f /var/log/mail.info
tail -f /var/log/warn
tail -f /var/log/mail.err
tail -f /var/log/mail.warn
tail -f /var/log/apache2/access_log
tail -f /var/log/apache2/error_log

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Webmaster manual for a root server

Pros:

1. I talked with Andy Brice and some other guys I already knew: Tarek, Jean Francoise and also new guys from RU, CR, Malta
2. I am thinking on going on Russian and Chinese market and Olga si Vladislav from SoftKey.ru will help me in this effort
3. I hat a surprise in the end to see that Press Release Submitter was suggested for the Epsilon Award

Cons:

1. Less iSVs comparing with the last years
2. Track-ul 2 was hard to find
3. The number of sponsors decreased, I would like next time to see also Embarcadero

Here are the presentation I saw, as soon I have a link or a download I will update this blog:

• Alwin Hoogerdijk – The Art of Ignoring
• Gilles Pardon, Softdatabase – Developing successful business in China
• Andy Brice, successfulsoftware.net – Marketing for microISVs – embracing the “dark” side?
• Laurentiu Ghenciu, Avangate – 5 Tried and tested ways to increase conversion rates
• Adriana Iordan, Avangate – How to Monitor and Protect Your Reputation Online
• Dave Collins, SharewarePromotions – Advanced Google AdWords
• Johanna Buckentin Senior Director, DR globalDirect – Site Testing: How to Optimize Your Site to Increase Your Sales
• Robert Martin, Infacta – Email Marketing – Engaging with your Audience
• Alwin Hoogerdijk – Web-Apps: The End for Software Downloads?
• Tetyana Franke – Share-it! – How and Why Does an Email Campaign Work? – Top tips to effective email campaign
• Raj Barman, Acutrack Incorporated – Increase Revenue By Implementing a Backup CD/DVD Solution
• Dave Collins, SharewarePromotions – An A to Z of online marketing
• Peter Kirchner, Microsoft Deutschland GmbH – Seamless integration in Windows 7 – the path towards application compatibility
• Dmitry Starostenkov, Perpetuum Software – Merging of ISV and custom development companies: benefits of cross-selling
• Olga Blazhevich & Vladislav Elizarov, Softkey – The Russian Software market

Thank you Dave and Cristian for the photos bellow.

My presentation “100 SEO methods to optimize your software site” was based on a “blog carnival” named 100 methods to obtain links (Romanian). Here is bellow the English version adapted for the conference:

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

ESWC 2009 – European Software Conference 2009

Related posts:

1. ESWC (European Software Conference) 2007
2. European Software Conference 2008 (ESWC 2008)
3. Submit Suite Sponsors 2007 European Software Conference

Google has released a few days ago in an official post a 22 page PDF document outlining recommendations for web site optimization rules. The basic guide is touching a number of basic elements, such as titles, meta descriptions, no follow link attributes, hyphen etc.

You can download and read the Google SEO starte guider PDF. The document is a great proof of what all SEO-s are doing, a chance to validate the value of your techniques and it validates the SEO practice overall.

The main chapters in the starter guide are:

- Create unique, accurate page titles
- Good practices for page title tags
- Make use of the “description” meta tag
- Good practices for description meta tags
- Improve the structure of your URLs
- Good practices for URL structure
- Make your site easier to navigate
- Good practices for site navigation
- Offer quality content and services
- Good practices for content
- Write better anchor text
- Good practices for anchor text
- Use heading tags appropriately
- Good practices for heading tags
- Optimize your use of images
- Good practices for images
- Make effective use of robots.txt
- Good practices for robots.txt
- Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
- Promote your website in the right ways
- Good practices for promoting your website
- Make use of free webmaster tools
- Take advantage of web analytics services

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current. So, the next time we get the question, “I’m new to SEO, how do I improve my site?”, we can say, “Well, here’s a list of best practices that we use inside Google that you might want to check out.”

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Google SEO starter guide

Related posts:

1. Lesson 4 – Title and META tag creation
2. Lesson 10 – Common mistakes that webmasters make
3. Lesson 2 – Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank

Here is bellow my list of Firefox plugins which are helping me on the SEO work or on checking some parameters for a website, for bloging etc:

Firebug

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

ScreenGrab

Screengrab! is an extension for Firefox that makes it easy to save a web-page as an image. With it, you can save anything that you can see in a browser window – from a small selection, to a complete page.

Google UnPersonalized

This plugin prevents you from seeing personalized search results, when searching from your browser’s search box. In Firefox, this plugin also adds suggest functionality.

InFormEnter

InFormEnter adds a small, clickable icon next to every input field in a web form, from where you can select the item to be inserted – no typing required. You can configure it to display your frequently used information such as name, email, address…

User Agent Switcher

Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

Search Status

SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox hat allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

TwitBin

TwitBin is an extension for firefox that brings the power of twitter right in your browser.

Seo Quake

Seoquake is a powerful tool, aimed at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows user to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

SEO and Firefox

Hard to belive, but if you are a ISV or microISV, Microsoft is offering in BizSpark (a program launched towards ISV and microISV at European Software Conference 2008). If you are a small company Microsoft will offer you the tools, database and even hosting for developing your applications for FREE. Is such an offer possible?

The conditions are simple:

• Actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business1
• Privately held
• In business for less than 3 years, and
• Less than US $1 million in annual revenue.
• To be eligible to use the software for production and deployment of hosted solutions, startups must also be developing a new software as a service solution (on any platform) to be delivered over the Internet

What is Microsoft going to offer you:

Design, development, testing and demonstrations rights with regard to:

• All the software included in the Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN Premium subscription
• Expression Studio (Version 2)
• VSTS Team Foundation Server (Standard Edition)
• Production Use rights to host a “software as a service” solution (developed by the startup during their participation, on any platform) over the Internet, with regard to products including: Windows Server (all versions up to and including Enterprise); SQL Server (all versions); Office SharePoint Server; Systems Center, and BizTalk Server and all these for your whole development team

Above all these, the support will be free. Hard to believe such an program exists. There is catch you will ask? A 100$ program offering fee is due when the Startup exits the Program. As part of Microsoft’s commitment to Startup success, there are no initial costs for Startups to join BizSpark.

More information can be found in this pdf.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Microsoft BizSpark is offering free licenses

Related posts:

1. ESWC 2008 – Free SEO Audit and advices
2. Lesson 7 – Make your software known with software submission
3. Submit Suite Releases Spanish and Romanian Versions of its SEO Software

The conference was a surprise for me, the quality in the presentations is increased from the last year, a lot of information available. The whole concept of the ESWC was based this time on 2 Tracks (2 presentations in the same time). Usually the ISV-s are shy guys/gals, but this time the audience really was open on questions and on debate on different topics.

I will do a pros/cons of the conference ( I do not have photos at all, but I hope the “Avangate guys” will let me use some of their photos):

Pros:

1. Is good to have a conference in Europe, and not only the SIC for USA, ISDEF for Rusia.
2. The orientation in the conference is towards ISV and microISV and should remain like this.
3. The panels are most of the time formed of entrepreneurs+isv+marketers and you have because of this the possibility to hear all the sides of the developing, support, sale process for a software product of online service/product
4. A lot of known people ASP (Mike), Tucows (Greg), Avangate (Adriana and Florin – thank you for the bear and the clever text on the t-shirt), ShareIt (Tatyana), and a lot of developers I knew from ASP (Oliver) or from the last year. A good opportunity to discuss your techniques and to compare them with the other used techniques, the ESWC is no place for self promotion but more trying to share and gather information and to do networking.

Cons:

1. If the last year there were 7 Romanian speakers now only 3 (is the recession?!)
2. Too much discussions about AdWords (that is why my jokes were around this theme)
3. Too bad I reserved in the other Maritim hotel, I had to take a taxi 3-4 times between the hotels
4. I will make a note for the next time “do not talk business on launch otherwise you will have no time for eating”
5. Next time 3 times more promotional CD-s with me
6. The wireless in the hotel was 8 euros for 60 minutes

In the seond day of the conference I took part in a panel: ISV business – how to make it effective together wit Alwin Hoogerdijk – Collectorz.com (Moderator), Tetyana Franke – sales Manager share-it! and Florin – e-commerce Consultant Avangate. An open discussion with the audience, with questions regarding bug tracking options, payment processors, support, promotion etc.

The audience was interested in the subject (as far I have seen), I tried to keep a my responses in the humor/serious side, the audience was really willing to have more information from us and more willing to ask questions (comparing with the last year). Again a lot of interest in how you promote your busiones, and how you do it cheap.

I will start to present slowly some of the new things presented and the ways these can be integrated, probably I will start with the solution from deal united.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

European Software Conference 2008 (ESWC 2008)

Related posts:

1. ESWC 2009 – European Software Conference 2009
2. ESWC (European Software Conference) 2007
3. Submit Suite Sponsors 2007 European Software Conference

So if you are willing to take this offer send me some details about your website on the form on our search optimization service page. Also add the note for ESWC 2008 and I will make sure we will find time to analyze it until there.

I will take a maximum 5 websites for which I am going to suggest improvements.

Update: 4 places left

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

ESWC 2008 – Free SEO Audit and advices

Related posts:

1. European Software Conference 2008 (ESWC 2008)
2. Microsoft BizSpark is offering free licenses
3. ESWC (European Software Conference) 2007

Why in the world is so hard to find a SEO Magazine?

If you are at all interested in SEO or if you are a Search Engine Optimization Professional then you read probably plenty of SEO forums and SEO blogs. What can a SEO magazine bring more? For a start reading a SEO Magazine would be the best thing you could do to get you away from your computer for more than 10 minutes.

Usually magazines comes with a spicy price. I have made my own list of 10 SEO and web marketing magazines. One of the magazines is totally free and for one of them I have manage to obtain a 15% coupon ( Coupon: SAVE15 ) for you. Here is my short web marketing and SEO magazines review:

01. Search Marketing Standard Magazine – use for subscription the COUPON SAVE15

I found 1 year ago Search Marketing Standard Magazine, using a banner in a blog and I got a 25% discount at the purchase. The subscription price is $30.60 for 2 years ( using the SAVE15 coupon ). It is the only pure SEO magazine printed, which kind of a web 2.0 flavor design. A lot of quality articles. What I love in this magazine is the fact that I can read it when I am not in front of my display, so heck if I am on the way to something I will have this magazine in my hand.

I have sent some of the past issues to one of my friend in Romania, I will ask him to post some words in the comments.

2. Domainers Magazine

“Domainer’s Magazine was designed to provide valuable insight and thought leadership into the Domaining world. Our goal is to create a world class publication that becomes the eyes and ears of the “Domainer”. Our magazine will focus on the value of Pay Per Click Management, SEO, Domain Legal Expertise, Domain acquisition and Selling, Domain monetization and any other topic that focuses on emerging technologies and services that provides value to you.”

3. Website Magazine – All digital editions free to download

4. Target Marketing

5. Entrepreneur Magazine – Not really a SEO magazine but the advices you can find in the online version are sometime priceless.

6. Revenue Magazine

7. Business Week Magazine

8. Direct Magazine

9. FastCompany

10. B2B Marketing

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Top 10 SEO and web marketing magazines

Related posts:

1. Beyond Buzz-The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Number of directories: 3574
Directories type: free, paid, reciprocal, regional

You can observe based on the date before the Google update and after a big difference between the way Google PR is distributed over these directories. Infact we can call it a downgrade, the number of directories with PR0 before the Google PR update was 357, after the PR update the number increased to 1207. I have displayed bellow in a graphical mode the distribution of the new Google PR and the PR fluctuations.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

How Google Page Rank update is affecting the directories?

Related posts:

1. Google Page Rank update 26 october 2007
2. Lesson 2 – Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank
3. Lesson 9 – Increasing Google Page Rank and gaining more visitors

Submit Suite sponsored this edition and also the Epsilon Award 2007 – which this year was awarded Nikos Bozinis from Zabkat Software.

DAY 1:

Asa Dotzler was unable to come but he was kind enough to send a podcast. Asa Dotzler is best known for his work as community coordinator for several Mozilla projects. He was one of the keyspeakers of this year ESWC, too bad he was not able to come. Still a nice podcast (you can imagine some arrows was launched toward Microsoft Internet policy ).

Andy Brice from Oryx Digital presented after the launch break an interesting point of view for the software usability. Are these rules apply strictly to software? No. Every website design must take in consideration most of the rules described there. His presentation “Increasing conversions through better usability” is available as download in PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint 2000 on his blog entry.

Rüdiger Kägler from WIBU-SYSTEMS held a presentation with the name, “Earn more money with new license models” ( available as pdf for download ).
The day ended with my presentation: “SEO optimization and online promotion” in which I am trying to expose some of the general SEO techniques and in the same time cover some of the specialized techniques for software producers. You can download for free in PDF format the SEO optimization and online promotion presentation.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

ESWC (European Software Conference) 2007

Related posts:

1. Submit Suite Sponsors 2007 European Software Conference
2. European Software Conference 2008 (ESWC 2008)
3. ESWC 2009 – European Software Conference 2009