Replacing rc.local in systemd Linux systems

Missing rc.local for adding commands to run on startup? Here’s how to set up similar functionality with today’s systemd.

The rc.local file was—and in some cases still is—the place for Linux sysadmins to put commands that need to be run at startup. Use of the rc.local file is not only deprecated but after a couple of hours worth of attempts, was not working in any event. This despite the fact that the systemd documentation mentions the use of a “generator” that generates systemd services from an rc.local file if one exists.

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Using lsof to Recover Deleted Files

If an open file is deleted accidentally, it is possible to use lsof to recreate a copy of the file; provided this is done before the file is closed by the application holding it open.

If you have inadvertently removed a file from the filesystem it is still recoverable if the application using the file it still running. This is because the inode is still open and therefore the data blocks are still on the disk until the application closes the file or exits.

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Create test Apache site with Docker

After creating your EC2 instance and connecting using PuTTY, this tutorials shows steps on how to run docker and setup a test Apache site using a docker image. This tutorial aims to introduce the basic operation of docker and how to use it on a Linux environment.

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Connect to Linux EC2 instance using PuTTY

When you create a new EC2 instance and created new keys, the keys are on the pem key format. This is used for SSH connection and is usable from a Linux terminal or OSX. However, if you are from windows and you use PuTTY to connect to your EC2 instance, you need to convert your pem key to ppk format which is accepted by PuTTY.

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How to Launch an AWS EC2 instance

This tutorial shows a step-by-step guide on how to launch an Amazon EC2 instance. We will launch a t2.micro instance using the Amazon provided AMI of Ubuntu 18.04. Let’s get started.

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Essential Docker commands

Docker is the most popular container technology. It is designed to make it easier to create, deploy, and run applications by using containers. Docker behaves similar to a virtual machine hypervisor. But unlike a virtual machine, rather than creating a whole virtual operating system, Docker allows applications to use the same Linux kernel as the system that they’re running on and only requires applications be shipped with things not already running on the host computer. This gives a significant performance boost and reduces the size of the application.

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Ansible Part IV: Roles Overview

You may find Ad-hoc mode (from Part II) easy to use on day-to-day tasks such as for quick systems checks or when updating a config file on multiple systems. Stepping up simple ad-hoc commands are Ansible playbooks (from Part III) and Ansible roles which are very powerful ways to utilize Ansible’s features.

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Ansible Part III: Using Playbooks

The Ansible cases we tested so far from Part I and Part II are what we call ad-hoc mode. If you are pretty comfortable on combining these ad-hoc commands and bash scripts, you can do a lot of work for a small amount of time. But Ansible can offer a lot more features. We’ll explore creating Ansible playbooks on this part.

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