Servers

Here is a little PHP script that I use to backup MySQL databases on Hostgator Linux web servers. Simply save the .php file to a non publicly accessible part of the server and run regularly using crontab:

/usr/bin/php /home4/username/my-backups/site-name/backup-task.php


<?php
$DATABASE="db_name";
$DBUSER="db_user";
$DBPASSWD="db_password";
$PATH="/home4/username/my-backups/site-name/";
$FILE_NAME="site-name-backup-" . date("Y-m-d") . ".sql.gz";
exec('/usr/bin/mysqldump -u '.$DBUSER.' -p'.$DBPASSWD.' '.$DATABASE.' | gzip --best > '.$PATH.$FILE_NAME);
echo "Database(".$DATABASE.") backup completed. File name: ".$FILE_NAME;
?>

When trying to edit commit log message using Tortoise SVN, following error is displayed:

Subversion reported an error:
Repository has not been enabled to accept revision propchanges;
ask the administrator to create a pre-revprop-change hook

Last weekend I had a small task to update BIOS and other firmware on a non-mission critical DELL PowerEdge T310 server. To safe myself a site visit I decided to to do this remotely via iDRAC.

I initially planned to run the updates from DELL Lifecycle Controller, but this was failing with error "The updates you are tying to apply are not Dell-authorized updates" due to out of date version of the Lifecycle Controller itself.

To get around this, I decided to use DELL firmware update LiveDVD, that can be downloaded from here. I mapped the Centos65-OM74-Firmware-LiveDVD.x86_64-1.1.0-Build6.1.iso file to the server via iDRAC and booted from it. Few minutes later, the firmware update utility loaded and gave list of components eligible for an update.

I selected all components that were eligible and started the process. The update was running happily for about 10-15 minutes. Then I left my desk for a few minutes and when I came back the iDRAC client seemed to be frozen. I tried to PING local iDRAC interface IP address from another machine on the same network, but there was no response... At that point the only option left was to drive to the site and check what had happened.

Download Windows (.exe) version of iDRAC update utility from DELL.
Extract the downloaded .exe file (with 7-zip or something similar).

Read more: Update DELL iDRAC 6 Firmware via Web GUI

Backup MySQL database using cron and php

Edit Subversion (SVN) commit comments (Synology NAS SVN server)

DELL iDRAC goes down during LiveDVD firmware update

Update DELL iDRAC 6 Firmware via Web GUI