The FreeBSD SysAdmin's Favorite Tools

[oversize]

hm, those are all Linux Unix tools in general.

Dont know whether the Author wanted to only have FreeBSD Tools listed. But as i read through all the posts i thought to mysqlf which are realy FreeBSD unique? Are there any?

And to name a tool, as everybody did, i recently discoverd ossec for systemmonitoring very handy.

cheers

 

[toomanysecrets]

My favourite tools...

vi/vim
screen
vmstat
systat
iostat
lsof
sockstat/netstat
netcat
sh/csh/tcsh/bash
perl
links/elinks/lynx
less
grep
awk

And... ok ok, stop right away...

 

[foldingstock]

Tmux is a terminal emulator, much like screen, released under the *BSD license. It operates differently then screen and is lighter on system resources.

 

[pirzyk]

hm, those are all Linux Unix tools in general.

Dont know whether the Author wanted to only have FreeBSD Tools listed. But as i read through all the posts i thought to mysqlf which are realy FreeBSD unique? Are there any?

And to name a tool, as everybody did, i recently discoverd ossec for systemmonitoring very handy.

cheers

One 'tool' that is not common on other versions of UNIX that I am familiar with is 'stty status'. I hear it does exist in VMS. I have used it quite a bit to figure out where a program may be 'hanging'. Usually it returns '[ttyin]' which causes a response of doh!

 

[hark]

sysutils/ezjail

It is dreamy.

 

[timmix]

So could you tell us more about how Zabbix could be installed on freebsd, some hints would be great for all

Ehm, just type: "cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/zabbix/ && make install clean" at your favorite commandprompt.

--
Timm

 

[estrabd]

Hmm.. lets see..

Nagios - Monitor your network to make sure the services and hosts are up.
Samhain - File integrity monitor.
Portaudit - Check your install ports against a database of vulnerable ports.
Screen - Terminal multiplexer.

Thats all I can think of right now..

screen++

 

[danger@]

hey guys, you don't watch your logs?

tail -f *.log

 

[Gabe_G23]

Too many to list but one in particular worthy of mention is portmaster. I used portupgrade for years, and it was a godsend in it's day, but for last couple have replaced with Doug Barton's excellent portmaster

Mmmh, I must say that I agree!

 

[horus]

what about ee(1)???

 

[brd@]

hey guys, you don't watch your logs?

tail -f *.log

In 7.0+ try:

tail -F /path/to/logfile1 /path/to/logfile2

It makes the built in tail(1) behave like xtail, and display multiple log files at once.

 

[bsddaemon]

In 7.0+ try:

tail -F /path/to/logfile1 /path/to/logfile2

It makes the built in tail(1) behave like xtail, and display multiple log files at once.

It works with older version, too, at least with 6.4

 

[Anapivirtua]

In 7.0+ try:

tail -F /path/to/logfile1 /path/to/logfile2

It makes the built in tail(1) behave like xtail, and display multiple log files at once.

Awesome !!!

 

[braveduck]

It makes the built in tail(1) behave like xtail, and display multiple log files at once.
It works with older version, too, at least with 6.4

Yep, it doesn't work with 4.*, but it works with 5.4+, so I guess it works with 5.0+. Nice thing to have.

 

[Vladimir]

I love command "watch". Who uses watch?

what about ee(1)???

It's terrible, please don't use it.

 

[oliverh]

ee is a nice editor (like pico/nano/joe ...) for the beginner, most beginners blow up their systems while using vi the first time.

 

[jb_fvwm2]

popd
....................
started using it less than a year ago. That
means 3 or so years less efficient at the shell.
....................

 

[Vladimir]

ee is a nice editor (like pico/nano/joe ...) for the beginner, most beginners blow up their systems while using vi the first time.

It's habit-forming editors.

 

[vermaden]

ee is a nice editor (like pico/nano/joe ...) for the beginner, most beginners blow up their systems while using vi the first time.

... or generate great random strings trying to exit

 

[oliverh]

It's habit-forming editors.

No it's open source, you have the choice ;-) If someone really needs vi or vim or emacs, then he will use it - so it's not the habit, it's the application. And speaking of 'bad habits' ;-)

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~kirkenda/joy84.html

I got tired of people complaining that it was too hard to use UNIX because the editor was too complicated. Since I sort of invented the editor that was most complicated, I thought I would compensate by also designing the editor that was most simple. But I got distracted. If I had just spent another day on it... I could actually edit a file on it. I actually used it to edit itself and scrunched the source code - sort of old home day, because we used to do that all the time.

I had threatened to remove all the copies of vi on January 1 of this year and force people to use be. I don't think it would have worked, though, because I don't know any of the root passwords here anymore. These editors tend to last too long - almost a decade for vi now. Ideas aren't advancing very quickly, are they?

--Bill Joy

 

[jonathan]

So could you tell us more about how Zabbix could be installed on freebsd, some hints would be great for all

its in the ports. think of it as a cross between cacti and nagios, but then it took some steriods after.

as far as hints, i have none yet. i built it once, but then didnt have time to configure it out. but when i redo my network at home, ill be going with zabbix for my monitoring needs.

 

[Alt]

As a sysadmin, my most favorite tools is
sockstat, systat, grep, perl, and ofc PING =)

 

[oversize]

to you guys looking at your logs with tail: Yo dont do that _all_ the day, do you?

I'm not a marketer ( ... and said it before), you should try ossec. Its not as huge as Nagios feels (i never realy used nagios).
The rules are so cool, _if_ you know regex (which is one of my weaknesses x( ). The Install went through in about 5 minutes and now, if something suspicious happens, i get an email right away.

Of course you get a ton of false positives in the first place. e.g. sshd scans, service monitors, general server warnings, but if you figured your way through customizing the rules, it is a breeze.

cheers

 

[joel@]

ee is a nice editor (like pico/nano/joe ...) for the beginner

I use ee all the time.

 

[billysponch]

I use ee all the time.

which just goes to show that