This is just a list of system tools that I use frequently and absolutely can’t live without. My own personal “sysadmin toolbox.” This isn’t your typical all command line utilites, but more so a list of useful utilties, software packages, and web-based tools that I commonly use.
1. First is the one and only Knoppix. Knoppix is the wonderful live Linux on a CD distrubution that can be used for tons and tons of different things. For instance, it’s wonderful for data recovery on a failing hard drive, diagnosing possible failing hardware, or simply in case you need to run Linux on a system that has that other OS installed. I never leave home without the latest copy in my laptop bag.
2. The Ultimate Boot CD contains just about every diagnostic tool under the sun, and then some. Hard drive diagnostics, hard drive device management, hard drive wiping (DBAN my personal favorite), hard drive cloning, partition and boot management tools, NTFS tools, CPU burn-in testing tools, memory testing tools, BIOS tools, anti-virus tools, networking tools, benchmarking tools, DOS boot disks, and so much more. Again, I never leave home without a recent copy in my laptop bag.
3. BeyondExec is a freeware utility that spawns remote processes on Winblows machines. It’s wonderful for easily scripting Winblows reboots, defrags, etc. Also, it’s great to deploy Winblows updates instead of using Automatic Updates, and instead of doing them manually.
4. Multitail for *Nix flavors is basically the usual Tail command, but on steroids. Ever have the need to watch more than one log file live, but in the same command window? If so, then this works great. There are packages available for almost every Linux system, but if not, download the source and compile your own. It’s great!
5. DenyHosts is more so a permanent installation than a portable “tool,” but it’s one of my favorite utilities so I’m going to mention it. Basically it’s program to read your /var/log/secure log on a Linux box, determine is the person(s) attempting to connect to your machine are valid or a dictionary attack, and then compute the results to either allow or block. It’s great to stop dictionary attacks and to stop having the log files filled up with want-to-be crackers.
6. Keychain is so simple, but yet elegant. I use this every single day I log into my laptop. It loads up your OpenSSH key(s) at login, so you don’t have to type your key passphrase every single time you SSH to a box. It’s amazing how much typing this saves me. Call me lazy, I guess, but damn it’s nice to not have to type the same passphrase over and over and over again.
7. Ethereal …if you’re into networking and don’t know what this tool is, then I think you’re just out of the loop. Awesome for tracking every single packet of information sent on your network. It’s great for tracking down networking issues, enough said.
8. DokuWiki is my favorite quick and easy Wiki program. There are so many Wiki flavors available, but I like this one for it’s simplicity. I use it for to-do lists, and it’s great to document just about anything. I use it frequently to document installations of software packages…makes it easy to append to readme files as you’re installing things. It’s great because everything is in text and easy to manipulate with a text editor.
9. Nagios is the best open-source network monitoring package out there, at least in my opinion. It’s very well maintained, supported, and documented. And it monitors almost anything out there. Hook it up with other SNMP and graphing tools, and it’s perfect for making sure all of your machines are doing what they are supposed to. You can literally set it up to notify you in anything on your network even so much as blinks.
10. DocMGR (document manager) requires a little effort to set up, because it’s requires knowledge of PHP, Apache, and a database, but it’s awesome for collection of any kind of document you want. I use it, well I try to use it, to upload all my documents after I convert them to PDFs, in order to easily file documents. Now if I just practice what I preach instead of dumping things into random directories here and there, but seriously it’s very useful for managing oodles of documents.
11. AllTray can be installed from yum and allows you to dock anything you want in the Gnome and KDE taskbar.
