tar and ssh like peanut butter and jelly

Everybody knows the classic command to make a tar file:

tar -cvf file.tar directory_to_tar

and if you use gnu tar you can improve it with the compress in that step:

tar -zxvf file.tar directory_to_tar
or
tar -jxvf file.tar directory_to_tar

for gzip and bzip respectively...

but did you know:

tar zcvf - /directory_to_tar | ssh hostname "cat > file.tgz"

so you can tar gzip on one end and write the file on the other end of an ssh session?

Huh? Did you?

Yes I know I still owe an automounter deal... I promise it is on the way.

Too busy gardening the Silicon Rust...

automounter is awesome

Ever had an nfs client hang because the server rebooted or hiccupped?

Ever had a web of nfs mounts that won't come up cleanly because there isn't a good order? Like Server A mounts Server B that mounts Server C that mounts Server A (not a good practice, but all too common in crufty environments).

Well automounter can solve some of those problems.

I'll post the technical details tomorrow or the next day.

MySQL stupidity

If you want to be able to troubleshoot mysql:

1) mysqlreport is very cool: http://hackmysql.com. The documentation is awesome and for a quick rush it is fabulous. After you get it installed try having it mail you a tab delimited report: mysqlreport --email user@domain.com --pass --all -tab

2) mytop is also very cool:

3) making sure your indexes fit in RAM is very cool, ls *MYI and sum them up. That amount should be less than physical ram (and less than the key_buffer_size variable from the my.cnf--- you did already check the my.cnf).

4) you can make some changes on the fly, check your variables with show variables; then you can set them with the mysql client

5) make sure your mysql install is logging :roll eyes: