Diagnosing Linux disk space usage

Ever wonder where all your disk space has gone? On this new page I describe some useful tips to locate the offending files.

Fixing 'ls' in SUSE so it stops doing 'ls -la'

In all of the SUSE varients (and in may other distros as well), the command ls has been aliased so that it actually does a ‘ls -la’. I find this particularly anoying so I have removed this configuration and documented it here: Stopping ‘ls’ from doing ‘ls -la’ instead.

Getting the Cisco 871w (800 Series) to do UDP NAT

I’ve recently been learning how to configure Cisco firewalls. A big challenge for someone with zero previous experience on Cisco IOS but lots of fun. I just solved my first major problem and created a page about it here:

Getting the Cisco 871w (800 Series) to do UDP NAT for VOIP.

PS3 Linux Video mode fix

I’ve finally figure out how to fix the display resolution on the PS3 running Linux. I’ve added it to my PS3 Linux page which is here.

Two useful Asterisk Scripts

I have re-written my Asterisk CDR import script so that it now tests every record for uniqueness before inserting into the database. As long as the database has an index on the call date field the performance hit is very reasonable given the extra flexibility and ease of use this provides.

Previously if you started your SQL logging before you ran the import it wouldn’t work which was a major pain because generally you want to get the sever up and running with logging before worrying about old log records.

Now you can run the import anytime and it will import everything and won’t create duplicate records.

The new Asterisk cdr import V2 is located here.

I also finally got around to putting online my maxcallcount perl script. I run this script in a cron every night so I can keep track of how busy my asterisk server is getting. More importantly it tells me how many Zap channels we’re using so I know if we need to consider adding more PRIs.

It also catches things like people call-forward looping their phones which can eat up all the Zap channels in a big spike.

The maxcallcount script is located here.

They both can be found (with more Asterisk stuff) at this page : http://www.johnlange.ca/tech-tips/asterisk/

mySQL does some dumb things

Today I struggled for quite sometime with mysql and in the process I narrowly avoided a complete disaster. My complaint is with the behaviour of the mySQL client.

Most rational people would assume that when you specify the “–port” option on the command line, mysql would use it as follows: