" Tutorials "

How to check DNS records on a specific DNS server using dig and linux

Sometimes it may be necessary to get DNS records from a DNS server even if the domain is already pointed at a different DNS server. One tool you can use under linux is called dig. You can use dig to query any DNS server you specify (or use the default nameservers) and get all DNS records from that server. I recently had to do this to help out a customer after they moved their site to our servers and they realized they forgot something on the old server. Problem was, they weren’t sure who the old site was hosted with or what the old IP was. In a matter of minutes I was able to query the old DNS servers and pull up all the DNS information.

Here’s how to use it… (more…)

How to restart cPanel spamd and reinstall SpamAssassin

Sometimes you will get notifications from cPanel whenever a service goes down. One of those that I find is the most common would be spamd. If you have notifications setup on your cPanel server for spamd you probably have gotten an email similar to this before: (more…)

Using LFTP (FTP) to mirror/transfer files from one server to another

If you’ve been using linux for a while you have probably used SCP or RSYNC to transfer files between two linux servers. These methods work very well and I created another post for using a non standard port with SCP…but what if the other server doesn’t support RSYNC or SCP? Or maybe you just like using FTP or want to create a script to do automatic uploads? LFTP was my choice because it displays a nice progress bar with transfer rate.

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Modifying your hosts file to point a domain at a specific IP address

Sometimes you will have a need to point a domain at a different IP than the current DNS resolves to. This can be to test your website when moving it from one server to another or if you are a web developer and need to test the site before making it live. Whatever the reason it is very easy to do this on both Windows, Linux, and Mac systems.

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