BlueFreelance

At the moment I am using hosting service from MediaTemple (mt). (mt) is using Plesk Control Panel for its clients. Recently, I have migrated my sites to a higher package of Dedicated-Virtual (dv) package, and I found a strange point. When I checked the free space in the statistic area, it gave me only 12%, like image below

Then, I went to domains section to see which domains own the most space,  the sum of space from all domains is not equal to the above number (of course, just a relative number).

Then I login to root shell, and check the size of each folder by this command:

du -hs [path/to/directory]

And, I found that “/usr/local/psa/PMM/var” occupy more than 5Gb. Then I looked into that folder, and it stored temporary folder, which were used for the last migration process, so just delete it, and now I have more space for my hosting easily.

This technique could be applied for any Plesk based hosting, not only MediaTemple.

Actually, I intended to upgrade my hosting for more space, but I was hesitating because I just need 2 - 3 GBs for my new site, it is not worth to spend more monthly. And now, I have more 5Gb without spending more. So the lesson, is you need to look into some directories such as temp, log … in many cases, they occupy a lot of my bhosting space.

Obviously, VeOH ’s quality is much better than YouTube, in both of graphics and sound quality. I am really impressive when I listened this favorite song on VeOH.

Let ’s compare with YouTube:

I think, YouTube should find a way ti improve its video quality. Nowdays, the broadband connection is so popular than ever, the users’ needs are higher (like me, he he). That ’s why, many sites like hulu.com, fancast.com and veoh.com are growing regardless YouTube is supported by the number 1 webware company, Google.

Today, I have just read an article, which discussed about the “getting out of Microsoft” of Bill Gates. The author wants to raise the question about the position of the leader in a software company nowadays. The discussion is “Do you need to be a programmer to run a software company?” He pointed out two opinions.

“What did I take from all this? Bill Gates was amazingly technical and he knew more about the details of his company’s software than most of the people who worked on those details day in and day out. He understood Variants and COM objects and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables — and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date and time functions. He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual programmer.

Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again. The cult of the M.B.A. likes to believe that you can run organizations that do things that you don’t understand. But often, you can’t.” - Joel Spolsky, the CEO of Fog Creek Software

Let take a look at another way of thinking:

“Gates is probably getting out of technology at the right time. Funnily enough, it’s not really a business for nerds anymore. Gates was at the center of the personal-computer revolution and the Internet revolution, but now the big innovations are about exactly the things he’s bad at. The iPod was an aesthetic revolution. MySpace was a social revolution. YouTube was an entertainment revolution. This is not what Gates does. Technology doesn’t need him anymore.” Lev Grossman, Time Magazine Author

This topic is really an interesting to me. I think that both of Joel Spolsky, the CEO of Fog Creek Software and Lev Grossman are not wrong. However, does it make sense to compare Microsoft, a desktop-based application company with others (Google, MySpace, YouTube …) internet-based company? I am an addict of web 2.0 application. I can’t imagine how my life goes on without Google, BaseCamp or WordPress. Grossman talked about the revolutions, but does he recognized that the biggest revolution still belongs to Microsoft Windows and Office. Is there any technical person, who has never used any kind of Microsoft‘s product? The fact that Microsoft is losing on the online battle, but it is still invincible to the desktop-based market. Linux are really good (I love Ubuntu), Leopard is outstanding and attractive but almost people can’t live without Microsoft software.

My conclusion is that if you intend to run an internet-based company like MySpace, you may not be an amazing technical guy (but, you still need to understand fundamental knowledge about programming), the thing you need is an extremely out-standing idea with some luck additionally. If you intend to produce desktop-based applications like VMWare, Lotus Notes … You really need to be a master of programming and software architecture to be successful.

Well, weekend again, I need some relax for today. One of my hobby is to watch movie, and I guess many of you sould have the same, right. Just some years ago, there were a few file formats of video as well as music and I often buy movie CDs to watch. Don’t ask me why I didn’t download a movie with a 56Kps connection at that time.

Nowadays, there are hundreds kinds of codecs and file formats. Be an internet worm, I enjoy searching and downloading a lot types of media to enjoy, from music video lip, funny clip to a whole movie. Then I tried various kinds of media player, from free to commercial to find a perfect one. Guess which one I will recommend you ? No one actually, but I will present you a list of the best, and of course, as usual, they are free.

I won’t put three popular ones Windows Media Player, Real Player and Quick Time into my list. They are still doing their jobs very well, however I am always eager to find others to try. Now, enough chat, let’s go.

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Recently, almost my websites on the MediaTemple (mt) had been infected by some exploits. The hacker tried to run some shell scripts on the server in order to attack other sites. Though, my sites are still not damaged but the (mt) must suspended my sites to prevent attacking to others. It is really serious, because there are also my clients’ websites there.

Truly, I have not much experience in this scope. All I often do is to chmod files and folder carefully. At the beginning, I was really confused, didn’t what should I do to find the exploit and stop the attack. Start a security course ? No, it ’s too long. Find some books to read ? I tried, but not easy to understand for a newbie.

Fortunately, I had received a nice support from (mt) and some friends. So, in this article, I want to share some experiences in this issue to protect your server. Read the rest of this entry »