

Tell and Ask HN: Mobile sysadmin on the road - pierrefar

This is a topic that I've been exploring lately and thought I'd share my nascent knowledge and ask for your input.<p>Topic: server sysadmin while traveling without a laptop.<p>How I do it: My G1 is at the center of it all. Stored in it I have the phone numbers of my registrar, my host, and my good friends who can sub as admins.<p>On this phone, I have a 3G connection with excellent UK-wide coverage (I know of only real reception blackhole!) Worst case is a GPRS connection.<p>I use Pingdom to send me SMS alerts if something goes wrong with my web app's hardware. I've configured Pingdom to check the text of the page to see if MySQL is dead even if Apache is fine. This is very useful and an I think an overlooked feature.<p>The phone has an SSH client (ConnectBot) which is freely available in the Android Market. There is a profile saved (without a password in case the phone is lost) for the server. Logging in takes about 15 seconds with a 3G connection and about 25s on GPRS.<p>Hardware-wise: Although the screen is small, it's still very legible to have a fully functioning SSH terminal. The trackball is useful for scrolling around quickly. Also, I've found that having a hardware keyboard is immensely useful for typing commands into the SSH terminal. I can't imagine what it would be like with a soft keyboard.<p>Of course there is a very good browser that can render pretty much any website well. This gives me confidence that I can look up any necessary info relatively easily.<p>The server has nano and htop installed. I know how to use them well, and constantly learning.<p>In my wallet, I keep a little cheat sheet of various commands, keyboard shortcuts (like for controlling htop), and locations of important files (logs, config files, etc). It folds to be smaller than a credit card's dimensions and has lots of text in 10pt. Having this sheet is a great way to calm down and to save me time because I don't have to work from memory under stress. Unfolding it is like unfolding a battle plan you know you're going to win with.<p>I also have an sFTP client installed but never had to use it.<p>So that's me in a nutshell. What do you do? Any special tools/tips/tricks/setups?<p>Cheers.
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jodrellblank
Nice. I don't know htop, but if it isn't a screen-alike then consider gnu
screen. Also, one of those pocket projectors might make a worthwhile
consideration.

