Etckeeper makes it easy to keep your /etc directory and its related config files in a revision control system of your choice.

Assistants are no longer just for execs. With a virtual assistant, you can hand off repetitive tasks and focus on the work that matters. Fancy Hands and Amazon's Mechanical Turk are two examples of affordable assistants, each effective at meeting a different set of needs.

If you're looking to script backups or other operations, a reliable CLI tool that works with S3 is a must. s3cmd fits the bill.

Prototyping Web applications? Trying to test and tune your Web servers? httperf makes it easy to test HTTP server workloads.

The latest GNU fdisk is now in alpha. Not anywhere ready for production, but ready for the adventurous to take out for a spin.

Learn tips for keeping your Linux system safe in this post-kernel.org-breach world.

Completing filenames when using Vim in command mode can be tricky. These tips will make it a simpler task.

Linux admins looking for an easy way to set hard and soft limits for users will find much to like about the pam_limits module. With pam_limits, you can set parameters on system resources on a per-user (or per-group) basis for all variables--from the maximum number of files a user can have open to the amount of CPU time.

Linux and other Unix-type systems contain a wealth of features under the surface. Oftentimes, however, these features are non-obvious and hard to find. Compgen, a GNU Bash builtin that shows all possible completions, is one such feature.

Is your hardware inadequate for your site? Throwing more resources at it may not be the best answer. For WordPress sites, W3 Total Cache is an inexpensive way to wring the most out of what you already have.

Most admins know kill and pkill. But those looking for a quick, clean kill use slay.

WordPress is one of the most popular CMSes, which means it is among the more commonly exploited. Use the Exploit Scanner plugin to help lock it down.

Renameutils is aptly named. The easy-to-use collection of utilities makes renaming files as easy as using your favorite text editor.

When it comes to collecting system status data, sar is a veritable workhorse. It is not, however, without its limitations. If you're in the market for a utility that also handles NFS, Slab data, and sub-second intervals, consider collectl.

For sys admins, running a process can feel like driving cross-country without a road map. Pipe Viewer is one way to answer the question, 'are we there yet?'

With GNU ddrescue you need never worry about the impact of optical media degradation on your data.

Understanding regular expressions is important for anyone who spends time doing system administration or programming. If that describes you and regexes are not your strong suit, txt2regex is an excellent tool to have handy.

For admins who work with Debian-based systems, the basics dpkg and APT's tools are old hat. For a richer user experiences, like knowing which packages have release-critical bugs, hog the most disk space and so on, Debian Goodies is a set of utilities that's good to know.

Ready to roll out a site, but not sure how it will perform in real-world use? Consider Siege, an open source load-testing and benchmarking utility that will help stress test your setup before exposing it to the world.

Fedora or RHEL users working with RPMs will find these 5 little-known features to be of great value.

Debian's package tools makes it easy to install and manage packages. For more complex tasks, however, tools are not as well-advertised. Here are five options worth checking out.

Have a long-running job you want to "detach" from the terminal? Don't use tmux or Screen? If you haven't started the job yet, nohup is an easy to use option, and if you must stop a job in the middle, there's disown.

No matter what the size is of your IT environment, issue tracking is a critical component of system administration. If you're looking for a simple issue tracking system that can be scaled as your shop grows, check out Roundup, an interesting solution that is easy to both test out and deploy.

DenyHosts makes it easy to ward off unauthorized SSH connection attempts. The utility blocks attempts to connect to your server via SSH after too many failed attempts or from a blacklisted host.

When your system is rooted, you can't trust most utilities to show processes from the rootkit. To identify the problem, check out unhide and unhide.rb.