Sendmail Relay and SES

Simple Email Service (SES)
Documentation is here: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/

The API code for SES needs to be installed on the sendmail server
Amazon Linux has the code installed at /opt/aws/bin

There are instructions in the SES documentation for integrating with Sendmail
The documentation instructs edits to the sendmail.cf file
Best practices are to edit the sendmail.mc file and then run the make command

Add the following line to the end of sendmail.mc

Maws-email, P=/opt/aws/ses/ses-send-email.pl, F=mDFMuXn, U=mailuser, S=EnvFromSMTP/HdrFromSMTP, R=EnvToSMTP, A=ses-send-email.pl -r -k /opt/aws/aws-credentials -e https://email.us-east-1.amazonaws.com   -f $f $u

P = location of SES scripts - edit as needed
F,S,R,A,f,u = Sendmail options - do not change these
U = mailuser is a local user, create on the instance with no remote access rights
k = location of credential file - edit as needed
-e = SES servers, can be changed but not necessary

After adding the line, run make -C /etc/mail
Restart Sendmail - /etc/init.d/sendmail restart

Follow the remainder of the AWS SES instructions for sendmail setup

Sendmail Changes
Edit /etc/mail/access
Add the following to enable devices within the internal network with 10.* IP addresses to send mail to the relay server
Connect:10 RELAY
Compile the access.db file
makemap hash /etc/mail/access.db < /etc/mail/access
Restart Sendmail - /etc/init.d/sendmail restart

Edit sendmail.mc
Make sure the following line is commented out - the dnl does the commenting
dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl

Make sure the following lines are active and changed to FH
MASQUERADE_AS(`yourdomain.com')dnl
FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl

After any and all of these changes, run make -C /etc/mail
Restart Sendmail - /etc/init.d/sendmail restart

Testing
PMP has a built in SMTP test utility
Troubleshooting - Review /var/log/maillog

Notes
Documentation for sendmail is scarce or very hard to follow. Sendmail has been around for years and is mature software. But it is opensource and by my definition still a bit confusing. To get sendmail working like I wanted, I used the Googler but never found anything I would consider Bookmark worthy.

After getting the setup working, there are very few steps and it seems easy. But there was not much to start with and there was quite a bit of trial and error.

Turn off Screen Saver via GPO

This should be done for cloud/virtual servers to save CPU/resources

User Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Display
Set Screen Saver to disabled

Cacti

Cacti is an open source performance monitor for IT infrastructure. It will run on Linux or Windows and stands up very well against commercial equivalents. Be mindful that open source can mean lots of tinkering time. I have used Cacti for many years but was recently given an opportunity to set it up for the first time. There were a few quirks in the process I want to remember for the future to speed up with installation. This is not an exhaustive how-to doc as I was able to find everything I needed via Google searches. But it was not all in one place so I wanted to put this together.

I prefer Linux for Cacti - PHP and MySQL are significantly easier to setup

Follow Official Cacti Installation Document
http://www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/html/install_unix.html

Notes
The newest version of PHP typically does not require any of the changes from the Cacti Installation Document, but go through the checklist regardless
Some of the MySQL commands will require --password forcing a password prompt
Common issue, no graphs being created - run the poller.php command as cactiuser from the command prompt - this will generate output with errors
Go through the errors - found one of the php files did not have proper MySQL credentials
Timezone issue - FH runs in UTC, but for reading Cacti graphs, having current time is convienient

Do not change any of the settings until graphs are being populated, once that is complete, change the poller to spine and set the polling interval to 1 minutes

Spine
Follow Official Cacti Spine Installation Document - http://cacti.net/spine_install_rhlnx.php
When changing to Spine, clear the poller cache - http://www.cacti.net/downloads/docs/html/scripts.html#CLI_REBUILD_POLLER_CACHE

1 Minute Polling
Change Settings page to 1 minute and change crontab to * * * * *
Also must update data templates - http://docs.cacti.net/manual:087:3_templates.1_data_template
Step changes to 60
Heartbeat changes to 120

Import Windows Graph Templates
The bundled Windows graphs that come preinstalled are average at best, import CPU, memory, I/O, and disk graphs from Cacti Forums - http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=29832
The thread is many pages long - there are updated versions of the templates, find the newest post from the author and download the attachments
There are instructions on the first post
These graphs require SNMP Informant STD version

Import IIS Graph Templates
Available from Cacti Forums - http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=12464
Import via the GUI and add to the Windows Template

Ubuntu Menu Configuration

Ubuntu has started shipping with the close, maximize, and minimize buttons in the upper left corner of the menu bar. I cannot get used to it and prefer them on the traditional right side.

A quick How To

1 Press ALT-F2 and run gconf-editor
2 Go to apps --> metacity --> general
3 Select and right-click button_layout
4 Click Edit Key
5 Replace with menu:minimize,maximize,close
6 Click OK and it's done

Log Rotation

The following is a script running once a day on a CentOS box to manage logs
Whenever possible, applications and machines are outputting logs to the NAS. Centralized logging allows us to manage them in one location and also helps with troubleshooting problems.

There are 2 log volumes. "Hot" Logs keeps logs created or modified within the past 24 hours. Archived Logs keeps logs for 60 days. This is very helpful when troubleshooting an active production issue because the relevant logs are very easy to find. Sifting through archived logs can take some time.

The script also does a gzip on the archived logs volume to conserve space. Logs will typically compress 80-95%. The script also removes empty folders to keep the log volumes clean.

Before running the entire script, run the rsync. It is key to get all the logs to archives before starting any deletion.

#!/bin/bash

HOTLOGS=/mounts/logs/
ARCHIVELOGS=/mounts/logsarchived/

# Delete any file older than 2 days from HOT Logs
echo "$(date): Deleting expired files:"
find $HOTLOGS -daystart -mtime +2 -type f -print -exec /bin/rm -vf {} \;

echo Geo log maintenance script
# Copy HOT to Archived
#rsync -aqO $HOTLOGS $ARCHIVELOGS --exclude $HERMOD
rsync -aqO --exclude "*.xml" $HOTLOGS $ARCHIVELOGS

# gzip files in Archived Logs older than 1 day
echo "$(date): Compressing old files:"
find $ARCHIVELOGS -type f -daystart -mtime +1 ! -name "*.gz" -print -exec /bin/gzip -v -f -S ".$(date +%F).gz" {} \;

# Delete any file older than 60 days from Archived Logs
echo "$(date): Deleting expired files:"
find $ARCHIVELOGS -daystart -mtime +60 -type f -name "*.gz" -print -exec /bin/rm -vf {} \;

# Remove empty HOT Logs directories
echo "$(date): Deleting empty directories:"
find $HOTLOGS -depth -type d -empty -print -exec /bin/rmdir {} \;

# Remove empty Archived Logs directories
echo "$(date): Deleting empty directories:"
find $ARCHIVELOGS -depth -type d -empty -print -exec /bin/rmdir {} \;

echo $(date) Done

Robocopy and Delete

@echo on
setlocal
set TODAY=%year%-%month%-%day% //create a variable called TODAY for the date
set LOGFILE=c:\sqlBackup-%TODAY%.log //set log file location
Set SOURCE=\\nas\backups\prod //set source of files to be copied
Set Target=\\nas\backups\prod2 //set destination of files to be copied
cd "Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools" //navigate to location of robocopy executable
robocopy.exe %SOURCE% %TARGET% /MIR //execute robocopy with variables
echo Y|del %SOURCE%\*.* //delete all files from source
endlocal

Windows SQL Express Backup Script with Extras

This script was created to perform a backup on MS SQL 2005 Express. The lite version of MS SQL does not have built in maintenance tasks. Then robocopy moves the files from the box to a CIFS share. Then a forfiles line is used to delete old copies of the backups.

sqlcmd -S servername\SQLinstanceName -E -Q "EXEC sp_BackupDatabases @backupLocation='d:\backups\', @backupType='F'"
robocopy.exe d:\backups \\nas\backups\servername /mir
Forfiles -p d:\backups -s -m *.* -d -2 -c "Cmd /C del @FILE"