Ever wonder what different sys admins consider ‘must have stuff’? Ya, me too. Check out the details below to see what is hip for the admins.

I run two servers that host a couple of Web sites for customers, including two wikis and a forum, and ordinary static HTML sites. The wikis, the photo gallery, and the phpBB forum are especially important to keep an eye on. The maintenance of the Web server and the mail server is a one-man show, so I have to watch them all the time and try to automate whatever is possible. My toolbox includes Mutt, rss2email, Midnight Commander, and more.

Telnet

Since I have to access my Web server a couple of times a day, but I am not always in the office, I need an application to connect to the server remotely. Telnet lets me do all the maintenance and surveillance work from any place in the world. I can “phone home” and check all the logfiles, my mail, and — via an RSS reader — changes to my blogs, the wiki, and the phpBB forum. If I have Linux available I log in using telnet. If it’s an Apple OS I can use Terminal.app, and if it is a Windows computer I download PuTTYtel to connect to my server. [Read the rest]

Tags: sysadmin, toolbox, phpbb forum, telnet