htDig Search Engine Installation on Debian 12
by Ramses Soto-Navarro ramses@sotosystems.com, 6/12/2025
Overview
htDig is a light web search engine written in C++. I’ve been using it for almost 20 years; makes it easy to search lots of text; great for IT administrators that need to search their own technical notes. htDig can also parse pdf, doc, and other types alike. htDig uses CGI. It is an old and simple web search engine but it still works great and is simple to setup once you know how. Here I put together some steps for a quick setup.
Simple Backup Script
Simple Backup Script
A simple backup script which backs up the OS directories of a Linux system remotely. root SSH keys must be configured between systems. SSHFS must be installed and the mailer must be running and configured to send mail. The script mounts the root directory of another system, in read-only mode, via SSHFS. It finds remote incremental files of OS directories only, which are one day old, then creates a tarball in the /dump/os/ directory; else a full backup every Friday. Next, deletes backup files more than 2 weeks old; all scheduled via cron. Last, it sends an email of the success or failure.
Linux Kernel Quick Boot with Kexec
by Ramses Soto-Navarro ramses@sotosystems.com, 7/12/2024
Linux Kernel Quick Boot with Kexec
Overview
Kexec quickly boots a Linux kernel and initramfs without resetting the hardware. Typically the reboot command also resets the hardware which takes longer for the entire reboot process to finish. The Kexec process is very convenient for rebooting a system very fast in order to troubleshoot or diagnose a quick reboot; it saves time, especially for servers that take very long during the BIOS post, in order to check memory and very the hardware. This technique is useful for test purposes or during times when rebooting quickly during an emergency is extremely necessary. Literally it can reboot your system in seconds. Here we run Kexec through a simple bash script which will run it in the background and then exit the script; otherwize your remote SSH remote terminal gets stuck in La La Land. The audience is experienced Linux administrators.