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Webmasters have to make sure that their websites and files are getting backed up regularly to be prepared when something unforeseen happens. This unforeseen event can be a hacker attack, a database crash, a fire in the data center of the hoster or human error. Whatever the cause is it can have a severe impact on the service and business if backups are not available to restore the website or service.

Many web hosting companies offer backup space and create backups regularly. Some on the other hand ask for additional payments or do not offer this backup service at all. It then is up to the webmaster or server administrator to ensure that the data gets backed up regularly so that it can be restored when needed.

One option that is becoming increasingly popular is to backup data and send it to an offsite storage space. Backup2Mail is such a script. It can initiate automatic MySQL database backups on Linux servers using cron jobs and transfer these backups to a Gmail account. The only restriction is that the size of the zipped database should not exceed the maximum attachment limit of Gmail which is currently 25 Megabytes.

The developer provides instructions on how to setup the MySQL database backup and Gmail transfer on his website. It basically means that the user needs to edit an index.php file to provide the script with the MySQL information and GMail data. The only thing left after this step is to create a cron job so that the script is executed regularly on the server. Backups will from then on be created automatically on the web server and send to the Gmail account.

Opera has finally lift the veil and introduced the “thing” that would reinvent the Internet. It goes by the name Opera Unit and will be a part of the upcoming Opera 10 web browser. Opera Unite basically offers web server capabilities right in the web browser which allows users to share data and files on the Internet but also to host chat rooms, online applications and even complete web projects. The main difference between Opera’s approach and the standard approach is that Opera establishes direct client to client connections without data being hosted in the cloud on third party servers.

Opera Unite is modularized and comes with so called services that can be installed to extend the functionality. This may remind many users of Firefox add-ons but it is actually a completely different technology that requires more than just clicking on an install link. Currently seven services are offered, they are:

* Media Player – Accessing the music collection from anywhere on the Internet.
* File Sharing – A way of sharing files directly between users.
* Fridge – A note leaving application that other people can use to leave notes on a computer system.
* Web Server – Hosting a web server from the local computer system.
* Photo Sharing – Share photos without uploading them first.
* The Lounge – A chat interface hosted on a computer system.

The Opera team has created a user guide to get users started with Opera Unite. Opera Unite is available as a separate preview release which can be downloaded for all supported operating systems from the Opera Labs website. The download will actually replace the current version of Opera 10 if the user decides to install it in the same installation directory.

Opera Unite is then available in the left panel after installation. Starting the actual home server requires an Opera account. A homeaddress is assigned to every user signing up for Opera Unite in the from “http://computername.username.operaunite.com/” with the user selecting the computer name. The username will be the Opera username.

Once that has been setup the service that has been selected by the user gets setup. Setup of the file sharing module for example requires the selection of a directory on the local computer that will be used for that purpose. Each service that has been activated can then be accessed from the created homepage if the user accessing it has sufficient rights to do so.

opera file sharing

The file sharing page on the server is for example protected by a password by default which can be changed in the root home directory. It offers three different access rights which make it possible to allow public access (everyone can access them), private access (only the root user can access the files) or password protected access.

Verdict:

Opera Unite offers something that web browsers do not offer out of the box. The usefulness of the service on the other hand depends largely on the user’s system configuration. If the user runs an home server then it might not be needed to run Opera Unite as well. Users who prefer to access everything from one program might find Opera Unite helpful especially if the developers and users begin to add new modules to the service. Not really a reinvention of the Internet but a nice service nevertheless.

DreamSys Server Monitor, once a commercial remote server monitoring software, is now available as a free download from the developer’s homepage. The user still needs to enter registration information after installation. They are however available on the homepage without the need for registration or any other kind of data grabbing. The Server Monitor application can be used to monitor servers over a network or the Internet.

The system administrator starts by adding new servers that should be monitored to the application. Required information are a unique name, the server address and the monitoring type. Available monitoring types are TCP / IP, Ping or Services. Additional information might be required depending on the type selected. A TCP / IP monitoring for example requires a port that can be added in the same interface.

The events and notifications that can be configured are quite extensive. Events can be configured for positive and negative results. Positive results – meaning the remote server is up and running – are limited to playing a sound or running a command while negative results (server down) include the additional options to reboot the computer or start a service.

Three notification types are available. The administrator can be informed by email, message box or net message.

Specific parameters for every server can be configured in the Configuration View tab. It allows the user to change the monitoring interval, configure the connection timeout, set the mail server and enable the logging of events.

DreamSys Server Monitor can be used as a Internet or network monitoring software. It lacks some of the features of advanced monitoring applications that offer website or database monitoring but could be enough for administrators who do not need that functionality.

SSH is a network protocol that allows to be transferred in a secure channel. Most users probably associate SSH with Linux and Unix computer systems. Webmasters might know and use SSH to connect to and manage their Linux servers.

FreeSSHd is a free SSH Server for the Windows operating system. Users can setup the SSH server on one computer system running the Windows operating system and use SSH compatible tools like Putty to connect to that remote computer system. The server can be setup with just a few mouse clicks. The administrator is only required to add users that are allowed to connect to the computer system in the SSH Server configuration.

Authorization can be NT authentication, passwords stored in SHA1 hashes or Public key driven. It is furthermore possible to allow shell, sftp and tunneling access individually. Having said that it should be obvious that FreeSSHd not only offers shell access to authorized users but also secure ftp and tunneling access.

Various options are available that define certain aspects of the SSH Server software. It is possible to add whitelist and blacklists of IP addresses that are allowed to connect to the server, enable event logging, set the secure FTP home path, select a specific allowed cipher, enable tunneling, telnet and check the access logs of the SSH server.

FreeSSHd is a comfortable SSH and SFTP server for the Windows operating system. Setup of the server should not pose to many difficulties even for inexperienced users. All in all a great software program that can be run manually or added to Windows services for extra comfort.

The network discovery software Fing has been born out of the ashes of the much acclaimed Look@Lan network monitoring and discovery software. The project is still in an early stage and comes with a command line version for the Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh operating system. This might turn away users who do not like working with the command line. The interactive mode that has been build into the network discovery software on the other hand might convince them to give it a try nevertheless.

Fing can be run with a single command from the command line or started in interactive mode which basically consists of a series of questions and simple answers provided by the user. The first question for example after starting the interactive mode is about the mode the software should run in. Options are discovery, scan or infos.

* Discovery: Will start the network discovery module. The user has to pick a network adapter and answer several additional questions. Fing will generate a network discovery report in the end.
* Scan: Provides the means to scan a remote host, will display ports, services and firewalls running on that server.
* Infos: Displays information about local and remote networks.

Fing offers a selection of output formats such as text, html or csv that can either be displayed directly in the console or saved in a file on the local computer system.

Verdict:

Fing is a fast network discovery tool for command line junkies. The export functionality and speed are excellent, a graphical user interface would be desirable nevertheless.

Professional webmasters and system administrators have to make sure that their websites, servers and networks are running all the time. One way to ensure that is by running server monitoring software like IT Service View. Similar programs and services that we have covered in the past include the website monitoring software Sitemonitor, the website monitor and downloader Wysigot, the network monitoring software Nettools or the online service Livewatch that is being used to monitor the server Ghacks is running on.

IT Service View is probably the server monitoring software with the broadest range of monitoring possibilities. They range from monitoring websites to Linux and Windows Server 2003 / 2008 servers to Microsoft Exchange Servers to Oracle servers and log files. The server monitoring is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003. It will display a wizard after installation that is walking the user through the configuration of the program.

The less complex monitoring services take only a few seconds to setup. Setting up a website monitoring service in the software that monitored the Ghacks database did not take longer than a minute. It has to be noted that the script that checks the database is already installed on the Ghacks server, the implementation itself was straightforward.

Several parameters can be configured in the setup phase. It is for example possible to define a maximum response time, time out, expected http codes, error texts and text that the website has to contain.

The even responses are highly configurable as well. They are divided into the possible scenarios “no response”, “error”, “error text”, “text not found”, “time out” and “slow web page” when configuring the website monitoring service.

Each of these can launch a series of responses including sending emails, running local programs, shutting down or rebooting windows, managing a Windows service and launching a Windows process.

Some or all of these event responses are displayed whenever configuring a new monitoring service in the server monitoring software.

The monitoring software displays various statistics about each configured job including graphs, log entries and script outputs.

The server monitoring services can monitor key variables on the servers including free computer memory, cpu utilization, service and process statuses and free disk space. Some of the services require that a script is running on the server so that the information can be analyzed. A Linux server has to run the net-snmp suite for example for It Service View to receive the data.

IT Service View is a sophisticated server monitoring software for IT professionals and small businesses who want to monitor their websites and servers.