I used to look after a number of servers and we were forever having grief when they got messed up due to new package installs and testing (used to drive me mad actually….flaming coders).

So quite often they required a good old fashioned cleanup. Well it used to get on my tits that when set up it would take an age and things would always be missing. So I made a batch script that was run just after the CD/DVD base install.

I have copied what I used to use to get up an running fast and pasted it below. Hope it helps or gives you some ideas as to what you can do. If I get any requests I will get the files together as well and post them.

Note: if it racks your system, that’s down to you

I created a folder called install in the root, made sure I had reoback and phpmyadmin in the right place, with the right name
######

#install and update aptitude
yum install apt
apt-get update

##Edit /etc/apt/sources.list. It should contain the following lines:
echo ‘http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/6/i386/freshrpms’ >> /etc/apt/sources.list
#echo ‘rpm http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386 core updates freshrpms’ >> /etc/apt/sources.list
#echo ‘rpm http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386 tupdates’ >> /etc/apt/sources.list
#echo ‘http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/1/i386 core updates freshrpms’ >> /etc/apt/sources.list

#get gpg keys
rpm –import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY*

#install some common apps
yum install sendmail wget bzip2 unzip zip

#install mysql
yum install mysql mysql-devel mysql-server

#restart mysql server
/etc/init.d/mysqld restart

#set root password
mysqladmin -u root password yourpassword

#install php and apps
apt-get install php php-devel php-gd php-mysql php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc curl curl-devel

#start apache
/etc/init.d/httpd start

#install webalizer
apt-get install webalizer

#install pcntl fork not done for now, as problems can occur
#rpm -ivh ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/sourceforge/p/ph/phprpms/php-pcntl-4.3.11-2.5.1.i386.rpm

#copy phpmyadmin to /var/www folder
mv phpmyadmin.tar.gz /var/www
cd /var/www

#unzip phpmyadmin
gunzip phpmyadmin.tar.gz

#untar phpmyadmin
tar xvf phpmyadmin.tar

#raname the folder to something sensible
mv phpMyAdmin-2.9.1.1-all-languages-utf-8-only phpmyadmin

#load reoback
mkdir /var/lib/reoback
mkdir /var/lib/reoback/backups
mkdir /var/lib/reoback/data
mkdir /var/lib/reoback/tmp

##update system
yum update

##add admin to sudoers file
echo ‘admin ALL=(ALL)’ >> /etc/sudoers

## add mysql and http to startup
echo ’service httpd start’ >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local
echo ’service mysqld start’ >> /etc/rd.d/rc.local

## add alias to phpmyadmin
echo ‘phpmyadmin /var/www/phpmyadmin’ >> /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

## install TOR for anonymous browsing
yum install libevent

rpm -ivH ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/core/4/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/openssl097a-0.9.7a-3.i386.rpm

##get latest package from here http://tor.eff.org/download-unix.html.en
rpm -ivH http://tor.eff.org/dist/rpm/tor-0.1.1.26-tor.0.rh4_4.i386.rpm

##install privoxy
rpm -ivH http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ijbswa/privoxy-3.0.3-1.6x.i386.rpm

##copy config file and force it with -f
## to access tor use ‘http://localhost:8118′
cp -f config /etc/privoxy

##set yum to update daily since it does not work with FC6
echo ‘#!/bin/sh’ >> /etc/cron.daily/yumupdate
echo ‘/usr/bin/yum -R 10 -e 0 -d 0 -y update yum’ >> /etc/cron.daily/yumupdate
echo ‘/usr/bin/yum -R 120 -e 0 -d 0 -y update’ >> /etc/cron.daily/yumupdate
chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/yumupdate

##update system one last time
yum -y update

##reboot as all is done! Congrats dude
reboot

###########tasks to do
## ## Go into /var/www/phpmyadmin/libraries/config.defaul.php and change cookie to http and remove host
## test that login to phpmyadmin works
## Add admin user to mysql with select and lock tables
## add admin user to mysql for use with reoback
## edit reoback to backup files and databases
## Drop test database from mysql
##########

This has been lacking for some time, but the old timer 4eyes has had a hand in the setting up of a forum specifically aimed at meetings and SEO type events.

Before long this will be the place to suggest meetings, from big, large scale events to the 3 blokes in a local pub who can make it out on a Thursday night to talk SEO.

Take look at :

SEO Circuit 

I was reading Joost’s blog over the weekend and he was talking about Wiep’s post about Google SEO Mythbusting and I could not help but think about what my PhD supervisor used to give people grief about….statistically sound sampling.

Well this isn’t me being provocative, I don’t know Wiep but Joost does and having met him and read his blog that’s enough for me.

On 1, 2, 3 and 4, how long were they left, how many sites were these tried on, one single site does not maketh a fact :-). So each theory does not have enough data to be conclusive, or maybe it does, but those figures were not included.
With respect to the Adsense and indexing, many moons ago, it was the first thing that we did on large scale sites to get Mediabot looking. Then the speculation that it would be silly for MediaBot NOT to index the main index came about. I always thought this was a very good possibility which was why I never cloaked pages with Adsense and I could not be bothered with full IP cloaking. And of course:

AdSense mediapartners bot adding to the Google search index

Anyway, just my thoughs.

Cheers

Rich