From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 18 17:15:39 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E9B5816A4CE for ; Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:15:39 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtp1.utdallas.edu (smtp1.utdallas.edu [129.110.10.12]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9B7BB43D4C for ; Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:15:39 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from pauls@utdallas.edu) Received: from utd49554 (utd49554.utdallas.edu [129.110.3.85]) by smtp1.utdallas.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A77E388D6F; Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:15:39 -0500 (CDT) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:15:39 -0500 From: Paul Schmehl To: SuDaNym@aol.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <1331C51A59EFE18A22DE5877@utd49554.utdallas.edu> In-Reply-To: <7a.718eeb0b.2f93e044@aol.com> References: <7a.718eeb0b.2f93e044@aol.com> X-Mailer: Mulberry/3.1.6 (Linux/x86) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Re: newbie question X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: Paul Schmehl List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:15:40 -0000 --On Sunday, April 17, 2005 11:52:36 AM -0400 SuDaNym@aol.com wrote: > > Can anyone give me a very rough estimate on how much time is required on > an ongoing basis, after a server is set up with FreeBSD and Apache, to > maintain everything. By everything I am referring to everything > required to keep the server up, and host about 100 domains. Thank you > in advance and I apologize if this question is not appropriate for this > list. > I'm maintaining a server with three domains, running apache, squirrelmail, postfix, cyrus imap and saslauthd, mailman, djbdns and a perl-based bulletin board, and I probably spend an average of 8 hours a month doing server-admin type stuff. If you set it up right, the only maintenance you have is running portupgrade and freebsd-update periodically, to ensure your apps don't have known security holes. Make sure you have a good backup system in case a drive fails, and that's about it. You can write "canary" scripts that monitor processes and attempt to restart them if they fail, and send you email as well. Most of the eight hours is spent reading mail from cron jobs that are monitoring the server. FreeBSD just runs. Paul Schmehl (pauls@utdallas.edu) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu