PT SysAdmin Needed - $500+/Month Value For Value Available to Assist 30+ Year Publisher w Monthly Server & CMS Maintenance (SOP video avail)
Todd McGreevy
Last updated
In The Morning!
My name is Todd McGreevy, and I am in search of our next Dude Named Ben (or Sal or Julie!) to have our back for the three servers and numerous websites we host at Digital Ocean.
APRIL 14, 2024 UPDATE: Most recently Avast has Blacklisted www.rcreader.com stating the site contains malware, etc. ... started down the forum path at Avast and realized, I needed to update this appeal below (including increasing the monthly budget to $500)... we need a sysadmin to identify and eliminate what may be causing Avast to blacklist us. It is on Drupal 7.X. Back to regular programming below...
This is a very part-time gig, and we currently have budgeted $500/month as our baseline for server maintenance and monitoring only.
April 2024 UPDATE: I did record a www.vidguide.com with Bill on many of his action steps inside our servers to achieve the monthly hygiene updates. We have SOP's recorded for the most basic hygiene duties. Our long time SysAdmin was Sir William Reveal, Knight of the Internet Revealed. Bill personally hit me in the mouth over 14 years ago : ) He was the first ISP in our Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities market area among other things.
We've had a wonderful value for value relationship for nearly 30 years! When the projects ramp up the monthly consulting payment ramps up. Ramping up would include deploying a new Wordpress site or modifying a current legacy site with custom php or python coding.
We're hopeful that the No Agenda producers will help us source and meet our next dude named Ben.
(We have lots of ideas for enhancing our current primary sites that will increase the monthly stipend by project... and If Drupal is your thing, would really really love to talk to you . . . don't be a hater!)
Sidebar: In 2022, we published our 1000th print edition of the River Cities' Reader!
River Cities Reader Issue 1000 August 2022 Cover.png
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View full-sizeDownload Here is a cover from a year later in Sep 2023:
stay-calm-and-do-not-comply-reader-issue-1013-september-2023-cover.png
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View full-sizeDownload In addition to the media or publishing websites above, we also manage two commercial websites, one for a made in usa vacuum pump manufacturer and the other for a small M&A firm.
And, thanks to our retiring Sysmin Sir William Reveal, we have stood up a Mastodon instance at https://flmnow.com/, for Free Lives Matter Now. The branding, and final settings are pending us engaging our next Dude (or Dudette) Named Ben.
Thanks for reviewing the scope and specs below to determine if this is a gig up your alley or not.
Our retired SysAdmin is Bill Reveal who we adore and are sorry to lose him, but he has greatly earned his retirement and we were super fortunate to have such a talented and engaged collaborator for close to thirty years!
Bill has shared with me he will be available to answer questions and help on board a new Sysmin.
We have maintained a message board of threads per project for many years at a Basecamp.com instance for posterity and referencing if need be for the history of what was done, including credentials.
Sir William Reveal has summarized what his current scope of responsibility is below.
April 2024 UPDATE: I did record a www.vidguide.com with Bill on many of his action steps inside our servers to achieve the monthly hygiene updates. Bill's Summary: I administer and monitor 3 LAMP servers (with Nginx thrown in for good measure). I install/uninstall new sites—WordPress when needed and set up the mysql database, and keep the DNS up to date for the sites.
All this is done via CLI and mostly manual or via Bash scripts. New databases can be installed via phpmyadmin or adminer. I have backups running on the server which I check monthly to ensure they are doing the job.
The Servers are rcreader server - 2 websites, test and www Apache, MySQL, and Php 7.4 Monitor via Nagios Disk capacity Web server Load - most common service problem, 4-7 times a week minor, maybe 1 complete outage 1-2 times a month MySQL ping response admospheres server - 24+ websites including test sites (15 domains) Apache, MySQL, php 5.4, 7.4, and 8.0 (all 7.4 sites need to be transitioned to 8.0) legacy php 5.4 required for adcast Monitor via Nagios Disk capacity General web server — most common service problem, almost daily warnings, weekly minor outages (i.e., by the time I can respond it has resolved), 3-4 times a month which require action. Server Load - occasionally get warnings at same time as web server warnings MySQL health Monitor two individual sites: agenda31.org and marigoldresources.com tmsvacuum server Nginx, MySQL, Php 7.4 Monitor via Nagios Web Ping Monitor manually disk capacity and load
I use the apt automatic upgrades for security issues and manually upgrade weekly the remainder after testing on a test bed I have setup for this purpose which has saved me a couple times.
Attacks against the servers are common but not nearly as problematic or frequent as they were when the servers were at Rackspace. Most attacks are brute force password attacks against individual sites. These attacks will often trigger a warning but not affect performance noticeably. Unfortunately sometimes they will lock the server up. Admospheres server due to the number of sites is the most common target.
DDoS attacks have become significantly less noticeable since the move to Digital Ocean. The admospheres server is still the most attacked but complete outages are infrequent now.
Based on reports from Nagios, load warnings are the most common issue affecting the rcreader server (last issue yesterday) while web server warnings are most common on the atmosphere's server (last issue yesterday). TMS outages are rare—last issue 7/27/22 which did require a reboot.
I get SMS messages and emails for service issues. I probably average 3-5 alerts per week of which I probably have respond to 1, restarting the web services or reboot the server. Brute force password attacks I will block at the firewall (ufw). If you've read this far, then you might be a good fit! Please contact me via any of the following with your interest, and we can arrange time for a phone call. todd@admospheres.com cell 563-650-0120 https://noauthority.social/deck/@todd
