Linux System Administration and Consultancy

I offer technical support and consultancy in a range of Linux and BSD-related areas; either in the form of hands-on programming and administration, or simply advice. With 10 years experience in the business, I have a good knowledge of most of the major Linux distributions, and have pretty much seen it all as far as services such as Apache, Sendmail, Qmail, Postfix, and BIND go. I'm also the author of a book on Linux Security, which has been receiving favourable reviews.

One thing I love about my work is the variety, nevertheless there are a handful of tasks which I am regularly asked to perform, and which consequently I have a lot of experience with. These include:

PHP/MySQL/Apache: upgrades, tuning, customization
Fixing mailing issues: routing, virtual mailboxes, support for SASL etc.
Spam filtering, including development of Spam Assassin plugins
Backup strategies.
Migrating existing servers to new hosts.
Security auditing, recovering compromised systems, forensics
Load Balancing and other multi-server setups
Installation of tricky CGI scripts
Implementing PCI DSS compliancy
Management of dedicated Linux servers

Some of the less common (but more interesting) areas I've worked on in the past include: automated burning of backups to DVD-R, modifications to SquirrelMail plugins, repairing broken Plesk upgrades, tracking down the cause of random crashes, recovering deleted data from ext2 partitions, WIFI hotspots (RADIUS/Chilli), and Firefox toolbars.

Security is a particular interest of mine, but not one in which I regularly get to indulge professionally. Most companies are reluctant to invest in security auditing since there is rarely any visible benefit (to the layman anyway). As such, most of my security-related work consists of recovering compromised hosts, and post-compromise forensics (how did the intruder get in, how can we stop it happening in the future, is the system backdoored etc). In the past couple of years, I've also provided detailed forensics reports which have been used as the basis of both criminal and civil prosecutions.

Consultancy is offered at a flat rate of $60/hour (or 40 GBP, whichever currency you prefer). Please contact me for further details. You may also like to read more about my background and the areas that I work in, or download a copy of my CV (in PDF format)

Services

Code

vBulletin

Data

Fun Stuff

pete@linuxbox.co.uk