The built in commands in Linux are simply awesome. Trying to do any advanced partition maneuvers in Windows are difficult to do and often requires expensive third party software to simplify the process. This is untrue in Linux.
The dd command in Linux can be used to clone drives between drives or even produce image files of drives, all with a few simple commands from the command line.
Linode is an amazing platform. This platform recently just got better with the ability to boot your Linodes from Block Storage.
One shortcoming of Block Storage is that you can only resize it in one direction: up. This can prove to be particularly problematic when over-ambitious users first discover this feature and select too much storage than what they need or want. When they go to resize the Block Storage volume to decrease its size they quickly discover that, by default, Linode does not allow this.
Fortunately there is a workaround.
One of the things that I often forget as a website developer is that, as a freelancer who also offers hosting, I also have to worry about my client’s email service. One thing that is particularly painful is taking over a client and having to migrate their email from one server to another.
As part of my Dreamhost to Linode server migration, one of my most dreaded tasks that I encountered was moving my client’s email to the new server or somewhere else. Particularly those who leave several gigabytes worth of email on the server.
The problem is simple, I want to move my and my client's sites away from Dreamhost into an environment where I have more control over the server software running the sites. A little over two years ago, Dreamhost started (and rightfully so) retiring older versions of PHP on both its Shared and Virtual Private Server hosting services. This caused me to have to go, metaphorical hat in hand, to a number of clients and inform them that their opensource web-based productivity tools are going to stop working without intervention on my part.