5 tools I use in managing servers

Get things done faster and easier.

Neofetch output on a DigitalOcean Droplet.

1. neofetch

When managing project that is using micro-services architecture which requires multiple servers, neofetch is the best tool out there to give you a quick glance on everything you need to know about the server specs.

Github Page: https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch
Installation: https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch/wiki/Installation

Quick install on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install neofetch

Running neofetch on M1 MacBook Air.

2. htop

To monitor active/running processes on your server and observe CPU, memory and swap load, htop is a good choice over the top command. Coloured output and mouse click support makes htop stands out.

Website: https://htop.dev

Quick install on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install htop

htop running on an Ubuntu ECS.

3. glances

In order to monitor overall system performance of your server in a terminal window, I think glances is so far the best tool that fits my need. Glances is basically htop on steriods. Glances shows basically every information you need including detailed break down of CPU, memory, swap usage, network I/O, disk I/O, active processes and etc.

Website: https://nicolargo.github.io/glances/
Installation: https://glances.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html

Quick install on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install glances

Glances dashboard. It even shows high memory consumption alert.

4. tldr

I didn’t remember every single options/args available for nmap, when I’m having hard time to recall the options shorthand for nmap, I will just use this tldr tool to quickly get a summarised version of the most popular use case of nmap. This makes tldr better than the man command.

Website: https://tldr.sh

Quick install on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install tldr

Summarised manually for nmap.

5. fzf

When configuring nginx for multiple domain names pointing to the same server node, I often double check and reconfirm options I set. However, grep experience is not quite handy to me especially when I need to search for several keywords that are totally different. So I will use this command to search keywords inside my nginx config file.

cat nginx.conf | fzf

Github Page: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

Quick install on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install fzf

fzf supports fuzzy search.

Wonder how I display system info bar on iTerm? Here is my previous article guiding you to set it up.

Better iTerm: System status bar