Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 11 down vote favorite
8

I know that there are several Firefox plugins that are invaluable for development. What plugins exist that are useful for system administration, monitoring, and the like? What plugins make your day-to-day job as a system or network administrator easier?

share|improve this question
I'm not sure if this question is on the CW border or not. I'll check in an hour or so to see if there's a balance of comments in either direction on whether this should be CW or not. – Eddie May 2 '09 at 1:34
5  
Voting for close... if I could. "What is your favorite cheese sandwich... as a system administrator." Honestly. Can't wait until we get a good group of 3k+ editors. – Adam Davis May 2 '09 at 5:03
yep... community wiki – Mikeage May 7 '09 at 17:46
1  
@Adam Davis, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed that day? Asking "what tool do you use to do your job" is different from asking "what do you eat at your job." I updated the title to make it more clear, but this is directly related to doing sysadmin tasks. The answers below directly relate to doing sysadmin tasks. This is not a "how do you decorate your cube" question. – Eddie May 7 '09 at 19:55
It took five days for two people to chime in and say, "Yes this should be CW," which doesn't indicate a strong preference. Still, given two such opinions, I have changed this to be CW. – Eddie May 7 '09 at 19:56
show 1 more comment

closed as off topic by Chris S♦ Aug 26 '12 at 4:07

Questions on Server Fault are expected to relate to professional server, networking, or related infrastructure administration within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here.

19 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

ShowIP - allows me to see quickly the IP address of the server where a particular website is hosted. Assists in managing my many clients websites.

DNSCache - quickly disable/re-enable Firefox's builtin DNS Cache, particularly good if your also manipulating the site's DNS at the time

ScreenGrab - particularly good at capturing that error and sending to the developers.

share|improve this answer
1  
+1 for screengrab, makes life a lot easier! – Milner May 7 '09 at 18:30
up vote 15 down vote

Foxyproxy - I cant stand getting attacked by others when they walk over with their stats and say "Hm this Serverfault.com you wasted 5 minutes of our time on it."

share|improve this answer
Wish I could upvote this more. – Portman May 2 '09 at 2:36
this looks more like a tool that would give sysadmins work to do! Maybe give it to all the end users as a ploy to get better funding for network security projects? – Nick Kavadias May 31 '09 at 18:12
up vote 9 down vote

Even for IT, I'd have to put FireBug at the top of the list, too much good information in there.and

share|improve this answer
up vote 8 down vote

Tamper Data this is handy when you have to examine HTTP headers. This may be necessary if you have virtual hosts in a hosting environment. We also insert a field in the header to identify web machines in some of our web farms to identify problem hosts.

share|improve this answer
up vote 6 down vote

Xmarks, cause who wants to maintain a local only copy of their Firefox bookmarks. Xmarks will sync your bookmarks across Firefox, IE etc on all your computers. It's fast and stays out of the way.

share|improve this answer
1  
Now when will it sync my Chrome bookmarks? :( – Christopher Galpin May 2 '09 at 2:33
up vote 4 down vote

WebMail Notifier - Tracks web email accounts

Live http headers - great for trouble shooting websites

Ghostery watch the websites that watch you

share|improve this answer
up vote 4 down vote

Delicious Bookmarks to sync my bookmarks across machines.

share|improve this answer
Yes! Yes! Yes! It's like a catch-all of all the useful content I've come across, tagged and sorted. – spoulson May 7 '09 at 20:01
up vote 3 down vote

LastPass. So I don't have to remember the loads of accounts I use (and can generate very strong passwords for each of your accounts), both personal and at work.

share|improve this answer
up vote 3 down vote

If you're using amazon ec2; elasticfox

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

Firebug and YSlow! FTW

However I don't see why a web browser is a crucial tool for sysadmins, curl ? wget ? telnet host 80 ?

share|improve this answer
I admin vmware server 2.x. If I don't run a website, I've got to use the 1500 character-long command lines. – Matt Simmons May 31 '09 at 18:12
up vote 2 down vote

ReloadEvery - so I can get SO refresh automagically while working!

AdBlockPlus - because so many sites have ads that I don't care about.

Mentioned before, but super +1 for Firebug and YSlow because there's typically some good information that can be gleaned depending on what issue you might get roped in to.

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

Greasemonkey and the many scripts available for it is all I need.

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

Charles Proxy with Firefox plugin is much better than Firebug network statistics.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Fireftp for when you don't want to install an ftp client

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

In addition to others already mentioned, I find SQLite Manager invaluable.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Update Scanner - For every site you have keep tabs on that doesn't have email notifications or rss.

If you ar using google apps:

Active Inbox - GTD for mail.

share|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.