So for a while I've been dealing with slowness when logging in to my server.
My setup is I have the main server with dual NICs connected to a switch and my desktop also connected to that switch. They're separated by about 1 foot, so no real distance and all local network. The slowness is only noticed when connecting locally. If I connect in with Putty from, say my work, there is no lag at all.

I finally got around to "Google-ing" the issue and came up with a really simple fix.

sudo pico /etc/ssh/sshd_config
and add this at the bottom:
UseDNS no
Then restart the SSH daemon
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Next time you go to log in you won't have that delay with the login. The odd thing is I've been connecting to my server through IP address, so no DNS at all.

This makes my day.

So I've recently rebuilt my server after loosing a 500GB backup drive; which after trying to recover the data somehow destroyed the ability to mount or even format any other drives... Yes I know having a single backup drive isn't the smartest.

Now I've got things setup in a nice mirror, with another backup drive ready and another that I will be using as an image drive.
I'm also setting up another server to be used as data/media storage. Nothing special, and not much space, but secure. I've got 4 80GB drives installed with a RAID 5 setup.

Main server is running a standard LAMP (Linux,Apache,MySQL,PHP) setup, along with mail and print. Configured as the internet gateway/firewall, along with everything else, its back up running stable... Now there's just some reconfiguring to do to make it more secure.