Posts that have the tag "linux"
Update: gOS
I didn't care much for gOS. I couldn't put my finger on the specific reason why. I just felt it was too cluttered to get it working just right. The other problem I ran into was that I wasn't completely sure how to customize the work space. However, this is probably due more to my inexperience with Gnome than anything with the OS.
I'll take a look at other light weight Linux distros later on.
Posted on May 05, 2010 at 01:42 pm. 0 comments. Tags: linux gOS
New Versions of Linux
I've been using Debian almost exclusively as my Linux platform of choice, however, I think it's time to take a gander at Ubuntu Server. It's built from Debian, meaning it can use the APT repository (which is one big reason why I like Debian). It's also meant to act as a server, which could be good for me. I want to test e-mail settings on my server in case I need to set up a new server.
Moreover, I'm going to take another look at gOS. I tried gOS once a while back on a woefully inadequate computer and it was a miserable disaster. However, I have a computer that's slightly more powerful (P4 w/ 256mb of memory) that may be able to handle gOS. If gOS runs well, it might be a viable alternative to Windows on the lower end computers we have in the office.
In other news, I've been hired recently as a consultant to a law firm. I'm going to use this opportunity to potentially jump-start a consulting side business. I've since registered a new domain (methompson.com) and will start developing a website for that domain.
Posted on April 29, 2010 at 06:41 pm. 0 comments. Tags: methompson.com gos ubuntu server ubuntu linux
Day Off
I took the day off today. I have a sinus infection, I think, and my nose has been running like crazy. I woke up multiple times this morning with a runny and stuff nose. My throat hurt, my lips were chapped, I was sweating. I had a headache and my body ached. I was in no condition to head to work today, so I stayed home. read more...
Posted on November 13, 2009 at 07:21 pm. 0 comments. Tags: Admin linux image upload website
Time variance
Unfortunately, my virtual server's clock runs fast. The crontab service was supposed to alleviate this problem, but it runs faster than I anticipated. As such, I changed it from once a day to once an hour. Now, it still desyncs, but not by a huge margin.
Posted on November 05, 2009 at 11:35 am. 1 comments. Tags: admin linux
Crontab
I finally got around to completing two tasks I should have completed long ago. I set up a crontab that will run a script that sets the time from the hardware clock to the OS clock. The problem with the virtual server is that the time can wander around quite a bit. There are some tools to sync the software clock's time with the hardware clock, but I couldn't get it to work on my version of Linux. I set it to run once a day, but I'll see if it's necessary to increase the frequency (maybe twice a day or even four times a day, we'll see).
A while ago, I wrote a batch that dumps the entirety of my SQL website database into a single file, then zips the file and gives it a time stamp. I did this for the purpose of creating an SQL database backup. I was quite lax in backing this up. In fact, I had only made 3 backups prior to Sunday and only made another backup on Monday because I had to reinstall Linux. I set another cron job to run on a daily schedule. I'll probably want to develop a cleanup script that collects all of the old backup scripts and places them into an archive. I'll see how that goes.
Posted on November 04, 2009 at 02:23 pm. 0 comments. Tags: admin linux sql backup
Down time
My OS hard drive crashed on Sunday night, so my computer went down after that. My website was, thankfully, unaffected, but because my OS went down, I wasn't able to get my virtual server up and running until yesterday and I only got Linux and all of the programs installed today. I still need to configure PHP and install Imagemagick so that my image gallery works.
Posted on November 03, 2009 at 02:11 pm. 0 comments. Tags: admin linux HDD
Working on the computers
Last night was supposed to be easy. I had only a few tasks to complete:
- Image my OS drive from the original drive to the new drive (old 500 GB HDD)
- Copy the 2nd partition from my old OS HDD to the new OS HDD
- Replace Video card
Under normal circumstances, the first task should only take about an hour to an hour and a half. read more...
Posted on October 15, 2009 at 10:16 am. 0 comments. Tags: computers desktop computer linux windows acronis imagex video card image
New Hardware
Last Saturday, I purchased a pair of hard drives for my computer. As I mentioned a few posts back, some of my HDDs were getting a little old. My OS drive is 3 years old and one of my data drives was 2.33~ years old. So, I bought a pair of Seagate 1.5TB HDDs from Micro Center. I've spent the past couple of days rigorously testing both of the HDDs using Seatools and Chkdsk.
I also purchased an inexpensive case. From Newegg, I purchased a new PSU: Corsair 400W. I plan on pulling the PSU from my living computer, which is an Xclio 420W PSU and putting that into the new case. The Xclio PSU is a great power supply and was highly rated, but it's getting old and I'd rather it go into a computer with older hardware. I also purchased an EVGA GTS 250 video card. The GTS 250 will go into my desktop. The 9600GT in there now will go into my living room computer and my old skool 7600GT will go into the third desktop.
The third desktop will have the following components:
- ASUS A8N-E Motherboard (nForce4 Ultra)
- Athlon 64 X2 4200+
- 2GB DDR400 memory
- EVGA 7600GT
- Maxtor 320 GB HDD
- WD 500 GB HDD
- Xclio 420W PSU
I'll install Linux on the new computer and shove it off somewhere. It will then become my new backup server. I've been using an Xbox for a long time as a backup server, but it's limited to an IDE bus and the HDDs are just too small.
Posted on October 13, 2009 at 11:01 pm. 0 comments. Tags: computer hardware admin server linux xbox xbox server
Remote Desktop and Virtualization
I've been working on a pet project for the past few weeks involving remote access to virtual desktops. Where I've been working the past 2 years, I've become a de facto computer guru for my co-workers. Aside from the fact that the legal field is moving toward electronic means (albeit slowly), our IT worker has been out of the office for many different reasons. My experience has taught me a few, very important, life lessons about computers. read more...
Posted on July 31, 2009 at 12:15 pm. 0 comments. Tags: server virtual virtualization linux windows
Down time
Unfortunately, there was a problem with my main hard drive on my computer. On Sunday, I restarted my main desktop computer because it had been running just shy of 2 weeks and I had been doing a lot of work, so I thought a good restart was in order. However, after I restarted, my computer was hanging at "verifying DMI pool data". This, of course, was a problem. Now, I had feared that it was my hard drive that was at fault, my motherboard, my power supply and any number of things. Through testing, I was at ease to find that I could boot from CDs and DVDs (though, Ubuntu didn't want to boot correctly). I got boot errors from HDDs that had no installation on them, indicative that the computer was attempting to boot from it. I had attempted to fix the MBR, among other things.
In the end, in desperation, I just installed Windows XP on a spare HDD so that I could access and back everything up to another HDD. I reinstalled Vista, wiping and repartitioning the entire HDD. Moreover, my Linux virtual HDD wasn't playing nice with VirtualBox. It, for whatever reason, wasn't finding my ethernet adapter nor acquiring an IP address. Rather than fuck around with it, I just reinstalled Linux and reset everything.
Altogether, a pretty shitty couple of days, computer-wise.
Posted on June 09, 2009 at 08:13 am. 0 comments. Tags: server computer windows linux
Debian Time Setting
As I mentioned earlier, my server is currently housed on my desktop as a virtual server. I run my server through VirtualBox, which tunnels to my DHCP server and acquires its own IP address. No need to go further in depth than that.
However, because it's not a standalone server, it acquires its time through my Desktop computer's time. My desktop is set to CDT/CST and my server acquires that time. Unfortunately, my server thinks that the time it receives is UTC. Thus, if it's 8am CDT on my desktop, my server will think it's 8am UTC and adjust the time accordingly (which would be 2am CDT). This was obnoxious. I was warned against using a cron job to use rdate once a day as problems would occur if there's work going on during the interval.
Turns out, the /etc/default/rcS file determines whether the time it receives is UTC or local. Windows will change the hardware time to match local time, rather than offsetting UTC by the time zone. Linux seems to want to do the opposite, by default, where it will regard the time it receives as UTC and offset. By changing the option "UTC=yes" to "UTC=no" and restarting my server, I solved the incorrect time problem.
Posted on May 19, 2009 at 12:55 pm. 0 comments. Tags: linux debian administration
The Server
Hello all. It's been a while since I updated last. First and foremost, I'm going to upgrade my server. I've been using my Xbox server for the past year and some. It's been pretty good to me, but there have been quite a few problems with it that make me want to look elsewhere.
The biggest problem I have with it is that the hardware is unreliable. On reboot, there's a 30% chance that it will give me a cryptic error "Error Decode Picture". From my research, this error appears to be due to a problem with the open source BIOS that is used to boot Linux, Cromwell. Apparently, it will hang on random occasions when attempting to access the video hardware. This error, unfortunately will not allow the Xbox to progress to the boot screen or reboot on its own. So, if I'm administering my server elsewhere, and I reboot my server, it's like playing roulette. There have been many times that I reboot my server and it never booted right back up.
The other main problem is that the hardware is special. It's not standard ATX hardware. While it may have a lot of hardware in common with a regular PC, including the Pentium processor and Nvidia GPU, its hardware is still different and apart. The specialized hardware means that when I upgrade the kernel, I need to use a patch that makes it workable with my hardware. The current Linux Kernel is at 2.6.29. The most recent Xbox Linux Kernel is at 2.6.16. It seems fairly obvious that I won't be able to upgrade beyond that. This posed a problem for me when I attempted to upgrade Debian from Etch to Lenny. I had to downloaded the proper kernel version, patch it manually, compile and install the kernel. It certainly was a pain.
There are other problems associated with the hardware limitations. The interface is IDE and runs at ATA33, severely limiting speed. The NIC is only 100mbps. It only has 64 megs of memory and runs a P3/Celeron combo at < 1ghz.
Now, despite all of this, I still liked using the XBox for a few reasons. First of all, it's small form factor. It's a little larger than a thin client machine. It doesn't require a monitor and can easily be plugged into my video capture card if I need to look at the screen input. While the processing power may be limited, it was still fast enough to run a small web server.
Though, I've decided to move the server duty elsewhere. I'm going to place my server on to a virtual environment using VirtualBox. I recently discovered that I can bridge a network connection from the virtual environment to my DHCP server so that my virtual environment receives a different IP than the host computer. This way, I can maintain server stability via stability of my own computer. Moreover, backing up my server is much MUCH easier as I can just copy and paste the HDD image. This ease at copying and pasting also means that if one computer is down, or will be down for whatever reason, I can just copy and paste the image on to another computer, boot it up and my server will be operational right away.
In order to account for the potential necessity for more processing threads, I'm going to upgrade from an E8400 to a Q8300. The E8400 will be shoved off to the living room for HTPC duty replacing my Athlon X2 4200+. The 4200+ will be put to good use later when I get around to purchasing a new video card, power supply, HDD and case at another time. It may pick up the server duties, but I'll decided where to put it.
In the meantime, the Xbox will continue to be a server. It will function as my file server for backing up data. COnsidering I have a 200GB HDD in there, it can easily back up all of my music and photos in case I needed them. It can also act as an intermediary for sharing files between all the computers in my house. At this point in time, I have the server set up in the virtual environment and it appears to be nearly identical, functionally. However, I'm waiting for my new motherboard and memory in the mail, so I won't switch it live until I can install the new hardware, reinstall the OSes and get everything up to where it was previously.