So Bung (the VM) will now serve my static content for the various sites I host, and Pants (local server) will be for services. This should simplify a lot of things, and give me a bit more experience with a) Ubuntu as a server and b) running a VM server.

In addition to switching up hosts, I’m also switching up HTTPD services. I’ve dealt exclusively with Apache (1.3 and 2) in the past. The same friend that is providing the VM also convinced me to give Nginx (wiki.nginx.org) a shot. It’s taken quite a bit of getting used to, but it does seem to be crazy fast, and the config gets a lot easier as you go along.

I have already migrated the sites under the scummbox.org umbrella, and am just rsync-ing the content for the other domains that I host. Hopefully the remainder of the sites will be relocated by this weekend!

To facilitate remote access to my network, OpenVPN has been installed. It was a cinch to install, and through some trial and error I have gotten additional routes passed through to access my home network range from any remote location.

Also installed was TinyProxy. This allows users connected to the VPN to (transparently!) access sites that may be blocked at their location.

A final new service running is GnuMP3d… A remote playlist/streaming client that is tucked behind the VPN to prevent rampant and unauthorized

The cutover was smooth-ish… aside from remote SSH access dying (thank god for VPN logins) and Apache forgetting it had PHP (a quick PHP recompile fixed that.) We’ll see if anything else has suffered during the move.

A lot of things have been re-arranged, due to the default set up of Apache 2.2. If you come across a link that doesn’t work, let me know… I’ll do my best to point you to the new link, or fix the issue.

As of yesterday, I decided that pants, the existing scummbox, is getting long in the tooth. It’s an old Celeron 333 maching that I got for free from a company that was throwing a tonne of them out. It lived a hard life before I got it, and it’s lived a harder life since then.

Pants has had cats chew on its power cables, rained on, dropped, had catastrophic power failures and still runs tickity-boo 99% of the time. But that 1% is out there, and I don’t want to get burned.

So I’ve made New Pants! New Pants is running much newer hardware (AMD X2 processor, 2gb of ram) and with a lot more storage (1TiB vs 40GiB) in a well-ventilated case. There has also been a complete OS changeover from the old FreeBSD 5.4 to a current version of Gentoo Linux.

As I type, I’m configuring mail services and copying over some test sites to see how things deal with my Apache/PHP/MySQL installs. WordPress has dealt well with the change, and theoretically mail delivery and webmail are running, too!

The problem will be identifying all the different processes running on Pants, and replicating them on the new machine. Already Apache 2 has changed how I store sites and configure virtual servers… but I’m not expecting it all to be smooth sailing.

Well, another post that no one will see once this build is closer to finished!

So after using Ubuntu for a week, I decided I didn’t like the coddling it does. What do you mean I can’t accidentally uninstall Coreutils and have to spend 4 frenzied hours trying to download and extract a version with no “advanced” tools such as ls and rm? I can’t trust anything that doesn’t boot to the command line prior to a GUI (Thus my current problems with Windows and OSX.)

So, in the spirit of “This works, but not to my satisfaction”, I nuked my Ubuntu install and put Gentoo back on the machine.

Ahh, that’s better.

Immediately I run into package blocks (HOORAY! I missed you, blocked packages!) between coldplug and udev. This is a known issue with older installs (2006.1, from the scrawl on the disc. The current install version of Gentoo is 2007.0) upgrading to the newest packages. Udev now has coldplug included (Linux Primer: Udev dynamically creates your /dev directory… the directory where all your raw devices are kept. Hard drive information, sound card information, etc. It’s much better than the old way. Coldplug checks for devices that cannot be changed while the computer is running… PCI cards and the like… and makes them useable by the linux system.) That paragraph got huge. Time for a new one.

So Coldplug is blocking Udev. No worries. I unmerge (uninstall) coldplug, and do the udev upgrade. Around the same time I change my network settings so that I have a static IP from my router, but it’s not taking. So, reboot. Once the system comes back up, I have to modprobe forcedeth (basically my NIC driver) before I can run /etc/init.d/net.eth0 start (the start-up script for my network card.) It didn’t twig in my head that because of removing coldplug and not running revdep-rebuild (basically recompiles any packages dependent on changed/removed components) to make sure everything used the new Udev, I might have some issues with services.

Prior to leaving to work this morning, I got a pretty big package upgrade going and strolled out the door thinking all is fine. Upon getting to work this morning, though, I find that ssh isn’t running. Oh woe is me!! A new Linux system, and I can’t even tinker with it remotely? Maddening! I meant to install my graphics card drivers and my current favorite Xwindows Manager whilst here (yes, everything I did prior was from a command line.) Nothing chafes me more than my own stupidity in these situations.

So I’ll be pissed about that for a good while

January 10th (or thereabouts) marks the 1 year anniversary of me getting bored with a Windows XP workstation and installing Linux for the first time in many years. Since then I’ve added a wee Ubuntu box and a PowerMac G4 running OS X Leopard (a topic for a different post) to my managre,

My various and sundry linux machines are running well: No major changes to Scummbox recently, and the desktop machine is running well (with an AMD X2 processor upgrade.)

I’ve all but

On reboot I see that there are several major errors: Udev wasn’t loading properly, the System Clock cannot be accessed, ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) won’t load, nor will my network card. Crap.

What did I do last night? I ran a deep system update based on a new portage listing. What was updated? Umm… my Vorbis libraries… oh, the Linux Kernel Headers. Well, that might have something to do with it. So, genkernel -all, wait 30 minutes, reboot… success! I don’t know if the kernel rebuild was strictly necessary, but it seems to have done the trick.

Going through the logs from last night, all I can see is the cron agent running at 3:00, and then some NTFS checks happening. Nothing that *should* have caused a major freak out. We’ll see how things go tonight.

*Update*

After posting on the Gentoo forums, it turns out the issue had to do with my NTFS driver and my localization settings. Two commands and my system hasn’t seized in days!

***CONFIGURE NETWORKING!!*** If you didn’t choose DHCP, then the installer doesn’t seem to do this correctly. You’ll have to edit /etc/conf.d/net and make the two lines in there look similar to this (you’ll change your IP’s accordingly based on your router):

routes_eth0=( "default gw 192.168.1.x" )
iface_eth0=( "192.168.1.xxx netmask 255.255.255.0" )

Once the file is updated, go to /etc/init.d/ and type ./net.eth0 restart to make the new configuration live.

You’ll definitely want to start off with emerge --sync to get your portage tree current. Second: emerge --update portage since there is a new version of Portage since the 2006.1 LiveCD was built. This is the easy part.

Since the LiveCD will *not* do a networked install (I’ve tried 5 times and various ways. It just *doesn’t* work.) You will have to download the Kernel source. Now. Here’s the rub. The LiveCD gives you kernel 2.6.17-r8. emerge gentoo-sources gives you kernel 2.6.18-r6. As I found out, this is *not* ideal. This means you get to compile a kernel right off the bat! emerge genkernel will help you greatly, as custom kernel compiling, while awesome, is not something you want to just jump into. Gentoo has some great HOWTO’s on compiling kernels. I’d recommend starting here and following the Kernel Compiling (the genkernel method, of course), then the guide on Configuring the Bootloader (GRUB if you chose the default in the install.) This should get you a shiny new kernel and source, making things like compiling Nvidia Drivers and such actually work. This one took me a borked install to learn.

Now, if you’re all “hey, Gnome/KDE is awesome!” you should install them at this point. emerge --search gnome or emerge --search kde will point you to the right overall package to install. I personally prefer the GUI Minimalist feel, so I ran emerge fluxbox. Once you have that done (it will likely take a while. Go have a sandwich.) you will want to update your base X install. The one that comes with Gentoo is Xorg, and it can be updated via emerge --update xorg. This, too, will take some time.

Once your preferred X components have finished installing, you can actually log in. startx should bring up your window manager of choice. Now you can open up multiple terminal windows and *really* bring your system to it’s knees by running multiple emerges at once! MUAHAHAHA! At this point it’s really a matter of preference what you install. I’d recommend emerge --update mozilla-firefox or emerge mozilla-firefox-bin to get up to Firefox 2.0.0.1. I also threw in emerge eterm as I hate the default xterm.

If you’re having problems with sound not working, I would *highly* reccommend the ALSA Guide. If you run an Nvidia card, I’d also recommend you checking out the Nvidia Guide, as it’s excellent.

A couple more packages that are worth it: mplayer and ffmpeg. If you’re going to play movies in Linux, these are the programs you want to use.

So I hope this has been at least a semi-informative guide as to what to expect on a fresh install of Gentoo Linux via the 2006.1 LiveCD.

So a new year has started, and a friend managed to get me interested in Desktop Linux again. I’ve run a couple day-to-day Linux installs, but they never lasted for one reason or another. The last one was probably in the very early 2000′s.

But I’m back up your ass with the resurrection! I’m packing Gentoo under the hood, and it’s nice! After spending a lot of time in a FreeBSD server environment, the portage system feels very natural. The custom compiled options do take a bit longer to install, but damn it! I miss watching esoteric compile strings flash by in my myriad of terminal windows.

And speaking of windows… where would a desktop Linux install be without a Windowmanager? I’ve chosen the Xorg backend with Fluxbox doing the minimalistic windows thing I’m working on getting the Nvidia Linux drivers going, and from there it’s a short hop to getting WINE installed which means World Of Warcraft under Linux

So far it’s been a blast. Just what I needed to get me interested in my computer again A+ would install again!