Linux Server

Installing SME Server

I used this some years ago for class when it was called e-smith and it was a very nice server setup that was administered from a web browser.

The test machine is a dell SFF gx270 with P4 2.6ghz, 1 gig DDR ram, 320 gig IDE hd. There is no cd so i opened the top and plugged in a cd using a long ide cable. The machine is very compact, about the size of a large 3 ring binder with 6 usb ports, low profile agp, pci etc and it has a SATA controller. We debated putting in one of the sata drives lying around but this old IDE drive should be fine. It also has an Nvidia 6600 256mb video card which is totally wasted in a server. We decided to leave the sata cable and the video card in the machine if we later need to use it as a ubuntu desktop for class.

The version we booted from cd is 7.4 and the main page for the distro is at http://wiki.contribs.org/Main_Page. This version is based on Centos.

The installation menu uses the old text config that will be familiar to anyone who grew up on red hat. You choose a language, a time zone and reformat the hard drive. It then starts installing the packages about 1.2 gig worth - 522 packages to be exact which takes about 4 minutes as the text installer flies. This gives us time to read the FAQ's.

Interesting, if you change the boot loader from grub to lilo you can run it on a mac mini (intel only). Unfortunately our mac mini is G4 so no joy there - however it is running osx server which is a very nice distro.

Done installing so we reboot. We will leave the CD connected for now in case we need it but we take out the cd-rom. The os starts up and mounts the ext3 fle system and then starts creating quota files which take a very long time. I also thought it was hung and was ready to swith to the other console.

Now some questions. We choose an administrator password. Next is the server name. Next we choose an IP address. This is a fixed one - not a dhcp. I assume we can change that later.

Lets give it 192.168.1.37 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and we choose it not to act as a router but to be just a server. I recall now that i used this as a router (server/gateway) many years ago when it first came out as it was less trouble than fiddling with red hat all the time. The machine was an old 486 with 2 network cards, one cat 3 for the cable modem and 1 coax for the 10 base T internal network. Since the server supported both samba and appletalk it provide a whopping 2 gig of storage for my coax network of a 586, a 486, a 386 for Doom fragfests and a mac.

Once the configuration questions are finished the settings are written and the machine finishes booting to the login prompt:

We login as root with our admin password. Success. Now from the machine we are writing this one we open a new tab in Firefox and goto http://192.168.1.37 and success - a web page with a message 'This web site under construction' is displayed. Ok we need the admin interface.

Best read the adminstration manual on the wiki. Damn - the wiki is down. I seem to remember that in the old e-smith version you did not log in as root but as admin. Let's reboot the system and see.

Success- logging in at the # prompt as admin with the administrator password brings up a text configuration menu. There is a new option - back up to a USB device. Let's try the server manager option. There is the info - use a web browser and goto /server-manager or use the text mode browser (lynx) from the console. Back to our machine here and firefox.

Succes - except that firefox complains the security certificate from sff is invalid so we have to create an exception. Once that is done we get a login box. We don't have any users so lets try logging in as admin. Success - the admin page is displayed.


Ok - let's play

First we change the windows workgroup name from mitel to workgroup. We set up a user and it will not allow a weak user password but it did allow us to create a weak root password! We will have to look into overidding the security policies tomorrow.

Pics of the new machine

Soul of the New Machine

Fast, fast, fast. Been busing installing lots of goodies, got to fill 1.5 terabytes somehow. Of course there is a 2nd SATA controller and space for another 1.5 t hard drive...

Found a neat application called aptoncd which allows you to copy all the appz you downloaded and installed to a optical disc so they can be installed on another machine without hogging all your bandwidth with downloads.

This pic shows Xara Extreme in one workspace (impressive program) and a movie running in another workspace. On the old 7.10 machine i could not play movies and run the compiz fusion effects at the same time. Looks like that has been fixed.

Only problem i have encountered so far is that when 2-3 cores get near max the variable fan at the front spins like crazy. From post by others it looks like this is a known problem with the Dell Precision 470. I'll have to look at replacing the stock fan.

This pic shows the other 2 workspaces, one is doing some 3D modelling and the other is playing some music. Best get back to work...more fun later.

New Ubuntu Baby

Daddy's got a New Computer

The original machine from last summer's ubuntu project was such a nice success (typing on it now) that we decided to upgrade to a better machine. There is nothing wrong with this computer, it runs 24 hours a day without a crash - in fact has never crashed, or hung or had a virus, or got malware or anything. It does everything from manage my ipod, run the color and bw postscript laser printers, burn movies and cd's etc.

The original pc was a cobbled together Compaq EVO W6000 bought for $64 from vfxweb.com (my favourite store). I upped the ram to 2 gig, added a DVD burner and a Nvidia 7600 GT 512 mb video card and a USB 2.0 card. The whole thing was < 200 bucks. It's now the main machine at chaos basement. The only problem is hard drive space - it has a 73 gig scsi hard drive for the os and the home folder a 18gig scsi scratch disk for temp junk and a USB plug in drive for backup - now 80 gigs and to be replaced tomorrow with a 250gig one.

A good machine but time to move on up. So we went back to vfxweb (my favorite store) and purchased 2 matching 3.20 Ghz hyperthreaded Xeon processors (1 mb L2, 800 mhz bus) and then off to ebay for a bare bones dell machine with 6 USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, 2 sata controllers (raid), room for 2 SATA hard disks and 2 IDE optical drives. I prefer compaq and HP to dell, they use metal and their machines just say 'quality'' while dell uses cheap plastic. But the price was right.

Added 3 gig of DDR2 ECC ram and a SATA 1.5 terabyte hard drive ($149 at tiger) and an LG DVD burner. Briefly considered putting in 1 gig sticks for a 6 gig machine but that would be excessive. Even my dual G5 mac only has 3 gig.

Next was an Nvidia 8600 GT 512mb pci express video card. Rummaging around the parts bin we added a 2 port firewire pci card and a 64 bit U320 scsi card to fill out the slots.

This project cost > 200 mainly due to the new parts. Probably $400 by the time we were though. Right now it is using a ps/2 kb and mouse and hooked to a 20" sony monitor via 5 coax to vga - later we will replace that with a larger monitor and usb kb/mouse.

Popped in the Ubuntu 8.10 CD and away we go! While we wrote this it has partitioned the hard disk and installed the files. Then it went off to the mirrors. While we let apt do its thing, one nice bit about 8.10 over earlier releases - the liveCD picked up the sony monitor a lot better. Although the monitor is capable of 1600x1200 rez at high refresh the older distros ran at 800x600 until you tweaked the configuration. This time it is running at a much higher screen resolution.

While the last bit is being done i was reading some reviews of windows 7 (really Vista SP2) and was thinking - why would i want this? Yes it has some better security (if stupid nagging is security) and a more modern mac/linux-like interface and.....ummm - can't think of anything it has that i don't have now. But it's user-friendly - or more accutately, user-annoying.

Switching from windows to ubuntu had some pain but now with a smooth running system there is no reason i can think of why i would want to return to windows world. The browser is worse, the system is annoying, it is insecure and it costs money. So far there has been nothing i did in windows that i have not been able to do in Ubuntu.

so why switch?