The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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sonic bed head: Dec 18, 2003; this is naturual, baby!

FISHMANPET posted:

Is this a personal machine of yours, or a public machine (like at a University?) If it's at a University or something, talk to your support staff and they'll help you set something up. If it's your own machine, then why don't you have root access?

The reason the directory needs to be executable is that when a directory is executable it means you can cd into it. Try it yourself, create a directory, give it 777 permissions, cd into it, and then go back out, change it to 666, you won't be able to get in.

As for the Mac thing, I have no idea. Google OSX X11 forwarding or ask in a Mac thread I guess.

Ah I see! It is at a university. I am emailing the system admin now. Thanks for your help!

# ? Feb 19, 2010 18:02

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 17:21

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

sonic bed head posted:

Ah I see! It is at a university. I am emailing the system admin now. Thanks for your help!

I just checked my queue to see if you go to the University I work at... :ohdear:

Looks like not.

Depending on how curmudgeony the neckbeard running things is, you might run into problems. Here's the way we do it, so you can offer it as a suggestion if the just flat out say 'no'

We create a group for the users, and then we have a separate partition (/class) where you can store your files or make an SVN repository.

Since you're at public machines, you don't want your home directory to be world readable by anybody. Especially if this is homework, if you have your svn directory wide open, anybody can go in there and read you homework (and since you're also granting write permission, they can change it too!)

And depending on how their partitioning scheme is, your partner may not even have a quota to touch files on your file system.

# ? Feb 19, 2010 18:26

chutwig: May 28, 2001; BURLAP SATCHEL OF CRACKERJACKS

sonic bed head posted:

Ah I see! It is at a university. I am emailing the system admin now. Thanks for your help!

For X11 on a Mac, run /Applications/Utilities/X11.app to start the X11 client on the Mac itself. From there on out, it will act like you're used to. If it's not there (and it should be because I think it's part of the default OS install), you'll need to ask an admin to install it for you.

# ? Feb 19, 2010 18:47

Hughmoris: Apr 21, 2007; Let's go to the abyss!

My Windows 7 RC is about to expire so I'm going to hop back into Linux with both feet for the time being. My only experience with Linux is using Ubuntu distro 8.xx I believe. The main thing that drove me away from Linux is the fact that web browsing with firefox seemed slower/jerkier than anything on Windows if the page had any sort of flash or java(?) on it. Has the newer Ubuntu distro resolved this issue? Is Chrome a viable option with Linux yet?

# ? Feb 19, 2010 19:19

dont skimp on the shrimp: Apr 23, 2008

Chrome works just fine. Flash on the other hand might be a very different story, but I'd suggest flashblock as a workaround.

# ? Feb 19, 2010 19:40

other people: Jun 27, 2004; Associate Christ

Hughmoris posted:

My Windows 7 RC is about to expire so I'm going to hop back into Linux with both feet for the time being. My only experience with Linux is using Ubuntu distro 8.xx I believe. The main thing that drove me away from Linux is the fact that web browsing with firefox seemed slower/jerkier than anything on Windows if the page had any sort of flash or java(?) on it. Has the newer Ubuntu distro resolved this issue? Is Chrome a viable option with Linux yet?

Chrome and flash work fine. What may have been the problem is that you may not have had accelerated graphics drivers.

# ? Feb 19, 2010 19:56

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Yeah, I associate "jerky web scrolling" with lack of video drivers on a fresh install, clears right up once I get them. "Flashblock" as a workaround won't do anything to help that.

Right now I'm "dual booting" with two separate drives and just unplugging the one I don't want. How difficult is it to put in a LiveCD and make the changes to grub to let me dual boot through software?

# ? Feb 24, 2010 00:49

KICK BAMA KICK: Mar 2, 2009

Hughmoris posted:

My Windows 7 RC is about to expire so I'm going to hop back into Linux with both feet for the time being. My only experience with Linux is using Ubuntu distro 8.xx I believe. The main thing that drove me away from Linux is the fact that web browsing with firefox seemed slower/jerkier than anything on Windows if the page had any sort of flash or java(?) on it. Has the newer Ubuntu distro resolved this issue? Is Chrome a viable option with Linux yet?

Chrome works fine for me in Ubuntu (boots way faster than Firefox for me, but I prefer Firefox in most other aspects) but I doubt it's not going to solve what you're talking about, like JawnV6 said this is probably a video thing -- sounds like the exact issue I described in this post. Google your video hardware with terms like ubuntu, your distro and see if you can find some help equivalent to the blog post that fixed it for me. If you're using an old Radeon, maybe just try that.

# ? Feb 24, 2010 01:51

Black88GTA: Oct 8, 2009

OK, so I've got an old kind of dinged up Compaq Proliant 7000 server of 1998 - 1999ish vintage that I'm going to put up for sale shortly, probably in SA mart or on CL.

This guy:

It is a dual PII Xeon machine, with 2x 400MHz processors installed and 1GB ram. There are 8 HDDs installed - 7x 9.1GB, 1x18.0GB. It hasn't been run in a few years, but when it was running before it had a Windows 2000 server installation on it. I'm getting rid of it because I have no use for it and it takes up a lot of space.

I fired it up tonight to see what's what, make sure it's still working, and figure out what to put in the for-sale description. It seems to be working fine - it boots up and initializes - but it won't boot to the OS and I've got amber status indicators on an HDD cage or two. I think one or more of the HDDs in the array may have died, which messed up the OS. So my thoughts were to reconfigure the array without the bad drives and slap a free Linux distro on the remaining disk space to see if I could get it booted to an OS so that I could run a diagnostic on it. Non-GUI linux is pretty much voodoo magic to me, so something with a GUI interface is a must. But I feel that any current GUI Linux distro will bog down my poor slow PII server.

tl;dr - What is a decent, free, stable Linux server distro with a GUI that will run properly on a dual PII server?

Also, what is a good server diagnostic utility that will run under Linux? For setting up HDD arrays, diagnosing bad drives, etc? I grabbed the HP one off their website here, but it doesn't seem to be extracting properly (each of those 1.3MB executables extracts to a junk >5kb file).

And finally, what is something like this worth? I honestly have no idea. (sorry if this isn't allowed here - if not, please let me know and I'll edit it out).

Specs:
Dual PII 400MHz
1GB ram
81 GB HDD space, although I'm pretty sure I have a bad drive or two in there, so less than that.
Dual redundant power supplies

# ? Feb 24, 2010 08:02

Piss Man 94: Jun 11, 2003

How do I find out where Konsole gets the default browser setting from? I've set my default browser to be Firefox through the KDE menu (Preferences -> Preferred Applications -> Internet) and it works everywhere else. Konsole still insists on opening links in Konqueror.

# ? Feb 24, 2010 12:37

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Black88GTA posted:

So my thoughts were to reconfigure the array without the bad drives and slap a free Linux distro on the remaining disk space to see if I could get it booted to an OS so that I could run a diagnostic on it. Non-GUI linux is pretty much voodoo magic to me, so something with a GUI interface is a must. But I feel that any current GUI Linux distro will bog down my poor slow PII server.

tl;dr - What is a decent, free, stable Linux server distro with a GUI that will run properly on a dual PII server?

Debian with GNOME would work, I have it running on a PII-450MHz with 192MB. It's barely usable.

I personally would install OpenBSD. Even harder to install than "non-GUI linux" but if you follow the docs you should be alright.

Black88GTA posted:

Also, what is a good server diagnostic utility that will run under Linux? For setting up HDD arrays, diagnosing bad drives, etc? I grabbed the HP one off their website here, but it doesn't seem to be extracting properly (each of those 1.3MB executables extracts to a junk >5kb file).

Compaq's utility is probably your best bet. Otherwise, check dmesg for detailed info on the hardware after you install Linux.

Black88GTA posted:

And finally, what is something like this worth? I honestly have no idea. (sorry if this isn't allowed here - if not, please let me know and I'll edit it out).

Zero dollars. You'd probably have to pay someone to take it away because it probably weighs 80lbs. It's louder than hell, uses as much electricity as a space heater, and can be out performed by a $30 computer from Craigslist.

However, it might be neat to play around with for a few days for someone who's never used a server before. It probably takes 5 minutes just to get through the BIOS and everything while booting up so it would get annoying quick, though.

# ? Feb 24, 2010 14:31

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Piss Man 94 posted:

How do I find out where Konsole gets the default browser setting from? I've set my default browser to be Firefox through the KDE menu (Preferences -> Preferred Applications -> Internet) and it works everywhere else. Konsole still insists on opening links in Konqueror.

I don't know if it's the same in KDE 4 as it was in 3, but check the file associations for the http:// protocol.

# ? Feb 24, 2010 14:59

Rastor: Jun 2, 2001

Black88GTA posted:

tl;dr - What is a decent, free, stable Linux server distro with a GUI that will run properly on a dual PII server?

Any of them? You've got 1GB of RAM, it's not like you need to get anything special. Ubuntu is generally considered the most popular. If that thing has USB ports or a CD drive then you can boot Ubuntu as a live system and not even worry about the state of the drives.

# ? Feb 24, 2010 15:17

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

You could even go nuts and use Xubuntu.

# ? Feb 24, 2010 16:52

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Rastor posted:

Any of them? You've got 1GB of RAM, it's not like you need to get anything special. Ubuntu is generally considered the most popular. If that thing has USB ports or a CD drive then you can boot Ubuntu as a live system and not even worry about the state of the drives.

You're underestimating how slow that machine is. I also really doubt it'll boot from USB, you'll be stuck with the 12X CDROM and 1MB integrated video card.

Bob Morales fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Feb 24, 2010

# ? Feb 24, 2010 17:46

Piss Man 94: Jun 11, 2003

Misogynist posted:

I don't know if it's the same in KDE 4 as it was in 3, but check the file associations for the [url]http://[/url] protocol.

How do I check this? I'm a bit of a noob. I've looked in defaults.list but I didn't see anything about protocols.

# ? Feb 24, 2010 20:28

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Piss Man 94 posted:

How do I check this? I'm a bit of a noob. I've looked in defaults.list but I didn't see anything about protocols.

The part you would be looking for is in the "uri" part of File Associations in systemsettings, but it looks like HTTP and other common protocols aren't kept there anymore.

So, I'm not really sure. Konsole opens links in my default browser just fine in Kubuntu Karmic.

# ? Feb 24, 2010 20:38

Black88GTA: Oct 8, 2009

Bob Morales posted:

Debian with GNOME would work, I have it running on a PII-450MHz with 192MB. It's barely usable.

I personally would install OpenBSD. Even harder to install than "non-GUI linux" but if you follow the docs you should be alright.

Hm, maybe I'll try that. Any version, I assume?

quote:

Compaq's utility is probably your best bet. Otherwise, check dmesg for detailed info on the hardware after you install Linux.

I've got the executables (searching for the model takes me to HP's site) but they don't seem to work properly on my XP box. Maybe they'll work properly under Linux or some archaic form of Windows. Once I have Linux on there, I'll probably try using the built-in diagnostics to see what I can find out.

quote:

Zero dollars. You'd probably have to pay someone to take it away because it probably weighs 80lbs. It's louder than hell, uses as much electricity as a space heater, and can be out performed by a $30 computer from Craigslist.

However, it might be neat to play around with for a few days for someone who's never used a server before. It probably takes 5 minutes just to get through the BIOS and everything while booting up so it would get annoying quick, though.

Heh, you must have owned one of these. Right on all counts, although it actually weighs more like 150 lbs :gonk:

. I had a feeling it wasn't worth much. Thanks for the tips, this should at least help me get it going.

Rastor posted:

Any of them? You've got 1GB of RAM, it's not like you need to get anything special. Ubuntu is generally considered the most popular. If that thing has USB ports or a CD drive then you can boot Ubuntu as a live system and not even worry about the state of the drives.

Before I made the thread, that's what I got - Ubuntu 9.10 server (although the .iso is tagged as AMD64, which wasn't listed in the d/l information). I didn't install it because I figured it wouldn't run on this old machine. Of course, I didn't think about this until I was ready to put the .iso on a disc. :downs:

No USB ports here, unfortunately. There is a crusty looking CD drive of unknown speed though.

FISHMANPET posted:

You could even go nuts and use Xubuntu.

Will look into this as well. Main goal is to get it running off its own HDD array for now...

# ? Feb 25, 2010 05:15

Rastor: Jun 2, 2001

Bob Morales posted:

You're underestimating how slow that machine is. I also really doubt it'll boot from USB, you'll be stuck with the 12X CDROM and 1MB integrated video card.

I used to run Red Hat 5.2 on a 386. I think this system will be OK.

Black88GTA posted:

Before I made the thread, that's what I got - Ubuntu 9.10 server (although the .iso is tagged as AMD64, which wasn't listed in the d/l information).

Server is non-GUI and AMD64 won't run on that processor.

Get Ubuntu (or Xubuntu) Desktop 32-bit and go nuts.

# ? Feb 25, 2010 05:43

Piss Man 94: Jun 11, 2003

Misogynist posted:

The part you would be looking for is in the "uri" part of File Associations in systemsettings, but it looks like HTTP and other common protocols aren't kept there anymore.

So, I'm not really sure. Konsole opens links in my default browser just fine in Kubuntu Karmic.

It clearly does have something to do with file associations as urls that link to pictures open in Gwenview. However I can't find anywhere to edit those in the menus.

# ? Feb 25, 2010 12:02

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Rastor posted:

I used to run Red Hat 5.2 on a 386. I think this system will be OK.

Your best bet would actually be to try Redhat 6.2 or 7.x. It was made to run on those systems. They've added a ton of things over the years, the memory/disk requirements are much higher.

In fact, they've probably removed some of the hardware compatibility as well.

# ? Feb 25, 2010 14:26

maskenfreiheit: Dec 30, 2004

Edit: Double Post

maskenfreiheit fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Mar 13, 2017

# ? Mar 10, 2010 20:08

RyanNotBrian: Nov 28, 2005; Always five, acting as one. Dedicated! Inseparable! Invincible!

I need to set up a server for my home office. We currently have my Macbook Pro, my wife's WinXP laptop and another PC running XP. I run a few Windows machines under Parallels on my Macbook as well. I develop web sites in PHP and ColdFusion, my biggest job is my wife's online jewellery store. I run my web and DB servers on my laptop, so no need for this machine to be a web server.

Rather than shelling out for a Windows server license, I figured I'd set up a Linux box and learn what it's all about at the same time.

The main functions of the server will be:
- Internal DNS
- File serving for all our machines (MacOS, WinXP, probably Win 7 in the near future).
- Centralised backup

I've got a spare machine ready to go for this, it's pretty well specced so no need for a bare bones install. I'm comfortable in the Linux shell and roughly know my way around the file system. Is there any particular distro that stands out as being right for my purpose? I was thinking Ubuntu just because I hear so much about it, is there any reason not to?

By the way, once I get this set up I'm going to be asking a bunch of *really* stupid questions about Linux. Is this thread the place for them? Or is there a more n00b oriented thread?

RyanNotBrian fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Mar 14, 2010

# ? Mar 14, 2010 11:58

Bhm: Apr 18, 2002; _{"I died a mineral, and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?"}

I just installed Ubuntu Server on my server-to-be. When everything loaded after the first boot I was horrified to see that there wasn't any real GUI so I hosed around a bit and after googling I decided to install KDE on it.

So, after apt-getting that everything booted up just fine and I even managed to get x11VNC running in order to be able to gently caress around with it from my Win7 computer.

In my euphoria of getting everything up and running I ran off and disconnected the mouse, keyboard and monitor and decided to go headless. I'm a total tool so I thought the terminal window running x11VNC was annoying so I closed it down. Of course that killed the VNC server so I was disconnected. (I thought it'd run as a background service...)

So I ran back to the server, reconnected the mouse, keyboard and monitor but it was, of course, unresponsive so I switched it off and restarted it.

Now after grub loads and I select the OS the monitor loses signal and it just sits there and nothing happens...

Another restart and the fucker loads but my mouse doesn't work. *sigh*

So, I think I did stuff the wrong way around. Was Ubuntu-server + KDE even the correct choice for me? I have no real Linux knowledge to speak of but I'll be loving damned if I won't have my homeserver up and running a linux distro. Me an' google are very good friends so together we'll probably get my new server (I've named him Frank) limping along just fine.

I'm planning on running VNC, Squid, SAMBA, LAMP, Webmin and some other poo poo on it. I'm going to use it primarily as a fileserver. Any tips? Or any webpage that has a decent writeup that I can read up on?

Edit: Whoa! I checked for keyboard shortcuts and started a terminal session, started x11VNC and it seems VNC sends mouse signals so I don't even need a mouse. This poo poo rocks...

Edit2: God, samba is a bitch to get working properly... gently caress ubuntu-server. I'm installing Kubuntu up in this bitch!

Edit3: Finally up and running again. Man, I'm becoming VNC-jesus up in this poo poo... Let's see if SAMBA is easier in kubuntu.

Edit4: Why on earth is this about 5-million times snappier? I bet it's because I plastered KDE on top of the server like an idiot.

Edit5: Hey, what the gently caress. It seems that Kubuntu is simply Ubuntu with KDE instead of GNOME. Yeah, call me captain Obvious. God loving damnit, I was hoping for a simpler way of dealing with SAMBA. :mad:

Bhm fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Mar 14, 2010

# ? Mar 14, 2010 14:41

enotnert: Jun 10, 2005; Only women bleed

Honestly, if you're going to be serving, ubuntu is fine and well and all. . . but for more stability (and keep things a little off the edge) I'd say go with a stable debian install or something that's well supported like CentOS.

RyanNotBrian posted:

I need to set up a server for my home office. We currently have my Macbook Pro, my wife's WinXP laptop and another PC running XP. I run a few Windows machines under Parallels on my Macbook as well. I develop web sites in PHP and ColdFusion, my biggest job is my wife's online jewellery store. I run my web and DB servers on my laptop, so no need for this machine to be a web server.

Rather than shelling out for a Windows server license, I figured I'd set up a Linux box and learn what it's all about at the same time.

The main functions of the server will be:
- Internal DNS
- File serving for all our machines (MacOS, WinXP, probably Win 7 in the near future).
- Centralised backup

I've got a spare machine ready to go for this, it's pretty well specced so no need for a bare bones install. I'm comfortable in the Linux shell and roughly know my way around the file system. Is there any particular distro that stands out as being right for my purpose? I was thinking Ubuntu just because I hear so much about it, is there any reason not to?

By the way, once I get this set up I'm going to be asking a bunch of *really* stupid questions about Linux. Is this thread the place for them? Or is there a more n00b oriented thread?

# ? Mar 14, 2010 16:54

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

I realize obviously that Solaris isn't Linux, but I didn't think this was worth posting its own thread for. I'm also not positive if this is kosher, since Sun's actual licensing is vague on this, so if the license says this is against the rules, consider it dropped.

I'm trying to pick up some Solaris experience, so I'm looking for some Solaris 8 and 9 ISOs, mostly to make sure I'm comfortable with upgrading Solaris 8 or 9 systems to Solaris 10. Unfortunately, these ISOs seem goddamn impossible to track down, even on torrent/file-sharing networks, and I'm not in the mood to start ordering media off of eBay. Does anyone know where I might pull up a copy? Both would be awesome, but either one or the other would suffice.

# ? Mar 15, 2010 04:22

SiliconCow: Jul 14, 2001

Bhm posted:

I just installed Ubuntu Server on my server-to-be. When everything loaded after the first boot I was horrified to see that there wasn't any real GUI so I hosed around a bit and after googling I decided to install KDE on it.

So, after apt-getting that everything booted up just fine and I even managed to get x11VNC running in order to be able to gently caress around with it from my Win7 computer.

In my euphoria of getting everything up and running I ran off and disconnected the mouse, keyboard and monitor and decided to go headless. I'm a total tool so I thought the terminal window running x11VNC was annoying so I closed it down. Of course that killed the VNC server so I was disconnected. (I thought it'd run as a background service...)

So I ran back to the server, reconnected the mouse, keyboard and monitor but it was, of course, unresponsive so I switched it off and restarted it.

Now after grub loads and I select the OS the monitor loses signal and it just sits there and nothing happens...

Another restart and the fucker loads but my mouse doesn't work. *sigh*

So, I think I did stuff the wrong way around. Was Ubuntu-server + KDE even the correct choice for me? I have no real Linux knowledge to speak of but I'll be loving damned if I won't have my homeserver up and running a linux distro. Me an' google are very good friends so together we'll probably get my new server (I've named him Frank) limping along just fine.

I'm planning on running VNC, Squid, SAMBA, LAMP, Webmin and some other poo poo on it. I'm going to use it primarily as a fileserver. Any tips? Or any webpage that has a decent writeup that I can read up on?

Edit: Whoa! I checked for keyboard shortcuts and started a terminal session, started x11VNC and it seems VNC sends mouse signals so I don't even need a mouse. This poo poo rocks...

Edit2: God, samba is a bitch to get working properly... gently caress ubuntu-server. I'm installing Kubuntu up in this bitch!

Edit3: Finally up and running again. Man, I'm becoming VNC-jesus up in this poo poo... Let's see if SAMBA is easier in kubuntu.

Edit4: Why on earth is this about 5-million times snappier? I bet it's because I plastered KDE on top of the server like an idiot.

Edit5: Hey, what the gently caress. It seems that Kubuntu is simply Ubuntu with KDE instead of GNOME. Yeah, call me captain Obvious. God loving damnit, I was hoping for a simpler way of dealing with SAMBA.

Look into something called "webmin":

http://www.webmin.com/deb.html (debian installation guide.. Will work for Ubuntu). Missing first step to download the file from cli prompt use: wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/webadmin/webmin/1.510/webmin_1.510_all.deb?use_mirror=hivelocity

http://www.webmin.com/demo.html (demo has everything turned on and can look kinda scary, most everything there is optional and can be used as needed or not at all)

It's a free remote administration web interface which has a nice balance between power and usability. You may not understand all the options but just leave them at their defaults and explore them when you want to learn more.

System administration with VNC is kinda lame not a good way to learn, use SSH and webmin to fill the gaps.

SiliconCow fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Mar 15, 2010

# ? Mar 15, 2010 07:34

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Misogynist posted:

I realize obviously that Solaris isn't Linux, but I didn't think this was worth posting its own thread for. I'm also not positive if this is kosher, since Sun's actual licensing is vague on this, so if the license says this is against the rules, consider it dropped.

I'm trying to pick up some Solaris experience, so I'm looking for some Solaris 8 and 9 ISOs, mostly to make sure I'm comfortable with upgrading Solaris 8 or 9 systems to Solaris 10. Unfortunately, these ISOs seem goddamn impossible to track down, even on torrent/file-sharing networks, and I'm not in the mood to start ordering media off of eBay. Does anyone know where I might pull up a copy? Both would be awesome, but either one or the other would suffice.

Do you know what the license is for 8 and 9? I could probably dig up some some 8 ISOs at work, though I'm not sure if you're allowed to have it or not without paying Oracle through the nose.

# ? Mar 15, 2010 14:35

CISADMIN PRIVILEGE: Aug 15, 2004; optimized multichannel
campaigns to drive
demand and increase
brand engagement
across web, mobile,
and social touchpoints,
bitch!

I'd like to build a linux box to function as a fileserver with the sole purpose of being a backup destination for a couple of windows servers, it would need to share via NFS (for vmware) and Samba to use as backup to folder destinations for backup exec. I haven't played with Linux in a few years I'm wondering what's going to be the best distro for this? I don't don't care either way about having or not having a GUI available if it makes a difference.

CISADMIN PRIVILEGE fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Mar 15, 2010

# ? Mar 15, 2010 19:48

Bhm: Apr 18, 2002; _{"I died a mineral, and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?"}

SiliconCow posted:

Look into something called "webmin":

http://www.webmin.com/deb.html (debian installation guide.. Will work for Ubuntu). Missing first step to download the file from cli prompt use: wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/webadmin/webmin/1.510/webmin_1.510_all.deb?use_mirror=hivelocity

http://www.webmin.com/demo.html (demo has everything turned on and can look kinda scary, most everything there is optional and can be used as needed or not at all)

It's a free remote administration web interface which has a nice balance between power and usability. You may not understand all the options but just leave them at their defaults and explore them when you want to learn more.

System administration with VNC is kinda lame not a good way to learn, use SSH and webmin to fill the gaps.

Thanks, I already had it installed and good to go but I hadn't tried it untill I read your post.

Holy hell, getting squid to run via webmin was a loving walk in the park... Thanks for the tip. I'm reading up on SSH but god drat everything is so twisted in linux. I appreciate a decent command interface but holy hell I feel like I'm 7 again staring at a DOS command prompt trying to get gorilla.bas to run... It's kinda exciting

Now, a problem I've come across:

It seems my server kills itself overnight. I have no power saving poo poo running so It's not powering down. Reconnecting the monitor, keyboard and mouse only yields a "no signal"-message on the monitor and the numlock LED on the keyboard doesn't indicate poo poo. Any connection attempts via VNC or anything else lead to nothing.

Any idea how I could start diagnosing this? :argh:

(Running Kubuntu on a P4 3ghz with 512MB RAM)

Bhm fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Mar 15, 2010

# ? Mar 15, 2010 20:34

SynVisions: Jun 29, 2003

Bhm posted:

Thanks, I already had it installed and good to go but I hadn't tried it untill I read your post.

Holy hell, getting squid to run via webmin was a loving walk in the park... Thanks for the tip. I'm reading up on SSH but god drat everything is so twisted in linux. I appreciate a decent command interface but holy hell I feel like I'm 7 again staring at a DOS command prompt trying to get gorilla.bas to run... It's kinda exciting

Now, a problem I've come across:

It seems my server kills itself overnight. I have no power saving poo poo running so It's not powering down. Reconnecting the monitor, keyboard and mouse only yields a "no signal"-message on the monitor and the numlock LED on the keyboard doesn't indicate poo poo. Any connection attempts via VNC or anything else lead to nothing.

Any idea how I could start diagnosing this?

(Running Kubuntu on a P4 3ghz with 512MB RAM)

All of the server logs are located in /var/log. Depending on your syslog configuration you'll have all sorts of files in there. The standard catchall is /var/log/messages. Take a look at it and you should be able to see a gap when the messages stop and start to correlate with when your system crashed and when you brought it back up again. If you don't see anything useful in there look in the other logfiles around the same time for clues.

# ? Mar 15, 2010 21:00

Keito: Jul 21, 2005; WHAT DO I CHOOSE ?

bob arctor posted:

I'd like to build a linux box to function as a fileserver with the sole purpose of being a backup destination for a couple of windows servers, it would need to share via NFS (for vmware) and Samba to use as backup to folder destinations for backup exec. I haven't played with Linux in a few years I'm wondering what's going to be the best distro for this? I don't don't care either way about having or not having a GUI available if it makes a difference.

Just about anything can do that these days. You could start with Ubuntu/Ubuntu Server Edition, it's the currently most popular distro and loves holding your hand.

# ? Mar 15, 2010 21:16

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

I've got 5 Unix hosts at my house nowadays, and I'm thinking it's about time to stop having local accounts on each one of them.

I'm trying to choose between LDAP and NIS. We use NIS at work now, and I understand it. It's also apparently horribly outdated. It's also stupid simple, since all I need out of it is passwd, groups, and autofs.

On the other hand, LDAP is hard, but it's "the thing." We'll also be setting up some LDAP stuff here at work, and I was hoping my server at home could be a bit of a learning experience, but so far it's just so drat hard. I'm going to learn this stuff eventually, but I've got a few months and a VM server to play with at work.

So should I force myself to learn LDAP at home because it's better, or will NIS be good enough for me? What are the disadvantages to using NIS?

Also, if it matters (I suspect it does) my main server is OpenSolaris, and all my clients are Ubuntu. The Solaris version of the ldap* commands seem to not work the same way as they would on Linux.

All the guides I'm finding start out creating people directories, but I don't really want that, and all the guides for setting other stuff assume I have some idea what I'm doing (which I don't).

Uh, basically, help?

E: Also, not totally adverse to the idea of making one of my Ubuntu machines an LDAP server, if that will make this easier.

# ? Mar 15, 2010 22:26

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Stupid question, but do most production servers have gcc + kernel sources on them, or is binary updates the only way to go these days?

# ? Mar 16, 2010 05:39

Rastor: Jun 2, 2001

Only Gentoo servers, which I would never do, but...

# ? Mar 16, 2010 14:30

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Bob Morales posted:

Stupid question, but do most production servers have gcc + kernel sources on them, or is binary updates the only way to go these days?

It depends on your environment. You're very unlikely to get support from the vendor if you have a customized kernel, so they're uncommon in most of the world, but in a lot of high-frequency trading shops you will see real-time kernels in the datacenter.

# ? Mar 16, 2010 15:28

zeroprime: Mar 25, 2006; Words go here.; Fun Shoe

I've got a home server running webmin to do firewall/fileserving/dhcp/torrent and setup my wireless router as an access point so that I can get an ip by dhcp from the server. Got an ip fine, SSH works, webmin works, FreeNX works, rtorrent works, rutorrent page is a accessible. I'm currently logged in to my server from inside my network, using FreeNX. It appears DNS is not resolving for computers on my local network while it's obviously working fine on my server.

I can ping yahoo.com from my server but not from my netbook. If I use the ip that resolved when pinging yahoo.com on my server, I can successfully ping that ip from my netbook. In the webmin network configuration module it shows that it automatically picked up the comcast DNS servers. I'm not sure where to go from here to troubleshoot the issue.

Here's my iptables, eth1 is the internal and eth0 is the external

code:

Chain INPUT (policy DROP 36 packets, 2506 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination         
  568  942K ACCEPT     all  --  lo     any     anywhere             anywhere            
  261 39087 ACCEPT     all  --  eth1   any     anywhere             anywhere            
   46  5425 ACCEPT     tcp  --  eth0   any     anywhere             anywhere            tcp dpt:55993 
  375  544K ACCEPT     all  --  eth0   any     anywhere             anywhere            state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 

Chain FORWARD (policy DROP 0 packets, 0 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination         
    0     0 ACCEPT     all  --  eth1   any     anywhere             anywhere            
    0     0 ACCEPT     all  --  eth0   any     anywhere             anywhere            state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 1055 packets, 1087K bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Any advice on how to troubleshoot this?

# ? Mar 17, 2010 01:16

Rastor: Jun 2, 2001

you have rules for RELATED and ESTABLISHED connections, do you need a rule for NEW ones?

# ? Mar 17, 2010 06:43

zeroprime: Mar 25, 2006; Words go here.; Fun Shoe

I downloaded the BIND DNS module for webmin and everything works now. :dance:

# ? Mar 17, 2010 15:46

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 17:21

Sharrow: Aug 20, 2007; So... mediocre.

Today I discovered Likewise Open, and 30 minutes later had gotten rid of all the manually maintained user accounts and CIFS shares on our little development server, and instead added a fully AD-integrated replacement.

Not that this is a new thing, but drat if it finally isn't easy. Hell, the paid version allows you to manage the system with MMC and group policy.

(Protip: Samba integration doesn't seem to work well after version 3.2; I had to pin an old copy from Intrepid's repository on our Ubuntu systems.)

# ? Mar 17, 2010 17:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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