FreeLinuxBox
I just got back from a special premier showing of the new Star Trek movie, due in theaters early next month. What can I tell you about it that won’t spoil it? Well, the audience cheered in unison at the end of the show. I really enjoyed it, and if you like Star Trek, and who doesn’t, you’ll enjoy it too. More movies like this will truly make sure that Star Trek lives long, and prospers.
I know, I just couldn’t help myself 
Many of you know my day job is that of a systems administrator. As one, I have to be concerned about things like data integrity, backups and disaster recovery. Somehow, while on one of my daily train rides, my mind wandered and hit on the fact that I really don’t perform these functions at home, and I should. Or, at least I should do them better. Of course, I do have the technology!
What I thought of was that my wife, like plenty of you out there, likes to keep paperwork. Now this is important stuff like tax returns, current bills, car service records, etc., and documents like birth certificates and such. Now some of these are in a small fire safe, but some of them are in a file cabinet.
So, what happens if there is a fire and I lose my file cabinet? I GUARANTEE that the IRS audits me because that’s where my tax returns are
Now a month ago or so I was reading an article on how to reduce clutter at home and one of the suggestions it made was to set up a “scanning station” where you scanned in your bills/documents/what have you and then shredded them. The basic idea was to use your computer and scanner as an avenue to better manage your paperwork. No more hunting for the last cable bill or pay stub through that grocery bag of miscellaneous paperwork you keep next to your easy chair, or worse, your “junk” drawer.
My idea was to use that scanning station idea as an avenue to not only reduce my personal paperwork clutter, but also as a security measure. Scan those important docs and get them available digitally. Get them all together. Scan all your important family photos. Imagine losing all those memories in a fire! Get all your music and anything else you can get together digitally and put all that stuff on a removable hard drive. In fact, have all that information backed up on that drive every day. You can figure out how to do that, I know you can!
Take that removable drive, maybe a big old cheapie USB drive and have your kids do an art project and cover it (not the vents or plugs) in bright red construction paper or masking tape with a white FIRE sign on it. Lastly, get it located in an as convenient spot as possible and drill everyone in the house that if there is an EMERGENCY, make sure to grab that FIRE drive on their way out the door if at all possible. Don’t even bother to unplug it, just grab and run. You can always get a new power supply or just slap the drive in a machine if need be, but you would at least have your important stuff available to retrieve.
That’s it. That’s the idea. Run with it and let me know how it works out. Now I have to go convince my wife that scanning for the next three months is going to be great fun
CentOS
wget http://yum.trixbox.org/centos/5/old/perl-Tk-804.027-4.i386.rpm
wget http://packages.sw.be/perl-X11-Protocol/perl-X11-Protocol-0.56-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
wget http://dl.atrpms.net/all/clusterssh-3.21-4.el5.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh perl-Tk-804.027-4.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh perl-X11-Protocol-0.56-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh clusterssh-3.21-4.el5.i386.rpm
Do that on a command line as root and you’ll have a functional cssh. Now there is some wierd error that ends up on my console when this is running, but it does appear to function correctly. Have at it folks!
HELP!
I need ideas for new server names and I am just drawing a blank. As many of you know, I name my computers after cryptids, or possibly undiscovered creatures. My list right now is:
Bigfoot
Sasquatch
Yeti
Wendigo
JerseyDevil
Chupacabras
Nessie
Ogopogo
Mothman
Kraken
and Bumble.
Yes, I know Bumble really doesn’t belong, but it’s sort of a play on my chosen machine naming scheme and the fact that he’s my favorite Christmas show character (you know, from the Rudolph special with Yukon Cornelius). “Bumbles Bounce!”
At any rate, my brains are hurting and I am fresh out of non-stupid sounding cryptid names. If you have any cool ones I am missing, please let me know. If not, what sorts of things do you name your machines after?
CentOS
To start with you need a CentOS 5.x install with a working web server.
# yum install subversion mod_dav_svn
Pick a directory where you want to house your repo. We’ll say for argument mine is /home/svn.
# vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf
Location /svn>
DAV svn
SVNParentPath /home/svn
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Subversion”
AuthUserFile /etc/svn-auth
Require valid-user
/Location>
Note that the leading less-than symbols are not displayed on the “location” tags because wordpress is retarded.
Add yourself a user into your auth file:
# htpasswd -cm /etc/svn-auth
You’ll be prompted for your password couple times.
Add your directory and fix permissions:
# mkdir /home/svn
# chown apache:apache /home/svn
Create your first repo:
# svnadmin create /home/svn/test
Restart your web service:
# service httpd restart
That’s it! If you point your web browser to http://yourwebserver/svn/test you should get a “Revision 0″ notice.
CentOS
First, install CentOS, which is an enterprise class Linux distribution that is basically a rebadged/rebranded RedHat, compiled from sources with a few tweaks. I did the generic server only install. After the install, make sure to do all your updates! (yum update)
Once that is done, head on over to VMware’s site and pick up the VMware Server 2. As far as I am concerned, VMware stil has the corner on the market for machine virtualization. There are plenty of other products out there, but I have done a *lot* of virtualization with VMware and it’s rock solid, and it’s free version has a really great price point for what it provides too! Sign yourself up and pick up the free server rpm and make sure to get your registration code as well.
Once that is done, the rest is easy:
Log in as root.
yum groupinstall “Development Libraries”
yum groupinstall “Development Tools”
yum install kernel-devel xinetd
rpm -Uvh VMware-server-2.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Run the perl config script that the RPM install will tell you about and pick the default settings (worked for me anyway). That’s it!
Point your firefox browser to https://yourCentOSserver:8333 and login using your root account and password.
One thing to note as you start creating VM’s is you may need to have access to iso images to do installs from. Place them into your /var/lib/vmware/Virtual\ Machines/ directory and you’ll be able to find them in your vmware datastore.
Gentlemen, start your engines. Torrent engines I mean.
“We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS-5.3 for the i386 and x86_64 Architectures.”
“CentOS-5.3 is based on the upstream release EL 5.3.0, and includes packages from all variants including Server and Client. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with. And the option to further enable external repositories at install time is now available in the installer…….”
Continue Reading….
Recent Comments