Samba shares on Xubuntu

Googling I found some tips to browse smb shares. First I configured "shared folders" on the Applications->System menu. The first time I run the configuration software, it asked to me to install all necessary NFS ans SMB software. It also installed the smb client.

Type smbclient -L -serveripaddress and now you can see what folders are shared. Then you can mount the desired folder with:

sudo smbmount //serveripaddress/folder localfolder -o username=youruser,password=yourpassword ,uid=1000,mask=000

There is, also, a small graphic soft to browse smb networks: pyneighborhood. It's a GTK2 application that runs very well. It can be installed from the Synaptic package manager.

More infomation on this thread at the Ubuntu forums.

Now I'm a Xubuntu user

The last week I was testing the last releases of Solaris, OpenSolaris and SXCE (snv_103) on my laptop, but I had the same problem with the ACPI driver than before. This is a major problem because with no wireless connection and with a difficult Ethernet setup is update to anew release is a pain.

Then I decided to return to Linux but I decided to change from Fedora to a clean and fast solution. The distribution is XUBUNTU and, really, I'm very impressed: It's very fast and stable, has a good package manager and I can do everything I need for now except browse smb shares. I installed the samba client but I need some software to browse shares and I don't want to install Gnome or KDE file managers.

I will take a look this weekend.

OpenSolaris 2008.11 is here

Yes!!! If the last Solaris revision was out on november, the new release is available for download now from the opensolaris.com page.If you want a printed CD there is a free CD order page.
I'm downloading now and I will try this night !!!!!

New ADSL

Yes... after 2 month of war have a new ADSL internet connection. A download test says 8850 Kb and near 450 Kb of upload bandwidth. Very good result. Now I only need some time to upload tons of pictures.
Maybe next week.

Fueling my life!!!!

Yeeeessssss, This is my not new Fuel!!!!!

From a year ago there is not a lot of SGI machines in the second hand market and the price of this few machines was very high but this time, I bid on this Fuel and at the end I paid less that I paid for my Octane2. It has some scratches and repair will be hard but it works very nice.

This machine is a 600 MHz CPU with 1 GB of RAM. I think it's a medium range Fuel. Enough to watch the difference with my loved Blue One. Firefox and runs so smooth on this but... the same day the Fuel arrived I installed an extra GB of RAM in the Octane (2 GB total) I received some time ago from Ian Mapleson, and... WHAT A CHANGE!!! I can say that my old Octane2 has changed a lot and now is a lot faster. If one R12000 400MHz with 2GB is good enough, what can the Fuel do with the same amount of memory? Unfortunately I have to buy a complete set of dimm's because all the slots are populated and I can't afford this now.

Now I need sometime to check how many processes are running in both machines, maybe I don't need everything that is loaded in memory...

More comming soon...

Creating your own RaQ restore disc

This is one of the easy admin solutions working with Cobalt RaQ's. It's easy to create a new CD to reinstall the Cobalt OS (OSRCD) but modifying partitions sizes and including Updates and Packages.



At the Cobalt Faqs site you can find this fantastic HOWTO, and create your special disc. this is a fast job using any linux flavor. In my case I have Fedora 9 running in my laptop and I find something different: Fedora doesn't include mkisofs but include genisoimage tool -OK genisoimage is linked as mkisofs but the parameters are not the same-.



Assuming you have stored your new OSRCD in /home/osrcd, the working command must be:

# cd /home/osrcd

# genisoimage -P YourName -b boot/eltorito.img -c boot/boot.catalog -R -l -L -J -o /tmp/filename.iso /home/osrcd



Another important thing: After the installation of the OS in our loved RaQ or Qube the LCD shows the name and net address of the server (after seccond reboot) but it doesn't ask for intro the new address. After a few seconds you can see how the LCD displays the name of the first package to install. This is a little bit strange because after the reboot seems that everything is finished, DON'T TOUCH THE FRONT PANEL KEYS!!!

The LCD messages changues between the name of the package being installed and the ip address until the last package is in the hard disk, the the server shutdown itshelf asking to turn off power.

My new OSRCD has all the updates created by Sun in order a runs nice but before a created a OSRCD with all Zeffies updates and it hang with a fault of campatibility (or something similar).

Bye

Unix in a low cost laptop (part 4)

Yes... finally I have OpenSolaris 2008.05 working in my bad ACER 5633 laptop. Very tricky installation (I'm not an Unix especialist) but now I have a true Unix OS ready to work. As I said before it was a dificult installation and the next words are the steps I followed to bring OpenSolaris to work.

The first problem was boot the OpenSolaris Live CD. The firts atemps, at the time of the CD download was available, went wrong because of cardbuss warnings. After grub boot a have warning message: pciclass,0607000: Cardbus Present State 0x11111111. But this week I tried another time. Searching in Opensolaris laptop forums I found a topic where a guy said that he was able to install Solaris Community Edition in a laptop like mine adding ',acpi-user-options=0x8' to the boot manager of the CD (grub). This workaround doesn't work for me but I tried the with Opensolaris Live CD. After a lot of tries and more web search the correct option to add in the Grub boot config was '-B acpi-user-options=0x8'. This is my LiveCD grub config:



When the Desktop was shown I started the driver tool and saw that my Ethernet chip is not supported (Broadcom BCM4401-B01) but this is not relevant at this step. The ACPI system isn't supported (or no driver included) and this seems to be the reason why I need to deactivate ACPI at boot time.


Opensolaris is installed!!! Yes but it doesn't want to boot in first attempt. First edit the Grub parameters to disable ACPI and at the seccond reboot I have a warning saying SATA timeouts, something like this: Jul 30 21:24:55 xxxxx scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@12/ide@0 (ata0):Jul 30 21:24:55 xxxxx timeout: abort device, target=0 lun=0. You can see in this tread. The good workarround was disable the second CPU with de boot debbuger: edit the Grub parameters and add -kd to the second line (and the ACPI option also). When OpenSolaris boot stops in the debuger type usep_mp/W 0 :c, and then OpenSolaris started to load!

Now I had the User Login screen but ssssshhhh... I created an user account without password and I wasn't able to login!!!!! I don't now why but nobody can login as root..... Reinstall creating an account with password was the solution and... the OpenSolaris desktop appeared!!!


It's time to make the configuration parameters permanent. To edit the config Grub we have to change the file menu.lst, and this file is not in /boot like the linux systems. Using a ZFS pool the correct menu file is in /rpool/boot/grub. Because I can't login as root and I can't open File Browser with superuser rights, I opened a terminal window and used the su command to be root. This is my menu.lst file (I have all the disk for OpenSolaris):



Then I needed to disable SMP. Being superuser type gedit /etc/system and add at the end of the file set use_mp=0:

Now we can reboot an every thing is OKAY!!! Now its time to setup the network...

Switching RaQ's

I had some free time this weekend to realize one of my test. In this case I tested the second Cobalt RaQ4 with CentOS+BQ and Torrentflux 2.4. Very happy with the results. Now I can download big files of various GB's.

After this successfull test I decided to switch servers and use the new one as BitTorrent permanent client. To do that I only need to set the ip address of the new one like the old RaQ and install the no-ip.com linux client. And here start the problems: The CentOS+BlueQuartz distributions didn't have compiling tools.

I only found the GCC-Tools package from NuOnce Networks in a BlueQuartz package but it doesn't want to install by the easy way with the GUI. Fortunatelly theirs forums has the solution, install it manualy by the shell: Here is the link.

1. Upload the file via FTP to the server.
2. Uncompress the file: tar xfvpz BQ-5102*
3. Go into the RPMS folder: cd RPMS
4. Be root: type su and then the admin password as required.
5. Install all the pakages with rpm -ivh --force --nodeps *.

And ready. Now you can follow my previous guide to install the no-ip.com client.

UPDATE

With the new software, the symbolic links to the noip software have to be done in other way then the old RaQ4 software:

In the old Raq you have todo in the /etc/rc.d/init.d folder:

# ln -s noip /etc/rc3.d/S99noip
# ln -s noip /etc/rc6.d/K99noip
# ln -s noip /etc/rc0.d/K99noip

In the new CentOS is a bit more tricky:

1. # cd /etc/rc3.d
2. # ln -s ../init.d/noip S99noip
3. # cd /etc/rc6.d
4. # ln -s ../init.d/noip K99noip
5. #cd /etc/rc0.d
6. # ln -s ../init.d/noip K99noip

SunFire V120 as a Workstation

Yeah... Finally I have an Sparc machine with display!!!!

The last two nights I had been working with my V120 server, installing a PGX32 gfx card that I received sometime ago. First I installed with the old Solaris 10 installation but nothig was appearing on the screen, only some noise. I didn't have the handbook and I wanted to do a fresh install. Today at lunch time I reinstalled it but the result was the same.

Some search in the sun website to reach the Framebuffer Handbook. First I configured the card from Solaris but I only get a yellow screen.. this was better anyway. Then I tried modifying the NVRAM parameters:

1. From the root prompt: # poweroff
2. In the lom prompt: lom> bootmode forth
3. lom> poweron
4. When I have the ok prompt I type >ok setenv output-device screen:r1280x1024x60
5. ok reset

And... after a reboot my monitor start to show the boot messages and then the login screen!

Today is too late and I am so tired. Soon I put pictures and more explanations.

See you.

A silent Octane

She has new fans. Now she is enough quiet to work near the table!!!!!

Unfortunately I thing I was wrong ordering the Sharkoon 120mm fan, the Octane needs more power in this fan. Oufff. New fan will be ordered next week because now the air is getting hot after 30 minutes of run. The 92mm fan is OK and this is the good thing because this was the noisy one!!!

Nothing more today

Titox.

PD: How slooooowwwwww is Firefox in Irix!!!!!!! A lot of time wasted to write this post!!!

Silencing

Hello.
Today arrived at home a new packet with a lot of fans. First I ordered two new fans for the Octane2 and small ones for the Extrem Networks switch and Gigabyte server. In th switch I changed the three original Delta Electronics fans by slow and quiet Sharkoon S402030L-3. This new fans run at only 3000 rpm with 16 dB(A) of noise.... With the switch running you hear anything!!!!! This new fans take out small air quantity but the switch is placed outside a datacenter - in my room!!!!-, and with the small amount of machines running over there, It isn't needed to take out a lof air -That room is not ver heat-.

Maybe tomorrow I'll upload some pictures. The only special thing that I did is to change the wires in the fan plug as the original fans have.

At the end I replaced the Octane PSU fan for a new quiet Sharkoon one but after a lot of work done (nearly 30 bolts out and then returned in place), the fan doesn't turn :(
Today I'm too tired to check it again.... tomorrow perhaps.

See you.

New BitTornado

Using Torrentflux with BitTornado from a long time, I always had problems downloading big torrents. I never had been able to download any linux distribution via the BitTorrent network and this is a big trouble for me. In files bigger than 3 GB's, like Fedora or Solaris installation DVD's, always I had a "Torrent died" messahe whe the download reached near 2,5 GB's. And everytime I tried to restart the server returned a bad "Torrent died" after checking the existing data. I deleted the downloaded part but nothing went better.

Now I'm working 600 Km from my home but yesterday nigth I had the same problem, then I deleted the file partially downloaded I tried to restart de download but TorrentFlux said the same and I decided to search some information. The TorrentFlux website says nothing about upgrades and nothing related in the its forums. Then I went to the BitTornado webpage I there is a new release: 0.3.18.

The release information doesn't say anything about bug fixes, only encryption upgrade but happiness now I can restart my failed download. Only some days waiting for to see if I have a good end of my torrent file.

To upgrade BitTornado I downloaded the .tar.gz file in my laptop, uncompressed it and moved to the server the files used by TorrentFlux: two files .py in the TFBitTornado folder and then all the CVS folder. Then I rebooted the server.

Nothing more today, I need hollidays... too much work now...

Maybe the problem is my server. The Cobalt RaQ 4 is running the old CobaltOS and needs update to CentOS + BlueQuartz... I'll see.

One month later... One more RaQ4

OK. I have a lot of work in my job and I can't dedicate a lot of time to my servers but... I can't be quiet. I bid on one more Cobalt RaQ 4i two weekends ago and it came here last friday. The seller said it has no hard disk and a lot of screws were lost. He didn't guarantee that te Cobalt runs but after installing an old Maxtor 40Gb, I installed the Cobalt software without problems. The best of all is This new RaQ had been very very cheap!!!!!

First I installed the Zeffies special restore CD and his Turbo Updates but some of the packages didn't want to install and this restore CD only detects 8GB-more or less- of the 40GB disk. Later I was thinking how this machine can serve files via SMB and I decided to install the Qube3 OS. Oohhhhh! This OS is beatiful and I think it is a lot faster then the old one.

I like the BlueLinq update system but it has a big fault: There is not a button to install everything with only one press, and I spent one day installing packages. Oh yes, the package Qube3-All-Security-4.0.1-17041 don't want to install.

Now I have a lot of work playing with this new software but I'm thinking to use this as first server and use the other Cobalt RaQ 4i as development system.

Here you have a picture of my servers - Ouch, yes, I have a new Extreme Networks switch-. maybe the next thing to do is find a place for all, a cabinet perhaps?

Finally, I have a Solaris machine

Yesssss. Here it is. A Sunfire V120 arrived last week. I spent all the weekend installing and configuring Solaris 10 and the Java Web Server.

My first idea was to run this machine as redirector or Reverse Proxy but it's noisy as the my Gigabyte server... I have to buy a lot of new slow fans!!!!

After the installation of the last release of Solaris 10 for Sparc I'm very impressed with the Sun webserver software, the configuration page via web site is fantastic and it has a wide quantity of options to configure the server. But there is a new things to learn and I need some time to know how works this server software.

In the other hand, the Webconsole software -included in the Solaris package- is really a good idea but now I can only manage ZFS and I don't need it. I'm going to install the Webmin Solaris package and try.

I have to say Solaris is more different from linux than I was thinking, big diferences in console commands and file structures makes me headaches to find some configuration files and, the installation path of some applications are very inconsistent: I have the webserver on /sun/webserver7/, and the webconsole in /usr/share/webconsole/. The freeware of the Companion DVD is in another place and I can't remember everything. Maybe with some work.....

Also, I miss some usefull tools from linux like wget. I downloaded it from ftp://ftp.sunfreeware.com/ but after installation I received a message saying I need some libraries to get it running. This is not a big trouble but some extra work is needed to do some jobs that were very easy with the linux of my Cobalt Raq. Maybe Solaris has it's own tools for the same job but I can't find any list of the equivalent commands and the existance of some freeware makes me doubt about the existance of this list itself.

Here you have some pictures of this hard weekend:

My Intranet DNS server

My home network is growing fast now with new servers, old PC's and new workstations. Now, I can't remember all my IP addresses and with Unix systems I can't use smb names. The solutions is easy and widely discussed: I need a DNS server.


The machine to runs DNS is easy to choose: my Cobalt RaQ4 is 24/7 up. The procedure is easy, and you can download the RaqTweak.com HOWTO. In my case, due this is a local network I simplified a lot the configuration.


Log in the admin panel and go to the Control Panel:


Click on the DNS Server Parameters to open the configuration screen and select Server Settings. Type your usual DNS servers, ask your DSL provider if don't know, as Forwarders servers. Our new intranet DNS server will redirect us to that servers in case of an Internet address translation.

Then select Address (A) record in the combo box and type the name you want for the network item and the domain name, here I use only home as domain name:

Now you only need to repeat this procedure with all the addresses of the net to access to them with names like router.home, webserver.home or films.home. Remember to add the ip address of your new DNS server to the network configuration of your computers, or better, put this in your DHCP server or router.

The next thing I need is a Reverse Proxy and some kind of ssh redirector because I have more than 2 webservers in my net and I need to access to them from everywhere without a VPN.