Posts tagged Linux
More Server Consideration
Jul 16th
I discovered a positive development for both server options today: First, the Q9400s, a lower power version of the Q9400 which would work better in the SFF case. Secondly, I learned that I can boot to a software RAID1 setup, which makes the Atom route more appealing, which I’m now leaning towards. The Atom should have enough power for a basic web and file server, while running cooler and using less power as well.
A Question of Power
Jul 14th
By now, Cervantes (my webserver) is starting to get pretty old. While it still performs it’s basic functions decently, I’m wanting to move to a RAID setup to prevent data loss due to a hard drive crash. While I do have nightly backups of the most important data on Cervantes (my posts) the rest of the data could still be lost at any moment.
I’ve found a couple of nice Mini-ITX cases for server use, both made by a company named Chenbro. One has two hot-swappable drive bays and a 150W power supply, and the other has four bays with a 180W PSU. Besides the number of bays, the cases are otherwise very similar. What type of RAID I decide will influence the case selection.
When I first started putting this build together, my plan was to use the Intel Atom board with the 330 dual core processor. Unfortunately, that board does not support hardware RAID, so I’d have to do RAID in software. While the Atom should be able to handle that ok, it does mean that I’d need a separate boot disk. The Atom board only has two SATA ports, so that boot disk would have to be on either IDE or USB, and I have found online some small flash-memory modules that can plug directly into those connectors on the motherboard.
When I ran into the hardware RAID issue on the Atom board, I also began to look at other Mini-ITX boards that DID support hardware RAID. If I want to stick to an Atom CPU, I can get an ION board, which pairs the Atom CPU with an Nvidia chipset. While I’d gain hardware RAID, the ION boards are considerably more expensive than the Intel boards, and most of the multimedia features of the board would go to waste.
The second alternative was to use a Mini-ITX Socket LGA 775 board, which are available with either a Q45 or G45 chipset. The board feature four SATA ports as well as hardware RAID support on the motherboard. I’d also be able to use a much more powerful CPU, though it brings up the question of whether the smaller power supplies in these cases would support them (In fact, a quick calculation confirms that the system would pull around 160W, just over the power provided by the smaller case, and a little close for confort on the larger). I’d like to have a Core 2 Quad processor, as I do sometimes SSH into my server for development purposes. The power issue could be remedied by replacing the included PSU with a larger one. The two bay case uses a FLEX ATX power supply, and a quick Google turns up a 270W for sale, which would provide plenty of power.
Overall, I’m leaning towards the higher end build, due to both the hardware RAID and the better CPU for development, as well as the possibility of running virtual machines on top of it.
Wacom Bamboo in Ubuntu 9.04
May 13th
Today I got my Wacom Bamboo USB Tablet in from Newegg. Installation in Jaunty was incredibly easy, I just plugged it in and the Wacom drivers were already installed and ready to go. The corners of the tablet automatically mapped to the corners of the screen, which in some previous Ubuntu releases required a bit of editing to Xorg.conf.
I’ve really only messed with two apps so far, Gimp and Evernote. Gimp is, of course, preinstalled in Ubuntu and allows pen input just fine, although it doesn’t automatically map the eraser to the Erase tool.
Evernote doesn’t have a native Linux version, but it runs quite well in Wine. The only issue I’ve come across so far is that I cannot drag and drop files from Nautilus into a notebook. My plan is to use this to handwrite notes for school, and I’ve already been typing my notes into Evernote for the last few days. Evernote is nice because it automatically keeps your notes synced between multiple installations (for me, that’s Evernote/Wine Evernote/VistaVM and Evernote/W7) and also has a web interface for when I’m not at one of my computers. This syncing allows me to drag files to Evernote either by opening a VM or remoting to my desktop and then they will automatically be synced back to the copy of Evernote I’m running in Wine.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix
Jul 15th
There’s been a fair amount of news online about Canonical’s specialized version of Ubuntu for Atom based laptops, but the current word on it is that Canonical will only be licensing it directly to OEMs. However, there is a PPA that you can use to turn an Ubuntu Hardy install into UNR.
Just add the repository and install the applications that it contains, then log out and in and set up your new desktop.
I have mine configured as close as I can to what the default layout seems to be from the screenshots I’ve seen online.
UNR makes good use of available screen real estate (my screenshots are running at 800×600) by putting each application in a “Tab.” I installed a couple of extra apps, Deluge 1.0rc2 and Banshee 1.0, and sure enough, they automatically conformed to the layout.
UNR places it’s launchers and menus on the desktop, which is quickly accessible from the “Go Home” button in the upper-left corner (it looks like an Ubuntu logo).
I’m not crazy about the look and feel. The desktop has a nice, new, polished look to it while the applications themselves use the standard Human theme. Either are nice on their own, but they seem to clash when used together. The interface was also a little slow, but that may be due to running it inside a virtual machine, as I’ve heard that the interface makes some use of OpenGL.
Overall, it’s a nice product and most tasks are accomplished easily. This will make a great OS for the Eee PC or any other subnotebook.
Easy SSH Tunneling
Jul 3rd
Whenever I work out of the San Francisco office, I have to tunnel back to my workstation in Palo Alto in order to do any development. The way I do this is with an SSH Tunnel. While I used to just fire it up manually, the other day I hacked up some shell scripts to automatically connect and start up my most used apps on the remote machine, and I thought I’d share them here.
First, on the local machine:
/usr/local/bin/tunnel:
#!/bin/sh
$IPADDR=0.0.0.0 # IP Address of the remote machine
$LOGON=usrname # Your username on the remote machine
$STARTUP=/usr/local/bin/startup
ssh -X $IPADDR -l $LOGON $STARTUP
and, on the remote machine:
/usr/local/bin/startup:
#!/bin/sh
gnome-terminal &
nautilus &
firefox &
pidgin &
xchat &
Essentially, a list of programs to start up. Don’t forget the & on each line, or else they won’t all start at the same time.
Make sure that both files are executable (chmod +x), then you can add a launcher to /usr/local/bin/tunnel and you’re good to go.
It’s a pretty simple trick, but it saves me several seconds each time I connect to the network. Also, as there’s no terminal needed to keep the ssh session open, I don’t accidentally lose my session.
Always lock down your mod_proxy
Jun 8th
So, my server had been eating bandwidth for breakfast, and I finally found out why. I was using apache’s mod_proxy to redirect incoming connections across the network, but that was being hijacked by some ad agencies and being used as a general use web proxy. Hopefully I’ve got that taken care of now. While I still see several incoming connections, they are no longer slowing down the network, so I’m assuming that my fix worked.
T61p works great with Linux
May 6th
Model: Lenovo Thinkpad T61p 6459-CTO
Distro: Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz
The CPU runs fast and cool. While idling, it stays somewhere between 40 and 50 Celsius, and goes up to about 60C under load. For comparison, the CPU in my previous laptop would hit the low 90s under load and idle around 60. - Video: Nvidia Quadro 570M 512MB
The video card is well supported by the latest Nvidia drivers. The Quadro 570M is essentially a Geforce 8600M-GT in terms of hardware, and can draw upon 512MB of memory: 256MB dedicated, and the other 256MB borrowed from the system.
I’ve yet to put it though any stress tests, but it didn’t have any trouble playing quake 4 at default settings at 1920×1200, though I only tested it for the first minute or so of gameplay. - Wireless: Intel Wifi Link 4965AGN
Works out of the box with Intel’s open source driver. Connects without trouble to my Netgear 802.11n router, and maintains full signal stength throughout the house.
The following also worked out of the box:
- Special buttons, including volume and media controls
- The integrated SD card reader
- Bluetooth
In short, every piece of hardware in the T61p works fine in Linux. Under the latest Ubuntu release, all I had to do after installing was install the nvidia-new driver from the repositories, everything else is supported by default with open source drivers.
New Laptop: Krayt
Apr 21st
After three years of faithful service, my Thinkpad R51 “notapowerbook” will be retired in favor of a new Thinkpad T61p, which I’ve decided to dub “Krayt.” I had some trouble deciding what to name this one, originally thinking of “notamacbookpro” to continue the “nota” naming trend, and then my planned Eee PC I want to get down the road could be “notamacbook.” However, as this is a desktop replacement notebook (and indeed, it’s more powerful than my desktop), I’ve decided to use my existing trend of naming computers after lizards (past computers were Iguana, Chameleon, and Komodo) by naming this one Krayt, after the fictional Krayt Dragons from the Star Wars universe. So, the Eee will wind up being a smaller lizard, maybe “Anole.”
Anyways, the laptop was born and shipped yesterday, on April 20th. The specs are as follows:
Lenovo Thinkpad T61p:
- 15.4″ WUXGA (1920×1200) Display
- Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz, 6MB L2 Cache)
- 4GB DDR2-667 Memory
- 256MB Nvidia Quadro 570M
- 160GB 7200rpm HDD
- DVD+RW
- Intel 4965AGN Wireless (802.11n)
- Integrated Bluetooth
- Integrated Memory Card Reader
- 9 Cell Battery
It should arrive at the end of this week, right as I’m finishing finals for the semester.
It will, of course, run Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
Good news for Atheros users
Mar 17th
The problem with Atheros cards in Hardy seems to have been resolved. I’ve built debs from the bzr branch of NetworkManager, which will become network-manager_0.6.6-0ubuntu2 (0ubuntu1 is the current version), and my wireless internet works again.
So, while the fix is currently unreleased, it should be out soon.
Going Live with Ubuntu 8.04
Mar 6th
I’ve installed Ubuntu “Hardy Heron” Alpha 6 on my laptop, and I’ve been using it for the last couple of days. So far, it works rather well, although I’ve had a few issues.
One problem that has finally gone away is the problem connecting to UofL’s network. I can now connect to the wireless network using NetworkManager, though it turns out I may have been able to do so under Gutsy as well.
Firefox 3.0 has been giving me some trouble as well, and I’ve just installed Firefox 2 alongside it in the meantime. Besides not working with Foxmarks, which is a must for me, FF3b3 has been having a number of weird rendering errors.
I love the improvements to Gnome. GVFS is very nice, and makes multiple transfers a lot less cluttered. Supposedly, there’s some stability issues, but I’ve yet to encounter them. The world clock in the calender applet is also very nice, as it lets me monitor the time and weather in multiple cities at a glance. This may be useful next semester if I get a co-op position out of town.
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