Linux Neophyte

Last time I wrote, I gave the overview of a project I’ve begun at the house. Here’s the hardware I’m working with and the roles the machines will be performing (or not, as the case may be).

These first 2 guys are the older noisy machines that I need to replace. They have loud fans and louder hard disks. I don’t notice the noise so much since I moved them to the basement, but I *know* they’re down there making noise…

Voldemort:

A Pentium III (Coppermine) 1GHz running on a SuperMicro P3TSSA motherboard. This baby is maxed out with 512MB PC133 SDRAM. This was a great machine 7+ years ago. I had a lot of fun on it. I built it to learn/play with Windows 2000, it had a whopping 256MB of RAM back then and was moderate to high tech when I built it. This isn’t the original mobo, it had an Intel branded board that went kaput some time after I installed XP on it. I’ve loved this machine for MANY years and while it won’t be running 24/7 anymore, it’ll still be there for me to play with. It’s currently running Debian 4.0 and hasn’t had a real role other than for testing for a while. Most recently, it’s been host to a VM or two that I’ve been playing with.

Albus:

A Pentium III (Coppermine) 1GHz running on a Dell GX150 motherboard. This one is maxed with 512 MB as well and used to be my work desktop many years ago. We were able to pick up our machines before they were refreshed for a modest price so I opted to. I don’t have any really fond memories with this machine. It’s always been on and I’ve never once had a problem with it. Not a bad little box. Currently it’s running Debian 4.0 (upgraded from Debian 3.1) and its primary role is a backup server (I’m using an offsite backup server after this whole project is complete) and shell server. it’s the single door into my home network.

This next machine is the physical box replacing both Albus and Voldemort.

Nix/Cerberus:

Credit: Cerberus was given his name by none other than Sarah Conti. Rock on with your mythology Miss Conti!

A Pentium 4, 3.00GHz (Hyperthreading) running on an Intel D945GTP motherboard. It’s currently rocking 2GB of DDR2/667MHz memory. This is a great machine for running a standard desktop. I built it in March 2006 to be my Ubuntu desktop, and I’ve never had a problem with it. Currently it’s name is Nix but will soon become Cerberus. It will be running Debian 4.0, VMware server and will be providing shell access (replacing albus) and will act as a Samba server for my music and whatever else I need to share.

…and without further delay, the virtual machines!

Ka:

Ka is a Debian 4.0 Virtual Machine. His role is to be an always on machine for my wiki, email, IRC & IM clients. He’s already alive and well and I’ve moved those services over to him. For the moment he’s hosted on Voldemort and will be moved to Cerberus once he lives.

Peeves:

Peeves is Windows Server 2003 Enterprise. Yep, I need to be able to virtualize Windows because I have a few apps that I need/want to have on at all times. This includes my FTP server, Handy Address Book server and WhereIsIt which is a cataloging program that just rocks. I decided to go with Windows 2k3 because I had a license for it and didn’t have one for another copy of XP. It’s currently being hosted by Darktower (you’ll meet him below)

Finally, the desktop machine/VM to get me through this whole mess.

Nix2/Darktower:

Nix2 is just an Ubuntu VM so that I can continue to use my Linux apps while converting Nix to Cerberus. Nix2 will be hosted on Darktower. This is a physical machine similar in make-up to Nix (only diff is that it’s a full ATX board, not a Micro and it’s in a taller case). Darktower runs XP at the moment but will eventually be a dual boot with Ubuntu and XP or Vista. I plan on keeping all data off of this machine, it will be nothing but a client as all of my data will be accessible via the servers. It’s final name will remain Darktower. Once I’ve got my data off of Nix2 and onto the new Darktower, Nix2 will get the boot and all will be good in the world.

So to summarize, both Albus and Voldemort die (seems fitting), Cerberus, Ka and Peeves rule the roost and Darktower just hangs out getting poked and prodded when needed. Since I won’t need it to be on at all times anymore (for IRC and what not) it’ll be spending the majority of it’s time in sleep mode.It’ll be nice to eliminate the 2 older machines and keep a third sleeping most of the time. That will leave only 2 always on machines in the house, that’s Cerberus and HTPC (which is a Windows machine running some home theater software).

Once complete, I’ll not only have infrastructure that’s really easy to backup/re-create but I’ll have stopped wasting so much energy.

Next, I’ll start going over what’s involved in setting up the VMs, things from Debian installation options to installed applications.

written by M@ \\ tags: Apt, ClamAV, Debian, Debian Volatile, Hardware, How-To, Linux, Migration Project, Samba, Ubuntu, Virtualization, VMware, Vnstat

Well, it’s been a while. I’m still rocking the Linux and loving it. I’m over the “shiney new OS” phase and onto the practical reality of Linux and its use (whatever that means). I still prefer it over Windows, but I do have my moments where I go back to Windows for certain things. I hate it, but I like the look of plain ole’ Windows Explorer for simple file management. This is only because it sorts everything in a predictable way (there is no case precedence). It comes down to me looking at something familiar and I’m sure (hope?) I’ll outgrow it :).

I’m still using Ubuntu as my primary desktop OS, Debian as my primary server OS and Windows XP as my wubi. I’ve also injected Vista Enterprise into the mix. I got a new laptop from work and since it has the juice to run it, and work provided the license, I thought it would be nice to get familiar with the OS. So far, it’s just “OK”. Aero looks nice, it has a lot of entries in control panel (sexy looking), but I haven’t seen anything that makes me go “wow” (I’ll be honest and admit that I haven’t searched for any wow stuffs). I will say that it can be slow at times and just feels heavy. I’ll be keeping it on the lappy for the experience and testing. It also allows Mrs. Neophyte to play the Yahoo games (I think she’s addicted to Ocean Express atm).

I want to outline a project I’ve started. It’s something I’ve been considering for a while and just put off as I was enjoying the summer. I have too many physical computers. OK, let me qualify that, I feel guilty running extra underutilized machines. They are old, less than stellar when it comes to power consumption/management and they’re damn noisy.

Since I almost never use the machine I have dedicated to Windows, I thought that now would be a good time to take my current Ubuntu machine, convert it to a server, virtualize some of the physical machines I have and shut them down. I’ve explored a few options and with my current hardware, VMware Server is the best option for me. I was hoping to use Xen, but since Intel’s VT extensions aren’t built into my processor, I can’t virtualize Windows with it. This is a problem as my web based address book runs on Windows (and I’ve never been able to get it running on a LAMP server), so I need to have a Windows VM. I also prefer Gene6 FTP server to anything available for Linux so I’ll be running that on the Windows VM as well.

This will allow me to eliminate 2 physical machines, move one to the basement to act as a VMware Server (among other things) and convert one to a dual boot with Ubuntu/XP. Then I can cram 2 machines (both PIII class units) into my closet for play time whenever I have the need (those are the old noisy ones).

Next post, hardware specs and hopefully the roles that the host and guests will be filling. I hope to go through everything here so that somebody else with too many machines (ugh, I just don’t think you can have too many machines…) can do something similar.

written by M@ \\ tags: Ubuntu