April, 2005
Setting up mail service on the server was trivial: just a matter of clicking a few buttons in VHCS. So, I have no idea what the problem was on the Win/ux box that prevented proper mail service, and, frankly, I don’t much care.
As for the CPU idle time, well now that all the server processes are installed and running, it’s sitting around 99% on average. Which is nice. load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 is pretty much what I want to see from an idle server.
Final Result: Mail service is being handled by the server again. The OS transition is complete.
Posted on 28 April 2005 in Uncategorized
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Not much to say about installing VHCS onto the server. I followed the tutorial I mention a couple of posts back, here’s the point form progress:
- apt Upgrades & Installs: success
- Apache listening on 8080 for the switchover
- Install vhcs, modify it to allow .htaccess overrides and also to do ip-based vhost entries
- Create users for the websites, create the databases, copy the files, smooth as silk
- Takes an inconsequential bit longer to serve than the PC (333MHz G3 v 750MHz Duron).
- Shutdown the Win/ux box and suddenly the apartment is blissfully, incredibly silent. It’s wonderful.
Final Result: Return to a nice, quiet apartment. Oh, and the web sites are again served off the server, but now by Linux not OS X.
Update: I forgot to enable mod_rewrite in apache2, so WordPress’s permalink’s weren’t working. Enabled mod_rewrite and everything’s peachy.
Posted on 27 April 2005 in Uncategorized
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A base Ubuntu server configuration is installed on the server. After two filed attempts at building a stripped-down custom kernel, I’m giving up for now and just running the stock. No big deal there. BootX is configured to auto-boot into Linux, so power outages shouldn’t be a problem. And, as another bonus on top of the 100 Base-T ethernet, since Linux isn’t booted out of Open Firmware, I don’t have to keep the entire boot partition inside the first 8GB of the disk (there’s a bug in the OF of the Beige G3s and the Bondi Blue iMacs that requires the boot partition to be… well, you can probably figure it out).
My partition structure is nice and simple: 500MB of HFS for Mac OS 8.6, 18GB of ext3 for Linux, and 500MB of swap, also for Linux. Under the OS X set up it was: 4GB for OS 9 & the OS X system, and 16GB for data. I like the new layout a lot better since it feels like there’s less wasted space.
I also want to mention the CPU usage. Under OS X the machine rarely got above 70% idle. Right now, it’s sitting at 99% idle with occasional bounces up to 100%. Granted all I’m running at the moment is sshd, tcsh, and top; so I’ll have to take another look once all the server processes are in place. That said, I still think Linux is going to come out ahead in this area simply because it doesn’t have the servermgrd daemon checking up on everything, nor a nice GUI (or any GUI at all, for that matter). Now, servermgrd and the GUI were both really nice conveniences under OS X, but I’m more than willing to do without them for the extra idle time. (More idle time = lower CPU temps = less need to add a fan. I hate noise.)
And yes, I skipped Milestone 2 (getting the mail service up on the temp server), but the fans in my Win/ux box are driving me nuts, so the sooner I can shut it off the saner I will be.
Final Result: Linux is running on the server. Not quite as lean as it could be, but nice and mean.
Posted on 27 April 2005 in Uncategorized
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Web services have been transitioned to the temporary server (my Win/ux box). Considering I’m learning VHCS as I go (and customizing it to boot), this is going quickly. Now it’s a just a matter of moving mail services to the temporary box and I can start building the new server…
Final Result: Web service is handled on the temporary box.
Posted on 25 April 2005 in Uncategorized
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By default VHCS has an AllowOveride none in a virtual domain’s spec. In order to support pretty URLs, WordPress need to do some mod_rewrite-ing. Luckily, it’s not to hard to change the default. In /etc/vhcs2/apache/parts/dmn_entry.tpl, change AllowOverride AuthConfig to AllowOverride All . Note that if you have any domains created already, it’s easiest to just make the same change for each of them in /etc/apache2/sites-available/vhcs2.conf and restart Apache.
Final Status: scotfl.ca seems to be working on the new server.
Posted on 25 April 2005 in Uncategorized
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Under Mac OS X, my G3 is limited to it’s on-board 10 Base-T controller. This is all right for serving things to the outside world because my cable modem’s throughput is much lower than that of a 10 Base-T link. However, I also use my server as my chief BitTorrent client. Thus, I need to transfer largeish files from my server to my laptop with some regularity. By replacing the 10 Base-T connection with a 100 Base-T would be a significant improvement.
The problem is that Mac OS X drivers for Ethernet PCI cards are rather thin on the ground, and there is no happy intersection of that set with the single 10/100 Base-T card I own. Linux, on the other hand fully supports almost every piece of ethernet hardware I own (the sole exception is a SCSI-based 10 Base-T adapter, yes, SCSI-based). SO, by switching to Linux I am also making it considerably easier to move data back and forth between my server and my laptop.
Final Result: Linux offers faster Networking for the server as a side benefit.
Posted on 24 April 2005 in Uncategorized
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Mac OS X Server has some nice administration software. I don’t want to lose that, so I’ll need some nice administration software for Linux. Specifically, something like CPanel, but open source. (Because I don’t want to pay US$1250.)
A little nosing around turns up three options: Web://cp which gets good reviews but appears to be dead (or, at least their server is), Web Hosting Toolkit which looks like it could do the job, and VHCS which is pretty much exactly what I meant when I said ‘open source CPanel-type thing’.
Thus, I’m going with VHCS. While they don’t list Ubuntu as a supported distro, they do list Debian, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get it up and running. And, in fact, their documentation wiki has some info on Ubuntu installations, excellent. On to the the installation.
- Install the required dependencies: check.
- Install VHCS: check
- No Ubuntu-specific instructions, so I’ll have to temporarily add their specified Debian Sarge repository to my sources list (
deb http://apt.scunc.it/ sarge main). Seems to work okay.
- Oops, I have no idea what my MySQL set-up is on this machine, time to Ctrl-Alt-F2 and investigate. Hmm… root can connect without a password, I’ll have to harden that on the actual server. Oh well, I’ll just create the VHCS db and user for now.
Alright, that was pretty simple. Unfortunately VHCS uses name-based V-Hosts by default, so it’s neccessary to switch it over to IP-based V-Hosts.
And, that works. The Linux machine is now serving out scotfl.ca and scotfl.net on a non-standard port (port 80 is still forwarded to the G3), but aside from that it is actually operating properly. Well, that is to say it’s serving the VHCS filler page for each domain, but the proper stuff will follow soon.
Final Result: success.
Update: There’s a nice HOWTO for installing VHCS on Ubuntu available in the VHCS forums here and the Ubuntu forums here. Definitely a step above the methods I used to get it up and running on my Win/ux box. I shall be following this to the letter when I set up the server.
Posted on 24 April 2005 in Uncategorized
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Before trying to get a Ubuntu-based replacement for the G3’s OS X setup, it seems like a good idea to make sure that Ubuntu will actually run on it. Thus, an Ubuntu Live CD is burnt.
After installing BootX into the OS 9 partition and copying the contents of Ubuntu_PowerPC_hoary/install/powerpc/ to the desktop, it’s a trivial matter to actually boot into Linux. There’s some slight glitching in the video, but other than that, so far so good. The Ubuntu Wiki page on using BootX is a good resource.
The Live CD setup fails on configuring the Time Zone. All right, skip that. I don’t know what caused it (the CD passed the built-in integrity check, so it’s not a flaw in the burn or my crappy old DVD-ROM), so I’ll just push on and hope for the best.
Module loading fails for ide-*, hmm, IDE drivers would be very useful. So, follow the menu option to drop into a shell, and… nothing. It’s just a fall-back for an actual installation. Time for a second try.
And it fails on setting up the Time Zone. Okay, time to admit (temporary) defeat, reboot the server into OS X and do some more research.
On reflection, it occurs to me that the kernel is probably being passed some parameters by yaboot when the LiveCD boots on my PowerBook. And, yep, there’s a magical incantation:
casper/enable=true casper-udeb/snapshot/backing-file=/cdrom/casper/filesystem.cloop --
After adding that to BootX’s kernel parameters, everything loads up nice and cleanly. Side note: checking the ‘no video driver’ checkbox in BootX eliminates to video glitches. Unfortunately, it also eliminates the console text. C’est la vie.
Final result: success! Ubuntu boots and runs quite happily on my G3, networking, video and what not is all auto-configured, so I can now move ahead secure in the knowledge I can actually install Linux on this box.
Posted on 20 April 2005 in Uncategorized
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