Cloud Computing.
Lots of benefits. More benefits that we’re willing to admit.
The rise of SaaS and similar services is by no means a surprise. It fixes a number of things, two of them should stand out as pretty important ones: Piracy, and Vendor Lock-In that goes even further to locking customers in to using their products.
Click through to read on…
If the title is confusing, this is just notes for me on how I get a DE in ArchLinux working because the last time I did this I used KDEmod but now support for this is ending it’s time to go from scratch.
Also, the one thing I’ve not done since I began learning Linux 5 years ago is set up a desktop environment. I generally use Linux on servers where a DE isn’t needed so as a result it’s time to trundle down noobie alley again.
I found the documentation on ArchWiki to be rather piecemeal and no step-by-step was available. There was almost one but there are certain things it really needs to tell you about that are missing. I should probably go fix that, but I’d probably end up changing too much and the mods rolling it back anyhow because it doesn’t conform to some strange archaic Wikipedia type rule that says you can’t stratch yourself while editing on Wikipedia because it ‘taints’ Wikipedia or some utter bollocks like that. Wikipedia ruined wikis as far as I’m concerned. They are now too formal and there is no ‘collaborative feel’ anymore. It’s collaborative, only if the other guys approve of your edits, and even then if they are torn a discussion page turns in to a vote to oppose or accept the changes. Talk about getting up on your high horse. The motto might as well be “The Encyclopedia anyone can edit, so long as it’s on our terms, and our terms are always right, even when they are logically impossible.”. Unfortunately anyone who runs a wiki also follows this standard. As a result, making a quick note on a wiki is considered a heinous sin. You must always go back to the discussion page to explain your change, and then you’re likely to be told “no” by some 35-year old overweight unemployed basement hippy that has played too much Nintendo, probably has fantasies about mashing (I was going to use “integrating”, which I actually find funnier for some reason) Sonic and Pikachu together (and generalising the entire WikiPedia faithful populace as a horde of Sonichu – I forsee a left4dead 2 mod coming) and fears stepping outside in case he gets kicked in the nads by the people who’s changes he rejected (and quite rightly so).
Oh bugger, where did that rant come from? Anyway, back to work!
Now, the guys who do the documenting over at Arch do a great job but I feel that most of this could be solved by one single virtual package called “kdebase-minimal-desktop” that installed Xorg, KDM, and the minimal KDE base and then just to tell the user to add “kdm” to the daemons line in /etc/rc.conf. A lot of the work any newbie coming to Linux needed to do would be eliminated in one swoop, and if they wanted to do it the long winded way then they can, just tell them to go to another wiki page.
New machine, recently wiped of openSuSE because for some insanely ridiculous and arse retarded reason they made the home and end keys do something completely different to how every single other distro uses them. Some of the Linux fanbois even go as far as to say “What might be better is to learn to use the system as a UNIX system, rather than trying to make it behave like a Windows system. I could just as reasonably ask bash keystrokes don’t work properly in Windows. The answer, of course, is that Windows isn’t UNIX and UNIX isn’t Windows.”
And people wonder why Linux hasn’t taken off? What else is the home & end keys meant to do? Home key when pressed doles you in to the back of a car and drives you home? End key ends your life? What? It’s irritating editing a file and having “Unknown command” come up each time you hit home or end! Goodbye openSuSE, Arch Linux I love you even more for actually being functional and not replacing functionality with user unfriendliness.
Ok, lets start.
You’ve just completed /arch/setup and have rebooted in to your shiny new system. You’ve logged in and now your system is ready to do your bidding, whether it be evil or otherwise. Next step is to perform a full update, so hopefully you configured your network during setup. No? Well, if you connected it to the network then if you have a normal home router it’ll automatically grab an IP address thanks to DHCP. Test it though by doing “ping google.com”. If it says “reply from” with a whole bunch of other garb, great, you can connect to the internet. Full update time. Type:
pacman -Syu
…to begin the update. Keep doing this and say Y to every message that comes up until pacman shows “there is nothing to do”. Once done, first thing’s first. Install SSH…
pacman -S openssh
…then add the following line to /etc/hosts.allow…
sshd: ALL
… Really, we should be restricting it so only you can get to it, but you’re not putting this out on the internet, are you? If you are, I’d recommend using SSL certs to log in, or at least changing the port to something above port 1024. You can use Pagent (comes with PuTTY) to store any certificates and automatically call upon them when you need a shell in to the box. I’ll come to setting this up in a future guide.
Connect from the computer you’re most comfortable at using your SSH client of choice and log in as root. Can’t log in (getting “Access Denied”)? Root user REQUIRES a password when connecting via SSH. Set a password on the console using “passwd” and enter your password, then try connecting again. You’ll notice you now get a prompt. Good stuff!
We can now install the X server. X makes Linux use the advanced features of your graphics card and puts it in to graphical mode so a desktop environment can draw pretty windows on your screen. It is required and you MUST do this first, something the Arch wiki doesn’t mention!
There are a number of parts required to make X work as desired. Graphics drivers being the most important. If you know what graphics card you have, do a search for it in pacman using:
pacman -Ss xf86-video | grep <insert name/brand of your gfx chipset here>
…The box I’m doing this on is a HP ProLiant ML115 G5, and this has a Matrox ServerEngines chipset. It didn’t come up, but after some googling I discovered it was in there as “mga”, so I’d have to install “xf86-video-mga”. ATI is in there as “ati” (lowercase), nVidia chipsets are in there as “nv”.
I’m only going to go through gfx card install here as I have no audio devices on this box. Audio is a little more difficult as other parts are required, X can’t do that on it’s own. I’ll cover sound in a future article.
I’d be typing…
pacman -S xorg xf86-input-evdev xf86-video-mga
You’d be typing…
pacman -S xorg xf86-input-evdev xf86-video-<your gfx card name>
Once done, it needs configuring. This needs doing as sadly X won’t automatically detect what card you have installed. It needs to be hand held through it like a Nintendo fanboi after he realizes Nintendo has been releasing first-party shovelware and has been taking their fans for a ride while calling the titles ‘hardcore’ (Since when was Wii Party a ‘hardcore’ title?), or a Future Publishing editor after “friends” share the video of the feckless tit screaming like a girl after being easily defeated by the first boss in Blue Dragon(ouch!), then giving it 1/10 in the “official” magazine he writes for and not mention he didn’t give it a proper playthrough because he’s too useless and inexperienced to understand that he sucks at games. You can tell I have an axe to grind where all (not select) of Future Publishing’s editors and writers are concerned!
Anyway, all done and installed? Good stuff, now, go back to this PC’s console, and run…
Xorg -configure
This will create a configuration automatically which may or may not work, depending on your setup. I haven’t done this yet, so this could go wrong. Once it finishes, it’ll close with
“Your xorg file is /root/xorg.conf.new
To test the server, run ‘X -config /root/xorg.conf.new’.”
That’s exactly what we’ll do now. Type…
X -config /root/xorg.conf.new
…and hit enter. Now, I’ve just got a blank screen. I think this is ok, it’s just that X doesn’t have any applications to start. At this point, you’re probably wondering how to get back out. Hit Ctrl-Alt-F2. It’ll drop you back to a login prompt. Now hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 and you’ll see your old terminal with X output at the bottom. Hit Ctrl-C to kill X. Move the config file to /etc/X11 using…
mv /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and then to really test it, type…
startx
Then hit enter. You should get two terminals, and the twm display manager (green titlebars). Again, Ctrl-Alt-F2 and Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get back. Now it’s time to install KDM and then KDE. You can either install the whole shebang or install only the minimal base. Eitherway installing either will install KDM. Away we go!
pacman -S kdebase-workspace kdebase-konsole kde-l10n-en_gb ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-bitstream-vera
… Aaand wait. This will take some time so go grab a cuppa tea. When you’re back and ready to continue, there are two different ways of going about getting KDM to start on system startup. The inittab method and the daemon method. The inittab method is recommended as you won’t be forced in to an improperly configured X server on startup with a livecd being the only way to fix the issue. Just specify on the kernel commandline in Grub a runlevel (3) that will keep the system from booting runlevel 5. Daemon method is easy to set up but if something does go wrong, it’s LiveCD/chroot time! Lets save ourselves some future hassle and go the inittab route.
Open up /etc/inittab in your editor of choice (nano in mine because I like ease of use over learning 20 million different shortcuts), and comment out “id:3:initdefault:” and uncomment “id:5:initdefault:”. Don’t exit and reboot yet, one more change needs making, KDM will not start yet. Scoot down to “x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon”, comment it out, go down to “x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon” and uncomment it. Now it’ll start. Save and exit. The Arch wiki says we can test without rebooting, so we’ll do just that. This involves putting the system in to runlevel 5. Do this by doing…
/sbin/telinit 5
The screen goes blank, and then shows you a logon screen. This is what will happen when you restart your system by default. This is great except you can’t yet log in. KDM will not let you log in with a root account. Thats ok, just get back out of KDM by using Ctrl-Alt-F2 then Ctrl-Alt-F1 again. Create a new user account (this is good practice anyway) by typing…
adduser
Here’s what you’ll get asked, followed by my answers (anything in brackets is the default, don’t feel discouraged if most of your button pressing here involved hitting enter each time you’re asked, like me)…
— quote begin ————————————————————————————–
[root@roo ~]# adduser
Login name for new user []: lward
User ID (‘UID’) [ defaults to next available ]:
Initial group [ users ]:
Additional groups (comma separated) []:
Home directory [ /home/lward ]
Shell [ /bin/bash ]
Expiry date (YYYY-MM-DD) []:
New account will be created as follows:
—————————————
Login name…….: lward
UID…………..: [ Next available ]
Initial group….: users
Additional groups: [ None ]
Home directory…: /home/lward
Shell…………: /bin/bash
Expiry date……: [ Never ]
This is it… if you want to bail out, hit Control-C. Otherwise, press
ENTER to go ahead and make the account.
Creating new account…
Changing the user information for lward
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
Full Name []: Lee Ward
Room Number []:
Work Phone []:
Home Phone []:
Other []:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Account setup complete.
[root@roo ~]#
— quote end ————————————————————————————–
Dive back in to runlevel 3:
/sbin/telinit 3
And then back in to runlevel 5…
/sbin/telinit 5
Once the login box comes up, log in with your new details. I just got a box saying KDM couldn’t open ConsoleKit session. Lets fix that shall we? Click Ok. Again, another message comes up saying PolicyKit1-KDE closed unexpectedly, we’ll fix that too. Interestingly, I also got the folderview thing at the top left saying “This object could not be created for the following reason: Could not find requested component: folderview”. Just close the first one for now and go in to the K menu and look for Konsole (Applications > System > Terminal), switch to a root user using…
su root
…and enter your password for root. Open up /etc/rc.conf and go straight to the bottom (daemons) and change it to read this:
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng dbus hal network netfs crond sshd)
Here we added dbus, hal and sshd. sshd because it doesn’t start by default and you kind of want it to. dbus and hal are needed for certain components of KDE, ConsoleKit and PolicyKit being two of them. Save and exit, then finally reboot (K > Leave > Restart) and confirm. Once the system comes back up, you’ll see your lovely login screen again. After logging in, you won’t see either of those errors.
The most time consuming bit is done. You now have a usable desktop, your system boots right in to it, no errors. Way to go! Now, perhaps the most frustrating bit. Getting VNC working. If you don’t need a remote console, you can stop here but I kind of need this as this box will be headless, so here goes.
This isn’t the first time I’ve done this bit. The last time I did this, this happened. I fear it could happen again, and if it does, can someone tell me how to fix it because I have no clue, and I’m running out of mugs to throw up against the wall.
Ok, VNC. Bring it on!
For this, we’ll be using TightVNC and I’ll be referring to the guide located here.
Install tightvnc by doing…
pacman -S tightvnc
I want connections to the server to be open, except when a user connects, they get the same KDM login screen you do when you restart. VNC won’t be exposed, and neither will SSH, only the game server ports. this involves the use of something called Xdmcp. Open up /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc and do a search for [xdmcp]. Change Enable=False to true, then save and exit. Reboot the system for the change to take effect. Now, log in again and pull up Konsole again, and do su root to give yourself root privileges. Add a new user, and this one will only be used for accessing via VNC. I’ll call this user the same name I called this server, “Roo”. Same as before, enter a username, hit enter a few times, give it a real name and hit enter a few more times again. Now, su in as this user, and run the following:
vncserver -query localhost
When it asks to enter a password, (Looks like I’ve got no choice. Oh well, more security is good I guess!) enter one and verify it after you hit enter. This password will behave like a gatekeeper password. When it asks if you want to have a view-only password, say no. VNC is now running on port 5901. Don’t connect yet, we’re not done yet. Kill the server by typing:
vncserver -kill :1
…and now open up the newly created /home/<user>/.vnc/xstartup. Comment out all the lines here (should be 4, not including the top one). We don’t want it starting anything. We’ll leave that to KDM. Save, exit, and then restart the VNC server with…
vncserver -query localhost
Now, you can connect! Go to your workstation and fire up a VNC client. I’m using UltraVNC. connect to the IP address of your server, adding :5901 to the end (it’s running on port 5901 by default), and hit connect. It’ll ask for your password, this is the one you specified the first time you bought the VNC server up. Enter that, hit enter and what do you know, you get your lovely KDM login screen! It might look like this:
First-time connect
Notice here we almost appear to be in a low colour mode? This is the same problem as before, but it actually looks like it’s a low colour mode this time. Lets log in and see what we get…
Not quite there yet it seems
Well, that’s the same problem I was having before for sure, it just looks a bit different. Great. That’s totally usable. I hope you’ve had better luck than I did and if I find the solution, just in case I’m not the only one, then I’ll be sure to post up and let the community know.
I now need to go buy more mugs.
Been a while, thats how long it’s been since I got stuck in to a project. *shrug*
Network utility service:
Ok, so the situation is this: One Windows server. Server 2008 R2 serving DHCP, DNS. Thats it. It is a domain controller but I don’t actually use the domain role. It’s useless for testing work changes on because we’re running 2003 R2 so tests wouldn’t be 100% reliable, so I’d like to get rid of this server and replace it with a small Intel Atom-based system. Doable, and in fact I have the hardware to my right. Problem is it’s my NAS, so we can’t use that, but I’ve explored the world of Mini-ITX.
End result: One micro-server running some form of Linux, serving up DHCP and DNS, with room for more (like TFTP) and using less than 50watt. All this server will have is 1Gb of USB storage, and boot from USB, 1Gb DDR2 and thats it. Cheapest humanly possible, cost almost nothing to run and be as small as possible. Network doesn’t have to be 1Gbit/s so don’t need to worry about making sure it’s a gigabit nic on the board.
Expected hardware required:
1x MiniITX case (still debating as to whether I want this rackmounted or not, but want no CDROM bay or floppy bay or anything) – This I like: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=54
1x MiniITX Motherboard (Atom based, low power enough to not need a fan – must have USB/Graphics)
1x 1Gb USB stick
1x Very low power consumption PSU
What I don’t yet know is what distro I want to use. I used Windows for these menial tasks because I had a UI and I didn’t need to alter files by hand to make really simple changes. Lazy, yes, but I really don’t want to faff about with editing files when I’m right in the middle of a project or need to make some really quick changes. So far, openSuSE Linux offers me a UI for both DNS and DHCP, so I think I’ll be going in this direction, but it’s not a small distro so this may require a larger USB stick, so anyone have any ideas?
Intranet service:
Yes, my home network has an intranet. A neglected intranet, but an intranet nontheless. MediaWiki is installed, as is Concrete5. This server is currently virtual, but now, I think I need it to have a bit more oompf to itself.
Software desired to be running on the future box:
– Apache 2, PHP5, MySQL – Obviously
– Kaltura ( http://www.kaltura.org – This would be the reason I need oompf, video encoding requires lots of processing power. Internal only. )
– YourLS ( http://yourls.org/- Link shortening script – Will be internal only. )
– Concrete5 ( http://www.concrete5.org – Again, as CMS. )
Also on this server will be my entire ArchLinux private repo, KDEmod3 Legacy repo and all my videos which are scattered across my hard drives and instant ability to download, transcode and make available internally any Youtube video and recording my own video to remind myself how things are done without having to type millions of words. Space required will be pretty high so possibly looking at a pair of 1Tb hard drives in a mirroring configuration. The server (already have) is an HP ProLiant ML115 with Quad-Core opteron and 8Gb PC2-6400 DDR. Speed is a must, so thankfully for me this server has a 1Gbit/s Broadcom NIC chipset.
This server would be running the same distro as my utility server, however Kaltura hates anything other than Ubuntu/Debian, and while I really want to avoid both Ubuntu and Debian, I don’t think I will be able to here, so compromises made, it’ll be running Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS. Ubuntu Server seems like it is no longer just stripped down Ubuntu and seems designed specifically with server purposes in mind, so this move isn’t something I’m dreadding so much like I would be if it were just stripped down Ubuntu Desktop. It’s for this reason I’m open on what my network utility server is running, ideally I’d like to keep the OSes the same, but I get the UIs with openSuSE, so torn between the two. 😦
So, for both, what do my fellow watchers (if there are any left) think?
– Cardare
I’ll be on that Astaro project in a the next day or so, household rubbish takes free time away when I’m off work!
I’ve had a Palm Pre since November last year. It’s quite possibly the best phone I’ve ever had. Before this, I’ve suffered Nokia’s N-Gage, a Samsung phone of some sort, and finally the Motorola Q9h (WinMo). Before this, my favourite was the N-Gage. You could do anything with Symbian. It was incredibly capable. The Samsung, not so much, and my Q9h started falling to pieces shortly before I settled on the Pre.
More after the leap…
ASG from here on in. I manage a web filter at work provided by the wonderful Barracuda Networks. Keeps the kids off sites they really shouldn’t be on and protects the workstations from horrible infestations of viruses, biggest hitter of the month being Virtumonde, which is a really nasty piece of work. So far, Barracuda’s Web Filter 410 has managed to protect the network in every instance. It’s amazing. If they sold merch I’d totally be buying it. The support is freaking amazing too. I’ve had to deal with support calls for all manner of problems for other software in the past and I don’t mind calling Barracuda if I have a problem. I try really hard to put off calling a few other companies though because they just ask that I jump through every hoop known to man, or don’t fix the problem citing either that they don’t know, or they are unwilling to fix.
Barrellroll that Read More link to dive in to the way of more post.
As a gamer, for a game to completely pass through my radar undetected is considerable bad luck, but also a sign there is way too much shovelware infecting the games industry. The shovelware getting most of the shelf space, and pushing games like Kao the Kangaroo down in to the Gamestation’s “Forbidden” section. Not that that is what is happening with games that are well worth the attention, but pushed to one side today of course.
…Damn you Wii Sports and all it’s clones!
Pummeldrive that Read More link for more post, less shorties.
