Linux Questions Answered

[AMDave]

A good friend and fellow forum member asked me some interesting questions today and while I was responding I remembered that it has long been my intention to kick off this thread. Time to bite the bullet and jump in head first.

The intention of this thread is not to build a Linux FAQ (there are plenty of them all over the web already for every distro you can find) but to find answers to problems or questions that AMD Users members have come across that you did not find answers to when you went searching.

So:

If you have a question or a problem on Linux (or even Unix) post it here and AMDave will do his best to find the right solution for you or find someone else who has the "magic key".

(oh boy ... I hope I can answer the first question...:icon_rolleyes:)

[vaughan]

Question 1:

I installed Ubuntu 6.10 from the CD to my HDD. The primary OS is Win XP Pro SP2 and I let Ubuntu do the partitioning. The installation seemed to be flawless but ... when I try to look for updates or browse the internet I get a message that Eth0 is not working. I don't recall the exact message text.

How do you enable wired networking from the Linux PC to the cable internet on a Windows XP Pro PC? Windows is 192.168.1.1 but I don't know what the Linux PC's address is.


Question 2:

What is the Linux equivalent to the DOS command DIR?

[AMDave]

Question 1:

I installed Ubuntu 6.10 from the CD to my HDD. The primary OS is Win XP Pro SP2 and I let Ubuntu do the partitioning. The installation seemed to be flawless but ... when I try to look for updates or browse the internet I get a message that Eth0 is not working. I don't recall the exact message text.

How do you enable wired networking from the Linux PC to the cable internet on a Windows XP Pro PC? Windows is 192.168.1.1 but I don't know what the Linux PC's address is.

Go the tricky one first! LOL
I will answer this separately on a following message...



Question 2:

What is the Linux equivalent to the DOS command DIR?

A terrific quick reference guide when starting to use commands in the Linux Terminal can be found at Linux/Unix for DOS users (http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/unix_for_dos_users.html) But you will mostly find that the parameters that you normally put after the DOS command are different in Linux. Before you use the Linux command you need to find out what the different parameters are and what they will do. To do this, type

$ man {command} <ENTER>where:

$ is the prompt at the command line. It will be different on your machine but I will stick to this format moving forward. The prompt is what you see when the terminal opens and is ready for you to enter a command.

man (short for "manual" as in Instruction Manual) is a command that will bring up a help-file called a "man-page". man-pages comply to a strict standard format that ensures that you get clear and concise information about the command that you are interested in.

{command} is replaced by the command that you want to use.

<ENTER> is the Enter or Carriage Return key. I wont be putting this in following examples. I will assume from now that everyone knows you have to press enter to complete a command line.

[AMDave]

...quick add to the last message

when using man and the page displays, the <ENTER> key will scroll the information page down 1 line at a time, the <SPACE> key will give you 1 page at a time and <q> or <Q> will exit back to the command prompt.

If you missed what you were looking for and want to look again, try pressing the up-arrow once. In most distro's this will scroll up one in the command-history and show the last command that you typed. Then hit <ENTER> again and the man-page will be re-displayed. You can scroll up and down the list. (In Unix, press <ESC><K>. In Unix the escape keys are H for left, L for right, J for down and K for up)

[AMDave]

Re: Vaughan's question 1 above.

Ubuntu is a brilliantly executed desktop distribution built on top of the work by the Debian developers. I have played around with a couple of Ubuntu distros and found it a pleasant experience. The official Unbunto forums are really well put together and cover jut about every thing, which is not surprising considering the huge uptake this distro has got and how fast it is developing.

I have to assume that the ethernet cable is working because it is probably working in your WinXP OS on the same machine. We need to know if you have more than ne network card active and how your distro has identified them and what settings it has given them. In Windows you would normally jump into the network settings and have a look, or at the DOS/CLI prompt you would type "> ipconfig /ALL". The equivalent here is ifconfig.

In most Linux distro's the general user is protected from running system command like this, so you would have to enter "su -" and enter the root password to gain those rights to do this.

However, in Ubuntu, the primary user can type "sudo " before running any commands that may be restricted to the Admin user "root" and the should run fine. So can you enter

$ sudo ifconfig -aand PM me the results?

This will allow us to determine if the Ubuntu install has recognised the ethernet port properly and the DHCP address or dedicated IP address it has ended up with. Then we can determine if that fits with your sub net.

I'll look for your PM.

[AMDave]

...oooh. another useful observation add on.

When you select the text in a linux window with the mouse cursor it is automatically put into the clipboard. You can switch window and right-click where you want in (say) a text editor and the highlighted text will paste into that window at the cursor position. This is something you can get used to really quickly.

Vaughan - got a way of saving that text from that window onto a FD since you can't email it? It's probably too much to re-type. Does it recognise your USB key?

[AMDave]

This was bugging me as I knew I had seen a definative work on this a short while ago. Through playing with various distro's over the last year or two I have hapened across so many useful pages, so it is likely that I will have fun finding some of them again.

Vaughan,
rather than go through the hassle of finding a way of transferring info from a machine that won't network give this page a kick
Ubuntu Networking for Basic and Advanced Users (http://www.debianadmin.com/ubuntu-networking-for-basic-and-advanced-users.html)

/ed- below the pictures for the "static" address setting you will find the heading "Configuring DHCP address for your network card" I think this is the one you need -ed/

I found it useful at least once (possibly more than that).
If following this procedure doesn't pin down the problem we can go into the h/w analysis on the CLI.

That's twice I have used "CLI" - short for Command Line Interface. A more generic term that includes both the traditional DOS prompt in windows as well as the Linux/Unix terminal command interface.

[AMDave]

Checking over that instruction, I realise that "vi" is something that needs a little explanation.

IMHO it is the worlds best command line editor. And I am not being biased :)
vi takes little learning to become very usefull and just a lttle more allows you to meld it right into your system or application scripts.

Generally I use a short reference when looking up a vi reference for a reminder on something not often used, but I decided to look for something more general that gives an easy-to-understand tutorial on getting to know vi quickly and simply. To my surprise, some Hawaii dudes (Aloha!) come up with the nicest one I can find today:
Mastering the VI editor (http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html)
This is an excellent intro to vi. It introduces the concepts and commands as you see it on screen. One of the best I have seen.

vi is extremely handy as a command line tool and once you are proficient at it you can quickly implement scripts to make it do things for you.

[AMDave]

Vaughan advises that the networking question is surpassed by a useage change for that box. But if anyone else has a repeat of this issue, it would be interesting to go through the above article to see if it is solved.

For the old-hats, I intend to start a new thread shortly on building a Linux application server using the kind of software you would find in a corporate data-centre.

In the mean time I get a reprieve, awaiting the next interesting puzzle.

[daddygeek]

Will ATI/AMD ever fix the video drivers for linux?

[Brucifer]

Question 2:

What is the Linux equivalent to the DOS command DIR?

I use "ls" with a switch, like "ls -la" will list out everything in the directory, including the permissions and all. Some distros have included "dir" but it's more of a pain than ls. All the switches can be found using the man command as AMDave laid out above.

[vaughan]

On my Windows XP and 2000 systems I use LogMeIn so that I can check their status remotely - either from the other side of my office or the world (it worked perfectly when I was in Florida last year). :)

I've checked out the LogMeIn web site and they don't have a Linux version of LogMeIn yet. What can I use or run on my Ubuntu 7.04 box so I can check on it from my Win XP Pro SP2 boxen?

[Bubben]

It´s even easier om WCG!

First you install Linux, then u go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org and register, then you download the Linux program and then it should be running!

Easy as a...

[vaughan]

Huh, that doesn't make sense.

[Bubben]

Well..it was so easy for me with a linux 6.10..

It wasn´t harder than that..^^^

But on WCG forum they can help better!

[Bubben]

Try this:

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/help/viewSearch.do?searchString=linux

or this:

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/searchprocess?key=linux

[AMDave]

On my Windows XP and 2000 systems I use LogMeIn so that I can check their status remotely - either from the other side of my office or the world (it worked perfectly when I was in Florida last year). :)

I've checked out the LogMeIn web site and they don't have a Linux version of LogMeIn yet. What can I use or run on my Ubuntu 7.04 box so I can check on it from my Win XP Pro SP2 boxen?
You can either set up a DynamicDNS to get you back to your linux box and access your VNC interface
OR
Use LogMeIn to get into your Win box and VNC to the linux box from there.

There is another pay-to-use product called gotomypc which works like logmein and includes a linux install.

[Ototero]

I use Dave's 2nd option, Logmein to my main compy, and VNC across to any machine inside my network.

I have to do that because I can only portforward to 1 machine (mine).

[Ototero]

Bubben, you miss-read Vaughans post. He wants to remote connect to a linux box .

[vaughan]

Thanks Ototero and Dave. So I install vnc server on the Ubuntu box and use vnc viewer on my Windows box?

[Ototero]

Correct Vaughan.

[Bok]

vaughan, of course you could always just ssh in and check anything out from a shell. download putty on the windows box and use that to ssh to the linux machine. Simple and quick. Bok

[vaughan]

Thanks Bok, I'll try that.

I couldn't find a Linux version of RealVNC. There's one for TightVNC but it said something about compiling it which scared me off. :icon_redface:

[Bender10]

Hi Vaughan,

I'm not sure of the version they are talking about. But It seems some version of Ubuntu has RealVNC already installed?

Here is the thread....

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=314697

I hope this helps.

[jay.perez]

AMDave,

Was researching info for building an application server and came across this old post from you.

Wondered if you ever got around to the application server project you talked about in your reply below.

If you did and documented it, would love to see what you came up with.

I'm a relative Newbie type but have some hardware and some time so playing around trying different things for the fun and education. Trying to come up with a design for how I should layout a system (using 2 or 3 computers if that's what makes sense) for the following:
Application server
sFTP
Firewall
Gateway
VPN
Remote Desktop
Mail server
Web server
Mixed O/S environment
Shared printers and files on M$ PC

I have successfully installed various distros and gotten the basic desktop setups to work and been able to use SAMBA to connect with my other computers. Heck, I even occasionally get the sound to work and once got my wireless laptop to connect !!!

Just loaded the Feisty Fawn release of Edubuntu which is preconfigured for sharing apps via thin-clients and pretty much works 'out-of-the-box'. Had to figure out how to get the clients to boot off PXE which was a pain on a couple of computers but it seems to be working well for the most part now.

My problem,

I suspect the server is not running some things it should be, such as a firewall program or the VPN software I'd like to mess around with. However, it probably IS running other software that I think could be moved to a different machine which might allow the app server to work better and faster. For example, it's set up as the DHCP server with 2 NICs, etc.

I imagine a future where 1 PC is doing the DHCP serving (or I set up my Linksys router to provide this again), sFTP, and other related network functions, another might be managing user authentication, VPN, Web hosting, mail hosting, etc. The better PC would be dedicated to doing primarily the application serving.

Not sure I have that right or that it's even necessary.

Looking for advice on what hardware to put in place and what functions should be assigned to each piece to optimize the system.

I have the following stuff to work with:
1.6 GHz PC w/ decent graphics card and 750 MEGs of RAM
400 GHz PC with low-end graphics card and 256 MEGs of RAM
Other low-end systems if necessary
16 Port Netgear switch
Cable modem and ISP provider
Wireless-G router with DHCP capability
Time (Work full time but stay up late tinkering)
Limited Linux knowledge
A reasonable amount of patience and determination
An understanding wife
Limited budget for new stuff (She ain't THAT understanding !)

I have not been able to find too much of this high-level design type discussion on the Web and especially have not found any images that shows these configurations in a graphical format. (What I can understand ...)

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer or point me to.

Jay Perez
Rochester, NY

[QUOTE=AMDave;41468]Vaughan advises that the networking question is surpassed by a useage change for that box. But if anyone else has a repeat of this issue, it would be interesting to go through the above article to see if it is solved.

For the old-hats, I intend to start a new thread shortly on building a Linux application server using the kind of software you would find in a corporate data-centre.

[AMDave]

Hi Jay.

Thanks for the post.


Wondered if you ever got around to the application server project you talked about in your reply below.
If you did and documented it, would love to see what you came up with.
As a matter of fact I did get it done, several times on several distros.
It was a great learning experience and lent knowledge to my own job at the time.

As a result of that exercise I found that RHEL4/CentOS 4.4 to be the best.
The reson for this is simple, RHEL is designed for the server with oodles of well supported server-side apps.
I have not yet had the time to download RHEL5/CentOS5 but I will do at some point soon.

Although I completed my intended excercise I did decommision that server 6 months ago.
I now have a much less powerful machine running a PHP site on MySQL, just for giggles.

The purpose was to simulate something like a midrange Unix/Linux server that you maight find in a corporate environment.
However, I can tell you that I kept it simple.

I restricted access to be SSH only - nothing else.
(some FTP clients also support SFTP via SSH)
I created a local-only application user barred from remote login.
So you have to connect to the server as yourself via SSH (try a client called PuTTY) & "su" to that user.
This enables you to chop and change login users without risking affects on the application.
I set the default shell to be Korn Shell. ('cuz I like it! Flames will be summarily ignored)
I installed Sun Java in a sub folder in the application user folder set and added some useful Java libraries.
I configured Java Home for my app user to point to that Java install (for that user ID)
You can have separate application users running different Java versions and I like to keep it separate from the OS version so there's no impact from OS patches or upgrades.
Installed Tomcat 5 to run as the web application service. (Use the Apache projects web site)
Enable Apache to cache for Tomcat.
I used Dizwell's instructions to install Oracle as the RDBMS. (Google "Dizwell+Oracle" for his blog in Australia)
(NB - to do this you have to use a UID on the local screen (or via VNC) due to the Java generated dialog boxes.)
I then enhanced my DBA skills and went through the business of setting up a secure Oracle DB.
Gave the application user ID access to the database and added scripts to handle data fetch and load.
Knocked up a JSP page to run in the Tomcat Server that will display a basic report from the database.
Add scripts to archive your scripts, the database and the web-site and send the backup files to another machine.
Add things like email notification of errors and warnings and apply some monitoring scripts.
Make sure all of your services and your app user's start up scripts run on restart.
Hey presto - the basic workings of a midrange *nix Database Application server.

Ok, that's the really brief version, but you get the idea.
The layers are generally interchangeable with other offerings.
You might have some other shell instead of Korn.
You might script in python or perl.
You might have IBM Websphere instead of Tomcat.
You might have IBM DB2 or ingres or postgres etc. instead of Oracle.
You would likely have proprietary backup software for torage to a backup tape server.
etc.
But the point of this exercise was to show what the main components are and get a feel of how they fit together.
PS - IBM make available a community version of websphere and DB2 if you are that way inclined.


Just loaded the Feisty Fawn release of Edubuntu which is preconfigured for sharing apps via thin-clients and pretty much works 'out-of-the-box'. Had to figure out how to get the clients to boot off PXE which was a pain on a couple of computers but it seems to be working well for the most part now.That's cool. I wish I had done that when I had my cpu-pharm. Long may it rest in peace. LTSP is very very cool.
One thing, I would try not to mess around with the LTSP machine too much unless you actually use that machine to put all these services on.
If you do you will have to be very carefull with your DHCP/DNS settings and your firewall or you may lock out the clients.
It can be quite difficult to debug or rollback those issues.


My problem,

I suspect the server is not running some things it should be, such as a firewall program or the VPN software I'd like to mess around with. However, it probably IS running other software that I think could be moved to a different machine which might allow the app server to work better and faster. For example, it's set up as the DHCP server with 2 NICs, etc.

I imagine a future where 1 PC is doing the DHCP serving (or I set up my Linksys router to provide this again), sFTP, and other related network functions, another might be managing user authentication, VPN, Web hosting, mail hosting, etc. The better PC would be dedicated to doing primarily the application serving.

Not sure I have that right or that it's even necessary.

Looking for advice on what hardware to put in place and what functions should be assigned to each piece to optimize the system.

I have the following stuff to work with:
1.6 GHz PC w/ decent graphics card and 750 MEGs of RAM
400 GHz PC with low-end graphics card and 256 MEGs of RAM
Other low-end systems if necessary
16 Port Netgear switch
Cable modem and ISP provider
Wireless-G router with DHCP capability
Time (Work full time but stay up late tinkering)
Limited Linux knowledge
A reasonable amount of patience and determination
An understanding wife
Limited budget for new stuff (She ain't THAT understanding !)

I have not been able to find too much of this high-level design type discussion on the Web and especially have not found any images that shows these configurations in a graphical format. (What I can understand ...)

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer or point me to.

Jay Perez
Rochester, NYAhh. the good stuff. A 400 GHz PC. We should all have one of those. :D
I will take it that you meant an old 400 MHz machine
Actually that old clunker is probably the best machine to load your linux services onto, except your LTSP environments (because you want extra ram and disk and speed for that).
I little old pc is perfect for running all the home environment daemons including making it your local email server.
such as

sFTP
Firewall
Gateway
VPN
Remote Desktop
Mail server
Web serverI admit that I have set up a Nortel Networks VPN service during a project design, but I have not tinkered with the OSS equivalents yet.
None the less you will be surprise how little processing power these services require for handling your network.
Perhaps you may not have space on that old box for your mail server

As you likely have more disk space on another newer machine, which you indicate you do, and it probably has a CD Burner for making backups.
That is a good arrangement under the circumstances.
You could point your linux sFTP service to a file share on your Win machine.
This helps reduce vulnerability as the sFTP service is not running on the same machine as your main file server.
You can keep all of your other machines hidden inside your network and just have one secure linux box that presents to the external network.


Shared printers and files on M$ PCYeah. Printer drivers are like that.
Printer manufacturers other than Epson, HP and a couple of others are really holding the linux desktop conversion back.
Printing is one of the main things we must be able to do at home.

So how to set all these things up. Well I am a great believer in helping people to learn and the best way to learn is to read the manual.
There are plenty of sites that say "do it this way" but fail to explain why, so if it fails you don't know why or how to fix it.
There are some that tell you why but most likely don't cover all the services you are looking to add.
You should be able to garner enough from several of them to put together what you want.

It is a shame that I cannot find an online community version of the APC Linux Pocket book.
It is out of print and a bit out of date now but gave a real boost to all of us "down" here a few years ago.

In the absence of any of these walk-through sites, I recommend a plan of attack to use http://www.linux.org/apps/ as a reference library.
Click through and find the application you are using, from there click on "More.." on the right hand side.
From there you can jump to the orginating site where you should be able to access the latest manuals, forums, updates etc.
It is a great index. Be mindful of whether you are thinking of a Daemon or an application or a client. That should help you drill into the right page.
(eg: you will find sendmail under Daemon > Mail not under Networking > email)

However, after some concerted web-mining I think you will be very well armed with this online reference
http://www.faqs.org/docs/securing/index.html

[AMDave]

Currently the first section of the documents page at www.faqs.org lists a set of Linux references (http://www.faqs.org/docs/). Many of them are very useful.

I think your Edubuntu (LTSP) clients are probably running off the second NIC via the 16 port switch.
Personally I'd keep it that way as a sub-net as it is purpose specific.
So, the router sends inbound sFTP and http requests to your 400 Ghz machine (sic. lol If only it were true.)
It serves permitted sFTP requests via a windows share on your main workstation where you can keep keen control on the files and make backups to CD/DVD.
It filters all the inbound traffic through the firewall so you need to block everything and then open the ports that you want.
(Note that there are new articles on how to block idle-port scanning; find them and use them)
It also serves IP addresses to your workstation and Edubuntu server and any other machines that are not Edubuntu clients.
DHCP is great for starters but I recon you would benefit from dedicated IP addresses that you can add tou your windows and linux hosts files.
(There are good articles on how to secure your hosts files)
It can serve up your web site(s) or forward the requests to another machine on a port of your choice or the default.
I didn't mention this above, but you can also set up the squid - a linux web cache and point all your browsers to that.
It can save a mountain of internet traffic and you might even be able to patch it into your ISP's squid cache if they have one.
I achieved this once a long time ago for the excercise, but I didn't have sufficient local clients for it to be worthwhile.
If you have many clients being used by people (ie not DC robots) then this can save you a lot.
If you have enough space you can set up your sendmail or some other MTA service and point your workstation email clients at your own email service. But make sure that you include your mail store in your backup plan.

It is possible to set up all of your computers into the switch so your Edubuntu server uses only 1 card and the clients still get their environments from it, but I didn't figure that one out when I was learning about LTSP. I got as far as getting 1 PC to boot via bootp on a second NIC, like yours and that was it. I tried the other way got into a terrible mess, had a good laugh at myself and moved on.

As mentioned above if your Edubuntu server is fairly recent with plenty of grunt, memory and disk then you could apply all this to that machine, but I'd probably experiment with the oldest machine first as a working LTSP server is a complicated beast to brea and you really want to avoid that. But if it is fairly top notch and there are people infront of those clients then in reallity it's probably the right place to serve your files and ftp and mail from and then your workstation just becomes the backup station for storing the latest backup set and burning the older ones off to CD/DVD.

I think I have done a terrible job of explaining, by mostly typing as I think, but I find it is a good way to put ideas across rather than outlining a solution specification.

Anyhow, what are your thoughts?

[AMDave]

Hit the motherload. I once used a document called the Perfect CentOS setup.
I see now they have one for the latest release version 5.
Seven pages of CentOS Bliss (http://howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_centos5.0)

Even better they have other distros there too, which I didn't know (because I didn't look)
This may be the bliss that you are seeking.
Seven pages of Ubuntu Bliss (http://howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_ubuntu704)

[AMDave]

Geeeeeezzzzz.!!! I do go on.

[AMDave]

On my Windows XP and 2000 systems I use LogMeIn so that I can check their status remotely - either from the other side of my office or the world (it worked perfectly when I was in Florida last year). :)

I've checked out the LogMeIn web site and they don't have a Linux version of LogMeIn yet. What can I use or run on my Ubuntu 7.04 box so I can check on it from my Win XP Pro SP2 boxen?

Following up from a chatroom conversation, I recommended to Vaughan that he continue to use LogMeIn to get onto his windows desktop and VNC from the windows desktop using a VNC client to access his linux desktops. This entails installing the VNC client of your choice (there are many) on your windows machine and enabling remote desktop access on your linux machine.
Actually, once you have done that you can basically unplug the monitor from your linux box and stow it in the cupboard. At one point I had just 2 monitors for 12 machines in my study - 1 monitor for the workstation and 1 to plug in to which ever cpu-node that I happened to stuff up that day LOLOL.

CRT Monitors use a lot of power, but these days there are some plasmas that use even more. LCD is the way to go unless you are a game-freak and you simply have to have the fastest non-interlaced display scan there is.

Just expanding on the resonse to jay above, you can use a monitor to set up your LTSP clients and enable VNC, unplug it to use to set up the next one. That's often referred to as "headless" operation. Even better you can set up LTSP diskless clients so they all use the disk on the server. With 100BaseT and above these days it's not much of a network issue on a home network. For a CPU farm this can save you real $$s as you just buy the psu, mobo, cpu, ram and a lan cable. Disks, monitors, keyboards, mice, speakers, cases etc not required. It's a challenge though and not one that I'm going to go into the details of. It has been well documented by others in the past elsewhere.

[Bender10]

And on, and on......:new_sleeping:

And we would not have it any other way!! :qgreenjumpers: Thanks AMDave!!

[jay.perez]

AMDave,

Was researching info for building an application server and came across this old post from you.

Wondered if you ever got around to the application server project you talked about in your reply below.

If you did and documented it, would love to see what you came up with.

I'm a relative Newbie type but have some hardware and some time so playing around trying different things for the fun and education. Trying to come up with a design for how I should layout a system (using 2 or 3 computers if that's what makes sense) for the following:
Application server
sFTP
Firewall
Gateway
VPN
Remote Desktop
Mail server
Web server
Mixed O/S environment
Shared printers and files on M$ PC

I have successfully installed various distros and gotten the basic desktop setups to work and been able to use SAMBA to connect with my other computers. Heck, I even occasionally get the sound to work and once got my wireless laptop to connect !!!

Just loaded the Feisty Fawn release of Edubuntu which is preconfigured for sharing apps via thin-clients and pretty much works 'out-of-the-box'. Had to figure out how to get the clients to boot off PXE which was a pain on a couple of computers but it seems to be working well for the most part now.

My problem,

I suspect the server is not running some things it should be, such as a firewall program or the VPN software I'd like to mess around with. However, it probably IS running other software that I think could be moved to a different machine which might allow the app server to work better and faster. For example, it's set up as the DHCP server with 2 NICs, etc.

I imagine a future where 1 PC is doing the DHCP serving (or I set up my Linksys router to provide this again), sFTP, and other related network functions, another might be managing user authentication, VPN, Web hosting, mail hosting, etc. The better PC would be dedicated to doing primarily the application serving.

Not sure I have that right or that it's even necessary.

Looking for advice on what hardware to put in place and what functions should be assigned to each piece to optimize the system.

I have the following stuff to work with:
1.6 GHz PC w/ decent graphics card and 750 MEGs of RAM
400 GHz PC with low-end graphics card and 256 MEGs of RAM
Other low-end systems if necessary
16 Port Netgear switch
Cable modem and ISP provider
Wireless-G router with DHCP capability
Time (Work full time but stay up late tinkering)
Limited Linux knowledge
A reasonable amount of patience and determination
An understanding wife
Limited budget for new stuff (She ain't THAT understanding !)

I have not been able to find too much of this high-level design type discussion on the Web and especially have not found any images that shows these configurations in a graphical format. (What I can understand ...)

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer or point me to.

Jay Perez
Rochester, NY

[QUOTE=AMDave;41468]Vaughan advises that the networking question is surpassed by a useage change for that box. But if anyone else has a repeat of this issue, it would be interesting to go through the above article to see if it is solved.

For the old-hats, I intend to start a new thread shortly on building a Linux application server using the kind of software you would find in a corporate data-centre.
Hi Dave,

Thanks for the excellent explanations and suggestions.

I'm new to the forum and saw your first note the other day but didn't realize the next two were also for my benefit.

I have successfully (mostly) set up my network in two different configurations; In the first one, I had my original home network hooked up to my router which provided the DHCP and firewall functions. The new Edubuntu server was added first as a stand-alone network (not plugged into the Internet or my home network) with the server, a 4 port switch, and a couple of PCs being used as thin-clients. This also worked well.

I then plugged the first NIC into my router which gave the server, and therefore the thin-clients, access to the Internet. (Was confused at first as I thought this was going to cause conflicts with having two DHCP servers on one network. I'm guessing the DHCP on the server is somehow isolated to my second NIC and going out only to the thin-clients ...)

Everything worked perfectly in this configuration except I now had two sub-nets and the limitations this causes. For example, I really want to have it so any computer on my network can be made to either boot up normally off the harddrive but optionally to boot off the network which will cause it to connect to the Edubuntu server and become a thin-client.

Sooo, I redid the wires and did just that, the Edubuntu erver was connected directly to my IPS cable modem on one NIC and to my 16 port switch on the other. The router was taken out of the loop. (It was put back in later with everything turned off except the wireless feature)

This setup really worked well with one huge problem I can't resolve; the non-Edubuntu machines can see everything insdie the house, including the server, but cannot get out to the Internet.

Otherwise, it's really, really Kool being able to boot them up in either O/S. (In fact, I have a couple that were already dual-boot with Linux and M$ and now they have a third option !)

If I could solve that, I could leave the network in that configuration for quite a while as I try to figure out what to do next about splitting up some of the services onto the old 4000 Mhz machine ... ;-)

I prefer to avoid static IPs right now as I'm constantly adding/removing PCs and also have people come over with their laptops and connect to my wireless network.

Thanks again.

Jay

[jay.perez]

Hi Dave,

I sent the note below back last week but think I messed up and did it as a reply to my own posting so you may not have seen it. Not only am I lacking in Linux skills but I ain't so good with the whole forum thing, either ...

Anyway, got to a certain point with my Edubuntu project but ran into a brick wall and not making any progress these days.

Does the forum site allow us to post images ? If so, I have a sketch of one of the configurations I had working that I could share for comments.

Thanks.

Jay

~~~~~~~~~ ORIGINAL NOTE BELOW ~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for the excellent explanations and suggestions.

I'm new to the forum and saw your first note the other day but didn't realize the next two were also for my benefit.

I have successfully (mostly) set up my network in two different configurations; In the first one, I had my original home network hooked up to my router which provided the DHCP and firewall functions. The new Edubuntu server was added first as a stand-alone network (not plugged into the Internet or my home network) with the server, a 4 port switch, and a couple of PCs being used as thin-clients. This also worked well.

I then plugged the first NIC into my router which gave the server, and therefore the thin-clients, access to the Internet. (Was confused at first as I thought this was going to cause conflicts with having two DHCP servers on one network. I'm guessing the DHCP on the server is somehow isolated to my second NIC and going out only to the thin-clients ...)

Everything worked perfectly in this configuration except I now had two sub-nets and the limitations this causes. For example, I really want to have it so any computer on my network can be made to either boot up normally off the harddrive but optionally to boot off the network which will cause it to connect to the Edubuntu server and become a thin-client.

Sooo, I redid the wires and did just that, the Edubuntu erver was connected directly to my IPS cable modem on one NIC and to my 16 port switch on the other. The router was taken out of the loop. (It was put back in later with everything turned off except the wireless feature)

This setup really worked well with one huge problem I can't resolve; the non-Edubuntu machines can see everything inside the house, including the server, but cannot get out to the Internet.

Otherwise, it's really, really Kool being able to boot them up in either O/S. (In fact, I have a couple that were already dual-boot with Linux and M$ and now they have a third option !)

If I could solve that, I could leave the network in that configuration for quite a while as I try to figure out what to do next about splitting up some of the services onto the old 4000 Mhz machine ... ;-)

I prefer to avoid static IPs right now as I'm constantly adding/removing PCs and also have people come over with their laptops and connect to my wireless network.

Thanks again.

Jay

[AMDave]

Hi Jay.

I guess I missed the question in your last post. My bad.
I don't have sufficient equipment on hand to replicate the problem these days. I have to go on the test that I did about a year ago with 1 server and 1 client. I remember having some similar problems.

I think if your Edubuntu server is the primary machine then you may be able to circumvent the problem by setting up a proxy (eg squid) on that machine and pointing your windows machines to it.

But it would be nice to have them working with the internet whether they were using a proxy or not.

I'll be honest, I have done some reading on this but the slicing and dicing of sub-nets is still somewhat beyond me. I have to admit when I am beat.

The closest I can come is this
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-users/2007-September/001882.html
the trail ran out there.
The gist was that the router should have DHCP turned off and all DHCP should be served by the Edubuntu server
Also there may be something else that needs to be cleaned-up or added in the dhcp.conf file.
Further reading on dhcp.conf started to fold my skull inside out so I have to take a break.

I think you need the knowledge and experience of Chuck on IRC chat at "#ltsp on irc.freenode.net"
The client-server technology you are using originates from LTSP.org
There is more information about their support here:
http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/CommunityPage#Support_Forums

If your router has DHCP turned off and only the Edubuntu is serving DHCP then I think you need an LTSP expert to look at your dhcp.conf file.

[jay.perez]

Dave,

I joined the IRC chat Friday night and hooked up with hoogbigfoot. He walked me through a variety of settings and ultimately we did it exactly as you have stated in your last note.

I had tried this setup a couple of times before without success.

It turned out the only missing piece that I left out was setting the router's IP address to the same address as the 'gateway' address setting on the server.

Holy crap ! I spent hours on chats and forums chasing that around and it turned out to be extremely simple !!!

Worse than that, I now realize that several people had pointed me in that direction but I didn't understand their suggestions about what needed to be done ...

Oh well, I learned a lot of good stuff anyways and met some very smart and helpful people along the way.

Thanks very much for the info and help and turning me onto the LTSP chat.

Jay


Hi Jay.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-users/2007-September/001882.html
the trail ran out there.
The gist was that the router should have DHCP turned off and all DHCP should be served by the Edubuntu server
Also there may be something else that needs to be cleaned-up or added in the dhcp.conf file.
Further reading on dhcp.conf started to fold my skull inside out so I have to take a break.

I think you need the knowledge and experience of Chuck on IRC chat at "#ltsp on irc.freenode.net"
The client-server technology you are using originates from LTSP.org
There is more information about their support here:
http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/CommunityPage#Support_Forums

If your router has DHCP turned off and only the Edubuntu is serving DHCP then I think you need an LTSP expert to look at your dhcp.conf file.

[AMDave]

That is terrific!
Welcome to multi-boot heaven ;-)

As a follow up on the slicing and dicing of sub-nets, my sources have directed me to the "IP Journal". Among their articles there was aparently a well written exposition on subnets, with a follow up article which added further clarification. I am hunting it down.


/ed

Part 1
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_9-1/ip_addresses.html

Part 2 (correction)
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_9-2/corrections.html

The IP Journal cumulative index is found here
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/index/linked/cumulative.html

ed/

[Bender10]

Hi Dave,

As an aspiring Linux user, I would like to use a recent install (Fedora 7) for surfing the interweb and other fun activities.

My problem for today is not being able to enter 'FlashChat' on my favorite web page...

Whenever I 'click' on the icon to enter the site's Flashchat area, I get sent to the Adobe site to download and install 'Adobe Flash Player' (which I have done and rebooted (a couple of times)). I'm sorta stuck at this point....:sad5:

signed,
Befuddled in Bundaberg

[AMDave]

The Unofficial Fedora FAQ only gets you part of the way there:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/#flash

This is a common problem as there are so many distributions that install programs to different locations.
The software providers tend to cater for one or two, but at this time there no easy way to cater for all of them.

FOSSwire is maintaining plenty of useful how-to's these days:
http://fosswire.com/2007/11/05/quick...r-on-fedora-7/ (http://fosswire.com/2007/11/05/quick-tutorial-installing-flash-player-on-fedora-7/)
(note that there is another "quick" method in a comment under that which is brute force and will usually make it work - hint)

Or from a community based site related to the plugin itself here: http://macromedia.mplug.org/faq.html

1. I installed the RPM package but Flash does not work.

Open a terminal and run /usr/lib/flash-plugin/setup.

If you do not see any error messages, then it probably worked. Be
sure to fully close your web browsers and run it again from scratch
before testing the Flash plugin for the first time.

In any Mozilla compatible browser, open "about:plugins" within the
URL bar and it should show a list of all installed plugins.
You should see "Shockwave Flash" somewhere in that list.

The better way to get this all sorted out would be if the providers of various distributions which where they have installed applications in non-standard locations, would create symbolic links in the right folders that link to the files where the software providers have installed their driver/add-on files.

Some distros are implementing that solution, but some older versions (Like F7) don't have that built in.

If it's still not working after that give me a blast "C'mon, AMDave!" LOL

[Bender10]

Hi Dave,

I figured out my problem (i hope). I am running Fedora 64 bit, and Flash is not supported yeti....

So I had to load Firefox 32 bit....

Signed,
Giddy in Gladstone

[AMDave]

the 64-bit version does explain your issues.

The flash and java plugin problems have been resolved for 64-bit fedora:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/#64bit-browse
or you could do this:
http://www.linuxheadquarters.com/howto/64-bit/flash64.shtml

I have observed no great advantage to running a 64-bit browser, except for a slightly smaller footprint on the disk.
32-bit FF on the 64-bit OS is indeed more painless, at least until more 64-bit support is actually built into the 64-bit libraries. Improvements in support are coming along slowly, but it is taking longer than expected for s/w providers to recognise the huge increase in shift from 32 to 64-bit desktops. I suppose this may be mainly because so many are still running 32-bit OSs on their 64-bit machines (possibly including the s/w providers themselves!).

[Bender10]

I'll try and get to the 32 bit adaptation to Firefox 64 this weekend maybe. Thanks.

[Nflight]

I am looking to get serious with my Ubuntu 8.10 I downloaded over New Years Eve. But before I stick my neck out and have lose ends and no connectivity with out being able to get the connection online, I want to read a manual I think~:rolleyes:~?

The Question is what is the best book to read on Linux as I am planning on installing the 8.10 as soon as I feel I have a good feel when I scrap the WinBlows OS and go with the linux ? Would it be better to read something off the net or I would like a hard copy shorten version cheater book if possible. I don;t need the extended explicative book, just the pages that show me the correct lines of code to activate the format I am trying to implement. I hope this helps the Linux Guru's with advice in my and anyone elses direction as most of us leave Winblows OS in the near future! :blob3:

[Brucifer]

I'm assuming that you have a couple computers with internet access. I say that as truthfully my suggestion would be to just load Ubuntu 8.10 onto the system you intend to run it on. If you are going to run a nvida cuda card, then put that in before you install ubuntu. It is really about the most painless one to initially start with. Once you have it loaded, it will leave you at a screen with internet access via dhcp. There will be an icon on the screen for updating the system. It is pretty rock solid and runs on autopilot. About the only issue I've ever had with it is if their server is loaded down so that your connection is downloading slowly. The same goes for the icon that will pop up about the system needing a driver for the nvida card. Take the 177 version if you plan on using cuda.

I bought myself a copy of Ubuntu Unleashed that I keep handy for reference. For someone starting off with Ubuntu it's pretty decent. For someone that has been using linux for a long time, it could get into stuff much deeper, but for what you want, it is good.

There are several Ubuntu users on here that will help you over any humps you encounter. As for getting started on a project, once you get the system loaded up, then just post your question here and you'll get the help.

Laslty, linux and UNIX isn't an operating system that you learn overnight. I've been a unix user for over twenty years. I still go to book to figure stuff out. The O/S is just too huge to stuff it all in your head. Even the really hard core big boys that I know still have to get into the books now and then to refresh their memory on stuff they don't use or do much. So don't ever feel that you are a slow learner because you have to ask questions. Everyone is still learning all the time with linux/unix. And the other thing is that there are multiple ways of doing things. :icon_mrgreen:

[jamers]

Laslty, linux and UNIX isn't an operating system that you learn overnight. I've been a unix user for over twenty years. I still go to book to figure stuff out. The O/S is just too huge to stuff it all in your head. Even the really hard core big boys that I know still have to get into the books now and then to refresh their memory on stuff they don't use or do much. So don't ever feel that you are a slow learner because you have to ask questions. Everyone is still learning all the time with linux/unix. And the other thing is that there are multiple ways of doing things.

Truer words have never been spoken. Having been an HP-UX admin, contrary to popular belief one never truly "masters" Unix.

[vaughan]

Nflight here is a link (https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/index.html) to the official Ubuntu 8.10 documentation that might be a start for you. Also try their forums.