Good evening,

after some days of silence, I think it makes sense to explain what happend.

First of all: I’ve launched my business “dennisklein.eu” successfully on Monday So – great to be back to my own business.

But let me scroll back a few days. The last time, I’ve told you, that I’ve moved to a new ISP, called VirtualBots. They had a nice offer to testdrive the vServer for 30 days. I was impressed, grabbed one package and asked them if it’s possible to upgrade with a managed software. They wanted to do the management and installed Confixx (by Parallels) for me. This thing worked smooth and nice, with some rough corners. For example the security of the Apache was not as I hoped, I could not even install phpSysInfo (and who knows me KNOWS that I love phpSysInfo!). I was nearly finished moving most of my websites to the new server (which now costed 60€ instead of 19€ monthly, which is a fair price) – the main server dropped off. Nothing. Silence. OF COURSE, my old webserver decided to do the same at this morning. So – nothing worked. No mail, no website. I was able to restart my olden goldie webserver at Server4You with a remote hard-reset. And it was back. Of course – broken and need to be replaced pretty soon.

Continue Reading »

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Hi guys,

since sunday I’m working on a new project in the late hours of the days. Since I moved to the new home office, I’ve no own ISDN connection in this room which means: I’ve no telephone available in the regular way. Sure, I have this cordless ISDN phone which I take to the home office every day at the moment, but it could be so much more comfortable. I mean – hey – I’ve an Cisco 7960 IP Phone sitting on my desk and I’ve a brand new GN Netcom “Jabra” USB Headset which I mainly bought a few days ago, when my new Logitech Headset broke down, for my daily work from the home office.

So, the plan was to create an Asterisk server inside one of the machines in the rack to put my to the ISDN line using the SIP phones (Cisco 7960) as well as the softphones on the different computers.

First, I thought I just need my few weeks back bought HFC ISDN card for everything and that I could use it on my DELL PowerEdge 1650. Well, that doesn’t work, because it’s a 3.5V card and the PCI-X slots on the DELLs riser card are made for 5V cards. Too bad. My next idea was to use it in the main fileserver which currently runs Windows Server 2008 x64 Standard Edition with some nice VMs. Of course there was NO driver available for Windows Vista/2008 64bit and I can’t link this card to a VM. Hm.. so the only way to go on with my project was to create another server for the rack.

So I grabbed my AMD64EE and put it inside my “beige” 19″ 4U case which was not used before. Hint for all of you who want to buy a new case for 19″: Pay more! Using those <100 Euro cases it HELL! My next case would be a SuperMicro or Chenbro, even if they are a "bit" more expensive. Anyway.

I've put on Debian Lenny as system OS and installed Asterisk following a bunch of tutorials I found on the net. The Asterisk itself was fast set up, but the configuration is so text-based, that I've installed Asterisk-GUI which works nice now

After spending some hours over 2 evenings & nights, my internal Asterisk works now. Most annoying thing was to make the Cisco IP Phone work with Asterisk, but in the end I solved it. Currently, I can make calls from any PC/Mac to this phone and vice versa and of course from any PC to PC or Mac to Mac or... you get the idea

But that's not what I initially wanted. I want to pick up the phone and call someone from outside. Well, that's a bit complicated with Asterisk, especially if you want to use your old ISDN phones with Asterisk.

What you need and how it should look alike is shown in the Visio drawing I've done yesterday to get an overview (click to show it in full size):

The current state is, that the connection between the ISDN and the Asterisk does not yet work. I’ve already put in both ISDN cards (1x HFC / 1x AVM Fritz), but the HFC is currently not used. First challenge is to make the ISDN connection work to the outsite. The rest is luxus

Here’s a link to an older video or playing around the first time with Asterisk and the phone, but it mainly looks like the current setup and – yeah – I think some of you know this ringtone

Link to the QuickTime Video

Have a nice day!

Ciao
Dennis

Useful links:
- Cisco 7960x on Asterisk
- Sources for your 7960x like ringtones
- Das Asterisk Buch (German)

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Hi guys,

4 days ago, I’ve posted about the pain of selecting the right OS. I would love to write: “I’ve found it! XYZ is the perfect match for me!”, but this does not happen (yet). And believe me: I don’t make it easy for myself.

I leaned back for an hour or so and thought about the local infrastructure here. Thinking about 3 screaming servers in the basement, a screaming loud Linksys GBit 19″ switch and a powerful PC at the attic. Hmm…

To be honest, after thinking for a time, I ask myself for what I will need it, I thought about energy costs and virtualization aspects of the new Q9650 CPU in my workstation. The servers are running at a very low CPU and RAM usage (sure, Linux uses around 100% of the RAM, but just because it’s there). Hmm… 2 wasting servers and an IPCop. Do you get what I was thinking about? Right! The workstation could handle some VMs while running, this would save me around 160 Watts. Calculate this over a month, a year – win/win – without loosing the comfort of different servers.

Good point – in my mind and the first step into the right direction. (Some of you may think: What!? He has so great hardware and think about not using it?! – Yep! But good to have a backup, right?).

Turning to the workstation, here’s what I did in the last few days on my PC.

First of all, I’ve removed the RAID from my server HADRON and put it back to the PC. Initially I’d bought the RAID for the workstation. I wanted to run Vista, having 2 graphic cards in the PC aswell. A PC that could be created by Stefan Didak

The truth is, I have a different scope of (private) work I’m doing here at home. Work is done on a single ThinkPad using Windows XP.

But back to the last 4 days. Now, that I’ve set up Windows Vista on the 6TB RAID, which is nice fast and secure, I’m trying to get back to Windows day by day. It’s pretty hard, if you’ve used OS X for the last few years mainly for private work. I don’t count the business stuff, because I work with special tools there and I know how to handle it, so XP works for me there.

Over the weekend, I’ve done some work on a PHP/MySQL web-app, I’m currently writing. Guess what I’ve used for this. You got it: My MacBook. Not that I couldn’t use Intype in Windows instead of TextMate on OS X and WinSCP on Windows instead of Transmit on OS X… Well, on one hand, I’ve worked for hours on Sunday in the bed. The last day of the 1 week vacation and we watched some TV series while I was working on the web-app. Right now, I’m writing this post on my MacBook, which lies in front of my PC keyboard and in front of the 2 displays.

Hmm…

Damn – if I would find a way to use the RAIDset as bootable volume for a Hackintosh based system, I think I would vote for this. But I think that’s not possible

Turning to the other site: before I’ve installed the RAIDset, I tried installing Debian, getting the graphic card to work was a challenge, but there’s Google, so I found a nice tutorial or call it HowTo. When I got this to work and also had the WindowMaker running in German instead of US, I wanted to play a video at the freshly installed VLC. No sound. Oh dear! Installing and configuring for hours and I have no sound. Of course – I had installed it from scratch and not “Desktop” in the installation setup – me fool.

To make long things short: I’d wasted 5h’s and was a little bit frustrated, so I’d inserted the Ubuntu 9.04 64bit CD that was laying on my desk and installed this instead. Hmm.. nice, but… even with the running sound, I found some bugs usung Xinerama and 2 diplays (the cursor stays at the left screen when I moved it to the left one for example, and does not fade away). I played around with Ubuntu for some more minutes or maybe 2 hours. It simply does not fit to me – as a desktop. It doesn’t worked for me really in the past and it will not work for me in the future.

Isn’t this great? I’ve removed Linux from my “possible desktop”-list.

Now there are just two systems left:
- Mac OS X as a Hackintosh installation
- Windows Vista 64bit

Not easy to choose, I see pros in both parts, but I really don’t want to have a Dual-Setup. Why not? Well, I would more switch from System to System than doing something productive. Currently, I do a enough unproductive

That’s the current status. Can’t await your comments

Ciao
Dennis

[Update]
Hi, just found this interesting YouTube video from Chris Pirillo I would like to show you, so I grabbed it and… well – here it is Have fun!

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Hi guys,

while crossing through different systems (if you click a bit through my blog, you get an idea ), I thought it was a nice idea to put my mostly used software together for each area and OS in a table with links to the project sites.

Here we go…

Comment: Regarding Office @ Linux/UNIX: I never used a spreadsheet-tool on Linux/UNIX yet, but for word-processing, I’m very satisfied with Abiword.

Ciao
Dennis

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Hey guys,

this is a post about my thoughts about different Operating Systems and the issue that I have while trying to select MY OS for myself.

Back in the 80ies when I grow up, I had my Schneider CPC464 with a funny green CRT. I learned a bit about Basic on this little machine and of course, also played cool games like Boulder Dash those days.

After 2 years, I got a Commodore C64 for christmas with a fancy color display. I couldn’t believe it! Computers where monochrome for me those days. My Dad had a IBM-XT PC and I remember that I loved to see how AutoCAD built the Columbia. Simply loading and displaying it took about one hour. Funny days. Of course, my Dad also had a monochrome screen, which was enough for dBase, Text4 and a bit of AutoCAD.

Around 3 years later, I wanted more power (oh dear, that is the point in my life where it all begun), so I sold my C64 and took some money that I got from my birthday and had to decide: get an Amiga 500 to play with or buy this crappy, but geeky 80286-AT with 8MHz and whopping 2MB of RAM and a fany 20MB MFM harddisk. The Amiga could be connected to a TV, what means color. The PC had a orange (Bernstein) color CRT. Honestly, I don’t know why, but I had the feeling, that the PC is the better choice. Ha! I remember that the 3.5″ floppy didn’t worked with 1.44MB diskettes and my Dad and I didn’t understand why. A few years later someone told me, that some 286/AT PCs where not able to allocate more than “DD” (720KByte) to the BUS, so I stuck with the DD diskettes, what was not a big issue. I installed DOS 5.0 on it and had fun playing around with QBasic which was delivered with the OS. Later, I started to use Windows 3.0 on it. Crappy software, but it worked. I had more fun on the console.

The next big thing was an upgrade to the 80386-DX/33 that a friend of my parents sold me. I got 4MB of RAM for it and took the ISA MFM cards from the previous PC with me. For christmas I got an upgrade to 8MB of RAM. Damn expensive! The system of the choice was meanwhile MS-DOS 6.2 and still Windows 3.11, which I rarely used. It was so much more fun to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat to get the last KByte/s of the memory below 640KByte/s. This was needed to play a lot games. It was before strange tools like MemMaker or Quemm386

With upgrading to my 80486-DX/33, I started to use Windows more and more. When I upgraded the CPU and kicked out the Intel CPU and installed my first CPU on my own (a AMD-468/DX4/100), Windows 95 came out and I bought it. It was really painful to spend 200 DM on this, even if it was “just” an upgrade from my previous Win 3.11).

*STOP*

This was the point where I should look around and seek out for other systems. Linux was already born those days, but at those times, just a handfull people in my city had access to data networks via modem and mailboxes. I had none and all friends just knew Windows and heared of Mac’s.

*GOING ON WITH THE STORY*

The AMD CPU was sooo cool and I was very proud of it, my friends where amazed by the speed of Command and Conquer on my computer. Oh yeah – I had a 14″ color CRT that time.

From 1995, everything went faster. Much much faster. While I was happy with my 386 and 486 for a couple of years, I didn’t had the AMD CPU for a long time, because I spend ALL of the money that I had collected for a Pentium 100MHz CPU. WOW! Whopping fast and amazing CPU. Of course, I had to buy a new mainboard for this.

I remember that I went through a AMD K6-200MHz and a Intel Celeron 300A which was clocked at 450MHz. This was the most reliable machine I ever had. It worked until 2 years ago! Pretty cool, ha?

Windows 95 was replaced by Windows 98 SE and games became heavier. A nVidia RIVA-TNT AGP card with 16MByte or RAM was the fastet card in the clique. A friend and I bought the same system in the same store, 100% the same 128MB RAM. Wohoo! But you know what? I want make the thing a bit shorter.

In my education I worked a lot on Apple Macintosh systems. G3/266MHz Performa series and later on, on G4 Dual Core 400MHz machines. At home I worked on Windows 2000. I had a job at a company in Düsseldorf for 1/2 year until I wanted to start my studies at the University of Dortmund (IT). While moving to the new apartment, I a killed building savings contract. Wow! So much money! I spend about 2500 DM on my very first own Mac. An iBook G3 with 12.1″. But I was not really satisfied with the iBook and sold it a few months later. I had my PC all the time to do 3D graphics with my bougth Student version of Maxon’s Cinema 4D, so I worked on this a lot. At the end of the year (2001), I wanted a Mac again, but not a mobile one, so I collected money and bought a QuickSilver G4/733MHz Apple PowerMac and I was satisfied – for a few months. I went back to Moers, because the education at the University was not the right thing for me and started working for Medion. A PC manufactor here in Germany who sells the PCs at the ALDI stores, maybe you’ve heared of them. So – there I was, with a brandnew job at the callcenter, some experience in the mind of how to use the Windows XP, that was the state of art for a few months now, but without the chance of testing anything at home, because the PPC just allowed me to run Mac OS X . No free selection like today – Windows on Macs? Yes, there where some expensive and superslow tools available. So I sold the Mac and the iBook that I got meanwhile (some people do funny things, ha?) and got a Pentium 4 / 2GHz – equipped with Windows XP. I was not really satisfied in the beginning with Windows XP and because of that, I also played around a lot with Linux. I ran RedHat 8, 9 and Fedore Core 2. Debian was nice, but I used that more on the SparcStations that I got for a few bucks by eBay. I had my new apartment and so I collected computers. Yeah, call me a nerd, a geek – I am I had different Suns, 2 SGIs (Indigo & O2) and a lot of different PCs over the years. Also Macs where a “I want to have” products, just to count a few: G5 (2x), iBooks, PowerBooks and yes, also Mac Pro as you can read here.

Today, I’m running a MacBook Unibody 13″ and I’m very satisfied with it. I sold the MacPro a few months ago and since that, I’m hunting for a system for me which really satisfies me. Maybe you’ve seen that I ran Hackintosh for a while. It was more or less great. Because the system was simply not made for this hardware, I run into hardware issues and crazy constructions to fix them again and again. In the end, I finally gave up. OS X is great – on Macs. I must admit, that I spend a lot time on this and it was maybe a waste of time.

The issue that I ran into is, that I’m not satisfied with ANY OS nowadays. Let me give you a brief overview on 5 systems that I’d used in the past.

MAC OS X
I love it – on my MacBook. It’s perfect if you do exactly what you should do. Do presentations in Keynote, write things in Pages, browse using Safari or maybe also Firefox (since 3.x it’s really nice on OS X, too). If I want to collect my photos, I use iPhoto. I never understood Aperture, but that is a really different thing.

OS X is great if you simply want to do your stuff. But I am a person that wants more. Having my Mac Pro under the desk, I wanted a RAID5 where I could boot from. Sure, there’s a card for around 800 US$ + harddrives + a horrible expensive “Bootcamp”-cable. No way! Too expensive. One of the reasons why I sold it – I was simply pissed, even if it was an awesome computer! (And yeah, maybe it was a fault to sell it).

What annoys me most on OS X is described in an older post of me.

But isn’t it funny? I spend a lot money on this PC I type on now, bought 6 harddiscs, an expensive hardware-RAID-controller by Areca and two graphic cards, new mainboard, CPU, a lot of RAM and a handful deluxe Noktua fans for this beast – and what did I do after some days of disappointment with Vista? Installing OS X. Bam! Here we are now.

Currently, I’m installing different systems again and again with the hope to find a fitting one for me.

The issue is, that I was more or less satisfied with OS X. Hackintosh runs more or less stable, but not good enough for a complete and main system (in my eyes) – so OS X was out. Oh! How often did I said that? :/ – very often – and a day later, the Hackintosh was installed again.

So, what annoys me on Vista?

VISTA
Vista, I get sick when I see Aero. What a clumbsy design is that. It looks awful and I hate it from the deepest of my sould . Everything is somewhere else and the PC reacts too often for my taste and tells me what to do. It’s slow even on this beast of a computer. Sure, here I have my tools like Photoshop, MS Office and Intype which is a great replacement for TextMate on Windows, but it feels wrong. Today, I’ve installed it again and what should I say? I didn’t get the configuration done before I had these “this is not your system”-feeling. I was satisfied with XP in the end. I hate Lune, too. Royal Blue theme was pretty cool and I also used to work with the Classic mode. Not beautyful, but worked for me. In Vista, sure – I can turn of Aero and also join the Classic Mode, but c’mon – it’s 2009 and I still should use a “theme” from 1995?! No.

LINUX
Well, lovely, free and great Linux. I love Linux – on my servers. My webserver here is running for nearly 2 years now without any issues, based on Ubuntu server 6.06.2. Very nice! But on my desk… As mentioned before, I had Fedora Core 2 running for a while (like 6 months). I had the time to really get into. I understood how and WHY to have to mount my cameras card by hand. Even my scanner worked (the same which don’t work today on Vista nor OS X ). I was solo that time. Today, I’ve a wife, I’ve a house and a job that don’t know shift ends, so I have less time.

Linux is in my mind a system with future. Also on the desktop! Not for me – yet, but when I see movies like StartUp (AntiTrust), which is my absolute favourite movie, I fell in love with the design of Synapse (which is GNome v1). It looks so cool, clean and maybe geek enough for my desires . 2-3 years ago, I used Ubuntu a lot, but it had some issues with my hardware and the fact, that it don’t run Photoshop (please, don’t comment here that I should use Gimp instead, I’m using Photoshop since 1996 and I don’t feel like I should switch to Gimp), makes it worse for me.

Today, there’s a MacBook laying here on my desk (currently sleeping ) so there’s all I need to work on, right? But I bought this PC that is now under my desk. The RAID5 is now in the server in the rack in the basement of our house, but the PC remains here. 2x 22″ displays sitting on this desktop (I’ve just added a 2nd desk to my part of the desk to seperate work & private a bit – I really need to make some current photos and share with you guys), which was simply too expensive to let it stay under the desk and get dusty. Selling it also on eBay? No. Not really.

UNIX
I also used FreeBSD at the beginning of this year (remember?) to start into ZFS and Software RAID. I removed it when I got my hardware RAID card. I like FreeBSD; it’s nice, very fast but has one painpoint: Hardware compatibity. Some goes for OpenSolaris and Solaris itself. I’ve tried all of them and I think they are great for servers, but for my desktop? Hmm…

RESUMÉ
What’s the resumé of this pretty long post? I don’t know. That’s the reason why I type it. I would love to write: Hey, I installed Debian on my Desktop from scratch and I’m super happy with it, but that’s not the truth.

OS X is the thing for the MacBook – fine, but not for this PC (I’m happy to leave those days behind me, because when you think everything should work find and you get a Kernel Panic suddenly on the screen showing you the middlefinger – you have to keep cool to not freak out because of all the time and work you’ve invested in this ungrateful shitty machine!!!).

Windows is currently installed. I’m typing this on Firefox in Vista while Trillian Astra Beta runs the same time. Aero is set up and I hate it So, I think that’s not the way I want to go.

Linux is the system I would love to use, but I want it sexy. The current Ubuntu comes with a funky and very very good antialiasing, but I’ve not idea how to get this into Debian. Fedora 11 download (DVD/ISO) has just finished. Ubuntu 64bit CD also lays on the desk, ready for a boot from the LiveCD.

I would love to use a system like Milo from StartUp and know what to do. Oh! Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not an expert, but I feel familiar in the console and know what I do there. Ok – the theme is not available anywhere – believe me, I’ve spend a lot time on searching for it.

While writing the last chapter here, I thought about really risking it and installing Debian again. The hardware is not that big problem anymore. Everything got much much easier compared to my Fedora Core 2 days. Even my color laser printer should work out of the box now. But there’s also a bit a afraidness to really use it. You could say, that I was tainted by OS X. Everything looks so nice and friendly in OS X, when I check Linux screenshots I often thing “OMG! How could they…??” and click the screenshot away. I’m a learned Mediadesigner and I love digital art, that’s why I possibly feel so good on OS X – until I want to change something deep inside the OS. That’s why I like Linux, doing things can be easy, but can also be damn complicated. But let me tell you one thing, even Windows can be hellish complicated. Ever tried to install an Exchange server on a bland Windows Standard x64 Server? Much fun, dude!

I’m seeking out for a good conclusion to come to an end of this story/report, but I can’t find one.

So – this could be more a dialog than posts before. Please, leave some comments if you want to. Maybe someone else who reads this feeld the pain of selecting the right OS and is unsatisfied (or was – what could be most helpful ) with all available systems.

Have a nice night!

Ciao
Dennis

EDIT
Attached, 3 screenshots from the motion picture “AntiTrust” (StartUp).

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Hey guys,

as little update, I’m happy to be back online with an IPCop. This incredible firewall, which in Linux based at freely available, is a great software that replaces my FritzBoxes – well, honestly that’s not true, because currently I need to use one FritzBox to connect to the main DSL (16MBit/s) line.

My wife got a brand new iMac 24″ on Monday, so we had one PC too much here. Some of you know that I own a 22U rack in the basement. So I decided to use this PC (Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 250GB SATA HDD) for the IPCop. The hardware is extremely oversized, but why not? Don’t using it at all is a bad idea, so – here we go.

The IPCop delivers now the following services to the network:
- DNS
- Internet Access
- Failover (if T-Online fails, IPCop will dial in to Arcor immediately)
- Proxy (Advanced Proxy)
- URL Filter (to block ads! Incredible speed boost for surfing)
- DHCP

The name of this machin is “blackpearl”. I had this name selected for our IPCop last year for the old installation (on a PIII/1GHz). I like it – and yes – it’s grabbed from Pirates of the Carrebian

At this weekend, the network will be redesigned completly. This means to put the Cat6 patchpanel to the patchpanel cabinet in the storage room and remove the current Cat5e one. Also, the FreeBSD server, which is now built into a 19″ 4U case, too, will be attached to the rack as well as the IPCop. I just need to solve on issue: I can’t get the lines currently to work on 1GBit/s, just with 100MBit/s. A tipp was to check the groundings of every patch and plug. What a lot of fun!

So – here’s just a photo of the FreeBSD server with the 6 attached harddisks. (Pssst! There’s enough space available for an 8 port SATA-II controller and a 3x 5.25″U 5 Port SATA-II Backplane 10TB RAIDz1 – here I come – well – within the next year or so! )

It’s sad, that the ZFS RAIDz1 is NOT extendable – yet (?). So creating a larger RAIDset would result in doing copies to.. well.. no idea

Ciao
Dennis

FreeBSD server “carter” in built. Meanwhile there’s a DVD+-R/W/RAM drive inside

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Hi guys,

I couldn’t find a good tutorial to install the FTP server proftpd on Debian, so I mixed it from different tutorials. Here’s what I’ve done.

What I expect from the FTP server is, that the user(s) could log in and have access to different folders who are shared from another harddisk. When I began the tutorial, I thought, that the proftpd is not the solution for my needs, but in the end, it’s the perfect one.

Let me show how what I need:
- the files are stored on a seperate (1TB) harddisk
- the user should be able to access those files without having to leave their own home directory
- the user should NOT see ALL of the folders from the sperate disk

First, the installation of the package was needed. Pretty easy with Debian of course
# apt-get install proftpd

This package has a lot dependencies, so don’t be surprised if up to 20 additional packages will be installed. You will be asked, if you want to install it as inetd or daemon process. Daemon is the better choice for 24/7 FTP servers.

Next, you’ve to configure the server. This is my configuration file, mixed from different tutorials:
Include /etc/proftpd/modules.conf
ServerName "Trip"
ServerType standalone
Defaultserver on
Port 21
Umask 022
MaxInstances 30
User nobody
Group nogroup
DefaultRoot ~
AllowOverwrite on
AuthUserFile /etc/proftpd/ftpd.passwd
AuthUserFile /etc/proftps/ftpd.group
UseIPv6 off
IdentLookups off
ServerIdent on "FTP Server ready."

DenyGroup !ftpuser !ftpprouser


RootLogin off
RequireValidShell on

UseReverseDNS off

When you’ve copy&pasted this (and modified the servers name), you should restart the server with an easy
# /etc/init.d/proftpd restart

Ok – the server is running fine now, and next, you will have to modify your user(s) to be able to access the FTP server with their account settings (which are the same as the SSH logins).

First of all, you will need to add a group. I call it ftpuser:
# addgroup ftpuser

Ok. So next, add the users to this group.

IMPORTANT! I’ve another group where the users are assigned to, so I had to use a CAPITAL “G” to add then to both groups.

# usermod -g ftpuser username

Repeat this for all users who should have access to your brand new server.

If you want to add new user, do it that way:
# adduser -g ftpuser username

Here are two commands, where I am honestly not 100% sure for what they are, but you need them.
# cp /bin/false /bin/ftp
# echo "/bin/ftp" >> /etc/shells

The next think you’ll have to do is to set up the directories. I prefer to use the mount –bind and not ln -l. So here’s what I’ve done.

# cd /home/username
# mkdir Directory
# mount --bind /home/username/Directory /media/1tb_a/Directory

I’ve mounted my 1st 1TB disk in my server in 1tb_a while the backup drive (same, energy saving “green” WD 1TB disk) is 1tb_b. So, of course it will differ from your setup.

I’ve, as mentioned before, 2 groups parallel for my users. The first, main group is klein2. I use this for Samba access. The new one is the ftpuser. I’ve added the new user, who will be able to access our local server, so this one is now also in the group klein2. Why? Well, the user should have access to all folders.

The rights look like this:
52707329 4 drwxrwx--- 2 root klein2 4096 2009-01-01 23:54 Directory

Note, that the ls -lisa will NOT show the 2nd group ftpuser, but the main group.

The rights were set with:
# chmod -R 2770 Directory

Of course, the groups should be set with:
# chown -R root.klein2 Directory

Mount other directories as shown above manual or – if you don’t want to repeat those steps whenever you’ve reset your server – add those lines into /etc/fstab:
# nano /etc/fstab
/media/1tb_a/Directory /home/username/Directory none bind 0 0

Repeat this for EVERY directory you’ve mounted.

See what’s the good thing here? YES! You can select the folders you like to share for different users. You don’t have to share all folders to everyone etc.. I like this

Ciao
Dennis

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Hi guys,

so, today after work (it was my last day to work for 2008 ), I played around with my Mac Pro. I just wanted to see a Linux running on it. Don’t ask me why – I’m just a guy who needs to play around.

So – here’s how I got it work:

1st: You need to install rEFIt just before you do anything else. Install the PKG that comes as download.

2nd: Insert your Linux CD (as mentioned in the caption, I’ve used Ubuntu 8.10 (AMD64) for my test) and reboot your Mac. Hold down the Option / Alt key and select the CD to boot it.

3rd: Install the Linux on one of your harddisks and reboot.

4th: Hold down the Option / Alt key again. You will see the disk rEFIt and a disk called Windows. Don’t ask me why, but when I join the rEFIt menu and select the Tux titled with Linux HD, all I get is this:

GRUB _

So, for my surprise, choosing the Windows harddisk, Linux boots up very nice.

That’s it!

I’ve the nVidia GeForce 8800GT in my Mac Pro, so I was in need to install the drivers for the card. Thanks to Canonical, the installation is just a procedure of a few clicks. I was able to use both 22″ displays. I just had to use the nVidia tool that was installed with the drivers.

Little hint: Using Xinerama and the effects coming with Compiz is not possible. You’ll receive a DRI-erromessage. I haven’t played around that, but I think it should be resolveable.

After installing some codecs (incl. QuickTime), it played a Full HD movie (1080p) in fullscreen and let scroll the GoogleEarth planet fast on both screens at the same time. Very impressive.

This machine is an 8 core Xeon beast with 14GB of RAM, so believe me – it’s damn fast!

If you’ve any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in a comment

Ciao
Dennis

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