YWAM Information Technology - Hardware - Comments

Good points!

Donovan — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:05:30 +0000

One of the things I found through 50days.net is that commercial hosting in London Telehouse was waaaay cheaper than ever trying to install that kind of bandwidth into our site. It shifted my paradigm. Put in a good SDSL line for local use and locate local services like file servers, development boxes on site. Then, put everything public at a hosting centre like Telehouse. The cool thing about Telehouse in addition to unbeatable access to bandwidth, you had 24/7 monitoring, security, power backup, etc. etc. all included in your hosting costs.

doesn't suprise me...

KevinColyer — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:02:43 +0000

Nice to hear you have it working in the wild! No excuses now. Did you find it straight forward to set up?

Doesn't surprise me it is faster than Vista. I did a head to head start from a cold boot on my Ubuntu Dell Latitude 750Mhz, 192 Mb machine against Steve Sullivan's new Toshiba Vista beast. I won it easily and was typing away at least a couple of minutes before his was responsive. Sigh. Progress eh?!

Cheers,

Kevin

PS Guess who forgot his password for his virtual machine and had to wipe it!

Crypto LVM (ubuntu on Dell Inspiron)

pcp1976 — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:04:54 +0000

I've been using a fully encrypted root/swap on an encrypted lvm for ubuntu installed on my inspiron (1.8 celeron). No noticeable hit in speed. Runs much faster than Vista (which came pre installed).

Virtual web development

Dan B — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:25:15 +0000

I started using virtual machines back when I converted to Mac. But since I develop web sites (for mainly Windows users) on a Mac, I found that my code (actually, the CSS) was buggy, and lacked cross-browser compatibility.

That's when I realized I couldn't be a die-hard single platform user, when my audience uses varied OS'es... and browsers.

So now I build (design and code) an Mac OS X and test on Win XP and DSL (linux). As long as a can have virtual copies of my least favorite OSes, then I can live and work in a relatively smooth Mac environment, and avoid the worlds of Windows and... (sorry guys) linux. :-]

WOOHOO!!!

tofirius — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:57:55 +0000

Awesome, man!!!! God rocks!!! That's so amazing... His timing is perfect!

Bless you!
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com

sounds exactly like that

neo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:50:17 +0000

Hi Kev,
your right. Our terrible loud vacuum cleaner is nice compared to that.

Luckily the fans are spinning down after a short while. Otherwise I guess the guys from across the street would watch out ufos. haha
But seriously I thought about getting out my ear plugs as long as I have to sit next to the server. But with the fans spinning down it's OK.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

Sounds like...

KevinColyer — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:40:07 +0000

...it will go VRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Have fun!

Cheers,

Kevin

server setup

neo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:06:53 +0000

Hi @ all,
& thanks for your comment, mate.

I couldn't be here for a while, so sorry for my late reply.
We now have all the hardware, everything sits in the rack and is ready to be installed. First thing I needed to do is figuring out how to set up the RAID. Never done that before but it should be working now.
So, quickly after I turned on the system for the first time I was surrounded by half the folks from our office. Not because they all wanted to see how it looks like with all the flashing lights but because they couldn't figure out what the noise was. Well, a server with redundant power supply, redundant cooling fans and a disk enclosure with redundant cooling as well make quit some noise & wind when turning on and every blows at full speed. It's like a jet engine, I guess.

Anyways, I wanted to install the system but couldn't read the install CD on that machine. After a while I found out the problem. I downloaded the Debian Image for IA64 (Intel Architecture 64bit), exactly that what we have. But then I figured out that this is only for Itanium processors but we have a Xeon 64bit. So, I need to download the AMD64 install Image. I just thought I don't have an AMD so I need the other one. I guess I should have done my homework better.
So, tomorrow morning I will download the correct one and then I'll see how it goes.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

server setup opinion

crashsystems — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:02:02 +0100

I think that the answers to most of your questions boil down to two main things: how the server will be used and personal opinion. Since I do not know much of the former, I'll give you my opinion. Debian is a good choice for an OS no matter what use the server will be put to.

As far as swap amount, there a lot of disagreements in that area. I've heard a number of people say it should be double your ram, but with 4gb, I think that would be overkill. The main server I'm administrating (also running Debian) is performing NAT with three ethernet cards, running Samba/LAMP/SSH, has 1gb of ram, and only uses 32mb of swap. Even (or espessialy) Linux kernel developers cannot agree on this.

For your file system, the most common choice is ext3, as it is a good all-around file system. However, its not the fastest one out there. My personal favorite is XFS, which is good for both general desktop usage as well as file server usage. It has amazing performance and is very efficiant. Two caveats about XFS though: first, if you use grub as your bootloader you must make a small non-XFS /boot partition, and second, you really should run a power backup if you use it (which you should do in any case). Another option is JFS, which I've heard is good for mail servers and anything else that involves read/write to many small files. Yet another option I've researched recently is LVM, though keep in mind that if you go this route, XFS volumes do not shrink.

Two backup programs I've used quite a bit are rsync, and more recently rdiff-backup. Both are easy to automate with cron + bash, and work with Mac too.

Here are some articles I've read that you can check out to read more. Have fun playing with your fancy new hardware!

File system comparisons: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388
LVM: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388
Rsync: http://www.linux.com/feature/113847
Rdiff-backup: http://arstechnica.com/articles/columns/linux/linux-20060202.ars/2

LVM

KevinColyer — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:32:10 +0100

Dear Douglass,

Gutsy implements the encrypted filesystem on top of the LVM, so I guess you could use any filesystem you want. Never tried XFS. I briefly flirted with Reiser 3 but went back to ext3 in the end.

As a speed tip I always at noatime to the options in /etc/fstab as this stops ext3 from making a save for every read (to update the "last accessed time" record). That speeds things up by 10% or so. But to be honest I have never been disappointed with the speed of the filesystems!

It is quite neat to see the encrypted filesystem in action as once you boot you have to enter the passphrase and that is as far as you will get! After that it is business as usual.

I chose the "guided setup with LVM and encryption" for ease from the installer. All seemed to go well except I got dumped at the text prompt when the machine rebooted! I tried startx but nothing happened. That was odd. I did a quick (well slow) sudo apt-get install kubuntu and about 700 packages were selected. I had some trouble remounting the CD ("sudo mount /dev/scd0 /cdrom" or something - Linux uses the SCSI subsytem for all disk drives now from IDE to Flash) but eventually it pulled the packages from the internet and all is tickerty boo now!

It does run like a slug under VirtualBox - but it does run! I it definitely the way to go if you want to run Linux on a laptop. As I doubt the encryption will slow much down on a real box (biggest bottleneck is always the hard disk writing).

Perhaps someone else will want to play with this!

cheers,

Kevin

Re: Virtual Machine

crashsystems — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:15:50 +0100

I've been testing Gusty since RC1 came out, and have been quite impressed. During the span of time I've been following Ubuntu releases (almost two years), this has been by far the most innovative. The encrypted hd option on the alternate install cd sounds quite interesting. I wonder why that is not an option on the main cd. Since you are already testing that installer out, does it have options for setting up LVM? I've been thinking about using LVM + the XFS file system on my new laptop I am about to get. I have been using XFS for six months now, and love it.

As far as VMs go, I use VMware very extensively. I used VirtualBox for quite a while, but it is so much easier to set up networking in VMware. Perhaps some day I'll try out KVM.

P.S.
If anyone is having problems downloading 7.10 due to clogged mirrors, check out torrent.ubuntu.com:6969

Re: VGA Extender via CAT5

mcjobo — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 15:18:57 +0100

The question is what do you want to do? If you just want to have a screen to a machine some meters away you probably could use it.

If you more look for a solution to remote control a machine I recomend the inbuilt remote solution in the OS you use. For Linux you can use basically any x-server to remote show programs if you want to have the whole desktop look for a tool that works with the XDMCP protocol. There are clients on most platforms. On Windows you would want to use Remote Desktop (rdp) that is also available on most platforms. The only thing you can't do with these solutions is bios access and a complete reinstall of the machine.
We also use Dell KVM switches in my company but that is kind of crappy to use remote but a last resort if the normal remote desktop doesn't work.

The problem with VGA extender is probably that you also want keyboard and mouse.

mcjobo

re: continued

neo — Thu, 17 May 2007 03:14:43 +0100

Hi.
Thanks David, for sharing your experience.

I would like to purchase in Germany, since I'm German it would make sense to have a German keyboard. I don't know if I can get a notebook somewhere else and order it with a German keyboard or change it later on myself if that's possible, anyways. Also I don't know the extra cost for that, if that's worth it or in the end more expensive.
In that sense I'm a bit limited. However, I was thinking about if it could be cheaper to get the computer where ever I get it cheapest and getting an external keyboard from Germany. I anyways don't like to be so close to the screen as I am with a notebook. With an extra keyboard I also could use a second (bigger) screen as my main screen and sit straight in front of it.

Oh well, I have a lot options in mind. So, I need to make a wise decision and need to see a lot of money come in for that. But really I need to know what God wants me to get and therefore how to pray more specific.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

continued

david.couper — Tue, 15 May 2007 07:47:12 +0100

My only experience with Fujitsu Siemens was horrible - the battery did not last long and pixels died on the screen. That was 7 years ago so maybe it has changed now. My experience with battery life within the first year on laptops is as follows:
Dell - not good - have not seen a battery still performing well after 1 year
Apple - same as Dell - on every ibook and powerbook I have used the battery was horrible after a year
Sony - same as apple, but they replace batteries on the warranty.
Fujitsu seimens - sore spot and I dont want to talk about it ;)
IBM - I have only had this one for 5 months - but still getting between 4 and 5 hours on it. My IBM in 1998 the battery was never a problem - so I hope it is the same!!

Which country will you be purchasing - I got mine in the US cause it is about half the price of buying it in the UK!

David

warranty and service

neo — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:56:08 +0100

Hi Bill,
I read through your links. Wow, that's really bad stuff. Specially since you pay for a Mac quit a lot of money. I seriously expected a bit more here.
However, the best warranty doesn't help if the service isn't good. Speaking of that, almost everything I heard about Dell so far was negative. From my personal experience with warranty issues at least from Germany, it can change daily. It almost feels like it depends what people had for breakfast. Here in Australia people seem to be friendlier but I didn't had to deal with computer stores so far. So, I can not really tell how that goes.

Anyways, I guess the need of repair is something we all try to avoid, we all prefer that the new machines just work. So, may question is what are the experiences with different brands? What brand needed most service, etc. How about ASUS, Acer, Toshiba, Fujitsu Siemens, IBM, etc?
I can't really tell cause my Acer notebook didn't cause any trouble in that sense, it's just getting a bit old and I probably asking a bit too much from this machine. More then 3 years ago it wasn't really meant as a full desktop replacement. Now, even with double the RAM than originally, I run out of RAM pretty much every day.
My first computer was a non-brand machine and lasted pretty long. All the others been self build. So, I don't really have any experience with brand computers, except with my Acer notebook which still runs without any repair.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo