Jan
11

Web server using nginx

Categories:

by

There are two new articles added, one about how to setup a web server with nginx, and one that explains how to migrate from apache to nginx. I finally did take the time to study how to do things the “nginx” way after years of using apache for a web server. It was just a matter of learning how to run php and cgi scripts. The only thing left to do is the way the mercurial repository is served, but it works for this moment. Of course this server is now serving this site using nginx.

The site itself got some cosmetic changes. The static header is replaced with random photographs that I made around the place where I live. More will follow when I take more panorama type pictures that will to fit in the header without losing important parts. Amazing how few from 12000 pictures can be used for a header.

 

Tags: , , , ,

Dec
11

Some new Home Server articles

Categories:

by

In the last week I added some new articles for the Home Server:

None of these things are essential, but they can be useful.

Tags: , , ,

Nov
13

Making backups using Amanda.

Categories:

by

I think that Amanda is one of the better backup solutions for small and large systems. The backups itself are written using standard *nix tools and can be used to restore even without amanda itself. The backups can be written to real tapes, disks simulating a tape changer, and into the cloud using Amazon S3 storage.

Because using amanda can be complicated and simple at the same time, I have split the whole story in three articles. The first is about the server part, which is also good for single machines. The second adds a *nix client, and the last article describes some practical commands such as maintenance and restore data.

You may expect an article about Amanda Recovery Manager, this is a backup solotion for your MySQL database and is a better alternatice then what I have written in the MySQL article.

Tags: , , ,

Nov
03

VNC article and other things

Categories:

by

Today I added an article about using VNC as remote graphical console to the headless home server. Original I used Thinstation booting from the PXE server, but that was a complicated and slow way to get the console. VNC is much easier and there are clients available for Linux, Windows and more.

In the meantime the server locked up a few times in the last days for no known reason. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,

Oct
05

T-Jam 45 guitar amp finally updated.

Categories:

by

I finally found the time to create the down-loadable pdf files for this guitar tube amplifier project. The description of the cabinet construction is added too.

See the complete page for details.

Tags: ,

Sep
06

Network problems

Categories:

by

During the latest changes for the Home Server articles I replaced the VirtualBox network drivers with the kernel’s virtio drivers. This was around the same time I was experimenting with traffic shaping and some other things, so when network problems would show up it was not right away clear what caused it. All the other computers had no problems while they were several virtio drivers in the path.

What exactly caused the troubles is a bit of a mystery, but it seems to work well again.

Tags: , ,

Aug
25

Slow Home Server updates?

Categories:

by

Not that I’m on holiday now, it’s just that I’m busy doing research about traffic shaping, better firewall protection, and improving internal network performance. Most of these results will end up in their own articles, but some parts that are already written will get some changes.

My main server is now using traffic shaping on the Internet side, but also between two of the virtual servers. That last one is necessary because the nightly backup otherwise would almost kill this web server. It seems to perform much better now during the night since the network traffic for the backup is classified as lowest priority.

For the external side, it looks that traffic to and from the Internet responds better, even while a torrent is handled at full up and download speed. In a few weeks everything will be tuned well enough to publish the results.

There is also a low memory version of the Home Server in the making, less features of course and no virtual servers inside, but it should do just enough to be useful.

Tags: , , ,

Aug
04

My telecine

Categories:

by

Last week I found two very dusty old 8mm movies made in 1973 and transferred these to my PC for restoration with my home brew telecine. I build that machine over a year ago when I needed to transfer all my parents old super-8 movies.

During the build last year I took some pictures. I thought that this is a good moment to document everything on this website, else it might never happen. The writings are just to show how I did it, it’s not a manual or so, but only to give you some ideas if you should want to make one yourself. Start reading from here if you are interested.

Tags:

Jul
23

Home Server – dropping tcp_wrappers support

Categories:

by

Soon in Arch Linux tcp_wrappers support will be dropped. It wasn’t used much these days, it is always the best to try to limit access to network services using the internal configuration and protect the network traffic itself with iptables. The following Home Server articles are updated:

  • Home Server MySQL Database server
  • Home Server PXE Server
  • Home Server NFS4 Shares

For the time being, put ALL: ALL in /etc/hosts.allow.

Tags: , , ,

Jul
23

Home Server article updates

Categories:

by

Lately I have not written any new articles for the Home Server series but updated some of the existing ones to make the contents more accurate.

The Minidlna article is updated for the local web server configuration.

The Home Server Linux installation has some fixes about the RAID and SMART setup.

The Home Server IPv4 article has most updates about the setup of the bind name server, it now uses /srv/named instead of /var/named as a working directory. This is because the /var directory won’t be included in future backup scripts.

The MySQL article is updated with information to backup the databases.

The Postfix article has some cosmetic changes.

The download file is updated.

Tags: , , ,

Older posts «