I signed up with Linode.com on April 1st. here is my order confirmation email:

Invoice Number: 721878

Invoice Date: April 01, 2011

Invoice To: None

Description                                   From           To    Setup    Price

———————————————————————————

[97123] linode97123 – Linode 512        2011-04-01 – 2011-04-30    $0.00   $19.95

Previous Balance                                                            $0.00

Total Due: $19.95

Thank you for your order!

the blog transition was smooth, and painless. I was happy with the speed of the site. I had a glitch with the database connection the next day, but I took that as probable database corruption in the migration process, so I repaired the database and that fixed the problem. on April 6, I emailed their support center because the blog had gone down 2 times for no apparent reason, though I suspected network to be the culprit. here is the email I sent them:

New Support Ticket 411583 has been opened by jnamaya:

————————————————–
hey guys, I just moved to your hosting, and my site has been down 2 times already? what’s going on? it seems the problem is network connection..

thanks,
Nelson

I got a replied back from Dave at Linode.com claiming virtual memory was the problem. I emailed him back with the following argument:

————————————————–
Hi Dave, if virtual memory is the problem, then it means all the physical memory on my node is being used up.. which is very unlikely, I’ve been monitoring the node very closely, and physical memory is never used up more than 212 MB on my node.. it also shows virtual memory has 0 usage. this is a simple site with around 900 unique visits a day..
————————————————–

within a few minutes I got this reply from Dave:

Thank you for contacting us. We’re sorry to hear of the issues you’re experiencing using your Linode. Your Linode is OOMing, meaning something inside your node is consuming all of the available virtual memory. You can see this for yourself by logging into Lish and viewing the console.

I had WebMin installed on my node, and the monitoring tool I had installed was not detecting anything wrong with my node, but the server kept going down. at this point I decided to host the blog myself. I got a box with plenty of memory, and a 25/25 Mbps Fiber Optic connection. its been almost two months since I started doing my own hosting, and so far the site has been running continuously without a hitch.

Linode.com did not work for me.

so you need to create at least two partitions to install Ubuntu. one with either RAID 0 or RAID 1 for the operating system and the other with RAID 5 for the file directory.

on this tutorial I will use a VM with 5 small virtual disks for a RAID 1 and RAID 5 setup. please remember that in Ubuntu you can add partitions to a RAID as well, so you don’t necessarily have to have 5 physical drives for this setup. as long as you have a big hard drive, you can slice it into partitions to configure the RAIDs.

without further talks, let’s jump in.

fire up your Ubuntu Server. the initial windows will come up:

choose your language and hit Enter.

the installation Server wizard windows will pop-up:

Press the enter key on your keyboard. choose your language again in the following Window:

then choose your country:

choose NO on the keyboard layout detection:

choose the right settings for your keyboard on the following two windows:

the keyboard detection, and other component scanning window will show up:

choose a hostname for your server on the following window:

choose your time zone:

the partition manager will come up. choose Manual :

Choose the first partition on the list and press Enter:

the following warning will come up. choose Yes.

The new created partition will show up as free space on the next window:

Select the partition and press the Enter. the create a new partition window will come up:

press Enter again. type the size for the partition. in this case, it is the entire disk:

click  on continue. and choose Primary on the partition type:

click on Done setting up the partition on the following window:

do the same thing we just did for the rest of the drives. once you have all the drives partitioned. they should look like this:

select Configure Software RAID on the top menu:

say Yes on the following warning:

the changes will be written to the disk:

after that, the Software RAID configuration window will come up:

select Create MD device. and press Enter.

we will create the RAID 1 drive first. choose RAID1 on the following menu:

choose the number of drives on the following window. RAID1 needs 2 drives, so enter the number 2 and click on continue:

enter 0 for spare devices on the following window, and click on Continue.

choose the drives on the following menu. only choose 2 for RAID1 by using the down arrow key and the space bar. after the two drives are chosen, click on Continue:

Say Yes to the following warning:

by now, the RAID 1 configuration should be completed. Now let’s setup the RAID 5. click on Create MD configuration again:

choose RAID5 on the following window, and hit Enter.

choose the number of disks on the following window.  choose 3. and click on Continue.

put 0 as spare drives. and click Continue.

choose the disks you want to configure. choose the 3 disks and click on Continue.

click yes on the following warning:

that’s it. we have completed the RAID setup on Ubuntu. click on Finish.

now you should have two partitions available on your Ubuntu server. one for 10 GB ( mirrored RAID1 drive ) and 21 GB the RAID 5 partition.

lets setup the installation now. select the first 10GB partition, and hit Enter.

on the following window. select use As: and hit enter. on the list choose the first option. Ext4 Journaling File System and hit enter again:

then select Mount Point and choose / – the root file system and click enter again:

choose Done setting up the partition on the below menu:

do the following to setup the 21GB RAID 5 partition, but instead of choosing the / mount point, choose /Var for the mount point. if you are using the server for web hosting apache WWW directory is at the /Var directory. you make your own decision to what directory you assign the RAID 5 partition.

after you’re done with the partitions setup. click Finish partitioning and write changes to disk on the menu below:

from here on continue the installation of Ubuntu as usual.

after finishing the installation. you should have a fully functioning Ubuntu server with RAID1 for the boot partition, and a RAID 5 for the /Var file system:

I hope this tutorial gives you an idea on how to setup a RAID on Ubuntu server. please if you have a question or suggestion use the comment section below.

take care. Nelson.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@email.com
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

this is your default website, and most likely your current website is using this file, so leave it alone as it is. now pay attention because this is where we will start making the changes, and if anything goes wrong, you can undo these changes, so you can  get back to square one..

step 1.

on the Sites-available directory under /etc/apache2 path,  create another file and name the file as the same name of the additional website you want to host from this server. for Example, if forevergeeks.com was the site I was setting up, I would name the file forevergeeks.com. edit the file and add the following text to it. change the information to fit yours..

# Place any notes or comments you have here
# It will make any customisation easier to understand in the weeks to come

# domain: forevergeeks.com
# public: /var/www/forevergeeks

<VirtualHost *:80>

# Admin email, Server Name (domain name) and any aliases
ServerAdmin nelson@forevergeeks.com
ServerName  forevergeeks.com
ServerAlias www.forevergeeks.com

# Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
DirectoryIndex index.php
DocumentRoot /var/www/forevergeeks

</VirtualHost>

save your file, and close the editor. my Sites-available directory looks like this:

step 2.

now open the  Apache2.conf file under /etc/apache2/ path, and at the very bottom add this lines:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
NameVirtualHost *:443
</IfModule>

save and close the file. now we are almost done.

step 3.

go to your Ubuntu terminal and type the following.

sudo a2ensite ( name of your website )

remember, the name of your site is the same as the file we created above.

apache will ask you to reload. so we must restart apache with this command:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

after that, your additional website should be live.

step 4.

test. test. test. to test your virtual host site, do the following. you probably already have a main website with a public IP address. for example, lets assume your main website is using 4.4.4.4 IP address, so when you enter that address on the browser it will resolve to your main website, now you want your newly added website domain to resolve to this IP address, but instead of going to your main site, it should go to your new website. well, this is already done, lets just test it actually works. I have a Windows 7 machine, and on Windows there is a hosts file on this path:

C:\windows\System32\drivers\etc

open the host file, and enter the IP address of your main website, and enter the domain name of your newly added website next to it. like this:

save the file, and open the browser and type the URL of your new site. it should resolve to your new hosting server.

pretty cool, uh.

1. Windows 7 Network Installation
2. Installing Ubuntu Server 10.10
3. Clonezilla Server Installation
4. Creating An Image Of A Hard Drive In Clonezilla

On post 4 we had Clonezilla Server ready to image the hard disks of a computer. we will take off from there on this post. boot the client computer and hit the F12 key on the keyboard right at the startup process. when the BIOS info show up. select to boot the computer from the network from the boot menu.

the computer should start booting using PXE:

then you should get to this menu. your image name you saved on the server should show up here now:

select that saved image, and Clonezilla should start cloning .

• Windows 7 Network Installation
• Installing Ubuntu Server 10.10

the first thing we need to configure on Ubuntu server is the two Ethernet cards required to successfully install Clonezilla. if you don’t have two physical Ethernet cards on your server, don’t worry, I don’t either. I will be using one physical card, and one virtual Ethernet port on my server. let’s begin.make sure your Ubuntu server is up and running then type the following command:sudo nano /etc/network/interfacesnow we need to change the Ethernet settings from DHCP to static. also we need to add the virtual Ethernet port we will need to successfully run Clonezilla. ( please notice that your network settings might be different than mine, so please adjust your settings accordingly)on your primary network interface change the settings from this iface eth0 inet DHCP to this iface eth0 inet static then add the following settings underneath:

address 192.168.1.5
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1

add the virtual Ethernet port right after the primary network interface information like this:

auto eth0:0
iface eth0:0 inet static
address 192.168.2.5
netmask 255.255.255.0

your entire file should look like this:

save the file and exit.

restart the network services in Ubuntu by typing the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

then type the ifconfig command and see if the new Ethernet settings show up in the network settings:

now let’s grab the keys for the Clonezilla repository. to do that, type the following two commands:

wget http://drbl.nchc.org.tw/GPG-KEY-DRBL

and

sudo apt-key add GPG-KEY-DRBL

now we need to add the Clonezilla repositories to the source list. to do that, type the following command:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

and right at the bottom of the file, add these two URLs:

deb http://free.nchc.org.tw/ubuntu maverick main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://free.nchc.org.tw/drbl-core drbl stable

save file and then exit.

now we need to update the list by issuing the following command:

sudo apt-get update

the source list should be now updated.

now let’s install the DRBL server on which Clonezilla server runs upon. to do that, type the following command:

sudo apt-get install drbl

DRBL and dependencies should be now install. now lets run the configuration wizard. type the following command:

sudo /opt/drbl/sbin/drblpush -i

Enter the domain name of your environment. if you don’t have one, enter anything :

Enter the NIS name. again if you don’t know what this is, or don’t have one, put whatever:

next you will be asked to enter the prefix you want for the hostnames you will be cloning. just hit the Enter key.

this next step is very important. you are asked which Ethernet you want to use for the public, and Clonezilla server. Choose Eth0 for public and Eth0:0 for the DRBL environment:

next the wizard will ask you if you if you want to collect the MAC addresses of the computers you will be cloning. choose NO

next you will be ask, if you want to assign the same IP address to clients. say NO

next choose the IP range you want to use for clients to connect. I’ll choose 10 . this basically will make DHCP on the DRBL start assigning IP addresses from 192.168.10 and so forth.

How many computer are you going to be connecting to this server? 12 works fine for me.

Say YES to the following question:

you will get the layout for your DRBL environment. press Enter.

choose 0 in the next question. we want the full mode.

choose 0 on the following question as well. full Clonezilla mode:

Choose the image location on the next option. this is where your computer images will be saved. I leave the default.

Say NO on the following question:

Choose 1 on the following question:

choose 0 on the following question:

choose NO on the following question:

Say NO on the following screen as well:

Say YES on the following question:

say NO to the next question:

Say NO to the following screen as well:

Say NO to the following question:

Say NO to the following question:

Next you will be asked if you want to use the Clonezilla server as a NAT server. say NO

press ENTER to continue:

and finally we are ready to deploy the files to the system. say YES

this post has gotten too big, so I will continue this tutorial in another post.

This post is a follow up on the previous post on how to install Windows 7 though the network I decided Clonezilla was my preferred method to install computer OSs through the network because is quick, free and simple. so on this post I will be installing Ubuntu Server 10.10 which will be our platform for Clonezilla server.

note: if you want to just clone a computer or a few computers look into the Clonezilla live option instead here http://clonezilla.org/ this tutorial is for system admins wanting to clone a lot of computers ( 40 or more  at once ) through the network.

OK. let’s begin.

nothing out of the ordinary about this Ubuntu installation, so no linux knowledge Ph.D required. to start, download the Ubuntu Server 10.10 ISO from this link http://www.ubuntu.com/server/get-ubuntu/download choose the bit version you would like to download. I use the 32-bit edition.

burn the ISO image to a CD. if you don’t have an ISO image burner software, look at this post on how to create an ISO image in case you don’t have a CD-ROM on your computer ( which is common these days ) burn the ISO image to a USB drive. here is an easy tutorial that guides you through the process on how to burn an Linux ISO image to a USB drive http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

Once you are ready with a bootable CD, or USB bootable drive, let’s boot from it. if your computer is not set to boot from the CD-ROM or USB drive, press the F12 key on your keyboard right at the restart process. the Ubuntu installation wizard should start.

choose your language:

on the following window choose  “Install Ubuntu Server” and hit enter.

choose language again. this is the language your server interface will be using:

On the following window, choose the country you are at.

On the next window, you will be asked if you want the keyboard settings to be detected automatically. choose No:

select your keyboard layout on the following window:

and again another window:

Ubuntu will start loading some components:

then it will ask you for the hostname. enter any hostname you want, just make sure the name is not being used by any other computer on the network.

choose your time zone.

next you will get prompted to partition your disk. choose the default. “guided – use entire disk and use LVM. LVM stands for Logical Volume Management.

on the next window, you will be shown the disks on your computer. press enter if you only  have one drive as me.

next you will be prompted to accept the agreement that all the data will be lost from the drive.. say yes. who cares.

next you will be asked if you want to use part of the disk, or your entire disk. I think if you have a big drive, then you should create a small logical drive for the system files, and then create a big drive to store the Clonezilla images. mine is only 16 GB so I will choose to use the entire drive.

on the next prompt you will be asked if you really want to write the changes:

Ubuntu will start formatting the drive:

and then start installing the base system:

after the base system is installed. you will be asked for your full name. this account is used instead of the default root account for non-administrative stuff :

on the next prompted, select a username:

then choose a password:

re-enter password:

next you will be asked if you want to encrypt the home directory.if this was a laptop, probably it would be a good idea to encrypt the files, but because it is a stationary server, let’s choose No:

Next you will be asked if you want to configure a proxy server for your Internet connection on the server. most likely the answer here will be No:

next you will be asked if you want to install updates for the server. choose not to install updates. we can do that later if we need to to:

on the next screen, choose the software you want to install as part of the installation. we don’t need any of the default software showing up on the screen to run Clonezilla, so let just choose to install the bare bone OS.

if you are not doing a dual-boot, then install grub-pc on the next screen:

and finally, the system installation is complete. remove the CD or USB drive off your computer.

notes: the root password ( big administrator password ) is the same as the password you entered above for the non-administrate tasks. also, don’t expect to find icons (GUI ) on Ubuntu server default installation. is all command line based.

there it is, command line is your friend now. on next post ( this is getting to big ) we will be installing Clonezilla server from head to toe.

‘till then now.

for 19.95 dollars a month I got an unmanaged VPS hosting plan at greengeeks.com.  VPS stands for Virtual Private Server, which basically is a VM with allocated memory and disk space. I got the lowest plan which comes with 384 MB of RAM, 10 GB disk space, and 250 GB of bandwidth.

for now that works quite well for me. if needed in the future I will upgrade memory to 512MB which will cost me around 6 dollars more a month. now forevergeeks.com has its own server, and its own IP address,and its fast as never before.

The only thing I miss from media temple is their simple control panel. I actually went from managing my website from one of the coolest control panel I’ve seen to this:

yupe, that’s the Linux shell, and from this command line I had to install PHP5, MySQL, and WordPress. I also installed the FTP server, and DNS. that was not so hard for me to do, but if you are not familiar with Linux I think you will be intimidated at first… but is not that hard once you get the idea of how linux works. anyways, what I needed was speed and less downtime with my hosting, not a nice control panel.

there it is, a long explanation why this blog was down most of the day yesterday, and why I have not posted anything since Friday.

thank you all.

Nelson.

From your CentOS desktop go to Terminal and type the following commands:

Install packages to build the kernel modules

“yum install gcc kernel-devel”

click on OK when it asks you if the total download size is OK

Check the running kernel matches the kernel headers

“uname -r   # running kernel”
“rpm -q kernel-devel # installed kernel headers”

Make sure the two kernel are the same:

if the two versions are not the same, type the following command:

“yum -y upgrade kernel kernel-develreboot”

Installing the VMware Tools

now from your VMware administrator console select your CentOS virtual machine, and click on the Install VMware tools:

now type the following command:

“mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/”

that will mount the CD-ROM.

Extract VMware Tools to /tmp/ using this command:

“tar -C /tmp -zxvf /mnt/VMwareTools-2.0.0-122956.tar.gz”  ( please note that the VMware tools version might be different for you because of newer version)

unmount the virtual CD Drive with the following command:

“umount /mnt”

Now run the installer using this command:

“cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib

the above command will get you to the “tmp/vmware-tools-distrib” directory, then execute the following command:

./vmware-install.pl”

because I had already installed the VMware tools, to practice for this tutorial, I get the message that VMware tools are already installed.

somewhere the installation will ask you the following question:

In which directory do you want to install the binary files?

type an absolute path when typing the answer like “/usr/bin/vmware”

type Y when it tells you ” the path”/usr/bin/vmware” does not exist currently. this program is going to create it. including needed parent directories. is this what you want?

this is part of the log of the installation I went through:

What is the directory that contains the init scripts? [/etc]
The file /etc/vmware-tools that this program was about to install already
exists. Overwrite? [yes] n

In which directory do you want to install the daemon files?
[/usr/bin/sbin] /usr/sbin

In which directory do you want to install the library files?
[/usr/bin/lib/vmware-tools] /usr/lib/vmware

The path “/usr/lib/vmware” does not exist currently. This program is going to
create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want?
[yes] y
In which directory do you want to install the documentation files?
[/usr/bin/doc/vmware-tools] /usr/share/doc/vmware

The path “/usr/share/doc/vmware” does not exist currently. This program is
going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want?
[yes] y

The installation of VMware Tools 2.0.0 build-122956 for Linux completed
successfully. You can decide to remove this software from your system at any
time by invoking the following command: “/usr/bin/vmware/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl”

at this point, I will need to reboot the computer.

For this installation I assume you already have a physical machine available, or a virtual machine. If you haven’t started using virtual machines, I recommend checking the links below on how to get started.

• http://forevergeeks.com/installing-vmware-server-20-on-windows-xp
• http://forevergeeks.com/creating-a-virtual-machine-on-vmware-server-20

If you are using a virtual machine, remember to boot the VM from the CentOS ISO image we will download below.

Getting the CentOS DVD ISO image

The DVD ISO image I downloaded is located at http://centos.secsup.org/5.2/isos/i386/CentOS-5.2-i386-bin-DVD.iso I recommend visiting http://www.centos.org/ website just in case there is a newer version of CentOS.

I must warn you that the download is 3.7 GB big, so you need  a good Internet speed connection, otherwise installing CentOS should be your resolution for next year, 2010!.

Installing CentOS

power up the virtual machine.

the CentOS installation screen should come up:

We want to install using the graphical mode, so just press ENTER on this screen.

next CentOS will ask you if you want to test the media CD before the installation. we are installing the OS from an ISO image, and if we press OK probably it will take awhile, so just Skip this option. ( press the SPACE bar to select )

at this point CentOS should launch the setup wizard. after awhile you should get to the following window:

I think we can safely click on Next on this window.

Choose your language on the following screen.

after choosing your language, just click Next.

next you need to choose your keyboard layout.

click Next, after choosing your keyboard layout.

clicking the Next button gives me the following warning about the  partition table being unreadable. this is normal, the partition is new, and needs to be initialized in order for CentOS to start using it.

click on the Yes button.

on the following screen CentOS wants a partition on the hard drive. and because I don’t have any partition on this drive that I’m using I will choose the default setting : Remove Linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout:

Click Yes on the following warning:

next we need to configure the network devices. I chose the network device to use when I setup the virtual machine, and for now, I will have DHCP to assign the TCP/IP settings automatically.

Click on Next after choosing your network settings.

next choose your language by clicking on the map region.

click on Next after selecting your language.

next choose your root password.

after entering your root password, click on Next.

next the installation wizard will ask what type software you want to include on the installation, check Desktop – Gnome and Server and nothing else. the extra stuff can be installed later on if you need them using the software management.

click on the Next button

next, you get the screen that will begin the installation.

as the screen indicates, a complete log of the installation can be found at root/install.log directory after the OS has been installed. the options we have selected can be found at “root/anaconda-ks-cfg”

click Next to start the installation.

after  rebooting CentOS,  the configuration wizard will come up.

click on Forward.

next the wizard will ask you what services to allow through the firewall. I guess we are not too concerned about web services or anything else that needs access to this system right now, if later on Asterisk needs any of these services, we will add it.

Choose the Firewall default settings, and click Next.

next, you will need to configure SElinux settings. if you are wondering what is SELinux, I did a quick research and this is what I found out at NASA website.

What is Security-enhanced Linux?

Security-enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a reference implementation of the Flask security architecture for flexible mandatory access control. It was created to demonstrate the value of flexible mandatory access controls and how such controls could be added to an operating system. The Flask architecture has been subsequently mainstreamed into Linux® and ported to several other systems, including the Solaris™ operating system, the FreeBSD® operating system, and the Darwin kernel, spawning a wide range of related work. The Flask architecture provides general support for the enforcement of many kinds of mandatory access control policies, including those based on the concepts of Type Enforcement®, Role-based Access Control, and Multi-level Security.

I will leave the default settings, and click Forward.

next, select your date and time.

you select a Network Time Protocol if you need to. otherwise just click on Forward.

on the next window you will need to create a user account for non-administrative stuff. is recommended, so I will created one.

Click Forward after you have created the user account.

next, the wizard will test your audio card.

after testing your audio settings, click on Forward.

on the following screen choose to install additional software by clicking on the install additional software option.

Otherwise just click Finish.

by now CentOS should be installed on the VMware machine.

On the next article we will be installing VMware tools to enhance our VMware visual settings and performance.