Michael Wheeler

IMG_3339 – TheSkorm

Just getting a quick post in before the end of the month. As you may notice by the picture, a hard drive in my server failed. Luckily this was a backup drive in a LVM which actually wasn’t being used, so there was no data loss. As you can see the damage to the drive is quite large (the most I’ve ever seen in pulling a drive apart). LVM wasn’t too nice to me though. I was quite disappointed that LVM failed to notify me of the drive failure, and/or recognise that there was a problem and mount things in read only, instead LVM continued on it’s merry way, until I found the source of the “clicking” noise in the computer room. Once I worked out which drive it was I had to remove the inode and get LVM to remove it and carry on.

From this, I think there needs to be some improvements for LVM. LVM should have some sort of error detection on drives and send out alert emails. LVM should also do data redundancy. I know LVM isn’t designed to do either, but it seems logical. I want something like a Drobo, but for free running on Linux or FreeBSD. Something where the hard drives can be what ever size they want with redundancy with error reporting. This is just a dream….

I’m also getting into my Uni work, starting two courses, Foundations of Business Computing and Data Communications. Both seem fairly boring so far but I’ll see how it goes.

Openfiler – TheSkorm

So I’ve wanted to setup a file server for home to backup two laptops, and a desktop machine and to store data like Music and Movies (Mum has the whole Stargate collection now on DVD and I’m thinking of ripping them for a backup copy). Previous servers I’ve made or setup have been loud, noisy and chew lots of power. This server is actually a Dell Optiplex that was on death row (ready to be sent to the dump) that I was able to rescue.

Hardware wise it’s just a 1.8ghz, 512mb of RAM, gigabit network card and 20GB hard drive. I’ve added a 40GB hard drive and a 320 GB hard drive for the moment to play with.

It’s quite a nice and quite server and I have ordered a 1TB hard drive and SATA card for the server, from Jack, which will provide me with a decent amount of storage.

Software wise I’ve been trailing Openfiler for the server which is an amazing file server bundle that runs on rPath linux. It uses all the new linux hard drive stuff, like LVM and software RAIDs, and has HTTP, NFS, RSYNC, FTP and SMB support for protocols, which is really nice.

The interface for openfiler is just awesome. You can easily add new partitions, and take snapshots of drive. You can manage all the access rights and everything from the web interface. It’s really really nice.

It still needs a bit of work, I had to hit the terminal a few times to fix some bugs, add new users and resize some partitions. The instructions for install are a littler unclear, like when your partitioning, I don’t think you are ment to partition the parts you want to share.

I don’t like the fact it runs on rPath linux and the way it’s made only for rPath, as this means that you have to have a dedicated server for files and nothing else. Most of the time my file server will be idle so I may aswell make it do something else.

It’d be really nice if it was just a package like software, like a gentoo ebuild or a deb package. That aside it’s really nice software and worth a look at.

As for backup software for Windows Vista, it really does suck. The Vista backup tool tries to backup your whole drive, which I don’t want it to do, and it doesn’t back up everything, just documents and the like, which is really annoying. On the other Vista machine I’ve used SyncToy from MS which is a nice piece of software, and so far it has been working well.

I’ll trial these and report back at the end of the testing period.

Screenshot-7 – TheSkorm

Last week I have been messing around with Ekiga 2.8 (or something) calling and video calling people. It was loads of fun and it ran well. The interface however was lacking awesomeness for its day and I was really surprised to see a wicked looking GUI on the Ekiga website. This is where my adventure began.

I first tried the released beta, and after figuring out how to compile (which was clearly stated on the wiki, however the documentation included within the package said the opposite) i attempted to compile, which failed, I then tried the latest snapshots which also failed. I ended up getting a combination of the 15th and 17th snapshots compiled, however it would segfault straight away. I also found out the hard way that there configuration scripts are dumb, and all previous signs of old libraries must be burnt in a fire and that make clean doesn’t actually work.

I then got some other snapshots to compile, although video support would not work, and it was only today when they released the 3.0.1 beta was I able to get video support working.

I’ve included a screenshot of me talking to Hamzah, although his Cam wasn’t included in the screenshot due SDL (from what I gather). Ekiga 3.0.1 seems more stable and nice to use, and feels more skypey. It also ties into libnotify or libsexy (I can’t remember which is which) and does a good job when people are calling you.

Really really nice, and for all you’s wondering my sip is sip:TheSkorm@ekiga.net . ekiga.net provides the best steaks in town, erm, I mean they provide the best STUN service around.