Home Server Goals</h1> <article> <h1>Home Server Goals</h1> <p>andunix — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:41:41 +0000</p> <p>As Constantin <a href="http://constantin.glez.de/content/seven-useful-zfs-home-server-tips">suggested</a>, here is a list of services, which my <a href="/project/home-server">home server</a> should provide:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Personal Video Recorder:</strong> I'm using the EyeTV Hard- and Software from <a href="http://www.elgato.com/">Elgato</a> to record, cut and archive TV broadcasts. </li><li><strong>Secure File Archive / Backup:</strong> I want my digital camera photos and other precious files to be stored at serveral places and to be protected with checksums. </li><li><strong>A/V Media Server:</strong> I want to store my MP3 files and the videos from the above PVR to be stored an be served to clients in the local LAN but not to the Internet. </li><li><strong>Web Hosting:</strong> I want to run web application at home. Usually, I'm hosting my webapps at Host Europe, but there are some apps which I can't or don't want to host there. This includes PHP and JEE applications with MySQL as database. </li><li><strong>LAN Gateway:</strong> I want to sercurely log into the LAN via SSH and transfer files from and to the server. </li><li>I had also a "<strong>OpenSolaris Sandbox</strong>" on this list, but I think that one is served bettes as a <a href="http://www.virtualbox.org/">VirtualBox</a> on my Laptop than on my home server. </li><li><strong>to be continued...:</strong> There will be more requirements in the future, like hosting my own Jabber server. </li></ul> <p>The server will continue to run Mac OS X and OpenSolaris, as the first goal on the above list requires Mac OS X and I haven't found an acceptable PVR solution for OpenSolaris yet. This is currently done using an Mac mini with Mac OS X and running an virtualized OpenSolaris on top of it. In the future, there may be two distinct servers due to some limitations of this constellation (e.g. having to stop the OpenSolaris server to install Mac OS X patches).</p> </article> <article> <h1>Hello Drupal</h1> <p>andunix — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Some time ago, I decided to migrate my blog from <a href='http://www.dokuwiki.org/' target='_blank'>DokuWiki</a> to <a href='http://drupal.org/' target='_blank'>Drupal</a>. Blogging with DokuWiki was OK using the plugins from the <a href='http://dokuwiki.foosel.org/blogsuite/index.php' target='_blank'>DokuWiki Blogsuite BundleHub</a>, but Drupal has some advantages.</p> <p>It's always fascinating to get into a new technology. After using misc. wiki systems and Wordpress, I wanted to try a content management system. I had a quick look into Drupal, Joomla and Silverstripe, and then decided to go with Drupal.</p> <p>One very interesting part of Drupal is the <a href='http://drupal.org/project/cck' target='_blank'>Content Construction Kit (CCK)</a>. This was also the main reason to choose Drupal. I've already set up my Projects a special content nodes and thinking about doing the same for tasks and bookmarks.</p> <p>The power of the CCK shows in the Blogroll channel in the sidebar. I set up a "Friend" content type and gave it attributes like blog URL and Twitter name. The <a href='http://drupal.org/project/views' target='_blank'>Views</a> module rendes the list of friends as a nice list in the sidebar. The credits for this solution go to <a href='http://constantin.glez.de/' target='_blank'>Constantin Gonzalez</a> which implemented this cool feature on his blog first.</p> </article> <article> <h1>ReLAX</h1> <p>andunix — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:36:00 +0000</p> <p>Thanks to <a href="http://www.synapseninferno.org/">Wolfgang Stief</a> and <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/constantin">Constantin Gonzalez</a>, I got hold on one of the proceedings of the <a href="http://www.linux-kongress.org/2009/">Linux Kongress</a> and <a href="http://www.osdevcon.org/2009/">OpenSolaris Developer Conference</a>.<br /> In this book, I found amoung other, also very interesting, articles one about <a href="http://lax.sourceforge.net/">LAX</a> by Thomas Groß.</p> <p>LAX has some very interesiting concepts, but, unfortunately, it doesn't fit my needs.<br /> So I decided to take some of the concepts of LAX and build my own sysadmin-automation-framework.</p> <p>In lack of a good project name, I named it "ReLAX".</p> <p>To get startet, here is a small comparison of the concepts of LAX and ReLAX:</p> <ul> <li>The most fascinating idea is the building of an API with shell-scripts. I adopted this from LAX.</li> <li>LAX uses an LDAP server to store the configuration. I decided to allow any server which can be read by ''curl'', ''wget'' or ''cat''. This allows http, https, ftp, ftps and file URLs.</li> </ul> <p>That's it for now, stay tuned...</p> <p>I started documenting the <a href="http://andunix.info/relax/api/">API</a>, so you might want to have a look there..</p> </article> <article> <h1>Found Geocache GC1VY11 "Ringpromenade"</h1> <p>andunix — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:36:00 +0000</p> <p>Yesterday, I visited my first <a href="http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=a04f5c71-9796-42a8-8b9a-1838e0130278">geocache</a>.<br /> For those interested, here is evidence:</p> <p></p> </article> <article> <h1>ZFS Playground</h1> <p>andunix — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:06:00 +0000</p> <p>This small demo shows the basic ZFS operations.<br /> You will need a Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris host and 1,2GB of disk space.</p> <h2>Preparation</h2> <p>First, go to a directory where you have enought space.<br /> We will need 1,2GB for 6 files of 200MB.<br /> The files are named like disks, but they are only files for this demo.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">cd /var/tmp mkfile 200m c0d0 c0d1 c0d2 c1d0 c1d1 c1d2</pre></div></p> <h2>Create Pool</h2> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool create demo /var/tmp/c0d0 zpool status</pre></div></p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;"> pool: demo state: ONLINE scrub: none requested config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM demo ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 errors: No known data errors</pre></div></p> <p>I will omit the <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">errors: No known data errors</code></span> in all following outputs.<br /> Also, the <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">rpool</code></span> is also omitted.</p> <h2>Attach a second disk</h2> <p>This will attach a second disk to the existing, creating a mirror.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool attach demo /var/tmp/c0d0 /var/tmp/c0d1 zpool status</pre></div></p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;"> pool: demo state: ONLINE scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Tue Aug 11 15:45:59 2009 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM demo ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d1 ONLINE 0 0 0 73K resilvered</pre></div></p> <p>Note that the <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">zpool status</code></span> output now shows a mirror over two files.</p> <p>Also note the <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">resilver completed</code></span> message.<br /> This tells you that the mirror is synchronized.</p> <h2>Replace a disk</h2> <p>In this example, I made the mistake of mirroring c0d0 to c0d1.<br /> I wanted to mirror c0d0 to c1d0, simulating mirroring two disks on different controllers.<br /> So, let's replace c0d1 with c1d0.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool replace demo /var/tmp/c0d1 /var/tmp/c1d0 zpool status</pre></div></p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;"> pool: demo state: ONLINE scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Tue Aug 11 15:52:24 2009 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM demo ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 83,5K resilvered</pre></div></p> <p>Note that the new "disk" c1d0 also had to be resilvered.</p> <h2>Expand the Pool by adding another disk</h2> <p>Now we add the "disk" c0d1 to the stripe, expanding the capacity of the pool.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool add demo /var/tmp/c0d1</pre></div></p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">invalid vdev specification use '-f' to override the following errors: mismatched replication level: pool uses mirror and new vdev is file</pre></div></p> <p>You have to force adding a vdev with a different redundancy.<br /> It's recommendend to have the same type of redundancy (none, mirror or raidz) for all vdevs in a pool.<br /> For this demo, we will ignore this recommendation.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool add -f demo /var/tmp/c0d1 zpool status</pre></div></p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;"> pool: demo state: ONLINE scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Tue Aug 11 15:52:24 2009 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM demo ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 83,5K resilvered /var/tmp/c0d1 ONLINE 0 0 0</pre></div></p> <p>You see that the pool <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">demo</code></span> consists of a mirror (c0d0 and c1d0) and a single file c1d0.</p> <h2>Mirror the second disk</h2> <p>We now attach a mirror to the second "disk", which will bring us back to what we should have done in the step before.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool attach demo /var/tmp/c0d1 /var/tmp/c1d1 zpool status</pre></div></p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;"> pool: demo state: ONLINE scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Tue Aug 11 15:57:30 2009 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM demo ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d1 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d1 ONLINE 0 0 0 18,5K resilvered</pre></div></p> <p>The new disk also had to be resilvered.</p> <h2>Add a third Mirror to the Pool</h2> <p>This time, we will add two mirrored "disk" right away in one step.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool add demo mirror /var/tmp/c0d2 /var/tmp/c1d2 zpool status</pre></div></p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;"> pool: demo state: ONLINE scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Tue Aug 11 15:57:30 2009 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM demo ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d1 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d1 ONLINE 0 0 0 18,5K resilvered mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d2 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d2 ONLINE 0 0 0</pre></div></p> <h2>Scrub the Pool</h2> <p>It's a good practice to run a scrub from time to time.<br /> The scrub will read all blocks of the pool and check the checksums.<br /> Any errors will be reported an corrected (if there is enough redundancy).</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool scrub demo zpool status</pre></div></p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;"> pool: demo state: ONLINE scrub: scrub completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Tue Aug 11 16:00:19 2009 config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM demo ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d1 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d1 ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c0d2 ONLINE 0 0 0 /var/tmp/c1d2 ONLINE 0 0 0</pre></div></p> <p>In this case, the scrub didn't find any errors, so nothig needed to be repaired.</p> <h2>Clean Up</h2> <p>For now, we are finished.<br /> We destroy the pool and remove the files.<br /> Note that <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">zpool status</code></span> doesn't show the pool any more.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec zpool destroy demo zpool status rm c[01]d[012]</pre></div></p> <p><em>to be continued...</em></p> </article> <article> <h1>OpenSolaris / VirtualBox: Mount Shared Folder</h1> <p>andunix — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:16:00 +0000</p> <p>To mount a shared folder in a OpenSolaris guest in VirtualBox, you have to install the Guest Additions and then mount the file system type <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">vboxfs</code></span>. The Usage is:</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">mount -F vboxfs <share> <mountpoint></pre></div></p> <p>If you want to share the filesystem <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">/share</code></span> from the host to the guest, then first create the share. Go to “Shared Folders” in the Virtual Machine's Settings and click the little folder with the green plus on the right. </p> <p>Then select the folder to share (<span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">/share</code></span> in the example) and enter a name for the share (<span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">share</code></span> here).</p> <p></p> <p>As a result, you will see the folder in the settings:</p> <p></p> <p>Now boot the OpenSolaris, log in and open a Terminal.<br /> I assume that you are using the user creates during boot which has the "System Adminitrator" profile.<br /> The commands will be executed with the rights given by this profile, so they need to be executes with <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">pfexec</code></span>.</p> <p>First, create the mountpoint if it doesn't exist.<br /> You will have to do this only once.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec mkdir /share</pre></div></p> <p>Now, mount the share.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">pfexec mount -F vboxfs share /share</pre></div></p> <p>If you want to have the filesystem mounted on every boot, then add this to the file <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">/etc/vfstab</code></span>.<br /> You can do this by executing <span class="geshifilter"><code class="text geshifilter-text">pfexec vi /etc/vfstab</code></span>.</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">share - /share vboxfs - yes -</pre></div></p> </article> <article> <h1>Virtual Network Visualization</h1> <p>andunix — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:52:00 +0000</p> OpenSolaris supports virtual networks using virtual interfaces connected with virtual switches. This feature was introduced with <a href="http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/crossbow/">Project Crossbow</a> in OpenSolaris 2009.06. To visualize the internal network(s), I created a perl script which takes the output of dladm show-link and generates a dot-File, which then can be rendered using <a href="http://www.graphviz.org/">Graphviz</a>. Update: The dladm2dot.pl script now also shows the non-global zones of the interfaces. <a href="http://andunix.info/solaris/dladm2dot">→ Read more...</a> </article> <article> <h1>Mac: Command Line Audio</h1> <p>andunix — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:17:00 +0000</p> <h2>Change Mac Audio Volume from Command Line</h2> <p>To change the audio volume from remote of my Mac at home, I needed a command line tool which I can use via ssh. I've found it here: <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2007/04/28/change-the-system-volume-from-the-command-line/">OS X Daily - Change the system volume from the command line</a>. It's as easy as</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">sudo osascript -e "set Volume 10"</pre></div></p> <p>You can enter numbers from 0 (mute) to 10 (maximum).</p> <h2>Play Audio File</h2> <p>How to play an audio file from command line is described here: <a href="http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20081002080543392">macosxhints - Use a built-in command line audio player</a>. You just enter</p> <p><div class="geshifilter"><pre class="text geshifilter-text" style="font-family:monospace;">afplay file.wav</pre></div></p> <p>More information on how to use afplay is available via afplay -h.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Project Idea: WikiTable</h1> <p>andunix — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:30:00 +0000</p> <p>I'm using wikis a lot but every wiki I tried so far lacks support for tables. The wikis are able to show tables, but building a table using lots of pipes “|” sucks. What I want to develop (or learn that such a this already exists) is a small application which creates tables which then can be included in wiki pages.</p> <p>The first step could be a small standalone application which manages the tables. The tables should also be available as a HTML-snippet (just the table, html- dory body-tags). This snippet can be included by most wikis.</p> <p>In a second step, the application could be transformed to a plugin for wiki systems. This enable users to manage the tables in the wiki and not to use a separate application. The biggest benefit would be to use the authorisation and wiki syntax in the table.</p> <p>The code should be small and simple so that it can easily ported to different languages.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Kenai Project</h1> <p>andunix — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:06:00 +0000</p> <p>I just created a project on <a href="http://kenai.com/">kenai.com</a> to share my Java Code and another project which invites all Travian tool developers to participate.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://kenai.com/projects/andunix">andunix Java Library</a></li> <li><a href="http://kenai.com/projects/travian">Travian Tool Coders</a></li> </ul> </article> </main></body></html>