Ubuntu

Ubuntu NFS Target for Symantec BE 12.5

Clearly Symantec is NOT open source. The solution to a common data backup problem can be found with open source tools however.

Issue: Backup2Tape provided long backup windows and an unreliable media. Soloution must use open source tools and existing hardware.

Solution: Ubuntu 9.04 (64-bit) NFS share running on Dell 2950 with six Seagate 1.5TB SATA drives in RAID5 configuration. Windows Services for Unix installed on Windows 2003 Server with Symantec Backup Exec 12.5.

NOTE: This will not work without this Symantec command: (verified in BE 11d and 12.5)
bemcmd -o116 -v -f”Name of your backup to disk folder” -e0 -m1 -d\\NFS-Server-Name\export-name

While the backup2disk is running fine, backups of Exchange Storage Groups are currently failing. All other data writes to the NFS share with no errors. Research continues…

Visit Righteous Hack Blog for a complete recap of the project: http://www.righteoushack.net/?p=384

Virtualization Lab: Part 2 – Concepts and Terminology

Virtualization Lab: Part 2 – Concepts and Terminology

Welcome to part two of my Virtualization Lab series. If you haven’t read part one, I would recommend reading it first.

In this post I want to go over the concepts and terms that are used so frequently. Understanding the gist of virtualization will help lay a steady foundation upon which advanced topics seem more natural and intuitive.

Commonly used terms:
Host – This term is used to describe the operating system and physical computer that exists and runs virtual software/hardware.

Guest – This term is used when referring to a virtual computer or operating system which is running on a host system.

VM – a Virtual Machine is the same thing as a guest and is used much more frequently.

Hypervisor: A hypervisor is a lower level operating system that exists somewhere between the physical hardware and the VM’s. A hypervisor usually takes the place of your user system and is essentially a small highly optimized operating system for running virtual machines.

P2V: This acronym stands for Physical to Virtual. P2V conversions are great when they work and help convert current systems into a VM.

There are many other terms and acronyms out there, but these are the most common.

Where to start:
For the absolute beginner and most others, I recommend installing VirtualBox which can be downloaded here. Go ahead and get VirtualBox installed since we will be going over it in more detail in part three of this series. You will also need to download a .iso file for next weeks post. I will be installing Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope 32bit which can be downloaded from here.

–Himuraken

Ubuntu upgrade kills Dropbox

I have been a user of Dropbox for about six months now and think that it is a great service. I have it installed and running on five systems, all of which run Ubuntu.

When Jaunty Jackelope was released a week ago, I decided to upgrade all of my Ubuntu boxes. While the upgrade went flawlessly on all five systems, Dropbox died. I went out and downloaded the latest version of Dropbox which has Ubuntu 9.04 listed. Reinstalling the package did not resolve the issue. So I started playing at the command line and realized that this is really easy to fix. Here is the fixed that I came up with:

Open up a terminal and type in dropbox status and you should see a message like Dropbox isn’t running!. If you try and run dropbox start you will get another error indicating that The Dropbox daemon is not installed! and the resolution which is to start with the -i option.

So the actual command to install the daemon is dropbox start -i. Once I ran that, the daemon and Nautilus extension launched and updated immediately.

Few people are aware of the command line use of dropbox. Play around with the utility and see what I mean. The dropbox filestatus command is pretty neat. Just run it from within your Dropbox folder.

–Himuraken

Installing Skype for Linux on the Dell Mini 9

If you have tried installing the .deb package for Ubuntu from Skype you already know that you can’t because of errors relating to improper or wrong architecture. That is being caused by the way that Ubuntu sees the Intel Atom CPU. This is because Mini’s configuration is set to lpia not i386.

You can force the install from the command line. I have, and so far it is working great, including the built-in web cam. Download the current .deb from Skype and save it in your home directory. Open up a terminal window and run the following command: sudo dpkg -i –force-architecture skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb

*Please note that you must use two hyphens / dashes for the FORCE switch to work, WordPress does not show the command properly.

Obviously, you will need to substitute the package name for the version you downloaded. After running the command, you should be Skyping in no time.

–Himuraken

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex is a go!

As everyones knows, Ubuntu released the latest version of their operating system. I’m not here to tell you what the pros and cons are, I’m here to give you some upgrade results.

My main two machines are a Dell Latitude D630 and a home built MSI/AMD/Nvidia system. Prior to the upgrade to Intrepid Ibex, my laptop was running Hardy Heron (8.04 LTS) 32bit and my desktop machine was running Hardy Heron (8.04 LTS) 64bit. Most of my Ubuntu installations have been clean installs from scratch, so I decided to try upgrading this time around. I followed the instructions from Ubuntu on this page. I used the “Network Upgrade for Ubuntu Desktops” method which was listed as the recommend upgrade method. The laptop and desktop both required 1200+ packages to be downloaded. The download process did take quite a while, which I expected since today is the first day of the release. If you are performing a clean install or a CD-ROM based upgrade, I would recommend saving Ubuntu/mirrors bandwidth by downloading the ISO via Bit Torrent which can be found here.

I am happy to report that the upgrade completed on both systems without a single issue. Dell Latitude D630 users will be happy to know that everything just works. Reloading the laptop with the Dell provided Windows and drivers CD’s isn’t that simple.

–Himuraken