It will be running a variety of applications including:

• Mandriva Linux 2010.0
• Web Serving: Nginx, Apache 2.2, PHP 5.3
• Mail: Postfix, Dovecot, RoundCube
• DNS: PowerDNS, Bind
• Database: MySQL
• Virtual Hosting: VirtualBox

Server Specifications:

• Intel SR1530HSH with S3200SHVL Motherboard. 320w PSU, 3x Hot Swap SATA HDD, 2x Gb Nic
• Intel Q9550 Processor – 4x 2.83ghz, 12mb cache, e0 stepping
• Intel Q9400 Processor – 4x 2.66ghz, 6mb cache, r0 stepping
• 4x 2gb (8gb total) Kingston DDR2 800Mhz Ram
• 2x 1Tb Seagate Hard Drives (in RAID 1)

Update: Unfortunately, the E0 stepping Q9550 is not supported for the bios of the s3200 motherboard, so I’ve had to switch down to the Q9400 with only 6mb cache .

Photos:

Intel SR1530HSH 1U Server - Front

Intel SR1530HSH 1U Server - Rear

Intel SR1530HSH 1U Server - Top

Intel SR1530HSH 1U Server - Inside

On apache, this can occur when your wordpress directory does not have write permissions for the apache user. But I’d already checked that. So I got thinking…

Since nginx and php fastcgi are separate processes I checked the users they were running under – lo and behold the php-fcgi was running under root!!! Big oops! Solution: change php-fcgi to run as user nginx & group nginx (same as the nginx server under Mandriva). As I currently use the spawn-fcgi program I changed by init.d file to use the user and group options as shown below.

/usr/local/bin/spawn-fcgi -u nginx -g nginx

All fixed

At some stage I’ll post my init.d file for php-fcgi and my nginx configuration files once they become somewhat stable.

First thoughts? Nginx is super fast, reasonably easy to configure (once you figure out the php issues) and saves a heap on memory. Downside? I’ve had the odd niggle with moving old sites across – especially since I’m moving to php 5.3 and MySQL 5.1 at the same time, otherwise all good.

The other major change is the look of this blog. The old K2 theme was becoming an issue to deal with (mainly because I didn’t update it enough) so I’ve now moved to this lovely theme: inove. I’ve also done a fresh wordpress install of 2.8.4 and added pretty links – so anyone linking to the old structure might have the odd issue, but otherwise should be painless. Oh yeah – any images on the older posts (pre Aug 2009) are gone.

Anyway here is a list of upgrades currently underway:

• php 5.2.x to 5.3.0
• mysql 5.0 to mysql-max 5.1
• apache 2.2/mod_php to nginx 0.8.10/php-fcgi
• athlon64 2ghz 1gb ram to athlon64 X2 2ghz 2gb ram
• mandriva 2008.x/2009.x to 2010.0 (Cooker)
• wordpress 2.x.x to 2.8.4
• mediawiki 1.x to 1.15.1
• bind 9 to powerdns 2.9.22
• and a few more that i’ve forgotten about

If you’re like me and hate the things with a vengeance, you can get rid of every single one of them using the linux command line below.

updatedb;for i in `locate Thumbs.db|sed 's/ /\__/g'`;do rm -vf "`echo $i | sed 's/__/\\ /g'`";done;

Update 21 Oct 2009: added for loop with sed commands to safety handle spaces, round brackets and single quotes etc. in the file path

I’ve been wanting to do this for years and has actually been the major stopper in Mandriva becoming my primary OS on my desktop (besides my laptop(s), wifes laptop, friends laptops, and all my servers). I always figured I could dual-boot for LAN parties.

Anyway… I did it like this.

Step 1. Install Mandriva 2009.1 Spring Powerpack (64bit)

Step 2. Setup online repositories including PLF mirrors

Step 3. Install dvb-apps and most other dvb utils (run `urpmq dvb- -a` to see them)

Step 4. Install mplayer, smplayer and usual auto installed plf codecs

Step 5. (as per v4l mailing list) Download ‘extract_xc3028.pl’ script, and drivers

Step 6. Extract driver and copied it to `/lib/firmware` (do not use Chris Pascoe’s firmware as it is not req’d – and not working)

Step 7. (following instructions from the ubuntu forums) Run `scandvb /usr/share/dvb-apps/scan/dvb-t/au-Melbourne > channels.conf`

Step 8.  Run `sudo cp channels.conf /etc && cp channels.conf ~/.tzap`

Step 9. Test Setup – run `mplayer dvb://”ABC2″`

Step 10. Due to all Australian HDTV channels using AC3 onlyfor sound we need to set the PIDS correctly for the audio as AC3 is by default 0. If you don’t you won’t get any sound on any of the HD channels.

Step 11. For each channel (ABC, 7, 9, 10 and SBS) run `tzap -c /etc/channels.conf -r “ABC1″` <- replacing “ABC1″ with the channel name. Then in a new console run scandvb -c and save the contents.

Step 12. Convert the AC3 values from hex to decimal. (Hint google: convert ….. to decimal)

Step 13. Edit /etc/channels.conf and add the decimal AC3 values in the file. Replace the zero in …:0:… with the AC3 value.

Step 14. Enjoy.

Ahhh

Mandriva Linux 2008.0 is out and going strong. Keeping that in mind, I have now updated this server to run 2008.0 with very few problems (via urpmi –auto-select). This is a first for me with any Mandriva server. Well done guys!

I’ve also installed the Powerpack on my Toshiba Satellite 2410 laptop with no real issues, but with great new fonts and features (like automount ntfs-3g) all around.

For the last month (and a bit) I’ve been running Mandriva 2007.1 Spring PowerPack on my Toshiba Satellite 2410. To avoid people having to skip to the conclusion, I’m sticking with Mandriva Linux Spring on my laptop permanently!

In the past I’ve only run WinXP as my primary operating system on this laptop (feel free to flame away), and either dual booted to Mandriva, or run a MandrivaOne disc. However, due to certain apps and features not working correctly or stably previously, I haven’t permanently converted. These apps/features include:

• Hibernate to RAM
• Hibernate to Disk
• NTFS-3G on FUSE (writing to NTFS)
• Power Management and CPU Scaling
• OpenOffice 2 (matching my desktop + OpenDocumentFormat etc.)
• Easy wireless management
• Proprietary nVidia driver
• MS fonts

Laptop Specs:

• Toshiba Satellite 2410
• Intel P4-M 1.7GHz
• 784MB DDR RAM
• nVidia 32MB GeForce4 420Go (not 16mb as per my previous reviews)
• D-Link DWL-G680 Wireless 802.11b/g (Turbo and XR) [Atheros PC-Card]

Installation & Configuration

I did a fresh install from the PowerPack DVD with only one unexpected problem. When installing the grub bootloader, it would hang. Using Ctrl+ALt+F1, killing the grub install via console, returning to the installer (Ctrl+Alt+F7) and clicking “retry” fixed the problem and it installed the bootloader fine the second time. Not sure why it happens but it did occur with the previous Mandriva Linux with grub but not with lilo. However grub is now the default for Spring. 1st problem solved.

As I knew that my Toshiba Laptop screen can be funny with the proprietary nVidia driver, I picked the free driver during install. First boot worked great. I particularly liked the new KDE splash screen (image to come). I noticed that both my wireless card and the power management was installed correctly (along with beagle which I removed) and were very easy to configure. The new wireless (or at least updated) system works great.

After configuring the power management I tried out the Hibernate to RAM and disk functions. Hibernate to RAM works well, and even disables and enable my wireless properly. 1st time I ran Hibernate to Disk it worked great, however ever since then it instantly starts up again. I’ll have to work out a fix for that in future.

As Spring comes with Firefox 2 (which I prefer) and OpenOffice2, I didn’t need to worry about upgrading. I don’t really like the Mandriva Firefox theme, so if you change to EVG theme then back to default and restart Firefox you will have the normal theme again.

As usual my laptop has a problem running the proprietary nVidia drivers due to the screen blanking. After scouring the web, nVidia forums and with great help from the Mandriva bugzilla team I found that this thing is common for this range of Toshiba laptops. Thankfully this has been resolved before. It involves setting up a special binary file, but if you need more info check out my bugzilla listing.

Proprietary drivers up and running, I tried out metisse, compiz and beryl on the laptop. Metisse worked great but I’m not sure I’ll need it for my workloads. Compiz and beryl looked great, but really my itty bitty p4-m 1.7 and a 3mb graphics card don’t really cut it. I only saw one problem with compiz/beryl, where the background will go black whilst the current window shows normally. Either resizing the window or flipping to the console and returning seems to fix it temporarily, but I don’t think I’ll try to fix this due to my laptop speed.

As usual I setup my update repositories via easyUrpmi, however I have now moved to using the distrib-coffee mirror as my default.

There is a great setup guide for Mandriva 2007.1 Spring for free users at HowToForge but there are some tips for PowerPack users too. From the tips on page 7, I installed the MS truetype fonts, and hey presto! stuff looks the same as on a windows box. Make sure you add your update repositories before installing the fonts as there are a few prerequisites.

Installed the ntfs-3g package with success, and managed to mount my NTFS formatted external hard drive with no problems. I can’t wait for someone to integrate this with the KDE automount system *hint hint*

Extra Features

Some nice features have been added for this release. Namely very tight virtualisation with Xen, qemu, VirtualBox and VMware Player. I’m yet to have time to play around with these to much yet. The other feature I love was the install script for Google Earth on the menu. Worked great with no messing about. Just one question. Why does the install script stay in the menu after the program has been installed?

Gone Missing

Last time around Mandriva added LinDVD, a proprietary DVD pack from the same guys that make WinDVD. However it isn’t there now. I shall be going back to my old disks to install it, but what about everyone else? Desktop linux users should be able to legally play dvds.

A month on…

After using this as my primary OS (well only OS) on my laptop, I’m happy to keep it this way. Great stability, great apps and excellent configuration with only minor hiccups. I may still try and fix Hibernate to Disk, but it isn’t high on my priority list. Mandriva seems to be heading in the right direction with this release, despite some internal reorganisation. A couple of great releases on the trot, let’s hope they we can make it three.

Creating interest in linux

As a side note I love playing SuperTux and the odd Frozen Bubble. When sitting I’m around at Uni, taking a few moments to relax, I usually whip out SuperTux. It seems this is quite popular and I usually get a small crowd watching over my shoulder, with the odd call out of “can I get that?”. Maybe we should all play a game in public to promote linux!

I’ve finally finished stage one of my Cyprix Mail Server Howto!

The howto is a very much step-by-step method of setting up a virtual domain, virtual user mail server using:

• Postfix
• MySQL
• Courier-IMAP (and POP3)
• RoundCube Webmail (PHP/AJAX)

Currently the howto is based on Mandriva Linux, however with minor changes it can be applied to most Linux/Unix based distributions.

As I mentioned before this system uses virtual domains and users (and aliases) in a MySQL database. Hence it is highly expandable, and can host as many users and different domain names as you wish (well as much as your hardware will allow).

For those who peruse the Mandriva Club Forums, you will have seen this howto appear before, however it has now been updated & tested to work with Mandriva Linux 2007. (see my release candidate review here)

I’m looking for others to increase the scope and functionality of the howto so feel free to register on the wiki and translate the document or add other modules such as spamassasin, clamav etc.

The whole basis of this system is to be highly flexible, and as such I am developing an AJAX/PHP web application for managing this setup. Simply enough it’s called CyprixMail.

If anyone is interested in helping with development of CyprixMail, comment here or send an email to cyprixmail[at]cyprix[dot]com[dot]au. Hopefully the first alpha release will be open to the public soonish. License will be GPLv2.

Mandriva One is the Live Linux cd for Mandriva. And just for fun we’re testing the release candidate 2 “Sunna” as this should be pretty close to the real thing.

As I’m a KDE user, we are using the KDE3 disc which does include proprietory drivers & software.

Mandriva 2007 rc2 “Sunna”

Right now you have a choice of 1 DVD(dual arch, ie. i586 & x86_64), 2 x 3 CDs(one for each arch) & 14 One CDs.

Key Packages:

• kernel 2.6.17
• kde 3.5.4
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5
• OpenOffice.org 2.0.3
• 3D desktop with compiz (XGL & AIGLX)
• new la-ora theme

For this review, I’ll be using both the “live” and the install from live features.
Test System:

• Athlon 1.2gHz Thunderbird
• 512mb SDram
• ATI Radeon 9550 (AGP)
• AC/97 inbuilt sound
• D-Link DWL-G520 802.11b/g (SuperG) Wireless

Now, for a bit of background. I’ve been a user of Mandriva (Mandrake) back since 9.2, however I’ve as yet not been able to make the permanent switch from WinXP to linux on the desktop. On my servers however is a different story as they have only ever run Mandriva(Mandrake) Linux.

2007 looks very promising on the specs – especially with the much hyped XGL/AIGLX + Compiz 3D desktop and a new network configuration tool. This may just be what I require to do the big move.

Live

First impressions were a bit up & down. The new theme (although bright) for the One discs looks great, even before getting into KDE, however the configuration windows at startup, although very easy to use, were very difficult to read on my 19″ LCD. Something was not right.

As I continued into KDE (again enjoying the new look!) the font readability was shocking, and left me thinking… is this the font anti-aliasing issue from beta2,3&rc1? A quick check on display setting shows a resolution of 1024×768. Hmm.. let’s see. Changing the setting is very easy through the Mandriva Control Center. I set the resolution to 1280×1024, exit session, start session, and …. voila! Excellent! Woohoo! For the first time as a linux desktop user I could say it looks stunning. The new la-ora theme is the best I’ve ever seen.

Test 1: 3D Desktop (XGL/AIGLX + Compiz)

Now normally with desktop linux, everyone (including me), jumps into checking the hardware detection, but as everything was seemingly running stable (more on that later) I thought I’d check out what the hype was all about, whilst hoping that my meager system could handle it.

During startup you are given the option of “No 3d desktop” or “XGL” (in this case). Actually when it is unable to run on your hardware it says “3D desktop not avaliable” and “AIGLX” for non-ati/nvidia video cards or something similar.

Compiz Shortcuts:

• Mouse to top-right corner – Expose-like view all windows on viewport (current desktop) and select required window
• alt+tab – Switch between windows on current viewport
• ctrl+alt+tab – Switch between windows on ALL viewports
• ctrl+alt+down arrow, then left & right arrows – Slideshow of Viewports
• ctrl+alt+left/right arrow – Switch to viewport on left/right
• ctrl+alt+drag mouse – Move around all viewports ie. 3D cube view
• shift+F9 – press once to start & again to stop – ripple (like rain on a lake)
• shift+F10 – press once to start & again to stop – slow motion [update]

I reckon that I probably spent 20min+ just playing around, watching windows wobble, rain falling on my desktop, easily switching between windows. -sigh- . Can this get any easier to use? I’m at a loss to think so. My old system runs this quite well under XGL, which was a suprise. No way I could use Vista on this box for anything like this, heck these effects beat anything I’ve seen before on any OS (yes even Mac OS X).

Click on the above thumbnails/links for full 1280×1024 view.

Results: Amazing Success

Test 2: Hardware detection & configuration

Looking through the list of configured hardware there was only 2 exceptions of incorrectly configured hardware.

1. Initial resolution not configured correctly (however driver detected correctly) – simple fix by changing resolution
2. Wireless card unable to be used. It was detected correctly, however I was not able to configure it to be used. I will follow this up later with the install.

All and all very well done for configuration and overall usability.

Live Install

This is one of the best features about the Mandriva One CDs in that you can also do an install of Mandriva Linux straight from the live desktop. A bonus of this process is that all the setting that you changed during live running (ie. screen resolution) are saved as part of the install, as a result less configuring is required post-install.

The installation process is pretty much a no-brainer on Mandriva, and the One discs are no exception.

Once installed & restarted there are some configuration wizards to go through. And tada..! Network Configuration. This is a big update in the Mandriva Linux system and is now even easier to use. Choosing “Wireless” and entering my encryption key, all is done and connected. Wow! This is the easiest wireless configuration I’ve ever done for linux any OS. My atheros based card is run using the new madwifi drivers, which will (in future) allow me to use the SuperG capabilities of my card.

Once complete, all is running stable and fine.

Results: Amazing Success, take 2!

Conclusions

This has to be the best live cd that I’ve used, let alone the best linux desktop. The new features like 3D desktop are stunning and hopefully will increase productivity (once I’ve gotten over the excitement of it all) and the new look la-ora theme will keep me happy for a long time yet. Keeping in mind that this is the rc2 and not the final, I’d wager that the 2007 Mandriva Linux releases will be the best ever and from here I will most likely increase my use of Linux as my primary desktop.
Side note: Normally I’ve used a dual-monitor setup under WinXP for my development, however with the 3D desktop, I may no longer require the second monitor, due to the ease of use. We’ll only know over time.

Update

Just for a thought, I tested the same disc on my Toshiba Satellite 2410 and there was no problem with incorrect resolutions, however a 32mb 16mb nVidia card just doesn’t hack it, so no 3D desktop, but still immense fun to play and use.

Update 2

For those who ask, the laptop specs are:

• Pentium 4-m 1.7ghz
• 768mb DDR Ram
• nVidia Geforce4 420 Go 16mb
• D-Link DWL-G680b/g (SuperG) Wireless

Update 3

There are many .iso’s avaliable as I mentioned above, but if you’re interested in the exact .iso I used (english, french langs) then go to: ftp://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/Mandriva/devel/iso/2007.0/One/mandriva-one-2007-sunna-kde3.iso

Else check out the cooker mirrors on http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/CookerMirrors