Build your own server: Part 2

Still does not work. I can access it but no one else can.

Shane

Are you sure the username/password they are using is correct? What errors does it give?

Hiya,
Cheers for the awesome articles! I was trying to set up windows home server before i found your first article, now i am converted!

I have a couple of questions, sorry if they are noob questions but i have tried googling but to little avail...

I have a film collection that spans 2 drives on the server and was wondering if there was a way to bind them both to the same directory at the same time when i share them, rather than having film a-l, film l-z as i do currently.

I read the blurb on the myth tv site but couldn't work out if it could stream the tv feed to other computers (don't have an arial upstairs but do have a lappy that i can stream to)

And do you have any experience getting mono installed alongside php on apache or know where i might find any good information on it?

Thanks for any help! The articles are great, thank you for the time and effort it must have taken to write them :)
Rob

Originally Posted by 3xca1ibur69
I have a film collection that spans 2 drives on the server and was wondering if there was a way to bind them both to the same directory at the same time when i share them, rather than having film a-l, film l-z as i do currently.

From what I make of your post, you have 2 drives which you want to become 1. Linux has an utility for it called LVM. Install "lvm2" and you can make the drives apear as 1 volume. However, you'll probably lose the data when you 'merge' the volumes. So , I'd move them somewhere safe first ;)

A great howto

Originally Posted by 3xca1ibur69
I read the blurb on the myth tv site but couldn't work out if it could stream the tv feed to other computers (don't have an arial upstairs but do have a lappy that i can stream to)

IIRC MythTV can stream to other pc's, so that won't be much of a problem.

Originally Posted by 3xca1ibur69
And do you have any experience getting mono installed alongside php on apache or know where i might find any good information on it?

Mod-mono to make apache2 parse ASP files? There are quite some limitations. But the setup isn't that hard. Install the library (libapache2-mod-mono) and add it to the apache2 config file.

A howto

Thanks very much i will give that a shot over the weekend then =)
You say mono has quite some limitations, are there any other ways to emulate the .net environment on a linux box? I do quite a bit of c#, .net aspx dev and would love to be able to test things quickly on the home server.
It is quite a powerful server (am2 4600+ chip, 2Gb ram)

Cheers
Rob

Yeah, Mod-mono doesn't support all the compilers IIRC, and there seem to be differences between mod-mono and .NET.

I can't seem to find the list I had about it, but theMod-mono FAQ might be a good read.

Originally Posted by Glider
IIRC MythTV can stream to other pc's, so that won't be much of a problem.

Yup - MythTV is fully network aware - you set up one or more "backends" (servers) which house your TV card(s) and do the heavy lifting of recording, transcoding, etc. and one or more "frontends" (clients) which present a user interface and can talk to the backend(s) to schedule and manipulate recordings and fetch recordings for playback.

You can, but don't need to, have a frontend and backend on the same machine, so a simple one box HTPC is possible, but Myth can also scale to very complex installations with several backends doing different things (e.g. two machines with TV cards doing recording, another handling the recordings database and web interface, another responsible for transcoding and commercial detection) and numerous frontends each playing back a different live or recorded programme, music or archived DVD simultaneously.

It's a seriously powerful piece of software and well worth a look.

Hi guys, I cant get the port forwarding to work with a Netgear 834G does anyone else have this modem/router? Portfowarding site didnt work for me. :(

Hiya,

Thanks for your help earlier. I now have LVM working perfectly and also have mono set up :) still messing with myth tv but think i should be able to get that sorted soon enough.

I have yet another question though... sorry. Now that i have LVM working i have 2 x 500 gig drives together and i have mounted them to a directory /home/Drives/Films. My main hard drive though is only 160 Gig, with about 40Gb spare at the min...

I have set up a samba share for the directory and wanted to transfer my films back onto the server (from my main pc) but it says that the capacity is on 40Gb. At the moment i have to transfer 40 gig, wait for it to finish then transfer another 40 gig... Is there any way of telling samba that there is really a Tb of space there??

I couldn't really work out how to phrase it for googling so if you can advise me on that as well so that in future i might have some idea of what keywords to search for for similar things that would be dead handy!

Cheers
Rob

Well, you are probably sharing /home only...

If you create a share for /home/Drives/Films you can just copy it in. I'll whip you up the config ;)

[movies]
  path = /home/Drives/Films
  browsable = yes
  writable = yes
  security mask = 0700
  create mask = 0700

Just add this to the bottom of your samba config ( /etc/samba/smb.conf ) and restart samba ( sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart ). Then you have a new 'share' called movies with all the space free ;)

I only have access to it via webmin at the moment and that is what i used to set it up, I do have a general share for homes but also specific shares for each to the folders which the i have drives mounted to. Could it be because i have the share for home set up as well. I don't think i had this problem when the individual drives were mounted to /media/disk, /media/disk-1 etc..

Would it be better to move the folder that i am mounting drives to out of my home directory?

Cheers
Rob

It's because they are mounted within eachother yes. You can just use webmin to set up an other share that points to the Film drives... Or mount them elsewhere, like you said.

Originally Posted by capnPedro
Linux: for people who want to get things done. Gentoo: for people who want to get things done after waiting 2 weeks for it to compile.
Nah, Gentoo's OK. But it can be a real PITA to get configured and compiled.

This post is pointless. Normal thread service will resume shortly.

Why bother spending time compiling everything on gentoo when you can just use GRP and stick with standard and proven i686 optimizations?

Personally, I'm getting a wee bit vexed at why certain people seem to
get their giggles over bashing gentoo/gentoo users.

Quoting a nice little article on LWN about Gentoo HPC Clusters:

"Gentoo's flexibility as a metadistribution means you can make
whatever you want from it without hacking and slashing all over the
place, as you may need to if starting from another distribution. Your
changes to the base configuration are easy to find, document, and
reproduce. You can even start out with something more minimal than a
Gentoo base system by taking advantage of Portage's ROOT support to
install only what you need to an arbitrary location (described in more
detail in this LWN article). I find this most useful for diskless
clusters. You can easily install to a location on an NFS server such
as /opt/cluster/, which the diskless nodes use as their filesystem
root. By using UnionFS to mount a read-only NFS root with tmpfs
layered on top, all of the nodes can use the same filesystem without
any concerns about multiple simultaneous writes. You can push only
security fixes using `glsa-check`, and with a single invocation of
`emerge`, you can manage full system updates to the server root or the
diskless root."

http://lwn.net/Articles/229770/

Flexible is good. What's wrong with CFLAGS="-Os -pipe" ?
And besides, there's always GRP packages.


Glider, Great work. I've been a linux abuser since slackware 1.5.0. Been through redhat from 4.2 on, debian from the early days, and wrote some of the linux from scratch bootscripts used in older versions (I understand they've been replaced since then.)

The one thing that got me using linux efficiently was messing around with LFS (Linux From Scratch) on a spare box.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/
Read the book.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/
Then read Beyond Linux from Scratch. This covers installing most of the packages listed in this article.

And another tip for the rest of you who want to play around with linux:

Check out COLinux! (Cooperative Linux) http://www.colinux.org/
It's a port of the linux kernel to a windows NT device driver, allowing linux to run natively (no emulation!) directly on NT based systems (Win2k, WinXP, Win2003, Vista) which gives you access to everything but native Xwindows (GUI).

You can run an Xwindows server under NT as well, since X is a networked protocol. VNC also works well! (Though I'd recommend TightVNC over x11vnc!)

And for my final words of wisdom: xEvil.

What? xEvil?!

http://www.xevil.com
Multiplayer mayhem for linux and windows! Chase unsuspecting friends around with a chainsaw, or drop a 10 ton weight on their head from 3 stories up! Turn people into frogs! Steal their body, AND their weapons with it, with the Soul Swapper! Become a Ninja, a Yeti, a Xenomorph (Alien/Alien3), or even a dog! And if you play your cards right, you can summon fire demons, or even swap souls with one for the ultimate pwnage of your friends! Or use calvin's Transmorgifier from the calvin and hobbes comics to morph yourself into something more useful! Become a facehugger, and rape some poor blond ninja girl's cakehole! Give someone else a taste of alien wing-wong! ( http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=108 )

I've been playing it since redhat 4.2. It's seriously addictive, and fun when you get over a hundred players on a large server.

Or if you're more of a RPG or Tolkien fan, there's always TOME! (Troubles of Middle Earth)
http://www.t-o-m-e.net/
Or, if you're just looking for a dungeon crawler, you can always play nethack.
And both can be played from any computer with an SSH client. Even my Playstation Portable has an SSH client. (And a native port of TOME, but I digress.)

Happy hacking, and enjoy all that linux has to offer: Speed, Stability, and Knowledge.
(The world needs more of all three.)

Thanks for the excellent guides Glider ;), I've completed part 2 and I'm all set.

Everything works great internally however, I have a small problem.

When I connect to http://xxx.no-ip.org:2222 I get a 404, same with http://xxx.no-ip.org:12345. If I drop the port and just type http://xxx.no-ip.org as the URL, it takes me to my router's config page. (note "xxx" replaces real URL so ignore links).

Therefore, I know I've set up the no-ip account correctly and it's pointing the URL to my IP. It appears that the problem lies in forwarding from the router to the server.

The thing is, I'm may be a complete n00b to linux but I'm no n00b to port forwarding. I've unblocked serveral ports on my router for various things (Azureus for example) and they work fine. I made sure I applied the changes and restarted the router but no joy. I guess te oly thing can be that my ISP (Virgin) are blocking those ports.

Can you suggest some alternative, suitable ports I could try instead?

Well, try http://xxx.no-ip.org instead of / ;)

Originally Posted by Glider
Well, try http://xxx.no-ip.org instead of / ;)

Sorry that was a typo, I'll go correct it now. I was infact already using http://xxx.no-ip.org :o.

As I say, without the ": port" part it takes me to my router's config page (the same as going to 192.168.0.1 on my LAN). Is this normal?

Just when I add the ":2222" or ":12345" to the end it says website not found.

Make sure external port 2222 & 12345 are forwarded to the correct ones internally (and the correct IP)

Originally Posted by Glider
Make sure external port 2222 & 12345 are forwarded to the correct ones internally (and the correct IP)

I've checked and double checked and I'm certain it's all okay (which prolly means it's not :P).

The IP of the server is "192.168.58.88". I have forwarded public(inbound) ports "2222" and "12345" to private ports "2222" and "80", on "192.168.58.88" accordingly. I have also ticked the 'enable' box, applied my settings and even restarted the router incase the settings were not 'sticking' for some reason.

Does the fact that I can access my router config page by typing my "no-ip" address with no port have any relevance at all (i.e. does that not confirm that at least the router on my LAN is accessible from the web)?

Is there something I can use to test the ports? Maybe the router's port fowarding function has gone up the creek?

EDIT: thought I'd add this:

http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=portsxs0.jpg

As far as i remember the last time i messed with a rotuer like that, you have to setup the forwarding somewhere else aswell (or maybe that was netgear ...)

Anyway, did you follow a guide at http://portforward.com/

Hmm, Belkin... Never had good experiences with those... But none the less it should work.

Also, if you browse to the no-ip address, and end up with your router's config, it shows that internal x.x.x.1:80 is forwarded external

Originally Posted by completemadness
As far as i remember the last time i messed with a rotuer like that, you have to setup the forwarding somewhere else aswell (or maybe that was netgear ...)

Anyway, did you follow a guide at http://portforward.com/

My Router:

http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Belkin/F5D7230-4/default.htm

Shows exactly the same method I used unfortunately :(

Originally Posted by Glider
Hmm, Belkin... Never had good experiences with those...

Me either, it would seem.

Originally Posted by Glider
Also, if you browse to the no-ip address, and end up with your router's config, it shows that internal x.x.x.1:80 is forwarded external

Does this mean I can be sure that the problem lies with the router? Everything works fine on the LAN it's just web connections that are failing. I don't like to rush to blame hardware when it could easily be (and usually is) a user error but I just can't see what else it could be, nor think where/what else to check.

You could check your firewall settings, if there's an entry for the forwarding to be allowed.

EDIT: Digging deep in memory I remember that our Belkin router at our students house had problems with port remapping. If you remove that line, can you SSH into the box?

Now this is odd...

Just got round my girlfriends house, banged in "http://xxx.no-ip.org:12345" into a firefox browser and boom! Everything seems to be working .

What's strange is that getting rid of the port number doesn't allow me to see the router's config page from here (which to be honest, I prefer). Why would I not be able to connect via a browser from my own network? I mean, obviously I don't really need to: If I'm at home I'll use the normal methods.

:(

Maybe some security thing of no-ip.org? Or your firewall being confused with getting internal traffic from the external interface... Anyway, glad it worked ;)