Dedicated Server Support

Tips on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows Dedicated Server.

Monday, March 28, 2005

New Server AMD 3000 BARTON Self Managed Server

After few days of hard work with NetFreeHost.com free hosting server, that getting dead slow at times due to high traffic and server load (mysql and httpd using too much cpu and memory), yesterday (28 March 2005 2.15 PM) i order new dedicated server for hosting the remotely hosted free phpbb forums of

http://www.netfreehost.com/phpbb/

Now forums are hosted on the server used to provide free hosting to NetFreeHost.com members. Last few week, the server was overloaded and sites on the server was dead slow at times. So we are getting new server and moving forums to new server. So forums will not affected by abuse of free hosting members :-)


New server Configuration:

• AMD 3000+ Barton
• 80GB IDE Hard Drive
• 1024MB RAM
• Bandwidth: 1000GB
• IP Addresses: 8 (5 usable)
• Private VLAN
• Number Of Servers: 1
• Basic Resource Monitoring
• FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, Windows*
• 100% Self Managed and Dedicated

On 28 March 2005 9.33 PM, i got confirmation from data center regarding the new server order, it told new server will be ready in 72 hours.

We have received the following order: Thank-you.

Server: #2 AMD 3000+/1GB/80GB
Hardware:
Hardware:
BW: 1000GB
OS: FreeBSD 5.3
C/P:
Port: 10Mbps Port

Your server will be provisioned, installed and setup within 72 hours of
your order. The majority of our servers are deployed within this time
frame,
although depending on the configuration of the server and the current work
load, the deployment may take a little longer. The 72 hour time frame is
not a guarantee. Non payment of the first invoice will delay the deployment
of your server. If the first invoice is not paid within 5 days of the order
date, the server will not be deployed and the order will be cancelled.

Your account information will be entered into the billing system shortly.
Once it is entered, you will receive an invoice for the first month of
service. We will automatically adjust your renewal date for one month and 3
days later to account for the set up time of the server. Example...if you
order on the 10th of the month, your initial invoice is due on the 10th.
You renewal date would then become the 13th of the month starting with the
following month.

Once the server is deployed by our NOC team, you will receive a welcome
e-mail that will provide you with your login details along with all of our
support/ticketing system resources, contact numbers and additional client
details.

Please note that we require a 7 day notice PRIOR to your renewal date for
cancellation of the server. If you do not cancel prior to the required 7
day time frame, you will be billed and responsible for the next invoice.
Further, any invoice that is past due will cause all servers associated with
that account will be subject to suspension.

Again we thank you for your dedicated hosting business and we look forward
to providing excellent service to you.

If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact me
directly.



This server i descided to go for FreeBSD 5.3 as the OS. All other servers are on various distro's of Linux. Linux Vs FreeBSD, lot of people says FreeBSD is better, but its told new Linux kernal v2.6 is better than FreeBSD. Anyway i want to try FreeBSD on my server and see how it works.

I do have local FreeBSD installed on VM Ware, I don't think managing it will be difficult for anyone who can handle Linux and have a mind to study new OS.

After ordering FreeBSD server, i formated one of my PC, installed FreeBSD on that. Installation was quick, i used auto slicing, etc... everything auto default (i lost windows already on the pc, but i don't have no data on that, so its not a problem.) But i could not get XWindow start on that PC. I got only console login, i will be trying to get X Working, so i can keep that PC with FreeBSD installed, so i can do some testing on local if required and others can work on that too. I can't use Linux or FreeBSD on my Desktop, i tryed it, but missing Windows a lot. Now i use Windows on desktop, Fedora running in VMware, mounted as Z Drive in Windows.

Need to study few things like Configuring Apache (Add modules, etc.. not editing httpd.conf, that is same as linux) once i install Apache from FreeBSD port.

FreeBSD on my local pc is much faster to boot. I feel like its light weight OS. Hope it will be the same in server too.

So waiting for root login on new server from DC.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

netstat

Today found a usefull combination of netstat command

# netstat -a -ngrep -E "^(tcp)"cut -c 68-sortuniq -csort -n
13 CLOSE_WAIT
13 LISTEN
15 LAST_ACK
48 FIN_WAIT1
68 SYN_RECV
157 TIME_WAIT
187 ESTABLISHED
1233 FIN_WAIT2

#

Thursday, March 24, 2005

High Server Load

A Bad Day again... NetFreeHost.com server went down due to high server load, this time reboot take more time, usually its done within 5 or 10 minutes.

After getting the server online, i found the server load going high at times. Too many MySQL processes, too many httpd process, server load rising to 20..30.

I have to restart httpd and mysql to keep the server alive.

This time i tryed running SIM when server load is high.

cd /usr/local/sim
./sim -v
Yes, SIM is working. It says server load is dangerously high and server is going to reboot and server got rebooted.

After server back online, i tryed to change some settings in /usr/local/acpache2/conf/httpd.conf i changed MaxClients to 100 (Default 150) and many other changes KeepAlive On ... KeepAlive Off... i tryed everything... I want my server ALIVE all the time.

I don't know what i done exactly. But now server load is normal, may be some thing i done or the HIGH load time is over. Now the server load is

00:42:44 up 2:53, 1 user, load average: 0.84, 0.65, 0.69
102 processes: 99 sleeping, 2 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped

After fixing this next problem started. BizHat.com server whent down. Can't login through SSH and no PING.

So submitted reboot ticket at DedicatedNow.com, don't know all data center tech gone to church for good friday, here also it time more than usual time to get reboot. Tech say server rebooted, but i can't access the server. So i submitted another ticket, that also answered server rebooted, may be because DC Tech thought it was same ticket. At last they told there is some hardware issue, i thought the CPU dead as few days back i got message in the server saying CPU temp is high, a reboot solved CPU Temp at the time. Data center tech replaced powersupply of the server and it back online.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

New domain name registered - phpbbweb.com

Today registered new domain name

http://www.phpbbweb.com

After registering the domain name, i just created hosting account on server10 and the web site get active instantly. Usually it take 24 hours for propagation, may be the domain name got registered at the time ISP was updating their DNS or they are using some central DNS server for name resolution.

This post will work as first link to www.phpbbWeb.com

I want to design this web site in few days, my plan is to make some thing different than my usual web design style (i do hand coding), for this may be i will try dreamwaver and some templates. I got some templates from boxedart.com as one of my friend have access to them, but i don't like the idea of using template much.

Anyway i am going to try my first template based site, i also thinking of using some CMS for this web site.

New site - kavyamadhavan.bizhat.com

Few days back i created one film review site

http://filmreviews.bizhat.com

Today created a sub domain for Malayalam Film Actress Kavya madhavan.

http://kavyamadhavan.bizhat.com

We have many screen savers of kavya madhavan, Navya NairKunchacko Boban, Hrithik Roshan, Meera Jasmine and Mammootty. More will be added soon.

You can find screen savers at

http://movies.bizhat.com/screensavers/

We have another web site for screen saver, but it is not fully designed. Can say a place folder, will be working on that when i get time :-)

http://screensaver.bizhat.com/

Saturday, March 19, 2005

BizHat.com dedicated server info

Processor Information

Processor #1 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #1 Name: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
Processor #1 speed: 3201.064 MHz
Processor #1 cache size: 1024 KB

Processor #2 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #2 Name: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
Processor #2 speed: 3201.064 MHz
Processor #2 cache size: 1024 KB

Memory Information

Memory: 1000072k/1014976k available (3091k kernel code, 14048k reserved, 1217k data, 232k init, 97472k highmem)

System Information

Linux server10.hosthat.com 2.6.8.1 #3 SMP Sat Aug 21 21:19:56 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Physcial Disks

Current Memory Usage

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1000772 980552 20220 0 106204 591080
-/+ buffers/cache: 283268 717504
Swap: 2096440 21388 2075052
Total: 3097212 1001940 2095272

Current Disk Usage

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 1.5G 495M 906M 36% /
/dev/sda7 82G 52G 26G 68% /home
none 489M 0 489M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda6 494M 8.2M 461M 2% /tmp
/dev/sda3 9.7G 2.5G 6.7G 27% /usr
/dev/sda2 16G 2.4G 13G 17% /var

BizHat.com server apache recompiled

When server rebooted, found service named not starting.

I have to manually start service named with

/etc/init.d/named start

or

service named start

So descided to upgraded cpanel on server10.hosthat.com used to host BizHat.com

/scripts/updatenow
/scripts/upcp

After upgrading cp, i have recompiled Apache as its running with out any modification for quite long time.

/scripts/easyapache

Found mySQL loading slow for mail service.

MySQL Database size for mail service was 1 GB, so i run MySQL optimise table command, it take 6 minutes to finish, but now MySQL loading very fast.

free phpBB hosting listed on oneworldscripts.com

NetFreeHost.com Free PHPBB Forum Hosting got listed on OneWorldScripts.com.

All are requested to rate of free forum hosting service at OneWorldScripts.com
You can also write a review on NetFreeHost.com free phpbb forum hosting at

http://www.oneworldscripts.com/addreview/28663

You can also see NetFreeHost.com at rizenet.com

listing of netfreehost.com free phpbb hosting at rizenet.com

NetFreeHost.com PHPBB Hosting listed in sitescripts.com

NetFreeHost.com Free PHPBB Forum Hosting Got Listed in SiteScripts.com.

NetFreeHost.com phpBB free hosting

http://netfreehost.com/phpbb/

Offers free phpBB forum hosting with following features

- PHPBB2 latest version.
- Instant Activation
- Easy installation
- No Popups Ads
- Upload Your Own Logo
- Over 50 Templates
- Support over 50 Languages
- Private or public forums
- Sub Domain: YourForum.NetFreeHost.com
- 24/7 Community Support
- Quick Reply and Banner MOD
- Free search engine submission of your forum.
- No limit on number of post, space, members, or size.

Signup at:

http://www.netfreehost.com/phpbb/

NetFreeHost.com also provide free Invision board at

http://hosted.bizhat.com

Friday, March 18, 2005

free forum hosting

http://www.netfreehost.com/phpbb/

On 25th March, netfreehost.com free phpbb forum hosting will complete 2 months of sucessfull service. As on march 18, we have 2503 hosted forums, 10426 members and 78470 posts.

Top 10 Message Boards

http://ywcf2c.netfreehost.com/
http://pancakem.netfreehost.com/
http://brian.netfreehost.com/
http://deathdevil3.netfreehost.com/
http://advanced.netfreehost.com/
http://vnpoland.netfreehost.com/
http://yesterday.netfreehost.com/
http://topofthehat.netfreehost.com/
http://cgu.netfreehost.com/
http://future.netfreehost.com/

Unlike other free forum hosting providers, netfreehost.com provides forums with no popup ads or big ads. Presently there is no ads in the forum, but we will be planing to put some advt, so we can get better dedicated server for the forum itself. Now forum is hosted on dedicated server of netfreehost.com free web hosting. Since netfreehost.com already have over 10,000 free web hosting members, we faced server getting hang at times because of high server load.

Now we have to get a server with higher configuration. But i think it will be good to get another server for forum hosting, so both services run on its on dedicated servers, anything happen to one server will not affect the other server. Present server have only 512 MB of RAM. I think more RAM will help to reduce server load, so new server will have atleast 1 GB of RAM.

download movie clips mohanlal

We got several movie clips on

http://movies.bizhat.com

Today found

http://movies.bizhat.com/movie_clips.php

is the first result when searching for

download movie clips mohanlal
download kavya madhavan movie clips

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Bandwidth usage of netfreehost.com free hosting server

NetFreeHost.com free hosting server used up more than 500 GB of bandwidth on Feb 2005.

We have 1,000 GB of bandwidth on this server. But it seems server can't handle more bandwidth with PHP and MySQL web sites.

Bandwidth Usage - Today

Image Hosted by BizHat.com Image Host

Bandwidth Usage - This Week

Image Hosted by BizHat.com Image Host

Bandwidth Usage - This Month

Image Hosted by BizHat.com Image Host

server12.netfreehost.com
DC: Savvis

NetFreeHost.cm free web hosting crossed 10,000 members.

NetFreeHost.com free web hosting crossed 10,000 members landmark.

Now we have 10348 free web hosting users.

Free Hosting dedicated server is pushing more than 1 MB/s all the time. This is much more than our other paid hosting servers, one of our windows server uses 40 GB bandwidth per month. NetFreeost.com free hosting server using around 20 - 30 GB bandwidth per day.

Server gets down at times, it seems we need to upgrade to a higher configuration.

Present Server is

AMD Athlon 2400
512 MB RAM
80 GB IDE Hard Disk
10 MB/S Ethernet

I doubt some PHP users running some script causing the server hang at times. Planing to install www.suphp.org, don't know when i get time to do this. Need to find solution for some technical problems before doing this, main problem is we use virtual users, not sure suphp can work with virtual users and groups.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Thanks to onlywebmasters.com

NetFreeHost.com phpBB forum hosting got listed in OnlyWebmasters.com

You can find the listing at

http://onlywebmasters.com/detail-1066.html

Don't forget to rate us.


Resource ID : 1066
Title : NetFreeHost.com Free phpBB
Url : http://www.netfreehost.com/phpbb/
Description : Offers Free Remotely Hosted phpBB Forums. Includes 20+
languages, 50+ skins, Instant Activation, Unlimited Bandwidth, Sub
Domain, Search Engine Optimization Mod.
Category : Remotely Hosted > Discussion Boards


Get your website rated at OnlyWebmasters.com





























Other Ressources Webmasters where you can submit your links :
www.WebmastersHeaven.com - Webmaster Resources
www.WebHostingDirectory.US - Hosting Related Resources, WM Dirs etc.
www.OnlyForums.com - WM Related Forums
www.ForumsArchive.com - Forums Directory
www.OnlyPHP.com - PHP Resourcess
www.PHP-Links.com - PHP Resources
www.OnlyCGI.com - CGI Ressources
www.OnlyProgramming.com - Programming Resources
www.MoreScripts.com - Scripts Indexes
More Coming Soon...

How to Access Windows Share in Linux

Samba is used to share fine between Linux and Windows computers in a network.

To mount an smbfs share from a Linux workstation at the command line, you can use either the smbmount command or use mount -t smbfs. Both command will work the same. When you use mount -t smbfs, the mount program actually passes the command over to smbmount for execution. Throughout this document I'll use smbmount instead of mount -t smbfs.

An example would look like this:

smbmount //servername/sharename /mountdirectory -o username=mywindowsusername,password=mywindowspassword

The mount equivelant is:

mount -t smbfs //servername/sharename /mountdirectory -o username=mywindowsusername,password=mywindowspassword

//servername/sharename refers to the name of the Windows computer and the name of the share.

/mountdirectory refers to the directory you use as the mount point on the Linux workstation. It can be any directory as long as the user executing the command has rights to it.

Whether you need to supply a username and password depends on what type of security you have on the Windows share. If you have a share created with no password on it, you shouldn't need to provide a username and password. If the share happens to be on a Windows NT server that is part of a domain, you would need to provide a domain login name and password.

Making the Mount Permanent

smbmount does not make the mount permanent. If the Linux workstation is rebooted, you will have to mount the share again. To make the mount occur each time you start the Linux workstation, you can put an entry in your /etc/fstab file. An example file would look like this:

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/hdd4 /mnt/zip100.0 auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
//servername/sharename /mountdirectory smbfs username=windowsuserename,password=windowspassword 0 0

The last line in the file is the line that will mount the Windows share. You would add a line similar to that in your /etc/fstab file for each share you want to mount. Once again the username and password are only needed if the Windows share is set up to require them. If a username and password are not required, you may just replace them with the word defaults.

An important thing to remember is that there is no space between the comma and the word password. If you put a space there, it won't work.

Providing Security

The /etc/fstab is readable by everyone so it obviously wouldn't be a good idea to have your Windows password in it. The way to get around this is by using what is known as a credentials file. This is a file that contains just the username and password. The best place to put this file would be in your home directory. Here is how to do it.

Create a file in your home directory named .smbpasswd (the period at the start of the filename makes it a hidden file). Modifify the permissions on the file so only you have permission to read and write to it. The only thing in the file is your Windows username and password. Here's the commands you would enter to create the credentials file:

cd
echo username=mywindowsusername > .smbpasswd
echo password=mywindowspassword >> .smbpasswd
chmod 600 .smbpasswd


Substitute your Windows username and password in the commands. No one else except root would be able to read the contents of this file.

Once that is created, you would modify the line in the /etc/fstab file to look like this:

//servername/sharename /mountdirectory smbfs credentials=/home/myhomedirectory/.smbpasswd 0 0

You can also use the credentials option in the smbmount command for security reasons. That command would look like this:

smbmount //servername/sharename /mountdirectory -o credentials=/home/myhomedirectory/.smbpasswd

Providing Read/Write Access to the Share

Another problem with mounting the Windows share as shown in the /etc/fstab file above is that only the root user would have read/write access to the share. All other users would have read only access to it. If you wanted read/write access to it for yourself, you need to specify your userid or groupid. That would change the line in /etc/fstab to look like this:

//servername/sharename /mountdirectory smbfs credentials=/home/myhomedirectory/. smbpasswd,uid=mylinuxusername,gid=mylinuxgroupname 0 0

Whatever user and or group you specified in the line would have read/write access to the mounted share. You can use either the user or group name or the user or group numerical ID. Either should work.

If you had several users you wanted to have read/write access to it, create a group and add those users to the group. Then specify just that groupid in the /etc/fstab file. You wouldn't need to specify a userid. The line in etc/fstab would look like this:

//servername/sharename /mountdirectory smbfs credentials=/home/myhomedirectory/. smbpasswd,gid=sambausersgroup 0 0

You can see the man pages on smbmount, smbumount, mount, and fstab for more details.

Troubleshooting

If you have trouble mounting your Windows shares from /etc/fstab, here are some things to try.

The most important thing is to try to mount the share using the mount -t smbfs command from the command line. This is what will be executed when the the Linux workstation is booted up and the mounts in /etc/fstab are initialized. If you can't sucessfully mount the share with mount -t smbfs, it won't work in /etc/fstab. Work the bugs out with mount -t smbfs. Once it works, it should then work in /etc/fstab.

One of the most common problems with mount -t smbfs is a file not found error. The file not found is smbmnt, which is used by smbmount. It's usually a result of the smbmnt command not being in the path when the mount command executes. The mount command usually resides in the /bin directory and smbmnt resides in /usr/bin. To fix this problem, you need to create links to smbmnt in the /bin directory. To accomplish this, execute these commands as root:

ln -s /usr/bin/smbmnt /bin/smbmnt
ln -s /usr/bin/smbmount /bin/smbmount

Another problem occurs when a non-root user tries to mount a Windows share using smbmount. To allow them to do it you need to setuid root the smbmnt command. Since smbmnt usually resides in /usr/bin, you can accomplish it with this command as root:

chmod u+s /usr/bin/smbmnt

This will not work if you setuid the smbmount command. It is specifically written so that it won't execute if it is setuid root.

To allow non-root users to unmount the shares, you need to setuid the smbumount command. Execute this as root:

chmod u+s /usr/bin/smbumount

Monday, March 14, 2005

NetFreeHost.com Free phpBB listed in HotScripts.com

NetFreeHost.com phpBB Free Forum Hosting got listed in HotScripts.com at

http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/44113.html

So far got 18 votes for Free Forum Hosting.

It seems more votes will get higher placement in HotScripts.com listing.

But i found some sites with more number of votes are not listed at top, not sure why. Anyway if you read this, just visit

http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/44113.html

Scroll down and give a vote for NetFreeHost.com phpBB forum hosting.

CGI Lance Script installation

Yesterday got a script installation from cgilance.

The project was

It's pretty simple for someone used to installing scripts. I just need it intstalled and running. The people who made the script have a good install guide and help forum, just not enough help for me. I would like to be able to have this done quickly. When completed, I would need the modified script zipped and emailed to me.

Script Download link =
http://www.kre8webdesign.com/linx/download.php

Script maker's link =
http://www.kre8webdesign.com/

Payment through this site when script is installed and functioning and I have a copy of the edited script.


The script installation was very simple even though there was not much documentation on installing the script.

Script is installed at

http://www.gymessentials.com/fitness-links/

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Web Directory

Just found a Web Directory at

http://www.webs-best-directory.com

when browsing through some web site. Its free to submit links to the directory.

I am submiting my link to Blog Section.

Adding Links to web directories help to promote your web site.

Fedora Core 3 on AMD 64 3200

Today installed Fedora Core 3 on new AMD 64 3200 pc.

Hard Disk is 80 GB, 40 GB is given to Windows 2003, rest used by Linux.

This time i partitioned 40 GB Windows space into 4 Drives.

Drive C is NTFS 10 GB.

Other 3 partitions are 10 GB Each and i partitioned them as VfAT.

I used VFAT so that i can mount drives D, E and F in Linux.

I use Linux for developement through VMWare Virtual machine under windows. Now i will see if i cam completely switch to Linux.

I have to manage windows servers too, i found rdesktop can do this, but it is not anything near remote desktop connection under Windows.

New Blogs

Last few days i was working on some blog idea's.

I descided to start some blogs, i will be using blog as its easy to use. I am not getting any time to properly develop and promote my sites like www.webhostingneeds.com and www.seo-rank.com so thought of starting blogs on them. I will get these site properly developed once the site get popular or get time for developing.

My New Blogs

Web Site Promotion

http://www.seo-rank.com/promotion/

Site will provide articles on Web Site Promotion.

Free Web Hosting Offers

http://www.webhostingneeds.com/freehosting/

This site will list free web hosting offers and related free service offers.


Hosting Offers

http://www.webhostingneeds.com/hostingoffers/

This blog is for web hosting offers. Plan to put special web hosting and reseller hosting offers on this web site.

Dedicated Server Offers

http://www.buyserver.info/

This blog is for dedicated server offers. Many data centers offers special discounts to customers. I will be listing all latest dedicated server offers on this web site. Before buying a dedicated server, check this web site to see any good offer is available.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

New AMD 64 3200 PC

Yesterday brought new pc with AMD 64 3200+ CPU.

I am not a fan of AMD CPU's. Already got two pc's with AMD 2400, but as a Inel user, i don't like AMD much. I have some problem with my old AMD pc, it can't install Linux, this turned out to be mother board problem, diver for VGA card (ProSalvage) not supported by Linux. Anyway this created negative attitude towards AMD cpu's.

Next PC, i brought was Intel because of this problem.

Recently found a review of CPU's in Digit Magazine (www.thinkdigit.com) that says AMD 64 3000 is better than Intel Pentium, so i brought this AMD 64 3200.

Motherboard is Asus K8S-MX, this time i brought 1 GB RAM, mainly because i want to run Linux Virtual Machine (VM Ware) under Windows, this take around 300MB of RAM. Hope with 1 GB Ram i can run with out using much virtual memory.

Sunday, March 06, 2005

HOW-TO: Virtual Dedicated Server

Virtual Dedicated Server

A software that allows you to partition a physical server into several "virtual" servers which give complete root access and a share of the physical host's CPU and memory resources.

User Mode Linux (UML) is just one way of doing VDS/VPS.

HOW-TO

This is a quick way of setting up a VDS. We will use the Kernel: 2.4.22-8um in this. You can use any you want.

First of all, make a UML directory on the server with the following command in SSH

mkdir /uml/

Then, we need to change to the newly made directory, using the following command:

cd /uml

Then, Download the kernel via shell with the following command:

wget http://kernels.usermodelinux.org/kernels/linux-2.4.22-8um/linux

Once the Kernel (roughly 2.5MB) is downloaded, execute the following CHMOD:

chmod +x /uml/linux

At this point, the kernel is in a runnable state, but we havent got any OS to boot into, or any tools to run the UML properly!

So, next we will download the uml tools, and install them. To download them, in shell, type the following command:

wget http://nrh-up2date.org/howto/uml/packages/host/uml_utilities-20030903-1.i386.rpm

Now, we need to install these utilities with the following command:

rpm -i ./uml_utilities-20030903-1.i386.rpm

After this installtion, we are nearlly done, but we need one more item, the OS!

For this tutorial, we will just grab a copy of the Redhat OS from the UML site, so you need to type the following into shell:

wget http://aleron.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/user-mode-linux/root_fs.rh-7.2-full.pristine.20020312.bz2%3Cbr%20/%3E


Once this is downloaded, simply type the following to un bzip it:


unbzip2 ./root_fs.rh-7.2-full.pristine.20020312.bz2

This will take a while to unbzip. Once it is done, we will make a test vds to ensure all is working, so we will do the following commands:


adduser vds1
passwd vds1 myfirstvds

This will add a user named: vds1 with the password: myfirstvds.

Now, we will make the UML run under that users login, so we type the following in order:
quote:

cp ./root_fs.rh-7.2-full.pristine.20020312 /home/vds1/root_fs
cp ./linux /home/vds1/linux

This will cause the files "root_fs.rh-7.2-full.pristine.20020312(which will now be named "root_fs")" and "linux" to be in the user "vds1" directory. Now, we will CHOWN it to user "vds1" so that the user can run it.


chown vds1 /home/vds1/linux
chown vds1 /home/vds1/root_fs

Now, at this point we have a VERY basic VDS setup. So, we will run it with the following command line to test if it works:


/home/vds1/linux ubd0=root_fs root=/dev/ubd0 mem=128m

The above line says: Boot the linux kernel, and the OS is in root_fs and make 128MB of ram available to the UML.

This should boot the VDS up to a running state.

More Info

http://user-mode-linux.sf.net/

Saturday, March 05, 2005

XPanel installation

Today Installed XPanel on dkmhosting.com

Server was Cpanel box with Xpanel already installed. There was some errors with config.pm and need to make few slight changes in cgi scripts and httpd.conf

php_admin_value is not working in httpd.conf or xp_httpd.conf, also phpmyadmin is not working in http auth_mod. Recompiling apache with /scripts/easyapache solved the problems with PHP.




Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Google Moves Draw Expert Speculation

by Rawlson O'Neil King, theWHIR.com

March 1, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- With a series of provocative moves over the past few months, search giant Google (google.com) has fueled speculation that the company's already large influence could spread to include other Internet services, including Web hosting.

Since the beginning of the year, the company has hinted at plans to acquire network capacity, has become an ICANN-accredited domain registrar, and has offered hosting to a collaborative, non-profit Internet project.

Speculation that Google would enter the service provider marketplace was definitively sparked in January, when the firm placed a job posting on its Web site, seeking a strategic negotiator with experience in closing contracts for dark fiber. The posting referred to unlit fiber optic cable as part of the development of a global backbone network.

With thousands of miles of unlit fiber available throughout the United States, the move initiated the belief that Google was seeking wider network coverage and more data center facilities in more metropolitan areas. With additional data center facilities, it would be possible for the firm to lease excess network and facility capacity to large corporate clients.

Due to strong traffic and revenue growth, which totaled a record $1 billion in the last quarter alone for its search engine operation, financial analysts believe that Google's interest in a global fiber network could be a calculated effort toward reducing growing bandwidth costs for its sophisticated multi-homed network. With its own network in place, Google would be able to save billions of dollars in global bandwidth costs over the long-term.

The acquisition of such added capacity would allow Google to offer extremely complex infrastructure provisioning to both corporations and Internet and application service providers if it so desired.

Google would also be able to offer services to its small to mid-sized business clientele if it opted to use the infrastructure to enhance its consumer-driven services.

Google already operates the free Blogger service, which could provide an entry point for a large market of hosting and domain customers. And integration of the blog service with domain name registration could become a reality since Google became a domain registrar in February, approved to sell seven top-level domains, including .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .name and .pro.

With the combination of domain name and blogging services, Google could develop a full "one-stop-shop" Web hosting operation.

Google could even opt to provide such a service free of charge in order to exponentially enhance the network of affiliate sites that presently distribute its text-based, contextual advertising. With millions of more page views available for its advertising service, the firm could break its $1 billion revenue record.

Industry analysts say Google could unite its blogging and domain name registration tools through the development of a specialized Web browser. With the recent hiring of Ben Goodger, the lead engineer of the open-source Firefox Web browser, Google sparked speculation that it could be developing a customized browser or browser plug-in that could directly integrate its core search, blogging, news and email services.

An enhanced browser could conceivably allow small business consumers to register domains and publish their Web sites directly through a specialized interface.

Most industry analysts however are pointing towards Google's potential hosting of the Wikipedia project, the world's largest free online encyclopedia, as the most definitive sign that the search engine giant is gearing up to offer commercial hosting services.

Recently, Google made an offer to host some of the content of Wikipedia on a dedicated server on its multi-homed network. Wikipedia's board of directors will make a decision in March on whether to accept Google's offer.

Reportedly, the agreement does not require the Wikipedia sites to include advertising. However, some analysts believe that such an arrangement would enable Google to fine-tune its infrastructure to third-party requirements.

Despite the Wikipedia project and other developments, Google still officially remains coy about its strategic direction. Company co-founder Larry Page downplayed recent media reports that the company is preparing to branch into new directions by introducing hosting services, domain registration or a new browser.

"Most of the things we read are a surprise to us," said Page at a meeting of stock market analysts in early February.