Ask Ubuntu General Room

5:37 AM

Morning everyone

I have something I would like to think is a server

RAM 4 GB

PROCESSOR 3.0GHZ (unknown)

using windows server 2003

used as a mail server

slow AF

HDD Failed

rofl

and?

repair started Friday Morning took 74 hours and migration started yesterday is at 56% as we speak. Now I KNOW Ubuntu Server would work better on this Machine with those specs but problem is I don't have a clue how to migrate from windows server to Ubuntu Server and I don't have the permission yet I wanna convince my boss to move

@mojo706: You're looking at it the wrong way

ok

You arn't migrating from windows to ubuntu

5:43 AM

what? then what am I doing?

you're migrating from $_windows_mail_server to $_ubuntu_mail_server

see I have no clue

lol

haha

What mail server are you running in windows?

5:44 AM

server 2003

no no

exchange?

yes

Exchange has a few things that (I have no clue about) which you may need additional software to replicate

I suppose upgrading the hardware to something more modern is out of the question?

we've asked for money but they seem to enjoy the constant mail outages

You have a few things to do before you even think of it.

1) work out what your users use exchange for

2) see which subset of these tasks you can use (say) postgres for

for 2, one thing that may trip you up is IIRC outlook uses a different protocol with exchange, and you may need additional software for stuff like calenders

3) Work out what software or combination of software fits these niches
4) work out how to move your users from exchange to what you want to use

Without this, making a business case for this is impossible

5:48 AM

you are correct

er

I missed a step

and for 4, additional hardware helps

I know man

You could go P2V (and ditch that museum piece PIV you're probably using) while you gradually install, test and migrate users over to the new system

else, meh, its pointless ;p

pointless cause it will still fail? cause of the specs?

Well, hardware failure is an utterly avoidable thing

5:51 AM

how?

Proper replacement cycles

From the specs I'd guess that machine is at least a decade old

my boss is frustrated and I wouldn't care but I hate seeing this Windows Piece of crap

and probably has a SCSI or IDE drive?

Its not even the OS man.

true in part its not even Windows

You could take the same system, install a beautifully maintained, perfect linux system....

and then the hardware goes, and...

5:53 AM

lol

hahaha

I don't need to explain which is the server.

nope

I mean, I like Ubuntu as much as the next guy (Unless the next guy is a comms room regular) but you have a bigger issue

5:55 AM

where are you from @JourneymanGeek

Singapore

how much would a decent server cost in Singapore

I have no clue

ok scratch that

what constitutes a decent server

but You could replace that with a modern desktop system

depends on who you ask.

5:56 AM

Im asking you

Well, in your shoes? I'd spend maybe 600 dollars on a slightly upgraded barebones box

lemme explain why though...

It would use less power, I can get spares for the forseeable future, and have an upgrade path that makes sense

im listening

your 3.0ghz system is likely an AMD box or a pIV

nothing against AMDs but PIVs are energy inefficient

You're probably using a IDE/Pata drive (which are obsolete) or SCSI

If you're using sata, thats one problem out of the way

its not SATA

so in the longer run you're saving on power.

At some point you're either going to be using cannibalised parts for that pile of junk, and well...

lets just say at some point you got to put that poor old thing down ;p

6:00 AM

lol

Now, in the short term.

Image that sucker weekly or so.

if nothing else, it means saving time on recoveries

(and I realise, this is a first world country, and hardware here is relatively cheap)

yes and getting hardware here is not cheap

but at some point, that is going to fail, hard.

Would outsourcing email be an option?

thing is the people who can give us the money or purchase the said hardware on our behalf claim its not as important. No outsourcing email isnt an option

ugh

sorry dude, at this point, you need someone to hit management upside the head.

6:04 AM

the bureaucracy is too much here

3 people need to sign a cheque and stuff

I'm half tempted to suggest a raspi as a mail server, but I'd rather shoot myself first than do that ;p

lol so would I

Its a lovely machine, but quite... underwhelming in some aspects

how do we get them to give IT a budget?

I have no idea.

I wish I knew ;p

and IMO, that's the right question

6:07 AM

damn 3rd World problems people who were BBC (Born Before Computers)

lol

we have that in the first world as well ;p

But we always outsourced email, and I managed to save us a bit by switching providers

some of our hardware and the way its used though....

how?

2gbish outlook store on a old c2d...

takes up a LOT of ram, which in turn increases virtual memory usage... which slows that system to a crawl

I run its sister on a newer version of windows and its fast

I came to this place with lots of hope but then wham! hdd starts failing and I have no Saturday

lol

6:12 AM

which do you think is better?

hope is a dangerous thing in IT

Windows server or ubuntu

Your OS is a tool

Its only as good as you are

I run my servers on ubuntu cause I'm familiar with it

there was this thing that Jorge has been telling us about

I'm not a proper ubuntero. I'm a bit of an OS agnostic ;p

6:14 AM

that can be deployed on a server or AWS or OpenStack

juju?

yes

have you ever used it?

naw

I've not really had get past ~~hammering rocks together~~ setting things up oldschool

hahaha

me neither but I'm willing to learn only that there's so little wiggle room now

lol

I learnt a lot from small VMs

6:18 AM

Ive never used a VM just old computers from friends who thought they were dead

good enough ;p

My 'first' home server was an old PIII that a university threw out ;p

2007/8 era, so core 2s were already out

I've tended to have slightly better than average desktops though

My current one has 16gb of ram ;p

hahaha

better than the one here at work

lol

where there is availability of money but no willingness to spend

My previous desktop was a dell 530 I saved from a dumpster

6:21 AM

keep buying vans

lol

What sort of company?

(I'm a IT/management major. I half regret this ;p)

I'd guess though the vans are their profit center

University

o0

lol

ok, THATS wierd

6:25 AM

ikr

most universities tend to have either volume or quality, systems wise

but this is a theological University

as if it makes a difference

yeah

I tend to hang around techie places ;p

I'm IT/Management major too just so you know but I lean towards IT

lol

I love the IT side of things

especially forensics

6:30 AM

Im more interested in Data Analysis Im a prediction kinda guy

lol

I applied here in hope of doing a research on Sentiment Analysis

but instead I got this mail server problems

lol

wait

they use undergrads as sysadmins?

Im an Intern

hahaha

7:05 AM

@Rinzwind lurking in the shadows

Rinzwind

nope. working :=)

oh ok

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11:37 AM

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Jerry Miller

12:56 PM

Anybody know why:
A) In one of my VBox Ubuntu installations, I can click the XTerm icon as often as necessary, while in another I have to type xterm& in the only window that ever opens from the icon?
B) Why this and other sites insist on using a microscopic light gray font on an off-white background? I thought that kind of thing went out with Angelfire!

1:18 PM

@JerryMiller A: you've probably set it to allow only a single instance. I assume you're using unity, there's probably an option for that, try right clicking the launcher.

B: I have no idea what you're talking about.

Tiny? Grey?

Jerry Miller

2:35 PM

A) These are the menu items when I right-click:

A) These are the menu items when I right-click:
XTerm
xterm
xterm
xterm
Unlock from Launcher
Quit
(The 3 xterm -- lowercase -- are from the ones I had to run in the background.
B) I guess you newbies don't remember when the default, before CSS, was a highly legible Times New Roman in 10- or 12-point.

Rinzwind

tsk I bet I started using Linux before you @JerryMiller >:-DDDD

Takkat

<-- first steps on CP/M ;)

Rinzwind

2:54 PM

I started on a 8086 :=)

we got those in school. 1985 probably. and I was the 1st to use it :=D

dbase <3

clipper <3

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4:20 PM

0

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr in a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine on Windows Server 2012 R2. I've stopped the VM, replaced an EXT4-formatted virtual disk volume with a new (unformatted) disk volume and restarted the VM. I see the following messages: Filesystem check or mount failed. ...

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@JerryMiller Please. And you think that saying these kinds of things is likely to make us want to help you? Oh, and I've been using Linux for more than 15 years, hardly a newbie.

Q: Disable CPU scaling with U 1404

5:29 PM

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I know there are a lot of things about this topic but I couldn't find anything not older than 4 years. As the stuff develops so fast I hope it is fine to ask again a few years later. What is currently a good way to disable the CPU throttling on Ubuntu and Debian systems? A few old ways I found ...

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How can I file bugs against distribution upgrade scripts?

I have submitted this bug but it really should go against the Utopic upgrade script, not do-release-upgrade itself

5:52 PM

@badp That might be worth a question. Unless @jorge is around.

@terdon apparently even if the file is in a directory where it would appear to be downloaded from the internet, it seems to match what's in the actual package anyway

the annoying thing is that something went wrong, the variable that should tell me what went wrong was never created to begin with and the screen setup used by do-release-upgrade wipes out the debugging messages

...and now there were no errors

I don't really know about this kind of thing, I don't use Ubuntu and I never upgrade, I always do a clean install. Sorry :(

I've virtually always done upgrades

@badp ubuntu-release-upgrader seems like the correct package

yep: Handles upgrades between releases of Ubuntu. launchpad.net/ubuntu-release-upgrader

Since the tool ran from /tmp I thought the problem was with the downloaded upgrade scripts, but it wasn't.

6:01 PM

I don't like upgrades. There always seems to be something broken, I always add all sorts of packages manually so it's a pain to handle libraries when upgrading and it always feels like the system is not clean.

Back when I was using a distribution that had upgrades, I'd just backup and reinstall. That way, I would also clear out the various bits and pieces that I'd installed over the years but did not need.

Now, on LMDE, they have what they call a rolling release cycle so there are no upgrades. We just get upgrade packs that upgrade various packages every few months. Love it!

@terdon That why you use package managers to keep track of the mess

PPAs <3

@badp Well yes, but not if you use stuff that you've compiled manually. Which I often do.

@terdon Yeah I stick to .deb's if at all possible

I heard it's possible to compile your own deb's anyway?

It often isn't, especially for fringe stuff. For example, I use a lot of bioinformatics tools and these are often only available as source .

seems like we have a maintainer volunteer!!!!!

6:06 PM

@badp Yes it is. Never tried it, I'm used to using source from back in the days when I was using RH?Fedora and there were very few rpms available.

At any rate I'm not sure how "upgrade packs" help.

Does it put new libraries alongside older ones?

@badp No, it's just that instead of getting a new OS version, you simply upgrade components. The packs ensure that they all play nice with each other.

@terdon Yes but there's like literally no difference.

Debian is like that. There are no Debian versions as such. Stable is always stable etc.

@badp Huge difference. See above.

TOO. MUCH. BLUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

6:08 PM

There are no versions, you just get different upgrades.

@Braiam :)

do-release-upgrade is a glorified thing that changes sources.list, does apt-get update and apt-get upgrade

It also does additional scripts that may or may not help? I run them anyway just in case

@badp do-release-upgrade is just a warper for distupgrade ;)

For example I would expect those scripts to be somewhat important in 14.10 if it actually does feature the move to Mir

actually Debian has script helpers also

Most of the logic ought to be inside .deb's anyway but...

6:13 PM

Q: how can i reinstall windows 7 through ubuntu

6:42 PM

Huh?

0

I need to reinstall windows 7 after screwing up the administrators and removing all of my permissions with no way of getting them back. Using Ubuntu, how can I reinstall windows 7 using boot-repair or a similar program?

dual-boot windows-7 boot-repair

Good news! Ubuntu 14.10 boots to Unity! I don't exactly know what I would've done if that didn't happen as I am not positive as to how the tty's work on this computer

I probably should connect the HDMI port to my mobo instead of my nVidia card in that case I guess.

That's okay because clicks are now refusing to go through to windows. :D

xkill did the trick

6:58 PM

and it still plays Serious Sam 3.