The Comms Room

Michael Hampton

23:00

0

Q: Iptables: how to redirect port 80 only for a specific domain

sorry for the title, but im such a newbie in server configurations. I have a problem (of course) and i will try my best to explain it to you: I have a vps, debian based with apache2 and in it I have two domains configured with virtualhost. the first domain is used to be the alias for a webserve...

Sometimes you just feel bad.

HopelessN00b

I guess. I'd go with "the Ruby developer fucked it up, make him fix it. I'm going for a smoke." ... which would be why the devs don't invite me out to lunch. :(

0

Q: Windows home server build that is energy efficient

I want to build a home server and I plan to run windows server 2012 essentials. I want to use it for storage, file sharing, dlna to my tv, host a couple of websites (not much traffic if any at all) and maybe run a minecraft server on it (but not essential obviously). I'm concerned that having a ...

hardware windows-home-server energy-saving

...and then sometimes you have to laugh.

rnxrx

not much of an electricity bill if adding one machine would "blow it"

Adrian

If you don't understand the OSI/TCP networking layer models, you shouldn't be allowed to touch the keyboard.

HopelessN00b

@Adrian That's a little much. Maybe you just shouldn't be allowed to use networking. Touch the keyboard on your unnetworked computer to your heart's content!

Adrian

@HopelessN00b Not too many folks are hosting websites from home either.

MDMarra

23:16

@ewwhite don't hate. I'll catch you again.

Michael Hampton

1

Q: Install Fedora 17 to iSCSI Target, Boot from iSCSI Target

I have installed Fedora 17 to an iSCSI target by: Booting with the Fedora 17 ISO Chose LiveCD so I could install iscsi-initiator-utils Started the installer Chose iSCSI target from native Fedora installer Installed as normal Using iPXE (gpxe/etherboot fork) to boot with sanboot iscsi:HOSTIP::...

fedora iscsi sanboot ipxe etherboot

ewwhite

@MDMarra Not going to happen.

MDMarra

You passed me because I was inactive for like 3 weeks while changing jobs. It's back on, sir.

How many days have you reached 200 rep?

ewwhite

Yeah, and I'm traveling and fighting bad cabling jobs...

I don't count.

MDMarra

(you can check in /reputation)

There's a badge at 50 that only a handful of people have

ewwhite

23:19

Right, only 15 days for me.

rnxrx

@MichaelHampton It's fiddly, but I've made that work before (although I didn't start with liveCD)

ewwhite

a lot of 195's.

MDMarra

Ah. I'm at 30. I was gonna propose a race if we were close

We could race to be the first to Legendary, but that would take probably at least a year

ewwhite

It's too tough... plus the questions don't flow consistently. Today was full of foolish questions.

MDMarra

It sure was

Joel E Salas

23:23

@MDMarra The only way to settle this is a race around the world.

MDMarra

Oh. Uh, I'm out

ewwhite

heh

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Do your favored XFS mount options hold for physical installs? We have a Shuttle that we use for cons and I'm wondering if some mount options could (safely) get more I/O performance

ewwhite

yep

I use the same setup on physical and virtual nowadays.

Especially with the RHEL tuned-adm package

This is an interesting one.

1

Q: VMWare vCenter/ESXi with FreeIPA instead of Active Directory?

Can vCenter authenticate against FreeIPA instead of Active Directory? If so, how would you set it up? We have a pure Linux environment (CentOS) and need to have vCenter are our VM's have the same users. vCenter is deployed as a Linux appliance. Would prefer not to have a Windows machine in our e...

linux centos vmware-vcenter freeipa

We have a pure Linux environment.....Would prefer not to have a Windows machine in our environment.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Neat! Thank you. The nobarrier option concerns me on this crappy little box

HopelessN00b

23:34

@ewwhite I dunno, it seems to me (from my limited experience) that the foolish questions are easier to get rep from. Help someone with a truly difficult, one-in-a-million issue, get +35 rep. Tell someone what the rest of the loopback address space is for, get 300+. :/

ewwhite

@JoelESalas Asking about filesystem creation or just mount?

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Mount

ewwhite

@JoelESalas Poop... nobarrier because I'm always on a BBWC or write-cache enabled array.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite I won't be. In fact, it's a WD Green, so it's guaranteed to fail before we get off the plane

Adrian

@ewwhite That's an issue we're dealing with. Deciding whether or not to roll out an entire Microsoft infrastructure for the handful of servers that run Windows.

Joel E Salas

23:36

@Adrian The answer is, did you win the lottery lately? Yes do it. If not, suck it up

Adrian

@JoelESalas TechSoup. Windows licenses aren't the expensive part. Our time in figuring out how all the MS-centric shit works is.

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b My highest rated answers are always long... I did this one on Puppet, and people have mentioned it in interviews since.

@Adrian I'm no Windows licensing pro... but I've worked with enough providers to get a feel on how to work the system. Always Volume licensing...

But as I see it, Windows 2008 is $600/install. That's fair. Enterprise is not a bad deal either.

Adrian

@ewwhite I think we pay like $30-40 for a 2k8 Enterprise license. The licensing isn't the expensive part for a non-profit. It's all the stuff that goes with it.

ewwhite

@Adrian My approach with clients is probably unorthodox... but I try to get hardware and storage in first...

and the long grace periods on Windows licenses is useful to get people to work up to the idea of paying $$$...

Adrian

@ewwhite Yeah. My toughest part is getting managers to understand that Windows isn't just like the Linux they've been using for years. Things are in fact done differently and I can't spin up an entire AD forest in an afternoon.

ewwhite

23:41

But even Linux isn't free... what's your time worth?

Adrian

@ewwhite exactly. They're not used to thinking that way. Stupid accounting people always nattering about "labor is Cheap because it's a sunk cost". Morons.

ewwhite

@JoelESalas It's safe enough. I've never had super bad XFS corruption.. maybe an extended xfs_repair session in init=/bin/sh, but that's all.

Adrian

yet some of those idiots wonder why they're still on Windows 98.

Joel E Salas

@Adrian To be perfectly fair, a significant cost of Windows is the fact that it's heavy as shit. Tons of I/O, memory hog, huge virtual disks, etc

HopelessN00b

@Adrian Is Linux these days really that different than MS, though? I mean, in terms of things like you can't stand up an AD forest in an afternoon, well you can't stand up a centralized authentication scheme for Linux in an afternoon either. (Or can you?) Seems to me like it's not so much MS and Linux being different, as everyone wanting a centralized framework for everything, on any platform, these days.

ewwhite

23:44

@JoelESalas I don't find that to be the case anymore. I find that I only deploy virtual Windows systems now. Only because they're not optimized to leverage all of the resources available on modern hardware.

Adrian

@HopelessN00b Just because the level of difficulty is similar doesn't mean they're the same. I can extend our existing auth schema in my sleep because it's what I do. You can't learn something new and crank it out at the same speed.

We had a lengthy discussion regarding AD best practices here awhile back. I had no idea that the DC MUST be the DNS master. That's certainly not how I set up my Linux subnets.

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b Linux is harder and more fragmented. For Active Directory, I see no reason not to include it in a VMWare environment. That's how VMWare was intended to be used...

I definitely don't understand the "no Windows" attitudes in some places.

HopelessN00b

Agreed (with both), I'm just noticing or observing that the things that are a bitch and time consuming in Windows are the same types of things that are a bitch and time consuming in Linux, and they all seem to revolve around centralizing your systems. (LDAP/AD, configuration management, centralized monitoring/logging, etc.)

Adrian

But are they a pain because of Windows or simply because they're complex things?

HopelessN00b

It's not so much whether you use Linux or Windows that makes it a bitch, as it is what you're trying to do with either platform.

ewwhite

23:49

Both platforms have sucky things related to configuration management.

HopelessN00b

@Adrian Well, that's a much shorter way to put it. Yeah, that. They're complex on any platform, not because of which platform you choose.

ewwhite

Linux has the disadvantage of the splintering of the community... cough Ask Ubuntu

Adrian

@ewwhite Yeah, I'm a little annoyed by that. I don't really want to have to monitor the question queue on 3-4 different sites.

ewwhite

I mean, I probably have a lot of less-than-optimal Windows installs out there... But having to lean on @mdmarra to fix my DFS file systems is just part of the job.

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Is it really that big a difference? To an outsider who's never used Ubuntu, it seems a lot like the difference between, say, XP and 2003 or Win7 and Server 2008. Seems like servers and desktops should have different focuses, even if the underlying OS is more or less the same.

ewwhite

23:52

@Adrian It's gotten to the point where I don't even understand the questions on Unix and Linux.

@HopelessN00b Yeah, it's morphing into something else.

lsiunsuex

everything has different levels of pain for everyone. design is a pain to me but i can write php easier than i write in english - to my designer, i show him a <a href> and his head spins

everyone has their own comfort levels

HopelessN00b

Ah well, in that case, nevermind.

ewwhite

I'm not the best in scripting... I can't stand tools that require ridiculous config files... Linux firewalls bother me... And that's just how it is.

Adrian

Unlike Windows (or at least until recently), The UI doesn't == Linux. With Powershell and the UI-less Server setups, that's a bit less so now.

@ewwhite Interesting. I'm crap for coding and have awful sense of algorithms and structure, but complex config files are pretty easy for me.

Michael Hampton

I can't stand check boxes and drop downs to configure things...give me a good configuration file any day.

Joel E Salas

23:56

@Adrian Can you whip up an Exim config

HopelessN00b

Ugh, don't get me started on Powershell, though. I'm really regretting not stumbling across Mr. Ozar and his advice earlier. ~"Be a DBA, don't have to learn a new language every 5 years." sigh

lsiunsuex

i think the linux community could learn a lot from apple (and i'm not saying that as an apple fan) 1 OS with the server installable on top of it. which is basically what linux is - nothings stopping you from using centos as a desktop - but its obviously better designed to be a server

ewwhite

        <service name="SSH" interval="300000" user-defined="false" status="on">
            <parameter key="retry" value="1"/>
            <parameter key="banner" value="SSH"/>
            <parameter key="port" value="22"/>
            <parameter key="timeout" value="3000"/>
            <parameter key="rrd-repository" value="/opt/opennms/share/rrd/response"/>
            <parameter key="rrd-base-name" value="ssh"/>
            <parameter key="ds-name" value="ssh"/>
        </service>
        <service name="SSH-2222" interval="300000" user-defined="false" status="on">

Adrian

@JoelESalas Not Exim, we don't use it except for Smarthost here. I'm pretty handy with Postfix though.

ewwhite

@adrian Is that clear?

lsiunsuex

23:58

its clear to me but i work with shit like that all the time

Adrian

@ewwhite I don't use that product, but it does give me a decent springboard to start with since the parameters are clearly delineated.

Michael Hampton

@ewwhite I've never used OpenNMS but even I can understand that.

Adrian

That actually beats the fuck out of Sendmail .cf files.

ewwhite

It's clear... but I have to manage settings in 30 config files...

that look like that.

for one OpenNMS installation...

Michael Hampton

Now if you want BAD configuration files... get Nagios.

ewwhite

23:59

as I do upgrades, I have to merge changes.

Adrian

@ewwhite I used to support a product with thousands that were even longer and the fscker was written in Java and we couldn't see the code since it was OEM'd software.

lsiunsuex

i think the httpd config is atrocious - thats a scary config file - and theres multiples of them for different shit on top of httpd

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Ouch. Enough to make me run screaming for a GUI and a visual diff utility.

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