Jezebel 7.0

This fall I decided it was time to update my Atom based media server to a more power version.This was driven mainly by the want to rip and encode blu-ray disks and run KVM for virtualization. While the Atom setup was great for power efficiency (using about 40 watts at peak load) there were other tweaks I wanted to make. Below is my new system specs for Jezebel 7.0:

• Intel Core i5 750 quad core 2.66GHz processor
• 8GB DDR3 1333MHz memory
• Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 mini ITX motherboard
• OCZ Agility 2 60GB SSD drive
• PNY Nvidia GT430 video card
• Seagate 2TB hard drive
• Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse
• LG 10x Blu-Ray burner (reused)
• Antec NSK1480 HTPC case (reused)
• Debian Squeeze 64-bit with custom 2.6.36 kernel

All of the parts were new except the case and blu-ray drive since they integrated without a problem. I originally purchased a micro-ATX motherboard which had more PCI, memory, and SATA slots, but the majority of the SATA connections went right up against the drive bay wall. The smaller board had less expansion space but fit better into the case and didn't limit any of the other components I purchased.

I went through about 4 graphics cards before landing on the GT430. Two were too large, and one was passively cooled but used a ton of power and put out a lot of heat. The GT430 has a fan on it that is a bit louder than I would have liked, but it can underclock itself when not in use to 50MHz to save power and heat. The GT430 is a bit overpowered for what I wanted to do, but it's CUDA support has me hoping for encoding programs like ffmpeg to use it for faster blu-ray encoding.

By far the biggest improvement is the quad-core processor, with two cores and 4 gigs of memory dedicated to KVM for a Windows XP guest install. I haven't tested it for video encoding yet but it has turbo-boost to go to 3.0GHz if needed. I also enabled an on-demand CPU governor and it runs at 1.2GHz while idle.

The drive setup was a big improvement as well. Before it was running the OS off a compact-flash card plugged into a parallel IDE connection, two 1TB drives on the onboard SATA, and the blu-ray into a SATA PCI card. This was less than ideal from an IO perspective and was still running on legacy technology. The new board has 4 SATA connections and I swapped the two drives for one 2TB disk. The SSD has shown a huge IO boost and the OS boots in less than 10 seconds. The 2TB drive is actually slow at 5900 RPMs, but it makes it quieter and is very power efficient.

The system setup is 64-bit Debian Squeeze installed onto the SSD, with /home all on the large disk. I also installed Windows XP into a KVM guest which resides on the SSD as well. GNOME is setup and running off the video card. HDMI out works for video and looks great, however I kept getting stumped on trying to pass sound through it and settled on a 1/8 audio connection from the line out.

The main use of the system is for pushing out content to our LCD TV via a variety of methods which I'll explain in a different post, and ripping/encoding DVD and blu-rays. It's also hooked up to our LCD TV and the wireless Apple keyboard and mouse is great for a living room setup with a range of approximately 10 meters.

Overall the system uses more power than the Atom setup, but the performance ratio makes up for this exponentially due to the advances in efficiency of the other components over the last few years. I'm looking forward to seeing what this system can do with it's virtualization capabilities and performance capabilities.

On some future notes, the next Intel architecture Sandy Bridge is looking to integrate video directly into the CPU. I looked into the on-die graphics available now since this motherboard can support them, but unfortunately the only Core i series CPUs that have it are dual core. Sandy Bridge will have 4 and 6 core CPUs to use it, but it will use a different socket, making this board unsuitable for it. Soon though we'll have HTPC systems like this that don't require any additional peripherals, increasing performance while at the same time driving down power usage even more.

LVM Disk Recipes for Debian

After much wrangling and researching I finally figured out how to get LVM disk recipes to work with Debian preseeding. The following recipe will create a partition layout of what's in the table. When making these recipes make sure that you account for extra whitespace that may be hiding (especially spaces) otherwise it may yield unexpected results.

Mount Point	Type	VG	LV Name	Size (MB)	Filesystem
/boot	Primary			100	ext3
/	LVM	vg00	/dev/vg00/rootvol	4096	ext3
/var	LVM	vg00	/dev/vg00/varvol	1024	ext3
swap	LVM	vg00	/dev/vg00/swapvol	2048	swap
/home	LVM	vg00	/dev/vg00/homevol	remaining space	ext3

Recipe file:

Ubuntu/Debian Custom LVM Disk Recipe ::

100 1000 100 ext3                              
    $primary{ }
    $bootable{ }
    device{ /dev/sda }
    method{ format }
    format{ }            
    use_filesystem{ }
    filesystem{ ext3 }
    mountpoint{ /boot }
.

100 100000 -1 lvm
    $primary{ } $defaultignore{ } 
    method{ lvm } vg_name{ vg00 }
.

4096 10000 4096 ext3                        
    $lvmok{ } in_vg{ vg00 } lv_name{ rootvol }
    method{ format } format{ }            
    use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 }  
    mountpoint{ / }
.                                             

1024 4000 1024 ext3                           
    $lvmok{ } in_vg{ vg00 } lv_name{ varvol }
    method{ format } format{ }
    use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 }  
    mountpoint{ /var }
.                                             

2048 5000 2048 linux-swap
    $lvmok{ } in_vg{ vg00 } lv_name{ swapvol }
    method{ swap } format{ }
.                                             

1024 1000000 -1 ext3                  
    $lvmok{ } in_vg{ vg00 } lv_name{ homevol }
    method{ format } format{ }            
    use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 }  
    mountpoint{ /home }
.                                             

SATA Drive Power Management in Linux

I recently purchased a new 1TB HDD for a new power efficient server I built and I wanted to share a few of the power saving tips I discovered after reading a few sites.

File system

I was originally going to use ext3 for compatibility reasons, but after reading into JFS more I found that it's lighter on CPU and a bit more power friendly, so I used it to format this new drive. I also disabled atime and diratime within /etc/fstab.

/dev/mapper/jezebel-homevol /home jfs noatime,nodiratime 0 1

hdparm

Many newer drives support advanced power management on the drive itself, mostly at the sake of performance but since this is a data drive that sits idle most of the time the hit is negligible.

sudo hdparm -M 128 /dev/sdb
sudo hdparm -B 100 -S 240 /dev/sdb

The first will enable Acoustic Mode and the second will set spin down after 20 minutes of idle time. You can make the permanent by adding them in /etc/hdparm.conf.

Kernel params

Most of these tricks are for laptops, but they work just as well on an always-on server by enabling them in /etc/sysctl.conf.

#Specific Flash and Power Tweaks
#
#Set Laptop mode for less disk writes
vm.laptop_mode = 1
#
#Set Dirty writeback higher
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 1500
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 1500
vm.dirty_ratio = 25

#
#Set swappiness
vm.swappiness = 20

Swappiness is set lower than default to keep swap around in case it's needed but to not use it very much.

Ubuntu Inside of Etch Inside of Sid

Fun screen shot I took today while seeing if Ubuntu Linux I installed on a laptop was up;

Debian Sid->Debian Etch->Ubuntu Hoary

Sierra Wireless MC5725 on Debian Linux

When I started my new job I was given an HP Compaq 6910p as a work laptop, which came with a nice embedded 1xEVDO (Sierra Wireless MC5725) card that I could use to get online anywhere where there is a Verizon signal. Over the past week or so I've been migrating from Windows XP to Debian, and this was the last bit of hardware I needed working. Here are my notes on how to get it up and running:

Requirements:
Kernel 2.6.21 or newer with sierra module compiled or latest from http://www.sierrawireless.com/faq/ShowFAQ.aspx?ID=607
Device activated in Windows and powered on (disable turning power off in preferences)

Load the modules:
sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x03f0 product=0x211d
sudo modprobe sierra

Setup kppp:
Uncomment noauth in /etc/ppp/peers/kppp-options
Modem device: /dev/ttyUSB0
Flow Control: Hardware
Line termination CR
Connection Speed 921600
Phone Number: #777
Authentication: PAP/CHAP
Login ID: your_device_phone_number@vzw3g.com
Password: vzw

Automatically load modules in Debian:
edit /etc/modprobe.conf/usbserial and add:
options usbserial vendor=0x03f0 product=0x211d
edit /etc/modules and add:
sierra

Refrences:
http://www.ka9q.net/5220.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-networking-3/motorola-e815-evdo-cant-dial-phone-592375/
http://tuxmobil.org/ibm_lenovo_thinkpad_t61_nc216ge_umts_linux.html

Some Technical Info:

lsusb -v:

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 03f0:211d Hewlett-Packard
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 1.10
bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level)
bDeviceSubClass 0
bDeviceProtocol 0
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor 0x03f0 Hewlett-Packard
idProduct 0x211d
bcdDevice 0.02
iManufacturer 1 HP
iProduct 2 HP ev2210 1xEV-DO Broadband Wireless Module
iSerial 0

dmesg:

[ 1976.898309] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
[ 1976.898435] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
[ 1976.898527] usbserial_generic 2-1:1.0: generic converter detected
[ 1976.898645] usb 2-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 1976.898738] usb 2-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[ 1976.898828] usb 2-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[ 1976.898897] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[ 1976.898957] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core
[ 1982.544979] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for Sierra USB modem
[ 1982.545685] usbcore: registered new interface driver sierra
[ 1982.545762] drivers/usb/serial/sierra.c: USB Driver for Sierra Wireless USB modems: v.1.2.8

Screenshots Over the Years

Going through my fileserver recently I stumbled upon the directory I'd put screenshots in over the years that I've used Linux. It covers back from 1999 until the present, enjoy.

My first linux computer running Redhat 6.1 using GNOME v1.0.39 from 1999, this shot was taken in 2000 and shows all the fun of connecting via dial-up.

Still running GNOME this time I believe it's Mandrake in 2001


My Windowmaker fetish begins while running on Debian circa fall of 2001

My Fluxbox fetish begins in 2002

More Fluxbox goodness, from senior year in 2002

Fluxbox again after college graduation in 2003


Final Fluxbox shot after I moved to San Diego in 2004

Moving onto XFCE in 2004

And finally, full circle we come back to GNOME running on Debian in 2008

Debian Work Desktop

This is my new Debian Unstable work desktop running GNOME on a Dell Optiplex 755 Intel Core Duo Quad with 4Gb of memory.

Getting it up and running wasn't as smooth as I first expected. First, due to the strangeness of the on-board Intel non-analog DVI connector, I put the dual-head ATI Radeon I was using on my old desktop. Because I have one wide screen and one standard LCD setting the resolutions was tricky, and I finally gave up on the ATI flglx driver after I discovered it couldn't do 1600x1050. It also caused weird corruption in the lower right hand of the screen and major stability issues. moving to the open source ATI driver and a combination of Xrandr I was able to setup each monitor properly and get them working as a "Big Desktop". Originally the on-board gigabit ethernet didn't have support in the kernel, and I used a common 10/100 PCI card, the latest 2.6.24 kernel added the e1000e module which took care of that.

Performance wise it's a beast, at first it was sluggish due to the AHCI and NCQ enabled on the hard-disk, but disabling it in BIOS solved that problem. The quad-cores absolutely scream, and it's a huge improvement over the original Vista install. In order to run our more MS specific apps (IE, Outlook, SQL Manager, Cisco), I installed the free Vmware server and setup a Windows XP virtual machine with 2gigs or memory and 2 processors. Enabling remote desktop and then logging in via the terminal server client makes it seem like Outlook is it's own "app". Native Debian apps I'm using are are mostly GNOME centric: Iceweasel (aka Firefox), GNOME Terminal, Gedit, Rhythmbox, Pidgin, Picasa, and a variety of other GNU programs.

Once I got everything up and running using the desktop has been a dream. Using GNOME as a desktop manager works wonders, since I can place menu bars in any location with any number of apps that I'd like to use. Creating a "quick launch" section on the menus is also nice, since before I was using a multi-media keyboard to launch my common apps in an attempt to slim down the memory footprint of Windows. Other benefits are the copy/paste highlight/click functionality and sloppy window focus, which makes using multiple monitors more intuitive.

Overall I'm glad I spent the extra time getting Debian running on this new desktop, since it makes my workstation a lot more usable and I feel I can garner more out of this new machine that I would have with Vista.

Thinkpad T42 and Debian

The other week my wonderful girlfriend came over with a "present". While I was expecting food or something another I was pleasantly surprised when she handed me a relatively unused IBM Thinkpad T42. I have sort of a fetish for laptops, and at last count have around 6. All are in some state or working order save my poor iBook G3 which has suffered one to many logic board failures to resurrect again. This one however was different, it's almost perfect. It has all of the features and non of the defects than the others have. Each always had one thing that would bother me: trackpad would go crazy, lid was too loose and kept falling back, or simply ran way to hot. So far this Thinkpad is not only the best Linux laptop I've had but the best one I've owned period. Here's the specs:

• Intel Pentium-M 1.7Ghz with SpeedStep
• 1GB DDR Memory
• 80Gb Hard Drive
• DVD/CD-RW Drive
  
• 802.11 B/G WiFi
• 1 Gigabit Ethernet
• ATI Mobility 7500 on a 1024x768 LCD

Desktop:


In the week or so leading up to getting the thinkpad I had been configuring my Dell Inspiron 8500 with Debian GNU/Linux Sid and found to my delight that transplanting it's 80Gb hard drive worked beautifully. All I needed to do was change the xorg.conf drive from the nvidia one to the Xorg ATI one. After that I was in business and with a few tweaks I got many things working properly:

• ATI 7500 Mobility: Yes, Direct Rendering enabled using ati driver in xorg.conf (listed below)
• Intel Pro Wireless 2100 3B MiniPCI: yes, after firmware download
  
• Intel 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet: yes, with e1000 module
  
• Intel SpeedStep: Yes, using cpufreq the processor will scale from 1.7Ghz down to 700Mhz depending on power settings
  
• Suspend and Hibernate: Yes, using acpid. video and network come up correctly
  
• HDAPS (disk head parking): sort of, works after a kernel patch, but seemed to cause instability and it was a bit too sensitive, somethings making the system unusable while it was parked.

The best resource I found when setting everything up and learning about the capabilities of the hardware was the ThinkWiki site that has excellent Linux information on almost all Thinkpad models.

Overall this is a solid laptop, I guess you could say the lid is a bit flimsy, but it's metal hinges are leagues above what Dells have. The gigabit ethernet is a big plus too, since we have gigabit connections at work and I'm planning to update my home router too. With auto-dim on the display, speedstep, and the tickless kernel option in 2.6.24 it's power management is capabilities are great. Hopefully this lasts me for a while with the only replacement part being the hard drive, but future laptop purchases will be guaged against this superb piece of hardware.

Some Linux info:

lspci

micheal@ruth:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]
02:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4520 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:00.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4520 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Mobile) (rev 03)
02:02.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (rev 04)

/proc/cpuinfo

micheal@ruth:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1400.000
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe bts est tm2
bogomips : 2792.87
clflush size : 64

xorg.conf (touchpad is disabled here)

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "0"
Option "MaxTapTime" "0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Mobility 7500"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "backingstore" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "TripleBuffer" "True"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 28-64
VertRefresh 43-60
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "ATI Mobility 7500"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "true"
EndSection

Debian Software RAID Setup

The Problem

Over the past few years space on my server would increase based on the deals found on sites like Slickdeals. After some time this lead to a mishmash of two PATAs and one SATA at 120Gb, 160Gb, and 200Gb respectively on my personal media server. Glad as I was to have all this space it started to become disk management issue since I wanted the bulk of the space consolidated for media. Filling up one drive would require me to move data to another with more space, causing organization and software issues (NFS would not single export multiple mounts).

Remedy

Last week this all became moot when Fry's advertised a 500Gb SATAII Maxtor drive for 90$. My EPoX motherboard was capable for RAID-0 and RAID-1 so I figured it was time to upgrade to a terabyte and bought two.

The initial plan was to create a RAID-0 array (striping for performance), re-install Debian, copy all data, and remove the older drives for noise and heat reasons. With two of them PATA drives, they could stay in the system easily copy straight to the new array. The older SATA drive had the OS and I wanted to keep it around for config reference when I was re-setting up the server. Both of the SATA ports would be used for the new array, not allowing this SATA to remain in the system, this was solved by purchasing a Masscool PATA/SATA external USB enclosure and copying the data from there.

Issues

Once everything was hooked up I ran the RAID BIOS config, set the new SATAs for RAID-0, and booted up the Debian Netinst CD. Surprisingly the installer showed both 500Gb drives as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, completely ignoring the BIOS set RAID array. After doing a bit of research online for the RAID chipset (VIA VT6420) I found that it wasn't capable for true hardware RAID and instead relied on drivers in the OS to function properly, aka "fakeraid". These drivers only really existed for Windows and not Linux. Eventually I did find ones for Linux, but they were binary only and didn't look too friendly.

I thought about using them, but then remembered that Linux can do software RAID. Having briefly heard about software RAID before I was suspicious until I read a few articles explaining it's virtues. After tracking down a how-to Software RAID for Debian before I knew it I had a software RAID-0 array running on /dev/md0. For screen shots check out this Ubuntu Server Install guide.

Debian Config

The biggest choice while running the install was which file system to us. I gave ext3 a try first, with formatted space coming up to around 870Gb. XFS came out to 932Gb which was better, but after reading XFS's disadvantages (no journaling for data blocks) I decided it wasn't the best choice. JFS was last, which I was running on one of the drives I was replacing. It had worked flawlessly for the past couple of years, proving itself in the type of setup I would use. Overall JFS was the best option, giving a total of 932Gb of formatted space, For comparisons sake, a friend with the same setup ended up with 840Gb using NTFS on Windows.

I started the OS install, designating the entire drive as /, but hit a bump when it came to installing GRUB, which said it couldn't install to the MBR. I tried a few partition schemes to no avail, getting "unable to create partition" messages for everything, including swap. After a bit of frustration I split the OS and data onto separate drives; a spare 80Gb PATA for the OS and the RAID for data. I created a basic partition scheme (600Mb for /boot, 70Gb for /, and 5Gb for swap) on the OS drive and then mounted the RAID on /home, since this is where the bulk of the data would go anyway.

Results

Debian finished the install without a hitch and soon I was booting into my new clean system. A few cp -pfr and hours later I had successfully moved my server to the new drive and array. Below are some technical details:

micheal@jezebel:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 70G 4.5G 62G 7% /
tmpfs 502M 0 502M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 60K 10M 1% /dev
tmpfs 502M 0 502M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1 564M 37M 499M 7% /boot
/dev/md0 932G 385G 547G 42% /home

micheal@jezebel:~$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid0]
md0 : active raid0 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
976767872 blocks 64k chunks

unused devices: none

micheal@jezebel:~$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
Timing cached reads: 1210 MB in 2.00 seconds = 604.80 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 442 MB in 3.01 seconds = 147.07 MB/sec

Particularly impressive are results of 147 MB/sec on hdparm, which is leagues beyond the 60MB/sec seen on the original SATA drive. A few config changes over the next few days and the server was up and running normally.

Conclusion

Overall Linux's software RAID capabilities are impressive, not only can it do 0 and 1, but when re-compiling the kernel it has just as may options, if not more, than a traditional hardware card. Performance is outstanding, without being limited by the RAID hardware it mostly depends on bus and CPU speed, which are easier to upgrade than a RAID card. After this experience with software RAID I would not only recommenced it for personal use but enterprise also, proving itself in configuration, ease of use, and performance.

Xfce Desktop on Etch

Last week I decided to make the jump from Debian Sarge to Etch on my home media server. The upgrade was for the most part painless, although there were a few snags I hit that I will explain in more detail in another post. For now though I wanted to post a nice screen shot of my new Xfce desktop:


On the left is the main app panel featuring: xterm, K3b, VMware, GAIM, Grip, XMMS, DVD::RIP, Iceweasel (aka Firefox), and Konqueror. Finally the little mouse with the X is the Xfce application menu, then hardware temperature sensors (a little high actually) and system load information. The top panel is running six virtual desktops with a taskbar on the right side. The app that is currently running is DVD::RIP in GUI mode making an Xvid video out of the Talladega Nights DVD I recently purchased.

Random Debian Scripts

Today at work I decided to do make a few Debian scripts for generating a dynamic MOTD and auto-updating using apt-get and I thought I'd share.

Debian MOTD

The first script is a fun one and requires the fortune and cowsay packages. When run, it generates a cow saying a random message from the fortune quote program and writes it to /etc/motd. Cowsay isn't just limited to a cow, and a look through the documentation will reveal a whole range of ASCII art. Mine is set to run every night at midnight and it makes for some fun variety throughout the week. Here's an example of what a login looks like:

Welcome to Debian GNU/Linux 3.1!
_________________________________________
/ Q: What do Winnie the Pooh and John the \
| Baptist have in common? A: The same     |
\ middle name.                            /
-----------------------------------------
     \   ^__^
      \  (oo)\_______
         (__)\       )\/\
             ||----w |
             ||     ||

Linux jezebel 2.6.16-2006-03-28-mcw-01 #1
PREEMPT Tue Mar 28 21:32:57 PST 2006 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Debian Apt AutoUpdate

The second is for those who get tired of running the same apt-get update && apt-get upgrade command day after day just to keep their system up-to-date. The script is simple enough, using the -y argument to allow for unattended updates and writing verbose output to a log file.