Well, decided to install “Ultimate Ubuntu 1.8″, based upon Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04), as i had a LOT of problems with my Nvidia 8800GT and Ubuntu – mainly Twinview having issues. Nvidia-config has trouble saving X to config, saying i dont have permisson, which is rather strange as i assumed i wouldnt need SU permission as it was in “Preferences” not “Administration” in the GUI.

When i installed UU1.8, the first thing that came to my mind was – good god this distro looks terrible. Wordart style headers, you name it. The default graphics sucked. However, like most things you need to dig a little deeper. Once it installed and i configured GRUB to dual-boot with my XP etc, i logged in. Again, the login page is visually awful, but after 5 mintues of changing i made it all pretty so i could actually use it.

Now, to recap, the main 2 gripes i had with Ubuntu 8.04 was dual screen spanning with applications, and mounting samba shares. I couldnt configure, via Xorg.conf or GUI, the application to NOT span across 2 windows using TwinView – when i double clicked it. Which is annoying. Whenever i tried “seperate X ..” it wouldnt work, even with Xinerama enabled.

Now with UU1.8, i was able to enable seperate X screens, allowing me to double click an application and it wouldnt span across 2 screens.

Regarding samba shares, at the moment i have RHEL 5 on my Server, running SAMBA. Whenever i tried to “mount -t cifs -o user=…”, i couldnt navigate to the folder i mounted it to – due to the fact the owner user and group where “500 502″, which really annoyed me. Doing a chown worked but it changes the permissions on the host server too which isnt desirable. After much googling, i found out that you need to download “smbfs”, via apt-get install smbfs. Once this is done, use “smbmount //192.168.1.2/Music /home/dbott/music -o username=dbott,password=mysecretpassword,uid=1000,mask=000″, where UID is the userid of the user owner in Ls -la on the actual server. If you do this as your user, and NOT as root, it will work fine, just remember the UID as it is key.

Now that i have my 2 main gripes fixed, i found the linux based desktop quite refreshing – however, unfortunately the lack of support for key applications such as VMWare ViClient 2 to run my ESX Server, or Football Manager 2008, COD4, etc, just meant it wasnt feasible as an all-year-round desktop. The way to get round this, im thinking, is to install VMWare Workstation and create a Windows XP VM, install all the Windows apps you need to run on that VM, and just power it up whenever you need that Windows loving. If anyone can comment on how to get said applications ^^ working i’d be more than grateful.

Well, decided to play around with Ubuntu 8.04 with the view to partitioning my existing 80GB Windows XP drive into 2 partitions and then installing Ubuntu on the new one. However, upon loading the CD and booting into the “Install..” (Alternative to Live Disc), it recommended “Shrink Windows XP and install Ubuntu”, great i thought – i chose to do this and it froze – for 2 hours. On reboot – it went into windows, complained about corrupt files “Hal.dll” for example, and i had to reboot. On reboot it errored at me (non-Blue screen i might add), saying the corrupt files meant it couldnt load XP! Brilliant!

I dug out my Windows XP disk, however ive no idea how to replace a single file! I deleted it, then did a repair,along with a FIXBOOT and a FIXMBR, which removed the error, but when XP went past the “sliding window..” splash screen, it gave me a black screen with a low-resolution mouse cursor – which then did nothing! So i had to reinstall – pain in the arse Ubuntu !!!!!!!!

Aside from this, ive started playing with Solaris on my ESX Server – might as well learn that seeing as i have Linux and Windows notches on my CV already!

Also, in return for building Toma’s PC for him – hes using some discount he has with a web retailer to get me a Logitech G15 (2nd Gen though..), and a Logitech MX Revolution mouse, both for 76 quid Wooo.

Pictures of my madness are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26592143@N08

Including this beauty i took of my ESX Server with heatsinks (makes a good background!).

Just realised – i havent mentioned anything about how i got around the ESX Storage problem.

I have VMWare Vi3 / ESX 3 Server installed on my S5000XVN Based server using evaluation licenses etc. Anyway, after updating the BIOS (you really do need to update it, its stupidly fussy), i managed to get the installer to recognise the LPT SCSI device and load the correct driver. Once i had VMWare installed, and the licenses created, i thought i could go ahead and create some VM’s and get cracking. Unfortunately -no.

With VMWare ESX, you cannot store VM’s on the hard drive / storage medium that the ESX server is stored on. This meant, in my “Storage devices” section in the VMWare VI Client, it showed no storage options for me to use to store my VM’s on. After looking at the “Add Storage Options..”, my main feasible choices were either an NFS Share, ISCSI SAN, or a LUN. I decided to use my spare server and install FreeNAS- an open source storage solution you can use to create ISCSI, NFS etc storage exports.

Unfortunately, as the “Free” implies, this piece of tosh is based upon FreeBSD – which decided it didnt like my hard drives and wouldnt work. Great stuff. I then looked at my current server, (RHEL 5), and figured out i could create NFS Storage via that! Consolidation in perfection! I added an extra hard drive, mounted it to “/datastore/VM”, and then edited /etc/exports to include the above destination, along with some options about RW access, etc. I then went into the ESX Server using the Vi client, and added “192.168.1.199 /datastore/VM” with my username and password as an NFS store – and voila, it worked!

You can also use this to export current file systems – such as my “software” folder that i use on my NAS, e.g. To make installation of VM’s quicker, i exported “/datastore/private/Software/ISOs” using the same method, so the ESX Server can pull ISO’s directly from the NFS Storage – making everything a lot simpler! Fast forward to the current, and i have around 15 VM’s on the box, all configured and running well Great success.

Well having not blogged for nearly 2 weeks, i thought it was about time i gave a little status update! My beast machine is now a fully fledged ESX Server, using Evaluation licenses (60 Days at a time) until i get my university funded ones in a couple of months. This is running CentOS, RHEL 5, Ubuntu, Fedora and others Which is nice nice nice.

Aside from technology, ive been pretty busy with other things! It was Frans birthday this time last week, so i was busy buying presents for her; couple of bits of jewellery, books, hard drive for her laptop etc. I also organised a surprise birthday meal for her at Cosmo’s with people from work, which she seemed to like, so it all went well! At the weekend i spent most of the time drinking, watching sports and eating curry! On Saturday i went round Toma’s to watch the United game and play some Pro Evo – ended up going out for a Khyber on a Man date and watched some films after.

On Sunday i went to Cardiff to watch the Wigan game and the Hull games etc. Met Ste and co, who eventually went home early to pass out (half sesh lad!). Ended up having another curry in Cardiff, before staying over night in a hotel next to the Cardiff Wharf.

Came back home to Swindon on Monday as it was a bank holiday, and ive been working 9-5 and chilling in the sun after work since!

As for technical conquests – my next adventure now i have my VM Box sorted – is to play around with CentOS / Ubuntu 8.04 as a Desktop solution (Dual boot naturally). Im quite interested to see the driver support for Nvidia, plus WINE Capabilities etc. I probably wont stick with it – as im too stuck in my damn Windows ways when it comes to Desktop OS, but its worth a try! Anyway, more work to be done!