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.

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!

Well, ive finally found a way to get the dreaded EEATX boards working! Using an ollllld Intel “KHD3BASE450″ Chassis, you can mount the EEATX format boards (after taking out the PSU) perfectly. We are using the Supermicro X7DB8+ motherboards for what its worth.

Once i took the PSU off, mounted the new motherboard screwed it in tightly, i now had the problem of remounting the PSU. I decided to do this the simple way,i  took off the PSU mounting bracket, flipped it around, and rescrewed it on (with some very ham-fisted screwing it had to be said). Once the bracket was firmly inplace, you can then re-mount your PSU perfectly, although again you might need to ham-fist a few screws to get them in.

Once this was done, i was presented with 2 more problems – power and powering on. The Supermicro Dxxxxx motherboard we are using drags so much power it requires the normal 24, 8 AND a 4 pin ATX12v power module. My power supply didnt have a 4 pin. The resolve to this was a dinky little £2 adapter from eBay, which works like a charm.

Now, the main problem i have been presented with, with trying to get a new motherboard to play nicely with an old chassis, is the physical act of getting the front panel to interact with the board itself. On the board that was previously in the Intel KHD3BASE450 (Pentium 3/ Earrrrrly Xeon), the front panel connected to the motherboard with a Floppy Disk ribbon style connector – something which isnt evident on newer boards.

Now for the ingenuity – on these old case there are intrusion detection switches, one at the front and one at the back. When the case lid is on, the intrusion detection switch is pushed in at the back, created a full circuit. The Intrusion detection of course, connects to the motherboard via standard, 2 pin, jumper, with positive, and negative wires. I decided to take these wires, place them on pin 0+1 on the motherboard for where the front panel should connect, and take the “rear intrusion switch” down so that there would always be a full circuit.

When the intrusion switch at the front is pressed, it acts like a power switch and boots the Server! Hurrah! This means that i’ve taken about £2000 of skipped hardware, and turned them into servers, for free! Along with some cheap xeon heatsinks and some borrowed RAM, i now have 2 fully working, 8-core Xeon servers. Ta-Da!

Also, i have been working on my Cisco lab in preparation for my CCNA exam next month – ive invested in a Cisco 2950 (for VLANs and L2 switching), a 2612 Router, and a 2610 Router. These are for practicing stuff like routing tables and protocols, VLAN routing, etc.

Well, the construction of my super computer has begun lol After having 2 Woodcrest based boards with quad-core Xeon support etc and finding out that they are EEATX and that the only compatible chassis’ are £250+ i had to go back to the drawing board.

I managed to shotgun some old server rigs from our labs that were being binned as part of our clean out, which were physically big enough. However the PSU’s werent pushing enough wattage, more to the point they didnt have the correct 4 pin ATX12v connectors. This is easy to fix, however when coupled with the fact that the chassis front panel method of connecting to the mobo is so outdated it isnt even google-able, i decided to scrap the idea (No jumpers?! WTF?!).

Im going to just recap a little here, the reason im actually building this machine is for my virtualisation final year project, whereby im going to need obviously a fairly powerful machine to run all the VM’s, VM technology etc. Ive already got Education licensing for all VMWare products, and Xen etc. However the hardware is the issue.

Fast forward to today, whereby using a bit of blag and some guile ive managed to commandeer myself a Intel S5000PSL, capable of supporting 2 Socket 771 Multi-core Xeon CPU’s – of which i have 2, Quad-Core Clovertown Xeons, which will do very nicely.

Now i have the motherboard, and the CPU’s sorted, i need to find where to get my other items. I have a load of EATX chassis’ at my desk, but they are very old and very clunky and well..”Grey”. So i decided to make my first investment of this project, and spend £110 on an Antec Titan, an EATX Server Chassis thats comes bundled with a 650w Antec truePower Trio! Which is normally worth £70 on its own anyway. A Definite bargain. This will go great with my board and CPU’s.

I bought 2 Xeon passive heatsinks off the Intel Shop, which hopefully (fingers crossed), will work first time with the board and the case (mounting problems perhaps?). All that i need to do now, is get some FB-DIMM’s and im sorted. I might be getting some free from work as we are upgrading all our RAM from DDR2 to DDR3 as part of our refresh, otherwise you can get them for £59 for 2GB which isnt too bad at all!

After ive got Motherboard, CPU, Chassis, Heatsinks, RAM i need to procure a CD Drive and im going to be sorted. Then i’ll use one of my many hard drives and the server will be ready to go.

Interesting thing about VMWare ESX is apparently need to attach an iSCSI SAN to get it to install (it worked fine on a single core, AMD CPU based workstation system i had), which was a total fluke obviously as it wouldnt install afterwards on a Q6600 based system, or a Celeron D based system (neither have SAN’s funnily enough).

A way to get round this, is to apparently create a software based Linux SAN (a distro), so i’m currently looking into this. Anyone know where i can get this from?

Anyway, onwards and upwards. 

My file server is now running RHEL 5! After a lot of tinkering and a complete RHEL re-install, i have finally have it working! After testing with multiple users etc, and confident i had done it properly – i migrated my Antec TruePower Trio 650watt PSU from my old File server into my new RHEL Box, followed by all my drives. I then tidied it up, and deployed it fully into my house! Woo. Now im left with my lightweight security box, which i need to pinch some blank CD’s off someone to install PF Sense/ Smoothwall security operating systems.

Well, im still plugging away with RHEL 5, a week down the line. This is good training for my RHCT! Samba is a very big pain in the ass to get working on this OS. Ive created the correct file structure, with permissions, owners (user AND group) etc defined. Ive then created the Samba shares, set the permissions, directories etc, and then enabled them, and still i cannot get online! It keeps prompting for a username and password all the time lol :S

I also had a play with getting NAT Masquerading to work using iptables – set it up as i always did except this time i didnt connect the outgoing interface to a switch just straight to the other computer, but it wouldnt work. Spent hours testing and configuring – ip’s are correct etc, and it has just dawned on me – i was using a straight-through Cat5 and not a crossover cable. Im an idiot sometimes. Hopefully when i go home and change the cable, it will all work hunky dorey – then i can sack off trying to get RHEL 5 to work as my new File Server and just use it as a security box instead – for now anyway!

Also, ive decided to seriously start studying for my CCNA; im designing a learning plan as we speak so i can start studying tomorrow – my aim is to have it passed by May/June.

Finally, valentines day is almost upon us – and i have a few tricks up my sleeve for Fran lol. We are going away for the weekend up to Manchester, which will be fun – plus im meeting up with Joe Joe and Con Cons for a few beers hopefully. Good times all round

Laters.