Home Server Projects
The best servers are those that don't appear to be servers at all.
Tuesday 14 April 2009, 4:32 AM
Give Your Windows Computer a Career
I've discovered an easy way to keep a P4 computer busy for a Looooonnnngggg time. Do a FULL Scan in Windows Defender. I admit that my system is not typical. It has 1.6 TB of used drive space on 6 drives. I expected that it would take some time. Ouch. It ran for 29 1/2 hours.
The idea was to scan it all and then start transferring files from the NTFS partitions on the Windows box to the ext3 partitions on Debbietoo. I just didn't want to transfer the malware too.
As I empty the drives, I install them in Debbietoo and re-format them as more ext3 volumes. Yes I know that I can mount NTFS volumes in Debian. Its too scary though to attempt to write on NTFS under Debian.
Too bad none of its billable time.
The idea was to scan it all and then start transferring files from the NTFS partitions on the Windows box to the ext3 partitions on Debbietoo. I just didn't want to transfer the malware too.
As I empty the drives, I install them in Debbietoo and re-format them as more ext3 volumes. Yes I know that I can mount NTFS volumes in Debian. Its too scary though to attempt to write on NTFS under Debian.
Too bad none of its billable time.
Sunday 12 April 2009, 5:55 AM
Junkbox Printer Server
In my position of “homestead-IT-director” I have a couple of users that are starting to need daily access to the HP ink-jet printer currently attached to my Windows XP Pro system. The educational system in the Republic of Texas hasn't gone “paper-less” yet. I use the printer as little as possible since I'm sure that I've denuded enough forests already. Obviously I need to setup a printer server of some kind to “divorce” the printer from the XP computer. That way I can leave my XP Pro development system turned off more, it'll seem like it runs longer before the next crash!
The substitute server hardware is going to be an old P3 industrial ETX-form factor CPU board liberated from a future as landfill. Serial COM ports 1 & 2 are dead but the USB ports, printer port and the 2 NICs still work fine. It has a compact flash socket connected to the secondary IDE bus and 256 MB of RAM. The plan is to connect it to a wireless router currently being used to provide network connections to the 2 student's Windows XP systems. One of the USB ports will connect to the HP Office-Jet. The compact flash socket will have the OS on it.
A little test demonstrated that the standard HP drivers in Xubuntu works perfectly fine with the HP C3100 model at least for printing. They may not offer a full suite of features. For scanning, FAX and other items other packages will need to be installed. But as a printer its already met the primary design spec.
Hibernation, or suspension as its known in Linux, seems to work but keeping a Linux-based print server in “luke-warm-standby” will require some testing. The ACPI BIOS will need to have an IRQ on the NIC set to trigger the wakeup and return from suspend.
Suspend under Ubuntu or Xubuntu installs very easily if it wasn't installed by default. (Try typing suspend in the Search window of Synaptic.) The idea is to leave the computer “on” all the time and let the NIC wake-up the CPU and have it come up from the suspend state when somebody wants to print a file. Configuring the software to respond to a wake-up from the NIC and then print a document from a Samba connected Windows client is something that needs to be figured out. Worst case, a VB script with a desktop shortcut to send a page feed command to the printer server to wake it up and then push a sheet of paper through to get things moving. It might also be possible to set the printer driver to a long delay ( 15 to 20 seconds or so) on a first attempt to print.
The drivers that HP supplies for this particular “does-it-all” Office Jet are Windows related, not Linux. It seems that it takes a considerable amount of time to print an ordinary page while running under Windows. The suspicion is that page raster rendering is being done in the Windows driver for the printer. That actually makes the use in Linux easier. The bulk of the printer driver will reside on the Windows desktops and they will use “raw mode” to print, that allows for less overhead on the Linux system.
Although Samba supports “install on demand” for Windows printer drivers, permissions on the Windows client need to remain tight to prevent support issues like broken installs and malware etc. The drivers will get installed manually in Admin mode on the two client machines. The users will be set to allow printing, print job management for deleting documents and jobs but not for print driver installations.
One other minor feature of the HP printer/scanner/fax machine is that it has built-in flash sockets for CF, SD and memory sticks. These sockets provide for a direct photo print mode that doesn't require an USB attached computer. At least in Windows, the sockets can also operate as standard external flash memory sockets. Under Linux they can be auto-mounted assuming there is a flash in the socket. This might be of some use later.
Using Linux makes the configuration of the printer server a little more difficult. Samba has to be configured to share the cups printer. User names and passwords have to be setup in nfs to match the ones on the XP desktops to avoid a logon box pop-up. Samba has to be setup first and verified to be functional with the automated Windows NTLM log-on.
One nice thing that results from all of this is that another printer can be connected to the server and made available. There is an old, old, old HP 500 deskjet (black ink only) that is perfectly fine to print program listings when its necessary to go back to killing trees for printouts. Hey! Its still working! It was likely the last HP printer built that actually was stout enough to justify the $350 price tag. Now they make more money off printer cartridges than printers.
At least at this point, the goal of achieving a Windows printer server is going to happen courtesy of Xubuntu and Samba. The price is simply the amount of time needed to do the configuration.
The substitute server hardware is going to be an old P3 industrial ETX-form factor CPU board liberated from a future as landfill. Serial COM ports 1 & 2 are dead but the USB ports, printer port and the 2 NICs still work fine. It has a compact flash socket connected to the secondary IDE bus and 256 MB of RAM. The plan is to connect it to a wireless router currently being used to provide network connections to the 2 student's Windows XP systems. One of the USB ports will connect to the HP Office-Jet. The compact flash socket will have the OS on it.
A little test demonstrated that the standard HP drivers in Xubuntu works perfectly fine with the HP C3100 model at least for printing. They may not offer a full suite of features. For scanning, FAX and other items other packages will need to be installed. But as a printer its already met the primary design spec.
Hibernation, or suspension as its known in Linux, seems to work but keeping a Linux-based print server in “luke-warm-standby” will require some testing. The ACPI BIOS will need to have an IRQ on the NIC set to trigger the wakeup and return from suspend.
Suspend under Ubuntu or Xubuntu installs very easily if it wasn't installed by default. (Try typing suspend in the Search window of Synaptic.) The idea is to leave the computer “on” all the time and let the NIC wake-up the CPU and have it come up from the suspend state when somebody wants to print a file. Configuring the software to respond to a wake-up from the NIC and then print a document from a Samba connected Windows client is something that needs to be figured out. Worst case, a VB script with a desktop shortcut to send a page feed command to the printer server to wake it up and then push a sheet of paper through to get things moving. It might also be possible to set the printer driver to a long delay ( 15 to 20 seconds or so) on a first attempt to print.
The drivers that HP supplies for this particular “does-it-all” Office Jet are Windows related, not Linux. It seems that it takes a considerable amount of time to print an ordinary page while running under Windows. The suspicion is that page raster rendering is being done in the Windows driver for the printer. That actually makes the use in Linux easier. The bulk of the printer driver will reside on the Windows desktops and they will use “raw mode” to print, that allows for less overhead on the Linux system.
Although Samba supports “install on demand” for Windows printer drivers, permissions on the Windows client need to remain tight to prevent support issues like broken installs and malware etc. The drivers will get installed manually in Admin mode on the two client machines. The users will be set to allow printing, print job management for deleting documents and jobs but not for print driver installations.
One other minor feature of the HP printer/scanner/fax machine is that it has built-in flash sockets for CF, SD and memory sticks. These sockets provide for a direct photo print mode that doesn't require an USB attached computer. At least in Windows, the sockets can also operate as standard external flash memory sockets. Under Linux they can be auto-mounted assuming there is a flash in the socket. This might be of some use later.
Using Linux makes the configuration of the printer server a little more difficult. Samba has to be configured to share the cups printer. User names and passwords have to be setup in nfs to match the ones on the XP desktops to avoid a logon box pop-up. Samba has to be setup first and verified to be functional with the automated Windows NTLM log-on.
One nice thing that results from all of this is that another printer can be connected to the server and made available. There is an old, old, old HP 500 deskjet (black ink only) that is perfectly fine to print program listings when its necessary to go back to killing trees for printouts. Hey! Its still working! It was likely the last HP printer built that actually was stout enough to justify the $350 price tag. Now they make more money off printer cartridges than printers.
At least at this point, the goal of achieving a Windows printer server is going to happen courtesy of Xubuntu and Samba. The price is simply the amount of time needed to do the configuration.
Friday 10 April 2009, 2:15 PM
________ (fill in the blank) as POSIX Compatible
First of all I am not a POSIX specialist. I can't really claim to be a Windows 7 expert, yet.
Thanks to Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX; I can say that its the craziest thing I've ever heard of. First of all POSIX as a Unix/Linux/BSD standard makes sense. You're talking Macintoshes and Granny Smiths. But grafting it onto Windows makes about as much sense as putting air conditioning on a fish. I'm sure it made sense to somebody at Microsoft. But I'll bet it was so Microsoft could make a big government sale. Insisting on POSIX compatibility might have even been a ploy by the contracting agency to try to keep Microsoft out of the bidding sometime back in the past.
What I find hilarious is the certification process allows for "partial" conformance to POSIX standards. That sounds an awful lot like a "one from column A and two from column B" certification standard. "Our computer is POSIX certified if you read a file but not when you edit it." (Yeah that's simplistic but you get my reasoning.) POSIX is probably one area of Open Source Software concerns that has become a pain-in-the-posterior for the OSS advocates. Its so anti-anarchy and freedom-fouling. You just don't organize chaos when everything is going so good.
Most of the download previously blogged about were chunks of software to enable Unix Services on a Windows Server 2008 installation. Another big portion of it was to allow for Visual Studio to be used as the IDE to develop Unix-based C projects. I laughed out loud. (What? Eclipse not good enough for ya?)
I'm sorry but it didn't make sense a few years back to put it on a Windows server then and it still doesn't make sense. Samba works so much easier.
BTW did you know that Samba can be used to serve up NFS files and printer services on systems OTHER than the one its hosted on? All it takes is a few edits in smb.conf. When defining shares, use the fully defined name, i.e. \\server\share. Make sure the users have file permissions on the remote Linux system. Comes in handy when you want to confine the Windows clients to their own little chunk of network. Just push another NIC into the Samba server slots and keep the Windows clients in their own subnet ghetto for the price of another net switch.
Thanks to Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX; I can say that its the craziest thing I've ever heard of. First of all POSIX as a Unix/Linux/BSD standard makes sense. You're talking Macintoshes and Granny Smiths. But grafting it onto Windows makes about as much sense as putting air conditioning on a fish. I'm sure it made sense to somebody at Microsoft. But I'll bet it was so Microsoft could make a big government sale. Insisting on POSIX compatibility might have even been a ploy by the contracting agency to try to keep Microsoft out of the bidding sometime back in the past.
What I find hilarious is the certification process allows for "partial" conformance to POSIX standards. That sounds an awful lot like a "one from column A and two from column B" certification standard. "Our computer is POSIX certified if you read a file but not when you edit it." (Yeah that's simplistic but you get my reasoning.) POSIX is probably one area of Open Source Software concerns that has become a pain-in-the-posterior for the OSS advocates. Its so anti-anarchy and freedom-fouling. You just don't organize chaos when everything is going so good.
Most of the download previously blogged about were chunks of software to enable Unix Services on a Windows Server 2008 installation. Another big portion of it was to allow for Visual Studio to be used as the IDE to develop Unix-based C projects. I laughed out loud. (What? Eclipse not good enough for ya?)
I'm sorry but it didn't make sense a few years back to put it on a Windows server then and it still doesn't make sense. Samba works so much easier.
BTW did you know that Samba can be used to serve up NFS files and printer services on systems OTHER than the one its hosted on? All it takes is a few edits in smb.conf. When defining shares, use the fully defined name, i.e. \\server\share. Make sure the users have file permissions on the remote Linux system. Comes in handy when you want to confine the Windows clients to their own little chunk of network. Just push another NIC into the Samba server slots and keep the Windows clients in their own subnet ghetto for the price of another net switch.
Thursday 9 April 2009, 1:18 PM
Annoying popups in Windows XP Pro
Well I finally got an answer as to why my XP Pro system at the office was popping me crazy with the Visual Studio debugger message.
Check this out:
http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/03/28/some-vs2005-and-vs2008-wizards-pop-up-script-error.aspx
Turns out there are "secret" security zones for Internet Exploder. Yeah just what I wanted to hear about. Presumably yet another way to gain access to the freaking OS. Hack through the IE interface of Visual Studio. Just freaking wonderful.
Check this out:
http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/03/28/some-vs2005-and-vs2008-wizards-pop-up-script-error.aspx
Turns out there are "secret" security zones for Internet Exploder. Yeah just what I wanted to hear about. Presumably yet another way to gain access to the freaking OS. Hack through the IE interface of Visual Studio. Just freaking wonderful.
Thursday 9 April 2009, 11:10 AM
GNU Windows 7?
I found something in Windows 7 that seems to have been around awhile,
Unix Application Services.
Please ignore the white space between the front part and back parts of that sentence. It just didn't seem to be right putting them both on the same line. Or typing them in the same breath.
Some years ago I received in the mail a CD from Microsoft that purported to be Unix services for Windows version 1. It was to be installed on a Server and it allowed access to Unix based printers and file systems but it was basically a Windows service. I had started using Samba and decided that I really didn't need to use the CD so it went into the coaster collection and I never installed it.
It turns out that one of the WINDOWS components in Win 7 is a thing called Unix Application Services. It doesn't seem to be anything other than a stub to download the big executable. What I found amusing is that to get the help information needed to install the "service" I had to download the add-on. Then I had to use the added stub to download the big exe. The help text was part of the first download. I guess it helped that I didn't need any....help.
Previous incarnations of a similar service was hosted on a server. Windows clients that required access to Unix/Linux files or printers connected to the service on the server and did what they needed to do through the server making the connection for the client and performing by proxy what was needed. Guaranteed to double up the network traffic. Made Unix look slow in comparison to Windows NT 4.0. Great marketing technique.
Some of the features include ODBC support for POSIX and Unix applications, presumably being able to run GNU based applications on WIndows, Visual Studio support, etc.
I guess its grandaughter or grandson is now a download-able 473 MB executable. In the description on Microsoft's webpage:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=93FF2201-325E-487F-A398-EFDE5758C47F&displaylang=en&hash=BFplrjFTrIZiuxB99dCYut4eGahLx4CQxtI9swtGwqBWmHo4CWnhgEricUI3Dru6%2b3LhVuHSNf5OsSBf%2bOSCqg%3d%3d
It describes the download as containing the GNU SDK and GNU Utilities. I have to see what this is. It purports to be Vista and Windows Server 2008 RTM compatible. So it should be Win 7 compatible?
To be honest I don't know what I'm getting myself into here but it will be interesting to see what comes out of all this. I have no freaking clue to whats really in the SDK so its going onto the Win7 running inside the Sun Virtual Box. When I figure out if its safe on its own recognizance I'll let it out.
Unix Application Services.
Please ignore the white space between the front part and back parts of that sentence. It just didn't seem to be right putting them both on the same line. Or typing them in the same breath.
Some years ago I received in the mail a CD from Microsoft that purported to be Unix services for Windows version 1. It was to be installed on a Server and it allowed access to Unix based printers and file systems but it was basically a Windows service. I had started using Samba and decided that I really didn't need to use the CD so it went into the coaster collection and I never installed it.
It turns out that one of the WINDOWS components in Win 7 is a thing called Unix Application Services. It doesn't seem to be anything other than a stub to download the big executable. What I found amusing is that to get the help information needed to install the "service" I had to download the add-on. Then I had to use the added stub to download the big exe. The help text was part of the first download. I guess it helped that I didn't need any....help.
Previous incarnations of a similar service was hosted on a server. Windows clients that required access to Unix/Linux files or printers connected to the service on the server and did what they needed to do through the server making the connection for the client and performing by proxy what was needed. Guaranteed to double up the network traffic. Made Unix look slow in comparison to Windows NT 4.0. Great marketing technique.
Some of the features include ODBC support for POSIX and Unix applications, presumably being able to run GNU based applications on WIndows, Visual Studio support, etc.
I guess its grandaughter or grandson is now a download-able 473 MB executable. In the description on Microsoft's webpage:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=93FF2201-325E-487F-A398-EFDE5758C47F&displaylang=en&hash=BFplrjFTrIZiuxB99dCYut4eGahLx4CQxtI9swtGwqBWmHo4CWnhgEricUI3Dru6%2b3LhVuHSNf5OsSBf%2bOSCqg%3d%3d
It describes the download as containing the GNU SDK and GNU Utilities. I have to see what this is. It purports to be Vista and Windows Server 2008 RTM compatible. So it should be Win 7 compatible?
To be honest I don't know what I'm getting myself into here but it will be interesting to see what comes out of all this. I have no freaking clue to whats really in the SDK so its going onto the Win7 running inside the Sun Virtual Box. When I figure out if its safe on its own recognizance I'll let it out.
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