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While I’m still setting up my new Fedora server, today’s task was getting an FTP server up and running.

I wanted the same kind of functionality with VSFTPD as I had with Serv-U on my old Windows Server but, as luck would have it, CHROOTing people effectively renders symbolic links totally useless.

The solution, as provided by ProFTPD’s user docs was to use:

mount --bind /home/folder /home/user/folder

to overcome the problem. The above command would create a mounted folder inside a user’s CHROOTed environment but to a folder that exists outside of it. ie. The user is CHROOTed in /home/user/ but the folder you want to give them access to is located elsewhere on the server, outside of their CHROOT. The solution works a treat and honours any security privileges set on the “real” folder too.

Great! Only problem there was that I need these mounts to persist between reboots so I needed to edit /etc/fstab. Unfortunately I know nothing about /etc/fstab so editing it was going to be fun. A quick Google dug up this helpful little tip. Hopefully it comes in handy for others!

In a nutshell, to see how a mount command should look when transposed in to fstab, simply type in the manual mount command then have a look at /etc/mtab using:

cat /etc/mtab

Lewis

So after recently installing Fedora 10 on a half decent machine and running VMWare Server 2.0, I discovered I didn’t really have enough memory in the host machine. A measly 2GB was blitzed by a couple of Windows Server 2003 guest machines with one as a Domain Controller with 256MB allocated and the other running Exchange Server 2003 SP2 and Microsoft Antigen 9 with 1GB allocated.

I decided to replace the 2GB with four sticks of 1GB CRUCIAL DDR2 PC26400 but, having experienced the memory issue with Windows XP only seeing 2GB RAM, I wasn’t massively surprised with what I saw in Fedora when I ran:

free -t

Yes, the 2GB limit applies here too!

But all was not lost. I decided to investigate to see if there was a solution, knowing about several bits and pieces with memory limitations on Windows Servers I knew it was worth investigating.

Some digging turned up that if I installed kernel-PAE in Fedora and ensured memory mapping was enabled in my BIOS, I should get the full 4GB! Huzzah! I busily set about installing kernel-PAE and rebooted…

yum install kernel-PAE

shutdown -r now

When rebooting I headed in to the BIOS and noticed that of course, memory mapping was already enabled (hence the 2GB limit, otherwise it would be 3GB + change) so I allowed the reboot to complete and… there’s still 2GB in there!

Yet MORE digging turned up that I was booting with the wrong kernel and not the PAE enabled kernel I had just installed so a quick edit of grub.conf following the wonderful advice in this forum entry finally enabled me to see and utilise the full 4GB in Fedora 10.

Now to see if I can add that damned PAE switch to Windows XP SP3 and get the full benefit of the 4GB installed in that too!

I’ve been running my own mail server for quite some time now and also hosting some apps and what not from a Windows Server 2003 box gathering dust in my basement.

Recently I decided it was time to put some of the quite high spec bits and bobs sitting around my room to good use and so I cobbled together a machine and then sat there wondering what OS to install on it.

New Spec:

ASUS Commando Motherboard
Intel CORE 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2GHz
4GB Crucial DDR2 PC2-6400 (4×1GB) (I’ll get to this bit in a minute!)
3 x 500GB Samsung SpinPoint F1 SATA2 (1 x RAID1 & 1 Standalone)
256MB ATI Radeon x1950XT

Now that’s no slow poke machine so my OS decision was pretty important I thought. Obviously, being a Sys Admin I just thought, yeah, I’ll slap Windows Server 2003 on it and that’ll be that. I had infact configured the HDs in a RAID5 with the onboard Intel ICH8 but a weird unfixable issue with the graphics card had me strumming my fingers so I decided to go with Ubuntu instead and run VMWare Server on that for my obvious Windows requirements.

First off, Ubuntu didn’t see my RAID5 partition so after some investigation and subsequent discoveries about fakeRAID and so called fake RAID controllers on recent motherboards, I decided to bin the RAID5 idea and create a softwareRAID setup. Now at this point I still wasn’t settled on the OS and the whole fakeRAID issue was really annoying me so I decided to see if I could get it working with another OS so I tried Fedora.

That is pretty much where I stopped. Unfortunately Fedora still didn’t support my fakeRAID on the ASUS Commando motherboard but the OS was so nice (and I’m used to administering Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 at work anyway so it wasn’t a steep learning curve) I decided to stick with it.

So far I’m VERY impressed with Fedora 10. It’s running VMWare Server 2.0 which is running 2 Windows Server 2003 boxes, one is a Domain Controller, the other, an Exchange Server 2003 box and it’s pretty damn good!

Read on for my battles with memory holes, PAE, rebuilding kernels and more.

It’s a small win but hopefully has significant ramifications for the ID card and DNA databases that our democratically elected government believes will stop all crime and keep all terrorists in check (they wish).

The European Court of Human Rights has found in favour of two men who’s DNA and fingerprint data was kept on record in direct contravention of their wishes after they were acquitted of crimes they didn’t commit. The police forces in question must now remove their data and the Government must reconsider and potentially scale back their plans for a UK DNA database. This is FANTASTIC news!

This obviously is a small victory for our civil rights given the battering that they have already had in the few short years since the war on terrorism was declared but it’s a victory nonetheless! While we may not have to worry about the police retaining our fingerprint and DNA data, it doesn’t stop local councils and the Government (Stasi) erecting CCTV cameras and pointing them at our houses to make sure we’re not terrorists/criminals/doing anything naughty.

More at BBC News

About a month ago a colleague was looking in to buying a netbook. I’d been toying with the idea of a portable computer for a long while and ummed and ahh’d about a new laptop for an age. I’d bought a Dell Vostro laptop for my girlfriend’s birthday back in October (her birthday is in November but there’s nothing like being prepared is there?) and while it has come in handy for her University work, it was just too cumbersome to carry around on a daily basis having a 15.4″ screen and being quite weighty.

Obviously then I was looking for a decent netbook so first stop was the Asus Eee range. A good starting point but I wasn’t feeling SSD at the time with the disk sizes being so small (8GB and 16GB). I was therefore in a bit of a quandry. I needed the size of a netbook combined with the usability of a laptop. I looked at the Dell Mini 9/12 and several other options but they were all missing something important so I put it off until my colleague mentioned recently that he was looking for one too.

While we were looking, another colleague mentioned the Samsung NC-10. Due for release in early November and had received very good reviews on the circuit. After a quick Google we had decided it had everything we wanted. Good brand name, attractive, 10 inch screen, large hard drive (160GB), good keyboard, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and was easily upgradeable to 2GB RAM also! We both decided this was the one and shortly after it came in stock at Play.com, we both placed orders. He went for the white one and I got the blue.

Unfortunately for me, it seemed that the blue one was seriously delayed and despite placing an order on 10th November for the blue one, I still haven’t received it from Play.com! Fortunately for Dixons, they did have stock so I placed another order with them and received my NC-10 yesterday! First impressions are favourable. It’s light, responsive and perfect for my needs and comes highly recommended!