If you have not installed file sharing while installing Debian lenny, you need to install them, the easiest way to do that is

run the command

aptitude

using the arrow keys and the enter key, expand “TASKS” then place the bar over File Server, then the plus sign to select it (Shift +), right after hit “g” then “g” on your keyboard to install them.

Once done, Download the following files and place them in /etc/samba/ replacing any existing files (Backup your own files)

wget http://www.linuxhowtodocs.com/samba_base.zip

unzip samba_base.zip -o -d /etc/samba

Now to adding users, from the following 3 commands, After the second and after the third command, you will be asked to chose a password for the user joe

useradd joe -m -G users
passwd joe
smbpasswd -a joe

Now with this out of the way, Edit the file /etc/samba/smb.conf

The following need to be edited

netbios name : Should become the name of the computer on the network, in windows, this is the machine’s name
hosts allow : If your network is like mine where PCs take IP addresses of the form 192.168.2.x, then this one should be 127. 192.168.2. where 127 is for the local machine, the following part of the IP is the part of the IP that prefixes the IP of all network machines that should be able to access this file server (usually you will change the 2 with a 0 or 1)
interfaces : 127.0.0.1/8 192.168.2.0/24, like above, if your IP subnet is not 192.168.2.x, change it here (usualy you will change the 2 with a 0 or 1)
remote announce : if your subnet does not start with 192.168.2. then change it to your own (usually you will change the 2 with a 0 or 1)
remote browse sync : if your subnet does not start with 192.168.2. then change it to your own (usualy you will change the 2 with a 0 or 1)

Now scroll down, you will see a sample folder, edit that to the folder you want to share, and copy it over and over again for any other folders that you want to share, You are done, now you should be able to open those folders from the network.

To begin with, if it is disk space you are looking for information about, the following command should display the useful disk usage information

df -h

If you want to know the size of all sub directories in a directory

Move to the directory containing the sub directories (if root, can take a long time)

du -sh *

1- You need to change the boot options to allow this…

Since i use debian lenny, my boot options look like this in /boot/grub/menu.lst

title        Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-686
root        (hd0,1)
kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet
initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686

We need to append ramdisk_size=1572864 if we wanted a 1.5GB RAM drive, make sure you have 1.5GB EXTRA on your system, let’s say you must have a minimum of 2GB for the system to run using the 512MB you are leaving the system with

title        Debian 1.5GB Ramdisk, kernel 2.6.26-2-686
root        (hd0,1)
kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet ramdisk_size=1572864
initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686

You are done for now, if you want to format and use it do this

/sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/ram0

Remember that you need to format as ext2 and not ext3, i have seen people format the hard drive as EXT3, why would you ever need Journaling on a RAM disk that is already volatile (Deleted when you reboot)

mkdir /ramdisk
mount /dev/ram0 /ramdisk

You can now get creative and format or load a disk image at boot time, in any case, the RAM is only allocated to the disk when you use it, but you really don’t need to know that to use your new RAM hard disk

NOTE: I chose to explain RAM disk because later on i will show you what advantages we can get from having a block level device, you can surely do this without modifying boot options by simply using tempfs or RAMFS that give you an instant ram disk, but it is not a block level device in that case

Testing Speed

So, you want to see how fast it is, but for that we need a data source that can push this thing to the maximum, the answer is /dev/zero that responds with a stream of zeros, so let us write a 1.3GB file to our new volatile hard disk

dd if=/dev/zero of=/ramdisk/pathtoimage.img bs=1M count=1300

On my computer, this took about 4.54006 seconds.

NOTE: (192.168.2.133) has apt-cacher, my PC 192.168.2.106 has a php script that responds with the caller’s IP

1- Put the Lenny Mini-CD into the computer
2- Follow instructions, when asked about a proxy, the address is http://192.168.2.133:3142/
3-Once done, run

apt-get update

apt-get install ssh openssh-server

4- Finding out our Network IP address, you can simply issue the command

ifconfig

The above will give us the IP address of this pc

5- Now we can go back to the Windows PC and start WinSCP and PUTTY to edit files and do stuff, i use sourceedit as the editor because i want to save any edited file as linux text (Line break is different)

6- connect via putty and WinSCP to the computer so we can edit some files…

7- Fix /etc/apt/sources.list to have the apt-cacher … and comment out the CD

so deb “http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main” becomes “deb http://192.168.2.133:3142/ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main”

The above lines save internet bandwidth by caching the files on the network

8- Now, we want the PC to request the same IP every time so that we always know how to connect to it.

edit /etc/network/interfaces,

——————————
initially it looks like this
——————————

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

——————————-
But we want it to look like this
——————————–

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.2.112
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.2.1

auto eth0

———————————–

—-DONE—

And now we are probably set to connect to this PC every time (Static Network IP), and to use aptitude without waiting for ages to download the packages from the internet

First, I absolutly LOVE windows on my Desktop, and i LOVE Linux on my servers, and i have nothing against windows servers or Linux Desktops, i like Operating systems that get the Job done faster and with least effort, so what suits a job suits me, having never used a mac, i would jump to a mac if they tell me it can help you develop application X faster, why not, but the article here http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/mysql_on_windows.html does not seem to make sense to me. Here is why

In the comparison of number of downloads, it clearly reads that windows has 600K downloads VS linux that has 200K downloads, but are you serious ?

On Linux, MySQL is hardly if ever downloaded from mysql.com , while on Windows it is always downloaded from MySQL.COM and therefore i beg an explanation on why you say this statistic tells anything, Also, most developers are like me, they use the Windows edition for development on there development PCs, and then deploy the actual application on a Linux server.

For example, on a debian system i would simply issue

apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server

this will get MySQL binaries from Debian, not from MySQL, and therefore making the statistic not available to you.

Then the article talks about how insignificant the differences between the Linux and Windows edition is, to tell you the truth, this is not the case at least for me, here are SOME examples

Most of my applications can not make good use of RAID because RAID does not help with disk seek time (And therefore latency), My answer to this is usually separating tables to more than 1 hard disk , and although having databases moved to other hard drives is supported in windows by creating a text file, moving individual tables on windows is not, On linux, i simply create a symbolic link to the MYD file, and one to the MYI file, i can even split a single table to 2 hard drives with the indexes on 1 drive and the actual data on the other.

Clustering anyone ??

For a longer list check out http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/windows-vs-unix.html , this is certainly is inferior to the Linux counterpart for something like a shared hosting environment (See number of open files and connection timeouts etc..)

Now to add more to that, Linux is a free OS, you install and upgrade it for free, and MySQL is also free, if your business uses many many MySQL servers, your savings on Windows Server licenses can be significant.

The bottom line is, when a company like Oracle (Since it has acquired SUN) gets hold of an open source database engine, you can rest assured objectivity will still be there only when it supports the paying product.

Thanks for listening.

In Linux, when you want to include a directory for a database, you add a symbolic link ( Using the ln -s targetdir command), in Windows, there are no symbolic links, and Windows Shortcuts ( Via right click create shortcut ) don’t work

The truth is, MySQL enables Symbolic Links in Windows by default, but you have to do it the MySQL way

MySQL is a file based database engine, you should be able to see a folder for every database run by your database engine, Now to move one of those DBs to a different directory or hard drive, you just copy it to the new destination and create a file db_name.sym then, within that plain text file, you can add D:\data\db_name\ where D:\data\db_name\ is the folder containing the MySQL files.

You should be good to go if you have moved the directory of the database to d:\data, but if you copied it, the copy in the original MySQL data directory will be used

You are done, Now you should experience the extra performance of combining disks, the closest it gets without RAID and a reformat, surely this is assuming the DBs are used evenly

But there are other reasons why you may want to do this, one of which is, when you want to compile all user data in a directory, So DBs that person creates using your server management software puts all that person’s software in one place so that when he or she requests a backup, you know what to send him/her

Enjoy

Back to Debian, as when i thought about it, i Don’t really like Ubuntu, what has it added, i still don’t know the difference between UBUNTU and Debian, Debian keeps a legal document that promises to never do what redhat once did, ubuntu does not, Debian has a Blue Background, and ubuntu has a color that i don’t know the name of, Besides, Hardy shipped with XEN not functional on my 64Bit and i had to wait for a long time to have it fixed, Lenny here i am.

To begin with, Why download the DVD or worse the 5 DVDs, i downloaded a CD (Or get the NetInstall CD), then install 1 copy from that CD, now install apt-cacher and the software you use will be cached on your network, My apt-cacher is installed inside a virtual machine, when i want to install another copy of lenny, i simply allow it to download from the internet, and after picking a mirror in the installer, i specify a proxy as http://192.168.0.133:3142/ and i will never have to download that package twice.

Better yet, the CD or DVD get outdated fast, this one keeps refreshing itself with the latest packages, and i can save Debian (The distro i love most) some bandwidth.

After the install, remember to change your repository lines so that a url like http://ftp.us.debian.org becomes http://192.168.0.133:3142/ftp.us.debian.org, Also fix that on the install that hosts the cache.

Great stuff right !

On windows, You can use speedfan, under linux you can read the smart data as follows

Use the smartctl command

1- Checking for smart support, (All recent hard drives have it but you need to enable it in BIOS)

smartctl -i /dev/sdb

2- Enable reading it

smartctl -s on -d ata /dev/sdb

See it

smartctl -d ata -H /dev/sdb

Read more

smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sdb

Now some manufacturer specific smart atributes exist, you need to google them out, Also smart is not definitive, if S.M.A.R.T data says ok but there is a ticking noise in your hard drive, Don’t trust the hardware data, get backup.

Some hard drives like the Samsung Spinpoint come with extensive diagnostics software, My 3 2.5′ disks pass the test, pass the smart test, and tick when warm, i will let you know if it was the tick of death sometime soon

Anyway, i am glad lenny is out, i have been waiting for it since last year, and i thought downloading it would be a challenge when the rush comes, The download came in at full speed and the both the text installer and the GUI installer work like a charm.

Did i mention it is not 1 DVD ! the thing is a 5 DVD, But i don’t think it is wise to download them all, Just download the first CD, and when you need a package, let the software get it from the internet for you.

all you need is the first CD or DVD, most packages you will need are there, and whatever is missing the installer can get for you from the internet !

Anyway, i have not yet checked it out fully, when i do, i will update you all.