In this post I’ll cover the basics one needs to know to install, upgrade and remove packages on a Gentoo linux system. read this entry »

I’ve recently switched to the Gentoo Linux distribution (mostly to experiment with this Linux distro) and I don’t regret it so far. This post is about my first impressions about Gentoo.

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I’m trying to install xen on Ubuntu 8.04.1 and here is what I get :

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spaghetti% sudo apt-get install ubuntu-xen-server
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
ubuntu-xen-server: Depends: python-xen-3.2 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: xen-utils-3.2 but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
spaghetti%

I’ve tried to follow the package dependencies but without success. As for now I’m growing tired of Ubuntu and I’m considering moving away to a more robust distribution … I’d be glad to hear your point of view about that too.

If you have multiple linux kernels with differents options in the command line in your bootloader (grub, lilo or other) and you wonder which one was used to boot, you can find out by looking in /proc/cmdline. Ex :
[root@picolo:~]# cat /proc/cmdline
ro root=LABEL=/
[root@picolo:~]#

To know what directories are exported by a NFS server, you can use the showmount -e nfs_server from a NFS client.

[root@client:~]# showmount -e server
Export list for server:
/data/dir1 (everyone)
/data/dir2 client1 client2 client3

(The /data/dir2 is exported only to specified clients)

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might have seen posts about SSH, RSYNC, ZFS Snapshots and so on. This article aims at describing the big picture, and to explain how I’ve been using those tools and technologies to build my own home backup system.

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Quoting the RSYNC homepage : “rsync is an open source utility that provides fast incremental file transfer.”

To make rsync both secure and automated (i.e : non-interactive), you can use SSH as the transport and set up a key pair. This is what will be discussed in this post, along with a few improvements.

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If you experience a slow SSH connection to a Solaris 10 host while after connection everything works fine, then read on !
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If you upgraded your Ubuntu on an IBM T40 Laptop only to find out that there is no sound anymore, you’re not alone in this

Follow the bug report for more information !

Edit 2008-05-11 : As of today I don’t have this problem anymore … update your machine if you haven’t yet !

Edit 2008-06-22 : Sound vanished again … I really need to look into this before this drives me crazy !!

Sound seems to come back and vanish unpredictably reboot after reboot …

CFEngine can do wonders to keep a cluster in shape, but it can be very useful for a single server as well. Here is a configuration sample to monitor a few common services and restart them should they fail.

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