Maintenance reference

Reference

LAN IP addresses

We want all IP address management to happen on the Buffalo DD-WRT router, as much as possible. Ideally, static IPs will be served up to every known box based on MAC address. Then no matter what OS is booted, the machine will have the same name and IP address. The router is slick, it can do it, but be careful to Save AND Apply changes there. airstation 192.168.21.200 dune 192.168.21.179 dhcp range for unknown devices: 2-99 (still more to do to make this consistent, keep at it)

Media Center drives
8 bay SATA tower houses these drives: 2.0tb archive (sdb right?) 250mb landofthelost circa ABB timeframe /dev/disk/by-label/LandOfTheLost /dev/sdc1 1.5tb raid drive #1 /dev/disk/by-label/d-sp-raid -> ../../sdd1 2.0tb latest /dev/disk/by-label/d-sp-20newmovies -> ../../sde1 1.5tb raid drive #2 (needs label change maybe)
There are also these drive partitions: / /dev/sda4 ubuntu root ub_root -> ../../sda5 /vista /dev/sda3

To add a new drive:

1. ls /dev/sd* # and make note of what you have
2. stuff the new drive in the SATA tower or plug it into a SATA socket
3. ls /dev/sd* # you should now see something new, like [/dev/sdf]
4. parted /dev/sdf
5. print # should show nothing or errors
6. mklabel gpt # this TRASHES EVERYTHING ON THE DRIVE and sets it up for "big" >2TGB partition labeling
7. mkpart primary ext4 0 -1s # makes an ext4 primary partition that goes from start (0) to end (-1s), yay
8. quit # yeah weird but that's how you exit, things are changed as you go (oops should have told you that before)
9. mkfs.ext4 -m 0 /dev/sdf1 # the [-m 0] is very important; without it, goofy ext4 wastes 5% "saved for root" wtf
10. mount /dev/sdf1 /somewhere # make sure it looks good!

Adding a new drive

Adding a user to the server

su - # only needed if you want them to have their own group (otherwise use "users" group) groupadd #newuser# # the additional groups here are optional useradd #newuser# -m -g #newuser# -G users,wheel,audio,video,games,dvd,usb -s /bin/bash passwd #newuser# mkdir /home/#newuser# chown #newuser#:users /home/#newuser# # grant ssh access by adding to "AllowUsers" em /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/init.d/sshd restart # grant samba access to home folder # it's already set up in /etc/samba/smb.conf # but the user must be manually added to samba # use same pwd as before to sync them smbpasswd -a #newuser# /etc/init.d/samba restart # YOU PROBABLY HAVE TO RESTART ANY STUPID WINDOWS BOX before it will see things correctly! crazy # you can try this in Windows but it didn't work for me: # net use # net session \\samba.server.ip.address /delete

Updating mediawiki installation
cd /var/www/localhost/htdocs/mediawiki emacs LocalSettings_redirector.php (to hardcode each site) php maintenance/update.php (repeat for each site) emacs LocalSettings_redirector.php (to reset dynamic behavior)

Creating a new ssh key pair for no-password access to a remote system

wow I just had serious issues with basic ssh usage, so i'll put a summary on the wiki basically most misunderstandings stem from describing these two: client: machine that is trying to ssh into the server server: machine that the client user wants to get to most poor sots are just sitting on the client and they create a pair and push their public key to the server but in my case, more often, i want to create a pair on the server and push the private key to the multiple places i need to connect FROM when doing that, you have to push the public key into the server's authorized_keys and configure the client to juggle multiple private keys create a key pair: ssh suser@server ssh-keygen use defaults will create: .ssh/id_rsa (private key) .ssh/id_rsa.pub (public key) put the public key in place: cd .ssh cat id_rsa.pub >>authorized_keys put the private key on the client and configure: scp id_rsa cuser@client:.ssh/id_rsa_server ssh cuser@client em .ssh/config Host tdm thedigitalmachine.com Hostname thedigitalmachine.com IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa User m Host server Hostname server.com IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_server User suser all is full of light

Back up a linux system to a second bootable drive

Steps: We want to copy all files from the root drive to a new drive. We also want to update the boot menu to boot off the new drive. We also want to change /etc/fstab on the second drive to use the new root path. These are the steps for backup of the dune box to the /spiceflow/2.0tb-newmovies/ drive. When we're done, we'll boot from that drive to prove we have a working standby system. rsync does an excellent job of copying just what we need. Test it with this: # a (archive mode -rlptgoD) v (verbose) x (don't cross filesystems) h (human-readable) n (dry run) rsync -avxhn --progress / /spiceflow/2.0tb-newmovies/ Do the job with this: rsync -avxh / /spiceflow/2.0tb-newmovies/ sent 28.10G bytes received 8.64M bytes 15.63M bytes/sec total size is 39.57G speedup is 1.41 There was def some old stuff in there worth cleaning up: /home/m/development/svn/mythtv... /var/tmp xbmc log files etc Next we fix /etc/fstab on the new drive to use the drive as root. Original config: /dev/disk/by-label/d-g2-root / ext3 noatime 0 1 /dev/disk/by-label/d-sp-20newmovies /spiceflow/2.0tb-newmovies ext4 noatime 0 2 New config (remember tho, we lose the 2gb drive): /dev/disk/by-label/d-g2-root /root-hot-drive ext3 noatime 0 1 /dev/disk/by-label/d-sp-20newmovies / ext4 noatime 0 2 Note: this never worked out for me due to my system's mix of ext3 and ext4. I'll retry once I migrate everything to ext4. Next, grub: mount /boot em /boot/grub/menu.lst Orig entry: title ----- linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r11_withext4 root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r11_withext4 root=/dev/sda4 Add a new "standby" entry under it - do a "df" to find the root: title ----- ==STANDBY== linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r11_withext4 root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r11_withext4 root=/dev/hda1 Then reboot to standby and see what we have... (no "latest" video library etc., but otherwise the same?)

git

Basic linux commands

Bash basics

Update gentoo kernel

Maintenance of my Gentoo boxes

Maintenance of my music collection

OS X basics

DOS basics

Update Boost

udev: Assign unique names to your devices

Automatically mount and unmount your devices

udev: Autorun programs when connecting your devices

Configure Eclipse

Configure Emacs

Configure MythTV

Basic MythTV plugin configuration