MyGodAL3X
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You helped him so much that he even changed his location to /home/joker 
But yeah this thread is awesome, thanks Jayce
But yeah this thread is awesome, thanks Jayce
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Jayce
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No problem, I'm glad to help. I'm still a little baffled at the situation though, which I think a lot of it stems from me not understanding your drive arrangement. Do I remember you saying you split off your partitions depending on their duties? Meaning, you had a music partition, a videos partition, etc.? I think some of that may be playing a key role here if that's the case. After all, I have just one large partition that acts as my home directory, which includes everything beneath it (music videos docs etc).
The other confusing thing is, rebooting shouldn't (keyword - shouldn't) make much of a difference. You're mounting by UUID, which is that more directed way of identifying drives. Now let's say instead of UUID you used /dev/sdb4 in /etc/fstab to mount as /home. But then you cracked the case open and removed a drive... you could have potentially just resorted the /dev drive assignments, and now what was once /dev/sdb4 can now be /dev/sda4. That's why UUID is a more fool proof "just do what I tell you and don't forget" kind of method. The catch? You used UUID, which aids in my confusion as there shouldn't be any mixing up of drives, etc.
Haha, of course! The beautiful thing about the magical internet: When I post my long threads going on and on about certain tasks and sometimes go off topic a bit, I can't help but to think "naw, it's okay. Someone will dig this thread up on Google in the future and find it useful anyway."
The other confusing thing is, rebooting shouldn't (keyword - shouldn't) make much of a difference. You're mounting by UUID, which is that more directed way of identifying drives. Now let's say instead of UUID you used /dev/sdb4 in /etc/fstab to mount as /home. But then you cracked the case open and removed a drive... you could have potentially just resorted the /dev drive assignments, and now what was once /dev/sdb4 can now be /dev/sda4. That's why UUID is a more fool proof "just do what I tell you and don't forget" kind of method. The catch? You used UUID, which aids in my confusion as there shouldn't be any mixing up of drives, etc.
You helped him so much that he even changed his location to /home/joker
But yeah this thread is awesome, thanks Jayce
Haha, of course! The beautiful thing about the magical internet: When I post my long threads going on and on about certain tasks and sometimes go off topic a bit, I can't help but to think "naw, it's okay. Someone will dig this thread up on Google in the future and find it useful anyway."
MyGodAL3X
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Yup, I will be referring to this bad boy this weekend, when I move over to Ubuntu as well.
Server and main rig. Going to be a fun weekend.
Server and main rig. Going to be a fun weekend.
Jayce
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I'm looking to move my server as well. Originally I thought my quad core desktop would be overkill (and suck up more electricity) than my pentium dual core server I have there now, but some testing with a watt meter suggests my quad core desktop, despite having a PCI graphics card and 4 HDDs (pentium dual core box has integrated graphics and 2 HDDs) there's a 65w vs 125w idle difference. I only used 4 HDDs for worst case scenario for comparing... in actual practice I'll use 3. Even still, a more powerful yet more power efficient box in use that would otherwise just be sitting on the counter? Sure, why not?
I'll likely be editing my /etc/fstab via UUID just the same way we did here. If KSoD doesn't mind I'll blab about it a bit here so you guys can see what my plan of action is as I go into this, especially since a lot of what I do when setting up a box like this directly correlates what has been discussed in this thread. Perhaps some of my setup and backup preferences may interest you guys, so I'll tag some extra details in the mix too so no areas are missed... Right now the server is running 11.04 for no particular reason other than it was my Unity test-box that I ended up leaving running and set up file server services on it. I'm eyeing up Lubuntu 12.04 or Debian 6 LXDE. The main reason I'm aiming for a light desktop environment is to eliminate any unneeded graphic overhead if I VNC into it or something. The box will be running 247 for various reasons, such as torrent usage (I let it loop Linux ISO uploads), file sharing with friends, home video surveillance, etc., so it makes it a little nicer to have a GUI. Straight file server I'd probably not care much.
It'll run 3 hard drives... a single 160GB SATA HDD for the entire root drive (no reason to split home and root since I don't have any personal documents on the OS drive), and 2x500GB SATA HDD's already set up in a RAID'd mirror configuration. My plan of action is exactly as follows:
- Boot operating system via USB flash drive
- Select advanced partitioning
- Select 160GB drive, install OS
- Leave other two drives 100% absolutely untouched during the installation process (more on this later)
- Complete installation of OS, reboot
- Log in, install "mdadm" (software RAID), then reboot
- Log in, run sudo blkid. /dev/md* should be viewable now (the "virtual array" of the two other drives) since mdadm was installed to recognize the 2x500GB mirror that was already set up
- Set UUID of /dev/md* (likely /dev/md0 or something similar) to mount /media/storage (personal preference)
- Reboot
- Shares in /media/storage should already be existent since the array didn't change... will test my desktop*** and my fiance's laptop*** to make sure synchronization works fine.
- Add folder to /var/www that I have ownership of, likely "public"
- Install samba, apache2, No-IP***, ZoneMinder***
***Desktop - In Startup Applications, I set up a new startup application called "NAS Backup". If you notice when you set up a new startup application, you have a few options - name, command, comment, etc. So naturally, you can run a terminal command on system startup. The command it runs rsync's my data over SSH to the file server in /media/storage/jason/.
*Note - The reason my destination folder is called Desktop is because it's referring to my desktop computer. I also have a folder in there for my laptop as well, as my laptop runs an identical service.
I don't back up my entire home directory, because my home directory on my desktop is 1TB whereas this box is 500GB, so I just back up the most important stuff - mainly just Pictures (obvious reasoning) and Documents (resumes, documentation, etc). It runs every single time I log in transparently via terminal in the background. Every once in a while I'll log onto the server and watch it when I log in to make sure whatever data I saved last time I was on my desktop comes over. So far, no hiccups!
***Laptop - Fiance's XP laptop has "SyncBack Free Edition" installed, which synchronizes her data every day at 9 PM, which is the most likely time of day she'd be on the laptop. In her case, I'm taking her entire My Documents, music, videos and all, because her laptop of course has 1 hard drive. In my desktop, since it's RAID'd, I consider my music and other misc data as much lesser priority, because while RAID isn't meant for backup purposes (redundancy), the realistic side is I still have 2 copies of it on my desktop whereas she has 1 copy on her laptop, which is why only my most important stuff gets backed up and ALL of her stuff gets backed up.
***No-IP is a package for DDNS. Makes it easier to give friends my DDNS address/public (aka, www.mywebsite.com/public) and they have full downloadable (but not editable) access to whatever is in /var/www/public, allowing me to host items. Makes it SUPER easy for vacation pictures. I always bring my laptop, then right before vacation is over, I gather everyone's camera, back up their SD cards to my laptop, go home, compress everything into a large .zip, host it in /var/www/public, link everybody on Facebook, right click - save target as - download pictures.zip, uncompress, oh hello everyone's vacation pictures that would have been a headache to share otherwise! (yes, I know there's snapfish and stuff, but how easy is that to have one central location for all pictures to fire out to anybody?)
***ZoneMinder is a Linux based home surveillance system. It allows me to hook up almost any camera (of course, check brand compatibility before you go crazy buying stuff) to it and run as a surveillance camera. I've tested USB webcams that work great, and I've also used network based cameras. Give the camera a static IP, go into ZoneMinder, add the camera via brand/make/model/IP/resolution, set record mode (constant, motion detect, scheduled time, etc.), done deal.
That'll be my Saturday morning coffee.
I'll likely be editing my /etc/fstab via UUID just the same way we did here. If KSoD doesn't mind I'll blab about it a bit here so you guys can see what my plan of action is as I go into this, especially since a lot of what I do when setting up a box like this directly correlates what has been discussed in this thread. Perhaps some of my setup and backup preferences may interest you guys, so I'll tag some extra details in the mix too so no areas are missed... Right now the server is running 11.04 for no particular reason other than it was my Unity test-box that I ended up leaving running and set up file server services on it. I'm eyeing up Lubuntu 12.04 or Debian 6 LXDE. The main reason I'm aiming for a light desktop environment is to eliminate any unneeded graphic overhead if I VNC into it or something. The box will be running 247 for various reasons, such as torrent usage (I let it loop Linux ISO uploads), file sharing with friends, home video surveillance, etc., so it makes it a little nicer to have a GUI. Straight file server I'd probably not care much.
It'll run 3 hard drives... a single 160GB SATA HDD for the entire root drive (no reason to split home and root since I don't have any personal documents on the OS drive), and 2x500GB SATA HDD's already set up in a RAID'd mirror configuration. My plan of action is exactly as follows:
- Boot operating system via USB flash drive
- Select advanced partitioning
- Select 160GB drive, install OS
- Leave other two drives 100% absolutely untouched during the installation process (more on this later)
- Complete installation of OS, reboot
- Log in, install "mdadm" (software RAID), then reboot
- Log in, run sudo blkid. /dev/md* should be viewable now (the "virtual array" of the two other drives) since mdadm was installed to recognize the 2x500GB mirror that was already set up
- Set UUID of /dev/md* (likely /dev/md0 or something similar) to mount /media/storage (personal preference)
- Reboot
- Shares in /media/storage should already be existent since the array didn't change... will test my desktop*** and my fiance's laptop*** to make sure synchronization works fine.
- Add folder to /var/www that I have ownership of, likely "public"
- Install samba, apache2, No-IP***, ZoneMinder***
***Desktop - In Startup Applications, I set up a new startup application called "NAS Backup". If you notice when you set up a new startup application, you have a few options - name, command, comment, etc. So naturally, you can run a terminal command on system startup. The command it runs rsync's my data over SSH to the file server in /media/storage/jason/.
*Note - The reason my destination folder is called Desktop is because it's referring to my desktop computer. I also have a folder in there for my laptop as well, as my laptop runs an identical service.
I don't back up my entire home directory, because my home directory on my desktop is 1TB whereas this box is 500GB, so I just back up the most important stuff - mainly just Pictures (obvious reasoning) and Documents (resumes, documentation, etc). It runs every single time I log in transparently via terminal in the background. Every once in a while I'll log onto the server and watch it when I log in to make sure whatever data I saved last time I was on my desktop comes over. So far, no hiccups!
***Laptop - Fiance's XP laptop has "SyncBack Free Edition" installed, which synchronizes her data every day at 9 PM, which is the most likely time of day she'd be on the laptop. In her case, I'm taking her entire My Documents, music, videos and all, because her laptop of course has 1 hard drive. In my desktop, since it's RAID'd, I consider my music and other misc data as much lesser priority, because while RAID isn't meant for backup purposes (redundancy), the realistic side is I still have 2 copies of it on my desktop whereas she has 1 copy on her laptop, which is why only my most important stuff gets backed up and ALL of her stuff gets backed up.
***No-IP is a package for DDNS. Makes it easier to give friends my DDNS address/public (aka, www.mywebsite.com/public) and they have full downloadable (but not editable) access to whatever is in /var/www/public, allowing me to host items. Makes it SUPER easy for vacation pictures. I always bring my laptop, then right before vacation is over, I gather everyone's camera, back up their SD cards to my laptop, go home, compress everything into a large .zip, host it in /var/www/public, link everybody on Facebook, right click - save target as - download pictures.zip, uncompress, oh hello everyone's vacation pictures that would have been a headache to share otherwise! (yes, I know there's snapfish and stuff, but how easy is that to have one central location for all pictures to fire out to anybody?)
***ZoneMinder is a Linux based home surveillance system. It allows me to hook up almost any camera (of course, check brand compatibility before you go crazy buying stuff) to it and run as a surveillance camera. I've tested USB webcams that work great, and I've also used network based cameras. Give the camera a static IP, go into ZoneMinder, add the camera via brand/make/model/IP/resolution, set record mode (constant, motion detect, scheduled time, etc.), done deal.
That'll be my Saturday morning coffee.
MyGodAL3X
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Nice setup.
See I would do the webpage to share and everything but the people I would share to (direct family) have crappy internet and wouldn't be able to download all of it.
I like the idea of going Lubuntu for the OS on the server, might try that out.
See I would do the webpage to share and everything but the people I would share to (direct family) have crappy internet and wouldn't be able to download all of it.
I like the idea of going Lubuntu for the OS on the server, might try that out.
Jayce
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Nice setup.
See I would do the webpage to share and everything but the people I would share to (direct family) have crappy internet and wouldn't be able to download all of it.
I like the idea of going Lubuntu for the OS on the server, might try that out.
Hey, even the slowest of DSL will handle a few hundred pictures just fine. Now if you're talking 56k connections, or with DSL if you're talking 100GB of family videos, that's a different story.
LXDE has faired very well for me in my testing with my netbook. The more I use the newer interfaces (Unity, Gnome Shell) I'm finding the traditional panel system to be very... inefficient. That said, nothing beats the light resources it uses, and since it won't be something I'll use for productivity efficiency (moreso resource efficiency), it should work great.
MyGodAL3X
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Yeah I had my old laptop an older version of Kubuntu and when I went into it the other day, it was soooo weird
I don't know what I was thinking when I set it up.My family lives in the middle of nowhere and they have literally the thing that is just one or two steps above Dial up lol
I'm thinking I will still set it up and test it out with em.
Well here is the whole story. When I first installed Ubuntu, I did have a drive for documents, photos, music and downloaded material. I actually had 2 partitions on 2 separate hard drives for that stuff.
Now once I started to make the move and format the drive to EXT4, these drives were then combined or became unlabeled. The drives while in Windows had the label to represent what they were. Docs, Pics, Downloads and Stuff. I moved the Docs from my Doc drive to the Ubuntu Doc folder. I then formatted the drive to EXT4. I moved the Pics off the drive and formatted that drive to EXT4. It was at this time I ran into the issue where my drives could get information put back onto them, when you gave me the instructions on how to get proper permissions for them.
After I got permissions setup, I moved most of the Docs back except ones that I use on a frequent basis. I have a backup of those but they are kept in the /home/document folder for use. I did the same thing for the pics. Moved all but the frequent ones to the drive again leaving a portion in /home/pictures and backing those up.
Now the stuff I had on my Download drive is split up between a Windows Drive and some was put back on the EXT4 after the format. I also got rid of the other Stuff partition and combined them into a large 1.4TB drive. The stuff I have on there is my Android ROMS and other programs I use as well as some of my backup stuff. It was at this time I moved my music off my 320GB Drive and placed it on the 1.4TB drive to format that to EXT4. After that format I put it back to the 320GB drive.
So yes my partitions and labels did get messed up massively. But through the whole process I made sure to go into the Storage Device Manager as well as the fstab and remove all mounting of these drives so that there shouldnt have been any confusion. These drives upon restarts were not mounted at all and the only time I could access them is when I personally mounted them within Ubuntu myself.
Even to this point these drives shouldnt be getting mounted upon boot as I just open up my Nautilus and mount them manually now to save time and effort in that aspect. So there was a lot of file movement that was going on as well as drive restructuring. Which kinda explains how things got so screwy, but still doesnt make complete sense that a reboot refreshed the status of the drive within GParted after I updated to 12.04 Beta.
MyGodAL3X
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Another question to add to this thread.
In a little while, when my job situation settles down, I will upgrade to an SSD.
So my question is, since I will be installing everything on a 1TB HDD this weekend, what would be the easiest way to make the transfer again once I do get the SSD.
How would one go about removing everything but /home from an Ubuntu install.
So that my HDD would only contain my /home
And I don't get why the drives/mounts are behaving so strangely on your rig.
In a little while, when my job situation settles down, I will upgrade to an SSD.
So my question is, since I will be installing everything on a 1TB HDD this weekend, what would be the easiest way to make the transfer again once I do get the SSD.
How would one go about removing everything but /home from an Ubuntu install.
So that my HDD would only contain my /home
And I don't get why the drives/mounts are behaving so strangely on your rig.
Jayce
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KSoD - Yeah... that seems a little screwy. It's really hard to pinpoint it because of all of the shuffling that happened. I wonder if the computer is just as confused as we were! At any rate, as long as it predictably comes up with the proper drive assignments from here on out (via GParted, etc) it may be one of those situations to choke up as "Hey, it works, back away slowly."
Well, it depends on several things. Do you have a location you can place all of your data (external hard drive, file server, etc) until the install is done? If so, kick ALL of your personal data over, and do the install like so:
Advanced Partitioning
Create partition (normally the same size as amount of RAM you have), set as swap area
With remainder of SSD, format as EXT4, mount as /
Format the regular HDD as EXT4, mount as /home
Then continue the install process. Fire the system up and /home will be fine. Copy your data back over and call it a day.
In the event you have absolutely no drive space to spare for this transition, it may be kind of tricky, since you need to swap them to EXT* to begin with... come to think of it, unless there's something I'm missing with your plan of action, that may be the only way to go.
At any rate, as long as it predictably comes up with the proper drive assignments from here on out (via GParted, etc) it may be one of those situations to choke up as "Hey, it works, back away slowly." Well, it depends on several things. Do you have a location you can place all of your data (external hard drive, file server, etc) until the install is done? If so, kick ALL of your personal data over, and do the install like so:
Advanced Partitioning
Create partition (normally the same size as amount of RAM you have), set as swap area
With remainder of SSD, format as EXT4, mount as /
Format the regular HDD as EXT4, mount as /home
Then continue the install process. Fire the system up and /home will be fine. Copy your data back over and call it a day.
In the event you have absolutely no drive space to spare for this transition, it may be kind of tricky, since you need to swap them to EXT* to begin with... come to think of it, unless there's something I'm missing with your plan of action, that may be the only way to go.
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