Cubicgarden.com
I don’t get it.
Ubuntu can be a server or a user system but its certainly not a home server. I have no idea what happened to the ubuntu homeserver project but Microsoft have got the upper hand when it comes to servers in the home.
There is a large enough difference between a server in a home and server in a data centre. Microsoft understood this when they launched Windows Home Sever. They could have just re-bundled Windows Server but no they brought out a different cut of Windows Server focused on the home market. Its also different enough from a NAS (network attached storage device) due to its great range of Apps or Add-ons.
I’m not the only one to say this either.
“95% of the would-be “nixers” are completely stunned, at that point when the Ubuntu Server installation states that it has finished and all that’s offered to the user is a black screen and a prompt line. Users … basically scrap the whole thing, install Windows and use … solutions which lack raw power but come with an comprehensive interface”
Like all the others I’m pleased to see that you decided to continue this project. I’m a new NAS end user: i first bought a Synology DS410j, but i realized quickly that the processor was far too limited for me. So I made a 4 bay NAS by myself, counting on freenas. My problem is that i use linux a lot (I have a Mythtv server), but i don’t know FreeBSD at all. So the promise of a linux based NAS is a very good news. You can’t blame people to defend their chapel. Don’t listen to them, walk and see ! I assure you that i’ll be among the first switchers and the first donators because your work is useful, there’s no doubt about that.
The closes thing to Windows Home server on Ubuntu is maybe Freenas (which requires you to format all your drives into UFS for the best use, oh and its BSd based. Theres also Amahi which takes over too much of your system (it likes to control the dns, which is a pain if you got a good router).
- Low Minimum System Requirements
- Simple Storage Space Management
- Scalable Architecture
- Cross-Platform Client Support
- File/Data Server.
- Backup/Restore
- Printer Server
- Network Functions
- Remote Access from the Internet
Windows home server does all this really well, Ubuntu Server edition falls very short.
What else is out there? Because to be honest I’m very close to installing Windows Hone server on my home server.
Open Media Vault looks pretty good but its not quite mature enough yet.
Canonical really need to get moving with this stuff… Microsoft had the vision to kick this off, now its time for Linux to lead this area. Just like how Android is now stiring up the mobile world.
I've heard about the problems but have not publiclly said much. But I'm sorry as far as I'm concerned, I stopped recommending Movable Type a long time ago and can't understand why people still use it. Suw's post on strange attractor is simply awesome and well worth reading if you also recieved the email from Sixapart. But generally it doesn't scale effectively, and I'm not saying many blogging servers do. But I wonder why everyone seems to think there are only 2 blogging application servers out there?
What about Blojsom, Community Server, Dasblog, B2, Roller, etc. Theres much more to blogging servers that MT and WordPress. Go Explorer, don't be constrained by whats the norm. Thom Shannon recommended http://asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm
Found on Engadget. Seagate D.A.V.E 
igital Audio Video Experience ) is simply a mobile hard drive with USB2, Bluetooth and Wireless. Its got a server built in so you can connect over wifi or bluetooth with almost any device. Currently it comes with 10-20gig of space, but there expecting much more in the near future. Oh and it launches in May.
My thoughts, on this very nice device which I can certainly see myself buying one. Does anyone remember the Toshiba Hopbit? Yes it didn't support Wireless and USB2 but the principle was the same. To be fair I wanted one of those a back in 2002 too.
So I've just changed the DNS records which means your reading this blog post from my new servers in Panama (don't ask!). I'm also currently in the middle of moving the domain cubicgarden.com to Godaddy.com. So i'm expecting there will be some issues during the next week or so while I get things sorted out. Please bear with me during this difficult time, and I expect to be blogging as usual soon.
Realisticily nothing should change for anyone subscribing out there. The feeds will stay the same but now you shouldn't get that weird RSS thing when I do a update and it throws up some old entries. I'm also aware the access to the new server isn't as fast because its hosted in Panama instead of America but it will mean I can take advantage of services like feedtree and feedburner. Hey and I've learned some of the sharper end of unix administration which is a big bonus. As they say, google is your friend. Althought recently the opposite would be true.
…Is what Miles said about me setting up my own virtual private server on the weekend. Yep I finally took bull by the horns and slapped down my credit card and decided to go with Hub.org for Cubicgarden.com's new resting place. To be fair I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. See I kind of thought Tomcat and Apache would be installed and ready to go. But nope I finally logged into my FreeBSD box and quickly found out that it was a barebones box and I would need to do the configuration of applications, permissions and users. Well trust me, this is no easy thing. I mean there something very different about running unix on the desktop and running it as a server. In a server environment permissions and applications running all need to be kept under tight wraps. I would agree this should be the case for a Desktop environment too, but you can be a little more flexable with the configuration of a desktop machine. Put it this way, being a admin with root access to your own server is certainly compareable to building your first F1 car then racing it along the streets of Monte Carlo. Or as Miles puts it a baby with a loaded gun.
Either way, with thanks to Miles and tons of resources online like this one, I'm almost up, running and hopefully pretty secure. Rather than the usual Apache 2.x and Tomcat 5.5.x type configuration with mod_jk, I've gone for Tomcat 5.5.x with Pen in front for a reverse proxy and load balancer. Miles suggested Pound and Balance but I couldn't get Pound to compile without seriously messing with OpenSSL and Balance didn't seem to forward HTTP traffic without stripping away the header information. Pen is just like Pound it would seem, but also runs on Windows which is good to remember for other projects I may have in mind with my old Windows 2000 box. So yeah its a pretty sweet setup so far and means I loose the overhead of running Apache when all I really want is Tomcat. By the way, I was very close to installing Resin 3.x but decided against it for now.
Compiling Cocoon only took 2 mins once I finally untared and gunzipped the source. Can I just say how much of a nightmare Compression is? This guide was very useful for not only uncompressing files (tar -xvvzf cocoon2.1.8.tar.gz) but also compressing them. It took me a while to work out the correct parameters to compress a directory of files and its contains but keep the permissions and modified dates (which is extreamly useful for moving blojsom blog entries) . tar -cRvzf archive.tar foldertocompress/. Anyway, Cocoon is running happily in Tomcat now and Blojsom is also running fine with everything this blog has up till Feb 26th. So I'll have to do another update just before I swap over to the new server. This will also mean there will be a period of maybe 2 days when the blog and RSS feeds may time out or seem out of date. Don't worry I'll warn you in advance of the exact day.
So what next on the horizon? Well I need to do some more securing and enable Log4J on Tomcat and Cocoon. I've also still got to sort out basic Unix type things. For example while I was setting up the server, the only text editor I had was vi and the only shells were tsch and some other weird ones. Yep thats right no Nano or Bash. I don't know how I managed, but trust me I'll be avoiding vi when ever possible. I've already chpass all the users and made Bash the default shell. Beyond this, I'm considering Hamachi for Linux which would mean I could securely login to Blojsom, Tomcat and anything else from anywhere without setting up that crazy port forwarding in Putty. This sounds over kill but I'm tempted to at least run Hamachi on my Smoothwall Firewall server at home.
In regards to Cocoon, well my next step which I had planned to do if I was not writing this long blog post, would be to install Saxon 8.7 (good to see a .net version btw) in Cocoon using this guide (I know it works, i already installed Saxon 8.4 on the development machine at work). While with Blojsom, I will start trimming down some of the outstanding issues I had.
Oh before I finish, did I say how great Wget and Sudo are? Loaded gun indeed.
