ubuntu config

hardware overview: P4 3.2, 1.5Gb RAM. 1 25Gb hard drive, 2 1.5Tb hard drives.

the two 1.5 Tb drives are mounted as \home\user\primary_storage and \home\user\secondary_storage

The are NOT configured as RAID intentionally. A cron script syncs them and does md5 hashes.

notation convention: <user> is the name you use

$ sudo apt-get install gparted

formatted both 1.5 Tb hard drives as ext3

following http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/mountlinux

$ mkdir /home/<user>/primary_storage

$ mkdir /home/<user>/secondary_storage

make a backup of the list of disks

$ sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.original

list what drives are recognized

$ sudo fdisk -l

$ sudo gedit /etc/fstab

/dev/sdb1 /home/<user>/primary_storage ext3 defaults 0 0

/dev/sdc1 /home/<user>/secondary_storage ext3 defaults 0 0

next, mount all available partitions in fstab:

$ sudo mount -a

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1

Finally, change permissions, since by default they are root only

$ sudo chown -R <user>:<user> /home/<user>/primary_storage

$ sudo chown -R <user>:<user> /home/<user>/secondary_storage

$ sudo chmod -R 755 /home/<user>/primary_storage

$ sudo chmod -R 755 /home/<user>/secondary_storage

software overview: using ubuntu as host, virtualbox runs guest ubuntus and windows XP Pro SP3

Howto VirtualBox 2.1 in Ubuntu 8.10: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1015045

workstations:

Windows gaming

serious sam
quake III arena

ubuntu work

gfortran
mathcad, matlab, mathematica, maple, gnuplot
latex

windows test

ubuntu test

Initially I had 2Gb of RAM. Then I ran into some errors. I thought it was my hard drive, an

ancient 25 Gb model, from back when that was top of the line.

hard drive bad blocks:

http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/node/50

http://ubuntumagnet.com/2008/01/checking-disks-errors-using-badblocks-command

$ sudo badblocks -s -v -c 10240 /dev/sdx

[took 30 minutes for 25Gb hard drive.]

Checking blocks 0 to 23912720

Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): done

Pass completed, 0 bad blocks found.

Decided not to do a hard drive recover, as only 2 days were invested with the 25Gb hard drive

http://blogs.sun.com/superpat/entry/hard_drive_recovery_ubuntu_style

Then decided it may be the filesystem and not the hardware. Did fsck.

sudo e2fsck -C0 -p -f -v /dev/sda1

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SystemAdministration/Fsck

Still getting errors, so did memtest off a knoppix LiveCD. The fourth 512Mb was

bad, so removing it was the solution.

Dual screen monitors, one 22" widescreen, one 17" 4:3. ATI RADEON 9600 with

the proprietary drivers. Two issues: reconfiguring to a left-right set up instead of the default

"mirroring" option works, but

changes don't stick after logoff/logon or reboots
both monitors must be same resolution. This screws the 17" 4:3 and 22" 16:9 combination

Firefox config: using FEBE, transfered all firefox settings from old windows workstation

to new Ubuntu

Next up: the virtualbox cloning (2.1.0r41146)

Installed newest vbox using sudo-apt get. Used the non-open source version

as I need USB drivers.

Changed the default virtualdisk image directory and machine directories to point

to \home\user\primary_storage\vdi, otherwise the large files would have been

on the

once a guest machine is set up, I wanted to have backups of the fresh installs.

$ VBoxManage clonevdi <source>.vdi <destination>.vdi

vbox said it worked (took a while), but when I set up a new guest and used the

cloned vdi, I got " a disk read error occurred"

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1022778

in Windows, while Ubuntu guests just hung at the GRUB load.

clonehd didn't work either, so I ended up finding

cp <source>.vdi <destination>.vdi

$ VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid <destination>.vdi

Once my data has been migrated to primary_storage, I run md5sum

on everything. md5sum isn't recursive, so there are replacements like

http://md5deep.sourceforge.net/

but a small shell script ("one line") does the same:

find . ! -type d -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum

find . -type f -exec md5sum {} \;

off-site backups:

http://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/non-gnu/rdiff-backup/

Moving SSH to a different port:

$ sudo gedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Port 22

becomes

Port 1022

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Then do

$ ssh -p 1022 -X user@<IP>

for ssh or

$ scp -P 1022 user@<IP> .

for scp

SSH Tarpit for pesky port scanners [I can't get this to work yet]

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2007-July/119286.html

http://kindergarten.madduck.net/configs/iptables

http://lists.netfilter.org/pipermail/netfilter/2005-June/060914.html

what existed:

user@ubunturesearch:~$ ls /proc/net/

anycast6 igmp ipv6_route psched snmp tr_rif

arp igmp6 mcfilter ptype snmp6 udp

atm ip6_flowlabel mcfilter6 raw sockstat udp6

connector ip_mr_cache netfilter raw6 sockstat6 udplite

dev ip_mr_vif netlink route softnet_stat udplite6

dev_mcast ip_tables_matches netstat rt6_stats stat unix

dev_snmp6 ip_tables_names packet rt_acct tcp wireless

if_inet6 ip_tables_targets protocols rt_cache tcp6

user@ubunturesearch:~$ ssh localhost

ssh: connect to host localhost port 22: Connection refused

user@ubunturesearch:~$ sudo apt-get install ssh

user@ubunturesearch:~$ sudo iptables -L

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)