With all these problems, and the need to have the homegrown server running something stable I've decided on Debian Stable for the re-install. I'll be doing this with backports as that way I can at least grab the latest releases without damaging the core stable system; as it'll be sitting in colo I really don't want to drive down there every weekend to kick it back into gear.

Debian can be grabbed from here, note most people have never needed anything but the first dvd or first one or two cd iso's for a basic install so no need to grab everything.

Backports are available here, this at least gives the ability to keep up to date with more specific packages while not damaging the core system.

Fingers crossed this should be the final time I do a rebuild before it goes to colo.

[update]

server running a lot better, since I made the switch to Debian; won't be long now till it's taken down to colo.

Trashed my Fedora 9 install with their latest kernel update 2.6.25, it really is unstable. So now downloading Fedora 8 Unity, hopefully that'll make it a little more stable. One thing though, unlike other distributions who use ftp or torrent downloads, the Unity project use Jigdo to handle their iso downloads.

This can be added to your Ubuntu install with,

sudo aptitude install jigdo-file

Then start the program,

sudo jigdo-lite

Now I copy & paste the jigdo repository link into Terminal from here, hit enter and it shows a list of possible iso files to download, select 64-bit and off it goes.

I'll burn that to dvd and get it on the box soon, can't believe fedora 9 was that unstable!

Download VirtualBox

Download VirtualBox, binary link will redirect you to Sun's site.

Installing

For me, I needed to install libqt3-mt before I could successfully install the 64bit package,

sudo aptitude install libqt3-mt

Now Install your download with...

sudo dpkg -i virtualbox_1.6.2-31466_Ubuntu_hardy_amd64.deb

Further note, you may need to recompile the VirtualBox kernel module if a previous install failed or you didn't have the necessary dependencies first time; this is done by:

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

Permissions

• Goto System / Administration / Users and Groups
• Click 'Unlock'
• Enter your password and click to 'Authenticate'
• Click 'Manage Groups'
• Find the 'vboxusers' group and click properties for it
• Make sure there's a checkbox next to your name within that group, so you are part of the 'vboxusers' group

You will have to reboot your machine for the change to take effect.

USB Support

By default USB support is disabled, to enable it;

sudo nano /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

Inside you'll find a block looking like;

# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
#mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
#domount usbfs “” /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
#ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
#mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Edit it to look like;

# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs “” /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

(basically uncomment the last four lines)

Save changes and close the file (CTRL+X and Y)

Create a VM

Applications / System Tools / Sun xVM VirtualBox

Scroll down and click 'I Agree' on the licence agreement, then fill in the registration information to use VirtualBox, first time.

The rest is pretty self-explanatory if you've used other VM packages like OSX Parallels or Microsoft Virtual Machine.

• Click 'New'
• Enter a name for your VM, choose the target platform you're going to use it for
• Choose Base Memory
• Create a new Virtual Disk Image, click 'New'
• Click 'Fixed Size' (for simplicity), 8GB should be enough for starters, you can choose 'Dynamic' which will grow or shrink the disk image based on usage
• Click 'OK' then 'Finish' to build the Virtual Disk Image
• Once the image has been created (may take 5+ minutes) it will show the new disk image in a listbox for selection, make sure it's selected and click 'Next' then 'Finish'

You now have a virtual machine ready for whichever ISO or CD-ROM install you wish to place on it. You can hit Machine / Settings / CD-ROM to select an ISO image to boot from so you can install from a disk image.

Note: Even if you're running on a 64bit machine, the virtual machines will still operate under a 686 (32bit) platform.

All the best,

(originally based on a guide from Ubuntu Geek)

had a similar problem to these guys

fixed with...

cd /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.2.2
sudo find . -perm 0662 -exec chmod 664 {} \;

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.101 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

Network address by convention would be the lowest: 192.168.1.0 Broadcast address by convention would be the highest: 192.168.1.255 The gateway can be anything, but following convention: 192.168.1.1

Note: the highest and lowest addresses are based on the netmask. The previous example is based on a netmask of 255.255.255.0

also,

/usr/bin/neat  ..gnome gui tool
/usr/bin/netcfg  ..handles all network interfaces
/usr/sbin/system-config-network-tui  ...text user interface
/usr/sbin/netconfig  ..(Only seems to work for first network interface eth0 but not eth1,...)

The ifconfig command does NOT store changes permanently. On reboot changes are lost. Manually add your commands to the end of the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local to execute them upon boot.

Otherwise use the commands netcfg and netconfig, which make permanent changes to the system network configuration files located in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/