Categories
Ubuntu Web Development

Ubuntu (7.04) on HP Proliant DL385 G2 Server

2 word summary = Works well! -Here’s a picture of one of the boxes I got in for work recently:

HP Proliant DL385 Server

Thought I’d share a few notes…

Firstly these don’t appear to ship with Optical drives as standard as (after talking to my friend who works at HP) most large customers use network based deployment systems to install the OS.

Not an issue though – just get hold of a USB CD or DVD drive to do the install from. Once I got hold of one of those everything just worked. RAID (using very flashy 2.5″ SAS drives), Ethernet everything – so thought I’d document that as when I ordered not much came up on a Google search for this specific model. And is working well after 3 months of use as a LAMP and SVN server.

Currently we are using 2 in my dev team – one for Wiki and SVN and another to host our LAMP Development work on a central box – Apache 2.2, MySQL 5.0 and PHP 5.2 – having a central development box really helps when working together (I will write an article on that in due course!).

The iLO feature on these boxes is quite cool too – for those of you that don’t know iLO (Integrated Lights out) is basically a mini server inside the server that has its own Ethernet network connection – you can use a web based interface to boot, reboot or even install an Operating System – if you have the relevant HP software). Very handy – particularly when the server isn’t in the same area as you!

At 7city we ordered IBM xSeries servers for LAMP use but those generally needed a little bit of fiddling to work on Linux (an X336 required a Kernel parameter so it would shutdown/reboot properly) none of that needed with these HPs – they just work – very impressed.

Categories
Linux Sony Stuff Technology Ubuntu

Ubuntu on the Sony Vaio SZ3

Full post to come on this but a summary – 99% of the features of the laptop (nVidia Graphics, Wireless, Mouse etc) all work out of the box (no messing about at all – it just works!) with Ubuntu Linux 7.04 aka “Feisty Faun”!

Ollie’s Vaio SZ3 running Ubuntu

I am really impressed with Ubuntu 7 – its a very well polished piece of software and what with the news of Dell announcing Ubuntu as a supported/pre-installed operating system in the US I think its starting to reach a level of maturity that makes Linux more accessible to the average user – interesting times…

When I did a google I found a link to related model. I have yet to try out all of its suggestions (such as detecting what graphics card is switched on – from the Stamina/Speed selector switch and changing the X config) but as I learn more I’ll update this post.

Hmm looks like this question on Launchpad might get the Webcam working.

Categories
Linux Samba Ubuntu

Ubuntu Server Kernel Opps turned out to be faulty memory

The title of this one says it all really, but after spending hours scratching my head with a office file server I built for L.S.A. Ltd (www.travelf1.com) late last year I found the solution to the crashes that started occuring a couple of weeks ago.

See this Ubuntu Server Crash Output file – for the error message that was appearing basically it was a Kernel Oops that occurred when large files were being copied/transferred via samba. It turned out to one of the memory DIMMs going weird which I discovered after having the idea to run a Memtest on the machine (Memtest is available as a boot option when starting up a Ubuntu machine). At first I suspected the software RAID 1 but that’s actually been rock solid on this box and on my home Ubuntu server too.