On my server, the /var-volume (in fact, the logical device /dev/vgroup/var, part of my LVM), is running slowly out of space. Therefore, I decided to extend it by 5 GB.
Fortunately, with reiserfs, you can do this while the volume is mounted – at least, this is what is said in the LVM-howto.
So, here’s what I did (after doing a full backup):
lvextend -L+5G /dev/vgroup/var
resize_reiserfs -f /dev/vgroup/var
This went extremely well and fast – I was really (positively) surprised! 
I have to admit something: I already started working on the server, but somehow, I blew it up. I don’t know what the exact problem was, but I had nothing but trouble.
I decided to start all over; also, because I had read through some security guides concerning PaX and grSecurity and did not understand one single word, I decided to stick with normal gentoo-sources and not with hardened-sources (but still securing the box as much as possible).
Here’s what we do today: Setting up the LVM. Download the stage3 and portage tarball, extract them and prepare make.conf. Quite a big deal, so let’s get started!
LVM-setup: First, make sure that /dev/hda3 and /dev/hdb1 are set to partition type 8e (LVM). Then, activate the swap on /dev/hda2. Now, using the LVM guide, I create a volume group called “vgroup” containing the partitions /dev/hda3 and /dev/hdb1. Then, I create these directories as logical volumes:
As described in the LVM guide, I create the logical volumes and format them – with reiserFS, I decided to give it a shot.
Now, following chapter 5 of the handbook, I download the i686 stage3 tarball and the portage snapshot. I extract both, as given in the handbook. Then, I update make.conf to look like this:
CHOST="i686-linux-pc-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PORTAGE_NICENESS=3
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
FEATURES="distlocks parallel-fetch"
USE="nptl"
Let’s advance to chapter 6 of the handbook – before chrooting, select the mirrors and the rsync mirror and finally copy over DNS info. That’s about it for today – stay tuned for more!
After I have been blogging about my server quite a bit, it is now finally the time to start all over.
After my new client is up and running, I had some spare parts, and as already mentioned, I decided to put all of them together into a brand-new server box. Here’s the new hardware list:
Now, the parts are assembled into an old case and let’s boot….
In setup, I make sure that all IDE drives are properly detected; I disable the floppy drive, the second COM port, the parallel port, the gameport, the audio; then, I make sure that “Power up on PCI” is enabled for later power up on LAN.
Now, using a knoppix, I make sure everything is detected; the LAN is a broadcomm BCM4401, the Graphic adapter is detected as a Geforce 2 MX400, and the North- and the southbridge are there, too.
So, I start with wiping out the harddisk drives using cfdisk. Then, it is time to set up some new partition scheme! As I will have only a small /, containing some necessary stuff, I decided to have a partition scheme like this:
/dev/hda1 / 4GB
/dev/hda2 swap 512MB
/dev/hda3 LVM the rest of hda
/dev/hdb1 LVM the whole of hdb
I write these partition tables to the disk. That’s it for now; next is to start with a proper gentoo cd and activate LVM to create the volume groups. Then, it’s time to get Gentoo up and running!
This is mainly a “note to self”, but why don’t post it? Maybe it will help some others….
As I now have a new client and everything is save and working ok, it’s time to put the old hardware away. But today I had the idea of combining the old server hardware (which will be reinstalled anyway) and some of the old client’s hardware into a brand new server…. let’s see what I can make out of this. An LVM might be an idea, as I will have two harddisk-drives then…
Also, there was a nice article in this week’s c’t about automatically waking up a Linux system – something that I will try to implement on my new server. Finally, I will install vmware on the server instead of the client – because most of the time, my server is doing nothing (besides, well, serving some files), so why not use it’s computing power for this? Let’s see how far this will advance…
What else shall the server do besides what it is already doing? Well, some remote X can come in handy from time to time – so despite other thoughts initially, I will probably put X onto it (but no Gnome or KDE, just something like some simple window manager or so…. Also, I will probably add NFS in addition to Samba (why using Samba when sharing from Linux to Linux?); the Backup mechanism needs some serious rethinking (because I almost do not use it nowadays), including making the USB harddrive accessible on the LAN. One possibility is Amanda; there is an entry on the Gentoo Wiki dedicated to Backup programs and strategies. Finally, I want an Apache Tomcat server to be up and running on the box; also, some kind of VPN would be nice…
I will start with the whole “server rebuilding project” in mid-summer, I assume.
2009, tkhobbes 