*Sigh*, again, a problem with mysql on my ubuntu eee-box server. This time, I could not update the fix package for mysql-server.
It turned out that there was a user missing – but NOT, as I initially thought, a Linux user, but a mysql user. I found an entry in the ubuntu forums that helped solving the problem.
It seems as if mysql is kind of a…. tricky platform. I seem to run into problems all the time… thank goodness everything still works flawlessly…
It’s been a while since I blogged about the installation of my eee-box – and my intention to use it as a server.
Of course, I did some basic installation in the meantime – and the box is now running perfectly. 
So – here’s the final chapter in this two-part series, and a list of everything I did to get the box up and running:
The first thing I missed was my good old vim – easy:
sudo apt-get install vim
did the trick.
I then made sure that updates happen automatically – there’s a good page on that in the serverguide, and all I had to make sure was that mailx was installed. Logwatch is also an option – but only after a mailsystem is up and running (see below).
MySQL installation was pretty easy: I followed the server guide’s page on this, and then created also /etc/mysql/conf.d/charsets.cnf (Download here) – this helped me get rid of some UTF8-errors on my old gentoo box already…
I then made the mysql server accessible from the outside by adding
bind-address my.ip.addr.ess
into /etc/mysql/my.cnf, then following this excellent website that explains everything on how to remote access a mysql database.
After that, I installed apache2 – again, the server guide’s page on that subject includes everything necessary. The guide’s page on PHP also has a lot of good information – I ended up installing php5, libapache2-mod-php5, php5-cli and php5-mysql. Finally, I created a phpinfo.php and deleted index.html, in /var/www.
For the usage of automatic WordPress updates, I also installed an ftp-server – again, just followed the server guide. In WordPress, when installing a plugin, I then have to enter “localhost” plus my local user name plus the corresponding password, whenever it asks for a connection information.
Finally, I installed mediawiki; the packages to install were mediawiki, mediawiki-math, imagemagick and php5-gd; the installation itself is again covered in the server guide.
After the configuration of mediawiki (make sure you use the old backward-compatible charset!), I enabled TeX and uploads and moved my old mediawiki according to my own blog entry (hey – they start to come in handy!!)
For some reason, I had to change the password of my mediawiki admin user after that – luckily, I found this blog entry… and then, I installed the cite extension – again, I followed my own guide on doing so.
For Samba, the installation was really easy; the corresponding page on the ubuntu server guide explains everything needed. All I had to do was to smbpasswd my working user – and everything worked. While I now have a nice NAS, I still wanted to be able to access my home share from outside – mainly due to filesharing, see below.
The mailserver is always a little tricky; I decided to go with dovecot, postfix, procmail and getmail. I started with dovecot (only use the instructions relating to dovecot, not the ones relating to postfix!), and for a proper postfix installation, I closely (!) followed this doc (also, I had to install procmail in order to get over this flawlessly). I created an alias for root pointing to my working user, as explained here. And finally, I installed getmail, as explained on howtoforge.
It took me three attempts – but following these documents in the given order should do it.
While I obviously know that filesharing involves a lot of illegal (or at least…. grey) activities, I still use it – how to get an ubuntu ISO file faster than via bittorrent? Not to speak of all the great american tv shows that you just can’t watch around here (not even DVD’s are available, sometimes….) – so, I still rely on bittorrent and, sometimes on mldonkey. The basic instructions I noted down a while ago were useful, when it came down to configuring mldonkey (it’s config files are in /var/lib/mldonkey…)
As for bittorrent, I highly recommend to go with devinw’s installer package that installs lighthttpd, rtorrent and wtorrent – it’s in the ubuntu forums and it worked after a couple of problems – read the forum entry in case of troubles!
I then installed rsnapshot and configured it, following the work I did a while ago.
Final step was to update to 9.04 – there is a good instruction provided by the canonical folks on how to do so.
The box now runs for something over 2 months – no problems, AT ALL!
Maybe I’ll go ahead and try some anti-spam solution, once again….
As previously noted, I got a neat Asus eee Box… but the thing comes with Windows XP Home and I want to use it as replacement for my e-mail & web server.
So, what I decided to do is installing Ubuntu Server edition on it – my selection was based on existing documentation and how active the forums are, and I think currently Ubuntu is better supported from this point of view than Arch (not to mention Gentoo).
I was thinking a lot about my “server” / “storage” concept at home; my current server is way to big, loud and everything. Finally, I decided to go for some NAS – these boxes do not cost a lot nowadays, and they are silent, do not use much power and are still fast and reliable. I got a Qnap TS-101; it’s a very basic model, but it has everything I need (SMB-shares, mainly). I found one where a 500GB Western Digital hdd is already built in…. it arrived today… but it will be only the second thing to get ready, because first, I will install my new server.
Yes – I think that I still need a server, for e-mail, bittorrent and alike. I decided to give the eee box a try – again, it is small, silent, does not use a lot of power – and it is stylish in these days. I just need to find a keyboard that I can hook to it – my only USB keyboard is at my main box, and the eee does not have PS/2 any more (finally!)…. once I get this, I will immediately get rid of WinXP home that ships with it and install some decent linux on it. I will probably opt for either one of Arch or Ubuntu; Gentoo was a disappointment, lately, and I really don’t want to fiddle around that much at this point in time. Let’s see….
At the moment, I just look at the boxes and admire them
Nein, dieses Buch habe ich nicht zu Weihnachten geschenkt gekriegt – es sei denn, man zählt Geschenke, die man sich selbst macht, dazu…
Nichtsdestotrotz ist “Das Postfix Buch” eine lohnende Investition. Ich habe nämlich jetzt endlich verstanden, wie dieses Stück Software funktioniert und fühle mich endlich in der Lage, meinen lokalen Mailserver (dessen Anti-Viren / Anti-Spam Funktion nie richtig funktioniert hat) zu reparieren. Ich werde die notwendigen Schritte selbstverständlich in der “Server-Sektion” dieses Blogs veröffentlichen; in der Zwischenzeit sei dieses Buch allen Postfix-Interessierten wärmstens ans Herz gelegt – die zugehörige Website ist übrigens unter www.postfixbuch.de zu finden; das Buch (und die Webseite) verfügen über viele weiterführende Links, btw – einige davon sehr nützlich…
Nichts wird ausgelassen – wie Postfix funktioniert, was SMTP / POP3 / IMAP eigentlich ist, wie man Anti-Spam Software integriert, wie man SMTP über SSL/TLS tunnelen kann usw usf. Und immer wird viel Wert auf Sicherheit gelegt. Wie gesagt – wärmstens zu empfehlen!
2009, tkhobbes 