[conspire] (forw) Re: Cabal

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Dave Pearce <daveryu at yahoo.com> -----

Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2011 18:01:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dave Pearce <daveryu at yahoo.com>
To: rick at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: Cabal
X-Mailer: YahooMailClassic/14.0.3 YahooMailWebService/0.8.112.307740

Hi Rick  :)
	In reading your reply, I realized I hadn't chosen my words carefully enough.  I stand corrected: my desktop powers my hard drive.  A better choice of words might have been my laptop drive will drive my desktop as it will contain the operating system.  I'll have the files I wish to make available stored on a separate drive, and that is the drive that I would make accessible from Elsewhere.
	So far the drive I have is bare; I have no enclosure for it.  The mounting bracket, RAM and processor are still in transit to me.  I hope they'll all be here before Saturday.  The laptop drive is a PATA drive, and I do have a power adapter for it.  It is going to be mounted into a 5.25" bay; tricky, but I'm good  ;)
	"Your wording suggests that you mean for the
> machine to provide some service to the household's computers _and_ 
> to provide either services or administrative access or both from the
> global Internet. "
	I should explain further.  This model will be a test to learn on as I have no experience with servers yet.  I wish to store files on it that I can access remotely from anywhere.  Data files (such as homework that I've left more than once on the main computer without realizing it until I got to school), music files (to access my music collection from a distance - good practice on moving files if nothing else), and ultimately moving/altering patient files from a database when I graduate.  I already know that I want my office to run electronically, and the laws governing medicine are moving that direction also.  I'm geting a head start on what I will have to learn anyway so that I will be well ahead of the game and not playing catch-up.  
	I know that you're a busy man at the Cabal, being the host as well as a spouse.  I also know that the times we've talked, you've had the highest percentage success rate of explaining things to me in ways that I understand.  Not that I'm opposed to learning from others; I just make the observations and go with the best option first  :)
	I will look into the mailing list for the CABAL community.  The more I learn, the more I want to learn and I'm always willing to pass on what I know to others.  
	Btw, if any of the Cabal are science (biological vs. computer) majors, Please send them my way!  My wall has an impression of my head firmly imbedded in it.

Dave

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 16:05:39 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Dave Pearce <daveryu at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Cabal
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Dave Pearce (daveryu at yahoo.com):

> Hi Rick  :)

Greetings!  It's a disgustingly beautiful day, and it's difficult to
fight the urge to be in a good mood.  I'll struggle to achieve a proper
level of Scandinavian gloom and pessimism.


> In reading your reply, I realized I hadn't chosen my words carefully
> enough.  I stand corrected: my desktop powers my hard drive.  A better
> choice of words might have been my laptop drive will drive my desktop
> as it will contain the operating system.  I'll have the files I wish
> to make available stored on a separate drive, and that is the drive
> that I would make accessible from Elsewhere.
> 
> So far the drive I have is bare; I have no enclosure for it.  The
> mounting bracket, RAM and processor are still in transit to me.  I
> hope they'll all be here before Saturday.  The laptop drive is a PATA
> drive, and I do have a power adapter for it.  It is going to be
> mounted into a 5.25" bay; tricky, but I'm good  ;)

Assuming you have a power adapter _with_ the necessary data-cable
conversion to allow plugin of a standard 40-pin PATA IDE ribbon cable (like 
http://www.wpclipart.com/computer/hardware/cables/ide_cable.png.html ),
then you're fine.  Nothing wrong with temporarily hanging one of those
off a workstation box.  You don't even need to put the drive inside the
box:  They work well enough, just dangling from the cables and cooling
in the afternoon breeze.

One thing you should be aware of:  Although it's a slam-dunk to give you
a working installed system, odds are that you'll need to re-do the
installation's bootloader when you get home and mount the drive into the
production system.  Maybe this won't hit you and it'll Just Work, but I 
wouldn't count on it.  Depending to a small degree on the distro, the
bootloader's usually GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) 1.x.  Search the
Web for 'reinstall GRUB', and you'll find dozens of explanations about
how to do that using pretty much any Linux live CD, e.g., the first hit
using Google is to 'How to install Grub from a live Ubuntu cd', 
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351 


> I should explain further.  This model will be a test to learn on as I
> have no experience with servers yet.  I wish to store files on it that
> I can access remotely from anywhere.  Data files (such as homework
> that I've left more than once on the main computer without realizing
> it until I got to school), music files (to access my music collection
> from a distance - good practice on moving files if nothing else), and
> ultimately moving/altering patient files from a database when I
> graduate.  I already know that I want my office to run electronically,
> and the laws governing medicine are moving that direction also.  I'm
> geting a head start on what I will have to learn anyway so that I will
> be well ahead of the game and not playing catch-up.  

Well, shoot, that's pretty modest, and is one of the things Linux
systems have always been really good at.  As Tony just got through
pointing out, your learning curve and difficulties will probably not 
mostly involve Linux, where the average Linux distro has included a
working Web server since around 1992, but rather the details of your 
IP address provisioning from your ISP.  Almost always, home users'
service doesn't include static IP address assignment, but rather dynamic
IP addresses given out on temporary lease via DHCP (and hence, subject
to change).  

You notice that my Internet presence is at DNS name 'linuxmafia.com'? 
That's made possible in part by my ownership of that domain, and
operation of DNS service for that domain, but also by my taking the easy
and old-fogey-ish way out and paying extra for static IP addresses.  So, 
I operate public services with the knowledge that my main machine is 
always at IP address 198.144.195.186.  Therefore, I just point the
'linuxmafia.com' DNS to that IP, and I'm done.

Since you very, very likely are -not- going to be arranging for a static
IP, you need to make sure that any DNS you establish takes into account
your ISP's habit of issuing you different IPs at unpredictable
intervals, and will update the DNS contents to account for such changes.
That is called 'Dynamic DNS', aka DDNS:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/DDNS
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Protocols/DNS/DNS_Providers/Dynamic_DNS/

I've personally never had to deal with DDNS, but I can at least point
you to Web pages about it.  ;->

(Or, you could decide to just pay a little extra, and get one or a few
static IPs.)


----- End forwarded message -----