[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting Monday. (Bobbie Sellers)

jim jim at systemateka.com
Fri Jan 14 07:33:26 PST 2011


   systemateka.com is running on ubuntu server with no 
problems. 
   i believe ubuntu server no longer has a default user 
account, verify this is the case and disable it if you 
find it (set the seventh field in the /etc/passwd file 
to /bin/nologin or /bin/false or some such, also change 
the password for that account. i say don't delete the 
account as a matter of good, if not best, practice 
(don't reuse UIDs). 

   at noisebridge, the linux system administration 
study group is running both ubuntu server and CentOS. 

   i believe the sf-lug.com host is debian with 
hypervisor--the host is supporting a VM for sf-lug.com 
and another VM for balug.org. 

   the sf-lug.org web site is hosted on a BSD box. a 
number of people whose sysadm skills i admire are 
running BSD for server support. 

   your partitioning info seems largely good to me. 
* the only reason for having /boot as a separate mount 
  point is that BIOS is old enough that it can't see 
  beyond some number of cylinders (i forget the number) 
  so the grub system has to be within its reach. 100M 
  has always been enough for me, it's a matter of how 
  many kernels and ramdisks etc one is working with. 
* there is no /swap directory. a partition for swap 
  has no mount point. 
* /var/www/ has been a mount point for web site, but 
  there are some who suggest /srv or /opt or some 
  other directory as a mount point. i don't see that 
  it matters much, but i've come around to that idea. 
* someone, i'm sorry to have forgotten as i'd like to 
  give proper credit, has suggested that one mount 
  flash storage as ext2 filesystem with noatime: 
  -- ext2 doesn't keep a journal 
  -- noatime directs the system not to update the 
     inode tables for repeated user access of files 
  the above reduces the number of writes to storage, 
  which has a finite number of writes as an upper 
  limit. 



On Thu, 2011-01-13 at 21:26 -0800, Alex Kleider wrote:
> I'm not sure there is such a thing as a 'servo distro'
> Ubuntu I believe does have a server installation with a different
> support schedule to it's desktop version.
> You might want to ask on the list (essentially that's what I'm doing
> now) what people recommend for running a server. It's been my
> impression that there is some consensus that Debian is a good choice.
> I've been using Squeeze (testing)  but I notice that according to the
> Debian site, testing is not supported as promptly for security updates
> so to the extent that that is true it might be an argument for using
> Lenny (current stable) instead.
> How do people weigh in on this issue?
> The other question I've been struggling to resolve is with regard to
> partitioning. 
> I'd be interested in any comments about the following issues I've been
> thinking about lately:
> I've heard arguments made for having separate partitions for:
> /boot: some say 100M is adequate, my SheevaPlug currently uses 26M but
> my Zareason laptop is using 147 M!
> /swap: I've read that if you have >= 1G of ram, you don't even need
> swap; alternatively if you use suspend-to-disk then RAM+15% is
> recommended.
> /home: keep it separate so users don't bring down your machine by
> using up too much space. My plug is using only 2.1M but my laptop is
> 44G! (I need to house clean.)
> /home/ftp and/lor /home/httpd for server data if need be. (Other
> sources suggest keeping server data in /var- comments?)
> /usr/local a local version of the root system: as a separate partition
> it will survive an upgrade/reinstall. (similar benefit for /home)
> /tmp two reasons to have it a separate partition: if you are running
> off of an sd card instead of a hard drive, this would be a good
> partition to mount on an external drive to minimize writes to the sd;
> the other issue is to protect against the possibility of a graphics
> program trying to load an image that might be too big for available
> space and thus bring down the system. Any comments from the more
> experienced? ..any suggestions as to a size that would be adequate?
> /var/log in case log files are not purged and get so big that the
> system is brought down. Does this happen?
> /var/spool if running services (eg mail)
> With regard to systems running off an SD card (vs Hard Drive), to
> avoid writes to the sd card, /home, /tmp, and /var might be best
> mounted onto an external hard drive. In this regard: when does fstab
> get read and the mounting get done relative to when the first logging
> is done? Could this be a problem? i.e. does logging of the boot
> process get done before an external drive might get mounted?
> 
> 
> 
> a_kleider at yahoo.com
> 
> --- On Thu, 1/13/11, ron wellman <wellmanron at gmail.com> wrote:
>         
>         From: ron wellman <wellmanron at gmail.com>
>         Subject: Re: [sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting Monday. (Bobbie Sellers)
>         To: sf-lug at linuxmafia.com
>         Date: Thursday, January 13, 2011, 1:08 PM
>         
>         Yes I'm planning to be there. Last time I got two laptops up
>         and running. I may need to tweak the wireless connection and
>         I'm bringing in an old laptop or two. I'll want to load a
>         server distro on one. The second one may be more problematic.
>         I'm hoping to see Alex there too.
>         
>         On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 12:00 PM,
>         <sf-lug-request at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
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>                 Today's Topics:
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>                   1. SF-LUG meeting Monday. (Bobbie Sellers)
>                 
>                 
>                 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>                 
>                 Message: 1
>                 Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:31:36 -0800
>                 From: Bobbie Sellers <bliss at sfo.com>
>                 To: SF-LUG <sf-lug at linuxmafia.com>
>                 Subject: [sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting Monday.
>                 Message-ID: <sig.99948092bf.4D2F36F8.9000400 at sfo.com>
>                 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1;
>                 format=flowed
>                 
>                 
>                     This Monday January 17, 2010 at
>                 the Cafe Enchante the usual SF-LUG
>                 low-key meeting from 6-8 PM nominally
>                 at 26th and Geary.
>                 
>                     later
>                     bliss
>                 
>                 
>                 
>                 ------------------------------
>                 
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>                 
>                 End of sf-lug Digest, Vol 60, Issue 11
>                 **************************************
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