Author Archives: Louis

Building a KVM host on Debian

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As a continuing project I always love playing with virtulisation. This is some notes for installing and configuring KVM on Debian. Its mainly for my own reference, but if you find it useful please leave a comment!

1. Create a Debian ‘base system’ and fully update it. I use Debian stable, and a minimal install.

Hardware Requirements for KVM

KVM works best if your processor supports virtulisation extensions. It WILL still work if you dont, but dont expect any decent performance! Installations of virtual hosts are sometimes painfully slow without this!

I like my virtualmachines to get their own proper IP address from my LAN or be configured with a static. For this to work and get past the default NAT setup, you will need to setup a network bridge. Follow the link here: http://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections#Setting_up_your_Bridge on how to set that up.

2. Now you should have a fully patched and updated Debian system, we’re now going to install KVM:
apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-bin

Why I chose a Macbook Pro

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Recently I got myself an early Christmas present – a 15″ Apple Macbook Pro. It is 2nd hand, I can’t afford a new one!

My new Apple Macbook Pro

My new Apple Macbook Pro

Many people have asked me why I chose to buy an apple product when I am usually such a Google advocate. Well, the answer is simple; im a power user, I’m ALWAYS multitasking. I needed a solid workhorse that I can use as a secondary workstation, a portable device to code, show presentations, all this (and probably more) with a superb battery life.

The windows laptops Ive had in the past few years have been ok. But ive put up with a few  crashes, software incompatibility, poor construction & very poor battery life.

This. Just. Works.

Revisiting Virtulization

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Its time to revisit virtulization. My home server homer is in dire need of some more diskspace, RAM and general cleaning up. It would probably help if the roles were split across a couple of VM’s. A bit of my development work requires a windows server or 2 and the rest, which is mainly web development is fine with running on Debian.

However, these days homer is showing his age. He is an old Dell, running only a P4 2.8 GHz chip. Hardware vitulization is not supported and previous attempts at running Vmware hasnt worked that well. I think its time to build a new server:

Requirements
1. Its got to be as quiet as possible (currently its in the bedroom, between our desks)
2. Low power consumption
3. Loads of diskspace (main house fileserver for movies) preferably in an LVM or maybe even some kind of RAID.
4. Enough RAM to run a few VM’s for various roles.
5. Low cost – its almost Xmas man!

 

 

Back to Fluxbox

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Today I switched back to using Fluxbox on my main linux system at work. I was having major performance issues and boy has it worked! I had forgotten just how fast it was! Dual monitors were a breeze to setup using xrandr and grandr. A few apps added to the start up file and I was in business. Loving Fluxbox yet again!

New Motherboard?

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Last night I was having PC problems. It seems it’s either my GFX card or (more probably) my motherboard. The GFX card is brand new, but luckily I have one here at work which I will try in it tonight. The motherboard was nothing special, just a cheap available Intel one at the time I built it about 3 years ago. If money wasnt an issue, right now I’d just upgrade to a nice shiny Imac. However, in todays climate money IS an issue, so I HAVE to find another cheaper way. The graphics card, PSU and hardrives are all brand new. So either its a faulty graphics card (nothing appears on the monitors when turned on) or the motherboard is goosed and not providing power to the card or another type of failure.

Either way it’s pissing me off!!

So, any suggestions on a cheapish, good Intel based motherboard?

Happy New Year!

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I know we’re a week into the 2008, but I reckon I have some decent excuses! I have been ever so busy setting up my new monitor (isnt she a beaut!) Reece got his first ever laptop for Xmas, so I have been showing him how to work it, and also my new laptop arrived! (It will get its own page in the ‘gear’ soon!) I hope you all had a great Xmas and a Happy New Year!

Louis & Sam


New Monitor

Virgin Traffic Management sucks!

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Im really fed up with virgin. I have just come home from work and set about checking the news and doing other geeky stuff. My 10 year old stepson was complaining that his game (mir2 was lagging. We rebooted the PC and thought nothing more of it. He was still complaining it was slow so I did an online speedtest (http://gadgetshow.five.tv/jsp/speed_test.htm), this one in particular I have been running regularly for a few weeks now, becuase of constant speed issues. It reported less than 400k download, with an upload of just over 100k. GRR!! Why? It would seem we have been ‘managed’ ie. our net connection limited due to high bandwidth usage. On my network, I run a firewall box (IPCOP) so I can reliably tell EXACTLY how much downstream and upstream traffic we have had in any time period. Todays is as follows:

RED Interface: Input: 123.743 OUtput: 863.809 (MB)

So today (since 12:00am) ‘we’ have uploaded 863MB and downloaded 123MB. I would say that is about normal for a house with 2 computers and a laptop.

So lets see what Virgin have to say: (We’re on package ‘M’)

Broadband Size: M
During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: M package download at least 350MB of traffic each.

is that ALL???

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 1Mb, with their upload speed set to 128Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

1Mb my arse!!! try 400k!

So now I have an issue. Should I ring virgin up and complain?

Read more on Virgins Traffic Management: http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Update

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Picture 109Wow. Its been a while since an update. All is  going well in the new house, we have decorated most of it to our liking, but still have some little bits and pieces to finish off, as well as the master bedroom. The Vespa has just had its 1st service (1000km) with no problems, something which I hope will continue!