Enoying my new server

It's been alive for about a week. My virtualized Red Hat 7.3 install is chugging along inside VMWare Server as is my virtualized FreeBSD 6.1 machine. The older hardware has been given a rest (well the 850mhz PIII became the new Kid Computer). My buddy Chris at work helped me diagnose a video problem I was having because I thought I was running the nvidia driver but really running the nv driver - causing havoc with vnc. Other than my virtualized FreeBSD machine's clock racing ahead a couple of minutes a day (no matter what I do - solved the problem in RedHat - that one was racing MUCH faster) everything is chugging along fine.

VMWare Server Sound on CentOS

Kind of disappointing that VMWare Server can only use the sound on one VM concurrently and that's only of nothing else is touching the sound card. Turns out after googling around a bit that VMWare uses OSS for it's sound. I installed the alsa-oss package for FC7 and the alsa-oss-libs package for FC7 as well (got them from rpmfind.net). I then renamed my vmware script to vmware.orig. I wrote a new script called vmware to run the aoss wrapper and have aoss invoke vmware.orig and pass all of the args it received. Works like a champ. Now at least all of the VMs can have sound. They can't use the sound at exactly the same time, but at least it's better than it was before. Afterall, what's a home automation system without sound :-)

It's Alive!!!

I got my new server machine built on 2/15/08. Best of all, it worked the first time. I do have the SATA cable plugged in backwards and also into the wrong SATA controller. The system complains that it can't find the rest of the RAID drives when I boot it. Not a big deal and I will fix it eventually. First computer I built in a long time. Also I think first time ever that I installed both a motherboard and a power supply and haven't actually drawn blood.

I changed my mind between Centos 4.6 and 5.1 a few times. I hate the changes to anaconda in 5.1 but got used to it after 4.6 didn't recognize my integrated sound.

Finally Confirmed Order

Finally have equipment on the way. The Dual Layer DVD writer with Lightscribe that was the only surviving piece from my original set of orders showed up yesterday to irritate me :-)

I got a quad-core processor and an Intel "Bad Ax" motherboard (at least the guy in some tech video says people call it that). Should be a fun machine build - haven't put one together totally from scratch for quite a while. It'll have 4 gig of RAM and a 750 gig SATA drive. Should be halfway decent for running VMWare Server.

Order Fell Through

Well, the website contacts me 2 business days after I place my order and say they don't have the RAM or the motherboard anymore. I paid with PayPal and got an immediate refund. I didn't realize how hard it is to find a dual processor ATX motherboard that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I'm leaning towards a single Intel Core2 Quad. Those motherboards are much easier to find and will potentially run around the same speed - or close enough.

New Server

My big plans have been delayed - so... that means it's time to upgrade my server to keep my sanity while I wait for life to resume. I am building a 2 processor Xeon 2.8Ghz machine with 6 gig of ram and a 1 TB SATA hard drive (for starters). I wanted something to host VMWare Server Images. My existing rackmount server has been converted to VMWare and the DNS and DHCP duties it performed have been rehosted on my OpenWRT Router. I also have an extra power supply laying around from when I rackmounted this particular server mobo and realized that ATX really wouldn't work correctly with the hybrid board (long story).

My buddy Carlos the Jackal said I shouldn't buy this particular motherboard because I would spend too much money finding RAM for it. The place that sold the mobo had RAM for $49/gig so I decided he was wrong :-D

Most of the parts should be here this week. I need a snow day so I can put it all together after the parts arrive.

In the meantime I'm building a base VMWare image that I can use for development. I'm going with CentOS 4.6 i386 for the initial VM. The Host is probably going to be the x64 version of the same OS. Seems pretty stable. CentOS 5.x sucks in VMWare right now - VMWare tools won't install. I'm sure you CAN get it to install, I just don't want to dork with it.

I eventually plan to ring the devil's doorbell and run away (install Vista on VMWare and play with it). I may as well with my MSDN Subscription it won't cost me anything.

I also want to try out various other Linux Distros like Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware etc. This will give me the opportunity to try out a ton of things without using old crappy hardware or committing myself to one particular install.

I may try to convert my trusty FreeBSD machine to VMWare as his hardware is aging. I wonder if it's as easy to virtualize as Linux is now that I know the secret ;-)