I decided that it didn’t make much sense to have my old dedicated server any more, now that I’ve got a VPS node – so I span up a Debian Instance, and setup nginx, mysql and php-fcgi, and started migrating my sites over. So far, it’s been a great experience – there have been no issues, and I’m pretty sure that the site is much much faster. Just try out the search function!

I’m also hosting the previously mentioned VPS wiki on this machine, and have plenty of resources left to host several more dynamic sites.

I hope to do a quick writeup for the VPS wiki in the near future.

Debian version not supported

Even though the GNUPanel site seemed to say that Debian Squeeze was supported.

A quick look at the install-dep.sh file showed that it relied on the mawk unix utility.

By running apt-get install mawk, we can solve this problem and continue with the installation.

UPDATE:

I’ve now had a chance to play around with GNUPanel a bit more, and unfortunately, I don’t think it’s fully up to scratch. The installation process was pretty clunky – the automated installed script forced me to manually confirm the installation of at least 10 groups of packages. Once the software was installed, I had to guess at the username – and the web interface was also pretty…. “ropey”. These are mainly minor issues, and I’m sure that with some TLC, the project can progress, and become much more useable.

The aim of the Wiki is to provide a centralised location for information about using Linux, performing general sysadmin duties, as well as some programming basics. I think the site will naturally change in time – It might lean more strongly towards a particular topic. If that happens, then I will rename the site – I thought “VPS Wiki” was a good starting point, especially given my recent venture.

Some people might think “What’s the point in this – can’t people just google for the answer?”. However, Because technology is rapidly changing, I find that it can be difficult to find relevant, up-to-date solutions to problems that I encounter. I think having a central database of of useful content could be very handy.

I’d really appreciate any contributions towards the wiki – at the moment, you need an account to edit/create pages. You can check the Wiki out here.

To start off with, I am doing this not for profit. I will not be offering any formal support for my customers, and have negotiated a deal with RapidSwitch, who are providing me with a discount (because I’m not making any money from it). I will be offering OpenVZ VM’s to people on my University course for £5.00/m, with the following spec: 18GB hard disk space, 400MB Ram, 128MB VSwap, and 750GB Bandwidth.

I’ve chosen to use the OpenVZ Web Panel control panel software, as it is easy to use and free.

If this is a successful endeavor, then I may go on to provide commercial VPS’s to customers. Who knows!

You can probably expect some  OpenVZ/CentOS based posts in the not too distant future…

UPDATE:

I had to go with SolusVM, due to OWP’s lack of bandwidth tracking. This meant increasing the price by £0.50 to £5.50/m – however, I think the users are probably getting a slightly better experience with the commercial control panel.

dtrace: error on enabled probe ID 5 (ID 992: io:mach_kernel:buf_strategy:start): invalid user access in action #3 at DIF offset 0

I thought my SSD was dying (it’s something I fear!) – however, after some messing around I discovered iotop doesn’t work when iTunes is running, because Apple have disabled dtrace while iTunes is running. Quitting iTunes sorted the problem for me. There is more about this “quirk” here: http://www.securitypronews.com/insiderreports/insider/spn-49-20080124AppleAlteredDTraceToolSaysLeventhal.html

I have recently acquired a few domain names, one of which is 23p.net. While this doesn’t really mean anything, I have decided to use it as the name of my Diaspora* pod because it is short, and easy to remember.

I hope to do a more technical writeup soon, but in the mean time, why not check it out? My Diaspora Username is josephredfern@23p.net.

If you’re interested in having a look, then check out the git repo here: https://github.com/JosephRedfern/RedBlog/

The loadavg script will check the load average of the server which it is being run on, and if the reported load averages cross a certain threshold, then a warning email will be sent to an email address of your choice. In addition to this, the current load averages will be logged to a MySQL Database.

The script is designed to be run as a cronjob (which most shared hosts support) – however, if cron is not available then it is possible to use “fakecron”, which is available here: http://quirm.net/2008/10/02/fake-cron/.

Click Here to check out LogBox on GitHub 

I have been fairly busy during my week off from University developing a website for a local holiday Chalet – check it out here. It’s not 100% finished yet, but the general design is complete. I have also been doing some a little bit of SEO on Anglesey Sailing, in an attempt to boost it’s rankings. I can honestly recommend both sites, and the services that they offer – so if ever you’re looking to go on holiday to Anglesey, or to charter a boat in the Anglesey Area, check out the aforementioned sites!