Rob's Rambling » Technological Prowess

Installing OpenQRM on Ubuntu 9.10

Rob — Thu, 27 May 2010 06:38:35 +0000

Seeing a virtual machine purring along is a thing of beauty. OpenQRM is a fantastic web based package for managing your system, private cloud and virtualization technologies. It integrates seamlessly with both KVM and XEN.

So, here's a brief HOW TO for installing OpenQRM on Ubuntu Server 9.10. This HOW TO assumes you've already installed the virtualization platform of your choice, either XEN or KVM.

Step 1: Installing Prerequisites

Boy there are quite a few of these for OpenQRM so let's take care of that first:

apt-get install php5-mysql libphp-adodb mysql-server mysql-client syslinux tftpd-hpa dhcp3-server nagios-images nagios-plugins nmap libxml-simple-perl open-iscsi aoetools expect puppetmaster subversion bind9

This will install everything you need to run OpenQRM. Nifty no? You may not end up using all these packages but OpenQRM requires them to at least be present before it'll install properly.

One note, and it's an important one - OpenQRM by default expects a blank root password for Mysql so don't set one or if you already have a root password, change it for the moment to blank.

Step 2: Getting the package

Head over to www.openqrm.com and grab the latest package. It's available in both Source and .deb format but I've chosen the deb as it's much simpler to get going. It's about 64mb in size so not exactly terribly huge.

As of writing, the latest version was 4.6.

Step 3: Installing!

Installation at this point couldn't be simpler:

dpkg -i openqrm_4.6-ubuntu1_amd64.deb

In my case, this did just fine.

The installation will ask you for details of your self-signed certificate. Fill these in but keep this step in mind because there are sometimes issues that will cause you to get stuck on Step 3 of the setup wizard. If this happens, you'll need to kill off OpenQRM by going:

apt-get remove openqrm

and re-running your dpkg -i command to start it up again. This time, don't enter any values for your certificate.

Step 4: Configuring

Head on over to https://[your-ip]/openqrm and login using:

Username: openqrm

Password: openqrm

Configure the cloud, virtualization and so on to taste.

Troubleshooting

Q) Help! My wizard gets stuck on step 3! The mysql database is created but nothing happens after that! What do?

A) You must kill off OpenQRM again and this time, don't enter any details in the certificate creation step. Please don't forget to go into MySQL and run a "drop database openqrm;" before reinstalling. Follow the instructions in Step 3 and you'll be fine.

Q) Help, something else is broken! How can I see what's going on?

A) OpenQRM uses /var/log/messages to store records of pretty much everything so use that as your first point of reference. If you can't get things sorted there, ask on the SourceForge site.

Conclusion

That's it - all done. I hope you enjoy using OpenQRM as much as I am

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Kicking my own ass today

rob — Sun, 09 May 2010 11:00:27 +0000

So, I've been working on and off on a number of sites that are my own personal projects (as if I didn't have enough to do).

Lately though, I've been slacking a little - hence the stagnation that is BlogNation.co.za. No more of that though. This is the time that I've started working.

I even have the help (and the blessing) of my dear wife who has promoted understanding that I'm just not going to be able to go to bed before 2am every night.

I can survive on 4 hours of sleep - I know I can, I've done it before. And actually, I'm quite proud of how it's been going.

BlogNation is now finally almost production ready. Something for me to throw around the internets. If it works, that's great. If not - then at least I tried and I learned a bunch of things.

Wish me luck. Rollercoaster ride over.

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Multichoice should worry a little

rob — Sun, 02 May 2010 08:25:31 +0000

Some people may not have even heard of them yet - I know quite a few who hadn't - but TopTV is the talk of the country today as they took a running kick at the Multichoice monopoly.

With their launch date set as May 1st and 50,000 decoder units shipped to various outlet stores around the country, TopTV were set to rollout at a reasonable pace over the next month or so.

The SA public clearly had something else on their minds with all 50 000 decoders sold out completely by 12:30 on Saturday, some stores running out of stock earlier in the morning.

I don't think TopTV expected this kind of response - it's been an incredible showing of how desperate South Africans are to get away from the Multichoice stable and although the sports fans who populate the ranks of DSTV Premium users will be sticking to their current supplier, I imagine Multichoice are dealing with quite a few cancellations this weekend.

If you're one of the lucky 50 000 who actually managed to get a decoder, please be patient as you try to activate your service. The call center is, of course, inundated with calls.

I can only hope that this forces Multichoice to look at their offering and actually bring something interesting to the table. If this isn't a clear message that subscribers aren't happy to be screwed anymore, I don't know what is.

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The Twitter Effect

rob — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 09:15:05 +0000

I'm not sure we've thought this whole social networking thing through properly.

I think relatively few people have realised what Social Networking has the potential to do and become. And when we start talking about companies that list dwindles significantly to around 40 (thanks to Mashable)

It's been pointed out lately that something has gone wrong with the whole gamut of services like Twitter, Facebook and so on. The problem? Social Networking is becoming dominated by business, not people.

I don't mean the innovative businesses that are using Social Networking to actually interact with their customers in a meaningful way. I'm talking more about those companies using Twitter to push their products and corporate agendas.

If I had a big virtual newspaper right now I'd be smacking those businesses on the nose with it - they need to learn that if they don't stop polluting social networks with what boils down to Marketing crap people are going to start leaving for better, newer services.

Do a quick exercise. Look around at the last 100 tweets on your timeline and the last 50 groups you joined on FaceBook. If more than 50% of them are businesses or business related (and you're not gaining anything from them), leave. Just straight up unfollow or stop being a fan.

I'm going on a virtual cull this morning and I'm going to remove anyone or anything that isn't actually at all interesting to me.

Don't follow companies blindly or the trend will continue. And none of us want that to happen.

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A bit of a bust

rob — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:33:57 +0000

Tonight has been a bit of a bust for me.

I managed to get some big things fixed that have been bugging me on www.dementia.co.za but that's about it.

I had hoped to upgrade the chat and make it super sexy but not so much at this time. Hope nobody mobs me for that.

Fortunately, some good came out of the evening. I've taken to wondering if I shouldn't use this opportunity to expand the site as I've wanted to before. Something with interesting applications.

Could I be more mysterious?

Yes, I probably could.

More later.

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It’s all about communication

rob — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:05:29 +0000

Tonight's work is all about communication. While I spent some of last night getting Twitter feeds working for my forum (yay!) - my mission as it stands now is to get a good, solid and customizable chat software suite running.

It needs to be:

PHP/Flash based
Integrated with the forums (one login, one username)
Have customisable smilies
Look good and run well

Wish me luck. Frustrations no doubt but such is the price for work I think.

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Twitter Advertising Revealed

rob — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:15:36 +0000

Twitter today revealed their brand new advertising scheme.

I managed to capture this screenshot before Twitter crack squads came and asked me politely to stop.

Not too bad really. Less intrusive than some.

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Worst. Idea. Ever. (Thermite)

Rob — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:36:20 +0000

http://hackaday.com/2008/09/16/how-to-thermite-based-hard-drive-anti-forensic-destruction/

Leaving aside questions of what you'd have on your hard drive that needed destroying so badly and the fact that most of the 12 year olds using this mod would have to pay for a new floor in their parent's house - What would you do WHEN it went wrong?

I mean compuiters are unstable enough already - now you're going to attach a thermite reaction to them? Really? I don't imagint it'll be the world's most pleasant feeling having a hold burned through your leg while you're helping yourself along to some of that contraband you're protecting.

WIth the new Thermite hard drive destruction mod, you'll be putting out the flames in your now mistreated crotch as the FBI burst in through your door and see the lingering images of Vanessa Hudgens as your mom storms in to see what the fuss is.

Seriously.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

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Mounting an NTFS volume in Centos

Rob — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:11:51 +0000

What a bitch this is to get done. In theory it's pretty easy - especially if you just want read only:

su -

mkdir /mnt/mountpoint

mount -t ntfs /dev/yourdevice /mnt/mountpoint

Seems to work quite well. But what if you want Read/Write? Bit more complicated.

First off, I'm assuming you're using yum. Because I'm using yum and who wouldn't? :D

Second, you need to be at least vaguely familiar with the console side of things in order to get this to work.

Step 1

Install and enable the RPMforge Repos by following the handy tutorial at: wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/RPMForge

Step 2

Make sure you have your kernel-devel installed. Without this there are problems so:

yum install kernel-devel

should set you on the right path.

Step 3

Now we need to install the fuse, ntfs-3g and dkms pacakages thusly:

yum -y install fuse fuse-ntfs-3g dkms dkms-fuse

It's only a couple megs in total and once it's done everything will work right according to almost every source on the internet.

Right? Right?

Wrong.

Try running the following command now:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/mountpoint (for example - substitute your own values)

You'll probably get something along the lines of:

"FATAL: Module fuse not found"

But wait? How is this possible? Didn't we just install fuse?

Not quite. DKMS is the final and seemingly undocumented step that has to be run. As far as I can make out, DKMS will install the fuse module when you reboot or when the service runs for some reason.

So, all we need to do in order to complete our install fo NTFS is:

Step 4

Hit up the DKMS installer service!

service dkms_autoinstaller start

/etc/init.d/dkms_autoinstaller start

Step 5

Now just to check before we go on and mount the volume, make sure that when you run:

modprobe fuse

You don't receive the same "FATAL: Module fuse not found" error from earlier. That'd be a problem.

Step 6

Assuming everything went well, simply either type:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/mountpoint (substitute values)

or edit your fstab to include an appropriate line using ntfs-3g as your file system.

Et voila. NTFS writable in Linux.

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July is Dementia Month

Rob — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:20:54 +0000

In keeping with my 2009 goals, July is Dementia month

This month, I'll be doing a bunch of work and improvement on http://www.dementia.co.za

In a few days, I'll be giving a rough plan of what I want to be doing as well as a timeline. Should be interesting (at least to me).

If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

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Post tags: dementia, development, goals, july

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