Just another developers blog.

Over the next few days (hopefully) I’m going to document the process of setting up a dedicated vps server to run from home. I’ve done this a few times before, but have never really gotten around to documenting anything. I’ve a spare box, the need and a little time at my disposal so this time I’m going to give it a go.

Currently I run a few small development wiki’s, issue tracking applications, subversion & this blog from some vps’s (openvz) running on my desktop machine. While this has been a pretty good setup for the last six months or so, I want to get back into making some music and so have the need to run this desktop machine as a dual boot GNU/Linux / Windows machine. In doing so, I’m going to need to shutdown Linux on occasions and seeing that I have people relying on some of the services available on this machine, its time to move on.

I’ve has an old machine (2.6Ghz 1G memory) laying around since it blew a graphics card some 18 months ago. Ive since (last weekend) installed an old card, and she is running again. Ive no spare monitor however, so this will be a headless machine – sitting in the corner of my study (I where I also have a small UPS setup).

At this point in time I’ve done nothing but plug my desktop machine’s monitor into this new (old) machine and do a pretty standard Debian (Lenny) install from a net-install CD. I setup a static IP, when prompted for a host name, I named the machine vpshost, and let it know it was on a domain named lcl. I then also set myself up a user account on this machine called thorpe. When prompted to install any software I deselected desktop machine and simply left standard highlighted. I’ll manually install what I need.

The machine rebooted and I log in as root. The first thing I need to do is update the apt cache, upgrade any old packages & install some essentials.

root # apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
root # apt-get install vim vim-scripts ssh sudo

The first thing I do is reconfigure ssh to use a non standard port & restart the service.

root # sed "s/22/1904/" /etc/ssh/sshd_config && /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Update the alternatives system to use vim as the default system wide text editor.

root # update-alternatives --set editor /usr/bin/vim.basic

Execute….

root # visudo

and un-comment the line that reads %sudo ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL. Place my user (thorpe) into the sudo group.

root # gpasswd -a thorpe sudo

I can now logout and unplug the monitor, putting it back in my desktop machine. Once in my desktop, I added an entry to my dnsmasq server so all the machines on my network can see this machine. I then simply copy over my public ssh key & some handy rc files.

thorpe $ copy-ssh-id
thorpe $ scp .bashrc vpshost.lcl:
thorpe $ scp .vimrc vpshost.lcl:

That’s about it for now. I’ll log in tomorrow and start work.

Recently my wife bought me an iPhone. I love thing and already am finding it hard to imagine how I lived without it.

For a while now, we have been using my iPod (with a tuner attachment) to play my extensive mp3 collection through our main stereo system in the lounge room. This has been ok to a point, but when we are outside at the bbq or spa the reception is just not good enough. The iPhone however has a remote application that allows you to remotely access iTunes installed on your computer. This gave me an idea.

I’m not a Windows user, haven’t been for a long time however the idea I had involved installing Windows on an old pc I have without a monitor. So I pulled her out (8G hard drive and all) installed a wireless card, plugged her into my current monitor and installed XP. From here, the process was simple.

• Right click on ‘My Computer’ and enable ‘Remote Desktop’. Shutdown & take the pc out to the lounge room, plugging it into the stereo. Restart.
• Back in my office, log into Debian and install rdesktop & samba.


apt-get update && apt-get install rdesktop samba

I already have all my mp3s stored within ~/var/mp3s on my Linux machine. I’m simply going to share this directory with windows. Configure samba to do so…

[mp3s]
comment = Mp3s
path = /home/thorpe/var/mp3s
writeable = yes
browseable = yes
guest ok = no
printable = no

Restart samba….

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

I run my own local dns server via dnsmasq so I have no problem accessing any of my machines by name, if your following along, you may want to use ip addresses.

• Log into the windows machine.


rdesktop -u username -p password -f -r sound:remote lounge-pc.lcl

The -f switch puts you in full screen mode while the -r switch disables the audio being sent to the client.

• Map your shared drive to the M: drive


net use m: \\oblivion.lcl\mp3s


• Install iTunes and add M: to your library

Install the remote application for your iPhone

Enjoy! Now I have a remote control on my iPhone that uses wifi to control iTunes from anywhere in my house. I can also login to this machine whenever I need to do maintenance (or update the iPhone even?) without having to drag it out and hook up any monitor.