Archive for the ‘Debian’ Category

ubuntu/debian raid10 installation

Monday, October 19th, 2009

I’m currently setting up a new file server. My first plan was to use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. The system has four sata drives, that should be combined to a raid10. Actually I wanted to use two raid1 which are combined into a striped logical volume via LVM. The server has no cd/dvd drive. Therefor an installation via PXE is the way to go. The text installer is capable of creation md raids and LVM volumes. Though I didn’t find any possibility to create a striped volume, neither in the debian nor in the ubuntu installer.

The solution is the following:
1. create the md raids and the LVM volumes outside the installer, with some live system.(CD/DVD or USB)
2. start the PXE installer
3. in the partition editor choose “manual setup”(or something similar)
4. the system will detect the created volumes which can be further used

This is only possibile with the current stable Debian installer, not with the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installer. I don’t know if the situation change in a newer Ubuntu version. It probably did as they take the code from Debian. Whatever…so my server will be a Debian system.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Debian, Ubuntu, linux | No Comments »

setting up Wlan (Acer Aspire 5920g)

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

My laptop(acer aspire 5920g) has built in wifi(Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN). The OS is Debian GNU/Linux, though it should work with other distros, too.

The Kernel module was already installed out of the box, but this one didn’t work for me, at least ifconfig and iwconfig didn’t show a wlan device. Thus I decided to compile the newest version myself. The sourcecode can be downloaded under click. To compile properly the kernel source/headers have to be installed. The rest is just some make, make install, make load routine. Follow the url above for more information.

The next step was to set up the gnome network-manager. (packages: network-manager and network-manager-gnome)

now edit /etc/network/interfaces and comment out all interfaces beside the loopback interface, otherwise the gnome network-manager will not work correctly. Now there should be an icon beside you clock at the top panel. Click on it to see the networks that are accessible. Choice one to connect. more information can be found here.

The network keys will be stored in the gnome-keyring. Therefore you will be prompted on every bootup to type in the password for the keyring. This can be avoided with the following steps:

  • install the package libpam-keyring.
  • now edit /etc/pam.d/gdm by adding the following lines at the end of the corresponding blocks (‘auth’, ‘session’)
  • auth            optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so
  • session         optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so  auto_start
  • now edit /etc/pam.d/passwd by adding the following line at the end of the password block:
  • password    optional    pam_gnome_keyring.so

The next time you boot there will a checkbox. select it as the last step.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Acer 5920g, Debian, gnome, linux | 1 Comment »