Tech Blog » ubuntu

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Beta Is Out

frank — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:25:10 +0000

There are supposed to be many changes in the upcoming release of Ubuntu desktop. One notable UI change is HUD (Head-Up Display) where you can type a menu command to get to an application's functionality without navigation through the menu system. It is useful for users who are experienced with an application and know what they want to get to without menu, sub-menu, sub-sub-menu, etc.

I will need to do a VirtualBox install to play around soon.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/251367/ubuntu_linux_1204_oneups_windows_and_mac_shuttleworth_says.html

Replacing OpenGeo Suites on Windows with GeoServer on Linux

frank — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:43:47 +0000

After our initial installation of OpenGeo Suites for WMS service on Windows, we encountered some stability issues that could not be resolved. We could have hired some high priced consultants to debug the issue but we opted for a lighter weight infrastructure.

Our initial system specs:

Windows Server 2008
4GB ram
Quad core
Open Geo Suites running as Windows application

Our slim and fast system specs:

Ubuntu 10.04
512MB ram
Quad core
GeoServer running as java process

So far so good. All layers are loading super fast. We will see how the stability issue is resolved. At least we are using a lot few resources now which makes scaling out to a cluster of GeoServers much more affordable.

Scaling down from MS to open source

frank — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:37:31 +0000

We just moved a service that was running on the Microsoft stack (Windows Server 2008, .NET, MSSql Server, IIS) to an open source stack (Ubuntu Server, php, Codeigniter framework, apache2, postgres).

We now run the service on a cloud server with dual cpu and 256MB ram (Yes, that's megabytes).

The old server ran on dual core with 2GB of ram.

A four letter word can ruin your day

frank — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:48:24 +0000

halt + Amazon EC2 + Instance Store = A bad day

I did a stupid thing while on vacation. Decided to clone an EC2 server and executed halt from commandline without checking to see if the server was using Instance Store. Whoops, Amazon showed the server as terminating...terminated... ahhhhh.

After having to rebuild the server while on vacation, I have learned a valuable lesson.

Fail2ban does not start after reboot

frank — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:10:39 +0000

This problem was identified with the following configuration:
Ubuntu 8.04
fail2ban

Problem: After fail2ban install, everything works fine, but after reboot fail2ban does not start. Manual /etc/init.d/fail2ban restart fails also.

Cause: Fail2ban looks for fail2ban.sock in
/var/run/fail2ban/
During reboot, that directory is removed. Fail2ban assumes it is there and fails on restart.

Solution: Make sure the directory exists during start of fail2ban. Edit the init.d for fail2ban to fix this.
sudo vi /etc/init.d/fail2ban
Find the do_start option.
do_start() { # Return # 0 if daemon has been started # 1 if daemon was already running # 2 if daemon could not be started do_status && return 1


        if [ -e "$SOCKFILE" ]; then

                log_failure_msg "Socket file $SOCKFILE is present"

                [ "$1" = "force-start" ] \

                        && log_success_msg "Starting anyway as requested" \

                        || return 2

                DAEMON_ARGS="$DAEMON_ARGS -x"

        fi
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --chuid root --exec $DAEMON -- \

                $DAEMON_ARGS start > /dev/null\

                || return 2

return 0 }
Add the following after the if statement.


        # Assure that /var/run/fail2ban exists

        [ -d /var/run/fail2ban ] || mkdir -p /var/run/fail2ban

Finally, it should look like this
do_start() { # Return # 0 if daemon has been started # 1 if daemon was already running # 2 if daemon could not be started do_status && return 1


        if [ -e "$SOCKFILE" ]; then

                log_failure_msg "Socket file $SOCKFILE is present"

                [ "$1" = "force-start" ] \

                        && log_success_msg "Starting anyway as requested" \

                        || return 2

                DAEMON_ARGS="$DAEMON_ARGS -x"

        fi
        # Assure that /var/run/fail2ban exists

        [ -d /var/run/fail2ban ] || mkdir -p /var/run/fail2ban
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --chuid root --exec $DAEMON -- \

                $DAEMON_ARGS start > /dev/null\

                || return 2

return 0 }
Now restart and it should work.
sudo /etc/init.d/fail2ban restart
Just for kicks, see how /var/run has the newly created fail2ban directory.
sudo ls /var/run