Month: December 2013

Simple (Non-System) Raid 1 Setup in Ubuntu Using MDADM

I had trouble finding tutorials on setting up a simple filesystem raid 1 setup. Most were geared towards setting up Ubuntu on a Raid 1 array.

List your disks:

$ sudo fdisk -l

This will give an output like:

Disk /dev/sdd: 240.1 GB, 240057409536 bytes
81 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91879 cylinders, total 468862128 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x211bbf32

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 2048 468862127 234430040 fd Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/sde: 240.1 GB, 240057409536 bytes
81 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91879 cylinders, total 468862128 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x22e6d1f2

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sde1 2048 468862127 234430040 fd Linux raid autodetect

Continue reading “Simple (Non-System) Raid 1 Setup in Ubuntu Using MDADM”

Importing GPG Key Error with Autodeploy Script on CentOS

Here’s another reason to update your system fully before installing software: I was running the autodeploy script for Zenoss and it would hang on the Importing GPG Key and then fail.

After running “yum update,” and then rerunning the autodeploy script, everything went without a hitch.

Troubleshooting Slow Web Browsing with Zentyal (DNS Lookups)

I’ve been having a terrible internet browsing experience for the last couple of weeks. Web pages would take up to 5 seconds or longer to load. Today, I finally had time to sit down and fully troubleshoot the issue.

I went to scrap Zentyal but then noticed that with the new firewall, there was no improvement. Turns out, Google DNS is at fault. Zentyal simply forwards DNS queries to whatever you tell it to. After changing DNS Forwarding (under DNS-> Forwarders) to my ISP DNS servers, web pages began loading instantly once again.

Hurray! Now time for another beer.

Remotely Accessing Deluge or uTorrent’s WebUI Behind a VPN

You may have noticed that regular port forwarding doesn’t work when trying to connect to your torrent server’s webUI if the torrent server is connected to a VPN. You can get around this limitation if you have an extra server with Apache installed using Apache’s mod_rewrite engine.

I’m going to assume that you have the following already setup and working:

  • A torrent server (torrents01) with a working web interface accessible on http://10.10.10.100:8080
  • An Apache web server accessible externally (web01 – IP of 10.10.10.99)
  • You’re running Linux (this will work with Windows, but you’re going to have to fill in the blanks on the steps in IIS or Apache)

In web01, log in to the shell environment.

Create a new virtual host:

$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/torrent-proxy

In the window, paste the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName deluge.DOMAINNAME.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://10.10.10.100:8080/$1 [P]

</VirtualHost>

Now, what the above is doing is receiving all traffic on port 80 with a web address of deluge.domainname.com and rewriting the address to the local IP address of your torrent server.

Press CTRL+X and then yes to save.

Enable the above by typing:

$ sudo a2ensite torrent-proxy

Restart apache2 (reload doesn’t always work, so restart is sometimes better):

$ sudo service apache2 restart

 

As a note to the above, if you want to be able to use the same address internally and externally, you’ll need to add deluge.DOMAINNAME.com to your DNS server and have it point to the Apache server (DNSmasq if you are using it).

Also, utorrent is a bit of a pain in the ass with the /gui it adds at the end. The best thing to do is to change the virtual host to listen on port 8080 so that you can consistently address it. You’ll need to edit the ports.conf (/etc/apache2/ports.conf) and add port 8080 to the listening ports.

There you have it, you should now be able to get to your torrent server inside and outside of your network using the same address.