The computer updates have started. The new goal is going to move the current physical instance of my Linux server into a VirtualBox VM that will host everything until I can bring up RHEL on the new server hard drives and have it pick up things like web hosting and email. Once that’s complete I’ll decommission the VM, create final backups and be done with it.

I’ll try to document the process of how it works.

So as alluded to in a previous post, I had a drive crash and it left me feeling a bit shaky about the other three drives that are in the array, one more goes and the system is gone. Not thrilled with the thought of that so I blew $320 and got 4 SATA Seagate 4 TB drives. While I was thrilled with the SAS drives, the price and obscurity makes them not good for what I’m looking for.

The new drives are actually new so 5 year warranty so I figure my Linux server should be good until 2026:) Need to look into getting some more RAM, I’m at 16Gb but would rather be at 32, that will probably be the last thing I do for this iteration of the server.

Nothing to do with cars but I’ve got a failure on one of the drives that this site is on. It’s got 4 x 3TB SAS Western Digital drives hooked up to a Dell H310 PERC PCI controller in a Dell T30 server. So the T30 doesn’t come with a H310, not sure you can get that server with that RAID controller. But the issue here is the drive. I guess you get what you pay for an $50 a drive seemed to cheap to be true. So now I have to figure out what to do with storage.

Maybe I should just get another enclosure for the Synology NAS and support everything through there. Or See if the H310 will accept SATA, I mean I like the thought of SAS drives but let’s face it, they’re hard to find and expensive.

So in a previous post I mentioned that I’ve brought a couple of Linux workstations online. My old development box (quad core Intel i7 with 24Gb RAM and dual SSD drives) has been turned into a pretty slick Mint desktop. But I could only hook up 2 monitors, so I broke down and bought 4 new monitors and a x4 HDMI card and now I have a pretty neat Linux setup.

So I’m taking a class on Python, I’m actually super excited about this class and it’s been ages waiting to get the class. For those who don’t know Python is a scripting language that is growing exponentially in popularity. It’s amazing what you can do with it, the only downside to it is that it’s not native to Windows. You can install it without any problem but it’s not out of the box which is a concern if you are dealing with locked down server environments like I do.

When you hear Python and programming language you immediately think of a snake and the dark art of coding. It summons up an image of a person dressed in black in front of a bank of monitor while a snake slithers around the desk. The fun fact about it that the guy who was creating the language liked Monty Python’s comedy show, he needed a name and the Python language was born.

So for the longest time my old development box was sitting around with an unactivated copy of Windows 10 on it and I was using RDP to VPN in and do my torrent downloading and what have you. Those are things you set and forget because it takes hours/days for the download to complete.

After jacking with the activation and not meeting success immediately, I started thinking that I’ve always wanted a Linux desktop and they’ve always been the last stop for hardware before the junk pile. Why not see what it’s like to have a screaming fast Linux desktop? So my Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770K CPU @ 3.50GHz with 24Gb of ram and 500Gb SSD is now my premier Linux desktop.

I bounced back and forth between Mint and Ubuntu, starting with Mint, getting lost because it’s Debian and not Red Hat, then switching to Ubuntu and completely disliking the GUI there even with Cinnamon installed and finally settled back with a clean install of Mint. Scavenged a blue tooth speaker with an aux port and that works for sound from it. And I have a 32 inch curved Acer Nitro EDO series – ED320QR monitor hooked up to it. So far I’m impressed. Lots to learn with the GUI but it’s a nice change. Already have xRDP installed so I just use mstsc.exe and connect right in.

As for the computer that can sit on the VPN and do my downloading? I’ve actually got my old laptop doing that. It’s also running Mint Linux and it basically closed and sitting plugged into a Gb network dongle and power source under the desk next to the UPS. Even have the VPN running and the qBitTorrent running only on tun0, so that if it dies I’m not sitting there exposed with my torrent hanging out. It did briefly happen, let’s hope no bad comes of it.

So building on the email/imap server success. I’ve finally learned how to host multiple domains on Apache!!! Yes I know I haven’t reinvented the wheel and I’m pretty sure that I would have figured it out had I needed it earlier but still it’s bad ass to be able to do so. That in and of itself is pretty cool but what’s more amazing is the fact that using SSL is now free and accessible to the masses thanks to LetsEncrypt. For those of you who don’t know, just a few years ago having a secure site (i.e. a SSL/TLS certificate to secure traffic to and from your site) meant having to fork over $50 bucks a pop per year for each domain. Hosting sites like GoDaddy have been screwing clients for years with this. Enter LetsEncrypt, a consortium of industry heavy weights now offer free certs, they are only 90 day but thanks to Linux the update process it automated. Life is good!

So everyone knows that Linux is the ultimate toy for computer geeks, it can do anything, do it well and do it free. It was a little over two years ago I broke down and bought a Dell PowerEdge T30. I know, it’s about as entry level as you can get. 8Gb of RAM and 1 TB hard drive but it is sporting a 4x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1225 v5 @ 3.30GHz. I did upgrade the RAM to 16Gb (wow ECC memory is steep). And the coup de grace was finding 3Tb SAS drives on New Egg for $50 apiece. Bought 4 of those bad boys and spent $30 for a h310 card and have a RAID 5 striped 8Tb volume to play with. Only have mounted 1Tb and still have tons of room.

In any case, I’m super excited to have the email piece up and running using postfix and dovecot. Some people say “big deal, it’s email”, to which I just sigh. The fact that email is ubiquitous belies the complexity of actually getting one of these set up and functioning. With that said I’m super excited to say I’ve got it up and running for multiple domains both sending and receiving. OK, it’s still using flat files to map users but I’m working on getting it setup on MySQL so more to come on that end.