John Galbraith
Here is a quick, down and dirty Ubuntu web server.
1. Download Ubuntu and create a disk from ISO. Ubuntu Minimal
2. Get your machine together. I would suggest a dual proc at least 800Mhz, At least 2GB ram, and At least 32GB of hard drive space on MIRRORED SCSI or SATA drives. SCSI preferred. If you get a Rackmount server off of Ebay, most come with no hard drives. No worries.. try and get one with hard drive caddys. If not, you will have to buy those separately. Pick up some U320 drives. Ultra3 will work too and may be more inexpensive but the U320 will rock your server when you put them in. You could mirror a couple of 73GB drives and be out maybe a total of $400 for the web server. I would go with a Dell poweredge 1U server. Trust me, it is worth your trouble getting ahold of one of these workhorses.
3. Build the exact same thing, only this time, go for a 4 or 5 U server and Mirror some drives for the OS but still have room to put in a nice Raid array for your data. RAID5 will serve you well for that set. Get you some 146GB drives for that one. If you really want to go SATA on these you will get a lot more drive for your money but the speed and stability just isn’t there. These are you SERVERS you are talking about. Not the machine you play Farkle on.
4. Now you have your two servers set up and ready to receive direction. Install Ubuntu Minimal on both server with your disk.
5. Assign both of them static IP addresses.
sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
You will see these two lines. Delete them.
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
Put these lines in their place.
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
Put your network information in there of course. Ensure both server have unique addresses. It is smart to assign static IP addresses outside of the DHCP pool. If your router gives out 192.168.1.100 though 192.168.1.135, Do not assign addresses in that range but stay in the 192.168.1.1-254 range.
Restart the neworking service using the following command
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
5. On both server do a sudo apt-get update followed by a sudo apt-get apgrade
6. On the web server do a sudo apt-get install apache2 php5
7. On the Database server do a sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 phpmyadmin
gksudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Add the following line of code inside apache2.conf:
Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf
Now restart Apache:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
8. Connect to it via your browser using http://ipaddress of SQL server/phpmyadmin
9. Configure it to allow users to connect from anywhere in your LAN.
10. Log into your router and go to port forwarding. Forward port 80 from anywhere to your webserver.
11. Install dropbox on your coding machine and your web server. http://www.getdropbox.com
12. Create a folder in your dropbox called webserver.
13. Enable SSH on both of your servers by sudo apt-get install ssh
14. In command line on your webserver, do a dropbox start -i
15. Then type in dropbox, look at the switches, and do the one to autostart on logon.
16. Delete the folder /var/www on the web server
17. Locate your Dropbox folder in your profile on the webserver and do a symlink to it by:
ln -s /home/user/myname/Dropbox/webserver /var/www
18. Do an init 6 to reboot the machine
19. Create a file in your webserver folder of your development machine like test.htm
20. If a few seconds it should populate on the webserver. If make a change to it. Now go to the dropbox website and roll that change back. Tada.. you have a smart webserver that is backed up in real time.
Enjoy 
I will go into what to do with the database server next time.
Windows 7 seems to continually have USB problems. I didn’t catch this one because the drivers that HP has in their database and the drivers the Microsoft has in their system are difficult to compare. According Windows the drivers are up to date yet there are updated drivers on the HP site? How is anyone supposed to know if the USB driver you have installed is the latest?
I guess every Windows operating system has it’s quirks and USB drivers are the big one for Windows 7. Here is the guidance..
Before you buy a copy of Windows 7, ensure that your computer’s manufacturer has an updated USB driver for your computer. This will be the only thing that renders your computer dead in the water. My Compaq v2000 laptop runs Win7 great until the USB drivers zonked on me. The manufacturer refuses to write updated drivers so I am waiting on a fix from Microsoft update to repair this issue.
I am also waiting on a coprocessor for my dv6809wm HP laptop. Come on Microsoft.. get on these drivers and pick up the slack where HP naturally fails. HP absolutely sucks at writing software.
In my recent hunt for a new position attempting to move up in the ladder a little, I have come across some interesting excuses for not being hired. Goals are definitely a road block. HUH? Yes, I said it. Let me explain.
Interview question: “What are your civilian goals in the next 5 years?”
I answered that I intend to finish my Masters degree by then.
OOPS! That was the first mistake. The reason I was not selected for the position was because “John, once you have your masters degree you are likely going to leave this company and move on to something better. I have to look into the best interest of the company and select the other candidate because she will be a smarter choice in the long run.” Of course she has NO education at all.
I am in a unique position. Rather than graduating high school and going straight to college, I went in the Army instead and started school after the Army. I didn’t have daddy to pay for my school so I worked my fingers to the bone for 10 years to get college funded later on. Now that I am at the point where I am in school, I found that the higher paying jobs are unattainable because I don’t have enough experience in the field. The entry level jobs are unattainable because I have more education, age, and goals then the kids I would be working with making me a risk to leave. Good old catch 22. Do I give up though? No way. These IT managers will know me by first name from the amount of applications and resumes of mine that will go through their hands. One good one has to bite. Don’t get me wrong, I have gotten offers but for temp positions and unstable stuff that if I weren’t a little older, married, have 3 kids I would take. I need stability though.
Also, being the the national guard is held against you with one question. “Do you think you could be deployed overseas in the future?” It should be illegal for employers to ask that. They know it is for a years time and employers know that we have to have a job to come back to after the deployment. So, if you answer honestly and say yes, it is a disqualifying answer because there is a chance that they would have to bring in a temp for a year while you are gone.
So, correct answers? For the guard “My unit is currently non deployable.” That may not be true.. but that is a status that is easily changed after you get the job. As for the education goals or “civilian goals”, I plan on taking whatever classes I need to better myself in this position. If I happed to complete my next degree doing it great, if not, I will be all the better doing this job. How’s that for an answer?
I have had it with AVG antivirus taking control of and messing up things that an antivirus software should never touch in the first place. I tell my friends and family that Avast AV is the best of the best when it comes to antivirus programs and they go download AVG. Hey, if you want to make that mistake.. I charge $50 to remove it. AVG has never been a very good antivirus and now it is virtually not uninstallable (kind of like some viruses I have fought recently… hmmmm) No, I am not saying AVG is a virus. I am saying that it sucks and is absolute IT hell to get rid of.
Take this computer I am working on now. I have to boot a Linux live CD to rip AVG out by it’s guts because AVG can’t stay in it’s lane and just kill crapware. It borks the video drivers everytime you try and uninstall the software. HA!
Get Avast – NOT AVG
Tired of all the advertisements in FaceBook? Tired of all the crap? The instability of the web app, the horrible chat interface? Here is your fix. it works for both Windows and Linux. The only difference is the file you download when you get the Pidgin mod. Of course you will download the exe for Windows and a DEB or TARGZ for Linux. If you are using MAC, figure it out… you had the money to buy a MAC, you have the money to buy some tech support to figure it out. 
Use Adobe Air in conjunction with Pidgin. For the Adobe Air application you want to get ahold of the uploader. This is basically a light weight FB application. You can just upload a picture by dragging and dropping on the app. Very nice. Either search the Adobe Air Marketplace for it or download it direct from here.
photouploader.air
Now, install pidgin if you are not using it already (sudo apt-get install pidgin)
Install a supporting file for the mod. libjson-glib-1.0-0_0.7.6-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
Buckey Balls.. They are magnetic balls. Oh soo cool. And entertaining. EBAY LISTING
We all know that Ubuntu just can’t run some of the great applications that are only available for Windows. I have also ran into a problem where Windows Vista and WIndows 7 won’t pick up certain hardware and there are no available drivers for them. Well, that sucks. There is an easy solution. Forget VMWARE.. it is garbage. Forget Parallels workstation.. it is also junk. QEMU is awesome though. Simply go into Synptic Package manager and search for qemu. Install qemu and the gtk gui package for it. BAM! You have a virtual machine. Now create your hard drive for your machine, tell it the OS you are putting on it and set up your boot device. Install Windows and have a nice day. That’s all there is to it.
I also installed Dropbox on it and synced files with it. Very nice feature.
Now my USB devices work, now they don’t. WTF. This is a problem I have been having since I installed Windows 7 on my laptop. Now, the laptop is a Compaq Presario V2000 with an AMD Semperon CPU an 1GB of RAM. The operating system runs like a dream, it is just that the USB functionality is intermittently troublesome and at times more unstable then Charles Manson on crack. Would I still recommend Windows 7 to other users? Absolutely. It is still great. It is just a little buggy the way it handles USB devices.
Cast your opinion on Windows 7.
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