Zimbra 8.0 upgrade from Zimbra 7.2 on CentOS 6.x quicky

Woot Woot. The rather well done Zimbra Collaboration Server ("enterprise-class email, calendar and collaboration solution") has a major version change from 7.2.1 to version 8.0.0! We choose to run the Zimbra Collaboration Server Open Source Edition (OSE). We have previously upgraded through the 7.1 and 7.2 series with no issues. This is a brief overview of what needed to happen to get from 7.2.0 -> 8.0.0 on my CentOS 64-bit test server. I will take the production system from 7.2.1 -> 8.0.0 after a couple of weeks of random testing. I'm not crazy enough to just put a dot0 version in production. I may even wait a month to make sure enough bugs are worked through. I do have a job I want to keep ;)

Naturally, one should start by reading the very informative Zimbra 8.0.0 GA Release Release Notes. I am glad to see the "Inline reply", "Autocomplete matches now work correctly for Contact Groups" bugs fixed! The "Per folder message retention policy creation" added is long overdue IMHO. Don't short change your upgrade by skipping the release notes. You *should* take the time to go through it!

As root:

screen

tar -xzvf zcs-8.0.0_GA_5434.RHEL6_64.20120907144639.tgz

cd zcs-8.0.0_GA_5434.RHEL6_64.20120907144639

./install.sh --platform-override

To get the new 5 year default SSL cert, you will want to run as user zimbra:

sudo /opt/zimbra/bin/zmcertmgr createca -new

sudo /opt/zimbra/bin/zmcertmgr deployca

sudo /opt/zimbra/bin/zmcertmgr deploycrt self

Production server upgrade note (10/29/2012):
The Zimbra 8.0.0 upgrade/install seems to have reset several of my custom settings to default attributes! I have made most of my custom changes based on the very handy Zimbra wiki for Performance Tuning Guidelines for Large Deployments in the past. The main changed items I've spotted so far are zimbraImapMaxConnections and zimbraImapNumThreads that reverted back to 200. I hope not to find too many more production system oddities! The reason I noticed the issue is that the /opt/zimbra/log/mailbox.log had MANY messages like:
WARN  [ImapServer-76] [] imap - Dropping connection (max connections exceeded)
WARN  [ImapServer-80] [] imap - Dropping connection (max connections exceeded)

Eye-Fi Connect X2 mini review/recommendation

Summary:

Eys-Fi makes a nice little SD card with built-in wifi called an Eye-Fi Connect X2 among others. This little gem is great! The title should really be, "Amazing geek toy and CYA device"...
I find the Eye-Fi Connect X2 card and Android Eye-Fi App to be very useful and mostly reliable on my Samsung Galaxy Tab Plus GT-P6210 running both the original Android 3.2 Honeycomb and recently updated Ice Cream Sandwich. There is a great deal of comfort knowing I have an immediate backup copy of every picture I take. 

Background:

Since pictures are of major importance to me. Safeguarding my photos with multiple copies is a priority. Under normal circumstance, I would take some random number of pictures, head to my laptop or home system, copy the pictures, rotate out the SD card, take more pictures, etc.

I had an original Eye-Fi card from a couple of years ago. I tried a couple of the Linux options like the python powered eyefiserver with some luck. Sadly, at the time, this option was not very portable since it needed an access point plus laptop or similar. Besides, reading the original eye-fi card was a pain for me under Linux.

Skip ahead a couple of years and the X2 versions... and add a tablet or smart phone and Ad-hoc network support of wireless uploads... welcome to a whole new world.

Now with my Android powered phone or my great little Samsung Galaxy Tab Plus GT-P6210 and the Android Eye-Fi App (or IOS App), I just start the App, shoot a pic and have an original sized copy on my phone or tablet!

OK there's a bit more to process of course. Some will not like the *requirement* to have an Eye-Fi account to use the app. Others will note that I needed to register the SD card with a Windows system. I wish that was different, but it's not.

Just as a side note, the Ad-hoc network range was about 40-45 feet as a general rule for quick transfers. As the distance got just past this range, the time to upload increased by minute(s). So, proximity does matter as you would expect for such a tiny device. Also, I did have a couple of times that the Ad-hoc network would not connect. Restarting the app seemed to provide relief.

Garden of the Gods horseback riding review - Academy Riding Stables

Family vacations can still be an opportunity to blog. This one is not geek related in any way, however. Other than this geek had a GREAT time horseback riding on trails of the Garden of the gods. The horses and guides were provided by:
Academy Riding Stables
phone (888)-700-0410 or phone (719)-633-5667
4 El Paso Blvd. Colorado Springs, CO 80904
I even got a discount of a couple of bucks per person from pikes-peak.com.

The Academy Riding Stables are very well organized group. Even when a larger group than originally expected group appeared. They split our 2 hour time slot into 2 groups instead of one larger one. Each group had both a lead rider and trailing rider. Safety seemed to be a high priority for the leaders. There was emphasis on how to approach, mount and ride the horses in a safe way. Helmets were provided for all that wanted them and use of helmets was encouraged. There were 10 riders from 8(ish) to much older. A person in charge selected horses of appropriate sizes based on each riders' size. My horse was very well suited to me and was well behaved.

Our ride began with a rather uneventful trek through a portion of residential area that borders Garden of the gods. This was a couple of blocks that included public roads and alleys. A trail was started about 10 minutes into the ride. First portion of the trail was easy and very wide. The horses knew were they were going and none ventured from the path. The first third a portion of the park that was generally easy with more gentile hills and valley like views.

The next 2/3 of the ride were primarily single horse width trails with changing terrain. Some climbs were very exhilarating both in final view of the area and ability of the horses to get up them. I was very thrilling to have my horse going down some rather steep steps with little effort. Even my youngest thought this was very exciting! Theses trails were not part of the general hiking area of the Garden of the gods if you were to go into the main rock formation area. We had views of part of that area, but our route focused on more of the perimeter. The views from the top of some of the hills are very breathtaking! The surrounding mountains and area are just beautiful. Words do not do justice to the majestic view that I had.

The ride lasted for 2 hours and included interesting commentary from the ride leaders. They made every effort to make sure all of the group was given information about the area we were in. Many times the end support rider would repeat the entire message to make sure the end riders understood. The information they provided was both interesting and worthwhile.

On a animal treatment note, I would like to commend the Academy Riding Stables for how well they seem to treat the animals in their care. Each horse that was brought for a rider was known by name and treated with kindness. Each of the riders was made aware that the horses should be allowed to drink their fill of water before the trip. Horse handling instructions were emphasized. All the horse stables seemed to be well kept and stocked with plenty of food. There was large areas for horsed to roam free. Heck even observed a couple of horses that were given showers while we were waiting for our turn to ride.

Make sure to get there early to fill out the paperwork. Reservations are required.

Google has lots of images
I will post some of my own pics very soon. I even used my DroidX with GPS tracking to map the route.
Note: I did not receive any compensation for this review.

CentOS 6.0 install on Dell D630 laptop and short review

First I would like to say, "Thank You!" to all of the hard working developers and other at org.org. In spite of some VERY well published delays in getting CentOS 6.0 out the door, it's finally here! I hope to see 6.1 soon.

Once again, I am using my venerable Dell D630 laptop with 2GB RAM, a dual core Intel T7500 and dedicated nVidia G86M Quadro NVS 135M video card. WIFI is handled by the Broadcom BCM4312 802.11a/b/g chipset. Modest by today's standards. It's the same laptop I have used for my Fedora 15 beta review. I can say with certainty that both this laptop and I are very grateful to be running Gnome 2.x instead of 3.x!

When I first went to burn the i386 .iso file, k3b greeted me with an interesting, "your image will not fit on your disk" kinda message. I was puzzled and then discovered the issue noted in the CentOS 6.0 release notes about the DVD+R media creation issue. Fair enough, I did not have at the time any other media, so I just overburned past the disk and tried to boot from the media anyway (which worked fine for *my* install). Just don't try to validate the disk ;)

Next, my default DVD install attempt was met with a very disappointing blank/black screen with the onboard Nvidia NVS 135M quadro video card. My good buddy google quickly lead me to some information that either "nomodeset" kernel option or install with the "basic video driver" would be needed. And either of those allowed me to move on through the install.

The rest of the install proceeded without issues. After the reboot, I was glad to see the nouveau driver seems to work well enough after the initial install problem. I was even more happy to see my wifi (Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g) installed with *no* intervention. And by this time, I always expect the onboard ethernet of (Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express) to work without issues or intervention. Thankfully, I was not disappointed with any networking issues. Sorry to say that this laptop does not have bluetooth onboard, so I can't test that.

I was greeted with good old Gnome 2 running after login. Everything looked fine at 1440x900 resolution without messing with any xorg.conf file! I do not yet see a reason to blacklist nouveau. I expect even less to use the a downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-*.run file as the elrepo binary kmod-nvidia* version will end up being no additional work after a kernel upgrade.

Laptop is running very stable, dynamic CPU fan control functions as expected. Suspend and resume has not had any issue at all with the nouveau driver. Nice to have it all just work (minus the install quirk).

More updated versions of most major apps would be better. OpenOffice 3.2 is included rather than 3.3 or even better now, the Libreoffice version that Fedora 15 has.

In the end, I would have to say that for a good solid Linux OS experience, I would suggest CentOS 6 as a good option to any current distribution. You will have a long support cycle and a very stable base.

I have a very minor annoyance that seems to be shared now with all the recent Fedora versions; resuming the laptop shows an initial screen that is your session even with the screen lock applied. This running session screen last only a second or two, but kinda odd that it shows at all.

As a note, I have added the "xdriver=vesa nomodeset" options to my PXE install for this class of device to get past the video driver issue on install.

For completeness, here is the lspci for this Dell D630:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G86M [Quadro NVS 135M] (rev a1)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. Cardbus bridge (rev 21)
03:01.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 01)

My intent is to soon publish a server based CentOS 5.6 -vs- CentOS 6.0 competition review using the same hardware. Stay tuned.

CentOS 5.6 Thunderbird 5 working setup and install howto

UPDATE: Thunderbird 6.0 does not require the hack below!

If you are getting the error

thunderbird-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by libxul.so)

You have come to one of the correct places. This is a continuation of the FIreFox 4 install. Again, I did not come up with this on my own! I just want to spread the word as much as possible that one very enlightened fellow referenced as "rkl" at forums.mozillazine.org has made it possible for the rest of us to hit the "easy button" and got FireFox 4.0 working on CentOS 5.x (CentOS 5.6 at this time). HERE is the original link that I lucked upon while trying to google it on my own.

This is my mostly plagiarized summary based on the original FF4 information for the link above. My testing was specifically done on CentOS 5.6 32bit desktop install:

1. Unpack the Thunderbird thunderbird-5.0.tar.bz2 somewhere (e.g. /opt/thunderbird5). A quick way to get the tar file is from the mozilla Thunderbird EN download link.

2. Download this 32-bit Fedora 9 libstdc++ RPM and unpack it with this command:

rpm2cpio libstdc++-4.3.0-8.i386.rpm | cpio -i --make-directories

3. Move the unpacked shared library into /opt/thunderbird5:

mv usr/lib/libstdc* /opt/thunderbird5/

Note: It's "usr/lib/libstdc*" above (i.e. the unpacked tree from the RPM, not the system /usr/lib tree) - do NOT put a leading slash there!

4. Run Thunderbird 5 with:

/opt/thunderbird5/thunderbird

I will say that TB5 is an *major* improvement from Thunderbird 3.x. So far there are less mailbox issues than with previous versions.

CentOS 5.x FireFox 5 working install

UPDATE: FireFox 6.0 does not require the hack below!

If you are getting the error

firefox-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by /opt/firefox5/libxul.so)

You have come to one of the correct places. This is a continuation of the FIreFox 4 install. Again, I did not come up with this on my own! I just want to spread the word as much as possible that one very enlightened fellow referenced as "rkl" at forums.mozillazine.org has made it possible for the rest of us to hit the "easy button" and get FireFox 4.0 working on CentOS 5.x (CentOS 5.5 at this time). HERE is the original link that I lucked upon while trying to google it on my own.

This is my mostly plagiarized summary based on the original FF4 information for the link above. My testing was specifically done on CentOS 5.6 32bit desktop install:

1. Unpack the Firefox firefox-5.0.tar.bz2 somewhere (e.g. /opt/firefox5). A quick way to get the tar file is from the mozilla EN download link.

2. Download this 32-bit Fedora 9 libstdc++ RPM and unpack it with this command:

rpm2cpio libstdc++-4.3.0-8.i386.rpm | cpio -i --make-directories

3. Move the unpacked shared library into /opt/firefox5:

mv usr/lib/libstdc* /opt/firefox5/

Note: It's "usr/lib/libstdc*" above (i.e. the unpacked tree from the RPM, not the system /usr/lib tree) - do NOT put a leading slash there!

4. Run Firefox 5 with:

/opt/firefox5/firefox

rkl references the FireFox 4 beta version, but all steps still apply for official FireFox 5 release.

I will say that FF5 is an incremental improvement from FF4. My initial usage has been positive. There seems to be a "follow the rapid release cycle of Google's Chrome" mentality. I hope this will not make it more difficult for organizations to break from the IE "standard".

Google Music Beta review with screensthots

Background:

You've got mail... Stupid movie name aside, I got an email invite to play with Google's Music service. I like toys and this is just another kinda toy. There is nothing revolutionary in concept with this music service in concept or execution. Music streaming and downloading have been around for a while to say the least. Google just makes it easier and more convenient. It should be obvious to state the requirement of a Google account in order to start using the Music service. So, on to the review:

I will start with the bad. The Music Manager upload utility is Windows and Mac only. No direct GNU/Linux support! I will end up trying wine soon. If wine succeeds, I'll report back. Otherwise, I will need to add the Music Manager to my otherwise pristine gaming rig or bring up some Windows VM in order to upload.

Update 6/15/2011!: There is a working modified MusicManager that will work with Wine 1.3.21 on Fedora 15. I *could* also get it to work with Wine 1.3.18 from rpmforge-testing under CentOS 5.6. I could not get Wine 1.3.7 under CentOS 5.6 to run MusicManager, however.

Another bad, in my opinion is missing, "show lyrics" option. This kind of option is kinda lame for *GOOGLE* not to have. Don't they have an index on EVERYTHING?! A simple link out to a lyrics site the same way they handle the shopping would even be a good start. But some in browser option would be better.

The web interface could use a range delete like the gmail webmail has. For example, if you add any "free" songs, you will be forced to individually remove each unwanted song. That is not a trivial task when you mistakenly added *several* groups of free music. In addition, "Recently added" should allow a date range or similar IMHO. I can't even figure out what recently means in this context.

Now for the good news for GNU/Linux peeps: Google Music will work without issue under at least the CentOS 5.6 or Fedora 13 and Fedora 15 distributions using either FireFox 4 and Google's Chrome 12 browsers. Adobe Flash of some version is required, I have tested with 10.2.x and 10.3.x. If you use any flash-blocking add-on make sure to white list google.com. The Flashblock 1.5.14.2 I have on Fedora 15 with FireFox 4.0.1did block the flash, but did not show me a notice that it was blocking.


Browser controls are shown as simple player controls icons with shuffle and repeat options. In a normal Google fashion, there is not much fluff. Information presented on screen is basic, useful and utilitarian. This is a good thing in reality. If you think about, you should only visit the Google Music browser tab when you need to change something like a play list. It is very much a play and forget about browser tab.


Free songs are optionally provided you when activate your account. The songs I have come across are largely live versions of known songs. That's not completely the case, of course, but songs offered are worth the cost. Please keep in mind that you are limited to only 20,000 songs at this time.


Google has provided some basic Settings changes for the web version of the service. To their credit, you can opt of Google Music with the click of a mouse. You will loose all of the uploaded music of course, but you can do it. The same Settings page also displays registered devices to your Music account. Not much to look at here so move along.


Missing from the options is any parental controls or music content rating. I believe this needs to be corrected soon. Google has provided a ranking system as simple thumbs up or down. This option could use some improvement. I would like to have seen something more like Netfix has with a global ranking and the option to put your own ranking. This would make finding and buying new good songs much easier.

Speaking of buying, you are 2 clicks from shopping for any selected song. Not surprisingly, you are taken to the Google Shopping link for lots of buying choices. The buying options seem to drift quickly away from the starting song selected. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad... I'm leaning towards bad - just slightly.

It should be noted that Google is looking to cover their but if you look at the usage agreement you are required to accept. I understand why, of course. I also find it acceptable to be allowed to only have one active player at a time. Make sure to read the fine print.

Beyond the browser usage, I also tested with my DroidX with Android 2.2.1 and the Google Music version v3.0.1.339. Newer versions may be better or worse... these are currently beta pieces after all.




Once again, utilitarian is the operative word when speaking of the Music App for Android. It is simple in layout and has very little fluff. Cover art is not made prominent, for example. Player controls are obvious and basic. We all know what a play button looks like, right.

Thought has been put into some of the back-end options. Specifically the cache and wifi options. I am very glad to see both. Heck anyone with anything but a truly unlimited data plan should be happy to see them. As you would expect, the cache option from the Music -> Settings option allows you to cache (keep a local copy) of the music you are streaming so you won't have too again any time soon. The wifi option allows allows for the ability to mandate that either streaming or downloading of music is done through the wifi connection. Heck that great in many ways. My home internet connection is WAY faster than the 3G I have and doesn't cost me any more. Nice going Google.



The down side of utilitarian is the realization that you might be missing something. One of the some-things for me seems to be an on-screen volume control. Not critical by any stretch. After all, there is that up-down volume button on the side after all.





My overall belief is Google Music is a winner. With ease of use, flexible device connectivity and Google is behind it, many people will enjoy this service.

My Tracks Android GPS route tracking app - mini review

I like to ride my road bike. I upgraded a year ago from a heavy 30lb mountain bike to a Fuji Roubaix Pro road bike off of craigslist. MUCH lighter at about 19lbs. I'm too lazy to actually chart my own road trip information. So, a quick google'n for a handy GPS app for my Droid X lead me to My Tracks. What a great find!

My Tracks reports itself as:

My Tracks records your GPS tracks and shows live statistics such as time, speed, distance, and elevation – while hiking, cycling, running or participating in other outdoor activities. Once recorded, you can share your tracks, upload them to Google Spreadsheets and visualize them on Google My Maps.

Here's a quick summary of the My Tracks Android app:
First, My Tracks is drop-dead easy to install. However, you expect ease of installation since basically all market place apps are easy to install.

My Tracks is very easy to just use. Start by enabling your GPS satellites on your phone. Not a big deal if you forget as My Tracks will remind you. That push-pin on the Google powered map is now your location. Want to see the satellite view of your current location, simply press Menu Key and toggle the Satellite/Map view option. Want to start a new GPS tracking session, just press Menu Key and Start Recording. Finished with the trip, well not surprisingly, press Menu Key and Stop Recording will stop collecting data.

The real beauty of My Tracks is what it will do after the collecting is done... the mapping and displaying and summarizing etc. My Tracks is geared toward google services - like it or not. I, personally, like it. Heck even the My Tracks web site is "Powered by Google App Engine". So, the visual gratification is to press the "+" icon on the screen and select to upload to Google and My Tracks will use your account to optionally create (Google) maps with the tracks or a (Google) fusion table to visualize your data points. Very cool overall!

Not into Google, no problem! My Tracks will allow you to export or email as  .gpx or .kml files. Heck, you can even tweet your ride. Check out the FAQ for more information on those features.

My only issue if you want to call it an issue is there is no delay option for starting. It does take me a several seconds to secure my Droid in it's pouch on the bike, get in on one pedal and start to ride. So, there, that's what could be improved ;)

On a side note, I am pleased to see that My Tracks source code is created with an Apache 2.0 License and is Open Source!

Note: Apps like "ShootMe" (Screen Grabber) seem to disable My Tracks ability to function for anything but time (as I learned the hard way).

Mini book review: "The Book of XEN - A Practical Guide For The System Administrator"

Mini book review: "The Book of XEN - A Practical Guide For The System Administrator" by Chris Takemura and Luke S. Crawford, published by No Starch Press, copyright 2010, ISBN-10 1059327-186-7, ISBN-13 978-1-59327-186-2

I would first like to begin with some credit as to why I started down the path of Xen. My co-worker Chakri Girda was excellent enough to be my introduction into the real world of using Xen for virtualization. We had been a long time user of various VMWare products to get the virtualization job done. He was the lead on our revamped virtualization project and choose Xen. Good move all around I'd say!

The quest for enlightenment can take many paths. My quest generally does depart from the "path-of-google" when it comes to technology learning. That is I google the item of interest and read some links/pages/source/whatever and make it work. For some reason I just wanted a book. I had an urge to understand Xen virtualization in a greater way. Don't misunderstand, I currently manage 7 Dell PowerEdge Xen servers with 30+ domU's. Not huge by any standard, but enough to make me want to learn some of the "best practices" and not just "it's running and has fail-over". So, A quick google lead me to this book.

Chris and Luke are very clear in the beginning on the CentOS/Redhat Enterprise Linux (slight) slant of the book. But face it, Xen works on everything. And the xm command args don't not change from distro to distro. The sidebars throughout the book provide welcome distractions and helpful titbits as a general rule.

The authors set the practical and pragmatic tone from the start. The introduction clearly sets the stage for the rest of the book by creating a brief and down to earth (mercifully) short background and summary of Xen. No extra fluff. As a bonus, there is an actual "But I Am Impatient!" section that provides a reader with what chapter to turn for "step-by-step instructions" or chapters depending on the type of deployment being considered.

Chapter 1 is the the real introduction to virtualization. A well thought out overview with just enough background. As as overview, you are told that some general concepts are a bit over-simplified to speed you along.

Chapter 2 has to be the most foundational portion of the book. This begins the "Getting Started" with Xen. Well written and laid out for reading. This in spite of being referred as a "step-by-step instructions". It turns out the entire book is written in a very readable manner that goes beyond the regurgitation of man pages or help files. Quite interesting how some of the paragraphs flow more like a novel and less like a how-to. I say this in a good way! As part of the title states, this is, "A Practical Guide". So, chapter 2 is the short version of follow-the-Xen-leader.

Chapter 3 is "Provisioning DomUs" it seems to go out of its way to be distro inclusive when setting up domU's. There is a tar install section, a Redhat/CentOS and even a Debian install section. The information provided even provides insight into the large scale deployment options. The quick and dirty version of SystemImager or Cobbler/koan. The array of choices for the newbie is quite large in this chapter.

Chapter 4 is "Storage With Xen" and begins the, "I know I have shown you the easy way, but that may not be the best way" approach to storage spelled out from chapter 2. What you get here is the blktap -vs- LVM information. The chapter is still presented in a very readable way. However, the spoiler of the chapter, in my opinion, is, "blktap is easy to set up and good for testing, while LVM is scalable and good for production". This chapter not only presents some basic commands, but also provides the foundation of *why*. The "why" something is done is often as important is what is done. So knowing both pieces allows a sysadmin to actually make the best decisions. In this chapter, the, "why" deals with storage allocation choices.

Chapter 5 is simply "Networking". Networking is really the whole focus of this chapter. The authors begin with the startup script hierarchy. Then explains when Xen preforms certain actions - on xend startup or domU startup. Followed by a well laid out how and why to name virtual interfaces. I had to dog ear one of the pages (page 65) as it perfectly explained an odd interface issue being reported by our MAC address monitoring. Nice, very nice.

Chapter 6 is "DomU Management: Tools and Frontends". Again, this chapter steps out to be more disto independent. They make sure to say that there are choices. The authors even provide installation instructions for the frontend tools. Really a continuation of the "step-by-step" approach taken throughout the book. Suffice it to say that there are frontend options and you will need to choose one.

Chapter 7 is "Hosting Untrusted Users under Xen: Lessons from the Trenches". This chapter could have been entitled, "Cover your A$$" or even "Share". The focus of this chapter is sharing (well, maybe imposing restrictions is another way to put it). The reader is gently stepped through a why and how to restrict CPU, IO and even networking. I love the whole system approach to handling DomU's taken in this chapter. The authors clearly provide the basics on how to generally handle each type of resource in a fundamental way. This means using system tools most likely in use already. I suspect this chapter is built from, "college of hard knocks" style learning. The authors are unusually nice when referring to the general user base that lead to this chapter. I would not have been so nice... I consider this chapter a must read no matter if your are a external (public) or internal (company) Xen administrator.

Chapter 8 is "Beyond Linux: Using Xen with other Unix-Like OS's". Honestly, I found this the least interesting. I was lead to this book with the general belief of being CentOS/Redhat centric since these are my OS platform of choice. Needless to say I do not need to know about Solaris or NetBSD.

Chapter 9 is "Xen Migration". This chapter does a good job of exploring the foundation of the migration options ("live" and "cold"). There are command examples for each option provided and well thought out reasoning. A nice addition was the inclusion of storage options in the migration mix. This included basic setup and configuration of ATA over ethernet (AoE) as well as iSCSI. Again, both informational context and actual implementation is provided.

Chapter 10 is "Profiling and Benchmarking under Xen". I was almost expecting a, "this is my kickass benchmark score for my servers" chapter. Luckily, I was wrong. Instead, the chapter lays a well balanced look at testing in general and how it can relate to Xen. Careful attention is noted at the beginning to state that no benchmark is a substitute for a production workload of a server. As common through the book, several options are provided and discussed. I do like inclusion of actual results and a real world application. The OProfile section is a nice addition and goes beyond the usual benchmarking spew. This is the section that provides the real world experience on how a problem was solved. My only issue with this chapter is the need to make all auxiliary program additions a download, configure, make and make install treadmill. Not a good idea for any production server to have 1.)build tools and 2.) "dead programs" that will never get updated and 3.) it's a bad idea.

Chapter 11 is "Citrix Xenserver" Xen For The Enterprise" - What?! A whole chapter devoted to non-Xen. Maybe a longer Introduction that included some of the Xenserver stuff. In spite of stray from Xen at it's core, the chapter does a good job to balance the open source -vs- commercial aspect of Xen core virtualization. I like the "gladiator combat" reference. It's good to have a sense of humor.

Chapter 12 is "HVM: Beyond Paravirtualization". This chapter represents a brief introduction into the HVM install process and setup. The only part that seems out of place is the 5 paragraph
Xen HVM vs. KVM in the middle of the chapter.

Chapter 13 is "Xen and Windows". This short chapter is another nice plunge into a specific implementation are for Xen. Well laid out chapter with good examples and very handy discussion of options. I managed to dog-ear a couple of the pages for later quick reference. The small section on HALs is a good addition in this chapter.

Chapter 14 is "Tips". I always like the real world problem -> resolution sections and this is the pinnacle for this book. This chapter has tidbits of knowledge for all to enjoy. I found the "PCI Forwarding" (passthrough) and a couple of other sections to be of great interest. Good chapter overall and one that *ALL* people should read IMHO.

Chapter 15 is "Troubleshooting". This chapter has the most dog-ears for me with 4. I will likely return to this chapter a couple of times in the near future. I have had (and ignore today) some of the issues noted in this chapter. Issue like the DomU interface number incrementing has just be an annoyance. While the VM restarting too fast has been a major battle on occasion. Another must read for the Xen (want-to-be) server administrator as far as I am concerned.

In summary, a well written book with lots of tidbits of wisdom and years of experience. This was actually an easy read. I would find no issue in recommending this book to a new -> intermediate Xen admin.

Dell E6410 Fedora 13 32-bit Linux install and mini review

This is a catch up article. More of a documentation piece of (past) success than a current Fedora 13 review.

This Fedora install is a stock 32-bit DVD install (PXE install failed issue with flashing video problem). The target system is a nice Dell E6410 with 4GB RAM, Broadcom BCM4313 802.11b/g, nVidia GT218 [NVS 3100M] rev 162 dedicated video card and Intel I7 CPU. Let me just add the note here and state, for the record, that the Intel I7 ROCKS! The E6410 is a physically solid chassis with precise feel. No cheap feeling plastic on this bad boy. The LCD hinge is firm and smooth with no lateral wiggle or bounce issues. The 14.1 inch screen is bright with no dead pixels. Screen glare is fairly minimal and the function brightness control is handy. I have been a big fan of the Dell Latitude laptops for a long time. The product line continues to excel in many ways. However, please don't mistake this unit for any ultra-portable! Especially with the longer runtime extended battery.

Install with Fedora DVD is best accomplished with the "Basic Video Driver" install selection. Otherwise the screen flashing techni-color screen makes it impossible to install. I choose to install with whole disk encryption as a general rule for any laptop. Let me just say that it is easier to type in a pass-phrase every once in a while than it is to explain why all of the confidential emails or data from a boss is floating around the internet. I will file whole drive encryption under the "CYA" category. Basically, install is click-button-simple. Besides my video issue and encryption desire, there was no real need to not click "next" button when presented. All of the Linux distributions have made HUGE progress in ease of installation over the years. And Fedora is no exception!

Reboot after install leads to a rather disappointing 800x600 resolution login screen. At least there is a login screen at all. First a quick key sequence to dump me to console in order to log in as root in order to do a full update and reboot just to see if that will help my screen resolution issue with the *default* install. I do need to note, I have a standard practice that on any NVIDIA installation, I get the kmod-nvidia drivers or the official NVIDIA driver installed as quickly as possible. I want to see about "stock" install at this point ... but no luck... Sadly, in order to get the 1280x800 capable on this 14.1 WXGA (not WXGA+!) LCD panel I install the kmod-nvidia-PAE drivers (I'm running PAE kernel). However, I still end up with the long dreaded invalid pointer problem and need to remove the "InputDevice" lines in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. A reboot an all is better now with video.

The Broadcom BCM4313 is not working out of the box. A quick bit of google'n and an install from the rpmfusion-nonfree-updates repository used for the kmod-nvidia above:
yum -y install broadcom-wl kmod-wl-`uname -r`
modprobe wl
makes the wifi issue go away without the need to reboot. Cutting the ethernet cord an goin' mobile now.

The bluetooth functions without issue. I could pair with my Droidx in seconds. Nice.

Helpful links:
E-Family Reimage “How-To” Guide
E6410 Manuals

Fedora 15 beta first impressions - aka mini review

First and foremost please remember THIS IS A BETA. There are going to be issues. However, I find myself more fixated with my issues with the GNOME 3.0 interface than anything else. I know Fedora HAD to move on and stay with the latest and greatest GNOME release. After all that is what is Fedora is known for (and the reason I prefer CentOS/RHEL for servers!). More on GNOME shortly.

My Fedora 15 beta test attempt is happening on real hardware. No virtual container. It's a Dell D630 laptop with 2GB RAM, a dual core Intel T7500 and dedicated nVidia G86M Quadro NVS 135M video card. WIFI is handled by the Broadcom BCM4312 802.11a/b/g chipset. Modest by today's standards.

Normally for laptops, I will do whole disk encryption using a kickstart file. This is just a plain, "select some defaults" and install test. Install worked without issue (as expected). In fact, installs have been very easy for a long to the point of being almost boring. Really just a few clicks and I was done.

Start-up for Fedora 15 beta is very fast. Though not timed, the perceived boot time difference from Fedora 13 to Fedora 15 seemed significant. More specially, Fedora 15 boot time is faster. If I get bored, I may consider actually install Fedora 13 or 14 again just to time the boot-to-login screen time. Many people dig that.

Initially, I was interested in how the nouveau video driver was going to handle my Quadro NVS 135M. Not a real common chipset. The former nv driver has woefully inadequate to say the least. The install and/or nouveau found the LCD SVGA+ 1440x900 without any problems. For any other NVIDIA installation, I would get the kmod-nvidia drivers or the official NVIDIA driver installed as quickly as possible. I'm going to stick it out with nouveau for now. No urgent video need to bail just yet. Not a big compiz fan, however, so that's off.

The install found my wireless card (Broadcom model BCM4312 a/b/g) without any issue. I was able to see AP's in the area. It's nice to see this, "just work". However, wifi passphrase didn't seem to work for some reason. I had to put in the hex key instead in order to connect to the test wifi router. In addition, getting connected to an access point seems to take several seconds longer that with Fedora 13 and GNOME 2.30.

Now for the BIG CHANGE... GNOME 3.0! Not sure if it's Fedora's ruff edges on this beta or my shear newness with GNOME 3.0, but wow it's hard to get used too. Don't get me wrong, a window manager that stays out of your way is good! But one that you can't figure out how to change (yet)?! I was kinda overwhelmed with the Activities and trying to guess under what category a program would be under. Select all and just keep looking. All I wanted to do was fix my touchpad issues. Need to middle click paste with the double mouse button touch pad on the Dell? Can only use the bottom set of buttons... Not sure why yet. I've gotta tell you I use middle mouse/double mouse button paste A LOT as my typing speed and skill is not the best. Also, spent 10 minutes trying to figure out if I could get System Monitor back on my screen or CPU scaling info... and never did...

My solution, at the moment, to GNOME 3.0 is to run LXDE instead! Thank goodness for choice at this time. My frustration rate is high GNOME and back to basics is good. I will likely make more attempts to use the new GNOME, just not tonight.