Linux Cluster Solutions

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Solutions to Linux cluster construction and management such as unified account management, NFS home directory, network configurations are summarised in this post. The post is keeping updating while new solutions is added to this site. ===Account and storage management=== [[unified-linux-login-and-home-directory-using-openldap-and-nfsautomount|Unified Linux Login and Home Directory Using OpenLDAP and NFS/automount]] [[backup-linux-home-directory-using-rsync|Backup Linux Home Directory Using rsync]]
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Setting up Stable Xen Dom0 with Fedora: Xen 3.4.3 with Xenified Linux Kernel 2.6.32.13 in Fedora 12

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This is the latest stable and recommended stable Xen Dom0 solution on Fedora 12. No serious bug found till now and we will fix the bugs by ourselves if some appears. It also works on Fedora 14 as well. It should not be hard to use this solution on other versions of Fedora or other
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Set up and Run Linux Xen Dom0 and DomU VMs

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The Xen solutions including installing and configuring Dom0 and DomU are summarized here. LVM volumes as backing for DomU’s file system is an appealing solution to Xen VBD. LVM volumes can dynamically grow/shrink and snapshot. These features make it simple and fast to duplicate DomU and adding storage to DomU. LVM backed DomU is recommended.
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Finding out Linux Network Configuration Information

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There is various network configuration information in Linux and lots tools can be used to find out those configuration information. Finding out these network information in Fedora Linux as the example will be introduced. IP address, MAC address and netmask ifconfig will print out all the network interfaces and their information including the IP address
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Setting Up Xen DomU on Fedora Linux (Fedora 12)

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Creating file-backed virtual block device (VBD) for Xen virtual machines and installing Fedora 12 in Xen DomU via internet will be introduced. Note that this tutorial is based on a pretty old OS (Fedora 12). But the method here is still valid while some minor details may need to be changed for latest Xen and
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NVIDIA Driver in Linux not Displaying Logo During Booting

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The NVIDIA video card driver in Linux will display the NVIDIA logo by default during booting the X server after we successfully installed the driver. If we don’t like to see the logo every time we start X server, we can disable it. We need to edit the Xorg configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf with root permission.
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Making dnf/yum Not Update Certain Packages

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We may not want to update some packages such the kernel on a stable server while updating the system. If we run “dnf update” or “yum update”, we may get suggested by dnf/yum to install all the packages with updates. In this post, how to make dnf/yum not update certain packages such the kernel when
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Linux Port Forwarding Using iptables

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Linux port forwarding is simple to do with iptables which may probably already being used as the firewall or part of the setting up a Linux gateway. In the Linux kernel, port forwarding is achieved by packet filter rules in iptables. Port forwarding Port forwarding also called “port mapping” commonly refers to the network address
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Setting Up a NFS Server on Top of tmpfs /dev/shm

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tmpfs has blazing speed. Why not set up a high speed NFS server on top of tmpfs? A little trick is required for setting NFS server on top of /dev/shm. If we add a normal entry in /etc/export and them run # exportfs -a exportfs will give us a warning like this: exportfs: Warning: /dev/shm
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How to Use Google Apps Account for GTalk in Pidgin

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I believe many users are using pidgin and google apps. Google apps support Google Talk. Can we use it in Pidgin? The answer is yes. How to use Google apps account for Google Talk in Pidgin will be introduced in this post. Let’s use one email address as the example: eric @ example.com First add
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Setting Up Xen Dom0 on Fedora : Xen 3.4.1 with Linux Kernel 2.6.29 on Fedora 12

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Please refer to for the latest stable Xen Dom0 solution. In this post, the detailed tutorial for setting up Xen 3.4.1 dom0 on top of Fedora 12 with kernel 2.6.29 will be introduced. Hardware: Dom0 hardware platform: Motherboard: INTEL S5500BC S5500 Quad Core Xeon Server Board CPU: 2 x Intel Quad Core Xeon E5520 2.26G
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Mounting Remote Folder Through SSH

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SSH is a very convenient tool on Linux that can be used to [[port-forwarding-using-ssh-tunnel]], [[proxy-using-ssh-tunnel]] and others besides its basic functions (remote shell). We can also use SSH to mount a remote folder to a local directory. We can use `sshfs` to mount remote folder through SSH tunnel securely over network. Install sshfs Install `sshfs`
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Sending Email Using mailx/s-nail in Linux Through Gmail SMTP

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The heirloom mailx (or s-nail if you are using Ubuntu 18 or later or similar releases) command in Linux is still providing service for guys like me, especially when we need to send email automatically by script. Gmail is great. Now, how to use gmail’s smtp in mailx/mail? gmail is a little special since gmail’s
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Setting Up Linux Network Gateway Using iptables and route

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Sharing the networking is important and setting up a gateway is a good solution to it. Building up the gateway on a Linux box is easy, cost efficient and reliable. With a Linux box, you can share the internet connection or the only cable connected to the network. The Linux box network configuration The Linux
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How to Set Up Socks Proxy Using SSH Tunnel

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We can set up a socks proxy on top of a SSH tunnel. Besides the common proxy functions, such as web browsing, the proxy on top of SSH tunnel also ensures the security between the browser and the proxy server (the SSH server). In this post, we introduce and explain how to set up a
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Automatically Backing Up Xen File-backed DomU

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A script for backing up file-backed Xen DomU is introduced in this post. This script can be changed to similar platform. In our cluster, virtual machines are stored under /lhome/xen/. Virtual machine with id vmid is stored in directory vmvmid. The raw image disk file name can also be derived from vmid. Some more details
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lftp Disable SSL

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lftp some times stalls with message “Making data connection” when “ls” the directory after logged in the ftp site. The message may appear like this: < — 227 Entering Passive Mode (xx,xx,xx,xx,xx,xx) —- Connecting data socket to (yy,yy,yy,yy) port zz `ls’ at 0 [Making data connection…] But some client such as filezilla may works on
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How to Remote Control Linux Server Using VNC through SSH Tunnel

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Sometimes we need to have the GUI of some application on the remote server. ssh’s X11 forwarding with “-X” parameter is a good and fast method. But if we want to have a whole desktop environment, vnc is a good choice. In this post, the method of how to control remote server using vnc through
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Howto: Git Server over SSH

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Git and SSH are both powerful tools, and git/ssh work well together. We introduce how to set up git server via ssh in this post. Git server through SSH is easy and fast to set up, although every user will have access to all repositories in the git server over SSH and every user is
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Create and Manage Virtual Machines on Xen

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In this post, these content are introduced: Create and manage file-backed virtual block device (VBD) for virtual machines on xen. Install Fedora 11 via internet as DomU on top of xen. Manage virtual machines using xm. Create file-backed VBD: The actual space of VBD will be the amount of disk the virtual machine used. And
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