One of my most favourite apps for my iPhone is iStat. It lets me monitor all my *nix servers in a beautiful interface. For my Linux clients, all I had to do was download the client, extract and compile. And since my router is running pfSense (FreeBSD 7.2) I thought I might as well get iStat on there.

Apparently, the developers edition of pfSense has all the goodies to compile stuff. Without even thinking of cross compiling, I quickly set up a VM of FreeBSD 7.1 (I know little to nothing of FreeBSD so I opted to get something near 7.2) and started to compile it. I had to get libxml2 first though and for FreeBSD 7. Anyway, logged into pfSense via SSH, fetch'd libxml2 and installed it. Now, since my router had nothing to compile packages with, I built iStat in the FreeBSD virtual machine and transfered the resulting mess to pfSense via SFTP. Now, since I couldn't have run make install in pfSense, I had to create /usr/local/etc/istat.conf and filled it in with the configuration file from another Linux client. I also edited the configuration file to fit the network interface (xl0 instead of eth0).

Looking back, I probably could have done things a little different. Either way, I got the job done. Now I'm happy that I can monitor my entire network with one app. I recommend for those that are in need of a functional server monitor to check out iStat for the iPhone. Be warned that iStat only supports one interface so far.

So, I installed VMWare Server on my Windows Server 2003 box the other day. Downloaded a Debian Lenny image and got it running. Never dealt with VMWare Server so it's pretty neat to configure virtual machines from a convenient web interface. The web interface was having issues at first, of which I tracked down to IIS. The web UI runs on port 8333 and IIS runs on port 80 of course. Disabled IIS and the web UI was up and running.

After that it was all down hill. Set the network adapter on the VM to bridged. Got the virtual machine running and started installing packages and such. At first, it couldn't resolve names so I had to correct /etc/resolv.conf and point it to my DNS servers. 

^{Photo by MarkyBon}

About last week my Windows Server [2003] (I had 2008 on there, then went back to 2003) server wouldn't boot. Since it's not accessed externally, I run TVersity to transcode by movies of which I watch on my 360.  

So, it wouldn't boot up which was great. Kept going into an endless loop, after POST it would keep rebooting. Dead RAM? You'd think it would beep if it was. But nope. Swapped the power supply and still nothing. Loose connection to the case fan? Still, nothing. Only other object that was still plugged in was the hard drive. Unplugged it. Booted normally (though it couldn't since it was the only one). Awesome. Ended up re-installing Server 2003 last night, turned out fine. 

Still puzzles me that it wouldn't boot at all. BIOS detected it fine, but once it tried to boot from the hard drive an endless loop occurred. Working well now, which is a surprise.

I finally put together a load balancing setup together this weekend, and I'm surprised it was this easy.

What you'll need is three servers, two web servers and one server for the load balancer. It's not recommended that you only use one load balancer since it's a single point of failure (SPOF) but I only had one extra server on hand. For this tutorial, I used Debian Lenny.

First thing's first, download and install pound on your load balancer. 

^{Photo by Vankuso (D.Starosz)}

Life has been comme ci, comme ça lately. I've been on SSRI's (Zoloft!) the last 7 weeks or so. Apparently they work like magic for some people. Not for me. 

 For the last week or so, my server(s) externally have been slow as hell. Now, me being not so investigative didn't check my routers logs. Well, let's just say someone was DDoS'ing me. Oh no, not the web servers. Just the tracker (Torrentino's tracker). Not someone, but a crapload of IP's. Still, making it virtually impossible to access the webserver. So naturally, me being a dumbass didn't have iptables configured....at all. Long story short, fixed it up with some iptables rules and blocking the offending IP's. The router is reporting that it's dropping the [bad!] packets, but I'm not so sure on that.

It's finally Friday, been waiting all week. I now have four spare processors, dual Xeon socket 604 processors. It'd be great if I could use them.... Also have some RAM too, 4GB's in total!

Torrentino has been running fine so far, server load has been low. PunBB uses a small amount of CPU usage, Torrentino itself (the system) uses next to nothing. One server for the front end + PHP, another for static content (CSS, images, etc.). I could have another server just for PHP processing, if needed. Well, atleast I'll have the hardware to expand ;)

Bought some stuff from the Canonical store recently, supposedly it'll take anywhere from 2 to 12 weeks. Awesome.

I took down all my local servers and building one larger one. For the last 8 hours or so, I've been trying to get it to work but no luck. Alright, check this out: Install Debian on HDD. Try to boot => instant restart. Back to the BIOS.
Like WTF?

Sale is over!

4Box Hosting has two spare dedicated servers up for sale. Below are the specs:
CPU: Intel  @ 2.1GHz
HDD: 80GB

(We'll have to re-check)

CPU: Intel Pentium III @ 860MHz

RAM:128MB

HDD: 40GB

Both include:
1 IP included

Full root access!
Canada based location
Around $8.99/month (prices can change), yearly also available. If you're interested, post a comment below.

We've experienced some downtime last night and this morning but we're back up and its all good.
 
 I thought of a new project the other day. In a nutshell, it is similar to Twitter but is used for development, beit web, software or whatever. So, for example say you have 5 other team members across the world. They would all have an account on the site. They could post what they are doing, ask for help, etc.. so other team members could respond. Post a comment if you have any ideas :D
 
 Anyway, today's Sunday, so I might go ahead and relax.