Entries from December 2008 ↓

I recently had some problems with using the crontab command on two of my servers. Don’t know how it happened, but here are two links that solved my problem:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=625184
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3907857&postcount=4

I download a Debian Sid livecd on my home server/HTPC and there’s a cd burner in there. So I would like to burn the downloaded iso. There no X Server running (yet) on the box so I was searching for a nice commandline utility.

I found cdw and it really looked nice so I installed it:

aptitude install cdw

After running it with “cdw” it detected my cd-writer so no configuration needed: nice. Because I once tried mybashburn (or something like that) and that piece of software needed all kinds of configuration. And I don’t like that.

I wanted to burn the debian sid iso with cdw but I couldn’t find an option for doing so. After some searching I found out that I had to go to “preferences” and change the value of “Default image file”. WTF? That’s not very nice I thought. But I tried it. But a no-go. The path to my iso was to long to fit in the box. So I couldn’t even select it.

Don’t get me wrong: cdw IS nice for burning music cd’s or just some files to backup. But isos…. pfff

So I resorted to cdrecord. It’s got a bit of a “hacker” feeling to it but it did the job nicely:

cdrecord driveropts=burnfree /home/leon/debian-live-sid-amd64-xfce-desktop.iso

What I don’t understand is why I have to manually enable burnfree. I mean: the last 5 cdr drives I had, all had burnfree. I’m doubting if they even make cd recorders without burnfree. So why not make it the default? Because apparently “Maybe it causes problems with *some* drives withput burn-free support”. Hja, retards.

But there might be a solution to this problem. Cdrecord checks for “/etc/cdrecord.conf”. And there you can change the default cdrecord parameters. My “/etc/cdrecord.conf” now contains:

driveropts=burnfree

But if it’s correct of if it works: I don’t know. I haven’t yet tested it.

I wanted to install the transmission torrent daemon on my new HTPC server so I can upload a torrent and go to sleep without having to leave my laptop on. Or thinking about starting transmission when my computer (re)boots. So here’s how I installed transmission.

aptitude install transmission
wget http://www.vanutsteen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/transmission-daemon -O /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon
chmod +x /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon
adduser --home /dev/null --shell /bin/false --no-create-home --disabled-login transmission
mkdir /etc/transmission
chown transmission:transmission -R /etc/transmission
update-rc.d transmission-daemon defaults

And then make sure your “/etc/default/transmission-daemon” looks something like:

TRANSMISSION_HOME=/etc/transmission

# The folder where Transmission stores downloads
TORRENTFOLDER=/media/sda11/downloads

# The port Transmission uses to connect to other peers
PORT=54318

# The name of the user that should run Transmission
USERNAME=transmission

# Login credentials for the Web- and the RPC-interface
REMOTE_USER=admin
REMOTE_PASS=password

You can not visit the daemon on: http://localhost:9091/transmission/web/

Here’s a nice screenshot:

This friday I got all the components of my new HTPC. With thanks to my boss

It consists of:

• Antec Veris Media Fusion Remote Silver
• Coolermaster 460WATT PSU ExtremePower Plus
• Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850E AM2
• MDT 2048 MB DDR2 800 / PC6400
• Asus EN8400GS/Silent/HTP 512MB PCI-E
• Scythe Ninja Mini
• Some old harddisk I had laying around
• Ubuntu server 8.10
• 15″ touchscreen

The Antec case really looks nice and seems to be built well. Especially the way the harddrives are suspended in mid air

I’ve now got the motherboard in the case and mounted the cooler on the cpu. I’ve attached the power-switch stuff, USB connections and mainpower of the motherboard. I still have the second videocard that has to be connected.

The powerswitch was a little tricky though. You have to connect the powerswitch not comming from the LCD display to the back of the display. And the powerswitch cable comming from the LCD has to be connected to the motherboard. But if you know it, it’s simple

I’m first going to install KVM for a Windows XP and Windows 2000 server installation. More on that in my next post.

The LCD display is nice but is a little hard to read. Maybe with some good software on my Ubuntu Linux 8.10 installation it gets better. If I manage to get something working I’ll post it here. For example the LCD display, fan monitoring and NVIDIA VPAU and AMD UVD2. Sure hops the latter two work.

Here’s a little impression of the work in progress: