The Linux Thread

[pentode]

Cool little box. That’ll make a very snappy little server. Probably run emulated games up to PlayStation 2 as well.

 

[pentode]

My focus wasn't that great last night- just thinking today that since you have the server in house, it might make it a slightly nicer experience to install a desktop environment like lxqt or mate or keep on top of your server installation. You'll still be doing some command line stuff but you can have multiple terminals open and a web browser for your tutorials on the same screen so you can copy and paste.
This isn't necessarily how you'd do it in a mission-critical high security situation but for this type of project I think it's fine with typical security precautions.

 

[sgtsandman]

My focus wasn't that great last night- just thinking today that since you have the server in house, it might make it a slightly nicer experience to install a desktop environment like lxqt or mate or keep on top of your server installation. You'll still be doing some command line stuff but you can have multiple terminals open and a web browser for your tutorials on the same screen so you can copy and paste.
This isn't necessarily how you'd do it in a mission-critical high security situation but for this type of project I think it's fine with typical security precautions.

I remember there being an option during installation for server setup with OpenSuse. I imagine other distributions having a similar option as well. I have no idea if a GUI is installed when doing so or not since I've never had the need. It would be real handy if it does.

 

[pentode]

I remember there being an option during installation for server setup with OpenSuse. I imagine other distributions having a similar option as well. I have no idea if a GUI is installed when doing so or not since I've never had the need. It would be real handy if it does.

It probably won't be there if you installed the server version (unless they've changed something recently)
but all you need to do to install it is

sudo apt install task-lxqt-desktop from the command line. That should also grab any dependencies you need.

best practices say you should do "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt upgrade" first... but that first command should work regardless

 

[Bill]

I'm mostly into free computing. I'm running Fedora on a freebie ewasted Dell Precison 5530 with a XEON. I had to bought a 1TB NVMe for it. I have another freebie Dell Precision 5560 which was ewasted because it needed a battery. I bought a battery and two 500GB drives for it. One drive will have Windows on it for software that requires Windows. The other drive will have Linux on it. I have four Precission 5540s that need batteries or other minor repairs, and two Precision 5520s that need batteries. They have 6th Gen XEON processors, so too old for Winders 11, but excellent for Linux. I have a bunch of other stuff too. Thinkpad T467s/T470s/T480s, several misc HP, Dell Optiplex 3050 micro computers, etc. I think I'm going to put linux on one of the Thinkpads to run IP cameras off of them.

And, those micro computers are good for a lot of things. They don't take up much space or power. I have one running OPNsense as a router, firewall, and DNS resolve so I can block ads, cryptominers, known malware hosts, and other bad stuff. You will have to add a second ethernet port. You can buy a USB ethernet adapter or buy an M.2 ethernet adapter and add install it in the WiFi M.2 slot. There's a little punch-out on the back of the Dell micro computers you can attach the ethernet port to. I also have one in the garage that I use as a cheapo look up how to do stuff I'm working on so I don't have walk inside and get grease on the keyboard for that computer.

And yes, I know I have too many computers.

 

[pentode]

I'm mostly into free computing. I'm running Fedora on a freebie ewasted Dell Precison 5530 with a XEON. I had to bought a 1TB NVMe for it. I have another freebie Dell Precision 5560 which was ewasted because it needed a battery. I bought a battery and two 500GB drives for it. One drive will have Windows on it for software that requires Windows. The other drive will have Linux on it. I have four Precission 5540s that need batteries or other minor repairs, and two Precision 5520s that need batteries. They have 6th Gen XEON processors, so too old for Winders 11, but excellent for Linux. I have a bunch of other stuff too. Thinkpad T467s/T470s/T480s, several misc HP, Dell Optiplex 3050 micro computers, etc. I think I'm going to put linux on one of the Thinkpads to run IP cameras off of them.

And, those micro computers are good for a lot of things. They don't take up much space or power. I have one running OPNsense as a router, firewall, and DNS resolve so I can block ads, cryptominers, known malware hosts, and other bad stuff. You will have to add a second ethernet port. You can buy a USB ethernet adapter or buy an M.2 ethernet adapter and add install it in the WiFi M.2 slot. There's a little punch-out on the back of the Dell micro computers you can attach the ethernet port to. I also have one in the garage that I use as a cheapo look up how to do stuff I'm working on so I don't have walk inside and get grease on the keyboard for that computer.

And yes, I know I have too many computers.

Nothing beats a free computer. My daily driver is a T430 ThinkPad I modded with a quad core i7 and a couple 1TB SSDs. Does everything I need a computer to do.

 

[Curious Hound]

I'm taking a temporary break from this. Just a couple weeks, hopefully.

I got ubuntu server set up on the "permanent" computer. I have the external ssd mounted and the system sees it. I installed Apache and got to the verification step where it says to type in my ip address and I should see the temporary welcome web page in Apache.

Trying to figure out exactly what my ip address is. Where do I type it in? Haven't gotten anything to work yet. I went into my router settings (AT&T fiber) and I see all kinds of info about devices on my home network. I see the ubuntu server machine. But ip addresses are eluding me IPv4, IPV6, etc. Wondering if there are router settings I need to set or verify. But I don't know what everything means. So, we'll come back to this in a few weeks and I'll ask some specific questions.

Meanwhile, I put regular Ubuntu back on the laptop and it's happy.

 

[Bill]

The (mostly) equivalent of Windows ipconfig in Linux is ifconfig.

bill@fedora:~$ ifconfig
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 22493 bytes 1129993 (1.0 MiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 22493 bytes 1129993 (1.0 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

wlp59s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.1.105 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255
inet6 2601:204:df00:3a2::14df prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x0<global>
inet6 2601:204:df00:3a2:a500:87ad:ac0e:492a prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x0<global>
inet6 fe80::6ead:6955:74f1:9710 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether 48:89:e7:40:7d:9c txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 23874224 bytes 35131532422 (32.7 GiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 11992 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 3207583 bytes 410862360 (391.8 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

That will give you your LAN ip address. If you need the ip address facing the internet you will have to look for the WAN address in your router. Or, you can go to a website that will give you your ipaddress. Try https://whatismyipaddress.com/

 

[pentode]

Once you get that LAN IP address, you can type that into a web browser that's connected to the same local network.
Setting things up so you can see it from the outside world will require a couple more steps but you can test everything locally before you worry about that.
Also, I'd suggest ignoring anything to do with IPv6 for now. It's unnecessary and just complicates things when you're learning.

 

[Curious Hound]

So, here is the output of ifconfig. I might need to back off and configure just one port right now. I have 2 ports on the computer and they are aggregated to be one. "Bond0" should be my aggregated connection. Eno1s0 and enp2s0 represent the 2 physical ports being used.

What gets me is that nothing but the loop back shows a normally formatted ip address. I have even designated static ip addresses to the 2 ports (192.168.1.64 & 192.168.1.66). But typing them into a browser does nothing.

 

[pentode]

Yeah at first glance it looks like you're only being assigned an IPv6 address by your router.
Just curious, why did you decide to use a bonded connection with multiple ports?

Edit: did you set up your network configuration manually or is it set up to get its config automatically with DHCP?

Edit2: it looks to me that all the MAC addresses for all your interface are the same so I'm curious how you went about setting up the link aggregation.

Edit 3: I don't want to push unsolicited advice on you but as far as simplifying getting things up and running, it would be easier to set everything up and get a grip on what's going on without bonding/link aggregation unless you really need it.

 

[Curious Hound]

Yeah at first glance it looks like you're only being assigned an IPv6 address by your router.
Just curious, why did you decide to use a bonded connection with multiple ports?

Edit: did you set up your network configuration manually or is it set up to get its config automatically with DHCP?

Edit2: it looks to me that all the MAC addresses for all your interface are the same so I'm curious how you went about setting up the link aggregation.

Edit 3: I don't want to push unsolicited advice on you but as far as simplifying getting things up and running, it would be easier to set everything up and get a grip on what's going on without bonding/link aggregation unless you really need it.

Bonded connection sounded like a good idea for faster communications, since the whole idea is large file sharing.

Originally dhcp. As a troubleshooting step, I assigned static addresses for those 2 ports.

MAC addresses aren't even displayed in the ifconfig output. They should be
84.47.09.32.ce.a8
84.47.09.32.ce.aa

Agreed on going back to single connection.

 

[pentode]

Bonded connection sounded like a good idea for faster communications, since the whole idea is large file sharing.

Originally dhcp. As a troubleshooting step, I assigned static addresses for those 2 ports.

MAC addresses aren't even displayed in the ifconfig output. They should be
84.47.09.32.ce.a8
84.47.09.32.ce.aa

Agreed on going back to single connection.

I take it your little box has 2 ethenet ports? Nice feature. Are they gigabit? Or something else?
Thing is, if they're gigabit, unless you have better then gigabit upstream on your home fiber connection, you won't really gain anything. I would argue that even if you did have multi gigabit upstream at home (lucky you ), serving your files through a gigabit connection would still be plenty fast for most situations. Not trying to twist your arm, just brainstorming.

Edit: in your screenshot, your mac addresses are shown next to where it says "ether"
There are a couple reasons they may not reflect your actual hardware

 

[Curious Hound]

I may work on this more later this evening. I set up the bonded connection during Ubuntu installation. Now I need to remember where or how to disable it. Weird thing is, I'm communicating. I can ping google.com and it works perfectly.

I have to take my dog back to my exwife now.

 

[pentode]

Ok there's no specific need to ditch it either... I just like to start with DHCP, especially on new hardware, just to make sure everything's working properly.