Best posts made by guyinpv

If Zentyal is dead, I'm screwed. They are like the only competitor for Windows Server. Maybe. I've barely got my Zentyal fully functional, I hope nothing is dying!

@gjacobse
......and replace with...........

@wirestyle22 said in Suggestion for decent, free, ticketing with simple needs?:

@scottalanmiller said in Suggestion for decent, free, ticketing with simple needs?:

@guyinpv said in Suggestion for decent, free, ticketing with simple needs?:

Essentially what I want is when either the boss or myself visit the site, it immediate asked for login with no other options. No home screen etc. Just go directly to the agent areas.

Just put Apache level authentication in front of it, easy peasy. Or put it in a VPN, but that's generally silly.

You know I may just do this for the experience. Maybe I'll spin up something on Vultr

This just means htaccess/htpasswd, which is what I did. All this does is make people have to login TWICE. Once to get past Apache, and again for osTicket.

@scottalanmiller said in Suggestion for decent, free, ticketing with simple needs?:

@guyinpv said in Suggestion for decent, free, ticketing with simple needs?:

There needs to be no "public" interface of any kind, just the login for employees.

If you are having that issue, it means that you have exposed the wrong directory in your web server, I think. Instead of pointing the web browser to the root of the install, point it to the scp directory. I think that is what you want.

This is what I want. I was thinking some kind of DNS-level redirect or htaccess, but changing the public root folder sounds like a simpler method. Will have to try this.

CentOS panel is good, but of course, it wants you to use CentOS. I have one of those running and it's definitely a kitchen-sink type panel. It's less like cPanel and more like WHM. You can use it if you want to create separate accounts for different projects that have their own individual logins with their own account panels etc. You could be more like a shared web host on this one. Here is my panel:

For a simpler panel I've enjoyed using Vesta. You can also set up multiple accounts here, but the core feature set is more tame and easier to get around. My panel is down cause I've been migrating sites to another host. This screenshot is from their website:

My favorite panel for single user, not for 'shared hosting/multiple accounts', is Webmin. This is as much for hosting as it is for server management. It's a general panel for managing the server itself, but throwing in php, mysql, apache and stuff is also something it can do. Here is my panel:

The default style is a big horrid so I highly suggest changing to the style I've got here.

One very important feature of Webmin is that they don't change or alter how software installs by default. In other words they don't move config files or default folder locations around or lock you out of editing things from the command line. I believe you can even install it on top of a server that's already configured with stuff, while the other panels insist on being installed on a fresh server and they control all software installing and configuring.
With Webmin, all configs are in default locations and you can edit them with or without using the Webmin panel. In this case, it merely acts as a visual GUI with everything else running in its default state under the hood.

If I just want a general server GUI and hosting one web location, it's Webmin. If I need a bunch of separate web projects, I'd go with Vesta. Go with CentOS if your idea of a relaxing weekend is configuring WHM/cPanel.

@aaronstuder You can see the name in my previous screenshot. Called "Authentic Theme".

@FATeknollogee
If I were you, I'd just spin up another cheap server and install email software. The equivalent of how cPanel handles email would be something like CentOS Web Panel or Vesta or even Webmin. Or go hard core and set it all up manually, install Postfix and a webmail client and spamassasin and antivirus and all the other tools needed to do email.

@scottalanmiller If that's so, check out AMPPS http://www.ampps.com/LAMP
It will install the common LAMP stack with a few extra goodies, but includes Softaculous app installer for free.
If you want a server to act as more a "deploy apps on the fly" server, this might be a good option.
Sometimes if I want to test something on Wordpress or try any app they have, I can just go in and install with a few clicks, do my thing, and then destroy the app after.

But if all you want is an app launcher, you might even do this on the cheap, or free, on Google Cloud with their Launcher tool. https://cloud.google.com/launcher/

As of right now I have lots of stuff undone. We just migrated ecommerce stores, there are a lot of procedures and how-to docs now out of date. Lots of reports done in Excel that use scripts will no longer work with the CSV exports of the new system, they need updated.
Web tools I programmed to work with old data, all useless now and need to be rewritten.
I have an in-house server and Drobo not fully configured and automated with what I wanted to do with them.
Backup software is not up to date on all workstations.
Lots of passwords not copied over from my LastPass into KeyPass which is easier to hand over to management or the new guy.
A local MySQL DB full of data that needs moved to our new in house server but haven't got around to it, as well as local WAMP internal projects.
Lots of research docs trying to find good tools for ticketing, WIKI or KB management, file sharing tools, web services for our online properties, time tracking, calendaring, two dozen other research projects. My todo app probably has 80 entries, some long term projects, some quick things, some on the backburner.

The point is, at not time are we 100% just "done" and everything is smooth. If I were to leave now and a new person step in my place, they would experience what you wrote. Everything would seem undone, slapshod, incomplete, or whatever. But I have four points to think about:

1. Everything has a reason.
   Every single Word or Excel file stored in every folder, every installed program, every web services signed up for, every bit of research that was started and not finished, had an original purpose and reason.
   We shouldn't make the mistake of thinking the last guy just did random things for no reason. I don't create files or sign up for things or begin configuring tools if there wasn't an original purpose or request. But like many things, management perhaps decided to go another direction, or it became a non-priority, etc.
   I personally don't like to delete things I've started, "just in case" I ever need to return to it again. Thus lots of things that seem half-done.

2. Not everything can have perfect documentation.
   Frankly, I personally know why any given thing is the way it is. But I cannot spend my day thinking "how should I document this somewhere so if I'm replaced tomorrow, the next person won't be confused?" It never happens.
   I don't have the time to spend making sure at all times I can be easily replaced and the next person won't have to figure anything out on their own. Documentation takes so much friggin time, and you have to balance how terse you can write about things. Am I explaining it to non-tech people? Or can I do quick summaries that only another nerd will understand?
   There are 4 laptops sitting on my shelf, none have perfect documentation. But I personally know who owned them and what we might use them for and what is not working well on them etc. But I don't have the time to write a dissertation about every piece of gear scattered around the office. Or every software installed, and every service I have an account for.
   I document important things, procedures and information on our most important critical services and accounts, but I don't document why I installed every piece of software I do, and what every single file was created for.

3. Some "useless" stuff is done by habit, or at some upper commander's request
   I know for a fact I waste time doing some stuff that doesn't matter. Collecting data that nobody will look at or act upon, but management just KNOWS they need it. I have a file drawer full of paper reports and data because they don't trust computer files.
   We do a lot of stuff because someone thought it was important, or because we do it by habit. I record how many black and white copies and color copies we make on the copier, because the boss keeps telling me it's important information. But they never look at the file or want to see the data or do anything with it. They just think it's really important.
   There is a honeymoon period when a new tech is hired. The new tech gets to make all kinds of suggestions and buy new stuff and declare what is useful and what isn't, and the boss will listen for a while.
   The old tech, however, loses their influence over time and the boss can easily reject any suggestions, leaving us to continue in our old habits where they feel comfortable, not wanting to make big changes.

4. Sloppy work may not be incompetence, just circumstances.
   Not enough time to do something "right". Not enough money to buy the "right" thing. Not enough time given by the boss to do something big so we have to compromise to get it done. "Quick and dirty and cheap" often wins out over "industry best practices". Often the ROI of doing something right versus just getting it done now, is not good enough.
   We don't need a better product image, we don't need it to look that nice, we don't need it to be that fast, we don't need it for very long so security isn't a huge deal. Whatever the case may be. I don't want that better software, because I once used this old decrepit version in college 22 years ago. Don't buy a new thing, this old junker is working "just fine".
   The list goes on.
   It's been said, IT doesn't own the business, the boss does, so we can only make suggestions, but they ultimately sink the ship. If they want to take risks, if they want to keep running on bald tires, they want to keep using the software they bought in 1998 cause they paid "good money for it" and it "still works", then that is their choice.
   Just because there is always a better way to do something, doesn't mean the tech was incompetent. Sometimes we have to use duct tape and super glue just like anybody else. We work with the resources we have.

Be nice to your predecessors, they paved the way for you to make the next set of improvements at the company.

I've got XenCenter 7 running a Ubuntu 14.04 x64 box headless/GUI-less with Seafile.

I was initially just testing Seafile but now I want to test further and move toward production use. I started with a 16GB single VD. Even with only light testing, I've already used up this space.

I shut down the VM and used Xen to expand the disk to 50GB, that worked fine.

Now I just can't figure out how to extend the partition in Ubuntu. Some various tutorials I've read just didn't work.

It would seem that because it's just one VD, and it's the system drive, that I have to completely delete the partition in order to extend it? I'm not sure about that.

Here is fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/xvda: 53.7 GB, 53687091200 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6527 cylinders, total 104857600 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000a051

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/xvda1            2048      499711      248832   83  Linux
/dev/xvda2          501758    33552383    16525313    5  Extended
/dev/xvda5          501760    33552383    16525312   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/mapper/seafile--vg-root: 15.7 GB, 15699279872 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1908 cylinders, total 30662656 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/seafile--vg-root doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/mapper/seafile--vg-swap_1: 1195 MB, 1195376640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 145 cylinders, total 2334720 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/seafile--vg-swap_1 doesn\'t contain a valid partition table

I have no idea why it's saying "doesn't contain a valid partition table". Nothing is making sense now.

At the top it says /dev/xvda is 53.7GB, this seems right since I changed the drive to 50GB. But the seafile--vg-root being 15.7GB is where the extra space needs to go.

I'm not sure if this can be expanded in place, or I have to delete and recreate it, or if it has to be done by booting to a recovery disk, etc.

/dev/xvda1 is ext2
/dev/xvda5 is LVM2_member
/dev/mapper/seafile--vg-root is ext4
/dev/mapper/seafile--vg-swap_1 is swap

Lastly, I was thinking maybe I should start over if I'm going to use in production and switch to CentOS7 instead of this old Ubuntu. If I wipe it all out, that kind of solves that problem, I can create my partitions differently too, or separate Seafile data on different VDs or something like that.

Easy button.....blast the VM out of existence. Who has time to fight this crap?

I'll rebuild my Seafile system from the start but I just want to set it up better. Probably run on CentOS7 instead of Ubuntu, especially Ubuntu 14.

Since this is a file store, some other arrangement of VDs would probably be appropriate to make sure I have a backup of our data. That is, instead of running everything off a single large disk.

Dang it.

XenServer is 6.5.
XenCenter is 7.1 as of today.
The VM is headless Ubuntu 14.04 running Seafile.
I happen to also run a VM for XO but I don't know how that plays into this. Is XO better at extending partitions?

I eventually gave up trying to extend the partition anyway. The docs I found said I had to blast away the partition so I needed to move data around to do it. Just a pain in the butt. It was only a test install of Seafile anyway. I intend to build it up properly this round.
The only question is now, I really don't want to go through this again, or I need to set it up so changing drive size isn't as big a deal.
We've used up our 10GB of Box space so I could easily just throw, say, 50GB at the new setup and it would probably last us a half decade. But still, it would be nice to do this in a way where I can more easily adjust available space if the time comes.

errrrrg
Would have helped if that were mentioned somewhere in the 42 tutorials I read before trying to update.

I found it curious that the install did not ask me where to install to. I don't know if it ignored the SD or automatically chose it, but it didn't ask.
Nor did it ask what partition type I wanted, this wasn't a question.

Guess I'm off to buy a couple 64GB SDs.....

I have a few old towers to play with and I wanted to turn one into a media server.
I currently just happen to serve using built-in Windows 10 DLNA but of course that leaves much to be desired.
I also used to run Plex but that was off my workstation too.

Now I want a standalone box that is simple enough to use but has better features. Things like faster transcoding and opening more file types. A better media browser and organization of movies/files. Easy access to copy new stuff onto the system and not use any resources of my main workstation.

I've pretty much boiled it down to either installing Plex again on top of Win7 or 10. Or going 'Nix with Kodi.

I'll mention I also ran PS3 media server from my workstation but always had network issues with it. Lots of disconnects.

It seems Roku and Kodi are not really friends.
For the sake of conversation, we should consider them as completely separate things, not links in a chain.

Ideally it would be nice to watch anything from any source using a single interface. Right now we have our PS3 which we use for Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, and DLNA from Win10.

If I got a Roku, then it would seem Kodi is not the best bet, Plex is where it's at.

No love for Zoho?
Entire free business suite including email for 25 people is free. With a referral, jump that up to 50 users. 5GB/user.

Since it allows one custom domain, you're pretty much set. It's what I use for my personal business.

And even the upgrade of $2/user/month is pretty standard, but they have a lot of stuff available in their suite of tools.

I think they recently added full support with Exchange, so Outlook is ready.

Nothing wrong with their mobile email and calendar app either.

@JaredBusch said in Rackspace email:

@guyinpv We have talked plenty around here about Zoho being a solid choice for the smallest businesses for exactly those reason.

I don't think it's fair to limit to "smallest businesses".
They seem quite powerful to me, with a million possible tools, and even certain social email features that nobody else has.

Starting a conversation based on an email (instead of reply-all hell), or delegating and sharing emails folders, seems pretty unique to me.

Since this thread is just about email, their email system has been just as good to me as gmail or hotmail or yahoo, if not more so. There is a feature/support box built right in to the program and I've had my own feature suggestions added to the interface.

In any case, when talking about free email with a custom domain as a hosted service, they are pretty much one of the only options, if not THE only option. And you still get a ton of stuff for free.

To 99% of people using casual language, there are three desktop operating systems; Windows, Mac, and Linux.

This is easy, common language.

If you eliminate using "Linux" as a term for "operating system", then there are no longer three desktop OSes, but untold numbers because now it's Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Mint, whatever, hundreds of them. And yet somehow in the back of people's minds the thing that connects all those is something something about Linux something something.

Sure it would be nice to always use perfect accurate language like the good cyborgs we all want to be, but at the end of the day, this is just casual language.

If my grandpa says to me "I'd like you install Linux on my computer" (which he has), I'm not going to give him a blank stare and act like, "what, he wants a kernel or something?"
Of course not, it means he wants me to install Mint or Ubuntu probably. And trying to correct his language not only makes me look like a cyborg, but also a douche.

Unfortunately, it seems like we are bound to use common vernacular or face looking like a bunch of elitist douches.

If I wanted to get a 2tb or higher normal 3.5 SATA drive, who has the best, fastest stuff right now?

@Dashrender said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:

@guyinpv said in What is the best way to get reloaded Windows 7 up to date?:

What I'm more surprised about is that MS doesn't offer any download that is already up to date to some degree. All we get is SP1. Now there is about 150GB of updates to do after that. Like 200+ individual updates.

I'm not surprised about this at all. MS wants to make it as painful as possible for you to stay in the past.

But they didn't really have a solution to this even when Win7 was the latest thing!
I remember in my bench tech days, we did a lot of reloads, upgrading HDDs. We had a U-shaped desk system with KVMs so we could hook up like 8 systems. Most of the time it was new installs doing endless updates! KVM switch between machines just to click "Yes" to restarting after another batch of updates.
Every single app install wanted a restart too.

@scottalanmiller said in Is the computer repair business dead?:

@guyinpv said in Is the computer repair business dead?:

In any case, "laptop repair" is even more niche than PC repair. After all the parts are a little more specialized and harder to find/install. Maybe there is still business for that?

moreso, but still very little. It's very much hardware repair compared to software repair.

I've been known to do solder repairs on floppy broken power cord connectors.
It's quite nerve racking to have a laptop spread out in a hundred pieces on a table!