Installing Virtualbox on Ubuntu Server 10.04

Wanna install Virtualbox on a headless Ubuntu server?

First do a:



Then download the appropriate .deb for your architecture from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

Finally, install with:



(Ok, I installed virtualbox 3.2 on a 64 bit server, yours might vary)

Extra credit
If you want to make your life REAAALY easy you should also install phpvirtualbox on the host Ubuntu server and get a shiny web based GUI administration screen that looks almost exactly like the native GUI Virtualbox application.

The Left Hand of Darkness

Winter is an Earth-like planet with two major differences: conditions are semi artic even at the warmest time of the year, and the inhabitants are all of the same sex. Tucked away in a remote corner of the universe, they have no knowledge of space travel or of life beyond their own world. And when a strange envoy from space brings news of a vast coalition of planets which they are invited to join, he is met with fear, mistrust and disbelief.

(From the book's back cover)

I barely had enough patience to finish this book. I wonder how come it got both the Nebula and the Hugo awards.

What was so special about the a single man trying to convince a newly discovered planet to join the Ekoumen (from the Greek word "οικουμένη")?. It could have been vastly more interesting, but the pace and the subject matter of the character conversations were a complete turn off for me. I couldn't wait for the book to finish. Good thing it was a short one.

If you want a nice Ursulla Le Guin book, you're better off with the "Earthsea Trilogy"

Summary

So to sum it all up:

Create sandbox



Create RAID5 array



Create LVM2 volumes



Format / Mount the volume



Extend an LVM2 Logical Volume



Remove an LVM2 Logical Volume



Replace a failed RAID disk



Add new disks to RAID5 array



Increase size of RAID disks



Recover lost RAID array



And that's how it's done.

RAID Manipulation

Playing with LVM2 is nice because you can manipulate and assign the available space you have any way you want. The actual unseen hero is the RAID5 volume that we have created because it provides a guarantee that even if one disk fails we will not lose our data. Let's play with the RAID disks now.

LVM2 Setup

At this point we could format the /dev/md3 partition with some filesystem and start using it. But that's the old way of doing it. What we want to do is run LVM2 on top of the RAID5 partition so we can better utilize the space provided by the /dev/md3 partition, allowing us to dynamically create, resize and remove volumes in the space provided.

Initial Setup of RAID Array

Now we have three partitions /dev/loop1, /dev/loop2 and /dev/loop3 that will imitate some actual /dev/sdXX, /dev/sdXX and /dev/sdXX partitions.

Now, let's combined them to create our RAID5 array:

Creating the RAID sandbox

The sandbox will consist of some loopback files that will simulate disk partitions. We will use these "fake" partitions to create our array. That way there will be no harm on your actual disks.

Let's imitate the creation of the RAID5 partition. First we will create three loopback files of 100MB each:



With the loopback files created we can mount them as partitions:

The Demon Princes

Kirth Gersen carries in his pocket a slip of paper with a list of five names written on it. Theses are the names of the five Demon Princes who led the historic Mount Pleasant Massacre, which destroyed not only Kirth's family but his entrire world as well. He roams the universe, searching the endless galaxies of space, hunting down the Demon Princes and exacting his revenge. Three princes will fall before Kirth's work is done, and two more await their doom...

(from the book's back cover)

This is Volume One that includes the first three books of the series: The Star King, The Killing Machine and The Palace of Love.

The Star King

Gesrhen is against Attel Malagate. Attel is not human, but rather a type of species, later called Star Kings, that can quickly mutate (through not so many generations) and approximate the best qualities of similar species that surrounds them. When humans colonized their planet, Star Kings quickly became a species that rivaled even human themselves.

An interesting concept in the book (apart from the detective work that Gershen has to go through to locate Attel) is Smade's Planet and Smade's Tavern. Smade, apparently fed up with society, took his family and set up a tavern, appropriately named Smade's Tavern, on a remote uninhabited planet. The only inhabitants of the planet is Smade and his family running the tavern. The planet is locate Beyond (beyond the limits of what is considered explored civilized galaxy) and the tavern is patroned with fugitives and outlaws looking to relax a little.

Smade runs a quite civil establishment and although his clientele is of doubtful morality, they must obey his rules or face his wrath.

The Killing Machine

The Killing Machine contains THE BEST villain name I have ever read: Kokkor Hekkus. It sounds so mean, that I do not even have to read a description of the vile things Mr.Hekkus has performed in his life. The fact that he is a "hormagaunt", extending his life by stealing children and kind of "distilling" them (it doesn't even sound nice), in order to extend his lifespan, doesn't make him any more likable, either.

The concept of the "Interchange" is the interesting fact of this book. Basically the Interchange, located in a secure planet, acts as an intermediary between kidnappers and ransomers. They safely keep the kidnapped victims and accept payments from their family that they forward to the kidnappers. Their motto is that everything is civilized and they offer the assurance and the much needed good faith that the whole procedure will be as smooth as possible with no surprises from either party. They take a cut of the ransom and try to be as civilized and humane to the kidnap victims. Since they guarantee such efficiency, it is to the best interest of everyone involved that they continue providing their services as is.


The Palace of Love

Gershen is after Viole Falush on this one.

With all due respect to Mr.Vance, this book hurt my head. Having to read through so much rumble from the mad poet Navarth (oh, he was quite mad, alright) was making me skip a page every so often just to get to the conclusion of it all. I had no interest at all on either Viole Falush, the plot as it was unfolding, or their dialogs, that were disjointed and led to no plausible or understandable conclusions.

My guess is, that even if you skip this book, in the Demon Princes pentalogy, you wont miss much.

Creating and Maintaining a RAID/LVM2 array

I've been using a software created RAID in Ubuntu for a couple of years now, and I am very happy with it. The system has gone through many iterations of system updates (and even a complete OS reinstall) and it keeps working fine.

Recently, I was not happy with the way I had partitioned the array and I wanted to re-arrange it, so I thought it would be a nice idea to document the process I went through. At the same I took the opportunity to also document the initial array creation (in case I'll have to redo it again)

RAID Setup
CAUTION: Do not play recklessly with your disk partitions. You can very easily mistype something, or run a command with the wrong parameters and lose your data. Instead of blindingly follow what I propose here create a safe sandbox environment to familiarize yourself with the RAID setup.

Continue reading about setting up and administering a RAID/LVM2 combination. Happy reading...