PC Hardware

Server Upgrade

Posted on by dk

Ever since the idea of setting up my own reliable server had me thinking “I need ECC”…

So, over the period of some 6 months, I finally bit the bullet (not to mention the credit card) and purchased an Asrock C236WSI, Intel Xeon E3-1225v6 and 2x Kingston ValueRAM ECC DDR4 2400MHz 16GB UDIMMs… Culminating in final receipt of all the items in July 2017 (I purchased the two sticks of RAM within a day of each other, but Amazon shipped the wrong item for the second stick… twice).

So yes, this post is long overdue… And basically explains the long gap between the last post mid-2017 till now – I have been fighting with this new server hardware and the original draft was first drawn up in September 2017 (refer to date in the URL/permalink).

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Ubuntu and UPS…

Posted on by dk

No, I am not talking about the delivery kind…

With an existing PROLiNK 902S 2000VA online UPS providing clean power to my (aging) desktop, I thought it time to finally get a proper UPS for my NAS instead of the old, line-interactive PROLiNK PRO1200SVU that already had to have its dying battery replaced once.

Fortunately, I managed to get a PROLiNK 903S 3000VA unit.

Like the 902S and my desktop, the 903S has its USB cable plugged directly into a/the computer, in the hope of using the provided ViewPower software to monitor the UPS and cleanly and safely shutdown the host should power interruptions occur.

Unfortunately, installation was not at all simple, particularly not since the user manual has no mention of installing the software on Linux (even if the software is “compatible” with Linux, being Java-based).

Googling did not help much, with most/all the returned pages referencing the use of NUTS instead of the intended/provided ViewPower, not to mention needing to “hack” your own “configuration file”, with no guarantee that the runtime calculations are correct.

After much fumbling around, searching and testing, I managed to get it to work…

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My Name Is Bond… eno1 and enp3s0 Bond…

Posted on by dk

With two NICs available on my motherboard (one Intel I217V and one Atheros AR8161B), whereas the product specifications warns that “teaming is not supported”, I am aware that any capable network stack would be able to handle teaming via software (disregarding drivers and assuming certain hardware acceleration features like TCP offloading is disabled).

Of course, proper LACP/802.13ad (bonding mode #4) set up requires upstream networking equipment support (i.e. your network switch also requires such support). Fortunately, I happen to have a TP-Link TL-SG3424P managed switch which does support this. Obviously, this is overkill, but I highly recommend the TP-Link TL-SG2008 if 8 ports are sufficient. As I had the chance to run multiple Cat6 cable runs from the closet/store to the various rooms in my apartment when it was renovated, I could, and do, use a SG2008s as a trunk port in my study which is link-aggregated to the SG3424P.

Network Manager

Some instructions on the big, bad Internet mentioned using the Network Manager from the desktop. All that did was to mess up the settings.

Fortunately, I had backups of the /etc/network/interfaces file which I could revert the damage the Network Manager did. So, I finally did the sane thing and just disabled the Network Manager:

If You Want Something Done Right, You Have To Do It Yourself…

So, we come back to the good ol’ shell…

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