A little startup stirs into life

I've been thinking about getting a little project underway for some time, and so there's now a grep101.com blog and a minimal landing page at www.grep101.com - fun stuff!

Postfix is fine, but I'm on a learning curve with mailman and the I nned to get some forum software setup - but the Next Big Thing is to get a decent design for the website.

Looking at www.designcrowd.com but of course it would also be fun to do-it-myself.

Hmmm, not sure how that would work!

Fancy logging

Had some fun yesterday setting up a central syslog server, and getting 3 RHEL boxes to send to it.

Various third partied will have «root» on those three boxes, and security is a big thing with this install so... It Seemed Appropriate.

I've got logwatch on the three, but would like to setup Splunk (free) on this monitoring box. Looks pretty flash, so it might be a bit more to the liking of the suits.

As much as possible I'd like to send router, SAN and ESXi logs to it too, so there should be lots of data to mine.

I'm woefully ignorant on SNMP, but have set a custom community string on various boxes and pointed them to the monitoring machine. Nothing there is listening tho, so I need to do some more research...

Android Blogger client (Testing 123...)

Installed and testing.... Like twitter and facebook, I suspect that doing this from the phone Just Makes Sense...

Very nice post by Stéphane Graber got me started with LXC. Nice, this is going to be fun!

Steve's One Best Tip for the Web

Most people browse the web using the default web browser that came with their machine.

However, using this, most people will see websites cluttered with advertisements, many flashing or blinking or in garish colour. Yuk.

Many of these advertisements will also be offering to “Scan your machine for viruses”, or even saying “You are infected!!” – and you, or anyone using your machine, clicks on one of these links then you are very likely to end with some type of “malware” (a virus, trojan, rootkit, keylogger or whatever).

Bad, bad stuff. So, what is the answer?

THE ANSWER = Adblock Plus + Firefox

Here’s what you need to do:

• Download Firefox from http://getfirefox.com/



• Install Firefox, and say YES when prompted to “Make Firefox your default browser”



• Import all your old settings and Favourites via File, Import. Your “favourites” become Firefox “bookmarks”



• Install Adblock Plus by: Tools, Add-ons, Get Add-ons and search for “Adblock”. Select “Adblock Plus” – the icon is a stop sign with “ABP”



• You will be prompted to choose/confirm a Subscription. It is essential that you do this to make sure that Ablock Plus keeps up-to-date. The default subscription will normally be “EasyList (USA)”. Confirm this and restart Firefox when prompted. There will now be a red ABP “stop sign” at the top right or bottom left of your browser window to show that you’re protected

Enjoy your much saner and safer browsing experience!

Occasionally you will find that you have to turn off Adblock Plus to view a site, or a video. Only do this for sites you trust, and ensure that you turn in off just for that site – do this: Click on the Red ABP “stop sign” in your browser window, and choose “Disable of this page only”, or perhaps “Disable on www.mybank.com”, but NOT “Disable everywhere”. The “stop sign” will now be grey from that page, and advertisements will be displayed.

Notes for nitpickers:

• Chrome and Chromium from Google are also good browser choices, and Adblock Plus can be installed (under Tools, Extensions)



• Adblock Plus for isn’t available for either Opera or Internet Explorer, and while there are “similar” addons for these browsers they are rubbish by comparison



• Internet Explorer was extremely unsafe in earlier versions. If you really need to use for some reason, then at least make sure you run version 8 or higher



• Yes, antivirus software is probably also a good idea

ARM-based servers make sense for me...

There are a few reasons why these may make most sense for me:

• Leading edge, so they are interesting and challenging technically
• For the same reason, user are more likely to be technical, and happy to work with JustOneGuy and email rather than the typical flashy panel interfaces available everywhere
• Less competition
• I'll be hosting at a site where the only charges are for power - which should be very low for an ARM

My only concern is that the focus for ARM-based servers seems to be on system where (for example) 100 5W processors are jammed in 2U. Nice density, but I don't pay for space, but I do have do come up with the capital for the initial servers, and this would be way out of my price range.

Some interesting links:

Calxeda Opens The Kimono..
A Sneak Peek At Calxeda’s ARM-Based Servers
KVM for ARM

KVM VPS ?

Hmm... fun fun fun. My current feeling is that the KVM/VPS is the way to go - slicing a single box into 10 x 50/mo = 500/mo = 6,000 pa.

Needs to be comparatively cheap because there'll be no control panels, web interfaces etc.

Many of the alternative ideas rely on volume - but I can see enough problems getting 10 sign-ups, let alone 100+ with some of the other things I've considered.

So, having a play with a trial VPS at OpenHosting...