Consolidating Linux boxes (was Re: [clue-talk] Linux Counter)

[Louis Miller]

Dear Miguel,

     I have to do the opposite. I have one main desktop computer and several hard drives. I need to keep unplugging them and switching, depending on the task.  Like for my important files, I used to keep them on the same hard drive that I was using as my main drive. But, I found it would be better to keep them on a hard drive with a stable version of Ubuntu, and if I keep installing and uninstalling software, then I slowly, or rapidly degrade my system, because I don't have the expertise to install and uninstall software cleanly. So, I keep my important files on a hard drive where I just keep the software necessary to view the files. Then, I have another hard drive with just Windows XP on it. This used to get a lot of use, but now that I have been using Hardy Heron, I haven't been using it as often. Then, I have a third hard drive to test different versions of Linux, because I haven't figured out how to use virtualization software or I don't have enough RAM. Then, I have a fourth hard drive to play around with different Hardy Heron software. Nobody else seems to do things this way, but it seems necessary for me.

The names you chose for your PCs are characters from Futurama? That is kind of a cult classic! What's a drive space?

Louis

--- miguelito at biffster.org wrote:

From: Michael Fierro <miguelito at biffster.org>
To: CLUE talk <clue-talk at cluedenver.org>
Subject: Consolidating Linux boxes (was Re: [clue-talk] Linux Counter)
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 07:26:31 -0600

On Mon July 7 2008 5:20:37 pm Nate Duehr wrote:

> Do VM's count?  LOL.  I can fire up 20 or so...
> 
> I "downsized" years ago.  One box does most of the work now, and has for 
> quite some time.

I am thinking of doing just that. Right now, I have two Linux boxes, one windows machine, and two laptops. They are set up thusly:

* leela - old PIII-900mhz with a half-terabyte drive space, running Ubuntu server, acting as proxy mail server (mainly to let Popfile tag incoming email), TiVo server (via Galleon), and fileserver (mostly for our music and video library, and as a backup destination for all of the other machines).
* frye - Athlon XP 2500+ with a half-terabyte drive space, running Linux Mint. This was my main desktop until I got my laptop. I am using it as my ssh server; I can connect to it from anywhere on the 'net. I also have FreeNX set up on it so I can run a remote desktop in near-real time. I also have Windows XP on this for the occasional game, though it has been forever since I booted into Windows.
* hermes - Pentium 4 1.8ghz with 250gb drive space. This was my wife's main desktop, now we use it strictly as a backup location for her photos. She is a digital photo buff, so this is critical and used daily
* bender - Dell 1521 (dual-core AMD 1800+) with 250gb drive space, running Ubuntu Hardy. This has become my de facto main workstation. It has no server functionality at all, relying on frye and leela for email, storage and backup.
* kif - E's laptop, Dell 1520 (dual-core P4 2.5ghz, 250gb drive space). This is her main desktop.

From what I can see, I can get rid of at least one of the Linux boxes. I could probably consolidate frye, leela and hermes onto one box. I can set up Windows XP on a virtual machine, since one of E's big uses is Picasa's backup feature. I have three sticking points:
1) Popfile. I have a few years worth of corpus built up on popfile, and I don't want to risk losing any of it. If I recall correctly, it was a little more difficult to restore this onto a new machine than I had expected.
2) Galleon. I have had a devil of a time getting any of the newest versions of Galleon to work. The version I am using works flawlessly - well, except for the bugs inherent in the older versions -  and I don't want to have to duplicate all of the time I spent getting things set up correctly.
3) IDE controllers - both frye and leela have two hard drives and two optical drives. I will need one optical drive on the combined server and four IDE hard drives. That leaves me short by an IDE spot. That's not a concern from hermes, since it  has SATA drives. 

Somewhere along the way, I set up both frye and leela to have identical directory structures. /music is a physical filesystem on leela, and is shared via nfs on frye. So all of my playlists and such work perfectly, no matter which machine they are played from. That seems prescient on my part; it should make this process easier.

So, my question is: has anyone gone through this type of consolidation? Any tips/pointers?

-- 
Michael Fierro                                  miguelito at biffster.org
Y! Messenger: miguelito_fierro                           AIM: mfierro1
http://biffster.org                           http://weightjournal.com
--
Peri: What happened?
Doctor: Change, my dear, and it seems not a moment too soon!
- Doctor Who
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