Data Center Hub

Internet Data Center and Hosting News and Views

How to handle more than 4GiB memory on Debian 6

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Laakkonen at 2:24 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The default Debian kernel does not address beyond 3406132K RAM. You may want to use lshw to list the hardware physically installed in the server- lshw -C memory. Use apt-get install lshw if not installed.

Install the bigmem kernel.

1. “uname -r” will give you the installed kernel e.g. 2.6.32-5-686

2. Run “dpkg –get-selections | grep bigmem” to show if the bigmem kernel is installed

3. If it is not installed then run “apt-get install linux-image-2.6-686-bigmem”

4. Run the dpkg command from step 2 again, it should now show the bigmem kernel, any alias name, and “install” in the output.

Reboot and make sure you are running the new kernel- uname should show bigmem appended to the end of the kernel name. Use top or free or cat /proc/meminfo | grep -i memtotal to see the new memory amounts.

How to Disable CTRL-ALT-DEL in Linux and FreeBSD

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Laakkonen at 2:18 pm on Wednesday, August 15, 2012

When running X-Windows the CTRL-ALT-DEL sequence is normally ignored. If you happen to be running a Windows Virtual Machine, along with Unix/Linux VMs- you might accidentally send the three finger salute to the wrong virtual machine. On VirtualBox it can be worse as the sequence is short cut to RIGHTCTRL-DEL and before you know it- the Linux or other Unix-like server is rebooted. Since there is no other way to avoid this in such an environment, here’s how to disable CTRL-ALT-DELETE on Linux and FreeBSD boxes.

1. Linux (e.g. Debian). Edit /etc/inittab and look for the line below “# What to do when CTRL-ALT-DEL is pressed”. Put a # at the front of the line which has the shutdown command, save and exit, then tell init to re-examine its’ files by issuing “init Q” and/or rebooting the machine.

2.FreeBSD – you should be able to run this: sysctl hw.syscons.kbd_reboot=0 to disable the three finger salute at the console. Add the hw.syscons.kbd_reboot=0 to /etc/sysctl.conf to have it disabled automatically on boot and reboot to be sure it takes.

Images in TinyMCE are not showing up in Modx manager after server change.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Laakkonen at 1:46 pm on Friday, August 3, 2012

Images in TinyMCE are not showing up in Modx manager after server change.

Q We moved the site from a Windows host to a Unix host and now find the images are not showing in the management interface with the TinyMCE editor- the images are there still, and the folder has proper permissions. What could be the problem?

A. When you move from Windows to Unix you will find TinyMCE needs to have the final base path reset. In modx Evolution you’ll find it under Tools->configuration->Interface and Features->File Base Path. if you see a path starting with a letter and you are on a Unix server, you need to reset the path by clicking on the reset button and saving the settings. That should do it.

Adding Disqus to Modx Evolution

Filed under: Uncategorized,Web Site Design — Bill Laakkonen at 7:29 am on Saturday, July 7, 2012

Adding Disqus to Modx Evolution

1. Create a disqus account, verify your email and log in to the account- remember your short name for step two.

2. Grab the Universal Embed Code and create a new chunk named disqus-

http://yourusername.disqus.com/admin/universal/ – when you use your short name in the URL to the left (replacing “yourusername”) the user code should be correct for your unique site. I also concatenated the second bit of code called comment count which is supposed to be placed just before the </body> tag into the disqus chunk and it seems to work fine for me.

<div id=”disqus_thread”></div>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var disqus_shortname = ‘yourusername’;

 

 

(function() {

var dsq = document.createElement(‘script’); dsq.type = ‘text/javascript’; dsq.async = true;

dsq.src = ‘http://’ + disqus_shortname + ‘.disqus.com/embed.js’;

(document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0] || document.getElementsByTagName(‘body’)[0]).appendChild(dsq);

})();

</script>

<noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href=”http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript”>comments powered by Disqus.</a></noscript>

<a href=”http://disqus.com” class=”dsq-brlink”>comments powered by <span class=”logo-disqus”>Disqus</span></a>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

/* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */

var disqus_shortname = ‘yourusername’; // required: replace example with your forum shortname

 

/* * * DON’T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */

(function () {

var s = document.createElement(‘script’); s.async = true;

s.type = ‘text/javascript’;

s.src = ‘http://’ + disqus_shortname + ‘.disqus.com/count.js’;

(document.getElementsByTagName(‘HEAD’)[0] || document.getElementsByTagName(‘BODY’)[0]).appendChild(s);

}());

</script>

 

3. Create a unique URL Identifier for Disqus. If you use the Modx document id variable it should always be unique.

For Modx Evolution use the following code just before your head tag:

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var disqus_identifier = ‘[*id*]‘;

</script>

 

4. Add a call to the disqus chunk in the content area of the page template(s). Just before the end of the div containing the content call: [*#content*], add {{disqus}} . Now you should be able to clear your site cache and test it.

Gmail is down with error 502

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Laakkonen at 3:27 pm on Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Gmail is down with error 502

OK Guys, I got the dreaded 502 error on my Gmail account today- funny thing though, my Firefox app still kept delivering screen pops- so I knew all of Gmail was not down. I logged into a server that was 150 miles from my home location and what do you know? Gmail worked from there! So, it appears my home connection kept going out to a dead server. Solution? Simply run ipconfig /flushdns from a command prompt- worked for me! BTW, if you are running Vista, don’t forget to right click on the command prompt icon and choose “Run as Administrator” or you’ll get a message about elevated privileges required. Hope this helps. Later, Bill Laakkonen

Data Center Photos and more

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Laakkonen at 9:49 am on Monday, June 11, 2007

One of my favorite sites for quality free images is pixelio.de. I have posted some of my data center and other photos there under the profile AVATAVA. The photos are of the US Wireless Louisville, Kentucky and the Columbus Ohio Data centers. The Louisville Data Center is no longer in existence and the Ohio data center is no longer part of US Wireless.

Meine Bilder bei pixelio.de

The web site is in German only- even if you don’t speak German you should still be able to figure out the photos. :-) Over the next few weeks I will upload more photos to the site under the key word rechenzentrum. All the photos are free for commercial and private use (copyright retained) as long as they are not used in association with illegal or immoral activities.

F-Secure linked to Evil, Inc. :-P

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Laakkonen at 7:19 pm on Sunday, May 27, 2007

Someone recently asked the staff at F-SecureĀ® why there is an uncanny resemblance between their official logo and the logo used for Evil, Inc. in the Austin Powers movies. F-Secure officially denies any association with Evil, Inc. The resemblance is apparently coincidental.

F-Secure had the same situation with the original name for the company, which was Data Fellows, Inc. Once they opened an office in California however, they were mystified as to why they kept getting phone calls intended for Date-A-Fellow :-) Of course this was also coincidental. The staff at F-Secure have a sense of humor about it though. For what it’s worth, I liked their original name better than their present name.

Crocodiles have a tenuous foothold on Collier County Florida.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Laakkonen at 6:30 am on Tuesday, July 18, 2006

When I first came to Florida in 1972 I was told there weren’t any crocodiles here, only alligators. Perhaps that was true in Martin and Palm Beach Counties for 1972. Today, there is a rebound of crocs in Collier County. Take a look here: Crocodiles in Naples, FL.

It’s about time…

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Laakkonen at 1:08 pm on Saturday, July 15, 2006

It’s about time to give up the excuses and actually start creating a web log of my own. My name is Bill Laakkonen. I am the founder of Im1 Web Hosting, now in our tenth year of service. Over at Im1 we have helped others run their own ‘blogs’ since before they were called blogs (among other things). We (Ryan Williams and I) started the world’s first hosting service dedicated to running the code created by slashdot, called slashhosting.com. The domain name incidentally was the first name ever registered in Tucow’s OpenSRS registry.

Slashcode is not the challenge that it used to be for installation and as a result, we don’t do much new stuff at slashhosting.com anymore. Just about any regular hosting account can easily run software such as WordPress with a simple 5 minute installation.

So here I am. Finally. Oh, by the way, the opinions and views expressed by me here are mine personally and do not represent my employer.