Revision as of 19:02, 14 December 2011

The 2004 Server suffered a power supply failure; because it is a custom build (not out of standard parts) getting a new power supply and make it reliable was going to be painful, so we replaced the server with a Dell Optiplex 760.

This is a summary of the replacement server configuration.

Configuration

Hardware Specs

• Dell Optiplex 760
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor E7400 (2.80GHz, 3M, 1066MHz FSB)
• 4GB DDR2 Non-ECC SDRAM,800MHz, (2 DIMM)
• Integrated Video, Intel® GMA 4500
• 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s
• 16X DVD+/-RW SATA, Data Only
• 88% Efficient Power Supply
• Service Tag 95D8Ck1 (Express Tag 19915596433)
• 5 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 5 Year NBD Onsite Service
• ordered by Matt Lindblad

BIOS Configuration

• Boot: CD, then HDD
• Diskette Drive = OFF
• SATA = ATA, SATA-0 ON, SATA-1 ON
• External SATA Disabled
• NIC Enable, USB No Boot, Parallel OFF, Serial OFF, Audio OFF
• Performance keep default
• Power Management: AC Recovery = Power ON

Software Requirements

The server runs the following software/services:

• Stable OS (debian or ubuntu LTS)
• Apache w/ OpenSSL
• PHP
• MySQL
• Gallery 2 (for images)
  • GD library for PHP so that gallery 2 can create thumbnails
• MIT Data Warehouse Access
  • Oracle 10 Instant Client (OCI Interface)
• mediawiki
• vproweather
• Athena login
• Emacs

System Clone (Jan 2012)

I (mwall) finally got around to cloning sailing.mit.edu to the new server. Detailed log is /home/admin/admin-log.txt

Second setup attempt (Jul 2010)

I (mwall) tried to install debian 5, but this failed - network drivers did not function, no matter what I tried. So I went with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

OS and packages

• bare-bones installation of ubuntu
• installed the following packages:

 apt-get install nagios-nrpe-plugin
 apt-get install nagios-plugins-basic
 apt-get install emacs23-nox
 apt-get install openntpd
 apt-get install apcupsd
 apt-get install smartmontools
 apt-get install logwatch
 apt-get install postfix
 apt-get install lm-sensors
 apt-get install bc

Athena-tization

First attempt was like this:

 apt-get install ssh-krb5 krb5-user
 dpkg-reconfigure krb5-config

That failed, but this worked:

 wget -N http://debathena.mit.edu/install-debathena.sh
 sh install-debathena.sh

Local Users

added a few local users with athena credentials

ntpd

pointed ntp to time.mit.edu (18.7.21.144)

 /etc/openntpd/ntpd.conf

apcupsd

configured apcupsd

 /etc/default/apcupsd
 /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf

tssh

installed throttle-ssh to reject script kiddies

 /opt/tssh
 /etc/rc.local
 /etc/logrotate.d/tssh
 /etc/rsyslog.d/tssh.conf

smartctl

Ran initial smartctl full disk check:

 smartctl -t long /dev/sda

updates

disable automatic updates - we update manually to avoid unanticipated problems.

 /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/sailing-pavilion

ORIGINAL SETUP ATTEMPT (2009)

I (alvarso) tried to setup the server by myself, but did not have time to finish. The steps below will be re-done by a group of volunteers in the future (Summer 2010), using a more professional configuration of the server.

Operating System

• Ubuntu Server 9.04 64bit [1]
• Burned to ubuntu-9.04-server-amd64.iso CD
• Default USA English / keyboard layout
• DHCP failed (expected): temporarily using orellana.mit.edu while being configured (manual network config)

Disk Partitions

• Setup using "Guided - entire disk and setup LVM"
• Select Disk: SCSI1 (sda) 320.1GB ATA (only available)
• Only one partition (sda)
• Maximum size

Users (during setup)

• Created user mitna first
• Same password as on /mit/alvarso/sailing.mit.edu/ information files
• No encryption

Misc

• No proxy
• No automatic updates

Apps

• LAMP Server
  • MySQL root pass same as previous
• OpenSSH server

Accounts

The server links to the MIT kerberos server to authenticate users. However, when using "SUDO" you must use your local password (which can be the same as your kerberos password, but which would NOT be updated when you change it).

Setting Up Kerberos

TBD

Creating New Accounts

To create new accounts:

 adduser <username>
 adduser <username> mitna  <-- to give access to website development

Using the standard adduser process will give the user access either via the local password (set by the admin when calling adduser) or the Kerberos password.

Basic Packages

1. Update package list: apt-get update
2. Get emacs
   1. apt-get install emacs22