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

Additional Configuration

configured apcupsd
installed throttle-ssh to reject script kiddies

smartctl

Ran initial smartctl full disk check: smartctl -t long /dev/sda

disable automatic updates

/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

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

2009 - Dell Optiplex 760

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