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There is so much great software available for ubuntu. This weekend I ran into subsonic, an excellent music streaming website you can host from your own PC. This can be used over LAN or WAN (be careful with security).

I followed the following url’s excellent instructions, but I’ll include them for future usage.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=920178

URL: http://subsonic.sourceforge.net

Step1: Dependencies

sudo apt-get install tomcat5.5

cd; wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/subsonic/subsonic-3.4.zip

Step2: Modify Init For Tomcat & Start

sudo nano /etc/init.d/tomcat5.5

Change TOMCAT_SECURITY=yes to TOMCAT_SECURITY=no

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat5.5 start

Step3: Unzip/Install Subsonic

unzip subsonic-3.4.zip

mv subsonic.war /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/

mkdir /var/subsonic

chown tomcat55:nogroup /var/subsonic

Step4: Test

firefox http://127.0.0.1:8180/subsonic

Browsing around lifehacker.com I ran across an article on how to create a bootable linux usb thumbdrive. This is by far the easiest method that I’ve run across.

• Download the utility.
• Open the utility and download one of the supported linux iso’s.
• Plug your usb thumb drive into your computer (utility is linux or windows, so you can do this from either)
• Point the utility at the iso you downloaded and the correct usb thumb drive.
• execute, wait and reboot off of your newly created bootable thumb drive.

article with better detail on process:
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/08/27/create-a-bootable-usb-drive-or-memory-card/

direct link to the utility download page:
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

I’ve been working a quirky sub-domain 404 issue and I found a quick and clean redirect script. Instead of a nasty 404 page you can redirect the web request to the index page. I found the helpful script here: http://css-tricks.com/how-to-redirect-indexhtml-to-indexphp/

I deleted whatever text was in 404.php and replaced it with:

<?php
header( 'Location: http://www.redirect-location.com' );
exit();
?>

Worked like a charm for me!

I’ve used a lot of different Palm Treos.  Now that I’ve switched to a Centro I knew the battery cover was going to be a problem for resetting the device.  I googled for a soft reset application and found one that is very useful.  You can set a default app to load upon every execution of soft reset.  I use it to launch Good Mobile Messaging which will in turn launch the broadband connection required for that application.  Works very well!

http://software.treonauts.com/product.asp?id=1819

The purpose of this shootout was to analyze already backed up images of VM guests sitting idle on disk. We like to keep 7 days online, so I was curious as to how the two compared in our environment.

Compressed vs Deduplicated

COMPRESSED: (backed up via vRanger Pro over VCB, size on win NTFS volume)
citrix_server = 4.29gb
win_sql_server_64bit = 9.76gb
citrix_server2 = 6.14gb
win2k3_member = 4.97gb

compressed vm total = 25.16gb

UNCOMPRESSED:

citrix_server = 10gb
win_sql_server_64bit = 20gb
citrix_server2 = 10gb
win2k3_member = 35gb

uncompressed total = 75gb

DEDUPED VS COMPRESSED:

deduped     = 54.29% savings (NetApp cmd output below)
compressed     = 66.45% savings

Here’s the actual output from the NetApp find_space exe:
A-SIS Deduplication Space Savings estimate.

Name of Fingerprint File:          d:\esx_deduped.txt
Total Number of Directories:       5
Total Number of Files:             58
Total Number of 4K Blocks:         19662390
Total Number of Duplicate Blocks:  10673928
Percentage of Duplicate Data:      54.29
Scan Start Time:                   Wed, Jul 30 2008 3:40:16 PM
Scan End Time:                     Wed, Jul 30 2008 4:22:25 PM

I’ll be honest, I was expecting deduplication to blow compression out of the water even with only 4 vm’s. I’ll go out on a limb and venture that deduplication would provide more results as you toss more vm’s into the picture.

I’ve been doing a little testing with NetApp Deduplication lately but only in a limited test environment.  I know one thing for certain, deduplication and compression do not mix at all!  When you start to look at this technology make sure you’re dealing with uncompressed data.  This posting is more or less a bookmark for:

“Scott’s Quick Guide to Setting up Netapp Deduplication”

NetApp does provide a useful windows exe called “find_space” which you can run in report mode against any windows data volume.

I came into work this morning and one of the ESX hosts had HA disabled.  The network engineers replaced the core switch and I have to assume the NIC connectivity caused HA to disable since they were all down at once.  One command helped me get HA enabled:

SSH to the host that is disabled and as root execute:

service mgmt-vmware restart

Then enable HA after successfully running the command.