Server

Mount network drives in Ubuntu

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"blades" by gothopotam, on Flickr

Network drives sitting in a server rack. Credit to Flickr user gothopotam.

The situation

A workstation is running Linux Mint 17 (based on Ubuntu 14.04), and the user needs permanent access to network drives stored on a Windows Server. The drives appear on Windows workstations like so:

M: Data

N: Secret Files

What we need to do is make sure that each network drive is automatically mapped and mounted on boot. Luckily for us, doing this is easy with a little help from the CIFS package and a few tweaks.

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First DDR4 capable servers starting to arrive

First DDR4 capable servers starting to arrive

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Supermicro DDR4 RAMA couple of months ago I posted about DDR4 SDRAM being one of the next exciting developments in computing, and now we’re starting to see our first servers becoming available running the much faster DDR4 options. The new servers are dual-CPU (no single-CPU servers running on the new platform just yet, but they’re just around the corner).

A recent Supermicro release profiled their move from their existing Platinum DXR motherboard platform to the new Platinum DXG. Front and center in the improvements (indicated by bold lettering in the table below) is the support for up to 1TB of DDR4, which will allow for greater server performance and reliability.

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Custom Servers

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Computerworld released an interesting article not too long ago, which mentioned that recent market trends had seen demand for custom servers grow by a whopping 47.2% in the final quarter of last year, while demand for servers from more well-established vendors fell by 4.4% in the same period. This poses an interesting question: what exactly is the worth in going with a custom server for your business, and is it a better option than going with the large & established “traditional” vendors?

Businesses would likely buy a custom server over a brand-name one for the following reasons:
  • Cost benefits:  a custom server can often be up to 50% cheaper than those offered by traditional vendors (Dell, HP, IBM, etc).
  • Provider flexibility:  Many smaller IT companies have no access to the reseller channels that Dell, HP, or IBM sell through.  If this is the case for your IT provider, it can exclude them from being able to provide the solution.
  • Hardware flexibility:  Businesses may have requirements that vary slightly from the configurations provided by bigger vendors. If you’re buying an HP server with a support plan, your only option is HP hardware – and these costs can add up incredibly quickly.
  • Support local commerce: By buying a custom server, businesses can support smaller, local IT support companies. It means that you are helping to create jobs in the local community, rather than seeing most of your outlay go offshore.
These are all great reasons to buy a custom server.  But what about the downsides?
  • Vendor Reputation:  With a smaller company comes a greater risk that you’re buying something of poor quality – or the risk that the company might go bankrupt. When it comes to the piece of equipment that will be storing most of your sensitive data, as well as being a centrepiece of day-to-day operations, you don’t really want to buy an over-priced coffee table.
  • Uncertainty:  There are lots of smaller computer shops out there who simply don’t understand the difference between consumer-grade hardware, and server-grade hardware.  These companies will sell their customers a “beefed-up” PC instead of a genuine server-grade machine, because it’s cheaper.  While consumer-grade hardware is just as capable in terms of speed, it provides nowhere near the same reliability or management options.
  • Vendor Support Plans:  Finally, server support plans from big vendors are good.  They’re expensive as heck, and require your server to only make use of their proprietary hardware, but when something breaks, they’re there.  Depending on which service level you buy, they can get a replacement server to you in as little as 4 hours!
Here at Gravity, we have experience with both IBM servers, and custom-built servers.  In our experience, the custom servers have outperformed the IBM servers by miles.  We haven’t done enough with the HP servers to pass any judgement, mostly because the pricing of their components is such that I’ve never been able to recommend them to any of my clients.
Configurability, compatibility with non-proprietary hardware, out-of-band management, and price are all key reasons why I would recommend a custom-built server over an IBM server any day.
Running ‘sudo reboot’ causes shutdown with Intel C224 chipset

Running ‘sudo reboot’ causes shutdown with Intel C224 chipset

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The Intel C224 chipset requires some tweaking in order for Ubuntu Server to reboot

The Intel C224 chipset requires some tweaking in order for Ubuntu Server to reboot

When setting up a server recently (the one mentioned in this post), I encountered an odd problem: running sudo reboot would power down the machine, instead of rebooting it! This was occurring on a new Supermicro X10SLM-F motherboard with an Intel C224 chipset, running Ubuntu Server 13.04 Raring Ringtail.

It turns out that the problem is caused by buggy Intel drivers, and the problem can be resolved by blacklisting the mei driver. In order to do this, open up a terminal and enter the following:

$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Then add these lines:

# Don't load MEI driver; this allows system to reboot
blacklist mei

Save and exit the file, and enter the following into the terminal:

$ sudo reboot

The machine should now reboot without any problems

Credit goes to Ubuntu forums user thomasberger for offering the solution: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2024096

No display on boot in Ubuntu Server 13.04

No display on boot in Ubuntu Server 13.04

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When performing a recent server setup, I encountered an annoying display problem. The install completed without any problems, but there was no video on boot at all – sometimes the Grub menu appeared (but usually not), and after that the monitor went to sleep. SSH access was working fine, proving that it was only a display issue and not a boot fail.A boot issue gives rise to an annoying display problem

The setup involved installing Ubuntu Server 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) onto the server, which contained a new Supermicro X10SLM-F motherboard with an Intel C224 chipset.

After doing some research I found that the solution was to enable nomodeset in Grub. Because I had set up OpenSSH during Ubuntu install, I was able to connect to the server and do the following:

$ sudo nano /etc/default/grub

 

Find the line 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

 

Change it to 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

 

And then enter the following commands into the terminal 

$ sudo update-grub
$ sudo reboot

 

When the server rebooted, everything loaded as normal.