Low Bandwidth 101

After finding a lot of posts from over a decade ago, I figured it wouldn't hurt to write out some notes on getting a minimally functional JWM environment going on Debian Bookworm.

My particular requirements for going with JWM are:

• Need something lightweight to run on ram limited hardware.


• Need somthing especially lightweight as Hardware is further limited by the fact it's also running Proxmox, Ceph and Debian VMs


• Need at least one node with a local UI for managing the cluster


• My spouse would be most displeased if I can't direct her how to bring the internet back if I'm out of town.

Step 1 : Have a working Debian Bookworm Box with the bare minimum installed (base system + ssh server is fine)
Step 1A : Install some useful utilities like htop and screen
Step 2 : install xinit and jwm

apt-get install xinit jwm

Step 3 : Launch X and enjoy minimal graphical-ness

startx

That's cool but ...
( Making things useful... )
A shout out to Joe Wingbermuehle for continuing to make one of the lightest weight Window Managers for Linux.

This took some trial and error, and my google-foo didn't turn up the answer, so here it is for all to enjoy.

Prerequisites

1. Working PXE server


2. Server that can share the ISO via NFS

Howto:

1. Create an nfs export with a folder that contains just the Live XFCE ISO. In this example it is located on the server 192.168.1.10 in /mnt/netboot/Fedora-Live-Xfce-x86_64-22


2. Open up the appropriate menu file for your PXE server, and add the following
   
   LABEL f22x64XFCE
   MENU LABEL Fedora 22 x86_x64 XFCE Live
   kernel /fedora/f22_x86_64/vmlinuz
   append initrd=fedora/f22_x86_65/initrd.img inst.repo=nfs:nfsvers=4:192.168.1.10:/mnt/netboot/Fedora-Live-Xfce-x86_64-22/ ro rd.live.image rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm-0


3. Save your config file


4. Download the PXEboot files from one of the mirrors to the appropriate location, in this example the path is fedora/f22_x68_64/ in the tfproot. The files can be found under fedora/linux/releases/22/Workstation/x86_64/os/images/pxeboot/ on the mirrors


5. You should be able to netboot the live CD via NFS now.

Good luck getting your install to work. Make sure to edit the paths and IPs for your environment.

A little background is in order. Several years ago I set up a CentOS 5 LDAP server and two virtual machines running Openfiler 2.99. Since then the Openfiler project has gone more or less defunct and hasn't seen any significant activity in over a year. The two Openfiler machines rely on the CentOS LDAP server for authentication.

I have been working on migrating the primary filserver over to my new Rackable 3U server running CentOS 7 and ZFS and so far it's been an uphill battle. I thought I could cheat a bit and copy the samba.conf from the main Openfiler VM to the new machine and it would work. Turns out there is more setup behind the scenes for Samba and LDAP to play nice than expected, plus there are features that have been changed or depreciated between Samba 3 and Samba 4.
And then their are SIDs. A SID is an identifier used by Samba and Active Directory to distinctly identify things like users, groups, and computers. While this is spiffy, things apparently go sideways in a setup like the one I have where I have multiple computers that aren't on a domain but are joined to LDAP.
"The primary group domain sid(S-1-5-21-[LOCALSID]-1236) does not match
the domain sid(S-1-5-21-[LDAPSID]) for someid(S-1-5-21-[LDAPSID]-5708)
check_sam_security: make_server_info_sam() failed with
'NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL'
check_ntlm_password: Authentication for user [someid] -> [someid]
FAILED with error NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL "
Is a rather infuriating error to receive, in part due to the fact it does not show up in the default log level of Samba. In combination to this, I was getting errors like "mount error(6): No such device or address" or "CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -5" and Windows 7 would see a list of shares but complain they did not exist when trying to connect.
What I ended up doing to resolve it was to copy the machine SID from the original Openfiler box that I created the accounts on to the machine object for the new server in my LDAP tree.
On top of this, I had to use authconfig-tui to set up ldap on the new server, as well as add a samba config to /etc/pam.d . I was able to copy the latter from my existing opefiler box.

Now, onward to seeing if I can get something other than access denied on my newly visible shares.

Well, it turns out my nifty kludge to get namecheap to behave on IPfire got brought into the latest update to the OS.

Now that things have quieted down a bit at work (no datacenter move in progress), I have started work again on a project that I started while a student at NU. A gentoo based, network booting, compile node for the DISTCC system. I'm still in the stage of solidifying and revamping the build process at the moment as a number of the components that I originally used have either been removed, or increased in size significantly. The biggest thing I'm debating on is whether I want to keep using the full init stack from gentoo, or build my own, more compact and less dependent scripts.

Since I was dragged from the East Coast by my employer, I've started to refurbish and redo a number of the computers I have. Partially because I have to pay the power bill now, partially because some of them I have simply outgrown.
( Pictures and explanations behind the cut... )

Wrote a fairly long bash script the other day and got the order of arguments wrong on all 100 something lines of it.
Also spent an hour trying to find what package includes the mount command in linux. It is apparently util-linux.

Go watch anonymous have fun

First of all, just went to the Market Pro Shows website... The July 1&2 computer show in richmond vanished... GRRR... Next one is scheduled to be about the same time i'm supposed to be checking into my dorm room at Norwich. I sent an email inquiring about this vanishment because on occasion they have dissapeared yet occured or been there and not occured.
Secondly, The OVERMIND MKIII is being assemble from the remains of OVERMIND MKI and a mound of miscellaneous hardware. Currentlty, I have 1 of 3 network cards that I installed working. If I can get an answer out of the people on the fedora forum as to how I can acquire the modules "ne" and "eexpress" I don't think I can get the other two to function. It also looks like I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting any of the modems I have to function.
Thirdly, the date had been configrmed by both parental units to be the weekend of 7/8, however, unless my mom finishes here 18500 piece puzzle by then, we will be in the garage, which is a little cramped (ask ratboy, trevafish or psycho/pyro joe)

Lastly, I need sleep ...

Hooray for abrrubt weather changes. Fiday, it was sunny and 70, today we got 3" of snow and it was 30... and so goes spring in Vermont.
Also, last night i had what I think was the most unusual indicator that I should go to sleep I have ever had. I've been reading "The Red Badge of Courage" for english 102 and as I was trying to get through the chapters and answer the required questions last night, I decided it was time to stop (thankfully I was on the last question) when I swore I was seeing penguins with read bowties dancing above the lines of perfectly legible text much like the Cid's were dancing in Chocobo Robo Voice. I don't know if I just fell asleep for a minute and didn't notice it or what, but I remember that quite clearly.
In other news, I spent half the afternoon in IM conversation with a friend from the UK in order to figure out how to change the permissions of a folder in linux. I already knew how to chnge the permissions, but for some reason they wouldn't stay that way. But in the end, we figured it out. yeah!