Month: January 2007

LVM for the WIN.

I finally got around to getting LVM (Logical Volume Management) up and running on my server at home. A few people had mentioned that it was quite difficult and I must say that it can be a bit daunting but really shouldn’t be.

I pretty much followed this article (http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_lvm) but I must admit that there were some things that I was confused about from the outset, hence my little introduction and LVM FAQ.

The basics

LVM allows you to combine many physical drives or partitions (Physical Volumes – PV) into one “Virtual Drive” (Volume Group – VG). You can then create “Partitions” (Logical Volumes – LV) on that Volume Group. You can add new drives or partitions to you Volume Group whenever you feel like it. Additionally you can resize your Logical Volumes whenever you feel like it too. (Image courtesy of the article… I’ll copy it onto my own server when I get back to a shell)

LVM Basics

FAQ: (Feel free to mail me questions and I’ll add them here)

Q. Why would I want LVM?

A. If you have lots of media spread across a few drives LVM can be a godsend.

Q. Do I need to reinstall linux in order to install LVM?

A. No, you can install LVM whenever you want and you can undo your changes whenever you want.

Q. What’s the best way to start?

A. I’d say you should start by playing around a bit. (You’ll need to read the article in order to understand how to do these things)

  1. Resize one of your partitions to free up 5gigs somewhere
  2. Create a 5 1G partitions to play with.
  3. Create a Physical Volume for each of your partitions
  4. Create a Volume Group and add 3 of you 1G Physical Volumes to it. (3 is just a random number, you can create a Volume Group with 1 Physical Volume)
  5. Create a 3G logical volume, Format it (ext3 is good), Mount it somewhere
  6. Put some files in it
  7. Add the rest of your 1G Physical Volumes to the Volume Group
  8. Create another 1G Logical Volume
  9. Resize your original 3G Logical Volume to 4G. (Unmount it first then lvextend() and then run resize2fs for FS’ like ext3.)

Q. Is it dangerous?

A. Yes, if you do stupid things like lvreduce() thinking that it wont wipe the data on the logical volume.

Q. Is it redundant?

A. No… that’s what RAID is for… but you can add RAIDed redundant partitions to your LVM and then your LVM will be redundant.


All in all I’m happy and almost near my life long goal of having a 1 terrabyte folder.

Later.

Can you spot the two faced bitch?

So, someone recently pointed me to some random girl’s blog about how she doesn’t like it when people rip off George Bush… she feels that we don’t have the life experiences to know what it takes to run a country and so therefore we should just shut up. Besides the fact that she is patently wrong and by her argument the only people fit to criticise bush would be other presidents, she is also, sad to say, a two faced bitch.

From her flickr site

hyrax2.jpg

Ahhhhh, man… so touching…. look how her heart is touched by the poor disabled child…. Someone like that would never make fun of disabled people on her blog…

Oh shit, wait…

From her blog

No no, shut your pie hole

Oh no. You. Didn’t!.

Paris Hilton would be so proud.

PS. I’m not giving this bitch any linkage… I’m sure she has a cellphone, if she wants to be famous she can use it like Paris.

My list of Web Zen and Learning

GoldenI’ve put a list together, for the guys at my new company, of all the websites that I read on a daily/weekly basis with regards to web development, design, usability and open source. I can not encourage you enough to spend some time on these sites. They will make you a better person, people will love you and butterflies will spontaneously appear whenever you are around.

A List Apart – http://www.alistapart.com

Jeffrey Zeldman’s awesome website. He’s a well respected guy who gets the top people from all over the world to contribute articles. The site focuses on design, web standards and excellent use of CSS.

Think Vitamin – www.thinkvitamin.com

The best thing about the new world order is that everyone seems to be playing nicely together. Think Vitamin is a place where you can learn a lot from the people on the advisory board like Cal Henderson from Flickr, Dave Shea form CSS Zen Garden and Jeff Veen from Google.

CSS Zen Garden – http://www.csszengarden.com

You can not comprehend the real power of CSS until you spent some time on CSS Zen Garden. Remember that every single design on the site uses the exact same html… it’s only the css that is changing!

Script.aculo.us – http://script.aculo.us/

Want to make your website do all the pretty things that the big boys do? A lot of them, including Google etc get some of their javascript Web 2.0 loveliness from scriptaculous.

User Experience Mag – http://www.uxmag.com/

Again with the big boys, but this time all about user experience…

Matt Cutts’ Blog – http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Matt Cutts is one of the few Google employees encouraged by Google to blog. He heads up the team that matters the most – Web Spam… essentially the guys who decide whether you’re invited to the party or not. We also share a wordpress template.

Jakob Nielsen – http://www.useit.com

Jakob is the godfather of usability. He’s been around for a long time and has seen it all before. His site is the epitome of usability and he encourages, sometimes a little too passionately, everyone to follow suit.

Web Style Guide – http://webstyleguide.com/

A website about how to build websites… seem a bit redundant? Think again. Here you’ll learn all the best practices; developing a site specification, information architectures, even how to write your copy so that people stay on your site. This is the knowledge that separates the companies that are constantly struggling against themselves and those that Just Get It Done™

Firefox – http://www.getFireFox.com

Firefox is not only more secure, more stable, more functional and has a better javascript debugger, but it also has some web development plugins that help you do your job faster and better. – Install the Web Developer Toolbar!