Couple of woes

[linuxlove]

Well i was a fool and was running my main server on Wind0ze. And while I was browsing TPB for the Windows 7 RC, i noticed that my virtual memory was too low. Then IE (also foolish to use IE) closed and i had the Antivirus 2009 Virus. It loaded three or four different versions of the same virus on to the system (what was a Pentium II 400MHz system so it was really slow). After that, it kept constantly throwing up YOUR SYSTEM IS INFECTED "errors" and evetually would put a fake STOP error on the screen and restart. It also changed my DNS server and that made me think it was part of a botnet. And as a last thing, it was throwing "Work for Google" ads up all the time. So I put linux on my P3 rackmount and am not using Windows again. That was woe one, here's the next one...

I installed Debian 5 on the P3 and i had to apt-get a few things to get X Window System and GNOME working. Now I was working on the server to get every prepared, and i noticed that i couldn't open any programs from the Applications menu. It would try to open them, then just stop. Now when I logged out and logged back in as the normal user, I got told that my session lasted less than 10 seconds. It said that I may be low on disk space. I know that both are not true; i was logged on for at least 15 minuits and i have 49GB free of disk space. Ideas?

[Mike Chambers]

first woe: yes like we talked about last night OUCH

second woe: did you set up swap space on the linux system? the apps trying to load but never finishing sound like you may have neglected to do so. if this is the case, all is not lost and you dont have to reformat/reinstall the distro. i can help you set up a file as swap space rather than an dedicated partition. (which is actually my preferred way of doing it)

[TNC]

How much RAM do you have?

If you are lower than 256MB i would strongly recommend you a another Graphical Environment. LXDE is very small and reliable. It even works fine on a Pentium 166MMX/64MB.

Did you set up a swap partition? That could a reason why no other programs opened.

[TandyMan100]

First woe: Yeah, we were chatting at the time. What's amazing to me is that he got it back up and running in a matter of hours :eek: Would've taken me days!

[linuxlove]

first woe: yes like we talked about last night OUCH

second woe: did you set up swap space on the linux system? the apps trying to load but never finishing sound like you may have neglected to do so. if this is the case, all is not lost and you dont have to reformat/reinstall the distro. i can help you set up a file as swap space rather than an dedicated partition. (which is actually my preferred way of doing it)

i believe that the swap space is set up. although apps were loading fine before i got locked out of non-failsafe mode.


How much RAM do you have?

If you are lower than 256MB i would strongly recommend you a another Graphical Environment. LXDE is very small and reliable. It even works fine on a Pentium 166MMX/64MB.
512MB PC133


First woe: Yeah, we were chatting at the time. What's amazing to me is that he got it back up and running in a matter of hours :eek: Would've taken me days!

i can do work pretty fast if i have to. in this case i had to.

I think what may be the error is the fact that even though I clicked on the download lenny CD 1 link, the mirror seems to have messed up and given me a sarge image. so i should probably chuck out all the lenny packages i downloaded and reinstall then with sarge.

[ahm]

If you're building a server why are you loading X?

To keep your server lean and mean for the services it's providing,
only load the apps that are necessary.
Also, turn off all non-essential services.
I realize that may be difficult in certain distros, but the extra effort is worth it.

Personally, I build servers with OpenBSD (http://www.openbsd.org).
The base operating system load has a lot less junk to begin with,
and adding new applications is usually as easy as "pkg_add yourfaveapp".

[Chuck(G)]

If you're building a server why are you loading X?

I was wondering that too. On a server, just a waste of resources.

[TNC]

If you're building a server why are you loading X?I was wondering that too. On a server, just a waste of resources.

If you need any graphical interface, you can install vnc4server. This is an X server, which does not output anything to hardware, but acts as an vnc server. In combination with fluxbox or openbox, you have a very ressource saving graphical environment.

[linuxlove]

why load x? really because i'm still learning how to use linux and haven't quite figured all the command line commands out yet.

[ahm]

You don't need X to work on the command line.
Using a text console will increase your street cred as well as your Unix-fu.

[southbird]

Yup, mostly comes down to "install service", "edit config file", "restart service." It's not hard, and if you have any tech ability at all, you'll pick it up quick.

Way back around 2001, I had a copy of NT4 Server running as a webserver and FTP, and all was good. Then I had my sister, then at college, access it to test, and she said "What do I do with this eml file?" And I was like what? Found that when I went to the test page hosted on the server, it was now automatically trying to download an Outlook eml file. Antivirus programs on other computers in the house (all networked together of course) were spouting about Nimda infecting executables. Apparently my sister's college network was rife with viruses ... or there was a convenient infection just at that moment. In any case, I should've known better, a public NT4 Server in 2001 was open for all the exploits I could not possibly have known about.

In any case, I killed it after that, and set up a 68K Mac running Linux. Why I went that direction exactly I don't remember; maybe I just felt bad for the former server tower laying around. I think I ran X once "just for fun", but it wasn't particularly useful, and that system ran console until I retired it later for something with more kick.