existence, refactored

So you want to be a bit productive this holiday/winter/end-of-year break and decide to learn how to setup your own website.

But for some odd reason you don’t want to settle with a free website service like WordPress or even a cPanel managed shared hosting site. Instead, you want to know how to setup your own web server, something like a Linode VPS or an Amazon EC2 instance.

Luckily for you, I’m having a bit of a writer’s block and I have time to write about how to learn setting up a Linux server without having to pull out your credit card.

What this post is all about

In this post, we’ll just discuss how to set up a virtual server on your computer.

Yes, that’s right. We’re not installing a server OS on a spare machine, nor are we dual-booting: we’ll be setting up a server in your desktop, running the former inside the latter. This is virtualization, dawg.

We’ll be creating a server with somewhat similar specs to what you’d get if you sign up for $8 a month at prgmr.com. This simulated environment will be enough for a newbie to learn the ropes in server management.

What you need

Any relatively modern desktop or laptop computer will do. For this series of posts, I’ll be forgoing the use of my quad-core gaming rig and instead use my laptop (dual-core @ 2.1GHz with 3GB RAM). For the sake of the majority of the readers, I’ll be using Windows 7 as the OS though the steps will almost be the same when using Windows XP and Vista, and will still be similar even when using Linux or OSX.

You also need to be connected to a network, preferably one that gives out local IP addresses via a DHCP server. In other words, a home/office router. Fast internet also helps as you need to download >700MB worth of installer data.

As for the software, you will need to download VirtualBox and a CD image (.iso) for Ubuntu Server 10.04.3 Long Term Support 32-bit. The VirtualBox download and installation is pretty straightforward, but for the Ubuntu Server 10.04.3, you may want to choose downloading via BitTorrent for faster download speed.

Unlike Linux and OSX users who already have it built in on their terminals, Windows users will also have to download an SSH client like PuTTy, the one that you’ll see in this tutorial.

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Some posts just write themselves. Today’s post comes from my reply to a guy in PhRUG who still thinks you need a Mac before you can develop Rails applications.

This is probably the biggest problem the Ruby/Rails community has when trying to spread the word in this country: the lack of interest in supporting Windows.

I mean, a typical response to the legitimate question “I’m using Windows, how to I practice RoR?” is the fanboy answer: “Get a Mac!”

And that, my dear readers, is a dick move. If I was an average college student and you told me that, I’ll immediately think “WTF?!? I just want to try out this open-source language and web framework and I need to shell out a couple of years worth of tuition?!?”

Answering “Format your hard drive and install Linux” is less of a dick move, but a dick move nonetheless.

Thus, if we rubyists want to spread the word about Ruby, we’ll have to make Windows a viable OS for Ruby development. Here are a few options available to us:

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Having to reinstall windows twice from scratch (first was when I migrated to Windows 7 last week, second was when my RAID setup failed when I transferred to a new motherboard two days ago), I’ve discovered which of my apps are absolutely essential for my computer. Here’s a list in a somewhat descending order of importance:

• Mozilla Firefox 3.5 – my main browser. It’s slower than the next browser, but it makes up for it by having extensions like the widescreen “killer extension” Tree Style Tab.
• Google Chrome 2 – Without the tree style tab, I can’t have as many tabs open in Chrome so it’s relegated as my secondary browser. I have two monitors in my rig and Chrome sits on the right monitor with Facebook on while Firefox sits on the center monitor (the left monitor slot is reserved for my laptop). I also use chrome for Google searching when my center screen is occupied.
• Yahoo! Messenger 9 – I rarely chat online but I still have Y!M on for the same reason why I still have a cellphone even though I rarely text or call: it’s just there to provide a (free) means of contacting me. The mail alerts are even more important – without Y!M mail alerts I probably would have migrated to GMail a long time ago.
• Launchy 2 – my program launcher. All my programs are just an Alt-Space away. And before you suggest the Windows 7 Search Bar, yes, I’ve tried that for a few days and I found out that it’s too slow in Windows 7 RC1 especially when compared to Launchy. The latter also doesn’t show up in the center of the screen, forcing my eyes to shift a few degrees to read the search list. Maybe when the search bar speeds up, or if there’s an option to show the search bar at the center of the screen, I might use the latter instead of Launchy.
• GIMP 2.6 – No pirated software means no Photoshop. Fortunately, GIMP is more than enough for daily photo editing tasks.
• Notepad++ 5 – my text-editor-that-can-parse-unix-newlines-properly. Useful for reading server logs or any random text file that I need to read.
• KeePass 1.16 – my password manager. All of my passwords hidden behind a strong 20 character password. I’m using version 1 so that its database could be used with my Linux laptop.
• Steam – I’ve been buying legal video games ever since I got a job that pays enough for me to consider not pirating games. Problem with legal games is that storing the boxes and the discs can be a hassle. With Steam games, I don’t have a storage problem (because the game is just downloaded off the net) nor do I have to keep discs around in order to get through the DRM (because Steam’s DRM is already integrated).
• 7-zip – for unzipping and un-rar-ing files. Also for archiving.
• Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Air, and JDK 6 – to allow Flash and Java programs to work on the browser and desktop. Note that .NET Framework 3.5 is already installed along with Windows 7. Also, Silverlight isn’t that popular yet to merit a download.
• WordWeb 5 – Ctrl-Alt-W for spell checking and synonym hunting is a habit I picked up from my previous work. I had to turn off the one-click lookup because it screws up with games (Ctrl-Right Click is crouch + zoom, a common move in shooting games).
• VLC and CCCP – for playing videos. CCCP gives me the option of using the lightweight Media Player Classic.
• PDF-XChange Viewer – my replacement for Adobe Reader. Decided to try it out after a recent Lifehacker poll.
• VirtualBox 3 – my development environment, virtualizing Ubuntu instances for both development and testing.
• PuTTy – my IDE. Seriously, though, I prefer connecting to my Ubuntu instances via PuTTy/SSH instead of using the virtual machines own terminal. It’s not faster, but it allows me to use the screen real estate of my main PC which is a big plus.
• Mozy – my backup scheme. All hard drives borked? Not a problem with Mozy.
• AVG Free 8.5 – free anti-virus software so that Windows would shut up about not having anti-virus software installed.
• FileZilla – for transferring files via FTP or SFTP. Used mostly for managing my website.
• OpenOffice.org 3.1 – for opening my game-related spreadsheets e.g. Mafia Wars ROI spreadsheet, TWEWY pin progress sheet, Persona persona sheets, etc. Also there to open random Word-documents-that-should’ve-been-PDF files.
• TweetDeck – like Y!M, allows me to forgo manual checking of my Twitter home page.
• JWPce – my Japanese wordprocessor + dictionary. Useful for translating unfamiliar kanji.
• JR Screen Ruler – for determining the exact pixel width when doing web development.

Excluded, of course, are the hardware drivers like ATI Catalyst and Creative Audio Control Panel, as well as the specific games on my Steam games list.

Problem

The Ubuntu VirtualBox instance I use for Rails development can’t connect to the network unless you do some funky sudo ifconfig eth0 up/down and sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart magic.

Cause

I upgraded to Windows 7. Apparently, the Windows 7 adapter is buggy.

Solution

Thanks to this thread, all I needed to do was to change the adapter to “IntelPro/1000 T server” in the network settings.