Quick Ubuntu server install

Run Ubuntu updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get  install lamp-server^ phpmyadmin (if required)


Set static IP
ifconfig
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

The default entries will be:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

change auto eth0 entry to:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.0.6.x
netmask 255.255.248.0
gateway 10.0.7.254
network 10.0.0.0
broadcast 10.0.7.255
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8

then save and run:
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart


Enable SSH for file transfer
sudo apt-get install openssh-client openssh-server


sudo shutdown -r now - restart
sudo shutdown -h now - shut down

Ubuntu 12.04 and SOLR 3.6.2 install

Solr installation

Hi, I thought I would revisit my solr install to try and clarify a few points where people were having problems loading the solr-cell class and getting binary files to index, with errors such as these:

Error loading class    
    'org.apache.solr.handler.dataimport.DataImportHandler'

So, hopefully by following this tutorial you should get a working solr install:

Install base OS, 64 bit variant, in this case Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit

create a solr user and log in with that user

Go to 'Software centre' and install Synaptic Package Manager
install tomcat6 + tomcat6-common + tomcat6-admin

sudo apt-get install tomcat6
sudo apt-get install tomcat6-admin

Modify the Tomcat admin configuration to allow a new manager login.

sudo gedit /etc/tomcat6/tomcat-users.xml

Add the following to the file, commenting out other similar lines

Restart tomcat

sudo service tomcat6 restart


Check the root of Tomcat works by visiting: http://localhost:8080
Then log into the Tomcat manager page by visiting http://localhost:8080/manager/html and entering your Tomcat username and password that you setup previously

Prepare the solr environment

Create a temp folder for the solr binary

cd /home/solr/
mkdir tmp/solr/

Navigate to that folder

cd tmp/solr/

download the relevant  Apache Lucene solr binary using WGET (you will need to get the  URL for the version you wish to install)

wget http://apache.mirrors.timporter.net/lucene/solr/3.6.2/apache-solr-3.6.2.tgz

Decompress the binary file, copy files into their relevant locations and give the tomcat user rights to the working folder

tar xzvf apache-solr-3.6.2.tgz
cd apache-solr-3.6.2
sudo cp dist/apache-solr-3.6.2.war /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr.war
sudo cp -fr example/solr /var/lib/tomcat6/
sudo chown -R tomcat6:tomcat6 /var/lib/tomcat6/solr

Restart tomcat6

sudo service tomcat6 restart

Set the solr home directory

sudo gedit /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr/WEB-INF/web.xml

Modify the file accordingly, by uncommenting the solrhome env entry and adding the line below:

/var/lib/tomcat6/solr/

Restart tomcat6

sudo service tomcat6 restart

Check you can start solr

http://localhost:8080/solr

Setup solr-cell for binary file (word, pdf etc) indexing

First we need to load the solr-cell module in solrconf.xml

sudo gedit /var/lib/tomcat6/solr/conf/solrconfig.xml

Find and change the solr-cell line to match the following:

lib dir="/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr/WEB-INF/lib/" regex="apache-solr-cell-\d.*\.jar"

Save the file

Now we must copy all the relevant .jar files into the classpath library

cd /home/solr/tmp/solr/apache-solr-3.6.2/

sudo cp contrib/extraction/lib/*.jar /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr/WEB-INF/lib/
sudo cp contrib/dataimporthandler/lib/*.jar /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr/WEB-INF/lib/
sudo cp dist/*.jar /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr/WEB-INF/lib/


Restart tomcat6

sudo service tomcat6 restart

Test our solr installation

First we must install the curl command to send binary files via http to the request handler

sudo apt-get install curl

Create a text (non image) PDF file by creating a text file in Gedit with a keyword, such as 'otter' and printing the result to the file test.pdf (save this in your /home/documents/ folder)
Now we will take the test file and 'curl' it into solr

cd /home//Documents/

curl "http://localhost:8080/solr/update/extract?literal.id=smoketest&commit=true" -F "myfile=@test.pdf"

Now test to see if you can search the index for the id

From a remote PC enter the following URL:
http://:8080/solr/admin
In the query string box enter the following:

id:smoketest

Press search and the results should show a match for the 'numFound' variable. This shows 1 matching hit for 'smoketest' so we can confirm the system is working correctly.

Once the basic system is running it is time to apply the custom solr schema (if you have/need one). The schema resides in the following location:
/var/lib/tomcat6/solr/conf/schema.xml

Amazing technology from Microsoft

If this makes it into production form I'll have to do some saving!

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/will-microsoft-s-illumiroom-bring-the-new-xbox-to-life--1147730

If you love COD...

Check out my friends channel - plenty of BOPS action.
http://www.youtube.com/user/druidhwang

Hyper-V 2012 - Best freebie in a while

If you are looking for a free hypervisor platform then I strongly suggest you take a look at Microsoft's Hyper-V 2012. I've been using VmWare Esxi for the last few years and although it has served me fine, the speed improvements and management of Hyper-V are so much better now. I'm no MS fanboy, as previous versions of Hyper-V have been horrible but now they seemed to have cracked it.
The killer features for me are free, out of the box, failover and replication between Hyper-V servers. Basic management is OK but in order to handle the replication and failover functions you need to run the Hyper-V manager from either a Windows 8 PC or Windows Server 2012 desktop.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/hyper-v-server/default.aspx

Ubuntu tweaks and themes from Noobslab

Grab some excellent tweaks, themes and wallpapers (I'm talking about you, Black Wallpapers) from Noobslab - http://www.noobslab.com/

SOLR 4

Think it may soon be time to revisit a SOLR build. Probably will concentrate on SOLR 4 http://lucene.apache.org/solr/features.html with Ubuntu LTS, 12.04 64 bit http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

More on IIS 8 and Windows server 2012

Further to my previous posts, it is also possible to setup app pools and change identities, using the syntax below:

appcmd set config /section:applicationPools /[name='purpleotter'].processModel.identityType:SpecificUser /[name='purpleotter'].processModel.userName: purpleone /[name='purpleotter'].processModel.password: APa55word

Windows Server 2012 and IIS bindings problem

Just starting to deploy some 2012 servers. If you can live with the interface then they can be a lot quicker for some operations. However, when working in IIS we've found some interesting buglets, specifically, when setting up a site with multiple bindings, addition net.pipe or net.tcp will fail.
The solution to this is to set the site bindings from the command line using the appcmd command. Create the site as normal and set an http binding on port 80 or whatever. Then to add additional bindings, open a raised privilege command prompt, navigate to the folder where appcmd is (usually C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv and follow the syntax below:

appcmd set site /site.name:MySite /+bindings.[protocol='net.tcp',bindingInformation='40011:*']

appcmd set site /site.name:AService /+bindings [protocol='net.pipe',bindingInformation='AService']

Restart IIS and all should be fine.

Ubuntu 12.10 themes

Thanks Jim for the themes how to..
http://www.itworld.com/software/315365/install-ten-great-unity-and-gnome-shell-themes-ubuntu-1210

Speed up Ubuntu 12.xx

Hi thanks to Nixie Pixel for showing some speedup tips on Ubuntu. I've tried these out on both a couple of VM boxes and a physical PC and can say they work well! Here they are:

Show all startup items

Ubuntu hides some startup items by default, by entering this in the terminal you will be able to see all startup items and disable if required, for instance Bluetooth daemon.

sudo sed -i "s/NoDisplay=true/NoDisplay=false/g" /etc/xdg/autostart/*.desktop

Preload

In order to speed up applications by loading frequently used libraries, go to the Ubuntu software centre and install the 'Preload' application.

Speed up Gedit

 A bug in a plugin in Gedit causes poor performance - go to > Edit > Preferences > Plugins and untick the 'File Browser Panel'