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How the EasyTarget hangs together
Looking For Owens Personal Website?
..go to http://easytarget.me.uk/
for my photos, blog and more..
This is the 'root' of Owens' web server.
- You are now looking at the default page for my Apache web server, running on my home FreeBSD powered server system. It is run on completely open source, 100% Microsoft Free, Software.
- My Main website, gallery, webcam, etc. comes from my personal server in my apartment:
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The heart of my website is 'Calvin', my old IBM Thinkpad G40 laptop, her screen died, so she has been adapted to work as a server.
She's a 2800Mhz PentiumIV based system with 512Mb of memory, a 1Tb external disk, and an interesting dust puppy living inside. -
Software-wise, She runs FreeBSD, specifically; FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE-p2
as her Operating System.
- FreeBSD is one of a number of Open Source, BSD style operating systems.
- It's extremely fast, stable and secure.
- It has the FreeBSD portage mechanism, always up to date.
- The price, as they say, is right.. Free as in Beer.
- And the politics are right too.. Free as in Speech. - On top of that I have layered a number of other Open Source applications:
-
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Apache 2.0 + mod_ssl
- The industry standard bullet-proof, secure web server.
- SSL gives me a secure web session for reading my webmail. -
WebCam
- It's really Cheap'n'Cheerful, an old Philips PWC640 (TuCam) webcam.
- All lashed together with some cheezy shell scripts..
- ..it's the funkiest thing on my site :-) -
Samba
- Provides a network file system for Hobbes and Susi (see below). -
SSH
- Lets me log in to Clavin from anywhere on the Internet.
- I normally use PuTTY for this, its excellent and free, it also does SSH tunnels, telnet, sftp, etc! -
Munin
- Collects various system data every five minutes.
- Then it generates graphs of system performance over time.
- Finally it wraps it all up in HTML to create an online overview of the whole system.
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Apache 2.0 + mod_ssl
- I run this system without any monitor, keyboard or mouse attached, it sits inconspicuously in my kitchen cupboard. When I need to connect I simply SSH from my workstations, and run the whole server from the command line.
-
Current status:
# date
Fri Sep 3 12:31:23 CEST 2010
# uptime
12:31PM up 31 days, 12:11, 0 users, load averages: 0.51, 0.32, 0.24
# apache
Server uptime: 2 days 12 hours 31 minutes 18 seconds
Total accesses: 9434 - Total Traffic: 38.3 MB
Parent Server Generation: 2
-> Show Detailed Status Graphs - 'Hobbes' is my desktop system, an Acer Aspire M3201:
- This is a AMD Athlon X2 system, twin core 64 bit processor, 5Gb ram, decent hardware all round with lots of USB ports etc. It has a recent ATI graphics card (HD4350), and is very, very quiet in operation which helps when I use it as a Media player.
-
It runs 64-bit Fedora 13 Linux,
with the Gnome desktop. This is a good system, Fedora is fun to use
and very good looking these days. The occasional breakage (Fedora pushes the envelope a bit) is less
impressive since it always happens when I'm busy. But overall this is a good experience.
- It also runs Windows7 (this is a twin-boot system) so I have a good platform for a bit of gaming and can run some programs that are windows-only. I am quietly impressed by Win7, just occasionally Microsoft manages to imporess me, their UI design and attention to detail can be impressive when they have some proper competition!
- My Netbook, an Asus Aspire One A110L, running ArchLinux she is the perfect portable work and media machine, under a kilo in weight and small enough to just slip in any bag!
- She has a widescreen display, and wireless networking, so surfing on my balcony is a nice way to end the day. I use her as a portable media player for movies and internet radio, regularly listening to the BBC online.
- I have a plan for her; at home is a touchscreen kit, and some other bits. She's going to become a MeeGo box.
- My printer, a very sexy black cube.. It just has one power button, and a touchscreen for all the rest of it's controls; it can scan, print, and all sorts of other stuff. Plus Wireless networking.
- A FRITZ!box, very nice, lots of clever features, and free courtesy of my ISP.
- If you have any questions; please email me using the address here and I'll try to help..
