Even if there are many ready-to-go NAS solutions I decided to build myself one and having the HTPC on the same machine. Here is mainly what I wanted:

• low powered system (64-bit microprocessor)
• used as a media server (stream movies/music)
• to be used sometimes as a HTPC, so I wanted HDMI (for HD video)
• ZFS file system with all its goodies
• gigabit ethernet interface to take advantage of the network bandwidth
• nice chassis with four hot-swappable 3.5″ SATA HDD (I am using just two HDD right now because the motherboard has only 3 SATA)

My NAS/HTPC specs are here:

• Chenbro ES34069 chassis
• Zotac ION-ITX-A Wi-Fi Dual Core 1.6GHz motherboard
• 2 GB Kingston DDR2 800MHz RAM
• 2 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1.0 TB
• 1x Toshiba 2.5″ HDD 100 GB (for OS)

I choosed FreeBSD as operating system, because I am more familiar with it than with Solaris. I recompiled mplayer with vdpau support (for HD video).

Here are the steps:

• download the latest mplayer snapshot from their website
• download these two files (ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/vdpau/include/vdpau/) and put them in /usr/include/vdpau (create that directory)
• ./configure –disable-x264-lavc –disable-x264 -–enable-vdpau
• gmake
• gmake install
• check to see if you have vdpau support with: “mplayer -vo help“. If you see something like: “vdpau VDPAU with X11” then everything is ok.

Some additional steps/configs:

• add zfs_enable=”YES” in /etc/rc.conf
• add  the following in /boot/loader.conf:

vm.kmem_size_max=”1024M”

vm.kmem_size=”1024M”

vfs.zfs.arc_max=”100M”

• zpool create storage mirror ad4 ad10
• zfs create storage/archives
• zfs create storage/backups
• install samba, duplicity, rsnapshots, rsync, unison, ushare, …

Right now, everything is working very well, I am very happy with the setup, but I still didn’t manage to have sound over HDMI, so, a temporary solution will be to connect an additional speaker system to it.

I don’t need any fancy remote control, I have a logitech wifi keyboard/mouse, because I like to be able to read the news in the morning (during cofee time) using google reader

The total power consumption is about 35W idle / 45W load which is pretty good, I think.

“Zimbra software is open source, meaning we make both the software code and the application itself available to anyone at no charge. Also, Zimbra Desktop is a full version; there are no missing features or catches”

For a complete list of features see this link: http://www.zimbra.com/products/desktop_features.html

If you have any issue with it you can find the answer on their wiki.

Here is just a screenshot:

1. create a full backup of your vps (databases, websites, accounts, emails, …). I have used “tar” command for that.
2. in plesk 8.1 control panel, do a complete backup (you need plesk backup module to be installed), or if you prefer the command line you can use the following command:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/pleskbackup all <backup-file>

Since version 9.x, the structure of Parallels Plesk Panel backup has been changed. Plesk backup created with Plesk Backup Manager is not just one file but a number of files and directories under backups directory /var/lib/psa/dumps. So, you will need to convert your backup file created in plesk 8.1 to be compatible with plesk 9.x. It’s a very simple process, see step 3.

3. convert the created backup file to be compatible with plesk 9.x

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/pre9-backup-convert -v convert -d /var/lib/psa/dumps/ <backup-file>

where /var/lib/psa/dumps/ is backups directory on the server with Parallels Plesk Panel 9

4. restore the backup files to use them with plesk 9.x. It can be done using the web interface, Home -> Backup Manager -> Server Repository, click the backup name to enter the backup details page and select the required restoration options and click Restore to start the restoration process.

If you would like to use command line to restore your domains, clients, server configuration, … then you can use the following command:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/pleskrestore --restore /var/lib/psa/dumps/<your backup xml file> -level server -verbose -debug

You can restore only clients or domains, for more options see:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/pleskrestore --help

Note: I had a small problem and I found that it is not possible to have a client with the same name as your name in Plesk Admin Profile. Maybe it is stupid, but I had some errors and only after I changed the name in Admin Profile (in Plesk control panel) to be different, I could restore without any problem everything.

I think that’s all what I did, from what I remember. If something is missing I am sure you can find a lot of useful stuff using our friend google.

Other useful stuff:

1. Plesk 9.x support as well postfix, so if you want to change from qmail to postfix, try that:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/autoinstaller --select-release-current --install-component postfix

if you are not happy, you can switch back to qmail:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/autoinstaller --select-release-current --install-component qmail.

If you are not sure if you are using qmail or postfix there are many ways to find that, one is to look in Plesk Control Panel on the Services management page {Home -> Services Management} if you have SMTP Server (Postfix) or SMTP Server (QMail)

If you decide you want to switch back, simply, do it, the emails are not lost, don’t worry.

2. Replace Horde webmail with AtMail

One of the many new features of Plesk 9, is the option to choose a different webmail client. The default webmail client Horde can be replaced if you are looking for something a bit lighter, AtMail. You need to install from Plesk Control Panel, both webmail clients, and to switch between them:

• Log into Plesk.
• Chose the domain which you want to use another webmail, enter on “Mail Accounts” page
• Click the “Mail Settings” icon
• Switch the “WebMail” to “AtMail (default is Horde)
• Click “OK”

If you decide you want to switch back, simply reverse the procedure, the emails are not lost, don’t worry.

That’s all.

References:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/5819
http://kb.parallels.com/en/5801
http://kb.parallels.com/en/952
http://kb.parallels.com/en/5969
http://kb.parallels.com/en/5864

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$ sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdd1
$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd1

and I would like to see the progress of dd command. So, do the following:

1. open a new terminal/console and type:

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$ sudo killall -USR1

2. open the terminal/console where your dd is running and you will see something like this:

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2242867712 bytes (2.2 GB) copied, 396.007 s, 5.7 MB/s
5625297+0 records in
5625297+0 records out

Anyway, your dd command will continue without any problem.
That’s all!

So here is what I did:

As filesystem I used Fat32. I installed System RescueCD so I have a bootable linux distro with a lot of useful utilities like Partimage, GNU Parted, TestDisk, kernel for i386 and also for x86-64, … The instructions to install it on fat32 filesystem are here: Installation On USB Memory Stick, I used “Instalation from Windows” part.

Next step was to install Truecrypt for windows in portable mode, a step by step guide how to do it, is available here, to be able to open my encrypted volume.

Now I can create an encrypted volume, using truecrypt, where we store all my personal files, let’s say 2 giga.

In that encrypted volume I also installed PortableApps Suite and beeing a LaTeX user I also included USBTeX.

Ok, now I still have space to store some useful small iso images, like Clonezilla, Hiren Boot CD, Acronis True Image BootCD.

That’s my setup for USB Memory Stick, I have it with me all the time, I can use it on any system, mac, windows, linux, I have a bootable linux disto on it, and also my personal files encrypted with some useful software. Maybe I should mention that Portable Apps Suite works well also with wine on linux.

I did a dd copy of my complete usb stick configuration/setup, immediately after I finished to install everything I needed, because if I will lose it, then to be able to recover everything quickly.

• gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOUTPUTFILE=finalcombinedpdf.pdf -dBATCH 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf
• joinpdf myfinalFile.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf
• pdfmeld file1.pdf, file2.pdf, file3.pdf resultcombinedfile.pdf

Some of the other tools available for merging PDF files include pfdtk, Multivalent, and pdcat.

* Ghostscript – A popular tool for viewing Postscript and PDF documents
* joinPDF – A simple, yet effective, PDF merging tool
* pdfmeld – A powerful tool for combining PDF files

For OpenSUSE there is the last version here:
http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/home:mrdocs/openSUSE_11.0/scribus.ymp

but I don’t want to replace 1.3.3.12 stable version, so I will install the latest development version in my home directory

Warning: The documents saved in 1.3.5 will not be back compatible with the other versions, more here: http://scribus.info/svn/Scribus/trunk/Scribus/README

Let’s install the last development of Scribus (it is very stable for what I need, I didn’t have any problems with it):

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$ mkdir ~/aplic/scribus_135
$ mkdir ~/tempsrc
$ cd ~/tempsrc
$ svn co svn://scribus.info/Scribus/trunk/Scribus
$ cd Scribus
$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=~/aplic/scribus_135

I obtained an error during the compilation because I didn’t have “libqt4-devel” so:

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$ zypper install libqt4-devel

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$ make
$ make install
$ ~/aplic/scribus_135/bin/scribus

Here are two screenshots, the main window and scribus latex editor:

That’s all.

References:

• http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Building_SVN_versions_with_CMake
• http://scribus.info/svn/Scribus/trunk/Scribus/README
• http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Working_with_latex_frames
• http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Embedding_other_external_tools_into_a_TeX_frame

1. Install mod_python:

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$ sudo zypper in apache2-mod_python

2. Enable mod_python: edit /etc/sysconfig/apache2 and add python to the APACHE_MODULES line, so your line will look like:

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APACHE_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_file authz_host authz_groupfile authz_default authz_user authn_dbm autoindex cgi dir env expires include log_config mime negotiation setenvif ssl suexec userdir php5 python"

3. Run SuSEconfig

4. Configure Apache to handle Python files:

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$ sudo vim /etc/apache2/conf.d/python.conf  # create python.conf file

5. Add the next lines to your python.conf file:

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<Directory /srv/www/htdocs/>
  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
  AllowOverride None
  Order allow,deny
  allow from all
  AddHandler mod_python .py
  PythonHandler mod_python.publisher
  PythonDebug On
</Directory>

6. Restart apache server:

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$ sudo /usr/sbin/rcapache2 restart

7. Create a simple .py file, put it in /srv/www/htdocs/ and test to see if it is working with http://localhost/filename.py:

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def index(req):
  return "It Works: mod_python ENABLED";

The other method is to configure the PSP Handler. PSP means Python Server Pages. PSP files have the extension .psp. If you follow this method it will allow you to include Python code directly in HTML code. To do that, I am sure that google can help you, for me the first method is enough.

That’s all. The above procedure will work also for CentOS, replacing the corresponding commands and the place where the files are.

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