A few days ago I came across a need to have a script to ping an IP:Port to see if a list of machines where online or offline. The basis for this was for a list of about 60 dedicated servers that I wanted to be able to load a page to see if any where down. After a few »]]>

A few days ago I came across a need to have a script to ping an IP:Port to see if a list of machines where online or offline. The basis for this was for a list of about 60 dedicated servers that I wanted to be able to load a page to see if any where down. After a few hours of research I came up with the following which will ping an IP and Port then change the text color to represent online or offline.

 
View Demo
The script is very simple:

For those of you unaware of how PHP works, the script will actually mask your IP:Port that is queried, so no worries on someone finding the open port!

This can be used for just about anything, not just web. I use it to monitor a few FTP servers (port 21) and another for a couple of game servers. The possibilities are pretty much endless.

For Christmas I bought myself a netbook, mainly so I can lay around on the couch, play video games, etc while I work. It’s been nearly a month now and I have been trying various Operating Systems to figure out which is best for what I need, what I need is just web access, SSH, and an RDP client. Anyways, »]]>

I started out with this refurbished laptop for $240 (including shipping). As I was waiting for it to be delivered I kept trying to figure out what OS I should run for best performance on the 1.6ghz and 1gb ram hardware it comes with, when it got here it had Windows 7 Starter on it. So I will explain how bad of an idea that is first.

Windows 7 Starter

Boot Time: 2-3 minutes
Initial Desktop load: 1 minute
Opening Chrome: 30 seconds

Slow as hell for the hardware, when I need to do something in a timely manner (eg: power on and answer a few support tickets / read a few emails) I can’t be sitting for 5+ minutes before it even allows me to open Chrome. So, let’s just toss this idea out altogether, it simply won’t work for a netbook.

Next I tried Win XP Pro simply because I had a disc and serial handy, don’t even bother. I spent 2 hours installing it to figure out that it’s completely incompatible with Atom processors, if you know anything you know Atom runs almost all netbooks, so toss that right out.

Ubuntu 10.10 (desktop) and Netbook Remix

Boot Time: 2 minutes
Initial Desktop load: 30 seconds
Opening Chrome: ~5 seconds

This came out a lot better than Windows as you would assume, but it turns out Ubuntu is more designed for retards than it is techs as it was in the past, I suggest against it for netbooks. As for the Netbook Remix, it was even worst.

Debian 6 + GNOME

Boot Time: 1 minute
Initial Desktop load: 30 seconds
Opening Chrome: Instant

Much better than Ubuntu but Gnome is just too damn bulky for netbooks, this is where I decided that I will NOT be using any OS with the GNOME Environment.

Debian 6 + XFCE Desktop

Boot Time: 30 seconds
Initial Desktop load: Instant
Opening Chrome: Instant

Everyone know’s Debian is fast but what they don’t know is that any desktop environment running under Debian looks like complete crap on small resolutions. While it is the fastest and overall the best for what I need I decided to go with something else entirely, if you can get over the grainy pixelated looking resolutions (and there are no fixes, trust me I looked) then go for it.

ChromeOS (Both Hexxah builds)

Boot Time: 2 minutes
Initial Desktop load: Chrome is the desktop…
Opening Chrome: 2 minutes (wtf?)

So after all that hype we went through thinking ChromeOS was going to be amazing for netbooks is a total sham, it’s slow as hell and let’s face it we need to be able to store and or open media files via our netbooks, not just use Google Docs. While the idea is good, the OS is complete crap even if you plan to only use Chrome you will find that functionality is broken.

JoliOS 1.2

Boot Time: 1 minute
Initial Desktop load: Instant (HTML5)
Opening Chrome: Instant

So this was the winner, JoliOS is a web-based desktop that runs off of a modified version of Ubuntu. Basically, you power up and everything is ready for you (assuming you have auto-connect to wireless enabled). Now, while it has the same idea as ChromeOS, it loads infinitely faster and still allows you to use the actual OS (Terminal) which allowed me to install tsclient for RDP. Overall the OS is just Ubuntu that loads up a web page that is your desktop. Your “desktop” is an HTML5 page that allows you to add links/icons/etc as you see fit. See the screenshot below of my laptops JoliOS Desktop:

Conclusion!

If you are looking for the perfect netbook OS but wanted to test a few out and see what’s best I highly suggest JoliOS or Debian 6 + XFCE.

Recently I had the pleasure of setting up a VPN via a 512mb Linode VPS ($20/mo) and I must say it impressed me beyond all belief. Why did it impress me you ask? Well, uptime is incredible and the speeds are nothing short of amazing. I am connected right now via the VPN I setup in Georgia and it feels »]]>

Recently I had the pleasure of setting up a VPN via a 512mb Linode VPS ($20/mo) and I must say it impressed me beyond all belief. Why did it impress me you ask? Well, uptime is incredible and the speeds are nothing short of amazing. I am connected right now via the VPN I setup in Georgia and it feels like I’m loading pages even faster than my bare connection. Here is the imagery you require:

Not only that, but they also have some pretty easyily managed RDNS to personalize it further, ever wanted your ISP hostname to be your own domain? Yeah you can do that. But I won’t be covering that in this tutorial, you can Google it or figure it out, it shouldn’t be hard to find, I found it in 2 seconds flat. Here is some more imagery:

Alright, I think it’s time to get into the actual tutorial, so lets get started.

First off you are going to need to order the Linode VPS and install the OS:

1. Click this and select the 512mb plan.
2. Once you pay you can select the location, choose the closest to you for optimal pings.
3. When prompted for the operating system you wish to run choose “Debian 6 (Lenny)“

Now that the VPS is up we need to set the default root password:

1. Navigate to manager.linode.com 
2. Click “Linodes” and select your VPS
3. Click the “Remote Access” tab and scroll down to “Console Access”
4. Enter your password and hit “Change Password”

nano /etc/pptpd.conf

#localip 192.168.0.234-238,192.168.0.245
#remoteip 192.168.1.234-238,192.168.1.245

nano /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

# Secrets for authentication using CHAP
# client        server  secret                  IP addresses
akensai         pptpd   passwordhere            *

nano /etc/sysctl.conf

sysctl -p

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

-o eth0 -A FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -m tcpmss --mss 800:1536 -j TCPMSS --clamp-mss-to-pmtu

chmod +x /etc/init.d/pptpd

/usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f pptpd defaults

nano /etc/iptables.sh

#!/bin/sh
IPT="/sbin/iptables"

$IPT -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
$IPT -o eth0 -A FORWARD -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN -m tcpmss --mss 800:1536 -j TCPMSS --clamp-mss-to-pmtu

chown root /etc/iptables.sh

chmod 700 /etc/iptables.sh

nano /etc/network/interfaces

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

pre-up /etc/iptables.sh

That’s it, now reboot the Linode and connect to the VPN, you can find a guide for that at PC World. If you can’t connect after you reboot there is a good chance you did something wrong, in which case I likely won’t help you with it, just check over the tutorial and make sure you did everything correct.

Updated March 14, 2011 View the DreamHost Forum Discussion on this. By now most people know I am using Dreamhost Private Servers to run Team Fortress 2 game servers, so I decided it’s time to share the secret to running a 32 slot TF2 server for $11 a month (bundled) or $15 a month (single). First off, you pay for a Dreamhost »]]>

View the DreamHost Forum Discussion on this.

By now most people know I am using Dreamhost Private Servers to run Team Fortress 2 game servers, so I decided it’s time to share the secret to running a 32 slot TF2 server for $11 a month (bundled) or $15 a month (single).

First off, you pay for a Dreamhost PS per how much ram you need, after careful testing with some trial and error, I found out that on Linux a basic 32 slot TF2 server, when completely filled will only use about 250mb of ram, thus the minimum @ Dreamhost for a PS (300mb) is perfect for any basic server, now if your going to be running a ton of plugins, you may want to drag that resource allocation bar up to around 450mb just to be safe.

Anarchy99 currently has 3 servers running off of the Dreamhost PS shells, each one its own PS, and bundled they are anywhere from $8/mo to $15/mo each.

Lets get started then, shall we?

To start, your gonna need Dreamhost hosting, they are an excellent company to use, and I highly recommend them to anyone in the market for web hosting, at the moment you can get amazing hosting for $2/mo, same hosting I have for my personal things, in fact. Upon registration enter the email ”les@dazik.com” as a referral email, earn me a good name!

Now that you have the hosting

You should have gotten a free domain upon registration (I told you they were awesome!), anyways go in your Dreamhost panel and scroll down to “Private Servers” on the left menu, then click “Enable DreamHost PS”, go through the little setup and wait for the email that says its ready, once you get that go back in your panel and click “Manage Resources” to be sure its up, the first week of PS is free, thus they give you an absurd amount of ram to use for the first week (2300mb default), when that week is up, the slider is automatically moved to whatever you use, I out of habit just set it at 300 or 350 once I enable a new server (you can have as many PS’s at a time as you want).

Add new user for the ps and subdomain

This first thing to do after your PS is ready is to create a new user for that server. On the left menu, click “Manage Users” and then click “Add a New User”, setup the user any way you wish, just make sure it has “SHELL” ticked as its access, and the server on the dropbox set to your PS.

Example:

Click for Fullsize

Now that you have a user, set a sub domain to it.

In order to use your FTP to upload/edit files on the server you need to set a sub domain on the user, click the “Manage Domains” link in your DreamHost panel and click “Add New Domain / Sub Domain”, fill out the information as I have it in my example image, make sure it is on the user you just made for the PS, and remember the “Web Directory” you set!

Example:

Click for Fullsize

Alright the hard parts done, now lets hop on putty!
Now you need to use an ssh tool, I use PuTTY, which you can find in the Downloads section of this site

Connect to your subdomain you just set and use the user we setup earlier, in the hostname, simply enter your sub. Once you click “Open” the connection will start, enter the username you made earlier, then it will ask you for your password, enter that as well.

Example:

Click for Fullsize

When done you will see a command prompt, type “ls” from there you should see a few folders, we want the one you made with the subdomain, so type “cd FOLDERNAMEHERE” to make it your current directory. From here, we install SRCDS (the engine that runs source servers), you can find the SRCDS tutorial on how to install here, for this tutorial I will also paste the instructions here.

First of all download hldsupdatetool from the VALVe webserver. Make a dir called srcds_l, and save hldsupdatetool in that dir and run it. (Check this out when you have an uncompress error.)

Command(s):

The new version of HLDSUpdateTool will be downloaded now. You will be returned to the console after its done.

We can start downloading the files. This can take a few hours depending on the connection the server uses.
Command(s):

If you want to install a Half-Life 2 Deathmatch server, use “hl2mp” for the game switch. For Team Fortress 2, use “tf”.
Go get yourself a cup of coffee.

First edit (or create) srcds_l/cstrike/cfg/server.cfg like you want it to be. Now we are ready to run the srcds.
./srcds_run -console -game cstrike +map de_dust -maxplayers 16 -autoupdate
and press enter. (-game hl2mp if it’s a HL2DM server ofcourse)
Your srcds is now up and running.

Now installing SRCDS is done! Lets make a auto-start script.

Without modifying or installing certain packages for nix, we cant use the screen script valve recommends in the install tutorial, for a stand-in I simply edited their use. Create a file either with command in shell or upload with FTP to your /srcds_1/orangebox directory, the file contents will be as follows:

screen -A -m -d -S server ./srcds_run -console -game tf +map ctf_2fort +maxplayers 32 -autoupdate -tickrate 100 +fps_max 500

Change this command line to your own needs, save as “start” and upload to the directory listed above.

Now in shell go to your orangebox directory

Commands

cd FOLDER (This represents the name you made in the subdomain, btw)
cd srcds_1
cd orangebox

After that type ls to make sure the file “start” is there, if so enter the command

chmod +x start

then proceed to run the script with

./start

Now that you have run the startup script, the server will start running.
NOTE: The best way to restart a server, or even stop it, is through the DreamHost control panel to restart your private server. (DH Only)

To find your server’s IP, in shell type the command
/sbin/ifconfig | less
You will then see your server’s IP listed next to “inet”

Congratulations, your successfully running a bare bones server off of a DreamHost PS!

If your server ever crashes, or doesn’t show up on server list, you can restart it by going into ssh (putty), from the root of your user make FOLDER/srcds_1/orangebox your current directory (As I explained above) and then type ./start for the server to restart.

This method has no logging for the server errors other than what is logged in files, you cannot see the actual command window. Its a very primitive way to run a server, but its much cheaper and works sometimes just as well, keep in mind that DreamHost is located in LA, Cali. Thus any server you host, while on a gigabit line, is a west coast server.

Working FTP with your server

Connect to your subdomain as the ftp address, aka for our training server:
ftp.train.anarchy-99.net

User and password are same as the one for ssh (this is why we gave the user shell access!), from here have a ball. I will not explain how to install plugins and addons and all that, use google. The hard part is done, you can do the rest.

Conclusion

Thats really all you need for a basic server, recompiling kernels, plugins/addons, and other such things such as running a Control Panel for your server, you will have to figure out on your own, be prepared for some serious work in this adventure, if you so choose to go for it. Look out in the future for a basic Control Panel I am currently developing to run RCON in php for console, and to run scripts for restarting/editing server files. This panel will work on ANY web server running php 5. Again, not quite done with it, in the process of developing it for Anarchy 99.

1) Introduction What is Solaris? Solaris is a mature UNIX Operating System, derived from Sun and AT&T’s partnership in 1988 that created UNIX Sytem V, Release 4. The first official release of Solaris in 1992 incorporated SVR4 plus many features from Sun’s previous BSD-Based SunOS, such as the Network File System and a number of BSD libraries for compatibility. 1992’s »]]>

– Desktops Galore: All of the popular window manager/desktop choices are available on Solaris. In addition to CDE, KDE, etc., OpenSolaris has customized the GNOME desktop into a very simple and easy to use version called the Open Solaris Desktop (formerly the Java Desktop System). The default on the live CD for boot & install is GNOME.

– The ZFS filesystem. OpenSolaris’ ZFS filesystem is as bulletproof as a Unix filesystem gets. The latest release features “Timeslider” backups that are as easy to manage as the name implies. If you’re running a server that needs to run dependably, ZFS has numerous advantages.

– Fault Management. Another consideration if you want to run an industrial-strength high-availability server is fault management. When running on AMD or Intel Xenon hardware, Solaris can monitor CPU, Memory, Northbridge chipset, and other hardware. While these features are mainly designed for multiple-blade server farms, they’ll run on any AMD hardware.

– Isolation. It’s a good idea to run srcds in a sandbox. This keeps srcds failures or hacks from damaging your system. Solaris’ Zones are an ideal environment, providing isolation from the host in a simple package that is integrated into the host OS and supported by the OS vendor. There are alternatives to Zones, which I discuss below.

– Full 64-bit support and cool tools. This isn’t important for running srcds, in fact the Linux Zone only supports 32-bit Linux binaries. However, if there’s other development or hosting you want to do on the same machine outside the Linux sandbox, Solaris is a full 64-bit implementation of Unix with really nice developer tools. Sun Studio, for example, is completely free and better than any paid-for developer suite. I don’t see how developers get along without DTrace.

NOTE: This tutorial only applies only to Solaris running on Intel or AMD x86 32- or 64-bit hardware. srcds is an x86-only binary, and it won’t run on SPARC or PPC hardware. The Linux Zone and other virtualization tools aren’t Intel emulators. Also, Fault Management support varies depending on the hardware.

3) How to run Linux applications on a Solaris machine

There are four tools available to run Linux binaries on Solaris: lxrun, Xen, Virtual Box and BrandZ.

lxrun is an obsolete solution. It’s a user-space application that executes Linux binaries but has limitations such as read-only access to the filesystem. It’s available but not actively supported anymore.

xVM is the Solaris implementation of the Xen “Hypervisor.” It’s more complicated, but allows you to run any complete OS of your choice. xVM actually runs the entire operating system on top of a Hypervisor. Solaris can (but doesn’t have to) be the “root” domain OS, with other OSes running in parallel.

Virtual Box is an open-source virtual machine project that works like VMWare or Parallels Desktop. It’s a completely isolated user-space application that can run just about any OS as a guest.

Zones allow you to set up a partitioned user space that’s completely abstracted from the OS APIs and from other processes on the host:.

A Branded Zone (or BrandZ) is a particular kind of Zone that has all of the abstraction features of a Zone with the added ability to run non-native OS APIs.

Specifically, the lx Branded Zone allows you to run binaries that make Linux API calls.

Support for the lx BrandZ is currently limited to RedHat or CentOS (the “community” version of RedHat). Any OS that uses the Linux 2.4.21 kernel should work but all of the documentation and support are around RedHat/CentOS. Red Hat did an odd thing in that their kernel is not a complete implementation of the Linux 2.6 kernel but it’s not stuck at 2.4 either. Many of the 2.6 features, with the big exception of 64-bit support, are in RedHat/CentOS.

Of the above options, I chose to go with BrandZ. At the time (4/2007) I started this it was the clear way to go. lxrun was already obsolete, Xen was only in beta and just too much work, and Virtual Box wasn’t around yet.

Virtual Box would be a great choice and would probably be less work. I am going to try setting something up in Virtual Box so I can make legit comparisons, then I’ll come back to this tutorial with my opinions.

Zones give more monitoring and admin choices and less runtime overhead. I can get to the file space of my Zone from Solaris, for example. If an app in a Virtual Box crashes, it’s just another hung application in user space and there’s nothing on the host you can do to monitor it or remotely administer it. There’s a scale between complete isolation and low-level control. Xen, Virtual Box and BrandZ will all work depending on where you as admin are on that scale.

The one big variable that would change the equation is 64-bit support. srcds works just fine under the CentOS kernel, but if Valve ever uses any of the APIs that aren’t supported this solution won’t work anymore. We’d have to switch to Xen or Virtual Box, unless Sun ups the version of the Linux kernel supported by the lx Brand. There does seem to be user demand for this, though, so we’ll see what happens in the future. The lx Branded Zone will run on either 64- or 32-bit Solaris hosts, so that’s not a problem.

4) How to Install Solaris and a Linux Branded Zone

Check Your Hardware

Before you do anything, check Sun’s Hardware Compatibility List.

Solaris seems geared for big iron. The real push to support commodity PCs has only happened with the recent open-sourcing of the OS. It’s the only area I’ve seen where Ubuntu, Knoppix, and the other boot-and-go Linuxes beat Solaris.

In particular, Solaris does not support as many Ethernet chipsets out-of-the-box as Linux does. If your Ethernet chipset isn’t on the official HCL, don’t panic. There are more drivers here.

There are also known issues with some RealTek built-in Ethernet chipsets. Here’s a discussion with more information.

I wouldn’t worry about the rest of the HCL since you won’t need sound or even graphics support to run srcds. The latest & greatest version of OpenSolaris (see below) seems to support more hardware than the HCL says anyway.

If you find a driver for a non-official NIC, just make sure you download your driver and put it on a thumbdrive or something before installing Solaris. Then install the correct Ethernet drivers after the install but before you do anything else.

Even easier: Ethernet cards are ten bucks. I just went out and bought one that works when I ran into RealTek issues. You do need to remember to disable your built-in Ethernet in BIOS if you use another card.

You’ll know if your Ethernet card works early in the install process (see below).

Get The Latest OpenSolaris

Things get a little confusing here, because there are many releases of OpenSolaris depending on which branch of the build tree you’re looking at. The OpenSolaris community’s latest and greatest official version is sometimes a version or more ahead of what Sun Corporate supports. Both are free. More confusing is the fact that Sun’s website is the repository for all of the ISO images, whether you get the corporate version from Sun or the Community version from OpenSolaris.org.

The latest & greatest OpenSolaris release is always called OpenSolaris 20XX.MM where XX.MM are the year and month of the stable release (2009.06 as of this writing). The tested and supported from Sun version is now called Solaris 10/YY, where YY is the year. When the links for both take you to the same place, they’re in sync and Sun’s supporting what OpenSolaris is giving away.

If you’re really ambitious you can get a developer’s release (2010.02) from the source code tree and compile it yourself. Double all coffee suggestions given below if you’re going to do that.

The latest version of OpenSolaris from OpenSolaris.org

The commercial but still free version from Sun

In the past you had to be careful to get the latest OpenSolaris instead of the commercial version, but lx BrandZ are now supported in both.

Confused? Good, because there’s one more domain where you can get OpenSolaris: opensolaris.com. The .org domain is the community portal and wiki for all the developers actually working on the project. The .com domain is more like a slicker end-user store for news and downloads. You can get the latest from both.

Once you choose a release all download links take you to Sun’s repository, where they ask for sign-up information but then take you to the download page. Remember this sign-up information for later. All the Sun documentation and support material requires a login. At least it’s a single sign-on for everything Sun offers.

You can also get free DVDs in the mail from OpenSolaris.org or Sun

Install Solaris

Sun used to have training videos on how to install Solaris, but the links are gone. That’s probably because the install process has changed so much for the better. Here are the latest install tutorials.

If you’re not going to dual-boot you can skip most of what’s in the tutorials, pop in the DVD & boot. It’s now a LiveCD like Ubuntu. You boot to Solaris with Gnome desktop and can start trying it out. When you’re ready to install, there’s a menu option off the main desktop. Answer all of the installation questions. Go get some coffee. Go get more coffee. Solaris takes longer to install than Ubuntu, but not as long as Vista, so that should tell you how much you need to brew.

If Solaris recognizes your network card, you’ll know because some of the setup questions will be about your network setup. If you’re watching, you’ll know early in the boot process, because one of the startup messages will look like this:

NOTICE: rge0 link up 100Mbps

rge0 is the notorious RealTek network chipset that may or may not work. Even if you think it’s working, it may fail later or work intermittently (see the discussion link above).

For a home PC behind a cable modem/router, you can just skip all the questions about installing NIS, where your DHCP server is, etc, and it’ll find all that automatically just like Windows or Linux installs do.

Watch out for partitions: Solaris actually assumes you know a thing or two about your disk drive and asks you how big to make each partition. It doesn’t do the math for you, so if you’re a byte or two off you’ll have to do it again. The defaults are fine, but see the warning below when it’s time to install CentOS.

After Solaris installs and reboots (be sure to wait for the GUI login to start) and you log in for the first time, you’ll have your choice of desktop, then you’ll be asked to register. Use the login and password you created at sun.com when you downloaded the ISO image (or skip). This will also tell you if your network hardware is supported, btw. Registering sets up the automatic package management, which is nice but not Ubuntu-nice.

If your network hardware wasn’t detected and installed the first time, now’s the time to unzip and install your driver from above, then reboot. If you’re not sure choose “Network” from the Start menu (where it is and what the start menu is called depend on what desktop you chose). If you only see the network adapter lo0 that’s the loopback adapter—Solaris didn’t see your hardware.

Make sure your box can see the outside world before proceeding. Ping something, visit a website, or actually register Solaris to check.

If the installer did recognize your network card but you’re still not seeing the outside world, you may need to make some configuration changes. From the Start menu, choose “Administrative Functions” and then “Network” (these may be different depending on the desktop you’re using). You may have to make sure you have DHCP turned on. That should trigger your machine to get an IP address from your router. It should also trigger the population of the “DNS Server” field with the root address of your router. If not you may have to add it. The same tool applies if you’ve divided your network into subnets, etc.

Get Linux and Install a Linux Branded Zone

You should download the CentOS tarball first, validate that it’s all there (tar –tvv), and then proceed with the following instructions. The CentOS tarball is not on the Solaris DVD even though the packages to support Linux are all installed from the DVD by default. Some people have reported trouble with tarball.

You can also use an ISO image or CD of RedHat 3 or the corresponding CentOS release, but the tarball is the easiest way to go.

Pop open a terminal window, become superuser, and follow these instructions.

Now is a good time to refill the coffee you got above.

5) Considerations Before Moving Forward

IP Address & configuration inside the Zone

The IP address you assign to your lx Zone will be more or less permanent. Make sure it’s in the same range as the ones your router assigns, but high enough that your router will never auto-assign it to another PC on your LAN. You also have to use the “slash” notation when you assign your zone’s IP address: 192.111.0.155/24, where the /24 refers to the number of bits in the netmask. Here’s a definition of slash notation.

If you are on a subnet administered by someone else, you’ll have to ask how the subnet mask for your network is configured and use that in the slash notation. For a home PC behind an off-the-shelf router, you’re not likely configured into different subnets so it doesn’t actually matter what you use. /24 works.

Configure your router for the IP address of the ZONE, not the host

Put the IP address you assigned to your lx Zone in your router and then forward srcds’ port (27015 by default) to it, not the IP address of the host Solaris box. This is a nifty feature because no matter how often you reboot your Solaris host, and no matter how often your router assigns a new IP to it, your Linux zone will always have the same IP address and it’ll match the one in your router.

If you’re behind a home router, put the address of your router in BOTH /etc/sysconfig/network (as a “GATEWAY” entry) and /etc/resolv.conf (as a “nameserver”) files inside the zone, like this:

$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network
NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=linux
GATEWAY=192.168.0 .1

$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 192.168.0.1

Otherwise, your lx zone will see the outside world by ip addresses but won’t be able to resolve domain names. The alternative is to enter a line-item for every server you want to talk to in /etc/hosts, which gets old.

Test the net connection of the Zone

Ping something from inside your zone to make sure it works. You can even directly ssh into it from outside if everything works. No need to ssh into the host Solaris Zone first once the lx Zone is up and running.

Disk Space — watch out where you create lxroot

The example in the BrandZ install page shows creating the root directory for your new zone in /export/my-zone_root. However, the default Solaris installation only partitions enough space in / to hold the Solaris install and not much else. If you put your Linux root here you’ll run out of space while extracting the tarball. Be sure to put it in your biggest partition; by default that’s not /export but /export/home. It took me about 12 hours to figure this out, and I left quite a welt when I finally figured it out and instinctively slapped my forehead.

Create a user in the lx Zone, or you’ll be running srcds as root

The srcds experts frown on running srcds as root. You can, but if someone ever hacks in via port 27015, finds a way to buffer-overflow srcds, etc. they’re in your box as root. It’s not as big a deal here since the zone is completely isolated. At the very least set a root password for your zone before you go any further.

6) Get and Install srcds inside the lx Zone

Log in to zone as described above, and then follow these instructions.

Refresh your coffee as directed.

There’s no modifications needed to the excellent install instructions from srcds.com. It all just works.

I have run HL2DM, CS:S and TF2 servers under the lx Zone. They all work as advertised. I haven’t tried any of the other source servers (DOD comes to mind) or mods like Zombie mod or Surf mod.

Congratulations, you’re now running srcds from inside Solaris 10.

7) More things you can do inside the lx Zone

Automatically start & monitor srcds

Any Linux tool you can use to watch your processes should work in your lx Zone. There are a number of discussions here in the forums on how to do this. When I come up with my favorite, I’ll update this tutorial.

Install Plugins

They all work. Mani, SourceMetaMod and MetaMod source all work. As for which one is better, there are several threads in the forums here on that topic. I like Mani but everyone now seems to think it’s a bug-ridden security hole so I should probably get with the times here.

8) More things you can do on the host Solaris box

Automatically start & monitor the lx Zone

You can auto-start your Linux Zone when your Solaris box boots. When I get my configuration perfected I’ll update this section.

Automatically monitor host hardware

As mentioned above, Solaris has fault-monitoring tools that currently supports AMD and Intel Xenon hardware. I’ll update this tutorial as soon as something fails (or I make something fail) and I’m sure it all works the way I think it should. Really, in two plus years nothing’s failed yet so I don’t have anything to report.

9) How to get more help

More help with BrandZ

More help with srcds on Linux
Everything described above also works by installing Solaris in a VMWare image. It makes no long-term sense to run a virtual machine (lx BrandZ) inside a host (Solaris) inside another virtual machine (VMWare) on a Windows box. I only did this first to play around with Solaris and make sure it all works before wiping out my physical hardware for Solaris. It does all work, and it’s a good way to try all this out before committing it to hardware. This is also a good backup solution: I run a copy of my physical box in a VMWare image when I’m performing maintenance on the primary server.

This guide comes from AoS.DeathFromAbove, it’s a great guide, be sure to give him and his community a visit.

It’s always better to read with music…  A Yoshi as it was called in the 90′s, is a rig that can play any video game. When the term was used in the 90′s it often meant a complex system of consoles stacked on top of each other using the same ports for video and audio. The end result of which »]]>

It’s always better to read with music… 

Zelda on 47 inch LCD – Bad quality, sorry! (360 controller to play)

A Yoshi as it was called in the 90′s, is a rig that can play any video game. When the term was used in the 90′s it often meant a complex system of consoles stacked on top of each other using the same ports for video and audio. The end result of which was a giant box of video game consoles that you turn on and insert cartridges/discs into according to what system you wanted to play, these giant systems would cost as much as the consoles, their controllers, and the games; so the price to build one was anywhere from $500 to $1500. Today, the same thing can be accomplished with a single computer running windows; total cost being anywhere from free to $50 for cables, many people run these systems but not many take the time to explain how, so here is a simple tutorial.

What you’ll need:

• Gaming Computer (budget could work)
• TV that supports HMDI or a DVI/VGA connection
• HDMI/DVI/VGA cable long enough to reach from your computer to your TV (alt: a computer for use just for your tv)
• Wireless Xbox 360 Controller for Windows (or any usb gamepad)
• Emulators (whichever consoles you want to play)
• Image Mounting software (alcohol, daemon tools lite, etc)

Optional:

• Wireless bluetooth keyboard/mouse (for internet browsing on TV)
• Sound extension to run sound from computer to TV (If not using HDMI)
• USB extension if you went for the cheaper and lighter non-wireless controllers

Getting Started
Check the video card in your computer to make sure it can support HDMI, if not check your TV and see if it supports DVI/VGA connections, chances are one of the two will have what you are looking for, however HDMI is recommended for best video quality. Once you figure out what type of video connection you will be running, the next thing to do is order it, try amazon, got my 15ft HDMI for $4; don’t forget to order the other needed stuff if you don’t have it yet already. If you are setting up a computer next to your TV, you obviously will NOT need wires as long.

Once you have the computer successfully connected, power it up and wait for it to load, the first thing you want to do is to change screen resolution so it at least looks right on the TV, in my experiences lower resolution is better for bigger, however a lot of the newer LCD models are 1080p and can support 1920×1080 resolution, if it looks right when you try it, than go ahead and use it. Either way you should use the resolution that says “Recommended” next to it by windows, its one of the only things I trust Microsoft’s judgement on.

Playing PC Games with controller on TV
Most newer games are very easy to play on a giant screen w/controller already, just check to see if there is a “controller” option and activate it when you find it, games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 come predefined with the Xbox 360 controls. You may be thinking, “Why do that when I have an Xbox/PS3?” Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but PC graphics are about 3x better than consoles are at the moment, if you want to have the best graphics, use your computer, if you don’t mind… Use your console.

The big thing about PC games on a larger screen is setting the resolution correctly, to be safe most TV’s made in the last few years have at least 720p abilities, so if you are unsure what to use as a resolution for both the game and the monitor, select 1280×720.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time (PC to TV)

Nintendo 64 and Older (Non-Disc Consoles)
I actually started doing this just because I wanted to play Zelda: Ocarina of Time without using a stupid keyboard, and I’m sure there are a ton more looking for the same thing. First off download a N64 Emulator, I suggest Project64. Install the Emulator of your choice than Google, for example “zelda n64 rom”, eventually you will find one, download it and unzip/unrar it, start the emulator and load the file.

At this point, what you want to do first is configure the controller, checkout the “Controller Setting” menus if you are running Project64, its as easy as assigning hotkeys. Once you have the controller set to your liking you may want to play with the audio/video settings to get the right feel for things, after you have that ready to go just click “Full Screen” (Project64) and enjoy!
Applies to: Nintendo64, Game-Boy Advance, NES, NDS, etc..

Shenmue (PC to TV)

DreamCast/PlayStation/Xbox (Disc Consoles)
As an example I will be using the game Shenmue for the DreamCast for this tutorial. Download a DreamCast Emulator, I use Chankast (This link includes bios/boot). Now what you are going to need is a image mounting program, the best free one that I use is Daemon Tools Lite. Install Daemon Tools Lite, once its done run it and click Device0 (the first virtual drive), select Shenmue CD1 and mount it. Next, open up Chankast and go to Options > Configure Drive and select the drive letter you just mounted the Shenmue Disc1 to. Again, just like with the older consoles, you may want to configure your controller now, just as easy as it is for the N64, once you are done with that you can run the game with Run > Start in Chankast. Lastly, just go to Options > Configure Video > Video Mode > Full Screen and enjoy your game session!
Applies to: DreamCast, PlayStation, Saturn, Xbox, etc..

Conclusion:
This is really all you need to know in order to get yourself started, fortunately all emulators are virtually the same in terms of user interfaces, so once you figure out the first one, it wont take you long to figure out the rest. I highly suggest getting the no$gba emulator (it plays GBA and NDS roms), something about 47 inch Pokemon diamond that makes it better, plus the fact you get to play with a controller helps a bit, I hate playing games with the stylus. The only real important thing to do is to make sure you have the right resolutions for your TV, in my case its 1280×720 (720p) in most cases, seeing how my TV is a few years old, yours could be 1080p; just check first and make sure the setup will work for you, if you try this setup do me a quick favor and leave a comment if you have any troubles or anything, I’m more than happy to help out.

Sound is sent along with HDMI as long as you have the correct video card drivers, I have ATI cards throughout every system I own, so I know that this ATI HDMI driver is the correct one for sound to be sent along with video. Remember to unplug your PC speakers if you plan to use sound through HDMI.

USB Controller:
Most windows games as well as a lot of the emulators have options to setup a controller (in my case Xbox 360), however some of them, including DreamCast emulation do not have options in place to configure a controller. If you run into this problem the best advice I can give is to get Xpadder.

Setting up Xpadder is pretty straight forward, just play around with the settings until you get the hang of it. You can also use Xpadder to setup your controller to be used as a makeshift mouse, using an analog stick as a mouse is kind of strange at first, but you get the hang of it; I use mine to browse YouTube, Google, etc…

Due to high demand (stop emailing me!) here is my setup:

Hardware:

• 2x 3.0ghz
• 8gb RAM
• FAVI Micro Entertainment Keyboard
• Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 (Low Profile)
• Xbox 360 Controller for Windows (Wired)

Software:

• XPadder (Controller Setup)
• NullDC (DreamCast)
• PSCX2 (Playstation 2)
• Project 64 (Nintendo 64)
• NO$GBA (Nintendo DS / Gameboy Advance)
• Dolphin (Gamecube/Wii)
• JNES (Nintendo Entertainment System)
• ZSNES (Super Nintento)

Screenshot:

47 Inch 720p – Yoshi Setup