Nautonnier Blog

As you can see things have taken a turn for the better since my last posts.

I had to abandon the idea of setting the Alcatel DSL modem to the Linux box. Sure, sure, you’ll find plenty of articles telling how to do it. Load this or that version of the microcode. Don’t load it at all. Run the Mandrake configurator. Never run it. Start at boot. Start at boot and it will never work again even if it used to. Finally, for the sake of my sanity and my marriage, I gave up.

That means that my Windows XP machine continues to be the gateway to the internet. I set up Apache on the Linux machine which, after my modem dramas, was incredibly easy and well-documented. I still needed IIS (as the point of first contact) to pass back internally the URL that had been requested. Unfortunately IIS can’t do this without destroying the original information about what was requested. ISA Server can but this is a beast of a package and certainly more sophisticated and expensive than I was willing to take on.

Eventually I realised that Apache could do the job, so I disabled IIS and installed Apache on my windows machine. Apparently what I want to do is called “proxied mass name-based virtual hosting” and it’s a fairly niche requirement. Some of my damaged pride was restored then when I got the Windows version of Apache up and running with correct settings to facilitate this in under an hour.

My system now works as follows: somebody enters a URL in their browser - say “psychicquesting.com” or “simonjnugent.com”. Both resolve to the same IP address (the external IP of my windows machine) and both hit my Windows Apache (reverse proxy) server. It passes the request exactly “as is” to the Apache server on my Linux box but it then scans the original URL (”psychicquesting.com” or “simonjnugent.com”) and routes each to a different directory. Thus I can now host as many different websites as I want on my two machines with a single IP address.

The downside of all this technical wizardry is that my existing personal website got decimated because it was meshed into IIS. As part of my plan (unbelievably - yes I have one) I needed to set up two separate blogs on the same machine (one for each website) so this gave me the push I needed to do some thorough testing using my personal website and blogs as lab animals. Happily I managed to copy across all past data from SQL server to MySQL (did I mention I installed this on my Linux box as well - also very easy) with the carriage returns being the only losers. A small price to pay as I now have a “proper” blog which I hope that you will find is much easier to use than the previous version.

The part of Haslemere nearest to our house is called Wey Hill. It houses a number of odd and vaguely run-down shops although the local council is desperately trying to regenerate it. On one side of the street there is a big Health Food shop, split over two distinct buildings and run by a black-clad bloke with long hair called Dominic. Dominic is your typical docile, colonically correct new-ager (although it has been noted that he doesn’t hold open the door of his shop for mothers struggling with prams). The shop is laid out in such a way that the two main parts of the building are not directly linked (an entrace to a courtyard divides the two ground floors although the upper floor does connect both sides) and if Dominic is the only one on duty he has to shuttle between the two sides, serving customers in both. The shop next door to Dominic is currently vacant but it used to be a new-age/candle shop called Heavenscent. The shop next to this is a computer shop with a hardcore computer shop name (”API Systematics”). This shop is run by a bloke who looks like Dominic’s evil twin. He also believes that black is the new black and sports long hair but unlike Dominic he is heavily accessorised with multiple earrings and pentagram necklaces giving him more of an aura of the sinister mage. Sadly it appears that I am not the first to link computers with the supernatural as a modus operandi. Like Dominic he can appear to materialise out of nowhere; unlike Dominic this cannot be atrributed to the layout of his shop. Despite outward appearances, he seems a very helpful sort and may even hold the door of his shop open for mothers struggling with prams, although I suspect there aren’t too many of these amongst his customer base. The reason I went down there was to see if he had a cheap (of course) network card for my Windows XP computer. (Ironically the linux computer that had been given to me was essentially a swap for the network card which was originally housed in the Windows machine and if you’re wondering who would swap a computer for a network card let me just say that there was a sane reason at the time.) Anyway, my friend the computer mage produced a new PCI network card for £9.99 which seemed magic to me. (Further aside - cost of project to date: 1 x Celeron 355 mHz computer = swapped for network card; 1 x splitter = £17.50; 1 x 30GB HDD = £24; 1 x linux Mandrake CD set = £9).

To help keep our study as tidy as possible (ultimately a doomed ambition), I purchased a little splitter on eBay for £17.50 which connects two PCs to a single Keyboard, Monitor and Mouse. You press a little button and are immediately toggled between the two machines. Linux to Windows to Linux to Windows. Within the next few days I got to press this button so often that even now my left ring finger twitches involuntarily when under stress.

My CDs arrived on cue from fastdiscs and the install was quite easy - you popped the first CD into the drive and booted the PC. Everything else happened automatically. One immediate problem that I encountered was that Linux appeared to only recognise half of my hard disk. There was a 4GB drive in there but only 2GB appeared as usable. This created a problem because all the options that I wanted to load on took up more than 2GB. Sigh. I unticked a load of options and allowed the, now sadly reduced, installation to continue. Some of the questions it asked me were odd and, frankly, scary. I was asked for an Administrator password but not allowed to choose the username (more on this later). I was asked to choose a security level out of: Normal, High, Higher, Ultra-secure. I was asked whether I’d prefer a GNOME or a KDE. There was plenty more in this vein but eventually, still as part of the installation, I was asked to configure the various devices on my compuuter. I took this at face value and did my best to comply. The DSL Modem immediately failed but I wasn’t worried because most of the other stuff did as well. Several reinstalls of the operating system later, I discovered that the worst thing you can do is to try to set up your machine at this point. I shall save the wonders of the Mandrake Linux GUI for another day. Suffice to say that I managed to log into the machine and get most of the devices working. Ultimately though I neeed greater capacity so that I could add the necessary components loaded. Fortuitously I had received an email earlier in the day from a wholesale company selling cheap hard disks. I rang them and persuaded them to sell one to me as an individual rather than a company. I paid £24 for a 30GB disk which I thought was pretty good. As I knew that I would have to reinstall Linux once the new hard disk arrived, I didn’t get to tackle any of the myriad problems confronting me and contented myself looking at the pretty new interface.

It’s been 15 days since my last blog post. Crushing disillusionment and psychosis-inducing levels of sleep deprivation are to blame for the “lost fortnight”. However, I emerge from this dark night of the soul more resilient, wiser and a hell of a lot more clued up on the quirks of Linux. Before I detail some of the obstacles placed in my way, I’d just like to thank Conor Murnane, who, when I was at my lowest ebb, mocked my misery by sending me this article. Thanks, Con.