After a going to the Anglia Ruskin University open day and speaking to one of the teachers there I decided to install Apache Tomcat. This is a JSP server which the teacher said is a programming language I would be learning. It makes sense to have the server setup and running before it’s needed as I don’t need the hassle of learning a new programming language and learning how to setup Apache Tomcat at the same time. The Apache Tomcat server is install on my laptop as there is currently no need for it on the main server because I do not know how to program JSP yet. I have setup the main server however to handle a domain that will redirect to my laptop so I can show people what I have been working on. If you are wondering what tomcat looks like you can see it at http://tomcat.black-flag.co.uk where you can see the welcome page but not access anything else apart from the examples.
Monthly Archive for May, 2007
Tomorrow is our last day at school before we leave for the exams. After that we will only see each other on results day so everyone at school is taking pictures. Like what I did for year 11 I tried to gather all the pictures that I could and put them on a website for people to see. You can find the pictures at www.black-flag.co.uk/gbhs/ and if you have any more please email them to me, My exam can be found by clicking the link for Cosmo 1847 on the right of the page. After my exams I will try and set up a proper website for them because at the moment it’s just a folder filled with images.
I have decided to sign up to Project Wonderful and to place an advert on my websites. The reason for this is to see if I can make a little bit of money out of my websites and to maybe cover the costs of the server. The ads I have planned will be small and next to the title of the sites since there is a convenient space to the right of them. The advert will in no way affect the rest of the website of my attitude towards them as I am not into making websites as a way to make money. They are a way to get my views, thoughts and skills out into the world. The advert will be a half banner which is 234×60 pixels so it does not take up much of the space. I also plan to update my websites once my exams are over so the advert my seem a little misfitted at first. The next sub-version of Cosmo will have the advert including in the designing of it along with a system for posting and editing guides that I will have on my website.
After much tinkering with the server I gave up in the end with linux and FreeBSD but I think that if I tried Ubuntu Linux I would have managed to get it to work. In the end I formated the computer with Windows XP home and installed VMware server on there. This machine is not the best for running these kind of programs due to the lack of RAM but it seems to be doing well. I currently have command line linux in the form of Debian 4.0 and I am just installing Windows 2000 Professional. I plan to get rid of this computer soon so if I am going to play around with this again it will most likely be on my more powerful desktop computer that recently had the RAM upgraded.
After helping my friend test out his VMware server over the internet I decided that I’d give it a go on my more powerful server. My main reason for this is like any other of my project, which is to learn. The biggest problem I have faced so far is the custom compiled kernel that I use and that I do not have X11 installed on the server. I have fixed most of these problems but I am having to recompile the kernel to have VM support so I’m using the latest snapshot kernel. VM stands for Virtual Machine and is a way of running many computers inside one physical computer.
Something that I have been thinking about for a while was to make a list of all the computer abbreviations used and what they mean. The main purpose of this is to be a quick lookup list to find out meanings you don’t know and to help new members with terms. The list can be seen here on the Kustom PCs forums.
After the problems I was having with the USB I found out the reason for this was because of the major changes from Debian 3.1 to 4.0. I reformatted my more powerful server with the latest debian and installed the things that I needed to compile the kernel. I used this guide to help me with it but it was similar to how I compiled the kernel before. The reason for the reformat was so that it had all the software that it was going to use installed on it where as my main server didn’t because it was upgraded from Debian 3.1 Sarge. After about a total of 5 and a half hours both the servers had the latest kernel image and headers compiled for them that I later installed on the computers. After doing a quick test on them to see that the USB was working I was happen to use it. Next time I compile the kernel I will not have the server in my bedroom since it makes it fairly hard to sleep.