As explained in an earlier post, rather than mess with the EeePC setup, I  ‘mount -bind’ the /dev and /proc folders of a linux root system sitting in an external drive ( a portable hard drive being faster by a mile than a usb memory stick).

This allows me to take several systems with me when working away (or simply on holiday).  I have a copy of the ‘general desktop’ I use day to day, the php & mysql system I tinker with and an OpenWrt buildroot system for the router.  These all live in folders under the /vz folder of the hard drive.

I have tinkered with the system for a while now and it is quite a simple matter to press “Ctrl-Alt-T” on the EeePC to get a terminal, “sudo su -” to get to the root shell, I don’t even have to type the “mount –bind” or “choot” commands in, a couple of presses on the up arrow and they are there in the command history.

At home, the system works fine, I turn off the wireless, run the gsm script and access the web.  With the 3G locally, I get between fast ISDN and early (512k) broadband speeds – not always good enough for Skype, but for general web browsing, emails and updating a blog, good enough.

However, last week, when we got to our destination (North Devon), I found that the phone only had a gsm connection – that starts at 9.6k.  Downloading voicemail messages emailed from the office took about 5 min per minute of message!  I got to keep up with the emails, but not much else.

The problem that stopped me dead in my tracks however, was that some websites (the bank, google adsense etc.)would refuse to completely load.  All of the sites that failed were https sites.  I keep shortcuts and login details stored within the “general desktop” system.  These sites seemed to be loading up to the part of the page where the login details would show.

The slow connection had me thinking that the browser must be giving up before the page was delivered, or perhaps it was something to do with the gsm modem service.

When I got back, I set the system back up and tried both the wifi/broadband link and the 3g modem connection.  Sure enough, when accessing the sites through the 3g phone, the same secure passworded pages failed.  Accessing those same sites via the Wifi/Broadband everything was fine.  Being back at the office, and with a faster connection, and copies on hand, I was able to try a few things out.

Re-naming the .mozilla folder caused the browser to ‘forget everything’ and I could once again access the sites.  Swapping back to the regular .mozilla folder, I dug a little deeper.

Deleting temp files made no difference (I had tried that whilst away), deleting the mozilla cookie files revealed them to be the problem!  Now some of the sites I need store part of the account details within cookies, so I guess I’ll have to make a few notes before setting off next time, as it seems that some site/cookies hold info about the connection you logged in with.

So, if you have any trouble accessing a passworded site and you are plumbed in to a different connection, try deleting or renaming the cookie files within the .mozilla/firefox folder.

With access to some sites, impossible and others slow, I was not able to do to much with the EeePC/Hard Drive combo this trip.  The system however, as a means of keeping several working environments accessable from the EeePC (or any other linux laptop) is – in my book – a winner!  The Hard drive (or memory stick if you favour battery operation over speed) can be carried away from the laptop, if that gets lost, none of your work or passwords are on the internal drive.

Usually, a VPS (Virtual Private Server) is offered by web hosting companies to their customers as an alternative to virtual hosting (where they can upload web pages and applications, but not configure the server software) and Dedicated Hosting (Where they get – and pay for – an entire server that they can specify and manage themselves).  Like Virtual Machines on a Workstation, a VPS on a server allows the hosting supplier to slice up one big server into many smaller servers, each with their own operating system, RAM and Hard Disk space.

Now, on one of these hosted VPS machines, you get enough resources to run a few web services accross one or more domains – depending on your budget.  The operating systems are pre-installed with the minimum software required, its up to you to add more – but its best to stick with the minimum you need for reasons of performance and security.

Move that same VPS system onto your own server connected to your workstation with a 100Mb network behind a properly setup router/fire wall and things are very different.

You can slice up your server however you need, I’m using a recent single core machine with 3 Gb RAM and a couple of 80 Gb SATA Hard Drives raided together.  At the moment, a 110Gb Drive is also sitting on the IDE connector.  It currently has seven containers running, the smallest has 900Mb ram and 6Gb of Hard Drive Space and is a bit of an overkill running DNS to the rest of the network as it does.

The Largest has 3Gb RAM, 26Gb of Main Hard Disk and exclusive access to the 110Gb IDE drive.  This is my ‘Desktop’ system.  It runs VNCServer, creating a virtual desktop that I can log into from wherever I happen to be sitting, an Ubuntu 8 Server operating system with the addition of XFCE desktop (compiled from source rather than the Ubuntu packages), Firefox web browsing, Gftp, Thunderbird for email, Open Office for general documents, PDF Viewer etc.  Also running in this container is Samba, so that I can share any files with the windows machines I now use to access the system.

In order to run server software like Samba, that requires a little more access to the networ card than usual, the OpenVZ vethN device is used, this requires that a script is run on the server after the container has started.  As I don’t often need to restart the server or the desktop container very often, I run this from a SSH login.

Regular server software such as Apache, sshd and even VNC Server are quite happy with the regular ‘venetX’ devices that start whenever a container is started.

The VPS Software running all this is OpenVZ.  It has command line tools for creating and modifying  ’containers’ and there are several templates for various distributions of linux, or you can create your own.

On top of this, there is a great browser based tool for managing the server, VTONF is GPL software from a hosting company called Bobcares.  It allows you to completely run the VPS Server using a browser, creating, starting, stopping and modifying containers at the click of a button.

So, How is this any better than a Virtual Machine running on a server?

Well, as the only software running as some version or other of Linux, OpenVZ is able to keep all of the container file spaces under a single directory “/vz” on the main system.  To inspect or retrieve some files, from a container, you just need to navigate to the relevant directory under “/vz”.

If a container is going to need more space that you planned for, VTONF (or a shell command) will allow you to increase it.  Ditto for memory.

Unlike a VPS up at a web host, your VPS Server can be asked to map any physical device ( in the ‘/dev’ directory) can be mapped to a container.

I recently found another advantage.  As the file system inside an OpenVZ container is simply a complete linux system root, should you need to use it on another linux system, it can be copied to a drive or memory stick and then, it is just a matter of ‘mount -bind’ing then ‘/dev’ and ‘/proc’ directories before chrooting into the container root.

I did this with an EeePC and the Container I use to do a bit of PHP developement.  A couple of changes in the container’s ‘/etc’ folder – to deal with the different network settings – and I was able to start the container’s apache webserver and log into the content management system using the EeePC web browser pointed at “http://localhost” .

I already knew that although getting a mobile phone to work with a Linux system is not always easy, I had read that several people had had luck using both usb cables and BlueTooth connections.

I’m on Three mobile network and have a ‘Skype Phone‘ or WP-S1 and a Sony W910i that Three used as an incentive for me to re-commit to them, saying that the Broadband Speed through the phone would be better than the WP-S1.  What they forgot to tell me was that in my area, the signal is not that great all of the time anyway.

The avarage download speed I get at home is pretty good, somewhere between fast ISDN and the original 512k broadband.  Uploads however are usually about 50-60k.  Good enought for browsing, email and the od bit of remote access, but not quite ready for VOIP or Skype via the computer – I guess the Skype function in the WP-S1 is using the band width differently.

The EeePC‘s Skype however gives good results when connected via a wifi link or network cable.

The Sony W910i would not (for me) connect via the blue tooth connection, but the usb cable works with a little tinkering.  Again, the details found on http://forum.eeeuser.com (try searching for usb and three.co.uk) produced several examples of how to get connected.

Currently, I use the W910i by poping up a terminal window and running “pon gsm” as root.

Sometimes this fails with an error message on the phone, but I just click the ok button on the phone and try the command again.  Once connected its fine.

If I was going to start from scratch and wanted to limit my monthly outgoings, I would get a 3G modem or a Skype Phone on pay as you go.  Topping up and converting the cash to broadband access gives up to 30 days to get throught the download allowance (1G, 3G or more currently £10 gets you 1G) – If you don’t use it for a while, don’t top it up – Pretty good internet access without regular bills – not bad.

As an extra, if its a Skype Phone / WP-S1 your using, (currently) topping up will give you access to the Skype function for 30 days – It only works for calls to other Skype computer users, not Skype In or Skype Out calls.

Like most, I had plans to replace the xandros linux with one I am more familiar with.  To my surprise, the simple control panel is fine for navigating the built in apps, they all work (for me) very well, and the EeePC connect to the internet via both my wifi network and 3g phones.

If I need exta software, its mostly command line stuff and that can be run very easily using a chrooted memory stick or external hard disk.

After being disapointed with Ubuntu‘s handling of various media on the web, I was reluctant to throw out the EeePC‘s Xandros, especially when it connected to the net using both wifi and (with a little tinkering) both of the 3g phones I currently own.  It also played the beeb iPlayer streaming video out of the box – something that proved to be a bit hit and miss with Ubuntu.

For the rest of the software I may need, most are command line such as the openwrt build system for compiling the router software, apache, mysql and php to do a bit of web development, these can all be installed into a minimal linux (Ubuntu) install on another system and copied to a large memory stick or portable hard drive (ext2 formatted).

Then just plug it in.  The eeepc will see the the memory stick or hard drive and offer to open it.

Call up a terminal window (Ctrl-Alt-T).

‘ls /media’ to see where the stick has been mounted, (usualy related to the manufacturer name of the memory stick/drive).

and then

‘sudo su – ‘

followed by ‘mount –bind /dev /media/memorystick/partition1/dev’

and ‘mount –bind /proc /media/memorystick/partition1/proc’

finally ‘chroot /media/memorystick/partition1′

You will then get a root prompt for the operating system located inside the memory stick/hard drive.  As the /dev and /proc have been bound to the corresponding directories in the chrooted memory stick/hard drive, it will be able to access the system devices and status of the eeepc host.

If the /etc/resolve.conf file is pointing to a different nameserver, you will have to edit it (or copy it using another Terminal window) to be the same as the one in the eeepc.

After that, you should be able to ‘apt-get’ any software you need -remember that the ram is short, your sharing it with the eeepc, so anything that usually requires large amounts of ram or swap will probably fail – if you are using an external hard drive, a swap file can be created and used from the xandros side, swap files on memory sticks should be avoided.

If you have some windowed software that needs Xserver to run – I perfer to use synaptic to locate and install software, as long as it will run without the full gnome or kde system, apt-get the application, apt will also drag down any required bits and pieces.

In a regular Terminal window, ‘sudo su -’ followed by ‘xhost localhost’ to allow connections from the local machine, on the chrooted Terminal, ‘export DISPLAY=localhost:0′ before running the program.

Providing you keep track of the terminals and only add or remove software in the chrooted one and your not using any hardware related apps, if it all goes wrong, just re-format the memory stick or external hard drive and try again – no harm to the eeepc.