vmware this thing....

[gecko]

Its getting time for me to build another spam filter and decommission the old one. I usually do this every year or so to take care of new software and I don't want to upgrade my production server for fear of breaking something.

Has this project not been done yet in vmware? If not, I'm a little surprised and disappointed. Is there no interest in it, problems, or anything I should be aware of before I give it a shot? A vmware image sure would be easy to do upgrades with in the future.

Thoughts? Anyone interested?

[Marius]

I recall reading somewhere on here, someone running their spam filter on a VM. I'm just not sure where. Personally, I don't see how there would be any issues with it. I'd say it would work quite well actually.

As you said, I would imagine it would be great for doing updates. Just take a snapshot of your server, and if you break something, simply roll back to the snapshot.

[Netopia]

I don't think anyone is running one, but I suggested it on another thread, since that would give total portability within an enterprise should the hosting computer go down.

I've again started to play with the idea, but I'm also curious about using building one using Virtual Box instead of VMWare.

Joe

[Marius]

I don't think anyone is running one, but I suggested it on another thread, since that would give total portability within an enterprise should the hosting computer go down.

I wonder if there's a way to convert a running Linux box into a VM. I've done it with Windows servers, but the VMWare Converter app only works with Windows servers, not Linux. I suppose one could ghost the production server, and then convert the ghosted image into a VM.

[Netopia]

Perhaps, but I really don't know.

I've spent some time today playing with Virtual Box, and I must say that it's a pretty darned easy system to use. So far, I'm on my WinXP desktop and running Virtual Machines that are Mandriva 2008 and Vista Business. All seamless and easy!

Sidenote: this is the first time I've ever run Vista. I've never been willing to put it on a real machine!

Joe

[Netopia]

This thread should actually be moved to a more relevant forum.

Anyway... the two advantages I see of setting up on a VM are:

1) I have a couple of spam filters that I've sold to companies and I get paid for any maintenance (like adding names to the white lists or updating software and the like). The biggest pain is just setting the machines up. With a VM, I could get a machine setup exactly how I want it and just copy it for new installs. I'd have to change all of their specific settings, but all the software would be preinstalled, configured and tested. I could charge the client the same but cut production costs.

2) Make a backup copy after any changes and keep it on an external drive. If a filter goes down (physically) all you have to do is load up the Virtual Box software on another machine and run the filter there.

I like this idea!

Joe

[Marius]

Make a backup copy after any changes and keep it on an external drive. If a filter goes down (physically) all you have to do is load up the Virtual Box software on another machine and run the filter there.

Awesome idea!

[Netopia]

What part of Virginia are you from? I'm near Greenbelt in Maryland.

Joe

[Marius]

What part of Virginia are you from?

South West VA (in the mountains)

[Netopia]

WOW... what sort of work is way down there? VA Tech?

Joe

[Marius]

WOW... what sort of work is way down there?

Not much at all. VA Tech has so many students who would work for nothing, just to get experience, I hear that's it's actually pretty difficult to get a good IT job there.

I lucked out and found a large(for the area) hospital to work at. If I didn't work here, I'd certainly be living somewhere else. lol

[Netopia]

My sister was a Charge Nurse of the CCU unit at Mary View in (Portsmouth?). My nephew is an advanced EMT and just got his nursing degree on top. He's living in Blackburg. He had to transport the body of the shooter to the morgue last year. Anyway, most of my involvement with southern VA is, in some way, related to hospitals!

Joe

[ryans]

Bump...

Also, has Freespamfilter been done on centOS yet?

[AnonymousDog]

It's been done, but nobody has written up a full-blown, cook book style guide for Cent OS. I have some quick 'n dirty notes, but it'd be ill advised for me to release those like they were guidance. I've done several Cent OS 5 boxes, and they are a pretty cake install if you use the RPM Forge repository for Cent OS...almost all of the components from the Fedora docs can be installed with yum.

I think my next "box" will be a VM; I just don't see any downside, and the upside is huge.

You would be more than welcome to contribute a Cent OS in VM guide

[Jasper.e]

I have been running the spamfilter as described by freespamfilter.org in VMWare for several years now. It works really well, for both Fedora and Ubuntu server. (Debian set-up-guide by Mr88Talent works fine for also the latest LTS release of ubuntu server). I have a fully working setup with pretty much all the components described in the guides from freespamfilter.org, including MailZu and amavisd's mysql support.

You just have to make sure your clock is synced to the host OS, if not amavisd will have trouble to kill or reload itself. That's the only glitch I ran into, and is pretty easy to fix. For me it meant making the following alterations, a fragment from my notitions made while installing:

Make sure /boot/grub/grub.conf has appended to kernel lines: clock=pit nosmp noapic nolapic

Not exactly a detailed description but there's plenty to find about keeping vm clocks in sync on google.