It took me a little while today to figure out how to do a text only install of a CentOS guest on KVM. Previously I had started the install using virt-install and then connected to the VNC console over SSH. This is a bit of a hassle though when all you want is a quick, text based install.
So here’s how.
Firstly all of my VMs live on LVM so create a virtual disk to hold the VM. I’m creating a 20G ‘partition’ in a volume group called kvm-storage. The logical volume is called host.demo.com.
If you’ve installed Asterisk and FreePBX, or you’re using one of the preconfigured distributions such as Trixbox or Elastix, a good idea is to have the linux firewall, iptables, running on your system. Here’s an example of how you could set this up.
First thing to note is that it’s pretty easy to lock your self out of your server when playing around with iptables! It’s best to take a couple of simple precautions in case this happens.
These instructions should apply to CentOS/Redhat/Fedora.
Our Asterisk Only VPS template has been updated to run Asterisk 1.6 and CentOS 5.3.
This VPS comes with the Dahdi dummy driver compiled meaning you can run IAX2 trunks and Conferences if required.
For more details on all Sysadminman VOIP VPS plans click here
I recently had a client that wanted to install Asterisk and FreePBX on a machine that was already running Apache so I though I’d have a go at getting it working with lighttpd instead.
It is pretty easy to setup and worked well. The instructions below are for CentOS 5.1.
Here’s how to set it up. You will probably need to alter this for your environment but it’ll be a good starting point.
Prerequisites
You need to have already installed Asterisk and FreePBX. When installing FreePBX you should choose a unique location for the install rather than the Apache default – /var/www/html. I chose /var/www/freepbx.
Installing lighttpd
I chose to install lighttpd from rpmforge but you could just as easy compile it from source.
See here for details on setting up rpmforge – http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/FAQ.php#B
Lighttpd configuration file changes
Change or add the following lines from the default lighttpd configuration file
Generate the SSL certificate
Create the password file
Set some access rights
Start Lighttpd
And that’s it. You should now be able to connect to FreePBX on port 81 using HTTPS.
You should be asked for a username/password which, if you followed the instructions above, will be ‘bob’ and whatever password you chose.
Here’s a quick and easy way to get a CentOS Xen dom0 and domU up and running
1 – Boot using the CentOS CD
2 – When prompted for the package bundle selection just choose “Virtulization”
3 – Log into your new CentOS install as root
4 – Install the ftp server vsftpd. We’ll use this to install CentOS on our domU
5 – Mount our CentOS CD so we can access it via FTP
If you’ve ever had a slow, unable connection to a server it could be that you’re suffering from some packet loss between you and the server.
This might not be noticeable for web browsing or e-mail but if you’re doing any sort or VOIP or gaming it can be critical to know the quality of the connection between 2 points.
A simple tool for this is mtr. This is normally included in modern Linux ditros – if you’re a RedHat/CentOS/Fedora person just run –
Now you can fire it up by running –