eje211's questions

I'm trying to use a Chromebox as a tiny server. I'm using Linux through Crostini to host the server application. It really seemed like a good idea. Currently, I'm trying not to replace the whole Chrome OS, although it might come to that.

I think I'm almost done, but my server software requires its storage allocation, a fairly large chunk of data that I store on external drives, to run code. Basically, I need external partitions to be mounted with the exec permission. I would like to point out that I am in developer mode. I've seen some articles on the web that said that mounting an external drive with the exec permission may only be possible in developer mode. But they never explained how. (Of course.) So far, I've tried sudo mount -o remount,exec /the/mount/location from the Chrome OS shell (not the inner Linux shell) and it did not affect the exec permission at all.

Do I need to install a Linux distribution over Chrome OS, or is there a way to mount the external drive with the exec permission within Chrome OS? Or is there yet another solution? The server app needs to be able to execute some files within its storage section and that section is too large to store within the Chromebox's built-in drive. I've been running this server on a Raspberry Pi, but what I really need is a computer with GPU acceleration, which the Chromebox has.

EDIT: Since I posted this, I had the clever idea of finding out which part of the large chunk of data really needed to be executable and I made a soft link to my main drive at that point. Which should have been a win-win: only that small-ish part that needs to be executable needs to be on the main drive. But that didn't work. It seems that Chrome OS does not allow symbolic links from an external mount to the main mount, I assume for that reason. It throws the error Too many levels of symbolic links even though it's the only symbolic link in the path. (I checked.)

I will soon need to setup a database server on a budget. We are planning to use Postgres on Ubuntu (most likely) and we'd like to have a backup server. For replication, I think I'll just use Postgres's Streaming Replication. It does all that I need and is simple to set up.

But what if the main server fails and we need the backup? Is there a way to route data to the backup without a third computer?

Let's say my main computer has the domain name PG-MAIN and my backup has the domain name PG-BACKUP. If I had a third computer I could (for example) check to see if PG-MAIN is up and if it is down, rename PG-BACKUP to PG-MAIN. Then, any query sent to PG-MAIN would still succeed. Maybe that would be a bad solution. I don't actually know. (Although this Server Fault answer says it's a bad idea to use DNS that way.)

But is there a way for the backup to silently take the place of the main computer upon failure without the use of a third computer? I can't think of anything. And by "failure", I mean like the database daemon stops responding or a piano falls on the computer.

If it turns out to be absolutely, positively impossible, what would be cost-effective way of handling the fallback? The client applications will be custom-made. Should the logic of fallback part of the system be handled by the client applications? (That last part sounds like a very bad idea.)

I'm trying to use Wine on Ubuntu to use a proprietary Windows program that looks for a proprietary device on the local network. I don't know where it's looking, which protocol, port or IP address it's using. That information is sealed. I only know it uses the Ethernet port.

It can't find the device in Wine. It can on Windows. It does not use any device drivers. All communication is done over Ethernet.

I tried poking around to see what could be going wrong. I tried several Windows LAN viewers and scanners on Wine, but none of them found any computers. So now I'm wondering: can Wine actually scan the local area network and find computers (or computer-like devices) on it? If so, how do I enable that ability?

My Wine version is 1.6.2 and I'm running it in a 32 bit prefix on a 64 bit Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty machine.

I have a web host system that I love, except for their web interface to administer sites. So I've changed my servers to a new service that is basically only a remote Linux machine. Everything works great except for the DNS.

It used to be that when I made a new site, I bought the domain name and pointed it to the host's DNS servers and from there I had a web interface that allowed me to do what I wanted with the zone file. Now, all I have is a Linux box with BIND9 on it.

Can I create a DNS server for several sites? Fox example, if I'm managing site1.com and site2.com and site3.com on 111.112.113.114, can I make the machine on that IP the DNS server for all of them, telling the outside world where the www and other subdomains are, where the email goes to and so forth?

My main domain registrar allows me to specify a "custom DNS server," where I can place the IP for a DNS server. I think I've configured BIND9 correctly on the web server and specified a low TTP, but so far no luck: my test site is still pointing to the old domain. Is what I am trying to do possible?