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HOWTO Install the ownCloud Server on Mageia5

It appears that "the cloud" is the popular buzzword now. All cloud computing is is a remote file server where you can store, access, share and manipulate your files. While several commercial services are available, it's possible to create your own cloud service using the ownCloud software. As with any powerful server software, it's not out-of-the-box easy, but with some preparation and understanding, it's not that difficult. Most of this HOWTO is Mageia-specific; a lot of the configuration details are enumerated at the ownCloud website documents . We're installing ownCloud on a minimal Mageia4 virtual machine using VirtualBox just to go through the process. There is no X-server, so it's all done on the command line. Mageia5 documentation, installation discs and Errata can be found here . Part One -- Installing the Apache Webserver We must begin by installing the Apache webserver. It's certainly possible to use alternative webservers, but Apac

HOWTO Configure a Headless Transmission Torrent Server for Mageia5

This will describe how to install and configure the Transmission torrent application on Mageia5 in a headless configuration, how to make it automatically download torrents by placing a .torrent file in a particular directory and admin the client remotely using both a cli (command line interface) and a GUI (graphical user interface) application. Transmission has both a Homepage ,  a Wiki and a Forum , so there's no lack of help and support. But as for installing it as a headless server on Mageia, all we found were HOWTOs for Debian/Ubuntu systems. We're assuming that you have Mageia5 installed and have configured your user to use the sudo command. INSTALL Begin by installing the transmission daemon and the command-line client. $ sudo urpmi transmission-daemon transmission-cli This installs  transmission-daemon, transmission-cli and transmission-common (which is mostly the documentation). All the binaries will be found in /usr/bin . The transmission package also

A Faster System

I'm always looking for ways to speed up my computer, especially when it comes to the boot process and loading applications. A good overall discussion or improving system performance is at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Maximizing_Performance , just remember that it focuses on the ArchLinux distro, not the Mandriva (now Mageia) distro I use. READAHEAD A useful utility is readahead . According to its manpage, readahead populates the page cache with data from a file so that subsequent reads from that file will not block on disk I/O. On my Mandriva 2010 system, the default installation of readahead places a default file at /var/lib/readahead/default.early . To create custom files based on your system, you should reboot the system and pause the GRUB menu and add the following to the command line. init=/sbin/readahead-collector This will examine your system as it boots and create a list of what files are to be loaded in the order that they are loaded. The configuratio

Upgrade Mageia 2 or Mageia3 to Mageia 4

Back in the early days of Linux, the changes to the OS were so dramatic that even when updating withing the same distro, in-place point release updates were problematic enough and it was always recommended that a major version release be done from scratch. There were just too many major changes to the underlying subsystems and package naming conventions. Doing an in-place update was just asking for trouble. Modern distros have matured quite a bit although there are occasionally some major subsystem changes being made. Yet it's never been easier to do an in-pace major version upgrade. I just did the upgrade on several Mageia3 systems and the results were consistent and satisfactory, not to mention simple. Step 0. Always backup critical information. Have a Mageia3 recovery disc on hand. From GUI Step 1. $ sudo mgaapplet-upgrade-helper --new_distro_version=4 Done. From CLI Step 1. Fully update the packages you now have installed. $ sudo urpmi --auto-update