(February 2020 onwards) WMT Pi VMs

[hamishmb]

Apologies, I have only just seen this post.

1) I can't quite recall the exact reason, but I remember encountering issues when using newer versions. I think perhaps the API had changed but the documentation hadn't, and it was behaving oddly. Sorry I can't be more specific - it's been some time and I no longer remember exactly what happened.

2) Yes, xinetd only needs to be enabled for Sump Pi - my mistake.

[hamishmb]

An update on the VM creation process:

I have made several more clarifications to the document, while I will make available once I have finished setting up the VMs. Unfortunately, I reconfigured my home network a while ago, and unthinkingly used 192.168.0.0 as the network address - the same as the WMT site-wide network. Oops.

As a result of this, there will be delays as I reconfigure the network and my firewall rules to use a different network address, so that I can finish setting up the VMs and use them for testing.

[hamishmb]

For future reference, I have uploaded a copy of Patrick's old VM creation instructions and notes to https://wmtprojectsforum.altervista.org ... stem%20VMs. These have since been superseded by the information in the installation specification, but might be useful for someone who wants to understand more about how it works under the hood.

[hamishmb]

I have now reconfigured my network, so barring anything else going wrong, I should now be able to get on with setting up the new VMs.

[hamishmb]

My network has been reconfigured. I should be able to finish the VMs at the end of the week and get on to testing code and general development again.

I have uploaded the version of Debian Buster I used to create the VMs to: https://wmtprojectsforum.altervista.org ... stem%20VMs, so that we can use it again later if needed - it was hard to find.

We may need to authorise payment for some more webserver space soon as we've got very little left.

[hamishmb]

Okay, I have fixed the instructions, so I just need to rebuild them again now (they're bigger than they should be due to the faffing with the bad instructions) and then upload.

The command we used to compress the whole lot with 7-zip seems to have gone AWOL. Does anyone remember what/where it was?

[TerryJC]

Afraid not.

[PatrickW]

Unless anything was said to the contrary, I think I would have just used Ark to compress them, using whatever its default settings are for 7z. (Ark is a GUI archive utility for KDE.)

I don't recall there being any special compression settings needed, beyond choosing the archive format...

[hamishmb]

I know I did it on the commandline, but couldn't find the command I used. I did figure it out in the end though, and managed to produce an archive of a similar size. It turned out rebuilding the VMs wasn't needed as everything compressed well. I'll be doing it again in the near future anyway after some more database schema changes.

The new VMs will be available on the webserver in a few minutes once it has uploaded.