Software RAIDs on m23 clients

The new m23 halfBaked 0.5.3 supports software RAIDs on m23 clients. Partitions or entire drives can be combined to RAIDs. m23 supports the RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 and 10. These RAID levels have advantages and disadvantages in relation to speed increase and data reliability. RAIDs can be used like normal partitions to install operating systems to or to use them as swap or storage space. The kernel and the modules can be installed on a non-RAID partition to enable the installation of the operating systems on all RAID types. You can define additional mount points as it is done in the file /etc/fstab. The new version is not available as ISO image but via the update function in the m23 user interface or via APT.

• Installation guide
• Wikipedia about RAIDs

Preinstalled m23 for VMWare Player

The new preinstalled m23 can be run in the VMPlayer (free of charge). This option should be interesting for all those who would like to try out m23 but have not done so before because they did not want to install the m23 system. You should consider installing m23 on a real server for productive environments via the installation CD or Debian packages.

• Installation guide
• VMWare Player

Help

The new installation guide contains information about the different methods to install m23 on your server. The complete m23 help was revised and updated in the supported languages English, German and French. There are a new chapter about the installation of RAID systems and new screenshots.

• Installation guide
• Manual (Online version, English)
• Manual (Online version, French)
• PDF versions of the manuals

This page gives you all the information that is necessary to install your own m23 server. m23 can be installed in different ways. The following chapters are containing all necessary instructions for each method. You should read the chapter "First steps with your m23 server" in the user manual after the installation.

Have fun!

Overview

• Server installation ISO
• Debian packages
• Univention Corporate Server

Server installation ISO

You can download the server installation ISO image from the m23 page and burn it on a DVD/CD (please use a rewritable medium to save resources and reduce toxic waste). The ISO installs a minimal Debian operating system and after the 1st boot from hard disk the m23 software is post-installed via the internet.

Suitable for

• Bare-metal installation on a dedicated server
• Installation in a full virtualization (e.g. VirtualBox or KVM)

Requirements

• Internet connection for installation (and operation)
• Static IP address
• Network card supported by Debian (network bridge if necessary)
• Minimum 25 GB HDD/SSD and 1 GB RAM

Additional informationen

• Download the Server installation ISO image from here.
• German Video-Tutorial: m23-Server installieren: ISO

Hint 1: The m23 Server installation ISO is developed for simpler setups and gives you only a fewer server configuration options (the functional range of m23 remains untouched). If you prefer a more complicated server configuration or your hardware is not supported, you need to install Debian with a Debian installation CD and follow the instructions under Debian packages afterwards.

Hint 2: The server installation ISO file can also be installed directly without previous burning in a virtual machine, like for example QEMU, KVM or VirtualBox. You can find some further hints about this here: "Virtual machines".

Hint 3: If you don't have a CD/DVD drive in your server, you can use the tool UNetbootin to convert the m23 server installation ISO into a bootable USB stick.

Debian packages

The m23 server installation packages are CPU architecture independent and can thus be installed on any server for which a Debian version (e.g. amd64, i386 or arm64) is available. m23 works best if m23 can use the server exclusively and it is not used for other purposes at the same time.

Suitable for

• Distributions: Debian: 10, 11, 12. UCS (Univention Corporate Server): 5.x
• Bare-metal installation on a dedicated server
• Installation in a full virtualization (e.g. VirtualBox or KVM)
• Installation in a container virtualization (e.g. LXC)

Requirements

• Internet connection for installation (and operation)
• Static IP address
• Network card supported by Debian (network bridge if necessary)
• Minimum 25 GB HDD/SSD and 1 GB RAM

Installation

• German Video-Tutorial: m23-Server installieren: Skript

To install m23 on Debian or UCS, run the following (after checking the script carefully) as root:

wget -T10 -t10 https://goos-habermann.de/m23inst.sh -O m23inst.sh && bash m23inst.sh

Caution: Be sure to make a backup before installing. Installing can lead to total data loss.

Hint for Raspberry Pi: Please also install the official Debian on the Raspberry Pi and not the fork Raspbery Pi OS. You can download tested Debian Raspberry Pi SD card images from https://raspi.debian.net/tested-images. For information on setting a static IP before writing the SD card, see the German video "Raspberry Pi OS"-Images anpassen.

Univention Corporate Server (UCS)

Under UCS you can install the m23 app directly via the Univention App Center:

Release date: It is possible that m23 as UCS m23 app – due to the complicated and error-prone release procedure at Univention – will be released significantly later than the other m23 versions. If you want to use m23 on UCS, you can install the m23 server software via the m23 Debian packages. The packages provided in this way are usually more up-to-date than those of the UCS m23 app and offer the same range of functions.

A new m23 update that introduces software RAIDs on m23 clients is in preparation. The update will be released when the tests are done and the translations are complete. This will be in the next few days. The m23 version number will increase to 0.5.3.

The m23hwscanner package was updated to support software RAIDs. The detection of the installation should work now in all cases. If you update a client or install a new one the updated package gets installed automatically.

The last update is rather unimportant. I created a new m23 autumn logo, because there were red points in the old one that didn't belong there.

Have fun!

I think it is worth to increase the m23 version number after lots of changes and m23 Debian packages. There may arise few problems during the update. You can find a help text at the end.

Status

• Debian packages
  The packages are stored on the SourceForge server an can get installed with APT easyly. The installation process hasn't changed till the last. This means:
  1. Add

     deb http://m23.sourceforge.net/m23inst/ ./

     in the /etc/apt/sources.list
  2. execute

     apt-get update

  3. and install with

     apt-get install m23

  
  Hint
  The SourceForge server may abort the download of the packages. Please repeat the the last step until all needed packages could be downloaded. This abruption may occur several times especial on big packages.
  
• Update via the m23 administration interface
  The new updates are based on the m23 packages. Updates of old m23 installations should work because only the update mechanism on the SourceForge server was changes.
  
  Hint
  There may problems with very old systems because other Debian software gets updated too and there may issues with package dependencies. If the update takes a long time (more than one hour or how long it takes to download 120-150 MB with your internet connection speed) you can have a look (as root) on the update process:

  screen -r m23install

• m23 server installation CD
  The ISO image is ready an can be downloaded from here.

Possible problems and solutions

APT or rather debconf may ask you some questions. You have to answer these to continue with the installation. I got the following questions while updating an old system. You should answer with my recommended answers:

• Remove current kernel: No
• Change my.cnf: Keep installed version
• Change config.inc.php: Keep installed version

When the instalation comes to the tftpd-hpa package the whole installation process may stall. In this case you should stop the installation with Ctrl+C and restart it with

apt-get install m23

. Now answer the question "Do you want to ignore this potential problem and continue, or would you rather not do so now? Continue? (n/y)" with "y".

Feel free to use the forum if this doesn't work for you.

Now for the first time there are Debian packages available for an installation of the m23 server on an existing Sarge system. On the long term, Debian packages are meant to replace the current updating system.
Its advantages will be that the amount of data transferred in the updating process will be reduced for "rare-updaters" and you will be allowed an easy update of the entire system by APT.

Just add the following line into your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://m23.sourceforge.net/m23inst/ ./

the server software including all additional programs will be installed. The packages will be configured automatically.

A simple

apt-get update

apt-get install m23

should be all you need to do.

Just try it out and tell everybody about your experiences HERE in the m23 forum.

Have fun!