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Install Ubuntu from ISO on IPv6-only KVM Server in SolusIO

Junxiao Shi

I recently obtained a KVM virtual server on SolusIO platform, and I want to install Ubuntu 20.04 Server from the official ISO image. This is not as easy as I hoped, but I figured it out.

Note: if you are in a hurry, skip the "Background" and start from "Part 1" section.

Background: SolusIO cannot Mount ISO Image

SolusIO is a virtual infrastructure management solution published by Plesk International Gmbh, the same company behind the popular SolusVM software. They describe SolusIO to be the successor of SolusVM, with more focus on the self-service approach for end users.

SolusIO inherits the same clean user interface from SolusVM, and is easy to use. However, as a power user, I notice several features are missing in SolusIO. One of these features is the ability to install the operating system from an ISO image.

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How I Setup my NFD Development Machine

Junxiao Shi

I'm the lead developer of NDN Forwarding Daemon (NFD). In this article, I want to share how my development machine is setup.

Everything in Virtual Machines

I do all NFD development work in virtual machines. There are many benefits in using VMs: I can have a clean operating system, I can test out different OS versions if necessary, and I can work on a different change on another VM when "my code's compiling".

My VM was setup using Vagrant, using the following Vagrantfile:

$vmname = "devbox"
$sshhostport = 2222

$deps = <<SCRIPT
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade -y -qq
apt-get install -y -qq build-essential doxygen gdb git graphviz libboost-all-dev libcrypto++-dev libpcap-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev pkg-config python-pip python-sphinx valgrind
pip install sphinxcontrib-doxylink sphinxcontrib-googleanalytics
SCRIPT

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64"
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 22, host: $sshhostport, id: "ssh"
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.name = $vmname
    vb.memory = 4096
    vb.cpus = 4
  end
  config.vm.provision "deps", type: "shell", inline: $deps
  config.vm.provision "hostname", type: "shell", inline: "echo " + $vmname + " > /etc/hostname; hostname " + $vmname
  config.vm.provision "sshpvtkey", type: "file", source: "~/.ssh/id_rsa", destination: ".ssh/id_rsa"
  config.vm.provision "sshpubkey", type: "file", source: "~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub", destination: ".ssh/id_rsa.pub"
  config.vm.provision "sshauth", type: "shell", inline: "cd .ssh; cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys"
  config.vm.provision "gitconfig", type: "file", source: "~/.gitconfig", destination: ".gitconfig"
end
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reboot-into.sh: Fast Operating System Switch for BerryBoot

Junxiao Shi

BerryBoot is a bootloader for Raspberry Pi, allowing multiple operating system images to be placed on a single microSD card. It displays a menu upon system boot, so that the user can choose which OS to load.

I use a Raspberry Pi 3 as my primary desktop computer. It loads Ubuntu Mate 16.04 by default, in which I can code, read, and write dissertation. The same computer is also equipped with RetroPie, as my gaming machine playing FreeDoom.

One problem I'm frequently facing is: in order to switch from work mode to game mode, I must reboot the machine. Shutting down Ubuntu Mate can take as little as 10 seconds, or as much as 3 minutes, depending on luck. I hate to stay with the machine while it's rebooting, but if I walk away, I may miss the 10-second window in which I should select RetroPie from the BerryBoot menu, before it loads the default, Ubuntu Mate, automatically.

A less known feature of BerryBoot is its runonce file. You may instruct BerryBoot to load a specific image at next boot by writing the image name to data/runonce file in BerryBoot partition. This works particularly well if the Raspberry Pi is headless and does not have a keyboard, but it requires 5 steps and requires typing the full image name in the runonce file.

To simplify this process and quickly switch to another operating system in BerryBoot, I wrote a little script:

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parallelize.sh: run commands in parallel with bash

Junxiao Shi

Recently I'm doing some heavy research work. One part of my work involves invoking a simulation script with different inputs and parameters and then an analysis script to analyze the simulation output.

At first, this is an easy bash loop:

(
  echo 3 11
  echo 3 11
  echo 5 19
  echo 5 19
) | while read -r -a L; do
  X=${L[0]}
  Y=${L[1]}
  python2 simulation.py --x=$X --y=$Y < input.tsv > $X-$Y.simulation.log
  gawk -f analysis.awk $X-$Y.simulation.log > $X-$Y.analysis.tsv
done

The loop works fine, but it takes too long time when the input gets larger, because scripts are running sequentially. Since we have a big server with 32 CPU cores, can I run the scripts in parallel?

So I wrote this nifty little script, parallelize.sh:

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