Ethereum 101

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Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform that enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications (dApps) on the blockchain. Ethereum was created in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin and has since become one of the most popular blockchain platforms in the world. In this article, we’ll provide a development history of Ethereum, an overview of its
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How to list and start VirtualBox VMs in command line in Linux?

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VirtualBox is a nice open source virtual machine software. It works nicely on Linux and is supported by many Linux distros like Ubuntu in their official package repositories, so it is quite easy to set it up on Linux. The VMs can also be managed in command line using the vboxmanage command line tool provided
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What can we expect in Java update 2019?

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Java is the most regularly used programming language for the creation of web applications. This high-level programming language develops by the Sun Micro-system. This language was designed for use in the world of internet and known for fastest, secure, and most reliable language of the computing platform. One interesting fact is that Java programmers are
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How to enlarge root partition and filesystem size of cloud Linux VM at runtime without rebooting Linux

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It is common that the root disk space is not enough when running a Virtual Machine in the cloud such as Amazon Web Service (AWS). The cloud storage usually provides tools or facilities to enlarge a virtual disk size. However, to make the Linux recognize and and use the enlarged disks without rebooting the OS,
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Too many TCP segments retransmited in a virtual machine

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I find there are too many TCP segments retransmited in a Xen virtual machine. sudo netstat -s | grep segments 537559 segments received 558908 segments send out 3533 segments retransmited 2677 bad segments received. There are 4 VMs on a host which has 4 cores. The segment retransmision rate is too high. It finally turns
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QEMU/KVM Network Mechanisms

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Introduction As we know, network subsystems are important in computer systems since they are I/O systems and need to be optimized with many algorithms and skills. This article will introduce how QEMU/KVM [2] network part works. In order to put everything simple and easy to understand, we will begin with several examples and then understand
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How to Install Paravirtualized CentOS 7 DomU on Xen

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This post introduces how to install a paravirtualized CentOS 7 DomU on Xen. The very common way of installing DomU does not work for CentOS 7. A little trick to set the repository and the network used by the VM should be used by adding a setting strings to the “extra=” field for this VM.
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How to Create Fedora 20 Domain-U on Fedora 20 Domain-0

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In this post, creating a file-backed virtual block device (VBD) and installing Fedora 20 in the Xen DomU via internet will be introduced. This domain is created on a Fedora 20 Dom0 as introduced in https://www.systutorials.com/installing-xen-on-fedora-20-as-domain-0/. For better performance, you may consider using LVM backed VM. Create file-backed VBD The actual space of VBD will
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How to Install, Run and Uninstall VMware Player and VirtualBox on Fedora Linux

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VMware Player and VirtualBox are two cool and free full virtualization solutions and both can run on top of a Linux host. In this post, I introduce how to install, run, and uninstall VMware Player and VirtualBox on Fedora Linux. VMware Player Install VMware Player Download the installation bundle from VMware’s website. For example, the
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Setting Up LVM Backed Xen DomU

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LVM volumes as backing for DomU’s file system is an appealing solution to Xen VBD. LVM volumes can dynamically grow/shrink and snapshot. These features make it simple and fast to duplicate DomU and adding storage to DomU. Creating LVM-backed Xen DomU is introduced in this post. Create LVM-backed VBD Suppose we have a LVM volume
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Duplicating LVM Backed Xen DomU

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LVM’s snapshot feature enables us to duplicate an LVM backed Xen DomU in seconds rather than minutes. We no longer need to copy the entire file system image like backing up file backed Xen DomU. We just need to make a snapshot of the current Xen DomU in seconds. When there are changes to the
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Duplicating and Backing Up LVM Backed Xen DomU from a Remote Server

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LVM’s snapshot feature enables us to duplicate an LVM backed Xen DomU in seconds inside of the same volume group. When we want to duplicate LVM backed Xen DomU from a remote server, we need to make use of LVM’s snapshot function and tools like scp and dd. Backing up the DomU is only part
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How to Create Fedora Live USB Media

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How to create a Fedora live USB media is introduced in this post. We can boot to Fedora operating system environment through a live USB system in the USB flash media on a USB-bootable computer without writing the computer’s hard disk. We can also install Fedora operating system from the live system environment. Remember to
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Setting Up Xen DomU on Fedora Linux (Fedora 12)

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Creating file-backed virtual block device (VBD) for Xen virtual machines and installing Fedora 12 in Xen DomU via internet will be introduced. Note that this tutorial is based on a pretty old OS (Fedora 12). But the method here is still valid while some minor details may need to be changed for latest Xen and
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Automatically Backing Up Xen File-backed DomU

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A script for backing up file-backed Xen DomU is introduced in this post. This script can be changed to similar platform. In our cluster, virtual machines are stored under /lhome/xen/. Virtual machine with id vmid is stored in directory vmvmid. The raw image disk file name can also be derived from vmid. Some more details
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How to Duplicate Xen DomU Virtual Machines

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Assumption: There are VBD based Xen DomU virtual machines stored under /home/xen/vm-f11-sample/. There are two files under vm-f11-sample: vm0-f11.run (The configuration file) and vmdisk0 (The virtual disk). Now we want to duplicate the virtual machine vm0 stored under vm-f11-sample to vm-10.0.0.213 which is stored under vm-10.0.0.213. And vm-10.0.0.213’s ip will be 10.0.0.213. The steps to
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A Simple CPU and Memory Performance Test of Xen Dom0 and DomU

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Please refer to Setting Up Xen Dom0 on Fedora : Xen 3.4.1 with Linux Kernel 2.6.29 on Fedora 12 for the platform of this test (this test runs on Fedora 11, however). I have done some simple performance test on DomU and Dom0 and compare with the performance on physical machines. These test are simple,
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Create and Manage Virtual Machines on Xen

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In this post, these content are introduced: Create and manage file-backed virtual block device (VBD) for virtual machines on xen. Install Fedora 11 via internet as DomU on top of xen. Manage virtual machines using xm. Create file-backed VBD: The actual space of VBD will be the amount of disk the virtual machine used. And
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Creating and Running Virtual Machine Using VMware Player and qemu-img

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基于VMware Player, qemu-img创建和运行虚拟机 Linux系统上的免费个人虚拟机方案. 1. 创建虚拟硬盘映象文件: qemu-img create -f vmdk WindowsXPPro.vmdk 10G 2. 创建.vmx虚拟机配置文件: 这是一文本文件. WindowsXPPro.vmx内容: config.version = “8” virtualHW.version = “3” ide0:0.present = “TRUE” ide0:0.filename = “WindowsXPPro.vmdk” memsize = “256” MemAllowAutoScaleDown = “FALSE” ide1:0.present = “TRUE” ide1:0.fileName = “auto detect” ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw” ide1:0.autodetect = “TRUE” floppy0.present = “FALSE” ethernet0.present = “TRUE” usb.present =
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Reading List for Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing

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Understanding the literature is usually the first step to do research, which is the same for systems research on cloud computing. A reading list may help a lot to those that just start in cloud computing research. Prof. Lin Gu, my PhD supervisor, compiled a reading list for system research on cloud computing. The reading
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