August 19th, 2008 admin
As I noted in a previous post I was recently the victim of a Random Kernel Upgrade Hell (RKUH). Maybe I should trademark that acronym, although its not particularly prounounceable like SNAFU, or PEBCAK. Anyway … the fact was that I was spending several hours trying to fix various problems with wifi drivers, VMware server, truecrypt and the sound in Skype, when it suddenly occured to me that a re-install was probably quicker. The double edged sword of Linux: quick to reinstall, but then again why should you need to do it so often? Well I guess in my case I push the OS pretty hard with some esoteric applications, but even so …
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August 19th, 2008 admin
I always forget this one when I’m setting up a new Ubuntu machine, so this is as much for my benefit as anyone else’s …
I’ve used a lot of OSes and have always found the chkconfig command on Redhat / Centos very useful for changing runlevels of services. The equivalent on Ubuntu is the fabulously unmemorably named sysv-rc-conf. Here’s how to get it on your system.
sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf
and to run it requires
sudo ..uh what was its name again sysrc something? Dammit.
So what I normally do is a quick symlink:
sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/sysv-rc-conf /usr/sbin/chkconfig
and then I can use chkconfig as if it was really available for Ubuntu. Don’t know why they couldn’t just stick to the same name. Bah.
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August 8th, 2008 admin
Depending on your background you’ll have different reactions to Free Wireless. Most people shout a quick whoopee, and plug right in there. However if your background is in IT security, you take a much dimmer view.
First of all there’s the fact that a lot of the traffic you send down the wire can be intercepted (”sniffed”) by people on the same network as you. The guy next to you in Starbucks could be snagging all your email passwords, for example. So at a minimum you need to make sure that you’re using Secure email protocols (eg Secure POP on port 995 instead of port 110, and Secure SMTP on port 465 instead of port 25), and using https intead of http wherever you get a chance.
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August 7th, 2008 admin
Anyone remember Groove? I first saw it about 6 years ago (can it really be that long?) and I got quite excited. Our peripatetic CEO at the time got enthused because it would let him share files with all of us while he was on the road, which he was for most of the year. But then Microsoft bought the company, and our plan to use it foundered. Recently it popped its head up again in the context of Sharepoint, but I get the feeling that Microsoft has never really pushed it.
So I was quite interested when I found out about Collanos (http://www.collanos.com/), which does the same thing. Even better, it is a cross platform application, running on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I made a note of it and waited for an excuse to try it out. Finally that excuse arrived. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Linux | 3 Comments »
August 5th, 2008 admin
I’ve been thinking of setting up a company to set people up with Open Source workplaces, and every year that goes past makes me think that the time is almost here.
There are a number of factors which are conspiring to make Linux a viable alternative:
July 18th, 2008 admin
I posted an entry here a month or so ago about my switch from Linux Mint to PCLinuxOS. There was good, bad, and definitely very ugly, which, to be fair, was probably due to the non-standard hardware of my Thinkpad r51e. In the many comments on that article, someone suggested that I should try Mandriva, which uses KDE and on which PCLinuxOS is based. So I did. Another new distro, another day …
I can’t remember what prompted the switch. I think I was having some minor problem with printing, which if you mess with your system as much as I do, is only to be expected. Anyway, I had a CD of Mandriva 2008, so instead of fixing the printing problem, I decided to change operating system. In the topsy-turvy world of Linux, these can both take around the same time. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Linux | 8 Comments »
July 18th, 2008 admin
Not sure if I’ve ranted about ID cards in the Philippines yet. Seems like every building you go into, you have to leave a photo ID and sign in. I hate leaving my passport with them, but that’s the only photo ID I have. I normally try and argue my way in. Once I left a calling card which seemed to satisfy them. Once I left a credit card, to my amazement and astonishment — just testing the boundaries of stupidity you understand. Several times I’ve had to call whoever it was I was meeting and get them to collect me from the lobby.
No more. I think I’ll just make my own ID card now — no one said they had to be official. Enter … auto badge generator page … http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/badge.php
Love it.
Posted in Life, Philippines | No Comments »
June 13th, 2008 admin
My girlfriend turned up this morning with her scanner, a Trust Flat Scan USB 19200. Its an old model from around 5-6 years ago, and she’d lost the driver disk. This was clearly a challenge for Linux …
I plugged the thing in (its a USB scanner, which pulls all its power from the USB bus) and the light went on. However the scanner application which comes with both PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu wouldn’t start up. Time for some investigation. I got a root terminal shell and tried poking around
lsusb showed that the scanner was recognised. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 2nd, 2008 admin
I started a new project at a client’s office a month or so ago. On the first day I turned up, and managed to work for about an hour, before my laptop died. Somewhat embarassing. I tried for about an hour to resuscitate it, but couldn’t get it to boot at all: it just died and froze before the KDE login screen. It seemed to be some sort of graphical mishap, and no amount of fiddling with xorg.conf from rescue mode would fix it.
I excused myself, went back home and after some more fiddling, decided to backup and re-install. Having made this decision I was looking through my pile of install CDs, and I came across PCLinuxOS 2008, which I’d downloaded a few weeks previously, and I’d been meaning to try out. “So why not try it out on this laptop?” said the evil part of my brain — the same part which forces me to spend time on Facebook instead of working.
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Posted in General IT, Linux | 22 Comments »
June 2nd, 2008 admin
The more astute readers will notice that its been over a month since I posted anything. Clearly the blogging apathy has hit, which any blogger will recognise as something which happens once the lustre of your shiny new blog begins to dull. But there are more sinister forces at work. I fear I may have been infected by the Philippines Treacle Syndrome.
This deadly wasting disease is most prominent on a Friday afternoon. It causes ordinary tasks to take several times longer than they usually should. Here are some examples:
Buying Ibuprofen in Mercury Drug:
You walk into the store. There are 6 staff in the shop, and 2 customers. You stride to the counter, behind which are 4 of the staff. They instantly stare intently at pieces of paper in front of them. Some try to run out the back door. Some duck under the counter. Eventually one will have to talk to you …
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