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Avoid latency while editing remote files using bcvi

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:59:00 +0000

The ability to run both console and graphical programs securely on a remote system using SSH brings you a great deal of freedom. When the communications link to that remote system has high latency, however, running interactive programs such as a text editor on the remote machine can become a real test of your patience. The bcvi project lets you edit files on a remote system using gvim (or another editor) on your local desktop machine to avoid the latency. Even without latency issues, bcvi is a handy tool when you want to use gvim to edit a file on a server that does not have gvim or the X libraries installed.

bcvi works by creating a port-forwarding "back-channel" when you connect to a remote system with SSH. On the remote system, when you execute bcvi, it uses this back-channel to tell your desktop machine to start gvim and fetch the file you want to edit on the remote machine. This all relies on gvim supporting SSH URIs so it can download the file from the remote machine over SSH and put it back again once you are done editing.

There are no packages of bcvi for openSUSE, Fedora, or Ubuntu. The bcvi script is presented inline on its home page, and can also be downloaded. The bcvi script must be installed on both the client and server machines, which you can do with the following commands:


# cp /.../bcvi /usr/local/bin/
# chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/bcvi
# dos2unix /usr/local/bin/bcvi
# ls -lh /usr/local/bin/bcvi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8.2K 2008-06-23 14:59 /usr/local/bin/bcvi*

The same bcvi script is used in three contexts: a daemon process that invokes gvim on your desktop machine in response to editing requests that you start on remote hosts; to wrap the invocation of SSH, setting up additional port forwarding so bcvi on the remote system can talk to the bcvi daemon process on your desktop machine; and on remote systems to initiate an edit request on your desktop machine.

When you SSH into a remote machine with bcvi the TERM environment variable has additional information added to it so bcvi on the remote machine can work out how to talk to your desktop machine. On the remote machine you will most likely want to add the following two lines to your shell's ~/.profile file. The first line lets bcvi take its information out of the TERM environment variable, leaving TERM the way it would normally be set. The second line makes typing vi on the remote machine execute bcvi, which will open gvim on your local machine. On most Linux systems, bash is the default shell, so the file to edit is ~/.bash_profile.


test -n "$(which bcvi)" && eval "$(bcvi --unpack-term)"
alias vi=bcvi

You also need to ensure that bcvi is running as a daemon on your desktop machine so that when you execute bcvi on the remote machine it can communicate with the local bcvi daemon to open the file for editing. You can start the daemon automatically by adding the following line to your ~/.bash_profile:


bcvi -l  &

Instead of having to remember to wrap your SSH invocations with bcvi, you can use a shell alias on your desktop machine to wrap all connections, as in the code below. I found that if I added the alias to ~/.bash_profile instead of ~/.bashrc it did not take effect when logging in to a local X window session -- so although adding the code to the .bashrc means it is executed every time you create a shell, you are guaranteed that the alias will be in effect all the time.


alias ssh="bcvi --wrap-ssh --"

With these modifications to the .bash_profile file on your desktop machine and the servers you are connecting to, you can edit files as shown below. Because you have set up vi as a shell alias to bcvi, you don't have to change your command line at all in order to edit a file on the remote system with gvim on your desktop machine. The screenshot includes this interaction, where I have also saved the file and executed cat on the remote machine to verify that the updates were saved.


[ben@virtual_client ~]$ ssh ben@virtual_server
[ben@virtual_server ~]$ date >bcvi-test-file.txt
[ben@virtual_server ~]$ vi bcvi-test-file.txt

bcvi

You can use a text editor other than gvim with bcvi as long as the text editor you want to use can load and save files over SSH. For instance, the gedit text editor can load and save over SSH:// URIs. To allow bcvi to edit using gedit, you need to add the following procedure to the bcvi Perl script, perhaps just after the execute_vi function.


sub execute_gedit {
   my($self, $alias, @files) = @_;

   s{^}{ssh://$alias/} foreach @files;

   system('gedit', '--', @files);
}

With the above new function in bcvi, you can execute the following command on the remote host to have gedit run on your desktop machine and load the specified file. If you like this, you can add the gedit alias to the ~/.bashrc file on the remote host to allow such editing without having to remember to change the command line.


bcvi --command gedit bcvi-test-file.txt
alias gedit="bcvi --command gedit"

If you use bcvi to connect to a machine but do not include the bcvi --unpack-term command in the startup files for the remove shell (~/.bash_profile as shown above) then you will get an annoying debug message when you exit your SSH connection, as shown below:


$ ssh root@virtual_server
Last login: Mon Jun 23 15:16:13 2008 from virtual_client
[root@virtual_server ~]#
[root@virtual_server ~]# exit
logout
'xterm
BCVI_CONF=virtual_server:localhost:5009': unknown terminal type.
Connection to virtual_server closed.

bcvi is a handy tool to know about if you maintain a system over a high-latency network link. If the file you are editing is only a few kilobytes large but the round-trip latency makes even moving the cursor painfully slow, bcvi should make for a quicker, frustration-free edit.

Maemo 4.1 bring mail and packaging improvements to Nokia's Linux-based tablets

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:56:00 +0000

Nokia released version 4.1 of it's Linux-based Internet Tablet platform Maemo last month. 4.1 is a minor update to the operating system, but it boasts two important features that answer long-held complaints: an improved open source email client, and migration to a package updating system more like that of a desktop Linux distribution.

Tablet owners can download the update for N800 and N810 devices by visiting tablets-dev.nokia.com. As with previous releases, a valid device ID is required to download a firmware image. Upgraders can make a backup of their settings onto one of their tablet's memory cards, including a list of installed applications, which can be automatically reinstalled following the update.

The end of flashing

The upgrade process involves flashing the new firmware over the device's existing installation, as it has since the debut of the Maemo-based tablets. But 4.1 is the last release to require such a headache. Future updates to individual system components will be made available as package upgrades, just as is done for user applications.

Re-flashing the tablet's firmware is not itself a difficult or dangerous task. The hassle is the time involved in reconfiguring the newly flashed device. Restoring files and settings from a memory card backup is rapid enough, but restoring third-party applications takes a considerable amount of time. My own upgrade to 4.1 on an N800 tablet took less than five minutes for data and configuration, but more than 45 minutes to fetch, install, and configure 31 additional applications from different repositories.

In addition to the convenience factor, per-package updates will allow Nokia to roll out new apps and services individually, rather than rolling an entire new release once every 12 months. That is undoubtedly better for the company, and ultimately better for users as well.

Email for the masses

The other major improvement in Maemo 4.1 is the new email client Modest, based on Philip van Hoof's Tinymail framework, designed for embedded and low-resource devices. It supports SMTP, POP, and IMAP, all with encryption, as well as the push email technique known as IMAP-IDLE.

Modest has been available as a beta since December 2007, and is reputed to be much faster than the old email client it replaces, especially when it comes to IMAP performance. In my own tests, that reputation is well-deserved. I set up several IMAP accounts, and Modest fetched message headers and folder names nearly instantaneously, including messages on a catch-all Gmail account that receives hundreds of messages daily. Modest was even faster than the Gmail Web app itself.

Despite the name, Modest is full-featured, supporting multiple accounts, per-account signatures, and other niceties frequently absent from embedded device email apps. I also appreciate the ability to specify different SMTP servers based on differing active network connections -- your personal level of paranoia may lead you to choose different servers when on a secured or unsecured network, but corporate users with IT policies to consider are the real winners here.

Looking forward: the tablet is the desktop

There are small changes in Maemo 4.1 as well, including browser speed-ups and OpenSSL fixes, but the greatly improved email client and adoption of a per-package system updating framework outshine the incidental bug fixes and version bumps.

The 4.1 update may not pack as many new features as 4.0 or 3.0, but it is important to consider it in another light: as part of the platform's progression from a closed, consumer-electronics-like device to a system more closely resembling any other Linux distribution.

Since Maemo's inception, the team at Nokia has slowly replaced closed components with free software alternatives, has made it easier for users to install "unapproved" applications, has opened up shell and root access, and now is making the system upgrade process function like a traditional desktop distro, not a cell phone. With all of the recent acquisitions Nokia has made in both the open source and handheld device realm, it will be interesting to see where it takes Maemo from here.

A case for text-based DVD rippers

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:01:00 +0000

At a time when graphical DVD rippers and encoders propose to make the backing up of your movies just a click away, a text-based application may actually be the best tool for the job.

I've tried graphical rippers such as AcidRip, dvd::rip, thoggen, and RippedWire, with varying degrees of success. However, I've also had my share of headaches. Most times, any crashes or problems I experienced were related to the graphical components of the application or the desktop. It's not pleasant (to say the least) to leave your computer eating electricity all night, only to find in the morning that the ripping and encoding of a DVD failed because of an error purely related to GTK+ or Qt. It's even more frustrating when you realize that most of these applications are front ends to command-line programs. For instance, AcidRip is a wrapper for MEncoder (not that MEncoder doesn't need a front end), and RippedWire sits on top of HandBrakeCLI. Once you click the Go button, the application basically becomes a giant progress bar, hogging your desktop and system resources.

undvd

After having trouble running a GUI-based ripper/encoder on my fresh install of Arch Linux, I stumbled upon undvd. Its only core dependencies are lsdvd and MEncoder, so I decided to give version 0.3.1 a try.

Being a command-line application, undvd installed in the blink of an eye. Running scandvd.shscandvd.sh will exit. After deciding upon the title to rip, run undvd.sh, specifying a few, simple parameters. For instance, to rip and encode the first title of a DVD, together with an English audio and subtitle track, you can run undvd.sh -t 01 -a eng -s eng. with a DVD loaded in the drive provides you with a simple screen that shows you the titles available on the disc, and basic instructions on how to watch them using MPlayer, or rip them. After that,

A more complex example rips the second track of a DVD (with a French audio track, without subtitles), forcing one-pass encoding. It assumes the DVD is encrypted (and requires libdvdcss to read) and rips straight from the optical disc, using a picture-smoothing filter and Xvid compression:

undvd.sh -t 02 -a fr -s off -1 -u -n -f -x

The result (in both cases) is an AVI file of surprisingly good quality. Other options include forcing two-pass encoding, selecting a target size for the AVI file, and video scaling.

undvd rips and encodes the titles to the folder from where you called the application, so beware of disk space issues. The default is for undvd to dump the entire DVD to disk, after which you can remove it from the drive. undvd then rips and encodes from the ISO image on disk. This protects the DVD from overuse and eliminates failed operations due to read errors. However, you can also rip directly from the DVD or from a folder.

I'm usually a nitpicker when it comes to lack of options, but my first encounter with undvd managed to make me a believer. The interface is simple but effective, and pressing the Enter key a couple of times -- or writing a short string of arguments -- is more practical in my book than navigating through tabs and checkboxes.

h264enc and xvidenc

Shortly after discovering undvd, I came upon h264enc and its siblings, xvidenc and divxenc. The author describes h264enc as an interactive script and defends the advantages of a bash script over a GUI application in his informative FAQ. h264enc does basically the same job as undvd (it also uses MEncoder), but it allows for more fine-tuning of the encoding options. The beauty of h264enc is that you can make the ripping/encoding process as simple or as complicated as you want. You can pass through as few menus as possible, or you can take your time tweaking the options. Forty-one quality presets, including presets for portable devices like Apple's iPod, make your life easier.

The man page shows you everything you need to get started. Running h264enc -scan scans the DVD for information on chapters, audio, and more, and presents it to you. After that, you can run h264enc with the necessary parameters to your liking. For instance, to rip the second track of your DVD again, type h264enc -2p -p hq. This makes a two-pass encoding with the High Quality preset. h264enc then shows a series of interactive menus where you can choose your DVD drive, the video track to rip, the audio track, chapters, angles, and so on. You can also choose postprocessing filters (such as deinterlacing, noise removal, and image sharpening) and define the video bitrate, target size, audio codec, and more. If you're in a hurry or confused, simply choose the defaults. h264enc encodes the files to the H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 standard, using the AVI container by default. You can choose other containers, such as Matroska Multimedia Container (MKV), Ogg Media (OGM), and MPEG-4 Part 14 (MP4). You can also store your settings for a particular job in a file, thus creating your own presets. Storing different settings for different jobs allows you to create batch jobs, which is a great feature to have at hand.

The quality of the final product varies according to the quality of the original video and the settings you choose. After some experimentation and following the advice of the FAQ, I achieved excellent results. Using three-pass encoding with a Very High Quality preset and a target size of 1400MB, for example, gave me a video file practically indistinguishable from the original DVD in terms of picture quality.

Conclusion

I use undvd for most tasks, and h264enc when I need more control over the output (for extreme high-quality rips, or movies with low image quality). Still in the realm of text-based applications, you also might want to consider RipDVD and HandBrakeCLI as sound alternatives. HandBrakeCLI in particular supports multiple CPU cores -- something most other rippers and encoders don't do. Although HandBrake isn't as easy to use as h264enc or undvd, a recent article may help with that. dvd::rip also supports multiple CPU cores, as well as the ability to set up a cluster to increase processing power.

These applications show that a command-line based workflow, in the context of common desktop tasks, still has its place, especially when you want power and simplicity.

Protecting against evil code fragments with HTML Purifier

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:03:00 +0000

HTML Purifier is a project that helps you ensure that HTML is valid and does not contain cross-site scripting attempts or other nasty attacks. With HTML Purifier you can allow users to post HTML content without letting them insert nasty code that will run in the browser of anyone viewing that HTML. An assortment of plugins let you use HTML Purifier with CodeIgniter, Drupal, MODx, Phorum, Joomla!, and WordPress. To get an idea of the cleanups that HTML Purifier can perform, head over to the demo page.

HTML Purifier uses a whitelist approach to security, where all parts of a valid HTML document must be explicitly permitted, rather than a blacklist that looks for known nasty HTML code. The smoke test page explicitly lists which things are permitted and in what context. One aim of HTML Purifier is that it should fully understand what valid HTML is, which elements can be nested in others, and what is valid content for the HTML attribute attached to a particular element. HTML Purifier also includes support for CSS and can do things like translating text prefaced with http:// into proper HTML href elements automatically. If you are already using an HTML validation tool, you might like to take a look at the project's comparison page to see if you might like HTML Purifier as a replacement.

There are no packages of HTML Purifier for Ubuntu, Fedora, or openSUSE. HTML Purifier can be installed using PEAR, which not only gets it installed quickly but also allows you to easily move to the latest version using pear upgrade. PEAR makes including HTML Purifier in your scripts simpler because you do not need to specify any path in your script. There are also three different tarballs offered for those who want to build HTML Purifier manually from sources. The different versions include the code offered with and without documentation, and a third tarball that includes all the dependencies you need.

To install HTML Purifier through PEAR you must first install the php-pear package, then use the pear command to install HTML Purifier. The commands below will install HTML Purifier at /usr/share/pear/HTMLPurifier.



pear channel-discover htmlpurifier.org

pear install hp/HTMLPurifier

For me, trying to use HTML Purifier at this stage failed with an error in the Apache log files about the Cache.SerializerPath path not existing. HTML Purifier tried to use /usr/share/pear/HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer as a writable path for caching content. The cache can be turned off as detailed in the INSTALL file, or you can create the directory in /usr that HTML Purifier wants to use as a volatile cache, or create a new directory in /var to handle the cached data. The third option is shown below:



# mkdir -p /var/cache/HTMLPurifier

# chown apache /var/cache/HTMLPurifier

# chmod o-rwx /var/cache/HTMLPurifier

# ls -ld /var/cache/HTMLPurifier

drwxr-x--- 2 apache root 4096 2008-06-25 14:25 /var/cache/HTMLPurifier

Unfortunately the default path for the SerializerPath is encoded in HTMLPurifier/ConfigSchema/schema.ser, which is a length-delimited file that is not very human-edit-friendly. The best solution is to use a configuration object in your PHP code to change the path, or better yet, your own PHP function that sets up the configuration object for your Web site.

Below is a simple index.php file that uses HTML Purifier to clean up HTML content that is submitted via a form supplied on the same HTML page. Note that the call to htmlspecialcharspre element. is not used for security, but simply to enable the HTML text entered by the user to be fully seen within the



# cd /var/www/html

# mkdir HTMLPurifierTest

# chown ben.apache HTMLPurifierTest

# chmod +s HTMLPurifierTest

# su -l ben

$ cd /var/www/html

$ vi index.php



 require_once 'HTMLPurifier.auto.php';



 $config = HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault();

 $config->set('Core', 'Encoding', 'ISO-8859-1');

 $config->set('HTML', 'TidyLevel', 'heavy' );

 $config->set('Cache', 'SerializerPath', '/var/cache/HTMLPurifier' );

 $purifier = new HTMLPurifier($config);

  

?>











Enter your nastiest HTML below!





    

        

    










This is the clean part of what you said...






 $clean_html = $purifier->purify($query);

 print htmlspecialchars($clean_html);

?>

If you wish to explicitly limit the HTML elements that a user can enter, use the ForbiddenElements configuration directive as shown below. This example will strip out any bold, italic, or preformatted tags from the HTML entered. You can also go the other way and explicitly whitelist which elements are valid using AllowedElements.



 $config->set('HTML', 'ForbiddenElements', 'b,i,pre');

HTML Purifier includes support for filtering and mangling URIs both before and after the main validation. Being able to filter before you validate the HTML input allows you to change URIs that are not valid into something that is so that HTML Purifier does not reject the URI. For example, if you are allowing the user to link to images or other media files, then you might just pass in the unique identifier of the image and have a custom URI mangler substitute these custom URIs with real absolute HTTP URLs.

One URI filter is the host blacklist, which lets you block given host names. Be careful using the host blacklist, because if anything you blacklist appears anywhere in the URL it will be rejected. Luckily the code for the host blacklist class is short, so you could easily define a class that tested for only URLs ending with a given postfix. There are more such URI filters listed as possibly coming soon.

Wrap up

Presumably the installation issues with the cache directory are a limitation of PEAR. At least having HTML Purifier fail to work while producing a nice verbose error message forces the issue of where to store volatile cache documents rather than just silently using a path under /usr.

HTML Purifier offers protection against people entering nasty HTML code instead of well-formed HTML fragments in your Web forms. The ability to enter whitelists for things like which HTML elements can be used along with URI filtering should also take the fun out of users trying to explicitly enter invalid data into your forms. URI filtering is a great option for helping with forum spam if you are allowing anonymous forum posts. For example, you could enforce a policy that allows people to post only links to your own site when they post anonymously, and if they want to link to another site then they have to register first.

Looming IT talent shortage sidesteps FOSS folks

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:57:00 +0000

A Gartner study from earlier this year suggests that a skills shortage will leave companies scrambling in vain to find qualified help. However, open source developers say there's an adequate supply of potential employees with the skills they have.

"The difficulty is not so much if they exist. It's finding the right people," says Jon Masters, a Red Hat Linux kernel engineer who also works on the real-time kernel team and helps support third-party drivers on Enterprise Linux distributions. He says that the supply of competent Linux and open source software types will be enough to meet the demand.

In the study, researchers at Gartner, a Stamford, Conn.-based research and advisory company, say that a coming skills and talent shortage in IT and business is threatening business growth. Meeting the demands created by the integration of IT and business models, they say, will require companies to find hybrid professionals -- workers with both technology and business skills. But the problem, according to researchers, is that such workers are scarce.

Masters says this is not the case among the Linux and open source software developer crowd. "We do have a lot of these hybrid professionals." He says such professionals are a resourceful bunch with a wide range of skills that will enable them to readily adapt to changing realities as IT and business coalesce.

Masters says the industry's emphasis on self-directed learning helps developer types think outside of the proverbial box in a way that might be foreign to their counterparts in the proprietary software space. "You don't have to be a computer scientist to get involved in Linux. But you do need to be able to problem-solve, work well with other people, and work on different things at the same time."

In Morrisville, NC, Open Technology Group has for over 10 years developed, deployed, and trained others to use IT solutions that promote openness and interoperability. Chander Ganesan, the company's president, says that -- based on the types of people who retain OTG's services in areas such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, PHP, Python, and shell programming -- the industry has its fair share of people with work-related experiences that epitomize what hybrid professionals are all about.

"A great many of [our clients] may already have a single area of knowledge and wish to broaden their skill set to become more versatile in their jobs," Ganesan says. "Additionally, we see that often the employees -- as opposed to a manager or traditional decision-maker -- are approaching us about training, and then selling their needs up the chain to management. This is fundamentally different, from my perspective, since it leans toward employees themselves being driven toward being hybrid professionals as opposed to upper layers of management."

According to DeLisa Alexander, senior vice president of human capital for Red Hat, her company's certification programs contribute towards producing hybrid professionals. "We're contributing toward training people who businesses need. We are looking for those hybrid professionals."

OpenOffice.org extension will add PDF editing

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:46:00 +0000

Easy PDF editing is coming to OpenOffice.org, but you'll have to be patient for a few months. Recently posted to the OpenOffice.org Extensions site, the Sun PDF Import extension (SPI) is only in beta, and only works with recent developer builds of OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is scheduled for September release. Right now, the quality of the final release is anybody's guess, but the beta's capabilities fall squarely in the middle of the available PDF import tools.

To investigate SPI, you need to download and install a snapshot build of OpenOffice.org 3.0. Then, from within the build, you can install SPI from Tools -> Extension Manager. The next time you start OpenOffice.org 3.0, you'll be able to open PDF files from any of the options for opening an existing document in the File menu.

By default, SPI opens PDF files in the Draw application, although you could also use Impress, which shares much of the same code. This default might seem strange at first, especially if your PDF file is text. Actually, though, using Draw is logical, given the limitations of the PDF format. No application -- not even Acrobat, the proprietary PDF editor made by Adobe, the company that wrote the PDF specifications -- is able to edit more than a single line while preserving format. Given this limitation, importing to Draw makes sense, because it can treat each line as a separate text object for editing. Although rearrangement of a paragraph requires line by line editing with SPI, and can be tricky if you need to add an extra line, the extension leaves you no worse off than any other PDF editor.

But at least you are in a relatively friendly user interface. Aside from the limitation of editing one line at a time, the worst problem you are likely to have is the automatic capitalization of the first character of each line if you have Autocorrect turned on while you edit.

In testing, SPI's success at importing text depended largely on the fonts being used in the document. For best results, you need to have the fonts in the imported PDF file installed on your system; otherwise, SPI will use a substitute font that may not correspond to the letter spacing of the original. Also, while common fonts such as Helvetica or Times Roman create few problems, SPI seems to have trouble reading the metrics of some PostScript fonts and displaying them correctly. Usually, the display problem takes the form of a line of text that, converted to a text object, extends far beyond the page margins, and makes reformatting tedious if not impossible. At times, too, the problem leaves random spaces scattered throughout all the lines.

Graphics in imported PDF files had similar mixed success during testing. Many import into Draw without any trouble, with text wrapping around them in the same style as the original document. However, some PNG images -- but not all -- were imported vertically inverted, and, in another case, a graphic became an uneditable object. And, in some complex layouts, the positioning of some graphics was off by perhaps a dozen pixels.

In the beta, SPI cannot handle PDF forms, and text alignment is not always preserved, with fully justified text showing a strong tendency to import as left-aligned. Nor are hyperlinks supported, although they are a basic necessity for many online documents.

Otherwise, the list of what SPI can handle is much larger than the list of problems: Text frames, sections, multilevel lists, and table formatting including border and background color, are all imported without any problems, all of which makes for a promising start for the extension.

For now, though, the problems with rendering fonts and graphics mean that SPI, like OpenOffice.org 3.0, is not ready for production use.

Still, in its current state, SPI is ahead of Abiword, which simply extracts the text from a PDF file and not the graphics, and KWord, which preserves line division but not most other text formatting.

But SPI's current state is behind that of Inkscape, whose main limitations are a restriction to single-page imports and the failure to preserve hyperlinks. Nor is SPI as reliable as PDFedit, which, despite being aimed at advanced users, remains the most reliable PDF editor for the GNU/Linux desktop. Still, a lot of development can happen in the next few months, and if SPI continues as it has started, its final release just might become an essential OpenOffice.org extension.

An introduction to the Kismet packet sniffer

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:12:00 +0000

Kismet is a wireless "detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system," and one of the growing list of essential open source tools for computer network security professionals. Kismet runs on any POSIX-compliant platform, including Windows, Mac OS X, and BSD, but Linux is the preferred platform because it has more unencumbered RFMON-capable drivers than any of the others.

Monitor mode ability is critical to fully utilizing Kismet, because it allows Kismet to examine all the packets it can hear, not just those of whatever access point (AP) -- if any -- you are currently associated with. Almost as important to police, intelligence agencies, and black hat hackers is the fact that it allows Kismet to work passively, intercepting and collecting packets without leaving any fingerprints of its own behind.

The point is that if you want to investigate Kismet fully, the first step is to ensure that you have a driver taht supports RFMON -- monitor mode -- for your wireless network interface card (NIC). Check the Kismet links page for information on the drivers available for your brand and model NIC.

Configuration models

Kismet is designed as a client-server application, but it can be run as a standalone application, as a server supporting a number of clients, and even as a server with "drone" Kismet installations across a network, each monitoring its own wireless hardware, and all forwarding captured packets to a server. Run standalone, you simply use the built-in client. But there are also a number of third-party clients available for Kismet; if you would like to try one, visit the same page of links noted above.

Kismet drones are minimalistic, often headless, Kismet listening posts across a network. Each uses its own individual configuration file, defining its own sources -- wireless cards -- to listen to, and containing the address of the Kismet server to which it will forward captured packets. The server logs the data from all attached drones to a single file, and can also provide a single source of wireless intrusion alerts for the network. This configuration is ideal for utilizing Kismet as a wireless intrusion detection system (IDS) across a LAN with more than one or two APs.

Each of these components requires its own configuration file, and those files do much of the work required to get Kismet performing as you wish. They are the kismet.conf, kismet_ui.conf, and kismet_drone.conf files. The Kismet Web site contains extensive documentation on the configuration files and other things you may need to tweak.

I tried Kismet in a standalone configuration, running from the BackTrack NETGEAR RangeMax wireless PC card. Even in such a simple implementation, the configuration details can bite you. Among other things, pay careful attention to the section in the online documentation about defining your wireless cards, which Kismet documentation refers to as capture sources. The definition has to be correct or Kismet will not work at all or not work correctly. 3 distro beta, and using a single RFMON-capable NIC, a

As noted in my Backtrack 3 review, I also had to use ifconfig to disable my laptop's built-in wireless card, which like the NETGEAR RangeMax is based on the Atheros chipset, then use wlanconfig to put the NETGEAR card into monitor mode prior to starting Kismet.

Top-down UI

The Kismet user interface is not intuitive, but it is fast and powerful, and easy to use once you get used to it. By default, the UI opens with Autofit, a top-level list of all the networks it can see (Figure 1). From this viewpoint, you can learn basic information about the networks detected, but -- unlike other network list modes -- you can't drill-down for more detailed information.

The Autofit Network listing shows a decay indicator, network name, network type, WEP status, channel used, packets seen, flags, IP range, and the size of the capture file. The decay indicator may be an exclamation mark (!), a period (.), or a blank. An exclamation mark indicates recent activity, the period less recent activity, and blank means no recent activity. The definition of recent is based on the decay variable in kismet_ui.conf. The default decay value is three seconds.

To drill down and gain more specifics, you first have to change to a different view. The Kismet interface provides a help function that explains in detail how to do this. Press h to get the help pop-up window (Figure 2). You can press x to close it or any other pop-up you may be viewing, and you can scroll through the help screens using the Page Up and Page Down keys.

If you scroll to the last screen in the help pop-up, you'll see the following in capital letters: ALL NETWORK SELECTION, TAGGING, GROUPING, SCROLLING, AND SO ON IS DISABLED IN AUTOFIT MODE. So let's change modes and see what else Kismet can tell us about the network.

After closing the help pop-up, press s to select a different sort order for the network list, then press b or B to order the list by BSSID, which is the MAC address of the network's AP. The title of the Network List panel will now read Network List (BSSID), and you can use the up or down arrow keys to scroll up and down the list to the device you're interested in learning more about.

With the network of interest highlighted, press i to get complete, detailed information about that AP (Figure 3). Press a to see statistics about its traffic by channel, or press c to view the MAC addresses of all clients Kismet has detecting talking to the AP (Figure 4). If you're using Kismet to protect your own AP, that last choice will be especially interesting to you.

Note that when the client list appears after you press c, the panel window shows Client List (Autofit). It works just like the Network List, meaning that in order to drill deeper, you'll need to change the view in the same way you did before. I chose l to list the clients in latest seen order (Figure 5). A capital L would reverse that list, so that the most recently seen clients would appear at the bottom.

Highlight a particular client, just as you did a network, then press i to see what information about the client is available. Kismet will show you the data in Figure 6, which includes the type of connection, MAC address, and much more.

Also note that the h function now shows context-specific help, not the same help information you saw when pressing h with the default Network List displayed. In this case, most of the screen is dedicated to explaining the various connection types: From DS, To DS, Intra DS, Established, Sent To, and Unknown (Figure 7).

Basic configuration tweaking

You'll want to change your kismet.conf options depending on how you are using Kismet. If you are searching for APs, for example, you'll have channelhop = true set, at a minimum, and perhaps some finer-grained tweaks as well. If you are focusing exclusively on a single AP and want all the traffic you can get from it, you'll turn channel hopping off so as not to miss packets while scanning other channels. This can be useful for intrusion detection, since you'll want to track all clients attempting to or actually associating with the AP.

By default, Kismet writes its logs the to the directory it is started in. You can change this behavior with the logtemplate directive in kismet.conf. Unless you modify the logtypes directive in kismet.conf, Kismet will create dump, network, csv, xml, weak, cisco, and gps logs. The dump log contains raw packets and is suitable as input to other packet analyser programs, such as Aircrack-ng or Wireshark, the network protocol analyzer once known as Ethereal.

Conclusion

Kismet is a difficult to use for a noobie. You can't just install it and go and get any sort of meaningful results. It has to be properly configured, and properly configuring it may require that you learn more about wireless networking, hardware, and wireless security than you already knew. But the good news is that if you suffer through that pain, and learn more about those things, you'll find it worthwhile, because the more you know, they more it can do for you.

Kismet is capable of a lot more than I've covered here. The more you know about wireless and wireless security, the more of Kismet's feature list you can use, including things like decloaking hidden SSID networks and creating graphical representations of wireless networks.

But even at my relatively low level of wireless security knowledge, Kismet provides me with an important safeguard for wireless access to my home office LAN. I've already learned a lot more about wireless insecurity than I knew when I started. In particular, I've learned why not to rely on WEP to protect confidential data or communications, and how to detect unauthorized wireless access on my APs. All of which points to an additional important feature not noted in the documetation: Kismet is a great learning tool.

IOzone for filesystem performance benchmarking

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:59:00 +0000

IOzone lets you benchmark your filesystem performance, seeing how well record IO occurs for files of various sizes. With IOzone you can see more detailed information than the read, write, and rewrite figures that Bonnie++ reports. IOzone is great at detecting areas where file IO might not be performing as well as expected.

IOzone is available for openSUSE 10.3 as a 1-Click install, in multiverse for Ubuntu Hardy, and is in the standard Fedora 9 repositories.

The simplest way to invoke IOzone is using the -a option to select full automatic mode, with the -g option to extend the maximum file size to be twice your system's main memory size:




$ time iozone -a -g 4G >|/tmp/iozone-stdout.txt

The size specified with any option can have the m or g (not case-sensitive) postfix to specify units of megabytes or gigabytes. Redirecting the standard output to a file allows you to generate graphs from the output without having to copy data from the terminal. Wrapping the invocation with the time command lets you know how long a full invocation took, so you are aware of how long IOzone took to execute and possibly tailor future invocations to specific areas of interest to avoid waiting for all the tests to be performed. The above command took a few hours to complete on a hardware parity RAID over six 750GB drives.

You can use the -n option to specify the minimum file size that the automatic mode will use during testing. Normally testing will start with 64KB files and increase the size by doubling it each iteration. Using -n can save some time and generate more targeted benchmarks if you are interested in only larger files that cannot possibly fit into the system buffer caches. You can use the -s option instead of -g to only test files of a specific nominated size. The below command will test only using files of 4GB in size and records from 4KB to 256KB in size.




$ time iozone -a -s 4G -q 4 -y 256 >|/tmp/iozone-stdout.txt

The tests performed by IOzone measure many things, starting with the simpler metrics such as read, write, reread, and rewrite performance. Read and write are obvious. Reread is measures how well a system caches a file that was recently read. There are two rewrite tests; the one reported as simply rewrite overwrites an existing file. The record rewrite writes to a specific location in a file over and over again.

Figure 1 -Click to enlarge The normal read and write tests are performed by sequentially getting and putting data to a temporary file. There are also random read and write tests, which obtain or write to little pieces of the temporary file instead of reading or writing it sequentially. If you are running IOzone on a filesystem created on a RAID, then the stride read test (see -j) might be interesting. The stride read test can show you if there is a performance penalty for reading records which are not aligned to your RAID stripe boundary. For example, in a four-disk RAID-5, data is split into chunks (perhaps of 64KB in size) and written over three disks with parity written on the fourth. So at the start of the disk 1 you have chunk 1, disk 2 starts with chunk 2, disk 3 with chunk 3, and finally disk 4 contains the parity of chunks 1-3. Chunks 1-3 are called a RAID stripe. Sometimes the parity chunk is included in the stripe too. The order of chunks and parity is changed in each stripe, maybe for the second stripe putting the parity on disk 1 and the chunks 4-6 on disks 2-4. Because the parity has to be updated when any chunk in a stripe is changed, varying where the parity is stored helps even out the IO across all of the disks in the RAID. Typically, applications try to access records at chunk or stripe boundaries. IOzone's stride parameter can be used to test performance of read requests which are and are not aligned to a RAID stripe. The strided read test reads records at a given stride offset (number of bytes apart), so you might like to set the stride to some whole multiple of your RAID chunk size. There are also versions of read, write, rewrite, and reread that are performed using the buffered fread() and fwrite() calls. These tests might show if your C library is causing some performance bottlenecks.

IOzone provides many options to control how data is read and written during the benchmark, so you can produces IO requests in a manner close to that of the application you intend to run on the machine. The options are described in alphabetic order in the IOzone documentation, but I have grouped them by their semantics in the following paragraphs.

Figure 2 - Click to enlarge This first grouping of options relates to which API IOzone uses to perform the benchmarking. Memory-mapped files can be convenient to use because they do not require programs to explicitly execute read() functions to get file data; instead, data is loaded automatically when memory locations are accessed. However, programmers using memory-mapped files need to understand that there are potentially large seek delays when accessing large memory-mapped files with random IO patterns. There is no cut-and-dried rule as to when memory-mapped files should be used by applications, and the API does not change the performance limitations of the filesystem backing the IO.

The -B option causes files to be accessed through the memory-mapped APIs. You can use -D to specify that data should be transferred by the operating system asynchronously for these memory-mapped files. The -G option expressly specifies synchronous memory-mapped files be used. Applications that perform memory-mapped IO can tell the kernel of their access patterns using the madvise system call. This allows the operating system kernel to tailor caching to match how the application has specified its access patterns to be. You can use the special -+A option to tell IOzone how it should madvise the kernel during tests performed using memory-mapped IO. The -H and -k options use POSIX async IO calls during the benchmark, and -H will also perform a copy from the memory buffer that was used by the operating system to perform the async IO request. Both -H and -k accept the number of async operations that should be attempted at any time as their argument. The -E option will use the pread API during benchmarks, the pread() call operates on file descriptors like the read() API but includes the offset in the file that data is to be read from.

Another collection of options deal with how benchmarks are measured. The -c option includes the close() call in the time taken for the benchmark. If you are running on a filesystem that might delay committing changes to disk until a close() call, such as NFSv3, using the -c option should give you a fairer impression of filesystem performance. The -e includes a flush call in the benchmark. The exact call made to flush data to disk is dependent on which IO subsystem you are using; for example, when benchmarking with file descriptors the fsync call will be used. Flushing is important in benchmarking because many database systems perform flushes to ensure that writes are on disk. The -o option opens file with the O_SYNC synchronous mode set, causing all writes to be flushed to disk immediately.

IOzone by default uses the current directory as the target filesystem for benchmarking. You can specify another location using the -f or -F options. -F works like -f but allows you to specify multiple locations for when you are testing multiprocess or multithreaded filesystem performance. The -U option specifies the mountpoint that the filesystem you are testing is located on. Specifying -U makes IOzone unmount and remount a specified filesystem between each test to flush any filesystem buffers.

The -j option sets the stride of file reads used for the stride read test. Each record read by IOzone in the stride read test will be separated by stride bytes. The -q and -y options specify the minimum and maximum record size used in automatic testing mode. You can use the -r option to specify a single record size that should be tested instead of the range from -q to -y. The parameter you pass to -j is multiplied by the record size, so if you pass in your RAID stripe size and use a range of record sizes using the above options you will be able to test aligned and unaligned performance and see both results on a single graph.

You can cherry-pick which tests are performed during benchmarking using a sequence of -i options. Unfortunately the -i option accepts numeric input values rather than allowing more human-readable options to be passed in directly. Most of the tests you can select rely on the write (-i 0) tests having been performed so that files have been created and initialized by IOzone. For example, to perform only read (1) and write (0) tests, use the -i 0 -i 1 options. The numbers for each test are shown in the output of IOZone --help.

You can run benchmarks with multiple processes by specifying the -t throughput mode and specifying the number of threads or processes to create. The -T option causes POSIX pthreads to be used to create the multiple threads for throughput testing. Being able to nominate the use of pthreads instead of processes allows you to benchmark IO with IOzone using the multithreading/multiprocessing model that the application you are planning to execute uses. You can specify the minimum number of processes with the -l option and the maximum with the -u option.

There are also options such as -d and -Jb for inserting delays at various stages during the benchmark.

Interpreting the results

IOzone reports results on stdout in a tabular format starting with the smallest files you have nominated to create (64KB by default for -a automatic mode) up to the largest files. For each file size, your nominated record size range is tested from smallest to largest record size.

The IOzone package comes with scripts to create nice graphs using gnuplot given the tabular output from IOzone. The gnuplot scripts are called Generate_Graphs and gengnuplot.sh. Generate_Graphs calls gengnuplot.sh multiple times to generate a graph for each test that IOzone performs in its benchmark and then runs gnuplot to show each of these graphs and generate PostScript output at the same time. Generate_Graphs uses the gnu3d.dem file to drive the gnuplot operations. You can easily customize this file to generate PNG bitmap images of each graph and not display the graphs interactively. The changes to gnu3d.dem to non-interactively generate PNG files are shown below:




set zlabel "Kbytes/sec"

set data style lines

set dgrid3d 80,80,3

#splot 'write/iozone_gen_out.gnuplot' title "Write performance"

set terminal png

set output "write/write.png"

splot 'write/iozone_gen_out.gnuplot' title "Write performance"

#pause -1 "Hit return to continue"

Shown in the screenshot in Figure 1 is the rewrite performance of a hardware parity RAID using a 256KB chunk size across six 750GB disks on a range of file sizes from 64KB to 4GB performed on a machine with 2GB of main memory. The benchmark was performed using the first iozone command shown above. Notice how performance is better before the record size exceeds 256KB. This is most likely because the RAID could perform a read-modify-write cycle for changes that are smaller than the chunk size. The dip in the front of the graph is due to smaller record size tests not being performed for larger files by the -a option.

For the same hardware and filesystem setup the write performance is shown in Figure 2. One thing that sticks out in the benchmark is the little dip on the plane for the larger records. This happens for file sizes of about 16KB and records between 256KB and 4MB. This might have been an anomaly that occurred during data collection, or there might be a component in the system that does not perform as well for that file and record size. Notice that for larger files the smaller record size performs much better until the file size becomes too large for the system cache (around the label starting with 4.19 toward the right of the file size axis) and the performance of all record sizes becomes much closer.

Wrap up

IOzone allows you to specify a range of file sizes to operate on and a range of record sizes to use for testing in those files. Along with this you can choose which operating system API calls are used to perform the IO in the tests, letting you select the API that is closest to the application you wish to improve IO performance for. The ability to generate a 3-D graph of the read, write, rewrite, and other performance statistics lets you see if there are areas of IO that the system as a whole is not handling well. For example, some RAID controllers might handle record sizes below a certain cutoff better than other record sizes and with IOzone you will be able to see this drop in performance on the graph.

IOzone lets you dig into IO performance beyond the single read, write, and rewrite figures that Bonnie++ reports. It can help you see the trends in IO performance as you vary file size, record size, the API used to issue IO requests, and other parameters. Bonnie++ gives a good indication of performance in a fairly short test run; once you are happy with your Bonnie++ figures, you can execute IOzone, which may take perhaps two to four hours to expose finer details of your IO performance.

Barracuda launches reluctant legal offensive against Trend Micro

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:27:00 +0000

The already vicious lawsuit involving Barracuda Networks and Trend Micro that is currently in discovery in front of the American International Trade Commission (ITC) just turned nastier. Barracuda has filed its own patent infringement claim against Trend Micro, based upon three recently acquired patents. The suit is in response to Trend Micro's allegation that its patent is being infringed by Barracuda shipping Clam Antivirus (ClamAV), the popular free software application, and appears designed to pressure Trend Micro to reach a negotiated settlement.

"It's unfortunate that we have to spend time and energy and money doing this BS legal stuff when we could be spending that time and money and energy making the Internet a safer place," says Dean Drako, Barracuda's president and CEO. "It makes you sad."

Ask for a reply, Trend Micro representative Michael Sweeny responded, "We have not seen nor studied this most recent suit filed against us by Barracuda, and have no comment on it" and emphasized that the first action in the dispute was Barracuda's request for a declaratory judgment in March 2007.

The three patents involved in Barracuda's law suit are U.S. Patent 7093287, which involves creating firewall rules based on downloaded content; 7093294 , which concerns the detection of Trojans and backdoors; and 7103913, which covers virus scanning.

All of these patents are at least as broad as 5623600, the US patent on gateway virus-scanning that is at the heart of Trend Micro's case against Barracuda. The absurdity of replying to one overly broad claim with three others is not lost on Drako, who laughed and replied, "Really? I am all too familiar" when Linux.com pointed out the similarity.

"But we have no choice," he added, becoming instantly more serious.

Drako is reluctant to discuss details, but the patents were purchased from IBM some time in the last six months -- in other words, after Trend Micro filed against Barracuda. "I approached IBM asking for help in defense of the open source community, and they directed me to the individual who sells their patents," Drako says.

Although he would not elaborate, the implication is apparently that IBM sold the patents to Barracuda as a way to help the community. However, Drako would not elaborate on what price or restrictions accompanied the sale, if any.

The three patents are not among the 500 that IBM pledged in 2005 not to enforce against the free and open source software (FOSS) community.

Defensive patents, pledges and portfolios

However, whether because of the terms of sale or his own inclinations, Drako states, "Our intent is to use our patent portfolio for defensive purposes. I'm pretty aligned with other folks in the industry who believe that patents should only be used for defensive purposes. I believe that Red Hat and Sun are in that camp as well. I didn't want to do this, okay? But I have no choice because otherwise I've got a real problem with Trend Micro's suit against me."

Drako says that all revenue generated from Barracuda's patents will be donated to the community -- although not how or when.

In addition, Drako says that he is "considering" ways of reassuring the FOSS community that the patents will not be used against its project. Earlier in the case, he approached the Open Invention Network (OIN), an organization dedicated to creating a public portfolio patent. "Unfortunately,the OIN was unwilling to expand the breadth of its reach to include ClamAV, because it did not consider ClamAV part of Linux," he says.

Instead, Drako is debating whether Barracuda should create its own public portfolio for FOSS or donate its patents to some already existing public portfolio designed for the same purpose. "I haven't had time to go and investigate that, but we will be investigating that," he promises.

The new case and larger strategy

Barracuda's new claim comes as a surprise, given that a recent deposition before the ITC by Swedish developer and entrepreneur Goran Fransson included prior art that seemingly would invalidate Trend Micro's patent. And, in fact, Drako says that "the case is proceeding pretty well from Barracuda's point of view," although at this point he says he is "not ready to talk about it yet."

However, as a partial explanation of Barracuda's strategies, Drako did point out that the process is slow and time-consuming. "It's basically been discovery and discovery and discovery, going back and forth. The judge hasn't even been involved yet," he says.

Drako goes on to explain, "We're doing this to defend the open source community and to defend ClamAV, but the patent system and the way it works in the United States is very expensive for the defense, and you have to have an offence if you're going to have any hope of coming to a reasonable conclusion."

Although Drako would not elaborate on how the countersuit fits into Barracuda's legal strategy, he did make the general comment that "obviously, if we have a lawsuit against them and they have a lawsuit against us, it would be wise of both parties to come to the negotiating table and settle their dispute."

"I'm thinking of a football analogy," he concludes. "You can have the best defensive team on the field ever, but if you don't have an offense, you're not going to win the game. So we have to have an offense on the field. We've been forced to do this, even though we don't really want to be in an offensive mode."

Portrait: Louis Landry of Joomla! finds direction in FOSS

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:24:00 +0000

For Louis Landry, a member of the core team for the Joomla! management system, free and open source software (FOSS) is not just a hobby, nor just the technology behind Jxtended, the consulting business in which he is a partner. For Landry, FOSS is also the movement that gave him direction in life, and provides both the rationale and the outlet for his diverse interests. In fact, he is so enthusiastic about FOSS that he sounds like an evangelist for the community whenever it is mentioned.

Portraits

Landry's discovery of Joomla! came at a critical time in his life. In 2004, Landry graduated with a computer science degree from Louisiana Tech, and, like many graduates, faced the problem of what to do next.

"I was relatively lost in the job search," he admits. "I was at the end of an interview process with NASA, and I had worked in many different places, but I really didn't know what to do. It was getting to the point that I was just going to accept whatever I got."

Louis Landry

Then, in the middle of this personal crisis, Hurricane Katrina hit Landry's home city of New Orleans. Overwhelmed and directionless, he says that "I just decided that I was going to spend as much time as I could on something I could change. I'd been working with Joomla! way before when it was Mambo, and I just kept focusing and focusing and focusing as a way of dealing with everything. It was really to keep my mind on something positive, where I could make effective changes."

Landry began submitting patches throughout Joomla! Before long, he realized that he was not only keeping occupied, but "doing more and meeting more people, and having a blast. The next thing I know, I'm on the core team."

Landry found a strong enthusiasm for FOSS. "I love the people, the relationships that you make. I do love coding, but it's not my principal love. I didn't really start programming until I got to college, so it's not something I've been doing my whole life. I really enjoy the interaction, and all the new people you meet. I mean, I talk to people from all over the world, on four different continents, every day. It's amazing to be able to do that, and all the things that make open source so much fun."

So far as Landry is concerned, even Jxtended, the company he founded with other members of the Joomla! and PHP community, is an extension of his Joomla! activity. "It's a way of spending as much time as I can with the project I love and getting paid for it," Landry says. "I feel incredibly fortunate for me to be able to do what I've been doing. I'm certainly not a wealthy man, but I've made enough to be able to support myself and to keep doing what I love, and there's not a whole of people out there that get to say that they're doing exactly what they want to do. I'm really grateful."

Community and flexibility

One of the reasons that Landry is such a FOSS enthusiast is that Joomla! is such a large project that it has given him the chance to work in a number of different areas. "My education was very well-rounded," he says. Besides computer science, "I also had concentrations in history and lots of other things. And my mother was an art teacher, so I come from a very creative background. I'm not a typical programmer in that sense."

Given this love of diversity, it is not surprising that, although Landry's contributions started with programming, they soon branched out. "I'm involved in so many pieces of the puzzle," he says, including building infrastructure for the project, as well as Web pages and his current role as the coordinator of communications on the core team.

Last year, Landry had the chance to broad his horizons further when he became project manager for the core team -- "the very center of the hub," as he describes it. "It was a centralization role. I filled in the gaps and made sure that everybody had what they needed. If somebody had issues with something not getting done, or there was a problem somewhere, I was the center of operations, so it came to me. I was basically acting as a facilitator and mediator.

"Here I am, 28 years old," he marvels, "and I get the opportunity to do all that in a corporate structure. I mean, it's not a corporation, for sure, but we've got this huge, massive community with layers and layers to the thing. It was a totally humbling experience, and an honor to be at the center of things. I certainly made my share of mistakes, but it was a lot of fun."

From these personal experiences, Landry has extrapolated the theory that the ability of FOSS projects to build a strong community rests in their ability to involve as many people as possible in as many aspects of the project as possible. "It's like, if I was still in development, I would get burned out and disinterested," he says. "So we move around, and that helps us because we all understand each other's jobs. One of the things we try to do is make sure that everybody is capable of stepping in and playing a role in whatever part of the project that needs help."

This approach also has the advantage of giving a project what Landry, borrowing a term from Google, calls a high bus factor -- "that is, how many people have to be hit by a bus before things won't get done. We try to keep that number as high as possible," Landry says.

To that end, Joomla! has not only encouraged people to contribute in a number of areas but also developed structures like its cookie jar for documentation, which lists a number of small, discrete tasks that one person can do without investing a lot of effort. "That's a concept that we try to use in a lot of areas," Landry says, adding that it tends to reduce the anxiety that people have when trying a new tasks. "The cookie jar is a way for us to say, 'Here are things that we know we'd like to see done, and anyone can pick them up.'" It is largely because of this attitude, Landry suggests, that Joomla! is "one of the best projects I've seen about opening up to non-developers."

Communication and planning

When I talked to Landry at the recent Vancouver Joomla!Day, he had just returned from the annual core team meeting in Germany. While many of the details of the decisions made on the summit still have to be worked out, Landry says that the purpose of the summit was planning for the continued growth of the project.

"We've got to regroup a lot of our structures so that we can better manager the group, and we need to add some new people at the leadership level," says Landry. "But it was really about making sure that everybody continues to have the ability to do their job the best they can without getting inhibited by structure, and lowering the barrier to get things done."

As for Landry himself, communications and organization are satisfying for the time being. "I don't know how I'll feel about things in the future. But I will do the best I can to ensure that when I get sick of everything, there'll be somebody else to step in."

He does not even rule out the possibility of moving on from Joomla! "I do have other ambitions," he admits. "I think that, for the foreseeable future, Joomla! works for me. But we'll see."

Speaking both for himself and the project, Landry concludes, "Our greatest success has been to enable people. That's something that really excites me about this project: Our ability to bring people in and grow the project organically from the ground up. I think that's one of the reasons I love open source so much."

Expert tip: Print booklets in Scribus

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:24:00 +0000

Scribus, a free, open source desktop publishing application, offers a wide range of page layout features, but one thing it lacks is the ability to print booklets. Fortunately, I've come across a simple procedure that lets you work around this issue. Here's how to do it in Linux; Windows users should be able to follow along too.

First, you need to determine the size of the paper you're using and the size of the document you want to create. I'm in Europe, so I generated A5-sized booklets using A4 sheets. In the US, if you want to prepare a booklet with letter-sized sheets, you must set the Scribus document size to half the letter size -- in other words, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches. In both cases, the orientation must be vertical.

Next, enter text into your Scribus document. Don't forget to put in page numbers if you need them (see the tutorial for details).

When you're ready to print your booklet, convert it to PDF format and put it in an easy-to-remember location, because you must open it immediately with Evince, the standard PDF viewing application, and go to File -> Print to open the Print dialog. In the General tab, set the number of copies you want, and if it's not grayed out, check the Collate checkbox.

You must set "Print Pages" to Range so that the pages print in a particular order. That way, your booklet will be ready without you having to use scissors and glue. To get the correct page order for a generic n-paged booklet, where n is a multiple of 4, follow this order:

n, 1, 2, n-1, n-2, 3, 4, n-3, n-4 ...

The following list shows some examples:

4-page booklet: Enter 4, 1, 2, 3.
8-page booklet: Enter 8, 1, 2, 7, 6, 3, 4, 5.
12-page booklet: Enter 12, 1, 2, 11, 10, 3, 4, 9, 8, 5, 6, 7.
16-page booklet: Enter 16, 1, 2, 15, 14, 3, 4, 13, 12, 5, 6, 11, 10, 7, 8, 9.

Next, go to the Page Setup tab and set Pages Per Side to 2. If your printer driver permits it, enable Two-Sided to print onto both sides of the sheets. Click Print, and your booklet will go to your printer.

Instead of exporting to PDF and printing with Evince, you could try printing the appropriate range directly from Scribus. However, the version I have installed, 1.3.3.11, is not yet able to manage this correctly.

Using free software, you can now produce beautiful booklets with ease.

A new utility for quickly interpreting multiple Bonnie++ benchmarks

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:15:00 +0000

Yesterday I discussed the Bonnie++ tool, which can be used to benchmark filesystem performance. When you are tweaking a RAID and filesystem combination, you generally want to see whether your changes work in a positive manner across the board, and by how much. I created a utility called bonnie-to-chart to show the results of multiple Bonnie++ runs in either absolute or relative performance terms. It's primarily a Perl script that can be used together with the Open Flash Chart component.

Bonnie-to-chart can report results in absolute terms, showing multiple benchmarks on a single graph, allowing you to see the absolute KB/sec throughput of each benchmark run. It also provides a relative mode, where you run a single "baseline" benchmark on a system in a default or current state, modify the system, and rerun Bonnie++. You can then quickly compare the results of the two Bonnie++ runs, seeing the results of the subsequent runs not in terms of raw KB/sec but in terms of how much more or less KB/sec each run achieves relative to the baseline benchmark.

The main requirements of bonnie-to-chart are the Perl modules CGI and Text::CSV_XS. You will also need to download Open Flash Chart. The bonnie-to-chart distribution tarball includes bonnie.csv, index.php, and chart-data.cgi.

You must install the software by hand by expanding the bonnie-to-chart tarball and selecting the required parts out of an Open Flash Chart tarball. Here I install bonnie-to-chart under my WebRoot (/var/www/html) in the bonnie-to-chart subdirectory:


# cd /var/www/html
# mkdir bonnie-to-chart
# tar xzvf /T/bonnie-to-chart.001.tar.gz
# cd bonnie-to-chart
# mkdir tmp
# cd tmp
# unzip /T/open-flash-chart-1.9.7.zip
# mv open-flash-chart.swf ..
# mv php-ofc-library ..
# mv perl-2-ofc-library/
# mv perl-2-ofc-library/open_flash_chart.pm ../cgi-bin/
# cd ..
# rm -rf tmp
# cd /var/www/html/
# chown -R ben.apache bonnie-to-chart
# chmod +s bonnie-to-chart

You also need to tell Apache that the cgi-bin directory contains files that should be executed rather than downloaded from the Web server by adding a ScriptAlias to your httpd.conf file, as shown in bold below:


# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
...
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"
ScriptAlias /bonnie-to-chart/cgi-bin/ "/var/www/html/bonnie-to-chart/cgi-bin/"
...

Running some benchmarks

Click to enlarge It is convenient to run Bonnie++ from a shell script that varies one or more parameters and benchmarks each configuration. The script below is an example that I used to benchmark the performance of RAID-5 and RAID-6 on six drives with various chunk sizes. A parity RAID like RAID 5 or 6 is divided into chunks as logical building blocks. As a concrete example, if you are using RAID-5 on six disks, with a chunk size of 64KB (the default for such RAIDs created with mdadm), then the first 64KB chunk is written to the first drive, the second 64KB to the second drive, the fifth to the fifth, and the parity to the sixth drive. These six chunks make up a single stripe on the drive. When writing the second stripe on the disk, the chunks move down a slot, so the first chunk is written to the second disk, the second chunk to the third disk, and so on, with the parity being written to the first disk for the second stripe. Sometimes for reporting the number of disks in a stripe, the number of disks that are used for parity are not counted, so the six-disk RAID-5 has a stripe size of five because conceptually one disk is used purely for parity.

The script shown below assumes that all the partitions listed in DISK_PARTITIONS can be completely destroyed and used for testing RAID performance. The two driving lists in the script are those in the RAIDLEVEL and CHUNK_SZ_KB for loops. For each RAID-5 and RAID-6 the performance of a selection of chunk sizes is tested. For each RAID and chunk size many different filesystems are created in different ways.

The alignment of data in the filesystem to chunk boundaries can have a profound impact on the performance of the filesystem. Some edge cases arise when dealing with journaling filesystems and how to best handle writing the journal data as the chunk size increases.

The Bonnie++ benchmarks are appended to bonnie.csv in your home directory. To make these available to the bonnie-to-chart Web application, copy them to /var/www/html/bonnie-to-chart/bonnie.csv.


#!/bin/bash

cd /dev/disk/by-id

DISK_PARTITIONS="/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SAdaptec_dev*part1"
TOTAL_DRIVE_COUNT=$(echo $DISK_PARTITIONS | tr ' ' '\n' | wc -l);

for RAIDLEVEL in 5 6
 do
 PARITY_DRIVE_COUNT=$(( $RAIDLEVEL-4 ));
 NON_PARITY_DRIVE_COUNT=$(( $TOTAL_DRIVE_COUNT - $PARITY_DRIVE_COUNT ));
 echo "Tesing RAID:$RAIDLEVEL which has $NON_PARITY_DRIVE_COUNT parity drives..."

 for CHUNK_SZ_KB in 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 1024 4096
   do

   STRIDE_SZ_KB=$((CHUNK_SZ_KB/4));
   echo "Testing CHUNK_SZ_KB:$CHUNK_SZ_KB STRIDE:$STRIDE_SZ_KB"
   mdadm --create --run --verbose -e 1.2 --auto=md --verbose /dev/md-tmpraid \
 --level=$RAIDLEVEL --raid-devices=$TOTAL_DRIVE_COUNT  \
 --chunk=$CHUNK_SZ_KB \
 $DISK_PARTITIONS
   sleep 1;
   echo "Waiting for RAID to reshape..."
   mdadm --wait /dev/md-tmpraid
   sleep 1;

   fsdev="raid${RAIDLEVEL}_chunk${CHUNK_SZ_KB}_ext3";
   mkfs.ext3 -F -E stride=$STRIDE_SZ_KB /dev/md-tmpraid
   mkdir -p /mnt/tmpraid
   mount -o data=writeback,nobh /dev/md-tmpraid /mnt/tmpraid
   chown ben /mnt/tmpraid
   sync
   sleep 1
   echo "benchmarking $fsdev..."
   sudo -u ben /usr/sbin/bonnie++ -q -m $fsdev -n 256 -d /mnt/tmpraid >>~/bonnie.csv
   umount /mnt/tmpraid


   fsdev="raid${RAIDLEVEL}_chunk${CHUNK_SZ_KB}_xfs";
   mkfs.xfs -f -s size=4096  \
 -d sunit=$(($CHUNK_SZ_KB*2)),swidth=$(($CHUNK_SZ_KB*2*$NON_PARITY_DRIVE_COUNT)) \
 -i size=512 \
 -l lazy-count=1 \
 /dev/md-tmpraid
   mkdir -p /mnt/tmpraid
   mount -o nobarrier /dev/md-tmpraid /mnt/tmpraid
   chown ben /mnt/tmpraid
   sync
   sleep 1
   echo "benchmarking $fsdev..."
   sudo -u ben /usr/sbin/bonnie++ -q -m $fsdev -n 256 -d /mnt/tmpraid >>~/bonnie.csv
   umount /mnt/tmpraid


   fsdev="raid${RAIDLEVEL}_chunk${CHUNK_SZ_KB}_xfslogalign";
   mkfs.xfs -f -s size=4096 \
 -d sunit=$(($CHUNK_SZ_KB*2)),swidth=$(($CHUNK_SZ_KB*2*$NON_PARITY_DRIVE_COUNT)) \
 -i size=512 \
 -l lazy-count=1,sunit=$((CHUNK_SZ_KB*2)),size=128m \
 /dev/md-tmpraid
   mkdir -p /mnt/tmpraid
   mount -o nobarrier /dev/md-tmpraid /mnt/tmpraid
   chown ben /mnt/tmpraid
   sync
   sleep 1
   echo "benchmarking $fsdev..."
   sudo -u ben /usr/sbin/bonnie++ -q -m $fsdev -n 256 -d /mnt/tmpraid >>~/bonnie.csv
   umount /mnt/tmpraid

   mdadm --stop /dev/md-tmpraid
   sleep 1;
 done

done

The core script of bonnie-to-graph is cgi-bin/chart-data.cgi. At the top of chart-data.cgi are some definitions you can change for the colors used for the bars and the CSS used for the graph title. The read_bonnie_csv function handles parsing the Bonnie++ comma-separated file from the input file, which is /var/www/html/bonnie-to-chart/bonnie.csv by default as defined toward the top of chart-data.cgi. read_bonnie_csv also handles converting the benchmark results into numbers relative to the first benchmark result if the relative CGI parameter is present. Another CGI parameter that is accepted is metadata, which causes the script to create the graph of metadata operations rather than the default block IO benchmarks. The chart-data.cgi script ends by looping over all the Bonnie++ benchmark results loaded by read_bonnie_csv and creating a bar for each result that should be shown (either block IO or metadata) and setting appropriate minimum and maximum axis values.

Results

Click to enlarge The results are presented as figures either reporting absolute figures or performance relative to the first result in bonnie.csv. In relative reporting mode, the first result itself is not reported because it will always be zero for each benchmark. Presenting results in a relative manner allows you to quickly see whether your filesystem modifications are giving you positive performance, and which from a group is the best choice. Relative mode is great if you are running benchmarks on the same hardware, just tweaking filesystem or RAID configuration, because you are less likely to care about the exact throughput and more about how your changes affect the benchmark.

The results of running a 64KB chunk size on RAID-5 and RAID-6 using ext3 and two XFS setups are shown below. It took about 1.5 hours to complete all of the Bonnie++ runs for the 64KB chunks size. You can see from the absolute graph that software RAID-6 gives a huge drop in rewrite and input performance but does not affect block output as severely. The baseline for the relative graph is ext3 running on RAID-5. You can easily see from the relative graph that XFS running on RAID-6 is actually faster for block output than ext3 running on RAID-5 on the benchmark hardware.

The relative graph is much more informative for displaying the Bonnie++ metadata operation benchmarks. The ext3 configurations handle sequential and random create operations much more efficiently than XFS. Of particular interest is the difference on the relative graph between the xfs and xfslogalign datasets. By stripe-aligning the XFS journal log for the xfslogalign filesystem, the relative performance of logalign is better than the defaults that mkfs.xfs chose for this filesystem. What might not have been quite as expected is that this change in the journal alignment also drops block output performance while increasing block input performance.

The bonnie-to-chart project is still in its infancy. I hope to support more graphing packages in the future and include a selection of scripts that can execute Bonnie++ for you. At the moment the script to run Bonnie++ presented about is very rough and unforgiving.

One live DVD, one ton of Linux games

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:00:00 +0000

LinuX-Gamers Live is a live DVD from Germany based on Arch Linux that includes nothing but games. Version 0.9.3 was released in June and provides an excellent means of sampling Linux games or setting up a home arcade, although a few of the games wouldn't run on my machine.

There are no productivity tools, Web browsers, or package managers here; this disc is all play and no work. Because it's a live DVD, no hard drive is required to run the games. Once you burn the downloaded image to a DVD, you have a portable arcade that will run on any x86 system with 512MB or more of RAM. A 3-D accelerated video card is also required for most of the games. Proprietary drivers for Nvidia and ATI-based video cards are included, so you can enable acceleration for those types of cards by simply answering a few dialogs during the boot process.

I downloaded the live DVD via BitTorrent, which as of this writing is the only way to get the live DVD. The download took a few hours. My test system consists of an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, 2GB of RAM, and two Nvidia 8600GT video cards connected by an SLI bridge. The DVD configured all of my hardware correctly, and both video cards were recognized, as well as my sound and network cards. As soon as I finished booting it, I was ready to start fragging.

The 2-D and 3-D graphics of each game looked crisp on my display, and the music and sound effects made good use of my surround sound speakers. The included interface is simple, with icons for each game along the bottom of the screen. The right-click menu allows you to shut down the system (there isn't a reboot option, unfortunately) and opens a terminal that lets you do advanced configuring.

This DVD has something for everyone, with about 16 games included. If you're in the mood for fantasy strategy, Battle for Wesnoth, Glest, and Savage will suit you. Wesnoth consists of each player having a leader, and in most cases (the goal of each adventure may vary) the game ends when you've eliminated all of your opposing leaders. You gain currency by taking over villages, which allows you to purchase more troops to fight for you. Wesnoth is ridiculously addictive and makes a fine addition to this collection. In Glest, a 3-D real-time strategy game, you take control of one of two factions (Tech, which focuses on warriors and technology, and Magic, which consists of mages and summoned beasts) and build up your resources to defeat your enemy. Unlike Wesnoth, Glest allows you to build structures to aid your faction. Savage is unique, as it includes the usual aspects of real-time strategy and in addition also includes first-person shooter elements.

If blasting your enemies is more your thing, Openarena and World of Padman will be of interest. Openarena is a great-looking shooter that contains the gameplay of Quake III: Arena and such modes as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Tournament, and Capture The Flag. World of Padman is a shooter that looks even more amazing, with professional quality visuals set in a stylized cartoonish world.

Other games included here are Boswars, Nexuiz, Bzflag, Sauerbraten, Savage, Treeworlds, Thunder & Lightning, Tremulous, Vegastrike, Warsow, and Warzone 2100. All of the games in this collection are top-notch open source treasures that should prove fun for even the casual gamer.

Unfortunately, this collection wasn't all fun and games. When I tried to launch Nexuiz, it crashed and changed my display to an unrecognized resolution, forcing me to have to restart X. Warsow also had issues; it made my monitor display the error message "input type not supported" when I tried to run it, also causing me to need to restart X. A few games wouldn't load for me, but other than that, the experience was solid.

Overall

Contrary to popular belief, there is no shortage of games on the Linux platform. While the LinuX-Gamers compilation includes some real gems, there's no way all of the noteworthy games in the Linux library could fit on one DVD. For that reason, I hope that compilations of Linux games on live DVDs becomes a trend that will continue, and additional volumes will be released with different game sets.

LinuX-Gamers is perfect for those who want to build a portable arcade or try out Linux games without repartitioning a hard drive. There isn't any desktop functionality here, but that's OK -- this is a gamer-specific distribution that isn't intended to help you get your work done.

Three reasons why GNU/Linux is better for Web servers than OS X

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:16:00 +0000

Apple's OS X, which has been an official certified Unix system for some time now, is often installed onto Internet-exposed or intranet-only Web servers for serving up dynamic content. I've worked with such configurations for a couple of years, and with GNU/Linux alternatives for even longer. There are at least three reasons why GNU/Linux systems do the job better.

Web servers are key corporate assets, and systems administrators are supposed to keep them humming along, but that's not always easy. Security is always an issue for sites, as shown by daily vulnerability reports and security advisories. Performance, in terms of load time and response time, is another key issue. Customers get frustrated if it takes longer to add something to their browser's shopping cart than it would take them to visit a nonvirtual shop to buy it there. Sysadmins also must focus on availability. If your site is down, you'll lose all the benefits an otherwise well-administrated Web site provides.

GNU/Linux and the BSDs generally have a fine track record as Web servers. In terms of software licenses, they make reliable hosting on the cheap possible, and they let you host dynamic sites that serves tens of thousands of visitors per day over hundreds of days without major hiccups.

Lately, Mac OS X is popping up on dedicated Web server machines more often than it used to, perhaps due to the ongoing success of OS X and Apple in the desktop market and the synergistic effects this has on buying decisions made by Apple users in relevant positions. I coadminister a number of Apple machines that serve a PHP- and MySQL-based Web app, and I'm not as happy with them as I am with sturdy GNU/Linux offerings like Debian. Here are three reasons why.

Managing software on OS X is inconvenient

OS X lacks proper package management. Sure, it's easy to install disk image files. The .dmg file format defines application packages and is understood by Apple's installer program. However, not all software that's important for your average Web server setup comes packaged as a .dmg file. Often, corporate policy forbids the installation of third-party software like Fink or Portage. You end up installing some programs the "proper" way, unrolling some tarballs to your filesystem by hand, and compiling and installing some other programs yourself.

Apple's Software Update doesn't necessarily know about all the little nuts and bolts that keep your system up and running. You'll often find yourself waiting for potentially crucial security fixes a lot longer than you would on well-maintained GNU/Linux distros, because Apple tends to provide fixes for individual software in batch volumes on a specific day.

It's much more convenient to have all your software managed by a central facility like APT or an RPM package, as you can under GNU/Linux. In most GNU/Linux distros, packaged software is maintained by a toolkit that can even pull in fixes for your applications automatically. It's also trivial to package third-party software that's not in your distribution's repositories yourself to have it consistently integrate with the other software on the system.

Default configurations of popular software seems awkward

Apple's strategy for selecting (or rather, configuring) server software is strange. The average Web app (that doesn't run under Internet Information Server) probably needs PHP at some point, but the version that ships with Apple's latest offering, OS X 10.5 (code-named Leopard), doesn't come with popular and much-needed PHP extensions out of the box. PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR), a vast software repository with reusable chunks of code, is not installed by default, so you've got to do that yourself (and without a suitable disk image). The distributed PHP build also lacks support for convenient extensions like calendar, mcrypt, and gd (a library vital for generating images dynamically), which renders the whole package next to useless for some add-on software. The only solution to these problems is to throw out Apple's default PHP installation and roll your own, with all the pain of setting up your build environment and finding out how to configure each feature.

Virtually any GNU/Linux distributions that comes with binary packages allow for an easy opt-in installation of these and any modules, and some actually enable you to rebuild any package in their repositories from source, with customized options set at configuration time. That said, all distributions geared toward operating a LAMP server usually come with all the well-known PHP extensions you might want to use enabled out of the box, so you most probably won't have to deal with these issues at all.

OS X is going astray from the "one true way" of Unix

Although OS X is a real Unix system, as Apple's marketing department let the world know in 2007, it isn't as close to Unix as it could (or should) be. For example, most GNU/Linux-literate people know what /etc/fstab and /etc/resolv.conf are for, and are surprised by what they do on OS X: nothing. /etc/resolv.conf applies only to some programs; there are multiple, independent ways of resolving domain names on OS X, which is a potential source of confusion. Many standard Unix tools also work in unexpected ways. For example, mounting a remote filesystem on the command line becomes a real quest as soon as you'd like to grant access to users other than the one who actually executed the mount command. Also, the well-known /etc/passwd file does not really reflect a user's login shell, and chsh, the program you use to change that setting whenever you don't edit config-files manually with a text-editor, operates on some different yet unrevealed data store. In addition, octal Unix permissions do not necessarily represent what's really going on and what you may or may not do with files; there's a chance that you'll get a "permission denied" error when you try to change to a certain directory even though the POSIX view of the system would seemingly allow you to do so without hassle, because some other system programming API (presumably Apple's Cocoa) overrules them. The standard userland tools don't allow for ordering command-line arguments any way you want, which can be highly inconvenient. The list of strange discrepancies and annoyances is a long one.

You won't come across a System V init system on OS X either. The system uses a service called launchd to control most of its other services (and supports a legacy system to control similar functions in parallel), and it performs tasks like automatically starting, stopping, or restarting services whenever various conditions apply. The configuration for those services is kept in XML files, making them difficult to read and even harder to write from scratch. In general, OS X does not really support you much when administering it via SSH on the command line. Most of the guides and howtos on the Web assume you're sitting in front of the desktop shell of OS X and next to the physical machine it's running on, and are dependent on the mouse and GUI. That's not always possible.

On GNU/Linux systems, a graphical interface (such as the X Window System) isn't a necessity, and many servers don't have one installed. Most of the configuration relevant to servers takes place via a command-line interface (CLI) anyway, because it is efficient to work with and you can easily script and automate processes.

A few bright spots for OS X

What I do like about OS X is its default mail transfer agent (MTA), Postfix, due to a personal preference for that particular program over its numerous competitors. You can have that on all mature GNU/Linux distributions too, but it's not the default for popular choices like Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Debian. OS X's manual pages are top-notch, too.

However, despite these couple of positives, I don't see any benefit in having a Mac act as your Web server. Updates and software installation can be a pain, and you're likely to find a cheaper, more flexible, better-working, and better-performing solution with GNU/Linux at a lower price.

Win4Lin 5.0 makes big improvements

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:21:00 +0000

There is no dearth of software that can help you run that indispensable Windows app over Linux. Win4Lin has managed to survive through the years as an inexpensive tool for people who like to pay for support. The recently released Win4Lin 5, available for $30 a pop, has shrugged off the shortcomings of its predecessor and delivers on its "near native-performance" promise.

When I reviewed Win4Lin 4 last year, the software wasn't easy to work with, thanks to its half-baked graphical user interface and over-reliance on the command line. It was on the edge of usability, with poor hardware support. Win4Lin 5 promises improvements on all these fronts, along with special pricing for desktop users, especially those running Ubuntu.

I tested W4L on two dual-core machines, a 2.0GHz E4400 with 1GB RAM and a 1.8GHz E6300 with 2GB RAM. Both machines were running Mandriva Spring 2008.1 and Ubuntu 7.10 as the host OS, and I couldn't see any performance difference between the two distros.

Like previous versions, W4L 5 is based on the open source QEMU processor emulator and its KQEMU performance accelerator component. You can install W4L from both RPM and .deb precompiled binaries, which are available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Installation is well documented for popular distros like Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Mandriva, and involves fetching the GCC compiler and kernel sources from a distro's online repository and installing the binaries with either the rpm or dpkg command. W4L is designed to run only Windows as a guest operating system. You can install several Windows guests, but can run only two simultaneously.

Powerful GUI

W4L 5 features a simple, well-laid-out, and easy-to-navigate GUI that lets you specify global settings that apply to all guest instances under W4L, install Windows guests, and tweak various guest settings.

When installing a Windows guest, you can use sliders to alter the RAM assigned to the guest and set the maximum size of the virtual drive. In addition to installing Windows from the CD/DVD drive, you can also install from an image. The users guide suggests users make an ISO image of their Windows optical media and use that instead of the disc to cut down on install time. You can also install Windows from a Windows Upgrade CD, but in this case you'll have to point the W4L installer to the location of the original Windows for verification purposes. W4L also allows you to run an unattended Windows installation by asking you to enter the product key in the guest installation interface before it installs the software.

W4L runs Windows inside of a window on the desktop, which when resized automatically adjusts the Windows resolution to fit the screen. This worked perfectly on my 17- and 19-inch widescreen monitors, and when running in full screen mode, Windows automatically resized to occupy the whole screen. W4L also automatically configures sound playback and recording, but you can alter the guest settings to force it to use ALSA, OSS, or EsounD sound servers.

In addition to the sound servers, there are lots of settings you can tweak to customize your Windows guest session. You can change the amount of RAM assigned to the guest as well as the keyboard locale for multilingual inputs, enable devices like virtual diskette drives, and add functions like the "print to PDF" option. In addition to using physical optical drive devices, W4L also allows you to use ISO and UDF images and make them look like physical CD/DVD media to Windows. You can do this from the W4L GUI as well as from inside a running Windows guest by pressing the Shift-F12 key combination. That lets you specify images for the CD/DVD drive, run the guest in full-screen mode, and send the Ctrl-Alt-Del key combination to the Windows guest. I was having trouble using ISO images on Windows XP. Leonardo E. Reiter, CTO of Virtual Bridges, the developers of W4L, says this was because of a bug in XP that doesn't properly detect the CD changing. I was able to use the ISO images after following the workaround documented in the users guide.

W4L also sports an interesting option to run the guests in "snapshot" mode. According to the documentation, in this mode, changes to the guest are lost when the session ends, which helps "prevent normal Windows degradation that happens over time, such as registry corruption and general performance loss." But changes made to user settings and documents are saved irrespective of whether the guest is running in snapshot mode or not. You can also back up and restore guest sessions from the W4L interface with the click of a button.

By default all W4L guests can copy and paste text to and from Linux hosts. If you want to copy and paste files, you'll have to do this via the shared folders feature, which displays host folders inside the Windows guest.

Good hardware support

W4L 5 has much improved hardware support compared to its previous version, which wouldn't even install on my dual-core machines. Basic devices like onboard sound cards, wired and wireless Ethernet cards, and USB and PS/2 keyboard and mouse all work. To increase volume in the Windows guest you have to increase it on the host, because W4L doesn't talk directly with hardware, and instead relies on the Linux host to patch hardware calls through.

This is also why the previous W4L release could work only with printers that worked on Linux. But with W4L 5 you can also use printers that don't work on Linux. However, I couldn't get my non-Linux-compatible printer to work by following the instructions in the manual. After installing the Windows drivers in the guest, every time I tried printing a test page, the operation failed, saying it was "unable to create a print job."

With this version, Windows guests can now read and write to removable USB devices such as pen drives, cameras, and music players. But due to W4L's indirect-access-to-hardware approach, you have to access these devices through folders mounted by the host. W4L creates shortcuts to several mount points, including /media, /mnt, and /home, under Start -> Programs -> My Host Computer, to allow access to files on these devices.

Floating apps

I installed several Windows apps on top of the W4L guest, including Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, VLC media player, and trial versions of Visual Studio and Quicken. I found no noticeable delay in launch times when these apps were launched from within the virtualized guest environment as compared to their native launch performance. All apps also performed equally well with hardly any lag or performance bottlenecks.

But the best advantage of W4L is that it allows you to run Windows apps without running a full-blown Windows session. You can create a launcher for a Windows application installed in a Windows guest on the Linux desktop. Then all you need to do is edit the Windows guest properties and enable Remote Desktop Protocol connectivity. This will run the Windows guest in the background, awaiting RDP calls. When you run the Windows app from its icon on the Linux desktop, it connects with the Windows guest via RDP and runs the application. In Win4Lin parlance this is known as a floating Windows application.

When you first run a floating Windows app it takes several seconds (depending on the resources of your physical and virtual machine) to load the necessary files. On both my dual-core machines, it took 10 to 15 seconds to launch Microsoft Word initially. Once the Windows OS bits were running in the background, subsequent launches of all apps were almost instantaneous. The app opens in a window like any other native Linux application and behaves like one too, respecting desktop borders and not overlapping the taskbar when resized.

Conclusion

In this release, W4L offers more positives than shortcomings. Performance-wise, this release surpasses any previous Win4Lin release. Despite relying on Linux for access to hardware, Win4Lin 5 now also supports USB devices and, purportedly, Linux-incompatible printers, although I couldn't get it to power my sole non-Linux printer. Users who need Windows to run an application or two will enjoy the floating apps feature.

With Win4Lin 5, Virtual Bridges has almost bridged the gap to expensive virtualization solutions, and now has a great platform to build on. In addition to the non-Linux printers, it could improve the software by adding better support for Linux-incompatible hardware like gaming devices, wireless cards, and Linux-compatible 3-D hardware.

If you need to keep Windows around to run one critical application and like to have the ability to pay for support, Win4Lin 5 should be on your list of virtualization choices.

Three image extensions for WordPress

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:37:00 +0000

mages are an important part of an attractive, eye-catching blog. Well-chosen images can highlight and capture the essence of your communication, helping your audience to better appreciate your message. Here are three WordPress extensions that help you gain more control over the photos and graphics you want to display on your blog.

Image Manager lets you set default image sizes and borders and control other aspects of your photo and graphics collection. ImageManager works especially well if you like to include images with each blog post and need to keep them to less than a specific width in order to avoid breaking a template design.

Once you've got ImageManager uploaded and installed, you need to set the configuration details before it becomes active. In WordPress 2.5, click Settings -> ImageManager to see the configuration page. Here you choose your default style, class, vertical and horizontal space, border, and alignment, as well as the default paths for your image directories and your default image manipulation library. If you already have the GD library installed on the server, that option will be selected by default. Otherwise you can choose ImageMagick or NetPBM, as long as you have access to the command line on your server. If you select ImageMagick or NetPBM, you'll need to specify on this page where its binary is.

Next, you'll be asked to choose your default thumbnail width and height, choose a default prefix and directory, and select a default thumbnail image in the case of an error.

ImageManager also lets you remove WordPress's default image uploader, which is handy if you decide you're going to stick with ImageManager permanently. If you accidentally delete the plugin before unchecking this option, don't worry; WordPress puts its uploader back in automatically.

Once you're configured the defaults for ImageManager, the fun starts. From the Write Post screen, launch ImageManager by clicking the button on the far right of the toolbar that looks like three little Polaroid pictures. You're presented with the "insert image" screen. If you don't have any images uploaded to the default directory yet, you'll have to look near the bottom of the window for the upload option. Browse for the image you want on your hard drive, select it, and click upload.

ImageManager gives you the option to manipulate your image once you've uploaded it to your server. Click on the pencil icon underneath the picture title in the "insert image" screen, and the picture opens in an editing window. From there you can crop, resize, rotate, and measure your image. I didn't like the tiny, unchangeable editing window that only showed a very small portion of the image I uploaded unless I shrunk the image size way down. Start with a smaller image if you want to see the whole thing in your editing screen.

Get the image the size you want it, then click the diskette icon to save it. You'll need to select a file name (if you want to use one that's different from the one with which you uploaded it). ImageManager also gives you the ability to select the format and the quality. This is a handy tool if you want more power to manipulate your images than you get with a standard WordPress installation.

The Images Max Width plugin is simple and straightforward: it keeps your images a certain size to keep them from breaking your layout. Choose this plugin if you're not terribly interested in server-side image manipulation but would love to reduce the size of your images to preserve continuity at your site or to save space on your server.

Images Max Width lets you choose either a client-side resize, which temporarily resizes the images whenever a page is downloaded, or a permanent server-side reduction, which alters the saved file size but results in a quicker download and better-looking images. You also have an option to force a resize, even when there are existing width and height parameters set on the image. I liked this plugin for its powerful simplicity.

Lightbox2 is big on appearances. It lets you display your WordPress blog images with a semi-transparent overlay, just like the fancy Web sites with highly paid developers.

Lightbox isn't a plugin per se, and you don't install it the same way you'd install a plugin. Instead, upload three folders -- css, js, and images -- to your root directory. Then somewhere in the header file of your WordPress theme, insert the lines:

To activate your Lightbox overlay, create an image link and add in the attribute rel="lightbox". If you'd like a caption on your image, add it in the "title" attribute. Then, whenever someone clicks the image link, it will overlay on top of your page.

Lightbox is attractive and can add spice to your blog if you've been looking for a new way to display images.

You can use any of these three extensions individually, or combine Lightbox with one of the other two, for maximum flexibility and power in working with images on your WordPress site.

GPLv3, one year later

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:27:00 +0000

After 18 months of widespread consultation with community and corporate interests, the third versions of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL). Looking back at these licenses today, observers of free and open source software (FOSS) judge them a modest success, and credit them with continuing to educate people about free software. (LGPL) were released one year ago on 29 June 2007. In November, they were joined by the

Figures on adoption of the GPL family vary somewhat, depending on whom you talk to. According to Doug Levin, president and CEO of Black Duck Software, a company that tracks open source code, 2,476 projects are now using the third version of the GPL, 358 are using the LGPL, and 72 the AGPL. Theresa Bui, vice president of marketing for Palamida, a firm with a similar mission, gives roughly similar figures of 2,271 for the GPL, 261 for the LGPL, and 100 for the AGPL. The difference in the figures is probably explained by the fact that Black Duck's figures include planned transitions to the licenses, while Palamida's does not. Palamida's higher figures for the AGPL are probably due to Palamida's recent interest in the license, as evidenced by its blog.

In addition, Palamida tracks figures for projects that use a version of the GPL that contain a clause allowing contributors to use version 2.1 or later of the license (which includes, of course, version 3.0). These figures are 6,467 for the GPL and 372 for the LGPL. Since the AGPL was not in widespread use until the third version, it is not included in these figures.

Despite the difference in figures, both Black Duck and Palamida agree on the overall trends. Both agree that, taking all versions and variants of the GPL as a single unit, they account for about 70% of all the free licenses in use. Moreover, both agree that the adoption rate for the third versions of the GPL and LGPL remain steady at about 220 per month, and that this growth does not seem to have come at the expense of the second versions. Both expect these trends to continue with little change for the rest of 2008. Neither expects the third versions to overtake the second ones any time soon.

The major difference in adoption rates comes with the AGPL. Levin is cautious about talking about trends with AGPL, pointing out that it has only been out for six months. He says only that "there has been some pick up on the adoption of the AGPL." By contrast, Bui says that AGPL adoption "is really starting to take off." She predicts another 50 projects will be using the license by August, and describes this estimate as "incredibly conservative." She goes on to say that the AGPL is causing far more excitement than the latest versions of the GPL or LGPL, most likely because it received less attention in the consulting process that produced the third versions, and therefore came as more of a surprise.

By contrast, Bui says that the slow but steady adoption rates of the GPL and LGPL third versions was predictable. Instead of rushing to switch to the newest licenses, she says, "Software projects have been just chugging along in their old, familiar lifecycles, and, when new versions were ready, they converted to GPLv3."

One noticeable trend in adoption of the third versions is that projects and companies that opposed them or were neutral during the consultation process do not seem to have changed their minds. "It seems that people who had significant qualms about it a year ago haven't moved from them," says Bui. As a result, while some prominent companies and projects have moved to the third versions, including SugarCRM, Sun Microsystems, and OpenOffice.org, others, equally influential, have not, including the Linux kernel and MySQL.

The outspoken resistance by Linux kernel developers that was so highlighted during the consultation process may be slowing the adoption rate. "The fact that the kernel has not adopted GPLv3 is a significant part of any group's decision not to adopt," says Bui.

Still, both Bui and Levin see the third generation of the GPL family as being steady, if unspectacularly successful. "We see no signs of trends increasing or decreasing for the rest of the year," says Bui. As for the second generation, she predicts that "it will not, in the next two years, lose its position as the number one license."

Similarly, Levin says, "I believe that the GPL will have an average increase of about 10% per month over the next year. What that means is that there will be some 6,000 projects using the licenses a year from now. It will continue to grow and continue to be a factor in the mix of licenses, but the other licenses will continue to be used."

Another measure of success

However, statistics are only one way to measure the licenses' success, as Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, emphasizes. While Brown says he is "happy with the rate of adoption," he suggests that the more important proof of the licenses' success is their ability to educate free software users and "prevent free software from being made proprietary. In that sense, we are very happy about it."

Nor is Brown unduly disturbed that the second versions remain the dominant ones, even though they offer less protection than the third ones. "It's not as if there's been a move away from the GPL," he notes. "It's the same GPL, in a sense."

Instead, Brown suggests that the consultation process and the third versions themselves "have helped the conversation about free software progress." The fact that large sections of the FOSS community were consulted about the wording of the new licenses helped both to educate people about the issues surrounding them, and to give them a stake in the process.

In addition, the Free Software Foundation has made considerable efforts to educate users about the licenses, such as its page about the advantages of the third version.

These suggestions are supported by Bui's observations at client sites of people using their knowledge of the GPL licenses to help plan product lifecycles. "That's due to the good work of the FSF," she says. "They have done a really good job of educating people about the GPL and raising their awareness."

Brown also suggests that the lack of legal challenges to the third versions may be a measure of their success, although he admits that they may be too recent to be contested, and that the second versions have not received many challenges, either. But he credits the consultation process with improving the legal language of the licenses, as well as making clear from the number of people involved in the consultation just how large a community any potential violators would be taking on.

Still another factor may be that the technology field has caught up with the licenses. When the licenses were being drafted in 2006-07, lockdown technologies were just starting to appear, so the language to prevent them was seen as unnecessarily radical. Now, with examples like the iPhone, such provisions are starting to seem far-sighted.

"The main thing is, we're satisfied that the changes that we've made seem to have done their job," Brown says.

Future measures of success

A year after third versions began to be released, an absolute judgment of their success is still impossible. No comparison can be made with the success of the second versions after their release in 1991, because the free software community and the pressures upon it have changed so drastically since then.

For another thing, the licenses remain a work in progress. One of the changes in the third version is greater allowance for exceptions -- special clauses that make small modifications to the basic GPL license. Brett Smith, FSF compliance engineer, is still working with the community to modernize and improve exceptions for the third generation. "GPLv3 came out on a Friday, and I came in Monday and started working on the exceptions," Smith says. A year later, they still occupy much of his time, but their effectiveness will be a major factor in how well the licenses themselves function.

It will take several years to see exactly how good a job the third versions do of "futureproofing free software," as Brown puts it. He suspects a major test will be the ability of the AGPL to create and safeguard free network appliances. Nor does he rule out the eventual need for a fourth generation of licenses in response to the discoveries of new loopholes.

For now, the only measure of success is that the third generation of the GPL family seems to be holding its own. It has not replaced the second generation, as many might have assumed it would when the process of creating it first began in 2006. Still, if counted separately from the second generation, in a year it has become the seventh most popular free license, according to Black Duck's statistics.

As Brown points out, "GPLv3 is probably the most adopted license in the last year. And it seems to achieve its aims thus far." For any other license, this performance would be a runaway success. It is only by comparison with the dominance of the second version of the GPL licenses that the success of the third versions might seem disappointing.

But the ultimate success of the third generation GPL, and the question of whether it will replace the second generation or continue to coexist with it, remain almost as uncertain today as they were a year ago.

Ten sticking points for new Ubuntu users

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:29:00 +0000

With Ubuntu, Canonical has had notable success in convincing people to switch from other platforms, but potential Ubuntu users are still running into trouble in several areas. Having spent some time on Canonical's forums, I've identified 10 points that seem to be common sticking points for new users -- that is, problems that have the potential to prevent a new user from adopting Ubuntu in the long term. These problems span the entire Ubuntu experience, but they all have two things in common: they are all serious enough to evoke the dreaded "I tried Linux but it didn't work" excuse, and they are all solvable.

Screen setup

Ubuntu is still bad at properly detecting and setting up the display. Once it's gone wrong, there isn't much you can do from the GUI setup tool -- it either lies about your screen settings or offers inappropriate screen modes. Anyone for 640x480@52Hz on a 19-inch CRT?

This is probably the most frequently reported complaint on the beginner forum. Other operating systems can set up the screen, so why can't Linux?

From the user perspective, the solution involves some research and the editing of the xorg.conf config file. This is bad, because if the user makes a single mistake -- presuming the typical user is resourceful enough to make it this far -- it's all too easy to render the whole Ubuntu setup unusable.

This problem is so widely acknowledged as a weakness of Ubuntu that I was surprised that Ubuntu 8.04 was still getting it wrong. Ubuntu should use its leadership muscle to create a robust, reliable solution from scratch or champion an existing project.

Boot management

I'm against the idea of making things unnecessarily flashy, but GRUB is both feature-poor and complicated to configure.

Smart Boot Manager is a boot manager that has more run-time configuration features than GRUB without being frivolous. Other boot managers, such as GAG, offer an attractive GUI interface. Both of these GRUB alternatives that I mentioned are GPL projects.

Having the boot manager overwritten by a Windows upgrade is another common complaint. A feature to reinstate the boot manager from the install disk menu would help people who can no longer boot Ubuntu.

Mounting

It's a shame that Ubuntu doesn't come with a GUI tool to configure the boot-time mounting of new partitions. Most advice on this issue revolves around editing /etc/fstab. A common complaint is that the partition can be seen but the permissions are wrong. There are a few other gotchas that can come up when a user is trying to make the system recognise a new partition.

Such a utility could be added to the live CD, as mounting a partition from the command line is difficult for non-experts.

Installation

I have a pet niggle with the Ubuntu installer: it's not very forgiving of network errors, often hanging at about 92%. I suspect that Ubuntu pings a test server, and if it receives a reply, assumes that the machine is connected to the Internet. The snag is that there is a class of networking problems that only affect DNS resolution.

The workaround for this problem is simple: disconnect from the network before beginning the install.

Ideally, the Ubuntu installer would pop up a warning when its attempt to connect to the server has failed, then finish the install. I'd settle for an error box stating that the install couldn't complete, accompanied with advice about how to proceed. Even a note saying, "If the installer stops at 92%, try installing without the network connected" would be better than an installer that stops dead with no explanation.

Sound configuration

Sound under Linux is a bit of a mess. There are a lot of different systems, and a lot of overlapping functionality. This needn't matter if the system sets itself up properly, but sound setup on Linux is hardly what I would call robust. As a result, when things go wrong, users have to hit the forums and the config files.

Some users report that sound is working but that only one program can use it at once. In extreme situations, this may lead to people switching off system alert sounds so that application sound works. Sometimes people can't get sound working in Web videos in Firefox. The common fixes for that problem can leave them with a system in which sound works only in Firefox.

Canonical is trying to solve the Linux sound problem by standardising on ALSA with Pulse Audio. This combination has the potential to be a killer system in the long run, but at the moment a lot of people can't get their sound up and running.

Networking: IPv6 support

Version 4 of the Internet Protocol (the layer that connects software to the Internet) is in the process of being superseded by version 6. By default, Ubuntu supports the new version, but many Internet service providers have not switched over yet. When IPv6 support has not been implemented properly by an ISP or by a broadband router, an Ubuntu user can experience slow access or even a total lack of access to the Internet.

From reading the forums it seems that Ubuntu may have defaulted to IPv6 support too early. IPv4 support can be re-enabled, but it involves editing configuration files. If Canonical has decided to be ahead of the curve, it should make it easier for people to switch back to IPv4.

I wonder how many people have given up on Ubuntu because Web browsing seemed slow? I suspect that some people are left thinking that Ubuntu doesn't support their network hardware, but in fact they were running afoul of incompatibilities with the new IP standard.

A simple check-box configuration for switching between IPv4/6 would save a lot of headaches for users who have run into problems.

Power and hibernation

Power management is vital for laptop users, and hibernating a desktop computer can be a cool approach to startup and shutdown.

Canonical should intensify its efforts in this area, because for most users, a laptop that doesn't sleep properly is a broken laptop. Ubuntu features a hardware testing and reporting application, but it didn't even prompt me for details about my experiences with power management.

Email migration

One of the most common things that new users want to do is migrate their email from their Windows setup. If they were lucky enough to be using a client such as Thunderbird on Windows, they can migrate their email with a combination research and some complicated file copying, all within an unfamiliar interface. Transferring email from the most popular Windows email client, Outlook Express, is even more complicated.

This process could be made more approachable with some prominent documentation, or even an email migration tool. I regard this as a fix rather than an enhancement as it refers to such a common and vital activity.

Documentation

How about providing some documentation to help get new users started, covering topics such as "Internet and networking problems" and "Getting the screen set up"? The Ubuntu team could produce a list, like this one, describing some of the most common problems that users are likely to encounter and make some simple suggestions.

Building from source

Ubuntu's package management implementation constitutes a significant enticement for the potential switcher in its own right. However, building packages from source is unavoidable when a desired package isn't in the repositories or the version in the repositories is out of date.

The build instructions in most source packages put the package manager out of sync with the actual packages that are installed. Why doesn't Canonical standardise on one of the GUI build tools in tandem with Checkinstall? Checkinstall installs the compiled application but works with the package manager to keep it in sync with the real state of the system.

By addressing these 10 points, Canonical can improve the Ubuntu experience for new users, and retain more of them who might otherwise become frustrated by problems with relatively simple fixes.

Free Locknote for Windows offers fast free file encryption

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:32:00 +0000

Steganos Locknote is a handy little GPL-licensed utility for Windows, built using the Crypto++ class library. It is designed to keep text files secure, so you can store your sensitive information and passwords without having to worry about the information falling into the wrong hands.

At 312KB, Locknote is quick and easy to download, and requires no installation. Once you have it, just double-click the icon. Locknote presents you with a small text window with instructions for using the program. Highlight and erase the instructions (don't worry, Locknote displays the same instructions each time you open it) and type or paste your own notes into the window.

Once that's done, click File -> Save As and give the file a name. Locknote will then prompt you to enter a password for the file. Enter it twice, and the file is stored as yourfilename.exe, which includes your text file and a copy of the Locknote application. To open it, run the file or click on its icon, enter the password, and there it is.

Alternatively, if you have a text file you'd like to encrypt, you can drag and drop it onto the Locknote window. Enter your password, and Locknote saves the file instantly, in the same directory as the original file, with the same name, except for the .exe extension. The resulting file size is 312KB plus the original file size. You can encrypt only files with an extension of .txt this way.

LocknoteYou can back up your Locknote files and store them anywhere, just as you would any other file. You can also download a file to any computer and open it, as long as you know the password. Emailing a Locknote file is just like emailing any other file, although since the file has an .exe extension some virus and spam filters will tag it. To get around that, you can rename the file, removing the extension, and have the recipient add it back in.

Locknote functions in a manner similar to KeepYouSafe, an online "lockbox" for sensitive files, and even uses the same encryption technique, but that service is hosted online and larger files cost money to store.

If you have Windows, Locknote is a simple, free way to keep your personal or sensitive information private, yet easy to access and completely under your control.

OpenLX and KalCulate pair Linux distro with proprietary accounting app

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:44:00 +0000

Most free-libre accounting applications that ship with GNU/Linux distributions are for personal accounting only: they manage one person's finances. Corporations and accounting firms need far greater functionality, however, such as the ability to maintain a complete sets of multi-company accounts, tally final accounts automatically, generate MIS reports, and function synchronously across multiple offices. Though there are some free-libre applications with such functionality, such as SQL Ledger and Ledger-SMB, the lay user may find their installation complicated, as it can involve manual configuration with the PostgreSQL database, possibly the programming language Perl, and the remote access software Samba. And these accounting apps are not installed by default in any distribution. But OpenLX is a distro with an accounting app.

The India-based OpenLX distribution comes with the KalCulate accounting package (not to be confused with the Kalculate calculator). The application is closed source and proprietary, though bundled with a free-libre operating system. Therefore, KalCulate is clearly positioned on pricing and usage advantages, not on freedom. Bundled with OpenLX it costs 500 Indian rupees, or about $13, making it more affordable than similar software from large, monopolistic operators. This price gets you a two-month trial version of KalCulate; after that time, you must enter a license key.

A chock-full distribution

You can also buy older versions of OpenLX bundled with KalCulate. These are, respectively, meant for a small office and a large networked environment. They differ mostly in the number of configuration, server, and networking packages installed. OpenLX Linux Desktop Edge 1.0 comes on one CD, and while OpenLX Linux Enterprise Edge 1.0 takes six. Both were released in November 2006, and come with a choice of desktops. There's also an older version (2005), OpenLX Version 11, which is an Enterprise version, weighing in at 5 CDs. All these older versions cost 200 rupees, or a little over $5.

The OpenLX Edge 2.0 distribution is based on Fedora Core, but neither distro nor Web site says which one, and I was unable to contact the developers. It's probably Core 6, judging from some of its dated apps. It uses Fedora's familiar installer, Anaconda, without much modification. Though it finished without problems, it appeared to hang because of a stuck progress bar. The distro's specified minimum hardware requirement of a Pentium 4 processor is not mentioned on either the distribution packaging or the documentation, but only on the KalCulate Web site, which led me to begin testing it on an underpowered machine before I turned to an Acer Aspire 5052 with an AMD Turion 64x2 processor and 512MB of RAM.

OpenLX Edge 2.0 uses KDE 3.5 and has the option of GNOME or the lighter desktops. It was created to be a GNU/Linux suited for Indian language speakers, so OpenLX comes with the SCIM (Smart Common Input Method) utility installed even in KDE, which enables the use of many Indian languages, such as Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. Unfortunately, SCIM froze repeatedly on both the desktop and the laptop.

The wealth of applications found on OpenLX is rarely seen on the same system by default. For instance, the multimedia players Amarok, Audacious, Kaffeine, Noatun, MPlayer, Kaboodle, JuK, and Xine Player are all included. Unfortunately, the bundled applications are old versions. For instance, the OpenOffice.org office suite is present, but it's version 2.3. There's Evolution 2.8.0 (released in 2006) for personal information management, comprising email, calendar, task list management, and address book. And the dated Firefox 1.5 is the Web browser.

Overall the application menus are all stacked high. There's a heap of KDE and GNOME games, a large mix of administration apps from both KDE and GNOME desktops, and also eye candy, with the inclusion of the Beryl 3-D desktop and the desktop widget app Superkaramba.

OpenLX also includes Wine, the Windows emulator, and configures it to launch with a right-click. The inclusion of Wine means that business users can migrate Windows applications to GNU/Linux. Wine worked fine in the test. It properly installed and ran a Windows-based CD-ripping application.

A competent accounting app with excellent documentation

Once you've installed OpenLX, you can start KalCulate from the KDE Office menu. New users can peruse KalCulate's manual, a PDF file placed on the desktop. It's comprehensive and well-written, with illustrations. The help option available through the app itself is also detailed and lucid.

As for the app itself, it maintains full accounts and generates purchase, sales, goods receipt, and other advice notes, invoices such as for purchase and sales receipts, and a slew of reports: 16 financial reports, 18 inventory reports, and another screenful of other reports, such as for tax and depreciation. KalCulate also generates Schedule VI balance sheets, which are mandatory for corporates in India, and claims to be ready for value-added tax (VAT) too. A full folio of accounts comes preconfigured in KalCulate. You can create uers with varying rights to access each account; passwords enforce these rights.

KalCulate is simple to use. In my test it generated a pleasant-looking profit statement and balance sheet; but it overflowed its page margins in the PDF export, yielding a column of figures cropped out from the right side of the page. Only trial balances seem to enjoy appropriate pagination.

KalCulate also has a sync feature designed to let branch offices keep their accounts in tune with head offices. This is not an automatic live or real-time feature: KalCulate creates "export sync" files instead, which must be manually imported into the head office accounts after the branch office sends them on removable media or via email.

OpenLX says KalCulate is extensible, and that it will provide APIs to users interested in doing so.

Conclusion

Together, OpenLX and KalCulate are average, not spectacular. Yes, KalCulate brings rare accounting functionality to the GNU/Linux desktop and has plenty of features, but it has its rough edges. The inclusion of a bagful of music players and applications is bemusing and counterproductive; a new user could be intimidated by all the clutter. Wine, though, is a welcome inclusion.

OpenLX seems to make sense only for companies migrating to GNU/Linux for practical reasons such as cost-efficiency and security and that have paid license fees for their Windows and accounting software. In developing countries, most small firms use pirated software, so their software costs are already low -- that is, zero -- so the majority would not consider paying license fees for an accounting app such as KalCulate when they could use pirated copies of something more widely used.

OpenLX makes sense for companies which would feel the pinch from legitimately obtained proprietary software. There, KalCulate can compete only on the issue of lower price.

Gizmo5 - a more open VoIP solution

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:52:00 +0000

With Gizmo5, not only can you use your PC to make or get phone calls on Linux, Windows, and Macintosh PCs. But unlike similar programs, such as Skype, Gizmo5 uses open standards like Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Jabber, which makes it interoperable with a variety of clients.

Previously known as the Gizmo Project, Gizmo5 is both the name of a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network (with its own servers and users, working over the Internet) and of a program that lets you communicate by using that network. Though it uses open standards, Gizmo5 doesn't qualify as open software itself. It uses several proprietary codecs, and the client code itself is closed source.

Installation

Gizmo5 offers several packages for Linux users, including RPM, .deb, binary tarball, and Click 'N Run versions. I used the RPM version, which worked fine under both openSUSE and Mandriva. Installation just requires running sudo rpm -Uvh gizmo-project-3.1.0.79-1.i386.rpm. Make sure you already have the GIMP Toolkit (GTK+) 2.6, GConf2, libstdc++, and Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) installed; the RPM package won't install those. After installation completes, you'll find Gizmo5 in the Internet section of your system menu; the program appears as Gizmo Project.

Unfortunately, Linux users don't get to use the latest versions of the software. The current available Linux version is 3.1.0, while Macintosh users can use 3.1.2 or try the 4.0 beta, and Windows users already have the 4.0 release. Even cell phone and Nokia Internet Tablet users can get more up-to-date versions.

The first time you start Gizmo, it asks you to create a user account. You have to provide a username, password, and email address (in case you forget your password). You can edit this information later from the Gizmo window. You may also pick an avatar for yourself, but Gizmo won't allow you to upload your own photograph, as several other programs do. As soon as you get an account, you get $0.10 credit, so you can perform test calls to any number. (If you call an USA number from the web, 10 cents buys you about five minutes at the current rates.) I experimented by calling home to Uruguay, and it worked perfectly. Gizmo5 installs itself in the system tray, so you can access it with just a click.

Features

You can get some features of Gizmo5 for free, but you must open an account and pay for others, particularly those having to do with calls to mobile phones and landlines; rates vary depending on your country and what kind of number you call. The free features include calling other Gizmo5 users (with optional video to be included in version 4; Skype already offers it), call recording and voice mail, chatting (AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber, and more protocols are supported), and doing file transfers (but only with Jabber clients).

The paid features include calling or sending SMS messages to normal phones and getting a landline number so Caller ID shows your number. Note that many other programs don't provide Caller ID information. Many people automatically screen calls from unidentified numbers, but this won't happen if you get a land number. You can get a local number for about 30 different countries.

Gizmo is easy to use. To build up your contacts list, you will probably want to search for other people, in one of two ways. You can click on the looking glass icon and enter some text; Gizmo5 looks for users with that text in their first name, last name, city, state, or country. (Thus, a search for WASHINGTON brings up people with that last name, plus all users in Washington, DC, every user from the state of Washington, and others.) However, if you already know another person's name, you can simply click on the icon next to the looking glass (a head and a plus sign), and you'll be able to add that person to your account list quickly.

You can start one-on-one chats (by clicking the IM icon) or group chats (by clicking the icon next to the IM one). For the latter, you have to name your group session and add all the people you want to invite. For both kinds of chats, not everybody has to be in your account list; you can enter their usernames, and they will also be invited in.

For phone calls, right-clicking on an account name lets you start a Gizmo call (with other Gizmo5 users), a SIP call (with users on other SIP networks), or a mobile or landline call -- but for the latter, you will need enough credit; go to "Your account" on the Gizmo5 Web site and use your credit card or bank account to get it. You can also "dial" a number by clicking on a on-screen phone pad. For laughs, try out the silly special sound effects (such as "thunder," "tiger," or "boing") during a call when you think the other person isn't paying attention.

In conclusion

At a conference I attended, Ivar Jacobson of UML fame, who has several years' experience with telephony, pointed out that the telephone system was the largest successful system in the world. Each country has its own system, connections, and rules, but somehow you can call from any country to any other country, and talk to whomever you want.

The Web phone category isn't a single world right now. It's difficult to avoid comparing Gizmo5 to Skype, because they have many features in common. However, each application has its particular features, and depending on your interests, one might be better for your particular case. If you require free voicemail, chatting with Jabber users, having Caller ID, or calling other SIP networks, then Gizmo5 is your choice. From a more practical point of view, you should consider the calling rates for your country, or the cost of the special added services; depending on your needs, which program to use will be obvious.

However, the main point in using such a program is getting connected to other people. The success or failure of the companies that create these applications depends on how many people use the software. If the adoption rate of Gizmo5 keeps growing, the company might face off with Skype, and users are sure to benefit from that. For now, it seems that Skype has the advantage, but Gizmo5 merits attention. The program is solid, fast, and easy to use. Being able to connect to other networks is a useful function, and its reliance on open standards is a plus. For now, I'm keeping both.

New media center OS is pleasing to the eye and ear

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:54:00 +0000

Acoustic Reality is a Danish company that sells speakers, amplifiers, storage devices, cables, and other products to build top-shelf home entertainment centers. It recently released eAR OS Free Edition, a free media center system built on top of Ubuntu that features a free version of the Acoustic Reality software technology used in the $100 eAR RT-OS Enterprise Edition and in the company's hardware Media 4 products. It provides a user-friendly media center along with a nice implementation of Ubuntu.

eAR OS is an installable live CD. The boot options are similar to those of Ubuntu 8.04 and the installer is exactly the same. The only problem I noted with the installer was with user setup, which didn't actually add my user. The eAR desktop uses the "earmusic" user, with the password "earmusic."

I had high expectations for the Media Center, since it is the focus and purpose of this distribution. It opens full-screen with a list of multimedia tasks available, including Listen to Favorites, TV, DVD, Video, Music, Radio, Photo, and More. The menu list is navigable with the arrow keys or by using the mouse. If you'd like to access the regular desktop without shutting down the Media Center, you can use the Ctrl-Alt-Arrow key combination to change to another virtual desktop.

But you may not have to shut down the Media Center or arrow to another desktop, because under the More heading is a menu of commonly used applications that can be launched right from the Media Center. Key portions of the desktop will show as well, such as the panel and Simdock docking bar. This is handy in expanding the functionality of the interface, particularly on a computer that has been dedicated to being a home theater machine, where one would might prefer to leave the Media Center visible at all times. Some of the applications available include Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Pidgin, GIMP, Skype, and the GNOME Control Center.

Click to enlarge The Listen to Favorites choice displays your personal playlist. It ships with a few examples, but you can add online radio stations, digital broadcast channels, on-disk music or videos, or music CD tracks to your Favorites. Depress the "p" key to access the list of Playlist Commands.

TV is for watching Digital Video Broadcasts using Kaffeine. That application must be able to detect and configure your TV card. I would like to see support for BTTV broadcast tuner cards included. I could use xawtv since Kaffeine doesn't support analog cards, but it's inconvenient and disappointing that this functionality isn't integrated into the eAR Media Center. As a compromise I was able to make a launcher in the eAR-More directory for xawtv so that it would appear in the More screen menu, but my family found it confusing to watch television through the More menu instead of the TV. Another alternative is to connect to a traditional television set (through S-Video or VGA-out for example), but that would require flipping the video input on the TV to watch, which is far from an integrated solution.

DVD is, obviously, for watching DVDs, and this choice too uses Kaffeine. Encrypted DVDs are no problem. The "d" key brings up the DVD menu, which gives access to other features available on a DVD. "s" controls subtitles, "f" raises the volume, "l" lowers the volume, and the space bar pauses and resumes a movie. The arrow keys fast-forward or go back in the video.

The Video menu lets you watch videos on your hard drive. Clicking it brings up a screen with several listed folders. Files should be stored in the subdirectories of /home/earmusic/eAR-Video, as there doesn't appear to be any way to add additional directories. All of the formats I tested (AVI, MPEG, and MPEG-4) played without issue.

Like Video, Music opens a screen of folders where your music should be stored. Also like Video, the files are stored in the /home/earmusic directory, and I didn't find a way to utilize directories of music stored elsewhere. You can listen to audio CDs too. While at the main screen with Music highlighted, if you use the right arrow key or move your mouse rightward, the entry will change to Listen to CD. If you choose that, Soundjuicer opens to play or extract the tracks.

Radio is for listening to Internet radio stations. eAR OS comes with an amazingly comprehensive list of stations to use, which is nice as I didn't see an easy way to add others.

Photo is for viewing a directory of images. As with Video and Music, images are stored in a hard-coded directory, specifically /home/earmusic/eAR-Photos.

The eAR Media Center is extremely easy to use. Although it didn't quite meet all my expectations, it provides extensive multimedia functionality. It looks great and was stable during my rigorous testing. I can forgive it for not supporting older analog TV cards, as they're at the threshold of antiquity and my workaround has sufficed. It comes with so many radio stations configured that everyone's tastes are likely be addressed. The only significant complaint is the hard-coded storage directories. I'd really like to be able to add my own storage directories to the choices.

OS infrastructure

Perhaps much of eAR Media Center's solid performance can be attributed to the underlying Ubuntu code-base.

The desktop is built using GNOME 2.22.2 and features SimDock 1.2. SimDock has several launchers, including ones for Firefox, F-Spot, the GIMP, and the eAR Media Center. The panel is set up with some handy applets such as Disk Mounter, Weather Report, Update Manager, Network Manager, Trash, and a Volume applet.

The menu contains a few standalone applications, including Wine, GIMP 2.4.5, Audacity, Sound Juicer, K3b, Kaffeine, Exaile, and VLC media player. For online activities Firefox 2.0.0.14 (with support for Web-based multimedia), Thunderbird, and Pidgin are available.

Under System -> Preferences you will find the GNOME Control Center, Screen Resolution, and Sound configuration, while present under Administration are the PolicyKit graphical configuration, Firestarter, Restricted Drivers, and Language and Network tools.

Like Ubuntu, eAR OS uses APT with Synaptic for package management. It comes set up with Ubuntu, Medibuntu, and WineHQ repositories. eAR OS uses codecs and libraries from the Medibuntu project to enable multimedia playback support that may be excluded from Ubuntu.

eAR OS features a real-time 2.6.24-17 kernel compiled with GCC 4.2.3. It functioned well on my Hewlett-Packard Pavilion notebook, as well as on two home-built desktops. The graphics are served by Xorg 1.4.1/7.3.0. The screen started in 1024x768 on the laptop, but I used the Screen Resolution module to adjust it to 1280x800, and I was able to easily install proprietary drivers using the Hardware Drivers module. Sound worked out-of-the-box and my volume and mute keys functioned. My keyboard and touchpad worked accurately and responsively. Removable media was auto-mounted if appropriate and associated applications opened. The wired Internet connection was enabled automatically if a cable was present.

Even better than that, with the Ethernet cable removed, my wireless connection was available as well. Although the Hardware Drivers module indicates that a proprietary driver is in use, it ships with eAR OS so I didn't have to have an Internet connection present to get my wireless Internet connection working. CPU Scaling was enabled by default, decreasing heat and saving energy. A battery monitor appeared in the panel when the electrical supply was removed. Suspend worked fine, but I did have issues with hibernate. Although eAR OS is designed to be a home theater system, it could be used as a mobile system if desired.

Closing thoughts

The eAR OS Web site has some Frequently Asked Questions with a few tips, and a README file on the desktop of a new install contains more instructions and information. You can install updates to the Media Center instead of downloading a new ISO for each release. An Enterprise Edition is available that offers added features such as support for IEEE 1394 FireWire audio and remote controllers.

Although I encountered a few issues that I didn't like, overall I had a positive experience using eAR OS. The desktop implementation is attractive, and the Simdock adds a touch of cool. The Media Center also sports an attractive appearance and includes useful functionality. It's not quite as inclusive as MythTV, but in contrast to MythTV it doesn't require complicated configuration to use. It would be ideal for a standalone dedicated home theater computer, especially if you have a DVB card.

If you're looking for an easy-to-use system for your home theatre PC or would just like a pretty media center for your current computer, then eAR OS is a worthy candidate. I'm going to continue using it for awhile myself.

Streamlined Firefox 3 makes browsing safer, more productive

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:49:00 +0000

Desktop users, developers, and reviewers all had their download managers aimed at the Firefox Web site Monday to grab Firefox 3 as soon as it launched and also help Mozilla set a world record. World record or not, the latest Firefox release is a world-class Web browser. It looks impressive, renders text and images better than its predecessor, and helps you browse safely. But while it delivers pages faster by cutting down crucial milliseconds, its memory footprint (in unscientific tests) is still as big as a yeti.

Feature-wise, Firefox 3 is a mammoth release. Mozilla claims the release has more than 15,000 improvements -- big and small, most under the hood but quite a few over it as well. Most of its user-centric features have been vetted through an extensive beta testing cycle and were mentioned in our review of Firefox 3 beta 4.

Some improvements are subtle. For instance, the process of saving passwords is much smoother and less obtrusive in this release. Instead of a popup, Firefox 3 now displays a bar at the top of a page that asks whether you want to remember a newly entered password. The bar doesn't keep the page from loading until it's answered or dismissed. If you deal with multiple tabs, you'll like Firefox's improved tab handling. Not only is tab switching smoother, but the "Open All in Tabs" option in the bookmarks menu doesn't replace open tabs but instead opens the pages in new ones. Also, when closing a browser window with multiple tabs, Firefox now offers to save the tabs before closing the window.

There are some major and interesting changes in the bookmark and history handling as well. In the address bar, Firefox 3 displays a star which will bookmark a page when clicked once, and on double-click will let you file and tag your new bookmark. Yes, bookmarks can be be tagged as well. Thanks to the clever new autocomplete feature, you can now use the tags to quickly find a Web site you're looking for. The new unified bookmarks and history organizer helps you import and export to and from other browsers, as well as save your frequent searches for quick access to your favorite sites.

Click to enlarge

Another improvement you can't miss is the new download manager, which can finally pause and resume downloads. When you right-click on a file in the download manager, it will offer to take you back to the original download page. If you're used to copy-pasting text from the browser window, you can now select multiple text ranges using the Control key.

When you install Firefox 3, which is as simple as downloading and extracting the tarball someplace like /opt and running the ./firefox script, it will check the existing plugins and only enable those that will work with it or have new compatible versions. To get more add-ons from addons.mozilla.org, use the new Add-on manager. It includes a new "Get Add-ons" option, which displays recommended add-ons and allows you to search for new ones, displaying descriptions and ratings for both, and install them with a single click.

Improved look and feel

Firefox 3 blends nicely into the GNOME Linux desktop under Ubuntu. That's because the release bundles four distinct new themes for Firefox -- one each for Linux (GNOME), Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. The theme influences buttons, windows, tabs, icons, and dialog boxes to make them blend into their respective platforms.

Firefox 3 incorporates the Cairo graphics subsystem and a new graphics layer built from scratch. This improves graphics and font handling to make Web sites look better than in previous releases, with sharper text rendering and better support for fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.

There are also a large number of behind-the-scenes CSS improvements in Firefox 3. I tested its CSS prowess via the CSS benchmark test, and it fared pretty well compared to Firefox 2.0.0.14. The test measures the time it takes a browser to render a locally stored page consisting of almost 2,500 DIV tag areas positioned by CSS. The plotted numbers in the CSS Test graph are average of five test runs, and show that Firefox 3 is more than 20 milliseconds faster than its predecessor.

No wonder then that Firefox 3 passes the Acid2 rendering test, and scores better than Firefox 2.0.0.14 on the Acid3 test.

Firefox 3 for developers

The release offers exciting new features for Web developers as well. For starters, Firefox 3 bundles APIs for simple open data formats called Microformats. These Microformat APIs can eventually be used to build add-ons.

With the world migrating from desktop apps to Web counterparts, Firefox 3 allows users to designate Web apps, such as Yahoo! Mail, for handling mailto: links. It also supports other protocols, such as webcal:, tel:, and fax:. Web developers interested in adding Firefox's protocol support to their Web apps can get detailed information from Mozilla.

Another features Web developers should look at is how Firefox 3 implements online and offline events from the WHATWG Web Applications 1.0 specification. Using this feature, Web developers can create apps that will work even when there's no Internet connection available by storing data locally on the user's computer and later synchronizing it with the server when the computer is back online.

Firefox 3 also offers a number of improvements to the Document Object Model. Speaking of DOM, I ran the W3C DOM vs. innerHTML benchmark, designed to find out which method of generating large amounts of content is fastest in the browser. Like previous Firefox releases, Firefox 3 works better with innerHTML, but I wanted the test to show the improvements in Firefox 3. I ran each method five times and used the average time for each method to plot the chart.

Similarly, there's quite a bit of improvement to Firefox 3's JavaScript engine as well as reported by both the JavaScript speed test and the respected SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark. I performed the JavaScript test 10 times for each browser, and used the average runtime.

Security-related improvements

Our previous review covered the improved security features in Firefox 3. In addition to its inbuilt security enhancements like disabling older, insecure plugins and disallowing add-ons that use an insecure update mechanism, Firefox 3 also relies on external applications and services to make sure you stay safe. On Windows platforms, it uses Vista's parental controls settings and also invokes the resident antivirus software when downloading an executable file. It also uses Google's malware site flagging to help you stay away from phishing and malware sites.

There are some subtle but important security add-ons as well, like the Larry extension. Larry checks sites for their security certificates, and if a site has one, Larry displays its content and what the site can do and can't do in easy-to-comprehend language.

To test the browser's security I ran a vulnerability test that scans open ports and determines what personal information a browser reveals while browsing the Web. Per the test report, Firefox 3 sends information about visited sites and "may also save" special cookies for directing advertisement or finding browsing patterns. In the exploits test, Firefox 3 was able to successfully defend against several known exploits. Firefox 3 also stood against various known vulnerabilities.

Memory matters

One area where Firefox 3 may not show a significant improvement compared to the last 2.x branch release is memory consumption. Mozilla says Firefox 3 is more memory-efficient than ever, with more than 300 memory "leak" bugs fixed and new features to help automatically locate and dispose of leaked memory blocks.

Firefox 3 beta 4 had a smaller memory footprint in a test conducted by Firefox developer Stuart Parmenter, who modified Mozilla's standalone Talos framework to run a stress test under Windows. MiningLabs replicated the same test with Firefox 3.0 rc3 on Linux and found that, contrary to Parmenter's results, Firefox 3 on Linux eats more memory than Firefox 2.

I used a more unscientific and manual method of measuring memory usage. I used Firefox 2.0 over Ubuntu on an Intel Core 2 Duo 4400 2.0GHz processor with 1GB RAM for a wide variety of tasks for more than four hours, then repeated the procedure with Firefox 2.0.0.14, the last stable release of the Firefox 2.x branch. I used the ps_mem script to measure memory every 15 minutes from a cold start. The result is plotted in the Memory footprint graph. As you can see, there was hardly any difference in memory presence between the two Firefox releases. But when it comes to releasing memory, Firefox 3 does so at a far better rate than the previous Firefox release.

In summary

Firefox 3 is a wonderfully crafted release. It has new features and improvements all across the board, from the user interface to processing CSS. The release pays special attention to security, and in keeping with the times allows users to replace desktop apps with Web apps for tasks such as replying to email. Mozilla has also added smart features to existing components, like the download manager, bookmarks and history organizer, and add-ons manager. Despite all the new bling, Firefox 3 isn't bloated, and in a variety of tests comfortably outperforms previous Firefox releases.

Mozilla wants to create a world record with Firefox 3. It couldn't have chosen a better release.

Kudos to openSUSE 11.0

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:34:00 +0000

openSUSE 11.0 was one of the most anticipated Linux distro releases of 2008. Despite a few bugs in the final code, which was released yesterday, it was worth the wait. The openSUSE version of KDE 4 alone is worth the download, and the improvements to the software manager make customizing a pleasure.

I used the 4.3GB DVD version, but live CD versions are also available. In either, the first thing you might notice is the beautiful new installer. The layout is similar to that of previous versions, with a large interactive window and a progress list to the right, but with an elegant new color scheme and stylish graphics. And the beauty is not only skin deep -- there are a lot of changes under the hood in this release.

The openSUSE developers have made many improvements to save users time and effort. A new "Installation from Images" option uses a defined set of packages in an install image for many common package groups, such as the GNOME desktop. Using this saves users from having to organize the needed packages and resolve the dependencies at the time of the system installation. It's a feature users can disable if they wish, but it does seem to save some install time.

At the beginning of the install process you can tick "Use Automatic Configuration." In other distributions, similarly worded phrases can turn off hardware auto-detection and lead to long, agonizing configurations. Wanting to avoid that fate, I checked the box, but as it turns out, this setting merely bypasses the hardware confirmation screen where users normally accept the auto-detected proposal or custom configure their hardware. For users who normally agree to the proposed settings, this saves time and clicks.

Click to enlarge Automatic Configuration does not bypass the installation summary. You can still change many options, such as the partitioning proposal. openSUSE presents the user with a proposed partitioning layout, but you can edit the configuration to your needs. For example, you can make a new partition or choose one that is already present. You can even use advanced options such as LVM and RAID.

During the DVD install you can choose your desktop envirnoment from among GNOME, KDE 4, KDE 3, Xfce, and Others, listed in alphabetical order. Some other desktops available for install include Enlightenment, IceWM, FVWM, and Window Maker. These less popular desktops don't include the openSUSE look. They are provided as released by the upstream developers.

No desktop environment is selected by default -- you must choose one. At the installation summary screen, you can click the Software heading to select additional desktop environments and software if desired.

The package selection screens haven't changed much in function on the surface, but they too have received a facelift. You can still search or choose packages by groups, package patterns, or individually.

To save another step during the install the openSUSE developers decided that the first user and root would share the same password. They believe that a large percentage of users use the same password for the first user and root, but if you have security concerns, it's easy to change the root password later.

OpenSUSE has always had one of the premier installers in the Linux landscape, and the developers have worked hard to make it even better in 11.0. Besides the items I specifically mentioned, there are little changes all over that make it more streamlined and easier than ever.

Because of its many desktop options, openSUSE is like several distributions in one. Here's a look at each of the major desktop environments.

KDE and Xfce

KDE 3.5.9 and Xfce 4.4.2 are stable, old-reliable desktops, and they functioned just as expected with no problems. Like the other major openSUSE desktops, they are customized to give them an openSUSE look and feel. In fact, the gray and green theme runs throughout the whole of openSUSE, including the GRUB screen, login screen, and application splash screens, which gives the desktop a uniform professional touch.

At first glance, little distinguishes KDE 4 from KDE 3 -- which is a good thing. Instead of a clunky, buggy Vista clone, users are welcomed into a familiar reassuring environment. KDE 4 in openSUSE is an tidy understated desktop with a panel at the bottom, a few icons, the Kickoff menu, and the widget creator in the upper right corner.

In addition to the comfortable environment, many KDE applications are now ported or backported to KDE 4.04 in openSUSE. I was able to import mbox mail files as well as KDE 3 maildir-format files into KMail 1.9.51. Likewise, I was able to import my news feeds into Akregator 1.2.50. Both of these functioned well, except Akregator was a bit sluggish during fetches under the weight of my 700+ feeds. I was able to just drop my Konqueror bookmark file into the .kde4 directory. It appears that for all the improvements KDE 4 is supposed to bring, Flash is still broken in Konqueror, although this is probably a universal in KDE and not confined to openSUSE.

When inserting removable media under KDE 4, the New Device Notifier located in the panel beside the clock opens with a list of devices. Depending upon the media, you may be given a choice of actions or have one default. For example, a data CD gives only "Open in Dolphin," while a USB memory stick opens an action chooser. Beside each device is an icon that will umount or eject the device.

Overall I was impressed with the usability and stability found in openSUSE's KDE 4 implementation. I began experiencing crashes only while exploring the Personal Settings module (Systemsettings, the replacement for the KDE Control Center) and changing numerous settings and reversing them back and forth. This is when I discovered that you need to press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace twice to kill the X server. This is the first time I've needed to do this in openSUSE.

GNOME 2.22

I experienced some issues with the GNOME desktop. It started just fine and seemed functional during the first tests. Problems arose when I tested the update applet. When I was adding a repository, the online update utility crashed and left most of GNOME unresponsive. When I left the GNOME desktop, the login screen font was scrambled or not fully rendered. I logged back into GNOME, but the font problem persisted. I tried to log out again, but now the Logout tool didn't function any longer.

After rebooting the system, GNOME seemed to function normally, but the update applet never returned to the panel. Running Online Update configuration through the YaST Control Center in GNOME continued to crash, and thus the Online Update tool would not function. However, the update applet did continue to appear in the KDE desktops afterward, and I was able to complete configuration and check for updates while in KDE.

Hardware support

Though I had some problems with software in different desktop environments, hardware support in Linux has all but become a non-issue, and this is even more true with openSUSE. While I don't own any exotic or bleeding-edge hardware, what I do have is well supported. For example, my Hewlett-Packard laptop, which was designed for Windows, is almost fully supported. The only exception is the wireless Ethernet chip, which requires Windows drivers. I used Ndiswrapper in 11.0 to extract and load the drivers to bring it to life. Other critical laptop features were available by default, although Suspend to RAM didn't work for me.

Sometimes, though, my Internet connection, which was configured to start at boot, wouldn't be started. The KNetwork Manager didn't function for me this release either. The GNOME network applet seemed to work well, however, so as a workaround, I just used it in KDE too.

Software

openSUSE is what I commonly refer to as a "kitchen sink" distro because it includes everything but the kitchen sink. It'd almost be easier to list what it doesn't have than what it does.

Besides a few extra desktops and the kernel development packages, my install consisted of the default package selection. This includes Firefox 3.0b5, OpenOffice.org 2.4.0, GIMP 2.4.5, Inkscape, Pidgin, Liferea, Ekiga, GnuCash, Evolution, Tasque, and KOffice.

openSUSE also includes the lastest Compiz Fusion. AIGLX, which provides GL-accelerated effects on desktops, should be enabled by default for those with supported hardware. That unfortunately leaves Nvidia users out until they install the proprietary graphic drivers. However, there are graphical configuration tools for enabling and setting options such as the choice of profile. You can choose profiles ranging from lightweight with few effects to full with lots of effects. The CompizConfig Settings Manager provides deeper settings. In addition, there are lots of great plugins included, such as the Magnifier, Window Scaling, and Show Mouse.

Under the hood openSUSE 11.0 ships with Linux-2.6.25.5, X.Org X Server 1.4.0.90, Xorg-X11 7.3, and GCC 4.3.1 20080507.

Multimedia

Multimedia support is a bit lacking in openSUSE by default. openSUSE has a policy of excluding certain code that does not conform to the open source definition and, unfortunately, that includes support for most multimedia formats. openSUSE 11.0 includes the just released Banshee 1.0, Amarok 1.4.9.1, K3b, Brasero, Totem, and Kaffeine. I could listen to an audio CD and watch Flash content from the Web, but I couldn't use any other multimedia file on hand.

However, community-provided solutions are already in place. YaST one-click install wizards will add repositories and install support for popular audio and video formats. After installing the codecs, libraries, and updated applications, I was able to enjoy any video or audio file I tested. I sometimes experienced crashes in Banshee while trying to adjust the volume. The problem was reproducible, but not consistent. I can't seem to get Amarok to recognize my CD-ROM drive either, but I can use KsCD or Banshee instead to listen to audio CDs.

Software management

Click to enlarge If you'd like to install additional software, openSUSE comes with a powerful package management system. ZYpp, which utilizes the RPM Package Management format, was completely rewritten during the 10.x series, and 11.0 brings even more improvement. To the end user this means better dependency resolution and much faster performance.

Zypper, the command-line package manager, functions much like apt-get does for APT. It can install, uninstall, update repositories, upgrade the system, or update packages. For example, zypper install crack-attack will install the game Crack Attack. zypper search tuxpaint will see if Tuxpaint is available in the openSUSE repositories you have configured. Some other arguments include remove, addrepo, update, and dist-upgrade.

Those who prefer graphical tools are in for a treat. The YaST package management front ends have gotten a facelift this release. It comes in a Qt version for KDE desktops and a GTK version for GNOME users. Using YaST simplifies software installation for users of all experience levels. It just takes a few mouse clicks to install any package.

In my testing, I found that both the command line and the graphical package tools worked well and were much faster than in previous releases. My only complaint is that the YaST GUI still refreshes the repository databases automatically each time it is opened. Fortunately, in this release there is a Skip Refresh button, but with the speed improvements it's usually half done by the time I grab the mouse and click it.

Conclusions

openSUSE 11.0 is a fabulous release. The pretty new graphics set the stage for significant improvements under the surface. All the time and energy put into the package management system has paid off. Including KDE 4 is not as big of a risk for openSUSE as it might be for other major distributions because of the conservative and intuitive way KDE 4 is set up. openSUSE has given me hope that I could actually like KDE 4.

As many point-0 releases, 11.0 does have bugs and rough edges. I experienced a few, and others are likely to be reported in the upcoming weeks. For the most part, the ones I encountered were insignificant, not showstoppers.

Overall, 11.0 is a commendable release. The developers have done an admirable job walking that fine line between stable and bleeding edge. If you like the latest software or wish for a nice usable KDE 4, then openSUSE 11.0 is for you. If you're completely happy with 10.3, well, perhaps you might want to wait for further reports.

Phoronix Test Suite brings Linux benchmarking to the desktop

noreply@blogger.com (THE GANDHIS) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:21:00 +0000

Despite a variety of open source testing tools, until recently there wasn't an easy way to measure and compare the performance of two Linux-powered machines. Phoronix Test Suite (PTS), released this month, addresses this -- and how! Using the suite you can gauge and compare multiple Linux-powered machines to find out if a particular setup is better than another for a particular task, such as hosting a Web server or playing games.

PTS is developed by Phoronix Media, which also owns Phoronix.com, a site popular for its Linux-based hardware reviews and analysis. The tool is available for download as a source tarball as well as a precompiled binary for Ubuntu and Debian. It has minimal dependencies and detailed installation instructions.

The tool comes with 57 tests which are logically grouped into 23 suites. So, for example, you can benchmark the performance of Ogg encoding on your system by running the encode-ogg test, or run the audio-encoding suite of tests, which benchmarks MP3, Ogg, FLAC, APE, and WavPack encoding. There are tests and test suites that can help you assess the performance of your computer for computational biology, gaming, GUI toolkits, audio and video encoding, building Apache, running PHP, compiling the Linux kernel, and more. Since the PTS is what Phoronix uses for its reviews as well, the package also contains a few Phoronix Certification and Qualification Suites (designed by Phoronix for use in their reviews) that test the graphics and motherboards on your desktops and servers.

PTS is a command-line tool, and is well documented and easy to use. Once you have it installed, you can assess your computer's gaming performance, for instance, by running the command benchmark gaming. This will automatically fetch all the tests in the gaming suite, compile and install them, then run the test. To make sure it has the undivided attention of the processor, PTS temporarily turns off ambient services such as power management and screensaver while the tests are running.

All tests performed by PTS need a unique global identifier to individually identify each test. When a test is completed, PTS expresses the result in numbers in the command-line interface. If you prefer simple bar graphs, you can also have it display its results in a browser. In addition to displaying information about the benchmark (the type of test and what the numbers mean), PTS also records and displays details about the hardware (processor, motherboard, chipset, memory, disk space, graphics, screen resolution) and software (OS, kernel, X.Org server, OpenGL, compiler, file system) on which the test was run, along with details like the date and time the test was run, and by which user, and what additional applications were running at the time.

Perhaps the neatest thing about PTS is the online PTS Global service, which is a repository of tests performed by PTS users all over the world. You get the option to upload your test results to PTS Global after every test is completed. Test results are listed by their time of upload, and you can search the results with a basic search interface to find tests performed on a particular motherboard, processor, graphics chipset, or running a particular distro, kernel, or compiler.

But PTS Global isn't just a collection of results. You can ask PTS to run a test on your machine and compare it with a particular benchmark on the PTS Global Web site. So, if you want to check how your desktop running Fedora compares with another similar spec (same processor, RAM, motherboard, chipset) machine running Ubuntu, while compiling the Linux kernel, you can use the search interface to find such a machine and then simply use its global identifier to run the same test on your machine and get comparative numbers. For example, if you want to compare your machine with a machine whose global identifer is root-9170-30463-10839, all you need to do is run the command phoronix-test-suite benchmark root-9170-30463-10839. That command will fetch, compile, and run the test on your computer and display the result in comparison with the one fetched from PTS Global.

PTS is a useful, easy-to-use, and well-documented application for all types of Linux users. As a reviewer it will help me back up my results with numbers. So while I find out how Fedora and Ubuntu perform in a virtualized environment, click to the next page for an interview with Michael Larabel, who owns Phoronix and is also the lead developer of PTS, in which he explains the motivation behind the project, the interest shown by hardware and software vendors, and upcoming developments.