www.xbsd.nl

PL2303 Serial USB updated for OSX 10.8.4

2013-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

A while a go I compiled and packaged an OS X kernel extension for PL2303 Serial USB adapters. It’s nice to see that a lot of people are still using it. I’ve received some feedback that the kext may not work on (fresh) OS X 10.8.4 systems. For those, I’ve compiled a new kext for which I would love to hear if it works on 10.8.4. You can download the new version from the URL below.

http://www.xbsd.nl/pub/osx-pl2303.kext_1084.tgz

Add a file extension to Vim syntax highlighting

2013-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

If you use Vim’s syntax highligting you may notice that not all files get correct highlighting, when opened in Vim. To quickly add a file extension to Vim, you can add the extension to your ~/.vimrc file.

syntax on
filetype on
autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.pp set filetype=ruby

In the example above, files with a ‘.pp’ extension get ruby syntax highlighting. See ‘:help autocmd’ in Vim for details on autocmd.

Natural scrolling in Linux

2012-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s a quick one on setting up Natural scrolling (a Multi-touch gesture from Apple OS X) on Linux. A mix of Natural- and Reversed-scrolling can be annoying when working on both Linux and OS X systems.

Add the following to your ~/.Xmodmap:

pointer = 1 2 3 5 4 7 6 8 9 10 11 12

Reload Xmodmap by a ‘xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap’ or by restarting X.

Plus addressing with Postfix

2012-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Using "user+foo@example.com" style addresses seems to be disabled in Postfix by default. One single parameter called the recipient_delimiter parameter needs to be set to make use of this kind of addressing in Postfix. Just add this to the main.cf file and reload Postfix:

recipient_delimiter = +

Alternatively, some other characters like '-' or '_' can be used here. Nice to know when using .forward files in email-delivery; When using a"user+foo@example.com" style address, the system will first check if there is a .forward+foo file before checking for a .forward file.

Prepare for RHCE Certification

2012-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Red Hat's RHCE certification is one of the most popular certifications in the IT market at the moment. There are different method in preparing for both the RHCSA en RHCE exams. Which works best depends on the individual.I decided to go for self-study, using several study resources. In this post, I'll describe the resources I've used in preparation for the Red Hat ex200 and ex300 exams. And yes, I've passed both exams with a very decent score, which makes this a proven method of preparation ;-).

For starters, the objectives for bothRHCSAand theRHCEexams can be found on the Red Hat website. Make sure you know them. Red Hat also offers a free skills assessment, which is good to use as a baseline measurement.

Make sure you have a good lab environment. A laptop with sufficient memory and diskspace to house a minimum of three (RHEL 6, CentOS 6 or Scientific Linux 6) virtual machines. To study for the Virtualization/KVM objective, you'll to run on bare-metal hardware that supports virtualization (eg. vmx on Intel CPU's).

Next up, OpenRHCE is a public collaborative to create RHCE study-materials based on Red Hat published objectives - not on exam experiences or actual exam contents! It's a good resource for exam preparation. Make a check-out of the project on GitHub. You'll find example labs and a broad coverage of the exam objectives.

What helped me probably most is theRHCSA/RHCE book by Michael Jang. Is a great book which covers all RHCSA/RHCE exam objectives in a clear way. The first half of the book covers preparation for the RHCSA exam, the second part the preparation for the RHCE exam. The book comes with good knowledge tests at the beginning and end of each chapter and useful example materials and example labs on a DVD.

Good luck! .. and feel free to drop any questions about preparation for these Red Hat exams.

PaulPaulito.com Linux training

2012-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Just gave PaulPaulito.com a try. All I can say is that it is a great way to learn Linux or prepare for the LPIC-1 exam. The screencasts PaulPaulito.com offers are in exceptional quality and are a great method to learn Linux. If your looking for a good resource to learn Linux you should definitely give it a go!

DVB-C via analoge TV bij Concepts. (Dutch)

2012-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

Mocht je beschikken over een FTTH (Glasvezel) aansluiting, dan isConcepts ICTeen uitstekende Provider. Naast het digitale televisie aanbod, is het ook mogelijk om 'ouderwets' analoge TV te gebruiken. Er zit een Coax-aansluiting op het Genexys modem waarop het analoge signaal wordt uitgezonden. Op het analoge TV net worden de standaard zenders ook digitaal aangeboden. Mocht je beschikken over een TV (of decoder) met DVB-C tuner, kun je de onderstaande gegevens gebruiken om de standaard zenders in SD kwaliteit digitaal te kijken.

Network-id : 07461
Fequency   : 304000 MHz
Modulation : 64 QAM
Scan freq. : 6875k/s

Resize an encrypted LVM logical volume

2012-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Recently I had the challenge to resize an (dm-crypt, cryptsetup) encrypted LVM Logical Volume on Linux. While resizing a 'plain' Logical Volumes can't get any easier, resizing an encrypted volumes involves a couple of more actions. Also, in contrast to un-encrypted Logical Volumes, the resizing of an encrypted volume can't be done online - at certain moments an unmount is required. These are the steps that worked out successfully for me; YMMV :) First step - Determine the volume to be resized:

[root]# mount
(..)
/dev/mapper/crypt_srv on /srv type ext4 (rw)

Stop related services, unmount the mount point and run a filesystem check:

[root]# umount /srv
[root]# fsck.ext4 /dev/mapper/crypt_srv

Close the volume in dm-crypt:

[root]# cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/crypt_srv

Perform the extend:

[root]# lvextend -l +1024 /dev/mapper/vg00-lv_srv

Re-open the volume in dm-crypt and make dm-crypt aware of the new blocks:

[root]# cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/mapper/vg00-lv_srv crypt_srv
[root]# cryptsetup --verbose resize crypt_srv

Check if it is possible to mount the volume, unmount again and perform a filesystem check:

[root]# mount /dev/mapper/crypt_srv /srv/
[root]# umount /srv
[root]# e2fsck -f /dev/mapper/crypt_srv

Now resize the filesystem itself (can also be done online), and mount the resized filesystem:

[root]# resize2fs /dev/mapper/crypt_srv
[root]# mount /dev/mapper/crypt_srv /srv

That's all there is to it! Drop a comment to let me know how it worked out for you!

Vim anti-patterns

2012-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

Even if you think you can write a book on vim (or maybe you did), there's always something new to learn. http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/vim-anti-patterns/

ownCloud 3.0

2012-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

The ownCloud project just released ownCloud 3.0. A feature-rich solution for personalfile storage, sharing and personal information management. ownCloud is written in PHP and uses a MySQL or SQLite backend. Setting up ownCloud on your own server or hosting-space is a matter of minutes. ownCloud 3.0 Release Announcement

Fix "IPv6 addrconf: prefix with wrong length" messages in Linux

2012-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Glancing trough the system-logging of one of my Internet VPS nodes, I noticed that the Kernel Ring Buffer (dmesg) was quite noisy with IPv6 Router Advertisement messages as:

"IPv6 addrconf: prefix with wrong length 48"

Some research learned me that this isn't a harmful error - more a cosmetic one. It's root cause are IPv6 RA's from a device on the network that is advertising something indifferent than your host is configured to. If you maintain a more static configured IPv6 setup, and your IPv6 setup is working as designed for you network, you can safely choose to disable those detections. Here's how to disable IPv6 to accept Router Advertisements and IPv6 Auto-configuration at runtime:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/accept_ra
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/autoconf

Or per interface:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/eth0/accept_ra
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/eth0/autoconf

To make this setting survive a reboot, you can make it permanent with:

net.ipv6.conf.all.accept_ra = 0
net.ipv6.conf.all.autoconf = 0

Or again, per interface:

net.ipv6.conf.eth0.accept_ra = 0
net.ipv6.conf.eth0.autoconf = 0

If you're running RHEL or CentOS, like my VPS was, you can add these options to "/etc/sysctl.conf".

Migrate Apple Time Capsules

2012-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

Just replaced my Apple Time Capsule with a newer one. Here's what I found to be the best approach in moving data and time-machine backups to the new unit. Hook-up your Mac to an ethernet-port of the old time-capsule. You can use Network Utility or ifconfig to verify gigabit connectivity. This is something you do not want to do over the wireless network. Second step is connecting a switch-port of the old time-capsule to a switch-port of the new unit. You can use both a straight or crossed networkcable. Disable time-machine on your Mac (Time Machine in System Preferences) and make use no machine in the network is using the disk of the old unit. Mount both time-capsules on you Mac from Finder. Just click the volumes on both units. Browse to the root of the data-volume on the old unit. Select and drag the time-machine images from the old unit to the new unit. You can copy the remaining data to the new unit in one or multiple batches. Next step is optional. It's resizing the Time Machine sparse-bundle (eg., backup disk-image). If you upgrade from, let's say, a 1TB Time Capsule to a 2TB unit you Time Machine sparse-bundle is max. 1TB in size. If you expect a large Time Machine backup you can use this command from Terminal.app to resize the sparse-bundle.

sudo hdiutil resize -size 1024g /Volumes/TIME-CASPULE-NAME/machinename.sparsebundle

Apple FileVault 2 on older Mac's with SSD

2011-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Apple's FileVault2 is a valuable addition to OS X Lion. It offers full disk-encryption which I find to be something mandatory on notebooks these days. On 'newer' Apple MacBooks, say since the Intel i5 and i7 architecture, FileVault 2 has barely no impact on disk I/O performance. OS X Daily has a fairly excessive benchmark report in which this is pointed out. I use a mid-2011 MacBook Air with an Intel i7 CPU, which benchmarks 200+ MB/s on both write and read with FileVault 2 turned on. Quite impressive speeds.

BlackMagic Disk Speed Test - a free Mac App Store app. On 'older' types of MacBooks, say Intel Core 2 Duo architecture, FileVault 2 has a bigger impact on disk I/O performance. In my case, I've enabled FileVault 2 on a late-2008 MacBook Pro (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU) with an OCZ Vertex 2 SSDdisk. Without disk-encryption this SSD reaches over 200MB/s in both read and write speeds in OS X Lion. With FileVault2 enabled both speeds are seriously affected. Write speeds is impacted by 50% and Read speed with about 25%. Still, very acceptable speeds. But definitely a factor when considering to use FileVault 2 on older types of MacBooks. Resources: FileVault 2 Benchmarks Show Full Disk Encryption is Faster Than Ever in OS X Lion MacBook Air SSD Benchmarks: 2010 vs 2011 vs Lion Encryption

TotalTerminal

2011-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

A small gem for OS X! TotalTerminalbrings terminal access trough a hot-key.TotalTerminal is a plugin for Terminal.app. It provides a persistent "Visor Window" which slides up or down when you press a hot-key. Website:http://totalterminal.binaryage.com/

PL2303 Serial USB on OSX Lion

2011-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s a way to get you PL2303-based Serial-USB adapter working with OS X Lion (10.7) or OS X Mountain Lion (10.8). Based on the osx-pl2303 project on github, I’ve built a kernel extension that works with OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion. You can grab the kext file here or from the link below.

Installing the kext file can be done in a few easy steps:

download and extract

$ cd /path/to/osx-pl2303.kext
$ sudo cp -R osx-pl2303.kext /System/Library/Extensions/

next you need to fix permissions and execute bits:

$ cd /System/Library/Extensions
$ sudo chmod -R 755 osx-pl2303.kext
$ sudo chown -R root:wheel osx-pl2303.kext

load the module and update kernel boot caches

$ cd /System/Library/Extensions
$ sudo kextload ./osx-pl2303.kext
$ sudo kextcache -system-cache

For deinstallation, perform these steps:

$ sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/osx-pl2303.kext
$ sudo kextcache -system-cache

Good luck!

http://www.xbsd.nl/pub/osx-pl2303.kext.tgz

Short URL's

2011-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Just wrote a simple URL shortener in PHP. It generates shortened URL's in the format "http://xbsd.nl/aBcD", in which the aBcD part is a random four character string. You can give it a go over at http://www.xbsd.nl/url/. No spam or malicious URL's or whatsoever - just plain and simple short URL's - promised ;-). Feel free to drop me any {suggestions,feature requests,bugs,other}.

SparkleShare .. promising

2011-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Back in the days, before cloud-based services like Dropbox or iDisk, I used to be a big-time user of iFolder. Desktop file-sync for all kinds of platforms with central versioned storage complete in your own control. Too bad current iFolder development is as dead as can be since 2006. The downside on the current cloud-based storage services is that the central storage in maintained and in control of a third party, to which you trust your data to be safe. SparkleShare is a promising new FOSS project that brings new life to iFolder concepts. A friendly desktop client for all common platforms allowing you to store and version files to a SSH or Git based backend. SparkleShare is currently available as an open beta version of the client software for Mac and Linux.

MobileMe calendar in Evolution

2010-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Now that the newMobileMe Calendar is based on the iCalendar and CalDAVstandards it becomes a lot easier to access your MobileMe Calendartrough third-party (non-Apple) calendaring tools. For now, we'llshow how to setup the calendar in Evolution, a common e-mail and calendar client on Linux and Unix desktops. Using the same steps you should be able to setup your MobileMe calendar in any CalDAV compliant tool with SSL support. Gather the information you need. There are two bits of information that are unique per user. One is the MobileMe username (eg. "martijn@me.com") and the second one is the server-path on which your calendars are published (eg. "/principals/users/1.234536789/"). The easy part would be the username, which you should know already. The server-path can be resolved by the iCal.app on a OS X. By accessing the Preferences pane in iCal, the server-path value can be found on the accounts tab, under the section "Server settings". The rest of the information we need, this like a CalDAV server and port-settings, is generic for all MobileMe users. Setup a CalDAV calendar So let's setup a CalDAV calendar in Evolution. This can be done by clicking the Calendar view in Evolution, right-click one of the default calendars and selecting New > CalDAV. The dialog that pops up looks like the one below. Setup the URL field so that it contains the protocol-handler caldav, the servername cal.me.com and your unique server-path. Make sure to have a trailing '/' at the end. The URL should look something like "caldav://cal.me.com/principals/users/1.23456789/". The SSL checkbox should the checked and the username to be used is the complete MobileMe loginname - including "@me.com" Optionally, you can choose to use the "Mark default" and "Use offline" options even as adjusting the refresh interval. Next, click "Browse server for a calendar", which will show all the available calendars in a new window. Select the calendar you want to use and click "Ok". You can repeat this procedure for setting up additional calendars. The initial loading of the calendars can take up to a couple of minutes. Be patient. Clearly, using your MobileMe calendar with third-party tools is not supported by Apple in any way. Be sure to create backups of your MobileMe calendar regularly ( - which also can be done automatically with CalDAV/cron etc.) Your mileage may vary ;-).

Stacklet, Images for Xen, KVM, VMWare and More

2010-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Stacklet provides ready to run Linux images and templates for popular virtualization technologies like VMware, KVM and XEN.

Apple AFP filesharing on FreeBSD

2010-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

On a Mac and have some FreeBSD file-servers around the house of office? Open your file-servers up to easy and fast access via OS X Finder. How? The method is Apple's native Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), with a bit of help of Apple Bonjour (mDNSResponder) for automatic discovery and presentation of shared resources on the network. The installation and config of the two Ports 'netatalk' and 'howl' is all there is to it. In a nutshell: Install the Ports. 'netatalk' is the AFP Daemon:

[martijn@shinobu /usr/ports]$ cd /usr/ports/net/netatalk
[martijn@shinobu /usr/ports/net/netatalk]$ sudo make config

Select the protocol and authentication features you're planning on using:

   [ ] APPLETALK Enable AppleTalk protocol support
   [ ] SRVLOC   Enable Service Location Protocol support
   [X] PAM    Enable PAM support
   [ ] TIMELORD  Enable Timelord network time service
   [ ] KRB5    Enable Kerberos V UAM

Install and cleanup:

[martijn@shinobu /usr/ports/net/netatalk]$ sudo make install clean

Install the 'howl' port for Bonjour or mDNS support.

[martijn@shinobu /usr/ports]$ cd /usr/ports/net/howl
[martijn@shinobu /usr/ports/net/howl]$ sudo make install clean

Add the following to /etc/rc.conf:

netatalk_enable="YES"
afpd_enable="YES"
cnid_metad_enable="YES"
mdnsresponder_enable="YES"
mdnsresponder_flags="-f /usr/local/etc/mDNSResponder.conf"

Create and edit the configuration files.

Netatalk:

[martijn@shinobu /usr/local/etc]$ pwd/usr/local/etc
[martijn@shinobu /usr/local/etc]$ sudo cp AppleVolumes.default.dist AppleVolumes.default
[martijn@shinobu /usr/local/etc]$ sudo vim AppleVolumes.default

By default, only user home-directories are shared by netatalk. See the '~' at the end of the file 'AppleVolumes.default'. Additional, or more generic, shares can be created by adding the to the'AppleVolumes.default' file.

Howl:

Define the services to be announced by Bonjour. First field presents the servername, second the mDNS services, third and last the domain and port-number to be used.

[martijn@shinobu ~]$ sudo vim /usr/local/etc/mDNSResponder.conf

shinobu         _afpovertcp._tcp        local.  548
shinobu         _ssh._tcp               local.  22

As you see, the OpenSSH service can also be announced. Simply by adding the _ssh._tcp mDNS service.

Startup both 'netatalk' and 'mDNS':

[martijn@shinobu /usr/local/etc]$ sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/netatalk start
[martijn@shinobu /usr/local/etc]$ sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/mdnsresponder start

Next up, startup OS X Finder on your Mac and you'll see your new AFP Shares in the 'Share' item list.

IPv6 and Postfix

2010-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

Postfix supports IPv6 from version 2.2 and up. By default only IPv4 support in enabled. Enabling IPv6 is as easy as adding one parameter to Postfix's main.cf:

/etc/postfix/main.cf:
    # You must stop/start Postfix after changing this parameter.
    inet_protocols = ipv4       (DEFAULT: enable IPv4 only)
    inet_protocols = all        (enable IPv4, and IPv6 if supported)
    inet_protocols = ipv4, ipv6 (enable both IPv4 and IPv6)
    inet_protocols = ipv6       (enable IPv6 only)

Be sure to also update match lists as mynetworks and debug_peer_list with relevant IPv6 addressing. http://www.postfix.org/IPV6_README.html

SUSE Studio contest

2010-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

SUSE Studio is a great tool for fast and easy creation of Linux appliances. It's even possible to give them an online test-drive on a VM.

For now, there's even a promo that gives you the opportunity to win $10k by showing off you own spiffy SUSE Studio appliance!

http://www.novell.com/promo/suse/the-disters-contest.html

Moved!

2010-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

Bye Blogspot, hello Wordpress. We've just moved this weblog instance to a new place on the web. All functionality should still be working .. please drop us a line if you find something really really broken.

LockTight Secures Your Mac With a Hotkey

2009-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

LockTight Secures Your Mac With a Hotkey Mac OS X only: Screen locker utility LockTight adds a shortcut key combination for OS X users to quickly lock your workstation from the keyboard. Windows users switching to using a Mac might be surprised to find no equivalent to the Winkey+L shortcut combination that locks the screen, especially helpful in work environments or at home to keep little fingers from opening things they shouldn't. LockTight plugs into OS X as a simple system preference pane with a configurable hotkey, but for full effect you might want to configure your Mac to require a password when coming back from the screensaver and disable automatic login. Hit the link for the download, or take a look at the Switching to Mac guide for all the steps.

LockTight [via Switching to Mac]

Linux via the internet with boot.kernel.org

2009-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

Linux via the internet with boot.kernel.org: "Boot.kernel.org allows users with broadband internet connections to start a variety of Linux distributions from the internet"

Git and distributed Web development

2009-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

Git changes the game of distributed Web development: "Version control systems are a core component of most development projects, regardless of whether you're developing an application, a Web site, or an operating system. Most projects involve multiple developers, often working at widely separated physical locations. Distributed version control systems are nothing new, but the Git version control system provides unique support for collaboration and interaction among developers."

DNS presentation on HAR2009

2009-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

DNS presentation on HAR2009:

"Bert Hubert (PowerDNS author) made 'DNS Security in the Broadest Sense' presentation at HAR2009."

Kernel 2.6.31 - Storage and file systems

2009-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Kernel Log Coming in 2.6.31 - Part 3: Storage and file systems: "Next generation file system for Linux" should now be even faster. The first components for defragmenting Ext4 file systems are now in the kernel. Parallel hardware scan in Intel ATA drivers speeds up boot time"

Byobu

2009-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

Like GNU Screen? You'll love Byobu.

https://launchpad.net/byobu

Yubikey personalisation tool

2009-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Version 0.94 of the Yubikey personalisation tool is available now.

http://code.google.com/p/yubikey-personalization/downloads/list

Novell SLE11 release indication

2009-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

Novell SLE 11 will probably ship by the end of March, according to the Novell Communities website.

http://www.novell.com/communities/node/6773/novell-support-advisor-02-beta-release-january-30th#comment-5700

a Ruby regular expression editor

2009-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Found a useful Ruby regular expression editor over at http://www.rubular.com/ . Can be useful if you're working with Regex every once in a while.

Google Calendar supports iCal

2008-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Google Calendar now fully supports Apple iCal. There's even a nifty app to set it all up.

Novell Leatherman

2008-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

Leatherman, originally uploaded by ./martijn.

Received a Leatherman Micra from the friends over at Novell Communities. All that for submitting one or two short articles. Thanks guys. http://www.novell.com/communities/

XEN dropped from Ubuntu 8.10 (server/desktop)

2008-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

With Ubuntu 8.10 it not possilble anymore to run Ubuntu 8.10 as Dom0 host. Ubuntu does not supply a suitable Kernel for this purpose. Of course it is possible to compile your own Kernel using the XEN patches from xen.org.

It's still possible to run Ubuntu 8.10 as a DomU guest OS. Ubuntu advices to use KVM for virtualization. This requires CPU's with virtualization extensions (hardware virtualization).

For now, Ubuntu 8.04LTS is the last version to include a XEN-enabled Kernel.

OpenRedAlert

2008-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

1992 all over again with this re-written OSS game engine for RedAlert (linux/win32).

http://code.google.com/p/openredalert/

Nokia sync with Google Calendar

2008-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

I'm a big ScheduleWorld fan for some years now. I mainly use it to sync my Nokia N-series phone with my Google Calendar using SyncML. The additional Contacts to LDAP sync also comes in handy. I sync my phone over a 3G connection. To suppress phone-costs, it's now also possible to sync your phone with ScheduleWorld over bluetooth using this nifty Firefox plugin.

Force change password upon login

2008-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

With the following command you can force a user to change it's password upon login on a Linux host:

# chage -d 0 [user]

Nomad

2008-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

Using RDP to control your Linux desktop sure sounds like a new approach to me :) Let's see if this lowers the barrier for Linux adoption in Windows-environments.

http://en.opensuse.org/Nomad

Nomad has compositing manager extensions. So, desktop-effects (*xgl) should work over an RDP session.

XEN guest images

2008-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Jailtime.org is a great resource if you're looking for some ready-to-run XEN guest images. http://www.jailtime.org

Apply for SLE11 beta testing

2008-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

The Novell Beta Program is accepting applications to beta test SUSE Linux Enterprise software.

The beta testing will run from September until February. If you are interested in applying for the beta, complete an application:

http://opsamericas.com/?p=779

Opt-in before 7 September.

new Novell Client for openSUSE 10.3

2008-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Novell released the Novell Client for Linux 2.0 SP1 public beta. This release supports openSUSE 10.3 and SLED 10sp2. Unfortunately no support for openSUSE 11.0 yet ... but it's in the making! -- We're pleased to announce the public beta of the Novell Client for openSUSE 10.3. Novell released the packages [1] for the Novell Client for Linux 2.0 SP1 public beta today. A number of openSUSE users have expressed interest in having the client packaged for openSUSE, so our developers have been working on building the client against openSUSE. Please download the package and give it a try on your systems. Novell is also working on a package for openSUSE 11.0, though we don't have an official timeline for that package yet. We will also post an announcement when it's available, and will post announcements for any further betas or the final release of the Novell Client for Linux. [1]: http://www.novell.com/beta/auth/beta.jsp?id=2585&type=1 --

Hardy wallpaper

2008-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

80058-hardy_darkorange,
originally uploaded by ./martijn.

A nice alternative for the default Ubuntu 8.04 wallpaper. Picked it up somewhere in the blogosphere, can remember exactly where.

oVirt

2008-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

New virtualization tools from the RedHat shed. oVirt offers a compleet solution for running and managing VM hosts. Funny to see that it uses KVM (trough libvirt) instead of XEN, with XEN being the main VM-technology in the RedHat exterprise products.

http://ovirt.org/index.html

Looks like a serious and low-cost alternative to VMware ESX to me.

openSUSE 11.0

2008-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

It's in the open ...

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/iso/

SUSE Studio

2008-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

Roll your own (JeOS) distro.

Just sign up, and explore when invited.
http://studio.suse.com/

S60 Google Calendar sync

2008-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

CalSyncS60 syncs your (Nokia) S60r3 phone with Google Calendar.
The software is currently in beta.

http://s60addons.com/calsync/

Novell Client for openSUSE - status

2008-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

There's progress on the Novell Client for openSUSE 11.0! Let's hope a public beta will follow soon.

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=262319#c36

--- Comment #36 from Jakob Perry 2008-05-14 14:53:43 MST ---
I'm currently in testing with the novell client for OpenSuSE 11. For
the most part it is working properly, except for the intermittent
appearance of ncl_tray showing up in its own window in the upper
left of the screen.

There also needs to be a refresh of using pam_script and autologin
for the novell client. novfs is working better now with beta 2
(After the drive space bug was fixed), however its showing incorrect
free space for drive pools. (IE: you have three NSS volumes within
one pool that is 600GB, novfs will show 1800GB as total storage)

Also, the rpms are built upon an old version of libbfd, which
requires manual symbolic links to allow ncl to work.
This should be updated for 11 as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

.history game

2008-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

Since this becomes more popular by the blogpost :)

martijn@martijn(17:05):~$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' |sort -rn|head
347 ssh
102 logconvert.pl
65 cd
62 openssl
42 vim
42 ls
39 l
39 host
29 perl
24 sudo

Quick host-to-host transfer

2008-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

From the openSUSE weekly newsletter:

Quick host-to-host transfer

Tired of setting up an ftp server just to transfer some files from one host to another? You don't trust your buddy to give him an account to your machine for ssh? Don't want to enter a password on someone else's machine? Look no further! Here is how to copy files from host2 to host1 in the shell:

host1:$ netcat -lvp 12345 | tar -xv

host2:$ tar -cv file [files...] | netcat -v IP_of_host1 12345

You can also use this in combination with dd to copy e.g. partitions:

host1:$ netcat -lvp 12345 >part_xyz.img
host2:$ netcat -v IP_if_host1 12345

Geek facts about netcat:

by many considered one of the most useful network utilities
available for install with the known methods
when telnet host port is used to test a TCP connection or talk to some text based server, netcat host port is the tool actually designed to do that.
doubles as a port scanner
on some systems and busybox, just short nc

Novell Client for openSUSE

2008-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Progress on "Bug 262319 - Sorry state of Novell Client on openSUSE" over at bugzilla.novell.com
There a lot of ugly hacks around to get the Novell Client for Linux working on openSUSE 10.{2,3}. Let's hope that Novell plugs some holes here.

------- Comment #29 From Michael Loeffler 2008-04-07 10:52:53 MST -------

Just a short update on this bug as people in the last openSUSE project
meeting complained about the slow progress here. I'm now in contact
with the right people for the Novell client for openSUSE and we're
working on a solution.

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=262319

And we're counting down ...

2008-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

openSUSE April Fools

2008-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

April Fools struck the openSUSE community :)
From the announcement list:

--------------------------------------------------------------
The openSUSE team proudly announces the availability of openSUSE 4.1.

We're shipping all the latest open source packages that are available at time of launch. As highlights, we'd like to point out the latest desktops, GNOME 4.1 and KDE 4.1 plus KDE 4.2 preview, our MP41 support via gstreamer plug-in by Fluendo, a faster boot process, heavily optimised and improved package management, 1-click install option for additional software, OpenOffice 4.1, XEN 4.1 and VirtualBox 4.1 and, last but not least, our 4 in 1 CD installation which provides a small but fully loaded desktop. For all the news and impressive screenshots, have a look at http://news.opensuse.org/?p=412008

It's available now to download at http://software.openSUSE.org in Amstrad, Commodore, Kaypro and TRS-80 versions - from our mirrors and via bittorrent.
The following ISOs can be downloaded: the 1 CD open source version with an add-on CD containing proprietary software, such as iTunes, World of Warcraft, and Microsoft Office for Linux. DVD ISOs for all architectures are available and contain the open source version plus proprietary add-ons. An installable Live CD will be released in October, and the Edu add-on CD http://en.opensuse.org/Education will show up in the same time frame.

As usual, openSUSE 4.1 will be available in European retail channels as a boxed product Of course, there it will be known as openSUSE 1.4. All software versions contained will follow. In North America, the box will be available through shopNovell http://shop.novell.com. Due to production lead times, boxes will start to show up on shelves when we feel like it.
--------------------------------------------------------------

notMac

2008-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

A free .Mac alternative which makes it also possible to sync both Mac's and Linux desktops.

http://www.notmacchallenge.com/

Evolution progress for 2.22

2008-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

This is the stuff that makes me happy ... read/write support for Google Calendar in Evolution.

Till now in 2.22 cycle, we have done
 * Google Calendar suppport
 * Support for external editors as composers
 * New Tango icons look
 * lots of bug fixes.

New Tango eyecandy is also always a good thing :)

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evolution-hackers/2007-December/msg00002.html

Virt-P2V

2008-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

A live CD for performing Physical2virtal (P2V) migrations.

http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-p2v/

'Repairing' my iPod

2008-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

Where the Apple support site offers no help, there's always google. I just fixed my dead iPod Photo by narrowly following the instructions on this website ... one well placed bang on the iPod ass was enough made it start working again. I wonder why this proofed-to-work method of repair isn't mentioned on the Apple support website.

http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/hardware/fix_your_dead_ipod_for_free

Linux desktops @ Amsterdam gov.

2008-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Now this is how the Amsterdam governing board pimps up their Linux desktop ;)

Their on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop iirc.

SLED10 Support Pack 2 in auth.beta

2008-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Support Pack 2 for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is just around the corner. The main gain will be in support for new hardware, an updated Open Office.org and, what I find interesting, better support for Tablet PC's.

Check out the enhancements or apply for the authorized beta right here.

http://www.novell.com/communities/node/3160

Bongo project

2008-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Where the the Hula project left off, the Bongo project picked up. I've just grabbed the latest src from SVN and can't say that it doesn't looks promising. Even support for LDAP backends seems to be in the making.

Be sure to check out the tour.

Just a matter of Time(Vault)

2007-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

TimeVault a (OS X/Leopard) TimeMachine lookalike for Linux.

openSUSE Shop

2007-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Here's a spot on the web for openSUSE fanatics.

Mapping 'Insert' on an Apple keyboard

2007-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

The first thing I noticed on my new Apple keyboard was the Insert-key being replaced by a FN-key. Quite hard to get used to when shift+instert is hard coded into you mind ;) Unfortunately, running 'xev' shows that the FN-key doesn't send any hard-link keycode what so ever (like keycode 110 for Insert). Quick and dirty, I worked around by mapping the F13-key (above the FN-key) to Insert. This can be done by creating a ~/.xmodmap file with the line "keycode 182 = Insert" and starting "xmodmap ~/.xmodmap" from GNOME Sessions, like this: This works for me. If anyone has a better solution, like embedding in x.org or making it work at system startup instead of enabling this on the start of a GNOME session, let me know. It's a nice keyboard. You should get one ;)

S60 Tango theme

2007-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Tango on your cellphone?! Just grab the .SIS installer from Martin's website. You got to have a (v2/v3) Symbian60 though.

Well, it sure looks cool on my Nokia N73.

http://wiki.sukimashita.com/Tango_Symbian60_Theme

Post @ Novell CoolSolutions

2007-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

My tip on ClusterSSH is posted on the Novell CoolSolutions website.

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tip/19915.html

ClusterSSH RPM's

2007-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Today i've build some RPM's of the ClusterSSH utility. It's a nifty little tool for working on multiple systems simultaneously, using SSH.

RPM's for openSUSE10.2/10.3 and SLE10 can be found over at the openSUSE repositories: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/martijn/

Ubuntu people, you'll find ClusterSSH right back in your Synaptic Package Manager (or a "sudo apt-get install clusterssh" should do the trick).

iFolder 3.6 @ openSUSE Build-services

2007-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

iFolder 3.6 server RPM's for openSUSE =< 10.3 and Fedora 6/7 are available @ the iFolder repository of the openSUSE Build-service. http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/dl9pf/

openSUSE 10.3 is available!

2007-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

openSUSE 10.3 is available! ... what are you waiting for!

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/

Novell Forums

2007-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

Novell has given their support forums a complete make-over. It now runs identity-based forumsoftware and still offers NNTP access.

openSUSE 10.3 package management

2007-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

os103rc1-1,
originally uploaded by ./martijn.

You just got to love the new openSUSE 10.3 package management system. It's slick, fast and easy to use.

Pidgin IM packages for Ubuntu FF/7.04

2007-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Some .deb's

http://download.ubuntu.pl/_Feisty_Fawn/pidgin/

Remember to remove GAIM first.

OES2 release date

2007-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Trough Sysadmin1138:

OES2 will be released on October 5th.
OES2-SP1 is targeted for mid-April, 2008.
AFP integration will be in SP1.

Around the release of SP1, Prosoft and Condrey Consulting (Kanaka) will release an NCP client for Mac.
OES2 is fully 64-bit optimized (on Linux)
They
claim EVEN BETTER NSS performance on OES2.

Convert Nero image (.nrg) to ISO9660 (.iso)

2007-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

A nice tip from Linux Screw on converting .NRG files to .ISO files.

"In case you need to convert Nero image file .nrg into regular ISO9660 .iso utility nrg2iso might be helpful then. Its included into apt repositories of Debian and Ubuntu, so to install it execute:"

sudo aptitude install nrg2iso

When its done, convert file by command:

nrg2iso image.nrg image.iso

---
Convert Nero image (.nrg) to ISO9660 (.iso) | Linux Screw

Lenovo want's to know ...

2007-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

Which Linux on our Thinkpads?! That's what the people over at Lenovo like to know. There's a poll over at one of the offical Lenovo blogs where you can vote for your favorite Linux distro.

For myself, I consider the Thinkpad as a business notebook and would vote for Novell SLED! ... but, the news has been all over the blogosphere ... SLED has already made it to the Thinkpad. I should probably vote in favour of another distro. One way or another: nice work Lenovo.

Novell Client 2.0 for openSUSE 10.2 in Public Beta

2007-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Novell Client 2.0 for SLED10 SP1 is in Public Beta for a couple of weeks now. Finally, a Novell Client that installs on openSUSE 10.2 is added to the Beta phase.
Both a i386 and a X86_64 version are available.As can shown on Novell Bugzilla, the demand for the Novell Client has been there since the release of openSUSE 10.2. Feedback (e.g., bugs and comments) can be submitted here. For now, just download and happy testing!

Novell Client 2.0 for openSUSE 10.2:
http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=aMa3aFbODfQ~

Picnik

2007-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

Just stumbled into picnik, an online photo editor. It uses the Flickr/Picasa/Facebook API's to access your online photo collections. It's free during the beta period and after that, there probably will be a free and a payed version.

openSUSE 10.3 boots 50% faster?!

2007-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

Replace ZMD with zypper, patchup the kernel with the fcache kernel patch, replace SysC init with Ubuntu's upstart en do some tuning on the init boot scripts ... all this together makes sure that your openSUSE 10.3 box will start a whole lot faster.

http://news.opensuse.org/?p=104

openSUSE 10.3 beta1 LiveCD's

2007-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

Stefan created openSUSE 10.3 beta1 LiveCD's of the 1CD installation version. Grab them and start slashing bugs!

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3-Beta1/iso/cd/openSUSE-10.3-Beta1-GNOME-Live-i386.iso

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3-Beta1/iso/cd/openSUSE-10.3-Beta1-KDE-Live-i386.iso

Do you have a minute?!

2007-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

GNOME-Writing Files to Disc,
originally uploaded by ./martijn.

Now this will take some time ... ;)

Holiday is over ...

2007-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Well, after spending some time in France it's getting awfully close to get back to work again ;). So, my last day off is mainly filled with catching up with email, snailmail and the www. I do have to catchup with some blog postings, but I do a have enough interesting stuff stacked to make that all good ;)

A friend pointed me on the fact that I'm also on Planet Sysadmin, with a lot of other very interesting blogs. Definitely something to add to your feedreader as well! (atom)

New openSUSE.org website

2007-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

... sure looks fresh

Recover a stuck SSH session

2007-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

This has happened probably to everyone that uses SSH from time to time. You logged in to a terminal over SSH and your session is stuck (e.g., no response). Most people will kill the window or the process that runs SSH and open a new one. There is actually a way to recover from a stuck session and it is quite simple: On the moment your session is stuck, you press tilde + dot (shift "~" + ".") on your keyboard to send a break sigal. You'll end up at your own shell from which you can resume the session by opening it up again. Got this one from the RedHat network.

VMGL: OpenGL 3D Hardware Acceleration within VM's

2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

E@zyVG: This is major news for the virtualisation field as 3D acceleration has been the one area where there has not been much progress.

Introducing VMGL,
which provides OpenGL Hardware 3D Acceleration for Virtual Machines. It
is a program that you install in both the host and guest and allows for
virtualizing the OpenGL functions. When tested in xen with Quake 3
& Unreal Tournament 2004 it provides for up to 87% of the
performance of the native implementation.

Desktop Flickr Organizer for Gnome

2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

For the moment I stick with F-Spot, but DFO (Desktop Flickr Organizer) is an application which development is worth to track. A similarity with F-Spot is that they are both Mono based.

http://code.google.com/p/dfo/

Yahoo Pipes

2007-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

Just stumbled into Yahoo Pipes. Pipes is an interactive data aggregator and manipulator that lets you mashup your favorite online data sources. Pipes works very intuitive and lets you create custom views or feeds of any kind of websource (xml/http/ical/csv/flickr and so on). Cool stuff!

Novell Client 2.0 for SLED 10 SP1 - Public Beta

2007-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

A Novell Client for Linux build specific for SLED 10sp1 is available on the Novell Beta website. Both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version are avaiable. Be sure to checkout the included readme. There are still a lot of issues to be dealt with.

http://www.novell.com/beta/auth/beta.jsp?id=2208&type=1

Upd: there's also one for openSUSE 10.2

Compiz-Fusion

2007-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

serudaru-10072007a,
originally uploaded by ./martijn.

Updated to the 06june2007 build of compiz-fusion on my Ubuntu 7.04 system. One remarkable change is that the, default, four-sided cube is replaced by a flat, two-sided desktop.
Despite the familiarity of the Cube, I can't say that changing this to _just_ two sides has a negative impact on usability. I find it to work quite well.

Compiz-Fusion translation

2007-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Now that Compiz-Fusion is i18n ready, some serious translation can be done. I've started on the Dutch (nl_NL) translation. Come and join in. More info on http://dev.beryl-project.org.

I'm one of 6589

2007-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

The Dutch Tax Administration offers tax-reporting software for Windows, OS X and Linux. Out of 5.700.000 taxreports in total, only 6589 taxreports were done on Linux. An example that there is still a lot to gain ...

src: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/48266/Belastingdienst:-Linux-en-Mac-amper-gebruikt.html (dutch)

Banshee web-player

2007-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Now how cool is this. Cool work by Joe Shaw. Vote for the man.

Novell hardware

2007-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

IMGP2265.JPG,
originally uploaded by ./martijn.

This is the stuff my Novell days started with. Remember these? A Novell branded NE2000 nic! We used these in good ol' NetWare 3.12 servers. Good for a solid 10Mb/s wirespeed.
This one turned up when moving IT inventory.

IMGP2282.JPG

2007-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

IMGP2282.JPG,
originally uploaded by ./martijn.

Well, Dutch public transport isn't all that either ;)

GroupWise Bonsai Beta

2007-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

GWCheck.log started a rumour about the first beta of GroupWise Bonsai (8?):
"First beta of the next version of GroupWise code name Bonsai will be ready september ...".

GWCheck.log: Bonsai Beta September

Google Desktop fo Linux

2007-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

Haven't tried this one out for myself yet, but it's sure worth mentioning: Google has released a open beta for Google Desktop for Linux.

Some feature:

search and index Gmail and your Web-history
intergrates with some Google online services (e.g., Search)
support file versioning
wide range of filetypes are supported

http://desktop.google.com/linux

Wallpapers

2007-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Ximian-Woodmonkey_1280x1024,
originally uploaded by ./martijn.

For those of you who are interested, we've uploaded some Linux , Ximian and Novell wallpapers for you to have. Please use the link below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/martijnpepping/sets/72157600461373618/

Mandriva Corporate Desktop 4

2007-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Mandriva steps into the enterprise Linux Desktop market with it's Mandriva Corporate Desktop 4. A market where Novell and Red Hat cover the main shares.

Some keyword: KDE, Virtualization, Mobility, 3D.

http://www.mandriva.com/en/linux/corporate/desktop

Compiz-fusion on OpenSUSE 10.2

2007-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

openSUSE 10.3 will ship with Compiz-fusion. On openSUSE 10.2, you'll be able to run Compiz-fusion as long as you follow the steps that Moosy provides for you.

Personally, I'm satisfied with my current Beryl setup so I'll wait until the first openSUSE 10.3 Beta arrives (09/Aug/07).

Future of Enterprise Linux kernels

2007-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Greg Kroah-Hartman has posted an interesting article on driver and module development for enterprise Linux kernel. Very interesting and recognizable stuff for enterprise Linux admins.

OSS driver for ATI chips

2007-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

And here's the announcement ... finally, there's a non-proprietary driver for ATI R500 chips. The current build only offers support for the rv515 and the rv530 (on the x1300/x1600 based cards). Next up are the r520 and r580 (on the X1800 and some X1600 models). Personally, I'm more a Nvidia kind of guy.

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-June/025506.html

Novell Linux Client for OpenSUSE 10.2!

2007-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fresh news from the Novell Bugzilla system:

A new Novell Linux Client build has been created for OpenSUSE 10.2. Notice the build date and the fact that there's even a 64 bit version.

Build Location:

ISOs

http://farek.provo.novell.com/install/ncl/2007614

and for 10.2 mounted installs:

32 bit

http://farek.provo.novell.com/install/ncl/2007614/10.2/i386

64 bit

http://farek.provo.novell.com/install/ncl/2007614/10.2/x86_64

UPD: an official beta of this Client has been released!

Next-gen photo management

2007-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

This Microsoft demo of Photosynth and SeaDragon gives a perfect view on whats still to be gain in the area of digital photo management. Both technologies have potential to change the way we experience digital photos. This demo is definitely worth watching.

Microsoft Photosynth

2007-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

Enjoyed this one? More info on MS Photosynth is available at http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

'old' SLED10/NLD10 mockups

2007-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

Thuesday the 12th of June will be the SLED/SLES10 Support Pack 1 release date.

Time flies ... a year and a half ago, these mockups represented a possible GUI layout for Novell enterprise Linux desktop ... at the time better known as NLD10.

Novell SLED 10 Support Pack 1

2007-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Word on the digital street is that SP1 for Novell SLED10 will be released around the 12th of June. The Release Notes only cover installation, upgrade and hardware support. But SP1 will also contain a lot of enhancements like a new GNOME Main Menu layout, a new time/timezone panel item and update for main stream packages like Mozilla Firefox (1.5 > 2.0), Adobe Flash (Non-GPL), Evolution, Banshee, Compiz and so on.

reCAPTCHA

2007-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Captcha's are a known tool to block comment-spammers on blogs or to stop bots from filling using web registration forms. About 60 million CAPTCHA's are solved around the world every day.

The Carnegy Mellon University offers a free reCAPTCHA service, that uses the power of the 'Human effort' needed for filling out a CAPTCHA to translate books and book texts. These are books and texts that cannot be translated correctly by OCR.

But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

The reCAPTCHA service can be used for web-forms, Email protection and a wide range of programlanguages and applications.

Grub recovery

2007-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Need to recover your Grub bootloader after Windows has overwritten the MBR on a dualboot system? Here's the howto in a few quick steps.

boot from a Linux LiveCD like one of these.
type 'sudo grub' to open the grub prompt (e.g., "grub>")
type 'find /boot/grub/stage1' to find a installable location (e.g., hd0,2).
type 'root (hd*,*)' ... and replace the asterisks with the output from step 2.
type 'setup (hd0)' to install grub to the mbr.
type 'quit' to exit grub.

Flickr pro account

2007-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Hooked myself up with a Flickr Pro account. Almost stashed and organised all my digital pictures. The 100MB a month limitation of a free flickr account just don't cut it, considering that the average size of a picture my camera takes is 4MB ;).

A Bluetooth Cell Phone as a Proximity Card on SUSE Linux

2007-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Here's a nice description on how to use a Bluetooth Cell Phone as a Proximity Card on Linux. It's written for SUSE Linux but also includes a link to a Ubuntu description.

Set this up, and your laptop or desktop will automatically lock or unlock when you are in it's proximity. You can still manually lock and unlock your system when you use this method as well.

http://www.goitexpert.com/entry.cfm?entry=Use-Your-Bluetooth-Cell-Phone-as-a-Proximity-Card-for-your-Laptop

F-Spot as default photo import tool in Ubuntu

2007-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

When you plug in a digital camera on an Ubuntu system, Gthumb is the default tool to import your shots. I prefer F-Spot over Gthumb because of the tagging and webexport functions. To change this default setting to use F-Spot instead of Gthumb do the following:

Click on System > Preferences > Removable Drives and Media. Go to the Cameras tab. Change the "gnome-volume-manager-gthumb %h" command to "f-spot-import %h".

The next time you attach your digital camera or a photocard, f-spot will be used for the import.

(Sync)Evolution and Google Calendar

2007-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

With Evolution it is possible to use a Google Calendar as a read-only webcalendar. To get some 2-way action between the calendars of Evolution en Google, some extra work needs to be done. I managed to get things working using the SyncEvolution package and the ScheduleWorld free SyncML service. ScheduleWorld supports the Google Calendar and any SyncML-aware device or application around.

An excellent howto on setting this up (written for ubuntu) can be found at the ubuntuforums.org
I've compiled a .deb file of SyncEvolution 0.5-1 for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04) on a i686.

packages:

all:
syncevolution_0.5.1 source package

Ubuntu 7.04:
http://xs4all.nl/~mpepping/log/syncevolution_0.5-1_i386.deb

Fedora 6:
hany.sk/~hany/_data/RPM/doors-fc6/x86_64/syncevolution-0.5-1.fc6.x86_64.rpm
hany.sk/~hany/_data/RPM/doors-fc6/i386/syncevolution-0.5-1.fc6.pentium4.rpm
hany.sk/~hany/_data/RPM/doors-fc6/i386/syncevolution-0.5-1.fc6.i686.rpm
hany.sk/~hany/_data/RPM/doors-fc6/i386/syncevolution-0.5-1.fc6.i586.rpm
hany.sk/~hany/_data/RPM/doors-fc6/i386/syncevolution-0.5-1.fc6.i386.rpm
hany.sk/~hany/_data/RPM/doors-fc6/i386/syncevolution-0.5-1.fc6.athlon.rpm

I wasn't able to find any openSUSE packages around, so grab the sourcepackage if you're a openSUSE user. Since it's easier to win the lottery than to get a openSUSE build-service account, you have to compile these for yourself.

Tidy up!

2007-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Maybe it's around for longer, but I saw this for the first time in Ubuntu 7.04.

GNOME (2.18) prompts to empty the Trash (.Trash_user directory) on removable storage when umounting these. Now this is a good way for preventing a thumbdrive to run out of diskspace after trashing data.

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha4

2007-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha4 is available for download! get it or check out what's new.

http://en.opensuse.org/Factory/News

Dutch Google SoC alternative

2007-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

The Holland Open Software Platform starts a Dutch alternative to the Google Summer of Code.

http://www.programmeerzomer.nl/

Liberation fonts

2007-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

As an alternative to some popular Windows fonts, RedHat has released their 'Liberation fonts'. There are three sets: Sans (a substitute for Arial, Albany, Helvetica,
Nimbus Sans L, and Bitstream Vera Sans), Serif (a substitute for Times
New Roman, Thorndale, Nimbus Roman, and Bitstream Vera Serif) and Mono
(a substitute for Courier New, Cumberland, Courier, Nimbus Mono L, and
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono).

The fonts ore covered by the GPL+exception license.

https://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/

VMware Workstation 6 has been released

2007-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

After a 3 month public beta period, the final release of VMware Workstation has been made public. This page on the VMware.com website enlights the new features.

http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/new.html

openSUSE 10.3 Roadmap

2007-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

The roadmap for openSUSE 10.3 has been made available. openSUSE 10.3 is the next release that incorporates new features from both the community and Novell internal development. The distribution will be build for the x86, x86-64 and Power PC platforms.

http://en.opensuse.org/Roadmap/10.3

VMware Workstation 6 Beta Program

2007-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

VMware Workstation 6 is in beta for a while now ... but it brings some interesting new features.

Support for Windows Vista Use Windows Vista as host

operating system
Multiple monitor display You can configure a VM

to span multiple monitors, or multiple VMs to each display on separate

monitors
Support for USB 2.0 devices You can now use peripherals

that require high-speed performance in your VMs, such as MP3 Players

and fast storage devices
VM Record/Replay Use this feature to record VM activities

and be guaranteed to reproduce the exact VM state 100% of the time
Integrated Virtual Debugger Workstation integrates

with Visual Studio and Eclipse so you can deploy, run, and debug programs

in a VM directly from your preferred IDE
Automation APIs (VIX API 1.1) You can write scripts

and programs to automate VM testing
Run Virtual Machines in the Background You can now leave virtual

machines and teams running in the background when you exit Workstation. On the host, a

system tray icon indicates how many virtual machines are running in the background. Click

the icon to open a virtual machine.
Battery Information Is Now Reported in the Guest If you use a laptop to

run a guest in full screen mode, you will now be able to see status information about the

host's battery.

Support for OS's:

This release provides experimental support for the following operating systems:

32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 (Beta, formerly called 4.0 Update 5) and Red Hat

Enterprise Linux 5.0 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 (Beta) as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.04 (Beta) as a guest operating system

This release provides full support for the following operating systems:

32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 6.10 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Mandriva Linux 2007 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 10 Update 3 as guest operating system
32-bit Novell Netware 6.5 SP5 as guest operating system

Check out the Release Notes or the VMware Workstation 6 infopage.

OpenOffice.org 2.1 for Windows Novell Edition - Public Beta

2007-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

The 2.1 version of the Novell OOo version for Windows has made it to the bta stage. No big enhancements. Just some bugfixes and improved VBA support.

http://www.novell.com/beta/auth/beta.jsp?id=2165&type=1

Ubuntu perfomance tuning

2007-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

E@zyVG posted an extensive list of Ubuntu performance guides.

http://linux.wordpress.com/2007/04/25/ubuntu-performance-guides/

Ubuntu 7.04 lets you migrate your Windows data

2007-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

The new Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" release comes packed with a Windows migration utility. The utility imports the data from an accessible Windows partition on the same system.

The new migration tool recognizes Internet Explorer favorites, Firefox bookmarks, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts, Yahoo IM contacts and imports them in Ubuntu. This offers easier and faster migration for new users of Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual partition. In addition to single accounts, you can migrate several users' settings in Ubuntu.

Throw in support for migrations over the network (Windows-based Agent or a BootCD?!) and this will be a big help in Windows to Linux migrations on the desktop!

GroupWise 7 SupportPack 2 released

2007-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

GroupWise 7 SupportPack2 is available for download.

GroupWise 7 SP2 Linux US and MULTI 7.0.2 PLATFORMEN: SUSE 9.0, SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10, SUSE Linux 10 LOKALISATIES: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Samoan, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai	Mand.	2 files	17 Apr 2007
GroupWise 7 SP2 Win/NLM Full US and MULTI 7.0.2 PLATFORMEN: NetWare 6.0/6.5, OES Netware, Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista LOKALISATIES: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Samoan, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai	Mand.	2 files	16 Apr 2007
GroupWise 7 SP2 Windows Client US and MULTI 7.0.2 PLATFORMEN: Windows 2000/XP/XP Professional/2003/Vista LOKALISATIES: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Samoan, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai	Rec.	2 files	16 Apr 2007
GroupWise 7 SP2 Linux Client US and MULTI 7.0.2 PLATFORMEN: Windows (all versions) LOKALISATIES: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Samoan, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai	Rec.	2 files	16 Apr 2007
GroupWise 7 SP2 Mac Client US and MULTI 7.0.2 PLATFORMEN: Mac OS 10.0/10.1/10.2/10.3 LOKALISATIES: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Samoan, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai	Rec.	4 files	16 Apr 2007

"The Sorry State of the Open Source Today"

2007-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Beranger is known for sharing his strong opinions on OSS and Linux. One time he's right on the money with his opinion, sometime he's miles off when I compare his opinion with mine. His report "The Sorry State of the Open Source Today" is an reflective report on the status of OSS at the moment and trough out the last decade. So if you're in to some strong criticism, check out "The Sorry State of the Open Source Today" report over at: http://beranger.org/feature/sorryfeature.php

GroupWise 7 SP2

2007-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

Monday the 16th of April is the scheduled release date of GroupWise 7
Support Pack 2.

Advanced SSH security tips and tricks

2007-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

Linux.com has a nice article covering some tips and tricks on advanced
SSH security.

http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/03/26/1423232

SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP1 "BrainShare Beta"

2007-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is the only enterprise-quality Linux desktop on the market, designed for general-purpose business. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop provides market-leading usability, seamless interoperability with existing enterprise computer systems, and dozens of essential office applications. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, businesses can dramatically reduce costs, improve end-user security, and increase workforce productivity. Enhancements in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Service Pack 1 include:

the latest OpenOffice.org version from Novell
Enterprise integration and security enhancements
User experience and multimedia support improvements
Virtualization on the desktop

Only SUSE Linux Enterprise Server offers an open, scalable, high-performance data center solution, that comes with application security, virtualization and integrated systems management across a full range of hardware architectures. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is designed to handle mission-critical workloads, and it offers seamless interoperability with your existing data center infrastructure. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, businesses can dramatically reduce costs while deploying the most secure and reliable data center server on the market. Enhancements in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Service Pack 1 include:

Key management features and security enhancements
Xen virtualization improvements
High Availability Storage Infrastructure Update

* The BrainShare version of SUSE Linux Enterprise SP1 Beta is made available via download only for Evaluation purposes and only from March 19th to April 7th 2007. Novell DOES NOT provide any support, services, or warranty for the use of this Beta version.

Download information is available at:
http://www.novell.com/brainshare/slesp1/

Emerald non-GPL'd themes

2007-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

Some non-GPL'd themes for Emerald can be grabbed right here:

https://svn.generation.no/emerald-themes/

Note that some of these themes are designed for Beryl 0.2.0, so upgrade
your Beryl/Emerald if possible.

Beryl 0.2.0 released!

2007-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

Beryl 0.2.0 is a complete overhaul of Beryl. The last stable release
0.1, featured a very fun, and eye-candy based compositing window
manager. However, since it's release, many parts of beryl have been
rewritten, replaced, or simply dropped. The Beryl team has put in
numerous hours to bring you this release. It's filled with fun,
eye-candy, better user support, new features, and most of all,
stability. While Beryl has had numerous developer releases, known by
their 0.1.X versions, 0.2.0 has been throughly tested by many more
users.

As Beryl has become more well known, our userbase has expanded
exponentially. Because of this, we've had more bug reports than ever. So
thank you to all of you who have helped us on this path. And thank you
to all of those who have made Beryl possible.

During the last year, Beryl has gone through a number of incidents.
Users have argued about Beryl and Compiz for a long time now. With this
release, Beryl has taken a giant step apart from Compiz. While some
things are similar, which is inevitable in a fork, many things are not.
We at Beryl believe that starting with the 0.3 development phase, many
more things will be come clearer in regards to Beryl. We are setting our
focus on organization, improving user relations, making the software
more bug free, and overall more fun for you!

So without further ado, I give you Beryl 0.2.0!

* New Plugins
- Thumbnail: Thumbnails on the taskbar (window list) which show a mini
view of the actual window
- Snap: Allows windows to "snap" to each other, or provide edge
resistance
- Opacify: Makes windows behind the active window transparent
- Group: Allows windows to be group, to easily switch between a set of
windows

* New system requirements check
- The improved check has much better accuracy
- The check is a lot faster

* New Window Decorators
- Since 0.1, we have two new window decorators
- Heliodor: Uses metacity themes
- Aquamarine: Uses Kwin themes.

* Newly Rewritten Beryl-Settings
- Written in Python
- More user-friendly UI
- Better profile support

* New Translations
- Thanks to all of our foreign speaking users, we've had a much better
time getting translations
in, and completed. So thank you!

All this and much, much more! So please enjoy,
- The Beryl Team

Beryl 0.2.0 on openSUSE >= 10.2 and Ubuntu edgy/feisty/etch

2007-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

openSUSE users:

Packages for SUSE can be found at it's usual place on openSUSE Build
Service repositories and its mirrors:

http://software.opensuse.org/download/X11:/XGL/

Make sure to uninstall all -snapshot packages before installing 0.2
packages. Consider 0.2 as stable release and keep a copy if you intend
to checkout snapshot packages later.

From the 0.2.0 release on there will not be any updates for SUSE Linux
10.1/SLED 10 due to many updated package requirements.

Ubuntu users:

0.2.0 has finally been released! Packages are pushed it to the repos.

deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org edgy main
deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org feisty main
deb http://debian.beryl-project.org etch main

This should fix all your white screen issues, many other bugs and
contain a little more polish.

Enjoy

Warranty worries

2007-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

2007 started good for me when both my Apple iPod and my Xbox360 suffered from some technical malfunctions. Luckily the iPod was less than a year old by a couple of weeks, so warranty should cover that. The Xbox360 was just over one year old, so I had less good feelings about bringing that one in for warranty.

After bringing in the iPod for repair, the retailer ensured me that the iPod was covered by it's warranty and it should either be repaired or replaced in 10 workdays. That sounded nice. Two weeks without music should be survivable ;). The waiting began ...

The Xbox was a different story. The game shops I spoke about out of warranty repair all gave me bad hope about repair options. Some said it was ridiculously expensive, some didn't even want to give it a try. So in last hope, I have Microsoft Xbox Support a phone call to check any other options to repair my Xbox360. After the techsupport guy checked my Xbox's serialnumber, he told me that the warranty for all 1st release xbox360's was extended by one year! This to satisfy all early adopters who suffered from the 12st generation 360's child diseases. I was told that they would pickup my Xbox and repair would take about 15 days.
UPS picked up my 360 the next day, and dropped a completely new one the next week!
Kudos to Xbox Support!

My iPod was still in repair. After 3 weeks I gave the guys over at the Apple store a phone call. They said that repairing my iPod wasn't an option, so it was going to be replaced by a new one .... but since it's a 4th generation, and not a 5th, the new one needed to be shipped from China ....

Two weeks later, nothing heard yet, I gave the Apple guys another phone call. Another issue came at hands. Apple Support claimed my iPod was out of warranty, because they maintained the fabrication date as the warranty date, just because I never registered my iPod with Apple.
After getting trough Apple Support, and mailing my purchase receives, the warranty date was adjusted to the sales date, and the replacement process would be started.
Waited another week before contacting the Apple store again. They claimed that I should pay 152,- for the replacement .... for repair within warranty?! After some debating about the warranty they stated I was right and should not pay a thing ... but my iPod wasn't there yet.
In the meanwhile, the time my iPod was in repair, the warranty on the purchase date was expired by two days. So Apple Support wouldn't return the iPod to the Apple Store unless the replacement cost were paid! Looks like Apple support doesn't accommodates it's retailers and customers when it comes to 1 or 2 days of warranty expiration by there own fault!

Anyway, the remaining cost for replacement by Apple Support were 92,-. I got my iPod back and the Apple store in Apeldoorn took care of the costs. My first experience with Apple Support is not one of my best support experiences. They definitely can learn a thing or two from Xbox360 Support ....

PXE on Windows DHCP Server

2007-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

Some info on how to configure PXE on a Windows 2003 DHCP service: Four additional entries must be made on your MS DHCP server. Highlight the Scope Options for the subnet in which you like to use PXES. Now choose configure options from the Action menu. Find 066 Boot Server Host Name and enter a String Value of the name of your MS DHCP server. It's recommended that you use your DHCP server as the TFTP server. But to inform PXE clients that the DHCP server also serves TFTP requests you need to enter the following Binary Value for 043 Vendor Specific Info: 01 04 00 00 00 00 ff. Now find 067 Bootfile Name and enter a String Value of bootfile-name. Additionally, you must add Option 060 ClassID. Because Option 060 is not standard on Windows 2000 and Windows 2003, you may need to add it from the command line. To do so, start Command Prompt and enter the following commands:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>netsh
netsh>dhcp
netsh  dhcp>server \\[server name] *OR* [server IP address]
netsh  dhcp server>add optiondef 60 PXEClient String 0 comment=PXE support
netsh  dhcp server>set optionvalue 60 STRING PXEClient

To verify that the Option 060 was added successfully enter the command:

netsh dhcp server>show optionvalue

Exit issuing command exit and restart your DHCP server. In the right pane you should see Scope Options as in the image above. thanks to the pxes project

Openfiler

2007-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

An OSS NAS/SAN solution.

What?	Openfiler is a Storage Management Operating System. It is powered by the Linux 2.6 kernel and Open Source applications such as Apache, Samba, LVM2, ext3, Linux NFS and iSCSI Enterprise Target. Openfiler combines these ubiquitous technologies into a small, easy to manage solution fronted by a powerful web-based management interface. Openfiler allows you to build a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and/or Storage Area Network (SAN) appliance, using industry-standard hardware, in less than 10 minutes of installation time.
Why?	Because life as a systems administrator is difficult enough as it is. Openfiler allows you to ease some of the pain by bringing together almost all storage networking protocols (CIFS, NFS, HTTP/DAV, FTP, iSCSI) into a single framework. So if your current pressure points arise from grappling with the task of providing secure and resilient storage to users, groups and computing resources in a multi-platform heterogeneous environment, Openfiler is the tool for you.
Who?	If you are a systems administrator looking for a way to take control of your storage resources without having to pull off the modern equivalent of The Great Train Robbery in order to afford it, Openfiler is the answer to your prayers. Openfiler is a serious tool meant for professional systems administrators with a keen desire for the ability manage network storage in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
Where?	Openfiler is meant for systems administrators and other technically minded individuals. Please visit the Download section of the website to obtain Openfiler. Please note that Openfiler is a powerful but complex piece of software which requires knowledge and understanding of a number of operating system, networking and storage concepts.

http://www.openfiler.com/
thanks to BJ.

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha1 available!

2007-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The first public alpha release of openSUSE 10.3 is out in the open!

Since the openSUSE 10.2 final release, the most significant changes
are:

* GNOME is moved to /usr. Please do test especially updates from
older distributions.

* KDE updated to KDE 3.5.6.

* Linux Kernel updated to 2.6.20. There's no Xen support enabled for
now.

* Pattern for minimal text install (see the opensuse-factory thread
for details)

* Update of OpenOffice.org to version 2.1.3.

* The whole distribution is build now with -fstack-protector to better
guard against some buffer overflows.

* Usage of LUKS by default for crypto partitions in YaST. Both GNOME
and KDE handle removable LUKS media now.

http://www.opensuse.org

GroupWise 7 SupportPack 2

2007-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

GWcheck.log:

Rumour: "GroupWise 7 SP2 is scheduled to ship 3/19..." (BrainShare is 3/18-23...)

Free navigation software from Nokia

2007-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

Nokia offers free navigation software for their (and some other brand) mobile devices powered by SymbianOS or Windows Mobile 5. More info on the Nokia Smart2Go website.

http://www.smart2go.com

Novell Client for Vista preview

2007-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

The official Novell Client for Vista is scheduled to be released mid
2007. A Technology Preview build is available for a small audience at
the moment. Here's a review of the installation and operation.

http://www.msiwisdom.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=2

Dutch openSUSE WiKi!

2007-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

Nice to see that there is a Dutch openSUSE WiKi! Kudos to Freek
de Kruijf, Rinse de Vries and Matthias Van Gestel.

http://nl.opensuse.org

Setup SSH public key authentication

2007-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

Setup SSH public key authentication in three steps

1. generate public key at the localhost
# martijn@serudaru:~$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
# Generating public/private rsa key pair.
# Enter file in which to save the key (/home/martijn/.ssh/id_rsa):
# Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):

2. copy out the public key to the remote server
# martijn@serudaru:~$ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@host:.ssh/authorized_keys2
# The authenticity of host 'host (194.x.x.x)' can't be established.
# DSA key fingerprint is c0:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--.
# Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
# Warning: Permanently added 'host (194.x.x.x)' (DSA) to the list of known hosts.
# Password:
#id_rsa.pub ============================ 100% 398 0.4KB/s 00:00

3. ssh into the remote server
# martijn@serudaru:~$ ssh user@host

Note that the first step (Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase)) does not explicit requires a passphrase. You'll be able to connect over SSH without entering any passwords.
The only security youll use the is user@host combination from the source host.

OSS and the Dutch government

2007-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

OSS does well with Dutch government agencies.

Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux

2007-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

I think we all can be happy that Adobe released the final version of the Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux.

Linux NIC channel bonding

2007-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Since most server hardware comes with multiple network-interfaces, NIC
channel bonding can be a valuable option to provide fault-tolerance and
loadbalancing on the network level. Recent linux server distribution
include the Linux bonding driver to provide these options on the Kernel
level.

Channel bonding is quite easy to setup but it does require some diggin'
in to configuration files. Here's some practical online info on how to
setup channel bonding for loadbalancing, fault-tolerance or both.

Detailed bonding info on the OSDL WiKi
http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/Bonding

Novell: How To Configure Bonding on Novell Linux products (04Jan07)
https://secure-support.novell.com/KanisaPlatform/Publishing/133/3929220_f.SAL_Public.html

HP: Implementing Channel Bonding (SLES9 and SLES10)
http://docs.hp.com/en/B9903-90050/ch05s05.html

Google Toolbar 3 beta

2007-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

If you're not offended by Google and it's plans for World Dominination, you might want to try Google's version 3 of their Toolbar for Firefox. It's currently in beta, but it looks quite promising.

openSUSE 10.2: The Most Complete List of Repositories

2007-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Vichar Bhatt maintains quite a list of openSUSE package repositories. Also, be sure to check out Scott Morris his script to automate the insertation of YAST Installation Sources on openSUSE 10.2.

openSUSE 10.2: The Most Complete List of Repositories

Novell OES Linux cluster project

2007-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

We're kicking off a new IT project to replace existing Novell NetWare servers with a single Open Enterprise Server (OES) Cluster of 5 nodes. The hardware is delivered. A HP c-Class Blade system and HP EVA6000 SAN-storage should do the trick.

At the moment we're considering which OES flavour to install. OES Linux should be the way to go but it's hard to find a Novell Partner (search on Netherlands and Linux ... no results) in the Netherlands that has hands-on experience with OES Linux and especially clustering. If anyone has some info on real OES Linux clustering cases, I'm really interested.

Novell OES2 in beta

2006-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Novell is accepting beta-sites for the closed Open Enterprise Server 2
beta. Key features of this OES2 release will be Dynamic Storage
Management, Linux/Windows Integration and Virtualisation.

On the announcement website, only references to Linux are made. So will
it be that OES2 definitely brings the end of NetWare?

open movie: Elephants Dream

2006-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

Last night I was at the local cinema for the last show of the Dutch Touch movie. Prior to the main movie a part of the short animated movie Elephants Dream was shown. The graphics where quite stunning and I was amazed when the final credits rolled over the bigscreen. Elephants Dream is an 'open movie', created with Open Source graphics software. The main motivation for the creation of this movie is to show the power of OSS tools like Blender.

"Elephants Dream is the worlds first open movie, made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender, and with all production files freely available to use however you please, under a Creative Commons license."

From the credits:
Special Thanks to Open Source Projects: Gimp, Twisted, Python, , Ubuntu Linux, OpenEXR, KDE, Verse, GNOME, CinePaint, DrQueue, Inkscape and Subversion.
We used a lot of open source software throughout the project, but these were the open source projects that helped us most, either through their applications, source code sharing, or advice.

It's a open movie, sure worth watching and it's freely available for download from: http://orange.blender.org/download ... the funny thing about it: it's open, so all production files from the movie and other open content are also available.

Course 3068: Migrating from RedHat to Suse SLES10

2006-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

I don't think bringing out free courses titled "Course 3068: Migrating from RedHat to Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10" can count on great acceptance by the community. It sounds biting towards RedHat. The course title it kinda misleading ... it's not a "Howto migrate from RHEL to SLES" guide, but it points out differences in administration (e.g., to configure your LAN settings you use YaST in SUSE and network-config-tools* in RedHat).

Course 3068 is a free course offered by Novell consisting of two eBooks (PDF) and a Course DVD (~1GiB ISO) containing coursefiles.

The course briefly covers quite the same stuff as the SLES10 Fundamentals (Course 3071) and SLES10 Administration (Course 3072), making comparisons to RHEL administration.

http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=ReHgN8b1qhU~

Secunia Software Inspector

2006-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Secunia offers a free online security inspection of Windows PC's. It audits a PC for insecure versions of applications using the vulnerability database of Secunia.

Feature Overview:
* Detects insecure versions of applications installed
* Verifies that all Microsoft patches are applied
* Assists you in updating your system and applications
* Runs through your browser. No installation or download is required.

Check it over at http://secunia.com/software_inspector/

GroupWise TID's

2006-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

My two new favorite GroupWise TID's over at http://support.novell.com/
Thanks to http://gwcheck.blogspot.com

openSUSE 10.2: List of Recommended Repositories

2006-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

Vichar Bhatt comes up with quite a list of recommended package repositories for YaST. Both the Guru and Packman repositories have made quite a name for themselves over time and are definitely must haves.

openSUSE and webcam support

2006-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Webcam support in Linux still is in a quite premature stage of development. Applications like GAIM and other IM applications (except for aMSN) still lack in any form of webcam support.

Recently I got a new Cisco webcam and I started the challenge of getting it to work on my openSUSE 10.1 system. After figuring out which driver fits my Cisco VT II webcam (Logitech OEM) I was finally able to get some things working.

It takes a shipload of packages and kernelmodules to add USB webcam support on a Linux system. These are the modules and applications that worked for me:

modules:
modprobe v4l1_compat
modprobe videodev
modprobe v4l2_common
uvcview.ko

applications:
LUCview
Camelot
gqcam
aMSN

Here's a good matrix on webcam/driver support on Linux: http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html

The UVC driver for Logitech cams is available from:
http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/

openSUSE 10.2 is released!

2006-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Nice to see that openSUSE 10.2 sticks to the planned release schedule.

For download ISOs of the the 5 CD open source version plus an add-on CD with proprietary portions, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, RealPlayer, and Sun Java Runtime Environment are offered. DVDs for all architectures are available and contain the open source version plus proprietary add-ons. For the first time a language add-on CD which offers support for languages which are not part of our base language setup is also available. The Live DVD will be release next week.

openSUSE 10.2 is available for download on http://download.openSUSE.org
in x86, x86-64, and ppc versions via ftp from our mirrors and bittorrent.

Interested? Check out the product highlights and/or the release notes.

The Linux way to Flickr

2006-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Linux.com offers a nice article on using the Yahoo flick.com photo service on Linux desktop. Several GUI and CLI tools are highlighted which all make use of the Flickr API. Too bad my personal favorite isn't mentioned ... F-Spot.

new blog address

2006-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

In the next days, I'll try to migrate my xs4all.nl blog to blogger.com.
For the moment, feel free to check out my blog over @ xs4all.nl

openSUSE 10.2 is done!

2006-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Quite a quick dev. cycle on this one ... Check the announcement by andreas.
Public release is scheduled for the 7th of December.

400+ OSS applications for Win32

2006-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Why do most people think 'Linux' when they hear the term Open Source Software?
Over 400 OSS tools and applications, mainly for for Windows

Xming (OSS)

2006-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

Xming is a great way to launch X-windows applications on a Windows desktop. Once you've installed this (OSS) X-server, you can use PuTTY (SSH client) with the 'Enable X11 tunneling' option to start YaST2, the ZENworks Agent or any other X-windows application. Definitely a must have for Linux admins who occasionally work on a Windows desktop.

http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Xming
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

GroupWise Server Migration Utility

2006-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Time to migrate all those NetWare and Windows based GroupWise servers to Linux. ;)
http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=hlBhizgetE4~

Novell - Microsoft collabo

2006-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Funny to see that news like this has effects like this.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 SUSE / openSUSE RPM's (2)

2006-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

Thanks to Matthias Koenig, Andreas Jaeger, Marcus Rueckert and Robert OCallahan!

Because of those guys we finally got a complete Mozilla Buildservice Repository which now contains Firefox 2 (with Novells additions) Therefore the repository now carries Firefox 2, pre-versions of SeaMonkey 1.1, Thunderbird 2.0 and XULRunner 1.8.1 in addition to the low-level libraries of NSPR 4.6.3 and NSS 3.11.3 for SUSE Linux 10.0, 10.1 and Factory.

http://software.opensuse.org/download/mozilla/

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 SUSE / openSUSE RPM's

2006-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

For openSUSE 10.1 users:
http://ftp4.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/opensuse/repositories/mozilla/SUSE_Linux_10.1/i586/

For SLED10 users:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-OSS-factory/inst-source/suse/i586/

openSUSE 10.2 beta 1 available!

2006-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

So check out Andreas announcement on the openSUSE list and start testing.

Flash player 9 beta available!

2006-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

So get it!

deeplinks:
FP9_plugin_beta_101806.tar.gz
FP9_standalone_beta_101806.tar.gz

Readme's are included. The browser-plugin will (1st one) be good enough for most people.

New Packman website

2006-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Packman renewed it's website. It's a great resource for off-distribution SUSE packages.

GNOME: Alacarte Menu Editor

2006-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Things like this make GNOME a whole lot better.

Sleuth Kit

2006-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Sleuth Kit (previously known as TASK) is a collection of UNIX-based command line file and volume system forensic analysis tools. The file system tools allow you to examine file systems of a suspect computer in a non-intrusive fashion. Because the tools do not rely on the operating system to process the file systems, deleted and hidden content is shown.

http://www.sleuthkit.org/sleuthkit/index.php

Banshee and importing from DAP sources

2006-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

With Banshee 0.11 it's possible to Import music into Banshee from DAP sources like iPod's, MP3-thumbdrives and other DAP's. Kudos to Patrick and everyone who worked on this one.

ThinkPad and hdaps

2006-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

Did you know you can do crazy things with a ThinkPad that has HDAPS? Get hands on if you have one.

SLED Menu now also available for Ubuntu

2006-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Ubuntu user can now also use the both loved and hated SLED Menu as a GNOME panel applet.

SLED Gnome Main Menu on SUSE Linux 10.1

2006-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

SUSE Linux 10.1 uses the native GNOME menu. If you like the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 main menu more ... you can also use this on SUSE Linux 10.1.
Grab the RPM for your architecture below. After installation, remove the 'Menu Bar' applet and add the 'Main Menu' applet instead.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~mpepping/log/gnome-main-menu/gnome-main-menu-0.6.1-0.2.i586.rpm http://www.xs4all.nl/~mpepping/log/gnome-main-menu/gnome-main-menu-0.6.1-0.2.x86_64.rpm

Novell Client 1.2 for SUSE Linux 10.1 / SLED 10

2006-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

After a 3 month beta period, the final build has reached the download site.

Key features:
* Support for traditional Novell protocols (NDAP, NCP and RSA) and open protocols (LDAP, CIFS and NFS)
* Automatic background reconnect to the Novell NetWare server or Novell Open Enterprise Server
* Greater than 4 GB file support
* DFS junction support
* Unicode file naming in mixed language environments
* Secure Authentication in conjunction with universal password
* Background automatic reconnect
* Novell login script support
* Processing of container, profile and user login scripts
* Conversion of existing Windows login scripts to run on Linux as native shell scripts
* Login script support and results display
* Novell eDirectory multi-tree support and authentication
* Service address and name resolution caching
* Network browsing and resolution through DNS, DHCP, SLP, and NDAP
* IP address costing
* Automatic workstation local user account provisioning (requires LDAP)
* Advanced password policy support (requires LDAP)
* NCP packet signing and support
* Drive mapping on a Linux desktop

Still no support for the main GNOME login dialog?

Git it!

2006-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

VMware Server ... it's there now

2006-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

After a 5 month beta period, VMware Virtual Server is now available for download ... and it's free!

SLED10 and SLES10 Preview Releases.

2006-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Both SLED10 and SLES10 Preview releases are available for download!
Based on the 3rd and final Release Candidate.

TTB Teletekst Browser (DUTCH)

2006-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

TTB Teletekst Browser for Linux. A great tool to keep up with the worldcup soccer score or news headlines at work or such. Depends on the python-devel package on SUSE Linux.

SLED10 Documentation online!

2006-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Moosy: SLED10 Documentation online.

Installing apt (Advanced Package Tool) on SUSE Linux

2006-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Quick and dirty:

root@linux# wget http://linux01.gwdg.de/~scorot/install-apt4suse.rpm
root@linux# rpm -Uvh install-apt4suse.rpm
root@linux# install-apt4suse

--
rpm's can also be installed directly from a webserver.
rpm -Uvh http://linux01.gwdg.de/~scorot/install-apt4suse.rpm

Google Earth and Xgl

2006-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Google Earth for Linux doesn't float well on Xgl ...

---
comment by Phoenix49:
Just turn off Anisotropic filtering, and everything will be ok

GroupWise 7 SupportPack1 MultiLang

2006-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

It's available for download! GroupWise 7 SP1 is long anticipated by the GroupWise community.

Wireshark

2006-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

... thats the new name for the popular Ethereal protocol analyzer.

http://www.wireshark.org/

Aircrack-ng and Aircrack RPM's for SUSE 10.1

2006-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

Updated the Aircrack-ng & Aircrack RPM's for SUSE 10.1 post.

Google Browser Sync

2006-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Sync your Firefox (>=1.5) settings across your computers.
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/index.html

Updated PGP key

2006-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Updated my PGP key ... the public part is on the Surfnet keyserver. E-mailaddress is unchanged.

SUSE Linux 10.1 Live DVD

2006-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

From the OpenSUSE Announce list:

The SUSE Linux 10.1 Live DVD is available now. The download URL to get it it from you next mirror is:
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1/non-oss-dvd-iso/SUSE-Linux-10.1-GM-LiveDVD.iso

The Live DVD is a 32bit intel based system which contains 4GB of great Linux software compressed into a 1.7GB iso.

RH5.2 and SUSE 6.1

2006-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

My first boxed Linux versions ... The Redhat 5.2 box is from late 1998. The SUSE 6.1 box got released in 1999.

SUSE Linux Update Management has been better ...

2006-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday, my SUSE Linux 10.1 desktop had 3 software updates available trough ZMD. Today 43 were added! With a grand total of 46 packages I started the update trough the ZENworks Management Daemon ... which crashes with a single mouseclick. Updates trough YaST Online Update work fine though.

Why should a system maintain two methods for software updating? Or better yet, why is ZMD used on a OS targeted for home and soho use? ... looks more applicable for enterprise environments to me.

Flash Player 9 for Linux

2006-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Many Linux users probably have reached websites which are using Macromedia Flash8 content ... a message like 'You need MacroMedia Flash 8 to view this website' can be quite frustrating knowing that Flash7 is the latest player for linux. So why isn't there a Flash8 player for Linux? ... or even better ... will there be a Flash9 player for Linux? Yes there will be ... but it will be released in 2007 ...

Online .htaccess generator

2006-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Create a .htaccess file by filling out a webform ... can be handy in some cases.

Beranger doesn't do SUSE anymore

2006-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Too bad Beranger switched sides from SUSE to Debian ... got to say he's right on these two posts though. The quality of the SUSE Linux product is definitly downhill'ing since the 9.3 release.

Package management is really buggy and the way some desktopservices are forced upon users can be done better as well imho. Things like the ZENworks Desktop Agent, Beagle intergration in Nautilus and the stability of some applications that are presented in the system as the main application for certain tasks (like banshee) don't improve my user experience in a positive way.

Anyway, just my frustrations at the moment ;)
Haven't tried SLED10 yet. I just hope that it'll be a stable, representative, OS with a quality level like NLD9 had. But for now, I do have my doubts on certain aspects ...

Other articles on SUSE 10.1 woes.:
http://linuxblogger.dyndns.org/weblog/index.php?/archives/192-guid.html
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3456783210.html

TwonkyMedia and Xbox360

2006-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

Just installed TwonkyMedia to hookup my SUSE Linux desktop machine to my Xbox360 (I know, it's MS ... just couldn't wait for this one). It's a good alternative for a Windows MCE or XP based computer ... especially if you don't have one. Now just have to find a GPL/BSDL equiv. ;) For those interrested, TwonkyMedia trails can be found right here.

Graham Anderson: Securing Applications With AppArmor - SUSE 10.1

2006-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

Good article on the use of AppArmor in SUSE Linux 10.1. Ofcourse, the official SUSE AppArmor Administration Guide is also great help on AppArmor.

OpenOffice 2.0 Calc and max. rows

2006-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Hmmz ... I do beleive that 'some other' spreadsheet applications do not have a maximum row limitation of 65534 rows.

SUSE Linux 10.1 DVD iso

2006-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

SUSE-Linux-10.1-GM-DVD-i386.iso ... ~3.5GiB in size. The DVD ISO is available since the 18th of May. This one contains Non-OSS packages!

md5 checksum: d3e88517b2f925c60e7286d79e0da82e

Google Suggest

2006-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

Google Suggest just does what it says, it suggest search keywords on the moment you start typing.

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Novell Client 1.2 for Linux - Public Beta REFRESH

2006-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

There's a new build of the Novell Client 1.2 for Linux beta online! This build has a whole lot of improvements ... including intergrated login support for bot KDE and GNOME. So if you're running an eDirectory Tree in your environment, grab the NCL_disk-SLED10-bld510.tar.gz from the above URL! ... Supported on both SUSE Linux 10.1 and SLED10.

Free Your Desktop

2006-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

Promotional material from Novell's Free You Desktop campain consist of a flyer containing a little N branded scraper to remove those nasty 'designed for Windows' stickers from PC hardware and four SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop stickers to replace them with. Gotta love it.

GroupWise7!!

2005-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Finally, it's official now! the next major GroupWise release, GroupWise 7 (Sequoia) will be launched during the GroupWise EMEA Summit in the Netherlands. This event takes place at the 28th and 29th of June in the Hague (http://www.groupwiser.net/summit).

Check this link for some screenshots and info:
http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/newrelease.html

SUSE Linux support for Apple iPod

2005-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

iPod and Linux

Now, officially Apple only suports it's iPod on Mac OS and Windows. iPod owners running Linux are forced to user third-party tools and applications to hookup their toys to the desktop. Articles in this category describe applications and tools to use your iPod with Linux. Check out the articles below.

iPod backup with Linux
Josh Gentry wrote a shell-script to backup iPod's with linux. Go get it.

iPod European volume restriction
Out of the box European iPod have a maximum volume restriction set. goPod helps you to remove it in a clean way. Binaries are available for Windows, Mac OS & Linux.

iPod Sync applications for Linux

Quick summary:

1. Banshee (http://banshee-project.org/Main_Page)
With Banshee you can easily import, manage, and play selections from your music collection. Banshee allows you to import CDs, sync your music collection to an iPod, play music directly from an iPod, create playlists with songs from your library, and create audio and MP3 CDs from subsets of your library.

2. gtkPOD (http://www.gtkpod.org/)
gtkpod is a platform independent Graphical User Interface for Apple's iPod using GTK2. It supports the first to fifth Generation including the iPod mini, iPod Photo, iPod Shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod Video.

3. YamiPOD (http://www.yamipod.com/)
YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. Take a look at the feature list to find out what it can do and feel free to suggest anything that might be missing.

SUSE Linux support for Apple iPod
SUSE Linux's support for Apple iPod is probably the best a Linux distribution has ever seen. Attached iPod's automaticly get mounted on /media/ipod for raw disk access an synchronisation applications.

Running GNOME, iPod's automaticly get a device-link on the Desktop. Even Banshee starts instantly. After a quick first time iPod setup (iPod name, your name) the iPod is ready for use.

KDE users can facilitate on the built-in iPod support from konqueror. A 'ipod:/' in the addressbar opens konqueror iPod services like library access, statistics and playlists. gtkpod is a good application for managing yur iPod's music.

gtkpod:

Read your existing iTunesDB (i.e. import the existing contents of your iPod including playcounts, ratings and on-the-go playlists).
Add MP3, WAV, M4A (non-protected AAC), M4B (audio book), podcasts, and various video files (single files, directories or existing playlists) to the iPod.
View, add and modify Cover Art.
Browse the contents of your local harddisk by album/artist/genre by adding all your songs to the 'local' database. From there the tracks can be dragged over to the iPod easily.
Create and modify playlists, including smart playlists.
You can choose the charset the ID3 tags are encoded in from within gtkpod. The default is the charset currently used by your locale setting.
Extract tag information (artist, album, title...) from the filename if you supply a template.
Detect duplicates when adding songs (optional).
Remove and export tracks from your iPod.
Modify ID3 tags -- changes are also updated in the original file (optional).
Refresh ID3 tags from file (if you have changed the tags in the original file).
Sync directories.
Normalize the volume of your tracks (uses mp3gain or the replay-gain tag)
Write the updated iTunesDB and added songs to your iPod.
Work offline and synchronize your new playlists / songs with the iPod at a later time.
Export your organizer/kaddressbook/thunderbird/evocalendar/evolution/webcalendar... data to the iPod.