Wolf's Ubuntu corner

Oracles OpenOffice commitment

2010-10-17T11:22:00.002+01:00

As you might have read, Oracle is committed to OpenOffice.

As a long term follower of Oracles policy, especially its adoption of open standards, I'm pretty convinced that they will push forward OpenOffice development. First thing, Oracle made an announcement. This is definitely a good way to show commitment and support.

If OpenOffice is under the tight grip of the coroners of innovation, is there any hope for an open and free office suite?

My hope rests on LibreOffice.

New layout

2010-10-01T22:15:00.004+01:00

How do you like our new layout? After setting up so many blogs for friends and family, I decided to give it a try for myself.

I have neglected this blog for a while. Why?

First, Ubuntu has grown up. It's a stable and solid platform. I still think that OpenOffice should get some attention (which I sincerely hope it does with LibreOffice).

Second, there is enough material available on the net and in magazines specialized in Ubuntu. My input is not required anymore.

Third, I am slightly disappointed with Canonical and the way things develop.

Canonical does not take leadership in bringing Linux to the forefront of information technology.
They allow kids to provide code in an uncontrolled and immature way.
Error elimination is not carried out in a professional manner.
Separation of communities, Launchpad, maintenance and development leads to nonexisting responsibilities.

Ubuntu by far is not ready for prime market. There is a spark but no fire.

Canonical and its leader could put emphasis on a mature and competitive development environment. They can put pressure on the Gnome team to come up with something like pyGTK. They can claim a stable and working office suite.

The window of opportunity is closed now. Microsoft has once again settled its business with Windows 7. Vista is forgotten.

With Office 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 they have forced their installed base to migrate from older platforms successfully. Visual Studio 2010 is unmet in the computer industry.

All left for open source affictionados is to wait for Microsoft to suffocate on it's own inability to innovate. The rest will be dealt by the big 3 that will challenge themselfs in patent lawsuits.

With all this happening around me I seriously considered changing to the dark side (Mac or Windows).

I shared my experience on Ubuntu with you for the last 3 1/2 years. I hope it helped. I think now is the time to consider moving on to something different.

VMware Workstation 7.1.2 on Meerkat 10.10

2010-10-01T21:36:00.004+01:00

You probably have noticed: VMware did it again.

They ship a new version, it offers update, downloads fine, installs with a breeze and
... zilch ...
crashes on restart.

vmmon and vsocks do not compile.

How many time does that have to happen?

Here is a patch:
patch-modules.sh
vmware-7.1-2.6.35-3-generic.patch

Download both. Then:

chmod u+x patch-modules.sh
sudo ./patch-modules.sh

This script will save the original driver tars, patch them and run the module installation script.

VMware Workstation should start fine.

iPod Nano 5G on Lucid

2010-06-02T22:03:00.002+01:00

My daughter got an Apple iPod nano 5G (with camera) for her birthday. Naturally she wanted to put some music on it right away. We could see the iPod as a USB storage device, even transfer data and music. However, the iPod did not recognize the music and therefore could not play it.

Quick fix

To quickly get the iPod nano 5G to work with Ubuntu 10.04 you can either initalize it on a Windows or Apple PC using iTunes. You only need to copy one piece of music onto the iPod.

After this, the iPods local database for music is initialized.

Use Rhythmbox or gtkpod to transfer music to and from the iPod.

If you don't have a Mac or PC available, go to the store and ask the clerk to initialize the iPod for you (Tell them you don't need iTunes only afterwards ;-))

TechnoExplain

iPod uses a local SqLite database to store meta information about music. It gets updated when synced by iTunes. Music is stored in a subfolder /iPod_Control/Music/fxx where xx is a number starting from 00. Rhythmbox stores music correctly in the directory but does not get the last part correct (fxx). Only when the iTunedDB is initialized can Rhythmbox store music in any of the prepared directory. The iPod finds the music and is able to play it.

Moving title bar buttons to the left

2010-03-13T12:05:00.002Z

I always liked the Mac style of the buttons in the window title bar: LEFT.

Gnome (as well as KDE or XFCE) show them on the right of the window title by default.

Historically, Microsoft could not simply copy all of Macitoshs interface so they "invented something new". Buttons to minimize, maximize and close the window are shown on the right of the title bar.

OK, it's different, but on second thought, it is stupid as well. On a Mac (as on my Linux box) everything having to do with commands is in the top left corner (general menus, window menues, etc.). So why move the mouse to the far left of a page to manpulate window controls?

Cut a long monologue short: How to get the buttons from right to left?

gconf-editor

Search for the key:

/apps/metacity/general/button_layout

Replace the colon right to menu with a comma and place the colon at the end of the line. You can place the colon any place you want to separate left from right buttons.

I have done this on my machines and the theme now looks perfect.

Could Canonical care less?

2010-01-16T15:52:00.002Z

Happy new year,

I ask myself, is it happy really? After installing 9.10 on most of my machines last year, I run into every little error that one can imagine:

Left mouse button constantly not recognized (requires restart of GNOME)
Fan operates at full speed (acpi reports hot components even though machine is quite cool)
Suspend to RAM takes for ages (3 minutes fan runs on full speed, machines does ... what exactly does it?)
Resume from suspend brings the machine to sleep (have to wake it up again) every second sleep
scanning with xsane does not work (scanner still not recognized)
printing large documents sends garbage to the printer (large documents being 1 page documents with one picture on it) which terminates with CRC errors
CUPS does not allow canceling and restart of print jobs. Requeue does not work either
burning CD images is not possible. Brasero eats raw CDs
OpenOffice does not honor screen settings (like font size). Every other launch, my menus and fonts are microscopic
OpenOffice screen updates provide spurious artefacts (some lines are drawn only half in height, tables are squeezed, images are cut in half). Page down and up usually resolves this
Launchpad does not accept errors being reported the conventional way. It requires to send error reports from the help menu
Evolution terminates when sending mails to distribution lists that contain members with quotation marks and without in the same list (no kidding you). Distribution lists cannot be edited if there are similar entries in the address book.
SD cards are not recognized or automounted on most notebooks
Screen resolution cannot be changed on notebook screens. External connectors do not allow to choose between screen duplication or extension any more
Battery charge lasts for less than two hours on my major notebook. The same notebook with an 8.10 image reports 4h36 minutes on a full power pack

What annoys me most is that all these issues used to work in previous versions. Some stopped working as early as 6.10, sime as late as 9.10.

Were they reported? YES

Were they fixed? NO

Linux a franchise system

In a franchise system you have an idea about a business. You buy into it, get the proceedings, marketing material and the right to pretend to be part of something bigger. Franchise systems are more or less stringent. In the end, you save on preparing the market and can start the business right away.

A Linux distribution is similar. You decide which distribution you want, install it and live with whatever you got. Take SuSE, get a green GUI and KDE as the engine. You get a load of applications, need it or not. Take Fedore, you get blue and can choose between desktop engine and apps. Take Ubuntu and you can be sure to end up in the brown.

Initially Ubuntu claimed to provide well selected best in breed applications.

I'm not sure this is the case anymore. Telepathy follows Pidgin, PiTiVi follows GIMP, ...

Does Canonical care?

I have read about initiatives at Canonical to reduce the number of open errors. At the time, I was delighted.

Today, I look back at times when errors where treated as what they are: ERRORS.

All of the above mentioned errors (name it issues, problems, shortcomings, what ever) where not there in previous releases. They were introduced as part of system upgrades.

I reported these errors only to have them change from new error to either incomplete (at best), triaged (whatever that means, usually an acronym for: we wont fix it), fixed (interesting, no new version issued), wishlist (printing is more a requirement than a wish for some of us) or next release (which usually comes with recomendations to install e.g. 10.4 pre-alpha).

Frankly: I do not think that Canonical cares any more.
Frankly: I think Canonical lost focus
Frankly: I think we should seriously evaluate alternatives

Could Canonical care less?

I don't think they could care less than they do right now. I wished some executives had the insight that this is neither going to help the open source community nor Linux nor Ubuntu nor Canonical in the long run.

Install HTC Sync on Windows

2009-12-04T21:50:00.007Z

OK, this is not a Ubuntu issue but I thought it was worth sharing as it touches on Android usage.

If you have trouble installing HTC Sync on a Windows machine (specifically non English system language), here is a fix:

Launch the MSI installer. You will run into a dialog that claims DPInst.exe can't find the drivers. In my case the system was a German Windows XP. Drivers were on the hard disk in the program folder path. Due to some hard coding of the access path in the installer, the MSI installer looks under
C:\Program Files\HTC Sync\Drivers
If this path is not available (as was on mine C:\Programme\HTC Sync\Drivers) you can temporarily create a folder
C:\Program Files\HTC Sync\Drivers
and copy the drivers into this path.
Repeat the installation and be patient. The procedure will execute without errors.
You can delete the temporary folder after the installation.

Alternatively you can create a link to the driver directory.

Hope this helps.

VMware Workstation 7.0 works

2009-11-22T10:27:00.005Z

Dedicated followers of this blog will remember my complaints about VMware never being able to provide a working installation.

After upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 I had to reinstall VMware. 6.5.2 did not work, 6.5.3 required a trick to circumvent the hangup in the installation procedure.

Two days after getting 6.5.3 installed, my VMware Workstation informed me that there was a new update out. Should I bother going through another hour of nightmare? I read release notes, nothing special: Windows 7 gaming support at the most. Who needs that?

I was reluctant to install. Finally I got myself up to get it over and done with:

Surprise, surprise.

VMware Workstation took longer than any other installation before but it worked out of the box (or installer bundle).

One gets modest over times: Thank you VMware for providing a software that installs, works and performs. (in fact, this is how it should have been all along).

MSI X320 9.10 installation

2009-11-22T10:21:00.004Z

I tried Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the MSI X320. It boots.

There are some things that do not work as of today:

1. SD-Card still provide error lists (card driver reports card insert-remove cycle permanently, effectively using 80-90% CPU). Disabling is mandatory in 9.10

2. Wireless does not work. There are no drivers in the media

3. Graphics adapter (or screen) not recognized. There is no poulsbo driver in the media.

This is specifically sad as Canonical announced support for Intels new ATOM processors.

I read some rumors about Intel sublicensing the driver code from RALink (which sounds reasonable because RALink provides source code on their website).

The annoying part: Nothing works out of the box.

HTC Hero with Android

2009-11-14T13:04:00.002Z

During summer 2009 I had the chance to compare Apple's iPhone side by side to the then new HTC Hero runing Android. After reading so many positive articles I was curious.

Disappointing at first

The HTC Hero comes with a refurbished Android theme. Compared to the rather clumsy looking original, HTC's Sense theme is looks decent. But this is where my first impression left the enthusiastic path. Compared to the iPhone the HTC was no hero at all. It was slow, text entry was cumbersome and full of recognition errors. So I did not buy it then.

Coverage in the media suggested, this was just a problem with preliminary models.

10.000 apps available .. where?

I read this article comparing AppStore to the Android Market. Apple was supposed to offer well around 100.000 apps. Google claims to have more than 10.000's of apps in it's Market Place.

Let's face it: Neither has Apple any more than say 300+ apps that are worth mentioning nore has Google anything more than around 100. You get easily overwhelmed by round robin lists, betas, free evaluation copies and some me2 development templates. But this is nothing I would call a usefull app (please refrain from flaming me on this, I would hate to censor your comments. I do look forward to discussion though).

Second looks

So, why do I comment on Android, HTC and mobile Phones here?

I do see a huge potential in mobile communication. The iPhone currently is the linea ultima in mobile communication and personal assistance. Windows mobile never was a direct competitor but Google's Android has the potential to be a serious contender.

While Apple uses a strict policy of control, Google offers a more open approach. Developers are encouraged to develope for Android, there are several SDK's, plugins for IDE's (ok, I have my personal opinion about Eclipse) and offers lots of documentation and sample code.

All this makes it an opportunity for innovative solutions and development.

Where we are

While it is easy to geting started, most of this sample code enters Market Place by just being renamed (there are approximately 8 notepad apps derived from Googles Notepad app and only Googles version syncs with GDocs). This is unfortunate and tends to scare people away.

To prevent poor apps to be swamping the market place, Google offers a rating system from 0 to 5 stars. It might sound like a good idea, only the fittest apps will survive. Unfortunately the rating is slightly missleading. Personally I could not relate attributed stars to the quality of the program. I found some apps that were rated 5 stars and the comments suggested that the app crashes (which it did on my phone as well).

True Lies

Here are some myths about the HTC Hero:

The HTC Hero has a specially coated touch screen, that makes it look less smeared as other touch screens:
The HTC Hero will have a special coating after 5 minutes of use. Before that, I can see nothing special about it.
The HTC Hero has a scrath proof screen:
Mine hasn't. Mine had some scratches after 2 days of use (my Motorola RAZR v3 does not have any scratches after 3 years of use)
The HTC Hero comes with its own Interface, HTC Sense. It is vastly improved performance-wise:
HTC Sense is a theme. It improves the looks of the shabby Android Interface a lot. Other than that, it does nothing.
The HTC Hero's battery can last more than a week:
I presume it will if you don't operate it. I have to reload it every other day

Here are some nice features (and immediately remedied):

The interface lets you operate the phone with intuitive on screen operations:
However, not all apps support widget presses to open option menus. Sometimes you have to use the menu key. This might be anoying, because some usefull apps only have keyed menus.
Sense has a beatiful, iPhone like date and time selector:
Well, Sense does, Android does not. I do not know, why some apps have the nice scroll selector, others you have to type + and - signs.
I like the Market Place. One can easily purchase apps:
This was quite a surprise and is a definite positive: I purchased Scan2PDF which I had a free version that embeds watermarks in the PDF. Purchase was straightforward. Entered my credit card, accepted the fee and download started.
(OK I even found something here: the free version was not removed from the phone, I had to do that manually. There is no security to prevent you from deleting what you just purchased. I also don't know, how to redownload the app in case I reset my phone).
The phone comes with headset, a nice box and small power supply.
The phone can be charged with a universal USB cable (with micro USB connector at the phone end).
The headset jack is a standard jack. One can use any headset they want.
ROM 1.6 is significantly faster and more accurate than 1.5. I look forward to 2.0:
(the original ROM from Google cannot be installed, one is required to get a ROM from HTC).

Do I regret?

Giving the potential that lies within Android, I do not regret having purchased the Hero (speech quality is clear, reception good, quality of mp3 acceptable). Some functionality is still not as one would expect. The phone app cannot be adjusted to personal preferences (which I would actually expect on a mobile phone). Mail services are not integrated (there are seperate apps for GMail, IMAP and SMS).

I still think that the tight integration in Googles online services is something to be aware of (I found my contacts in my Google calendar which I never used before). I still have not decided whether to use Google Docs, calendar and other services more intensly. It would make the phone more versatile.

My recommendation: Have a look, take a test drive and don't believe what most people say about Android (or the Hero). It's pretty beta out there.

Ubuntu 9.10 client installation

2009-10-27T21:40:00.003Z

This refers to Ubuntu 9.10 rc1.

I installed 9.10rc1 on a HP510 (2GHz, 1GB, 1280x800 i945), HPnx8220 (2GHz, 1GB, 1650x1080 ati), HP 8510w (2,4GHz, 2GB, 1920x1200 nvidia).

Installation of the core system went fine. Compiz works on all machines, the Intel chipset being the easiest, NVidia requires proprietary drivers.

Switched from Thunderbird to Evolution.

I don't know why this program gets all the hype. Its buggy (and I mean, it is hardly usable). It's a pain to configure offline synchronization (you have to set this in the Edit -> Preferences -> Mail Account -> Edit -> Receiving Options -> Automatically synchronize remote mail locally and the manually right-click the folder -> Property -> Copy folder content locally for offline operation). It's a pain to configure spam protection (in the above mentioned Account Editor you have to set Check new messages for junk content). It does not read news, it is slow and auto filtering does not work all the time.

Why did I swap: Its default, it has Exchange connectivity (not that I need it) and it syncs my Palm pilot and hopefully my Andriod phone.

Network manager still does not work correctly.

Using a mobile broadband internet connection does not work with wireless access points in reach. If wireless is turned off, the connection works fine the first time, consecutive connections do not adjust the resolver settings.

Used a manual override to fix this.

Another issue is purely annoying: Setting the mobile connection to be available system wide will lock you out of editing the settings. One can delete the connection and set it up afresh. As soon as you set system wide availability, the game starts new. Sometimes I would not even get an error message, the network manager applet would simply terminate.

Canon FB363u still does not work.

It's a shame that this used to work in 6.06 but never after. Several attempts to issue bugs failed. Canonical does not react but still provides drivers for the scanner in it's repositories.

Power management?

In 9.04 the battery on my 8510w lasted nearly 4 hours (3.57). This was ok. I remeber having heard the fan twice.

With 9.10 the battery lasts 2h20mins. Worse, ever since the upgrade the fan spins permanently and really loudly. acpi -t tells me that some device has a temperature of over 75° C. It was never that hot before.

Sound issues.

I installed additional gstreamer libraries (bad and ugly). After that I installed VLC. This seemed to render sound output dead on all my machines. Reinstalling gstreamer bad and ugly libraries solved the problem (don't know why)

VMWare ... the usual ...

I didn't expect VMWare to work out of the box. And VMware did not disappoint me.

Cut a long story short, here is the fix. There is another hint out. I did not find the problems described about mouse grabing problems on any of my machines. As I like simple solutions I followed the one on the vmware community site. It works fine.

CUPSpdf.

I used CUPSpdf a lot to print PDFs out any size. In 9.10 CUPSpdf offers adjustment of the paper size. To the application only A4 or Letter is available. I don't know what the use of bigger paper size is if one can't use it.

So where are the good news?

ext4 works fine. It's fast (boot time about 15 secs, used to be 47 secs with 9.04).
Grub2 is fine. It does what it should and stays out of your way.
firefox 3.5 is snappy.
avant window manager is a pretty add-on that makes my life pleasant and easy.

Pretty little if you ask me.

Worth your while?

If neither Windows nor Mac are an option, then the answer would be: yes.

However the pain and frustration (I still can't connect to my campus network via VPN) accumulates.

MSI X320 graphics driver update

2009-07-16T15:25:00.004+01:00

After upgrading to kernel 2.6.28-14 the graphics driver could not be found. I got an error message that the system does not find the corresponding module and can run only in low res mode. Reinstall or uninstall and install of the poulsbo drivers does not fix the problem.

To fix this, simply install psb-kernel-sources and reboot.

sudo apt-get install psb-kernel-source
sudo shutdown -r now

Reason for this is that the kernel modules are hard coded in a directory:
/lib/modules/2.6.28-13-generic/updates/char/drm (drm.ko and psb.ko).

Installing the psb kernel sources creates a directory:
/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/updates/char/dkms and in there the files drm.ko and psb.ko.

Why the kernel modules were hard coded in the first place is beyond me. Should work in the future.

MSI X320 Wireless installation (obsolete)

2009-07-06T18:52:00.008+01:00

This post is obsolete and has been integrated into MSI X320 Installation (revisited).

MSI X320 installation (revisited)

2009-06-24T21:59:00.015+01:00

(this post has been updated on Sept. 3rd, 2009)

Installing Ubuntu from scratch (unless you want to live with Windows Vista Home Edition) on a MSI X320 is non trivial at best. The notebook comes without any CD-ROM but boots from an external USB CD- or DVD drive.

Installation goes straight forward, the system comes up nicely.

Things to keep in mind

Graphics resolution is 1024x768. The display can run at 1366x768. Here is what you have to do to get it:

Setting the right screen resolution

In Synaptic Package Manager under Settings/Repositories/Third-Party Software add:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

copy the following text to a text file:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: SKS 1.0.10

mI0ESXQtMgEEAMtSSxV/TSMW1mEnFVc7DJ/g/7UOq+TnlSs68uVbhUoh0BRuVScOb81dsyTg
IB3WQzbvE2r0ELa+L/hYGsRH9XOq5u+qVtBJmDtUWjT0okVlBBIpyWkM61sWCQYkbs4UcF9a
U+zfy4W1rIY81etivlqWQ79XmZ5iUHHMvGzvbZONABEBAAG0JExhdW5jaHBhZCBQUEEgZm9y
IFVidW50dSBNb2JpbGUgVGVhbYi2BBMBAgAgBQJJdC0yAhsDBgsJCAcDAgQVAggDBBYCAwEC
HgECF4AACgkQmdayHMZZijA7ZAP8DBWyjyo8O8hNbpvN/T7kEB4HxcNd6R6HaGQen3jSBrxe
vviVA1h2Md81C6gnvr/XT/kUYLyEK1oIY+jw8nHl7Z6Vf8kDfDACiN4KJXQY8wMOotQhHCZd
UM93u4yTZy+hWHcHU0/7a5EOU2bT7x3CztYJN7PURR89Sto3aXy3aW0=
=0g8f
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Save it under the name "msi.key" and import in the tab Authentication/Import Key File... (alternatively you can download the key from here).

Reload the repository. You should now find a package:

poulsbo-driver-2d and
poulsbo-driver-3d as well as
psb-kernel-source (will be needed by the wireless network driver as well).

Install it and its depending packages. Further install

compiz-settings-manager
awn-manager

and all depending packages if you want to mimic Apple.

Now edit the file /usr/bin/compiz. Its a wrapper script to launch compiz. Find the line that starts with:

WHITELIST="..."

Add a space and "psb" at the end so that screen composition works with the Poulsbo chipset.

I also installed AUT2 (the Austrian Ubuntu Theme) which has resembles a silvery blueish style. For that, copy AUT2 into /usr/share/themes and UE-icon-set-light into /usr/share/icons.

After rebooting the machine, you will be greeted with an optimized resolution of 1366x768. Choose the AUT2 theme from the Preferences/Appearance control panel.

Wireless LAN

You might find your machine not offering bluetooth and WLAN. Bluetooth can be turned on with the Fn-F9 key combination. WLAN ist toggled with the Fn-F8 key (not very intuitive icon).

Ubuntu does not provide a wireless driver for the RaLink RT3090 pci card built into the MSI X320. In order to get wireless working you need to download the source file. Either go to RaLink directly:

http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html

and download the file "2009_0612_RT3090_Linux_STA_V2.1.0.0_DPO.tar.gz" or download sources for SuSE 11 (which have some handy patches enclosed):

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/Akoellh/openSUSE_11.0_Update/src/rt3090sta-2.1.0.0-1.2.src.rpm

The driver derives from the RT2860. If you want to adjust the interface name to wlan-x and the driver name to rt3090sta, you need to patch some source files. SuSE delivers 5 patches, 4 of them apply, on is for 64bit versions only (which do not make sense and I could not get the driver to work with this patch).

Install the patch utility and optionally the rpm utility:

sudo apt-get install patch rpm

Sleves up

Extract the sources. If you extract from the RPM you have to extract the tar.gz contained in the directory within rt3090sta-2.1.0.0-1.2.src as well (I renamed the directory to RT3090 for convenience).

In the RPM sources you find 5 patch files, some decriptive text and the original source directory (is the same as the one from RaLink).

Source code preparation

You can either apply the patches or apply changes manually. To apply patches cd into the directory containing the Makefile (2009_0612_RT3090_Linux_STA_V2.1.0.0_DPO). All patches create a backup of the files patched (they have an extension .orig).

patch -b -p0 ---input=../rt3090sta-2.1.0.0-config.patch

This patches the Makefile and the os/linux/config.mk file. In my case I had to revert the changes in the Makefile (I simply copied the Makefile.orig over the Makefile).

You can apply these changes manually by editing ./os/linux/config.mk. Set:

HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y
...
HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y

This allows the driver to be controlled from the Network Manager applet.

Next apply the WPA-mixed patch. This changes the encryption cypher to TKIP-AES.

patch -b -p0 ---input=../rt3090sta-2.1.0.0-WPA-mixed.patch

You can change the line in ./common/cmm_wpa.c from MIX_CYPHER_NOTUSE to:

WPA_MIX_PAIR_CYPHER FlexibleCipher = WPA_TKIPAES_WPA2_TKIPAES

manually.

If you use the patch utility, you can change the driver name to rt3090. This is cosmetic:

patch -b -p0 ---input=../rt3090sta-2.1.0.0-remove-potential-conflicts-with-rt2860sta.patch

This replaces all appearances of "rt2860" to "rt3090" in the file ./os/linux/pci_main_dev.c and can be done manually using gedit or vi.

We are nearly there. Another cosmetic change is applied by:

patch -b -p0 ---input=../rt3090sta-2.1.0.0-convert-devicename-to-wlanX.patch

This changes the default ra device to wlan device. You can manually replace the "ra" with "wlan" in the define statements of the file ./include/rtmp_def.h.

If you are not there, go back to the directory containing the first Makefile.

Compile

Simply call

make

This will start the compile process. Don't worry about the error messages. I tried to fix them but the results were no better.

After a while the make process will terminate with an error message (it cannot copy files to the /tftpboot directory). Don't worry, we don't need it.

Install

You can call

make install

or manually copy the driver and bind it to the OS:

cp ./os/linux/rt3090sta.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/.
depmod -a

There is also an install utility that you can use for this purpose.

Configure

You have to copy the file RT2860STA.dat to /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA. Create the directory Wireless and RT2860STA if it does not exist (if you used make install, this is done for you).

If the file is not found there, the wlan interface will not get registered and you will find an error entry in /var/log/syslog:

... RtmpOSFileOpen(): Error 2 opening /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/RT2860STA.dat

(I found some posts on the internet that suggested fixing paramters in some configuration files. I think the euphoric success messages are due to frustration and not due to solution. Only having a system readable version of the file in the right place makes the driver work).

Edit the file /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/RT2860STA.dat. Change the settings for:

CountryRegion
CountryRegionABand
CountryCode
WirelessMode
AuthMode=WPA2PSK
EncryptType
WPAPSK

or Keysettings. You can find the correct parameters to use in the template file README_STA_pci. Ignore advice of the rest of the file, it does not work in Ubuntu.

Start the driver

Before you continue, check the Network Manager applet. It should not offer you any wireless networks nor should you be able to Enable wireless either.

sudo modprobe rt3090sta

should work flawlessly. After a while you should be able to connect to the wireless network. Enter the connection information in Network Manager. If you choose auto connect and connection available to all users, connections will be set up automatically.

Reboot the machine. The driver should get loaded automatically after reboot.

Caveats

Some things to keep in mind:

The driver is copied into a directory tree of the kernel libs that gets replaced as soon as the kernel gets updated. You have to copy the kernel driver anew to the correct library path. I presume this is an accepable tradeoff until drivers get shipped with the standard image
The driver does not connect to SSIDs that are hidden (as was the case with my WLAN). I had to set the router to show my SSID in order to get a connection. This was the reason it took me that long to figure out how to install.
The warning messages that you saw during make do mean something. The source leaves some variables uninitialized. This generally is not a sign of good quality code. However, the driver works sufficiently. I hope RaLink people will deal with the warnings.
The driver does not correctly deregister for sleep mode.

Disable non-functional SD card driver

The SD card driver does not work on the MSI X320 (as of September 2009). The sdhci kernel mode drivers are notorious for making the machine unresponsive. The device does not release locking bits thus causing permanent timeouts, slowing the machine considerably. To disable kernel mode drivers in Ubuntu

goto /etc/modprobe.d/
create a file somenameorother.conf (I called it blacklist_sdhci.conf)
edit it to:
blacklist sdhci
blacklist sdhci_pci
restart the machine

You can edit existing blacklists but they might get overwritten in case of OS upgrades.

Other caveats
Neither suspend to RAM nor hibernating works.

I tried Karmic Koala (9.10) but neither the Poulsbo drivers, the SD card nor power savings were fixed.

Conclustion
If you can live with rebooting the machine, the MSI X320 is a slim, leightweight notebook. Here is a screenshot of how my machine looks now:

Webmin 1.480

2009-06-22T21:21:00.002+01:00

I run webmin to manage my servers. To upgrade I usually download the latest package from the webmin website and install using dpkg.

Today I saw a notification on the System Information page. Following the link upgrades to 1.480. This is the first time upgrading from within webmin worked on my servers.

If you need web based server administration, I can recommend webmin.

Error in Gnome-RDP

2009-06-16T19:24:00.004+01:00

Gnome-RDP is a nice client to administer remote computers. It offers RDP protocol as well as VNC and SSH. It has a simple interface that just does it. And it keeps its settings in a SQlite database.

And here the problem starts.

After every major upgrade of Ubuntu, Gnome-RDP does not read the file correctly:

Error in query:
SELECT * FROM version WHERE id=1
Error:file is encrypted or is not a database

This is annoying as connection information and passwords are stored in this database.

Reason for the error is a difference in the SQlite schema. The error message is missleading.

Here is a fix that works on Ubuntu 9.04.

Open a console window
Check if sqlite and sqlite3 are installed (type sqli and tab. If you have installed a fresh copy then sqlite might be missing. Temporarily install it)
sudo apt-get install sqlite
Make a copy of the gnome config database
cd
mv .gnome-rdp.db .gnome-rdp-backup.db
Start Gnome-RDP and quit immediately. This creates an empty config database. Then you dump the old database using sqlite to the new database using the new sqlite3
gnome-rdp
sqlite .gnome-rdp-backup.db ".dump session" | fgrep INSERT | sqlite3 .gnome-rdp.db
Just dump the session table (which will dump CREATE statements as well) and just use the INSERT statements to copy the data into the new file.
Starting Gnome-RDP should now work fine.
Deinstall sqlite (you won't need it)
sudo apt-get remove sqlite

Hope the developers of gnome-rdp will do a database check in the next release.

Thanks to Mick K for the solution.

VMWare Workstation 6.5.2 64 bit bundle

2009-05-05T17:59:00.005+01:00

VMware download is still corrupted. I found some torrents around that work fine.

Backup with Clonezilla

2009-05-04T16:36:00.002+01:00

On my server I use LVM to manage my disks. My physical volume group has two disks containing one logical volume. Up till now I had trouble backing up my server as all the backup tools did not recognize the LVM.

This time I used Clonezilla 1.2.1.48. It's release notes state that it recognizes and honours logical volumes.

And it does.

Just to let you know.

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 on 9.04

2009-04-22T21:09:00.005+01:00

As described in several places VMware Workstation 6.5.1 does not work on Ubuntu 9.04 64bit edition.

This is due to the fact that autocreation of the modules breaks.

I found a script that is supposed to work in Fedora (which I doubt as the script has some flaws).

Here is a script that works on Ubuntu 9.04 (64bit and 32bit edition alike):

#!/bin/bash

cd ~
rm -rf vmware-modules
mkdir vmware-modules
cd vmware-modules
find /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source -name "*.tar" -exec tar xf '{}' \;
mkdir -p /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc
rm -f /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc{vmblock.ko,vmci.ko,vmmon.ko,vmnet.ko,vsock.ko}
rm -f /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc{vmblock.o,vmci.o,vmmon.o,vmnet.o,vsock.o}
cd vmblock-only; make; cd ..
cd vmci-only; make; cd ..
cd vmmon-only; make; cd ..
cd vmnet-only; make; cd ..
#cd vmppuser-only; make; cd ..
cd vsock-only; make; cd ..

cp *.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/.
cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/

ln -s vmblock.o vmblock.ko
ln -s vmci.o vmci.ko
ln -s vmnet.o vmnet.ko
ln -s vmmon.o vmmon.ko
#ln -s vmppuser.o vmppuser.ko
ln -s vsock.o vsock.ko

depmod -a
service vmware restart

cd ~
rm -rf vmware-modules

Copy it to a text file "vmware-build-module", set permissions to execute:

chmod u+x vmware-build-module

and execute it:

sudo ./vmware-build-module

The script creates a directory, extracts the module sources, makes them, copies the kernel modules to the right directory in the /lib tree, sets symbolic links (which the original script laked and it did not work without). It then rebuilds the module dependencies, restarts the vmware service and deletes the directory with the compiled modules.

Once done, you should be able to start VMware Workstation 6.5.1 without problems. If you have, let me know.

Note: There is no error checking whatsoever. At least, the script does not remove any other files in the misc directory if there are any.
Note: Sorry there is no download. I wish there was something like the image upload here.

Ubuntu 9.04 RC disappointment

2009-04-22T19:27:00.004+01:00

I got a bit disappointed using 9.04. I installed RC on my production machine (yes, I took a full backup, used Clonezilla btw.).

Things worked smoothly. The install went through, it just asked me to replace some files and 30 minutes later, I was up and running again.

VMware Workstation does not work any more

My notebook is a HP 8510w which runs Ubuntu 64bit. Unfortunately, VMware Workstation 6.5.1 did not run any more. The network modules could not be found.

OK, there is a new version out 6.5.2. But: Downloading the RPM works fine, the plain vanilla bundle is corrupt. Does VMware not know or recognize this?

So: No VMware Workstation (and thus) no way to test other things (like ext4). This happened in April 2009 let me add. We do have 64bit machines out there.

On a note by, VMware Workstation 6.5.2 works fine on a 32bit OS.

Gnome freezes

I used a mobile internet connection from Vodaphone today. After use, I tried to disconnect from my provider. The machine froze on disconnect. Not one, not twice, 4 times reproducably.

Most ot the time I put the machine in suspend mode. Every 5 times, Gnome does not react to wakeup calls. I get the background of the password entry dialog, but no entry field, no way to get into the machine.

Up till 8.10 I had the chance to restart Gnome using the well known Ctrl-Alt-Back key combination. Someone had a brilliant idea and disabled this last resort handler. So, now if Gnome freezes, I have to reboot the machine.

Another issue that happens regularly is my bluetooth mouse does not get recognized after boot. I have to turn it off and on to get it recognized (which itself takes several seconds).

Buggy Network Manager

I connect to my infrastructure using a wireless LAN. I like to sit on my balcony on a warm April evening and like ... ok, you are not here to read about my leasure activities.

I use WPA2 private to connect to a Netgear router. There are about 30+ wireless routers in the neighborhood so I turned my SSID broadcast of.

Network manager disconnects regularly when there are more than 10+ SSIDs seen. Most of the time it does not even attempt to reconnect. I like this to happen during downloads especially.

Disconnects happen every 8 hours or so.

Sometimes the machine tries to reconnect. It does not succeed and brings up a dialog to log on to the network.

Lukily one can observe the password that is there as the default.

Unfortunately its not the password, but the password hash. This is retrieved from the keyring manager.

So, I filed a bug, that the logon dialog in the network manager applet takes the wrong credentials.

I'm the only person having this?

I get an answer telling me, I am wrong. I'm puzzled. I can see the wrong password, I can enter the correct one (and get connected again) and this guy says that the correct password is used?

So besides my observations that the password hash instead of the password is used, I download the sources.

I'm no C guru any more (I used to program in C some 20 years ago). But I found some suspicously looking files (wpa2.. wireless... .c and .h). I open them in Geany and low and behold, I find two routines that get called.

One gets called after a first connect and it uses the password, runs it through a hashing function and sends it to the connecting routine.

The other is called whenever the is the need to reconnect. It retrieves the password hash, hashes it and forwards it to the connection routing.

I send the two files to the guy telling me, I'm wrong.

That happened 2 weeks ago. I update daily but there was no update on network manager applet so far.

How long do I have to wait for a working connection (that, btw. was perfectly working in 7.10)?

Never ending scanning story...

I do not want to go into details about scanning. I use a Canon FB630U. It's old but it works. It is supposed to be supported. But since 7.04 scanning with this scanner is not possible any more.

I file a bug every release and it gets piled up, but there seem to be no one that works on these issues.

SD cards

I have a camera that uses SD cards and I have an SD card reader on my notebook. One would think that getting pictures from my camera into my notebook is easy. Well: it's not.

The card reader recognises the inserting of SD cards. But Gnome does not mount them always. I have not figured out why it does not mount the card. At first I beleived that certain cards were formated malformed. But the same card gets recognised on monday and ignored on tuesday.

Should you use 9.04?

I cannot recommend 9.04. Im sorry to say.

Basic error correction by Canonical is minuscule to non existent.
The software is not ready for prime use. Experimental yes, but not stable.

If you have the chance to test, do so. If you want to upgrade: DO A BACKUP. If you never did and relied on Ubuntu quality, DON'T DO IT THIS TIME.

Stay with 8.10 if you can (and want). 9.10 is out soon.

Stay tuned, as I am not giving up on trying to help improve Ubuntu.

If you think that this is normal: Download Fedora 11 beta and test all of the above mentioned issues. You will be surprised. Nothing fails in Fedora (thats why I know, my scanner works actually).

Testing 9.04 Beta

2009-04-05T10:58:00.004+01:00

As of March 23 Ubuntu 9.04 beta was out. It's a fine piece of work. However there are some regression errors and some promises that Ubuntu does not live up to. Here is what is improved over 8.10:

OpenOffice 3.0.1 does work with samba shares at last. The workaround mentioned in this blog is not required any more
System menu and User menu have been reorganised and unified. It requires learning but it's clear at last.

Here is my list of things that do not work:

Scanning with Canon FB363U still does not work. It's a shame that this is not addressed.
Network manager looses connection to wireless access points regularly. This was an issue in 8.10, got better eventually but is back with full force. Hope they fix this one before release date.
There is an error in network manager related to how they fetch the password from the key ring. I posted this as a bug previously but the developers in charge deny to acknowledge it. Do they not read their own source?
Bootup is supposed to work faster. Well maybe if you upgraded from an old 486 to a modern machine. On my machines this is definitely not the case (HP nx8220 1GB RAM, 2.0 GHz: 8.10 -> 1m25s, 9.04 -> 1m23s)

Some issues I have to sort out yet:

With every upgrade my test machine became louder. The fan works 100% yet the motherboard and harddisk still run hot. I would suspect the machine to slowly die but launching 8.10 from CD provides a clean, cool machine that does not show the symptoms. I don't know what that is.
Deluge every now and then stops operating for no obvious reason. It declines to continue downloading torrents. Using Transmission on the same file works fine. Strange

Some of these issues are reported on launchpad, some are still under investigation.

OpenOffice 3.0 with Samba file shares

2009-03-29T12:22:00.003+01:00

With OpenOffice 3.0.1 (it has to be added using an external ppa repository from Launchpad) I could not read nor write files to and from my Samba file server. It worked under 2.4.1.

Developers on Launchpad denied to acknowledge the bug, even though it was reported widely on the internet.

The issue seems to have something to do with the way, OpenOffice authenticates with Samba. In order to get a different behaviour, one can change the way, OpenOffice is called.

If you start OOo from the menu, the call is:

ooffice -writer %U (with calc and the others following the pattern)

This tells OpenOffice, it should hand the user credentials to samba and authenticate. The result is the well documented error, the file cannot be read or written, a dialog asking for username and password for workgroup MSHOME, etc. appearing.

Under Ubuntu 8.10 you can adjust the menu setting to:

ooffice-writer %F (same with all the others)

If you have a connection to the Samba server (e.g. a share mounted), you can access the files there, both read and write.

This is a workaround for Ubuntu 8.10 (sorry for posting it so late, but I did not find out until recently).

Under Ubuntu 9.04 (bound to be out April 23, 2009) OpenOffice works with the %U parameter as well.

Ubuntu Theme on Launchpad

2009-03-07T21:46:00.003Z

I created a Launchpad project:

Austrian Ubuntu Theme (aut)

You'll find a tar.gz file there which you can install using the System / Preferences / Appearance control panel.

Feel free to experiment, comment and criticise.

Adding Code Intelligence to Komodo

2009-02-15T20:48:00.004Z

Writing programs in Python using PyGTK can be hard as the documentation is not consistent and somewhat outdated.

Adding Code Intelligence to the Komodo IDE is a matter of adding a specific XML-File to the IDE. Here is the link to the CIX-Files that do the trick:

http://community.activestate.com/files/gtk._gtk.cix_.gz
http://community.activestate.com/files/gtk_v2.cix_.gz

Extract the files to a directory. Add the two under Edit/Preferences/CodeIntelligence "Add an API Catalog...".

Viola. You have code completion.

Ubuntu Theme takes shape

2009-02-09T21:01:00.004Z

As I struggle my way through the configuration files, GTK+ documentation and some source code, the Ubuntu Theme takes on shape.

I still have not found out how to distinguish between windows in the front (focused for Metacity) and the ones in the background (normal). Having a way to differentiate would allow for different coloring of widgets. This in turn would make for nice visual feedback.

Another issue I have to tackle with is figuring out the names of widgets in different applications. Not all of them are documented in the GTK documentation.

Finally my icons in the top panel grew all of a sudden from nice 28 px to 32px filling the whole panel. I have no clue what I did (acutally I think I did nothing, but that certainly is not the case). I would like to think this is due to errors in all the other themes.

Ideas anybody?

Awn Window Navigator

2009-02-08T11:28:00.007Z

I follow development of the awn window navigator closely ever since it was first announced on Launchpad.

Awn window navigator is an Apple dock mimic. Under Gnome it acts a a panel on steriods. It lets you collect your favorite apps in a dock, supports drag-and-drop and gives nice visual feedback about the state of the application - Apple like.

Is it pretty? Yes,

Is it usefull? I'm not quite sure any more.

A shortcut collection of items makes sense if:

the set of common applications remains static most of the time
the set of apps is limited to a few (10 - 15 apps). Otherwise the dock will be overloaded and at the most exceed screen limits
the main screen is big enough for the extra space used by the dock
applications are hidden behind a cumbersome access path (like menues on Windows or folders on Macs)

Technically speaking, awn is working fine. It allows for customization, adding applications is straightforward, the tool is sufficiently responsive and graphically appealing.

So why do I doubt the usefullness of it?

Basically Ubuntu comes with some shortcuts in the main panel. This dock-like panel can be populated with additional apps. It does not provide visual feedback like awn. On the other hand, it does not use extra screen space (the dock is there anyway).

Ubuntu is reduced to some essential applications. The main menu is organized in logical compartments and can be adjusted to personal preferences using the menu editor. All of this makes Ubuntu easy to use and navigate.

It is because of the combination of just providing the essential applications and the option to add ones favorite applications as shortcuts to the top panel that makes awn redundant on Ubuntu (at least in my eyes).

My recommendation: If you want to mimic Apple, use awn. If you want to work, use the panel instead.

Trouble with gtkrc

2009-02-05T20:52:00.002Z

Creating a Metacity window decoration was pretty straightforward. I have what I want. A smooth gray window title that dims when the window looses focus. When focused, it has a gradient look imitating a round vertical curve.

Here comes the catch.

Items in the window are controled by a file ~/.themes/mytheme/gtk-2.0/gtkrc. This file controls everything drawn inside the window -- buttons, menus, scrollbars - you name it.

Here is a basic gtkrc file:

###############################################################################
# default color scheme
###############################################################################
gtk_color_scheme = "fg_color:#202020\nbg_color:#D7D7D7\nbase_color:#FFFFFF\ntext_color:#202020\nselected_bg_color:#696986\nselected_fg_color:#FFFFFF\ntooltip_bg_color:#FCF6DE\ntooltip_fg_color:#202020\n"

###############################################################################
# default style
###############################################################################
style "default"
{
##################
# Color assignment
##################

fg[NORMAL] = @fg_color # Metacity and mouseover, Most text
fg[PRELIGHT] = @fg_color # Text when mouseover
fg[ACTIVE] = @fg_color # Text when mouseclicking button, Tabs, Active window list
fg[SELECTED] = @selected_fg_color # Metacity X when window selected
fg[INSENSITIVE] = darker(@bg_color) # Insensitive Text (in menus)

bg[NORMAL] = @bg_color # Normal Background, inactive Metacity bar, buttons
bg[PRELIGHT] = @bg_color # Mouseover buttons
bg[ACTIVE] = @bg_color # Mouseclicking, Tabs, active window list
bg[SELECTED] = @selected_bg_color # Metacity Bar
bg[INSENSITIVE] = @bg_color # Insensitive buttons

base[NORMAL] = @base_color # Background, most
base[PRELIGHT] = @base_color # Mouseover menu
base[ACTIVE] = @selected_bg_color # Menu active item in inactive window
base[SELECTED] = @selected_bg_color # Menu active item in active window
base[INSENSITIVE] = @bg_color # Background, insensitive

text[NORMAL] = @text_color # Text in window
text[PRELIGHT] = @text_color # Text on Mouseover
text[ACTIVE] = @selected_fg_color # Active text in inactive window
text[SELECTED] = @selected_fg_color # Active text in active window
text[INSENSITIVE] = @bg_color # Insensitive text

xthickness = 3
ythickness = 3

}
class "GtkWidget" style "default"

style "window" = "default"
{
bg[NORMAL] = shade(0.87,@bg_color)
}
class "GtkWindow" style "window"

style "menubar" = "default"
{
GtkMenuBar :: shadow-type = GTK_SHADOW_NONE
GtkToolbar :: shadow-type = GTK_SHADOW_NONE
bg[NORMAL] = shade(0.87,@bg_color)
}
class "GtkMenuBar" style "menubar"
class "GtkToolbar" style "menubar"

style "tooltip"
{
fg[NORMAL] = @tooltip_fg_color # required in order to set the gnome default colors right
bg[NORMAL] = @tooltip_bg_color
}
widget "gtk-tooltip*" style "tooltip"

Two problems with it:

1. It does not load when selected by the Appearance System panel.
2. (and this currently worries me more) I cannot lighten the window background when the window looses its focus.

I would like to change the color of the window interior when the window is in the background. This would allow for the window to visually vanish in the background.

Any hints?

Ubuntu Theme

2009-01-26T20:41:00.013Z

I have done some research on the subject. And I have received lots of "good advice" Here are some results:

6 myths to go by

Theming Gnome is hard to do: Well, actually it is pretty easy, once you understand how Gnome displays its windows and widgets
There is no documentation around: It's true that the Gnome technical library is somewhat sparse, incomplete and sometimes error prone. However, there are some links to good documentation. And there is the source code of course.
Better modify an existing theme: This is a definitive NO NO as far as I am concerned. You most likely add more junk to the underlying theme, making it even more unusable.
There are no debugging tools around: While it is true that most tools advertised to be helpful are ancient and most likely not working properly, there are few tools that help you develop and test your theme (I will cover them later).
One can download everything from the web: There is art.gnome.org. And - yes - there are window themes, icon themes, wallpaper, logon themes and bootsplash screens. But this does not make for great design. What's missing is a thorough and complete design. That cannot be downloaded.
A good theme has to be better than Windows or Mac OSX: I'm afraid, the only thing a good theme can do is put Ubuntu / Linux on par with both former mentioned. Everything important was built into those GUIs and Linux mimics most of the style guides.

Some introductory material

This is a list of links that I found helpful:

Designing Metacity Themes - HOWTO
Understanding Metacity Themes
Metacity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
GnomeArt/Tutorials
IconThemes
GtkThemes
GdmThemes
MetacityThemes
GtkEngines
Welcome | Murrine
Individuelle Metacity-Themen für GNOME
Understanding Metacity themes
Themes Blog
UsefulLinks

Useful tools

After experimenting with some tools that claim to help develop themes, I found these the most helpful:

metacity-theme-viewer: this shows the window frames for all 6 window types
metacity-window-demo: a tool to investigate gtkrc settings. It helps to optimize GTK layout
gconftool-2 (actually gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/theme themename): sets and resets themes
GTK_RC_FILES=~/.themes/mytheme/gtk-2.0/gtkrc Gnomeapp: this starts the gnome application with the corresponding gtkrc file. Helps to optimize GTK settings for applications and widgets.
gtk-chtheme: a small utility to select themes and preview the GTK widgets. Currently I have not found a better tool.

These tools were useless:

gtk-demo: even though it documents some of the widgets, it is outdated
The Widget factory: acclaimed to be the tool of choice to present themes on art.gnome.org, this is nothing more than a showcase. Outdated
gtk-theme-switch2: while not completely useless, it seems outdated. Some of the widgets are not shown (like scroll bars and handles). Use gtk-chtheme instead.

My first attempt in creating a theme was by (OK, I did it as well) copying a theme and modifying it to my needs. Unfortunately some of the code fragments did not make sense, so I developed a theme from scratch. It's not finished yet, but it is a starting point.

I will publish it on SourceForge when I have tested it more thoroughly.

I also plan to write a compendium in how to write your own theme and publish it under Creative Commons. This will take some time, but I keep up to it.

Comments are welcome, hints appreciated.

Ext3 vs NTFS

2008-12-23T19:25:00.026Z

During my bi-anual hard disk cleanup, I had a choice to make. Every two years (or so), I upgrade my backup disks to larger capacity. This year, I got several 1 TB hard disks from Samsung (they are fast, quite, reliable, and keep cool).

As I have been using Ubuntu for more than a year without any major problems, I thought of using a native linux file system on my backup disks. What would I want to use NTFS for anyway?

I formatted the first disk to ext3. Next I copied a full 250 GB hard disk to the drive. The whole drive took 3 1/2 hours to copy. The disk was evenly populated with small, medium and large size files. When I was finished, I was quite surprised that a 250 GB NTFS disk (233 GB netto data) would require something like 360 GB disk capacity on an ext3 formatted drive (including an offset ot 14 GB disk overhead).

There are ways to format hard disks specifically to ones needs, reducing overhead and tayloring meta information to a minimum. But using the tools offered by the GUI, you have to make do with the defaults.

In a second round, I formatted the same disk to NTFS. Used space was 233 GB (which would not surprise anyone).

So, if disk space on ext3 is used more freely, is the file system faster?

I timed the copying, using an idle notebook. Here are the results:

FS MB/sec MB on Disk
ext3 15.2 346
NTFS windows formated 13.1 233,5
NTFS ntfs-3g formated 17.1 233.5

Besides the fact that formating a 1 TB disk for ext3 takes some time as opposed to NTFS which takes just seconds, the NTFS file format seems to provide higher transfer rates on Ubuntu while maintaining a smaller footprint on the disk.

Further tests showed a degrading performance when the disk (or directory) gets filled up. After having filled 3/4 of the disk, transfer rates lay at around 4.5 MB/sec.

Conclusio

I have not looked into this in a statistically valid way. File system layout, file size and other aspects have not been covered. From the point of disk space usage, it seems that NTFS is more efficient.

If you want to share your own observations, I look forward to reading from you.

Upgrading 8.04 Server -> 8.10

2008-12-21T09:54:00.005Z

Ubuntu 8.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release. This implies that automatic upgrades to later releases are supressed in favour of having a stable system.

If one wants to upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 (server edition) one has to edit the file

/etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

Search for the string:

Prompt=lts

and change it to:

Prompt=normal

(as described in the comments of the file). Now you should be able to run the upgrade utility:

sudo do-release-upgrade

This will start the upgrade process.

If you have followed previous hints on upgrade in this blog, you might have the upgrade-manager-core utility installed on your system (which includes do-release-upgrade). If not, you have to install it with sudo apt-get --install.

Upgrade takes approximately 20 mins on my server and requires a reboot to finalize the installation process.

Theme Considerations

2008-11-20T21:23:00.003Z

Here are my preferences:

I like my desktop to be bright and stimulating. I love a certain kind of blueish gray (or grayish blue as you like). The RGBs are #6B73A9.

I also like the aluminium decoration of the mac. It's clear, its clean and it does not distract from the task at hand. So probably brushed metal look will be nice.

I am not one to have a wild wallpaper desktop image. I prefer calm and quite abstract patterns. I get a kick out of mathematically motivated images.

Lets translate this into requirements:

Windows are white or very light gray
Borders are medium gray
Menus and tool bars are same medium gray
No separation lines between window title, menu bar and tool bars
Windows in the background are darker than windows in the front
Selections are my favorite gray-blue
Information windows, tool tips and hints are a faint yellow
Text is dark gray, not black (black is to hard on the eye)
Window corners are rounded
Tabs and panels should look like they are extruded a bit
Firefox and Thunderbird have corresponding themes
Icons are more photo realistic (however, harddrives do not have to look like the naked bare metal)
Prefer XML definition to images (slower loading)

I know that not everyone shares my taste. I think that there should be two themes, one bright and one dark.

I also consider positioning the window buttons (max, min, close) on the top left side. This minimizes the way, you have to move the mouse.

Creating a theme for Ubuntu

2008-11-20T20:16:00.014Z

Let's face it: Linux themes are pretty ugly. Ubuntu's default theme beats most of them. The brown and orange might remind Mark Shuttleworth of his origins. I will spare you the details of what it reminds ME of.

Tangerine, ClearLooks and all the other prepacked themes are no better.

Ubuntu 8.10 comes with a new theme: DarkRoom. It makes one increasingly sucidal.

I've tried some stock themes from art.gnome.org and gnome-looks.org. The results are sobering (On the right is the most appealing window decoration I found so far. It's called Almond and was last updated in 2006).

I envy Mac users for their simple, visually appealing and intuitive interface. It seems that neither Microsoft nor the whole Linux community can come up with something that can compare to Apples GUI.

Is it really so hard? To find out will create my own theme.

... the Austrian Ubuntu Theme (AUT) ...

Here is my plan:

Read into the subject: I have to understand how Gnome uses Metacity and rendering engines to draw the GUI.
Define how the theme should look like
Modify an existing theme to learn how things interact
Create raw minimal theme: I have to figure out what is minimally required
Resolve extras (Panels, awn)
Learn how icons work
Create a customized set of icons
Make a .deb installer to install the theme on any machine
Test on several machines runing Ubuntu (8.04.1 LTS and 8.10) and possibly Debian
Write a HOW-TO that covers more than the bare Gnome tutorial
Start a SourceForge project

I will post here regularly. Your recommendations are welcome.

Updating to Ubuntu 8.10 (64bit)

2008-10-29T20:20:00.006Z

I recently described that upgrading to 8.10 beta was no pain at all. Today I upgraded my production notebook (as tomorrow will be the big day and I presume there will be no bandwidth available).

sudo update-manager -d

Here are some miscellaneous updates on my previous report:

VMware Workstation 6.5 offers a new dialog informing you that kernel drivers require updating. You can confirm and it does it automatically. (Hey, this is a feature I long waited for)
There is something with the new font in Mozilla. It is slightly slimmer (like Helvetica vs. Arial) and it gives a much nicer look on pages.
OpenOffice installation as described in my previous article works on 64bit equally well.

My thanks to Canonical (the Debian group, the Gnome fellows, the OpenOffice folks and all the others that participated). This edition of Ubuntu deserves to be called a desktop alternative.

Open Source tool to migrate Outlook calendar

2008-10-28T21:55:00.003Z

When I moved from Windows to Ubuntu, I faced one mayor hinderance: Outlook.

In particular, migrating calendar entries from Outlook was near impossible.

OL2003 lets one export one single calendar item to iCal format (and you have to use a trick to even get there).
OL2007 lets you export more than one entry at once, if the entries are less than 1000 and do not span more than a 10 year periode (earliest to latest entry).

The last limit is particularly nasty, as birthdays will not migrate and if you have more than 1000 entries (which I had), you have to partition the export (which means you have to switch to list view, which also shows canceled and updated calendar entries).

FreeMiCal

Cut a long story short, I wrote a little program, available on SourceForge that exports all calendar items at once, regardlessly.

FreeMiCal comes as a source zip-package or just the executables (for easy use). It is written in C# and requires nothing more than a Windows machine with Outlook 2003/2007 and .NET 2.0 installed.

FreeMiCal was downloaded over 11.000 times in the last year. It seems to do the job and helps obliviate Outlooks calendar lock-in.

OpenOffice 3.0 on Ubuntu 8.10

2008-10-28T21:29:00.009Z

OpenOffice 3.0 is not released with Ubuntu 8.10. I downloaded OOo300 (.deb) from the OpenOffice web site, unpacked them and tried to install it.

Using the update shell script did not work

Installing all .debs packages manually is possible but tedious. One also risks that aptitude or apt-get does not see the installation. Certainly, old packages are not removed. This page describes the procedure. Not recommended.

Using dpkg-scanpackages to create a Packages.gz is a possibility. However, this requires to install from a local drive which produces errors. Not nice, but works.

The Fast lane

The following procedings seems the fastes and most secure way to install OpenOffice 3.0 and maintaining the upgradability on the fly:

Launch Synaptic Package Manager
Select Settings/Repositories (this will start the Software Sources control panel)
Add the following line to the Third party software repositories:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main
Close the dialog and confirm that the list of repositories will be reloaded
Choose Mark All Upgrades
Apply changes.

This will upgrade your OpenOffice 2.4.1 to 3.0. It will also migrate your settings (some things are reset though, like the year offsetting digit replacement).

Warning!
I have tested this on Ubuntu 8.10 32bit and it works. On 8.04.1 64bit it seems that not all programs are available as packages (e.g. Draw and Impress are missing). I turns out, this is due to missing libraries.

VMware Workstation 6.5 on Ubuntu 8.10

2008-10-28T13:09:00.004Z

VMware Workstation 6.5 comes in 32bit and 64bit flavours. If you download, you can either get RPMs or installable files, that end in the extension .bundle. These are combined shell scripts with embedded binaries.

Installation works fine. First I had to chmod the file to be executable, then sudo ran it. Ths installation starts a graphical installer that does the rest. If you have Eclipse installed, you can accept the path to the debugger. Other than that, no excitement.

The installer copies both VMware Workstation 6.5 as well as VMware Player 2.5 onto the machine. It recognises and takes over the old settings (both network and VM favorites). Also the software recognises fingerprint readers as well as bluetooth devices.

The installation still requires vmware-config.pl if you change kernel modules.

Unity

A new feature in VMware Workstation 6.5 is Unity. It allows guest applications to run in parallel with native host applications.

In practice this means, I can run Visual Studio side by side to my native OpenOffice or Geany IDE.

If nothing else, this feature is the reason to upgrade.

Other than that, there are background snapshots, background operation, enhanced settings on VMs, etc.

Making films in GCompris

2008-10-11T17:47:00.005+01:00

I wanted to make a film in GCompris recently. GCompris is an educational suite for children.

There is an animation program in the suite and I wanted to integrate my own characters (the set included is limited). There is a directory with a Readme file which says: All custom images in here.

Well: I can put custom images into this directory. The software stores animation sequences into this directory as well. So far so good.

Unfortunately, I cannot add my own characters to the application or my film for that.

I'm still looking for a way to add my own characters to the film. Keep you posted (appreciate hints all the same).

PS: Tyler has an important hint on how to do this. I think it's worth for everyone to read his comment. Tyler, thanks.

Lost notification icons

2008-10-10T21:45:00.003+01:00

Sometimes I loose my notification area. This is where programs like Firestarter or Network manager put their icons to inform you about some system state.

Here is how I get them back (this is mainly a reminder as it always takes me some hours to refigure out the procedure):

In the area where you want to see the notification ...+ Add to panel...
scroll down to Notification area
click Add...

should do the trick.

Easy system backup tool

2008-10-04T19:34:00.003+01:00

Before upgrading 8.04 to 8.10 I did a full backup of my harddisk. There are several tools around but I found CloneZilla to be well suited and easy to use.

CloneZilla comes in two flavours:

LiveCD (for on the fly backups)
SE (Server Edition for workgroup or corporate backup)

There is another source that offers an added feature:

CloneZilla - SystemRescueCD - SuperGrub

This is a compound bootable CD that offers both CloneZilla and SysResCD in one package. The latest version can be downloaded here. Additionally to CloneZilla this CD offers a system recovery CD and a tool that allows to repair the grub boot loader.

Upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 (32bit)

2008-10-04T18:56:00.007+01:00

I upgraded to 8.10 b1 today.

sudo update-manager -d

My first impression is positive. The system upgraded fine on my HP nx8220. Some visuals irritate me though:

Menus now have two broad lines indicating a submenu (I liked the black triangles)
Some icons come directly from the gnome desktop (The quit icon is a running man in green, while the original was this ring with a vertical bar on red ackground)
There are two ways to exit a session. One allows to switch users, the other adds shutdown and hibernate to the menu.

Some apps were dropped to maintain compatibility to Debian:

I used AVscan as a frontend to clamAV. This was dropped. I replaced it with ClamTK (which has a nicer GTK+ GUI). It's ok.

I had a tool that allowed to adjust the display (external monitors, frequency, and resolution). displayconfig-gtk was dropped (after being introduced in 8.04). The Preference panel "Screen Resolution" offers the functionality as well as lets the display be controlled from the panel. This is nice.

What else needs mention?

Netbeans comes in V6.1 (nice and fast. Core modules update from the Netbeans website)
MonoDevelop is V1.0 (disappointing, as V2.0 a1 is out)
Geany is 0.14 (offers improvements under the hood, I keep it as a fast IDE)
Network Manager 0.7 offers a clear and clean interface for managing network connections (there will be thorough testing this on my side)
There is OpenJDK with Webstart on the machine

I did not find much of a change with Gnome 2.24. Tabs in Nautilus are OK but nothing spectacular. I didn't find the promised improvements on PAM so far.

VMware Server 2.0 changes some things

2008-09-30T20:38:00.003+01:00

VMware Server 2.0 is out and installing it changes some things.

First, installing over a running VMware Server 1.0.7 did not work. The installation routine complained about a running instance of the server:

vmrun stop /path/to/vm/file.vmx

solves the issue. I installed over the previous version (the installation routine deinstalled 1.0.7 for me).

No problems installing, however, the installation routine asked for a http port and suggested port 80. Port 80 is taken by apache and the installation routine acknowledges this. I also run MUI (the web frontend for 1.0.x) on port 8333. This does not work either.

One can choose any free port (as there will be a Tomcat server be installed).

VMware Server 2.0 comes with its web interface integrated (as mentioned, Tomcat). There is a browser based console window that installed without any problems.

VMware Server Console for the client provides an error:

Unable to connect to the remote host: 501 Global command GLOBAL server-vmdb to non-host agent targets not supported.

I did not find a version of the linux client that works with 2.0 yet. However, it's not neccessary either. The built in browser console does the job nicely.

Upgrade VMware Tools in virtual machines

I strongly recommend updating the VMware Tools in Windows VMs. Much to my surprise, the visual performance and speed increased significantly. Also I could adjust my screen resolution to fit the size of my monitor.

VMware Server 2.0 offers another nice feature that I missed previously: Administration of user rights via the graphical interface (remember, you had to set file access rights to allow for different user rights in the VMware Server).

After installation of VMware Server 2.0 I deinstalled the MUI on the server and the client console on my client machines. I don't need them.

Dovecot terminates unexpectedly

2008-08-31T10:04:00.007+01:00

Recently my dovecot IMAP server died regularly. In my log files I found the following message:

...
dovecot: 2008-08-31 09:12:50 Fatal: Time just moved backwards by 11 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards
...

The wiki describes the cause - the clock of my server is not in sync - but does not offer much of help. Usage of ntp is suggested.

Openntpd syncs the system clock but does not slow it down (effectively causing the same problem). ntp offers to slow down the clock with side effects to database and CMS.

Examination of the logfile reveals that webmin runs a time sync just before dovecots unnatural death. OK, here's the cause.

...
Aug 31 09:13:01 myserver /USR/SBIN/CRON[12345]: (root) CMD (/etc/webmin/time/sync.pl)
dovecot: 2008-08-31 09:12:50 Fatal: Time just moved backwards by 11 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards
...

Restarting dovecot right after the time sync will solve the problem. You can do that from the webmin user interface:

System/Scheduled Cron Job/Create a new scheduled cron job

enter

/etc/init.d/dovecot restart

select time right after /etc/webmin/time/sync.pl
and you are done.

Updating VMWare Server, MUI and Console

2008-06-15T16:37:00.006+01:00

Updating VMware Server 1.0.5 to 1.0.6 works fine. However, installing VMware MUI afterwards breaks with VMware MUI 1.0.6.

VMware Server must be installed on this machine for the VMware Management Interface to work

Installation aborts.

In order to fix this I had to remove the library libgcc_s.so.1 in /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1:

mv libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1_orig

Installation of MUI worked fine afterwards.

In order to start the management interface during the next reboot one has to add a few lines at the beginning of /etc/init.d/httpd.vmware:

RUNDIR="/var/run/vmware/httpd"
OWNER="www-data"
GROUP="www-data"

/usr/bin/test -d "$RUNDIR" || \
/bin/mkdir -p "$RUNDIR" && /bin/chown "$OWNER:$GROUP" "$RUNDIR"

Now, the management interface survives a reboot.

This workaround fixed the installation problem of the server console on the workstation as well.

Linux week in Vienna

2008-05-17T19:48:00.008+01:00

May 15th to 17th, the Austrian chamber of commerce held their annual Linux weeks in Vienna.

Besides giving interested visitors the opportunity for hands on experiencing Linux, topics focused on

Beginners and Switchers
Linux in an educational environment
Business and Government

I held a presentation together with my daughter covering our experience with (Ubuntu-) Linux and educational software. I did the theoretical part, while Paula gave a hands on demonstration of

Tux4kids (TuxPaint, TuxType, TuxMath)
GCompris

Here are some pictures of the event.

Overall, the Linux week was a great success.

Interesting Ubuntu blog

2008-05-08T21:40:00.005+01:00

Searching the web for solutions to my problems I ran into this interesting blog.

I also would like to refer you to a blog that is maintained by a co-member of Ubuntu-Austria, Martin Lettner.

May the force be with you.

April 30th = Independence Day

2008-05-08T21:35:00.003+01:00

On April 30th, 2008 I celebrated Independence Day.

I had switched my last application from Windows to Linux.

Free at last.

Distribution Upgrade 7.10 -> 8.04

2008-04-28T22:09:00.009+01:00

As with the upgrade from 7.04 to 7.10:

sudo do-distribution-upgrade
keep the configuration files
accept deletion of outdated files
reboot

For a complete list of prerequisites visit my old article here.

There is an error in Webmin 1.410. It shows Apache2 server as being stopped. This is not the case as one can verify with ps afx | grep apache2. I will post a fix as soon as I found one.

Configuring VMware Server

In Kernel 2.6.23, a change was introduced that breaks vmware-server (a complete explanation can be found here):

Another solution is to get the vmware-any-any-patch116.tar.gz. I unpacked the tar and copied vmmon.tar and vmnet.tar into /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source.

vmware-config.pl configured the server (ignore the warnings, the server starts fine), and ran vmware-config-mui.pl.

Server is now up and running.

UMTS Modem in Ubuntu 8.04

2008-04-27T09:38:00.004+01:00

Dial up internet connections are easy to set up, one might think. I wanted to connect to my ISP using a PCMCIA UMTS card. Searching the internet I found three different approaches:

use wvdial to set up a ppp connection
use gnome-ppp to set up a ppp connection
use a specific software (like umtsmon or vodaphone-mobile-link)that installs all required drivers

I run Ubuntu 64 on my notebook, so vodaphone does not work. There is an ancient x64 .deb package that refuses to install. The tar files don't compile due to missing twisted python modules. and finally (after installing twisted) it refused to start.

I found a much simpler solution: Gnomes network-manager.

network-manager allows you to configure 1 dial up connection. It requires some tweaking of a configuration file in order to reap the maximum speed from your modem but other than this, it is an easy solution without any bells and whistles.

Configuration of network manager

Left click your network icon in the top right of your Gnome panel. Select "Manual configuration..."
Unlock the dialog
Select "Point to Point connection" and edit its "Properties" (this brings up a 3-tabbed dialog)
On the General-Tab tag "Enable this connection" and adjust the connection type, access point name and account data.
Change connection type to "serial modem" to enter the phone number. Change back to GPRS/UMTS. The phone number gets stored in the configuration file
On the Modem-Tab type the modem port. In my case I hat to overwrite what was offered by the dialog ("/dev/ttyUSB0"). I found this information in the gnome-device-manager.
The Options-Tab allows to set the modem to provide the default route (which is helpful on the road) and to accept the DNS servers from your provider. I did not select "Retry if the ..." reconnect option here, but rather in the configuration file (as this sets it to retry permanently)
OK and close the configuration dialog and you are done.

Insert the card, left click the network icon in the panel. You can "Dial Up Connections>/Connect to ppp0 via Modem...". It takes a few seconds, then the connect is made.

There is not much of an indication as the line being up. On my modem, the LED is on permanently. Network-manager does not change its icon to reflect connection status.

Configuration myths and files

There are lots of rumors out. Here is what I found out:

wvdial and other command line tools use /etc/wvdial.conf to configure dialup connection.
gnome-ppp and network manager use ~/.wvdial.conf (in your home directory)

Both files use similar syntax but Gnome does not read /etc/wvdial.conf or setup configuration in /etc/ppp...

Here is my .wvdial.conf:

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
ISDN = off
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800
Init = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = at+cgdcont=1,"IP","mynetwork"
Init4 =
Init5 =
Init6 =
Init7 =
Init8 =
Init9 =
Phone = telefonnumber_from_provider
Phone1 =
Phone2 =
Phone3 =
Phone4 =
Dial Prefix =
Dial Attempts = 1
Dial Command = ATM1L1DT
Ask Password = off
Password = mypassword
Username = myusername@mynetwork.domain
Auto Reconnect = off
Abort on Busy = off
Carrier Check = on
Check Def Route = on
Abort on No Dialtone = on
Stupid Mode = off
Idle Seconds = 180
Auto DNS = on
;Minimize = off
;Dock = on
;Do NOT edit this file by hand!

Despite the last line, the file can be edited by hand. network-manager honors changes in the file. I changed Baud from 57600 to 460800. This provides significant increase in performance.

VMware 6.03 on Ubuntu 8.04 compile error

2008-04-27T09:17:00.003+01:00

After upgrading Ubuntu to 8.04, I ran into an error reconfiguring VMware with vmware-config.pl:

include/asm/bitops_32.h:9:2: error: #error only can be included directly, and vmmon-only compile failes

I found a helpful blog describing 10 easy steps to fix the problem. Here is the list of steps (security issues corrected)

cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
cp vmmon.tar vmmon.tar.orig
sudo tar xvf vmmon.tar
cd vmmon-only/include/
sudo vi vcpuset.h
change line 74 from: #include “asm/bitops.h” to: #include “linux/bitops.h”
rm vmmon.tar
sudo tar cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only/
sudo rm -rf vmmon-only/
sudo vmware-config.pl

After this, I could start VMware. Robert, thank you.

VMware Server console in 8.04

2008-04-26T12:49:00.004+01:00

After upgrading Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 my VMware Server console would not start:

wolf@wb:~$ vmware-server-console
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libstdc++.so.6)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libcairo.so.2)
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_4.2.0' not found (required by /usr/lib32/libstdc++.so.6)

I found a helpful link here. The resolution would not work for me (as you can see in the error messages above. However, removing the library libgcc_s.so.1 did the trick.

root@wb:/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1# mv libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1_orig

Now the console works fine.

Drupal 5.2 on Ubuntu 7.10 with Postgresql backend

2008-03-30T21:31:00.004+01:00

Installing Drupal 5.2 on Ubuntu 7.10 with Postgresql requires several steps.

Install php_pgsql (the required files are not installed after selection of the database
Manually create a database user and a database:
createuser -D -A -P drupal5
createdb -O drupal5 drupal5
Using the automated setup scripts creates a database that is not owned by the drupal user. Later, the installation process will not be able to create the required tables. It seems that dbconfig-common has its trouble handling postgresql databases.
Install drupal using
apt-get install drupal5
Choose to set up the database manually. The dialog is likely to frighten you away, but you have already done everything necessary.
Change the ownership of the data files. The script changes /var/lib/drupal5 to www-data (with is what Apache needs to read files). However, the files are in /usr/lib/drupal5. As they are still owned by root -> Error messages.
chown -R www-data:www-data /usr/lib/drupal5
does the trick.
In /etc/postgresql/8.x/main/pg_hba.conf add a line:
host drupal5 drupal5 127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 password
allows drupal to access the local database.
Restart Apache and Postgresql
In a browser query the server:
http://server/drupal5
You should see the Drupal logon screen.
Create an administrative user

As easy as this list of actions sounds and as clear it seem now what one has to do, it was hard to figure out from all the error messages where the problem lay.

There is a helpful link in the Ubuntu forum. It helped me understand what was going on durign the installation process.

Error in OpenOffice DicOOo wizard

2008-03-30T17:53:00.005+01:00

The dictionary installation wizard of OpenOffice 2.3 is not working correctly. You can start it, start DicOOo macro and download language specific dictionaries, thesauruses and hyphenation module. However, after launching OpenOffice again, spellchecking is still missing.

What's wrong?

Apt-get installs OpenOffice with a set of language packs. If one wants to install more language packs, OpenOffice offers a wizard to install them. I need some extra language packs for my work:

de_AT
de_DE
fr_FR

There are two officially announced methods to install:

Use the wizard as root will install additional dictionaries into the /usr/lib/openoffice branch of the file system (I didn't try this, so I don't know whether it works)
Use the wizard as user to install into the local home directory (I tried this and it definately did not work)

If you use local installation, all files fo into ~/.openoffice/user/wordbook directory. All files get copied. A special file - dictionary.lst - contains a list of installed language packs. You can install spell checking, hyphenation and thesauruses seperately (or exclude them by editing dictionary.lst)

In Windows installations local dictionaries get installed into a directory ...dict/ooo in the local application tree. It turns out that OpenOffice looks in ~/.openoffice/user/dict/ooo for additional language packs.

A better solution

Installing something into a directory which is not maintained by the installation scripts of the distribution may backfire later. If you want to give a user a specific language pack, installing into ~/.openoffice/user/dict/ooo is the only working solution.

If you want to install language packs globally, there is a better solution: Install the myspell localized languages.
This will not only install spellchecking, hyphenation and thesaurus for OpenOffice but will provide the same functionality for Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

Preferable.

Adding Spamassassin to Postfix

2008-03-21T22:01:00.007Z

Adding spam protection to Postfix, I installed Spamassassin. The Postfix web documentation describes installing Amavis as this also provides virus protection. I kept it simple by just using Spamassassin as a post queue filter.

First install the package:

sudo apt-get install spamassassin spamc

(You will need the spamassassin client later).

By default, Spamassassin logs into syslog. So you do not need to modify /etc/spamassassin/local.cf. You do need to enable Spamassassin by enabling launching the spamd daemon. Modify /etc/default/spamassassin by setting:

ENABLED=1

This will do the trick.

Finally you need to modify /etc/postfix/master.cf. Edit the line:

smtp inet n - - - - smtpd

smtp inet n - - - - smtpd -o content_filter=spamassassin

and add:

spamassassin unix - n n - - pipe
user=nobody argv=/usr/bin/spamc -f -e
/usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -f ${sender} ${recipient}

to the end of the file (you have to indent line 2 and 3 in order to maintain the logic of filters). You also might find these lines in different forums. They suggest creating a new user account "spamd". I was reluctant to do this as it roadens the attack surface to the server. Starting Spamassassin with user nobody works perfectly fine.

Start Spamassassin and restart Postfix and there you are.

SD Card not working

2008-03-11T21:32:00.003Z

I remember my SD card working in 6.10. I never checked in 7.04 but as i tried to read one in 7.10 I found out that SD cards do not work on either HP notebook I have.

This seems to be a known issue. The build in Ricoh SD card reader does not work.

I found some very clever hints to work around this issue. They all seem to stem from one single source and suggest to adjust PCI settings.

One tried to load module for TI card reader (?) Excuse me. Well, I tried in vain.

Another tried to set the PCI slot to readable.

sudo setpci -s 03:01.2 0xCA=0x57
sudo setpci -s 03:01.1 0xCB=0x02
sudo setpci -s 03:01.1 0xCA=0x00

Well it did not run (i did change the slot to the correct number). Here is a script that finds the slot automatically:

#!/bin/bash
modprobe -r sdhci
setpci -s `lspci | grep "SD\/SDIO\/MMC\/MS\/MSPro" | awk '{print $1}'` 0xCA=0x57
setpci -s `lspci | grep "SD\/SDIO\/MMC\/MS\/MSPro" | awk '{print $1}'` 0xCB=0x02
# setpci -s `lspci | grep "SD\/SDIO\/MMC\/MS\/MSPro" | awk '{print $1}'` 0xCA=0x00
modprobe sdhci

This one does not work either.

Conclusion

It seems that there are some kiddies fiddling around with code they do not understand. Worse, they introduce regression errors and refuse to fix them. Continuing development like this will not build up a decent reputation for Ubuntu :-(

Installing Postfix SMTP server

2008-03-11T21:06:00.009Z

Actually I installed Postfix before installing Dovecot. However, it took some tweaking to get dovecot running.

By default, postfix installs inboxes into /var/mail in a flat file format. This disallows creation of folder structures in the INBOX. I also run several domains on one server. It is simple to tell postfix to accept any combination of username@domain_x. In operation, this will lead to combinations that are certainly not desirable.

To fix this, I had to set up some domains as virtual domains in /etc/postfix/main.cf:

virtual_alias_domains = my.domain
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual

I also want to allow for certain type errors. If someone does not know the correct email address, I consider it convenient to give some support. So I set up aliases in /etc/aliases like:

first.last@my.domain user
f.last@my.domain user
first_last@my.domain user
flast@my.domain user

This usually provides a reasonable catch for misspelled email addresses. The same procedure applies to mail aliases for the virtual domaines. However the translation table goes into /etc/postfix/virtual.

I used domain masquerading to conceal mail sent from client computers. They are sent with my main domain:

masquerade_domains = my.domain

Did I already mention I am aware about security? Well, I am. I adjusted which client is allowed to connect:

smptd_client_restriction = permit_mynetworks, reject_unknown_client, permit

smtpd_helo_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, reject_unknown_client, reject_invalid_hostname, reject_unknown_hostname, permit_naked_ip_address, reject_non_fqdn_hostname, permit

smtpd_sender_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, reject_unknown_client, reject_invalid_hostname, reject_unknown_hostname, permit_naked_ip_address, reject_non_fqdn_hostname, reject_unknown_sender_domain, reject_non_fqdn_sender, permit

smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, reject_unknown_client, reject_invalid_hostname, reject_unknown_hostname, permit_naked_ip_address, reject_non_fqdn_hostname, reject_unknown_sender_domain, reject_non_fqdn_sender, reject_non_fqdn_recipient, reject_unauth_destination, reject_unknown_recipient_domain, permit

These restrictions are set in order of Postfix processing. I kept all restrictions in each line in order to catch Windows client behaviour.

Finally, in order to allow dovecot to connect and manipulate my folder structure without limitations, I had to set the mailbox directory:

home_mailbox = Maildir/

I experimented here and it did work. But it never was right. Some mistakes were:

home_mailbox = ~/Maildir/ ... created a directory ~/~/Maildir/ that is hard to cd into.
home_mailbox = /home/%u/Maildir/ ... created a %u directory in /home. As all mailboxes are stored into this directory, this leads to collisions. Not so good.

I am happy with the current setting. A symlink from /var/mail/user to /home/user allows for easy administration.

Finally postfix works as intended, domains are separated correctly, users can store folders in their INBOX and dovecot connects beautifully ;-)

Installing Dovecot IMAP server

2008-03-06T22:08:00.010Z

It's time to replace my good old Exchange server with something more open source. Dovecot seemed a pretty stable and secure IMAP server.

Dovecot requires some tweaking. First, the logs are placed into syslog. If you don't like it (like myself) you have to change the location of the logfile. In the configuration file /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf enter (or change if set):

log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log

This will produce a log file that grows in size without any restriction. I didn't like this so I added a script that rotates the log files on a daily basis:

# dovecot SIGUSR1: Re-opens the log files.
/var/log/dovecot*.log {
missingok
notifempty
delaycompress
compress
sharedscripts
postrotate
/bin/kill -USR1 `cat /var/run/dovecot/master.pid
2>/dev/null` 2> /dev/null || true
endscript
}

Name this file /etc/logrotate.d/dovecot and place it into the correct directory.

I also changed the greeting string in /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf to:

login_greeting = *

as I do not want Dovecot to notify every weired spammer about who it is.

There is a caveat in dovecot. If your server adjusts the system time regularly and your system clock runs slightly faster than the NTP server, dovecot will terminate itself with an error message:

dovecot: 2008-03-06 23:59:54 Fatal: Time just moved backwards by 9 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards

As the wiki states, there is no easy way around this. I created a cron job to restart dovecot each day at 0:02. If the server terminated, the script will start the daemon. If the server is running, restarting it will not harm the system.

This is a dirty workaround. I shall have to get through to installing ntpd later.

The end of the Domain concept?

2008-02-17T10:04:00.001Z

Late 1999 I held a presentation about future developments in computer security. By then, there was an overwhelming hipe in firewall installations. During my speech I was asked about my personal opinion about how firewalls will develop in the future.

My response was quite surprising to the audience.

Firewalls and Virus protection are as protective as a perforated condom works for saver sex.

The audience was not happy. They came for support in their next major investment. Speakers before and after me were praising the techology as a panacea for any sorts of protection.

After my presentation a professor of the local university approached me. He congratuated me on the overall speach but commented, that I was completely wrong on my deduction that firewalls would be unnecessary devices in the future.

9 years after

The Dot.Com bubble was building up, Application Service Provisioning was on the verge, it was clear by then that most communication in the future would traverse through three ports only: HTTP/HTTPS and SMTP (well, there still are some more around).

If so, every communication channel would be redirected in the future to use one of these channel (it proved correct as we see large scale spam and web site attacks and only a few successful expliots).

9 years from now

Where's the point?

Systems cannot be protected at the perimeter any more. Protection schemes have to be introduced into every software service and application. With the increasing offerings of Web Services, boundaries between companies vanish (yet the title). Our carefully crafted computer domains will erode. As soon as they are consolidated (after mergers and company consolidations) they will be obsolete.

We have to use services and data across company boundaries. Small companies have to share information in order to withstand the pressure introduced by large multination enterprises.

If so, this raises the question of who has and who owns information (in the form of data).

DRM becomes DARM

What we see in the music industry is an absurde effort to protect rights. DRM, Digital Rights Management (or restriction of rights of the owner) is a technological approach to manifest control over the use of data.

DARM, Data Access Rigths Management (sorry, I did not come across any suitable term so far), will be the next development. What ACLs are to the operating system, DARM will be to information.

DARM will not only cover the rights to access information, but also timing information and environmental parameters that allow for viewing the content (similar to cascaded style sheets on steroids).

In this future, the concept of computer domains makes no sense.

Notebook users (especially those using Microsoft Windows) have trouble traversing domains. Trusts on the domain level have to be set up or the user will not be able to access any peripherals or services provided by the local domain.

With the concept of Service Oriented Architecture carried on, the IT of the company of the future will pretty much look like an encapsulated ISP. Services will be offered to anyone subscribing to it.

Questions about ownership of data and services have to answered.
Issues of multi cultural access and presentation have to be solved.
Problems relating to the timely validity will arise.
Censorship and circumvention of it will be on the agenda.

But I doubt that in 9 years from now we will see a logon dialog that offeres the domain as third parameter to authentication.

Installing Postgresql 8.2 on 7.10 server

2007-11-22T21:23:00.000Z

Installing Postgresql 8.2 was tricky. The database did not start automatically. The directory /etc/postgresql was not created by the installation scripts of the package.

In a previous version of this blog I complained that Ubuntu developers would ignore the problem.

Martin Pitt pointed out that the problem had something to do with my settings of locale. It turns out that the installation script checks very stringently for a correct setting of the locales. Otherwise it would simply terminate the installation process.

locales showed a correct list of locale settings.

Martin suggested to use the following command:

sudo locale-gen de_AT.UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8

On my test machine this changed nothing (obvious). Only when Martin explained why he insisted on the locales (setting the character set and collation sequence in tables) did I follow his advice and reset the locales.

Reinstallation postgresql 8.2 worked finally, the database started automatically.

Kudos to Martin Pitt for having the patience putting up with me. Martin, I am sorry.

To set up you database server you first need to:

edit postgresql.conf configuration file and set
listen_addresses = '*'
edit pg_hba.conf host based authentication configuration, add
hostssl all all 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 md5
to the end of the file to allow all clients to connect to the database
restart the database server with
/etc/init.d/postgresql-8.2 restart

I installed pgadmin3 on my notebook to access and successfully configure the database. I created a table using webmin for testing purposes.. Finally I tried to connect to my database using MonoDevelop and reconfigured the table to my requirements.

7.10 -> HP 8510w

2007-11-16T22:06:00.000Z

Installing 7.10 on a HP 8510w (T7700, 2.4 GHz, 120 GB SATA HD, 2 GB 600MHz RAM, nVidia FX560M) works fine.

To boot the 64bit Edition you need to adjust SATA Native mode = Disabled, in order to boot the LiveCD. After basic installation, I set SATA Native mode = Enabled.

Migrating settings onto the machine worked as described for the HP 8510p.

Copying Thunderbird settings worked fine (with the exception of Lightning, which requires a 64bit version). A special treatment require the additional phone books
Migrating keyrings is as simple as to copying the gnupg directory
Transfering Firefox settings worked by copying the user profile to the target machine

Some things I did not get to work yet:

SD cards are not recognized (they are in my old nx8220)
Sleep mode sometimes does not resume. The fans work their maximum, but the screen remains black. This happens every 5th or so sleep and you have to reboot the machine.

All other things work fine:

Screen resolution of 1900x1200 was recognized and the screen adjusted correctly
Touchpad and the little blue nub in the middle of the keyboard work fine
Even though the screen resolution is larger than that of the 8510p, over all the 8510w feels faster and snappier than the 8510p.

A note on the notebook itself: The keyboard feels slightly different to the 8510p I used before or the nx8220. I have to type harder or some letters get swallowed. Also the distance of the keys feel slightly different. I sometimes miss the "i" and get an "o" instead.
Other than that, its a pretty machine.

Installing Ubuntu 7.10 on a Sony Vaio Z600NE

2007-11-03T16:13:00.002Z

Haven't used my old Sony Vaio Z600NE for a while (Windows XP was prohibitively slow). The Sony Vaio Z600NE was shipped with Windows 98 in 2000. Sony does not support any OS after W98 on this machine, but W2K Windows XP worked fine.

The machine came with a CD ROM that plugs into the PCMCIA slot. USB 1.1 connectors don't support booting from USB devices.There is a 10 Mbit Ethernet connector on board.

Booting LiveCD

First I tried to boot the LiveCD. The machine hung without giving any indication about the cause. I tried several boot parameters and settings:

set keyboard to German / left default
set graphics resolution to 1024x768 / left VGA
set kernel parameters: noquiet, nosplash, irqpoll, irqfixup, acpi=off, pci=off, clocksetup=hpet, clocksetup=pit (in any combination)

LiveCD would not boot, after the graphical or textbased loading of the kernel image (vmlinuz) the screen blanked and installation halted (even tried a full night in case Linux required longer timeout periode).

Booting the Alternate CD

Booting the alternate CD worked fine (I tried several boot parameters first with same results as with the LiveCD: the CD would not boot). Alternate CD boots into a textbased installer.

I entered username, password, keyboard layout and location. From there the installation went without any interupts. Installation took pretty long (approx. 50 minutes), after detecting the hardware, a default set of software packages was copied and in a third round installed.

After installation, a reboot was required.

My Sony did not boot up. Turning the machine off completely did not change the situation.

Removing the CD ROM from the PCMCIA slot and rebooting finally worked. The machine shows the GRUB boot loader prompt. It prints ACPI capabilities on the console. Then the splash screen shows up and with one hesitation it boots up quite fast.

Adding Netgear WG511T Wireless adapter

After the first reboot, software updates were available. In order to get higher bandwidth, I inserted a WG511T wireless adapter from Netgear. The adapter was recognized immediately and configured correctly. I had to enter key information and then could access my network at 108 Mbits/sec.

Software update after this was fast and reliable.

Performance

As a general office machine, the Z600NE is sufficient. Accessing the internet or reading E-Mails work fine. Even blogging this article works fine.

However, I tried to install TuxKart und Planet Pinguin Racer. Both programs crawl along so I deinstalled them. Other than this, I am happy having revived a long lasting companion.

Final steps

Sometimes the Z600 refuses to reboot. Kernel boot options were set to quiet splash. After changing this in /boot/grub/menu.lst to

quiet nosplash noapic clocksource=acpi_pm

the machine rebooted reliably.

I'm not reading mags

2007-10-31T21:32:00.001Z

I stopped reading magazines years ago for several reasons:

they distract from the issue
their net ratio of information transferred is bad
cost per page of information is beyond acceptable ranges

Let me elaborate on this.

Magazines usually cover just one or two subjects that interest you or that are helpful to your current situation. The rest is either unsolicited input or, worse still, advertisement. I don't need advertisement. Who wants to learn about the n-th version of a charting package that can be embedded into your source code or the umpteenth version management with pink color coding of source files ending with the letter x. Take away cover, index, imprint, the info per pages ratio lies somewhere around 3%.

Even if an article covers an issue right in your focus, usually the issue is large enough to be broken into several articles. Publishers do not want articles to extend two pages and they want to sell the next issue as well. So, the article consists of 30% intro and repitition, 60% information and 10% links to supportive web pages, half of them not online otherwise you would have found them in previous web searches. So the info per space ratio lies around 60%.

Your average magazine costs about € 10,- for around 60 pages. This makes 17 cent / page.

Compared to a book with 1.000 pages (e.g. O'Reilly JavaScript Reference, € 46,99) the price of a magazine is about 3,5 times as high.

All that said, I found a magazine and an aspiring magazine that are worth reading:

dotnetpro is a magazine that concentrates on .NET software development. Much to my surprise it also covers Mono (in those much-hated multi-issued never-ending article-threads). On average, I can read 4 to 8 articles in it that interest me and the quality of code is more than acceptable.

pythonmagazine is an effort to get a Python developer magazine up and running. Issue 1 can be downloaded in PDF and offers an interesting blend of Python issues.

I am not going to change my mind: I read books, no magazines.

But I will keep an eye on the two.

Upgrading 7.04 server -> 7.10

2007-10-29T19:08:00.000Z

I upgraded my server from 7.04 to 7.10. It went through straightforward.

Prerequisites

package update_manager_core

If you have not installed it, you can do so:

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

Installation

Start upgrade with:

sudo do-release-upgrade

I did this over a ssh session. The installation process warns you that you might loose connection during the upgrade and gives you the option to open a secondary ssh session on port 9004.

ssh server -D serverip:9005 -l username

will do the trick.

My upgrade went smoothly. Connection did not fail and after about 30 minutes I had 7.10 installed.

Post installation procedures

VMware Server did not start automatically. I had to install the linux headers manually. The upgrade deleted the old ones without adding new headers. This was due to my installing the server 1.0.4 provided by the vmware.com site, so this is no error in the package upgrade mechanism.

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

Then recompiling all modules:

/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

and

/usr/bin/vmware-config-mui.pl

There is an error in the way, the installation procedure sets up access rights to the /var/run/vmware/ directory. httpd.vmware cannot create a httpd directory to store temporary data. I added the following lines to /etc/init.d/httpd.vmware (after the ### END INIT BLIOCK):

RUNDIR="/var/run/vmware/httpd"
OWNER="www-data"
GROUP="www-data"

/usr/bin/test -d "$RUNDIR" || \
/bin/mkdir -p "$RUNDIR" && /bin/chown "$OWNER:$GROUP" "$RUNDIR"

This changes the ownership to www-data, the processes user and group ID. Now one can start the httpd.vmware process that handles the web administrative interface.

Enabling compiz on ATI Mobility Radeon X600

2007-10-23T20:32:00.000+01:00

I enjoyed compiz on my ATI graphics card during 7.10 beta. Then xserver-xorg-video.ati got updated and screen effects stopped working.

Many complaints and errors filed but no update to activate the feature.

To fix this, I opened /usr/bin/compiz (a wrapper script to start compiz) and edited the cards blacklist.

In my case I searched for my card using

$ lspci -nn | grep ATI

This gave me 1002:3150 as the card ID.

Delete this string from the blacklist (T).

Activating compiz, now works.

11 most useful console tools

2007-10-21T13:15:00.000+01:00

Here are the most essential command line tools:

> filename
Redirect output of commands into a text file, so that you can attach it to emails.

$ uname -a > mypc.log

man command
This gives a brief online description of the command. man always requires a parameter.

$ man uname

sudo command
Run a command with full access rights. You will be asked to enter your password again. The command then executes.

$ sudo chown root:root /etc/init.d/networking

Attention: You turn off Ubuntu's protection features, so double check what you enter!

uname
Provides general system information. Usually called like:

$ uname -a

less filename
If you need to view configuration- or logfiles, less allows you to view them on the console. less always requires a parameter.

$ less /etc/X11/xorg.conf

tail (-f) filename
To view just the most recent part of logfiles, tail shows the last 10 lines of the file. The parameter -f will show new lines as they come in.

$ tail -f /var/log/syslog

lspci
Lists all devices attached to the PCI bus. You can analyze hardware problems with this.

$ lspci

lsusb
If you have trouble with USB devices, this lists all attached USB ports.

$ lsusb

lsmod
Lists kernel modules and their dependencies. You may want to find out, if kernel modules are loaded at all and which modules depend on others.

$ lsmod

dmesg
To read what was printed on the boot screen, this command preserves the messages even when you are in X-Windows.

$ dmesg

sysctl kernel.parameter
If you ever need to display or set any kernel parameter, you can use this.

$ sysctl kernel.hostname

To start a console window, from the main menu select Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. At the prompt ($) you can enter your command. The output will be shown in the same window.

8 steps into Ubuntu

2007-10-20T11:43:00.000+01:00

You are new to Ubuntu? Here are 8 steps to remember in order to enjoy working with it.

1. Ubuntu is not Windows

If you come from a Microsoft Windows environment, you might expect everything to work the same.

Drop this expectation!

If you don't, you will always compare Windows with Ubuntu and will not benefit from the differences between the two.

2. Different GUI

The first and most obvious difference is the Graphical User Interface, the way information is displayed on the screen and the way how you can interact with the machine.

With Ubuntu you can choose your favourite Edition:

Ubuntu (easy to use Gnome based user interface)
Kubuntu (highly customizable KDE user interface)
Xubuntu (optimized for old and slow machines)
Gobuntu (no restricted software included)

To get the most out of Ubuntu, start experimenting. Things follow a certain logic that is concise and clear.

3. Different CDs

Ubuntu comes in different packages:

LiveCD (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu) lets you start Ubuntu from CD, play and experiment with it or install a standard set of applications on your PC
AlternateCD is for installing special hardware or configuration requirements
Server CD is required to install out-of-the-box server systems

If you are new to Ubuntu, you should be fine with the LiveCD. You can download any of the above from here.

4. You cannot destroy anything

Ubuntu protects essential parts of the computer system from being changed in a way that the system stops working. Every change that is considered critical is cross checked and authorized by you by entering your password again.

Ubuntu cleans up after all changes so there are no left overs from previous changes.

You may loose some personal adjustments but the system generally protects you from altering the system inoperable.

5. One CD covers all

Ubuntu comes with everything on board.

Email -> Use Thunderbird (my favorite) or Evolution
Internet -> Firefox
Office productivity -> OpenOffice is a complete suite of applications that allow you to write documents, calculate spread sheets, present slide shows, access databases and some things more
Entertainment -> Sound Juicer, Media Player, RythmBox, Serpentine CD Creator and others come out of the box

There are more applications in the software repository that comes with Ubuntu. You can install, test and deinstall any of them without the risk of degraded performance or instability of your system.

6. Under the hood

Every 6 month a new version will be released. You can upgrade to these new versions automatically and at no extra cost. You choose the time and authorize individual updates at your own leisure.

Security issues are fixed and shipped to you during these periods. To update your system you can choose between fully automated or individually authorized procedures. There is no hidden updating of system components.

You get what you ask for. Nothing less, nothing more.

7. Yes, there is a console window

Most things can be done from the graphical user interface. Some actions are more efficient or only possible using a special command window: the Console.

Don't panic. You will use the console only on rare occasions where you want to query your machine about specific details usually required to fix problems.

See my blog entry about the most useful commands.

8. Help where help is due

There are zillions of books on Windows available. There are only a few books on Ubuntu out.

Information is conveyed over the Internet.

A good starting point would be Ubuntu's homepage
Special search engines cover Ubuntu topics
There are User groups around the world. (If you happen to be Austrian, here is a good choice)
You can get professional support from Canonical or RSB at a reasonable fee.

Good luck!

Chess does not show 3D board

2007-10-20T11:22:00.001+01:00

In Gnome, when you switch Chess (glchess) into 3D mode, you get an error dialog:

Unable to enable 3D mode
Your system does not have the required software to enable 3D mode. Please contact your system administrator and ask them to install the OpenGL Python bindings and the GtkGLExt Python bindings.
You are still able to play chess in 2D without these packages.

[Close]

In order to activate 3D you need to install the following packages:

python-gtkglext1
libgtkglext1
python-opengl
python-setuptools (not required in 8.04)

I had trouble getting 3D to work on an ATI X2600 graphics card. With the nVidia card, everything works fine.

VMWare Workstation & Server console

2007-10-15T19:13:00.000+01:00

VMware Workstation prerequisites:

You need the linux headers installed
also install build-essential package (this has the C compiler and make utility required for the vmware modules)

Installing VMware Workstation is straight forward:

Download the installation package from VMwares webpage.
Unpack the zip-file in a directory
sudo ./vmware-install.pl and answer the questions about directory location
confirm that you want to run the vmware-configure.pl script as well
add bridged, NATed and host network adapters. I chose the ones suggested

You will get a working installation with icons available under Applications -> System Tools. Start the Workstation and enter a license. Viola, you are ready to go.

There is also a VMware Player installed which is free of charge and does not require a license.

If you run into trouble the most likely causes are that you do not have the latest VMware build. On several occasions I found that there was a newer build on the web. Incidences included:

Could not compile vmnet and vmmon utilities (I tried the vmware_any_any_update113 patch and it worked partly but not on every machine, so I could not recommend it)
Installation routine finds wrong network adapter. This is the case when you work with a notebook connected to you LAN via wireless adapter. The scripts suggests eth0 as the default bridge. This is no good if you use eth1 or wlan0 to connect to you LAN.
Wrong set of kernel module drivers. I tried to install the kernel module drivers that come with Ubuntu. They never worked for me.

To fix problems, run sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl and recompile the kernel modules. You can keep the network settings by skipping network discovery.

VMware Server console:

Same prerequisites as with VMware Workstation.
Decompress the vmware_server_linux_client archive. Take the vmware_server_console archive and decompress it in a directory
in the vmware-server-console-distrib run sudo ./vmware-install.pl
again answer the questions. You can change the port the client communicates with the server. But this has to be done on the server as well. I recommend you don't change this.
The installation script asks whether you want to run the configuration, which you want to do.

After the installation, you are left without any menu entry. I manually added a lauch icon under Applications -> System Tools and chose the icon that comes in the /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/share/pixmaps directory.

Most likely errors are:

Your server does not run the console service (default on port 902)
You haven't installed the prerequired components
You do not run the latest vmware build (in 7.10 only 1.0.4 build 56528 worked on my machines)

To fix problems, run sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config-server-console.pl and recompile the kernel modules if required.

During the latest updates I got a vmware kernel components from the Ubuntu repository. They prevent you having to recompile kernel modules after each kernel update.

Screen resolution on HP 8510p is wrong

2007-10-14T15:59:00.000+01:00

I run Gnome 2.20 desktop on the machine. Ubuntu 7.10 recognized a screen resolution of 1400x1050. This produces a blured image (as the native resolution is 1680x1050).

Here is what my xorg.conf says:

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc ATI Default Card"
Driver "vesa"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "ATI Technologies Inc ATI Default Card"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1680x1050"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Under System -> Administration -> Screens and Graphics -> Screen I have selected:

LCD Panel 1680x1050 (wide screen)
Resolution = 1400x1050 (cannot be changed), 60Hz
Default Screen selected

On the Graphics tab:

Graphics Card VESA driver (generic)
Video memory = automatic

Under System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution:

Resolution = 1400x1050
Refresh Rate = 60Hz
Rotation = (disabled) Normal
Make default for this computer only = not selected

Steps to fix the screen resolution

Changing xorg.conf I tried several hint offered on the internet:
a. changed the graphics driver to "ati" in xorg.conf Section "Device". Restarting the X-server provides an obscured logon screen (horizontal sync does not work)
b. added
Screen 0
Option "MergedFB" "off"
to the Section "Device". Still the same effect.
c. added
Vendorname "Generic LCD Display"
Modelname "LCD Panel 1680x1050"
Horizsync 31.5-65.5
Vertrefresh 56.0 - 65.0
modeline "1680x1050@60" 147.14 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087 -hsync +vsync
and removed
Option "DPMS"
to and from Section "Monitor". Still the same pattern after restarting gmd.
Then I tried setting the screen resolution in Gnome:
a. from the recovery dialog at the start of Gnome I set 1680x1050. Gnome starts with 1400x1050 resolution.
b. tried several other ways but no resolution other than 1400x1050 and a vesa driver.
Tried to install xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd package. I could not find the correct driver in the control panel and the driver was not selected during startup of the X server.

Installed ATI proprietory drivers

Next I took ATI proprietory drivers. I followed the installation instructions:

Download the driver from the web site
chmod o+x to make the driver file executable
ran the file as sudo user
answered the following dialogs by selecting a default installation
The final dialog informs you that you have to run aticonfig --initial to create a suitable xorg.conf configuration file and reboot the machine

If you do not follow the procedure exactly as described you still run into the situation described above. If you reboot (hey, are we back to Windows) you are welcome with the correct screen resolution.

OK, now it works

Having a suitable screen resolution of 1680x1050 I tried to enable desktop appearance enhancements (compiz). As described in the Readme of the ATI installer, compiz is not supported.

Further, the graphical performance of the driver leaves a lot to be asked for. I have never seen anything that sluggish. I'm left with the choice of having a screen with a readable resolution where I do not even want to move windows or have a decently fast GUI with an unreadable resolution.

The driver prohibits the machine from entering sleep mode (suspend to RAM). The machine stays in a semi-suspended state, consuming full power but with a blank display. To wake up the machine you have to force reboot it, as the driver never wakes up again.

Conclusion

If you have the choice of not getting an ATI card, then do so. NVidia seems the far better choice. It works out of the box and has support for visual enhancements

7.04 -> Server

2007-10-14T10:56:00.000+01:00

My Server is an assembly made up of individual components that had a high price/performance ration at the time of purchase. You can always get cheaper or better equipment if you wait but eventually you have to start. This is what I started with.

Installing the hardware

Right after the first boot we ran into several issues:

CPU frequency would only operate at 2,2 GHz
Memory access was half the frequency than what was advertised

Installed BIOS update that I downloaded from the EliteGroup website. This solved the issue of CPU speed. The documentation of the motherboard mentioned nothing about specific banks that you should install memory in, it turned out though that leaving a gap between two memory banks would provide the desired improvement in access time.

Intalling Ubuntu 7.04

Booting with the LiveCD did not work. Sometimes the CD would boot and perform as expected, but this was not reproducible.

At first, after the initial loading dialog, the screen blanked. This could be resolved by selecting a display resolution using F4.
Next, the boot process would continue providing the well known splash screen. After a short period the boot process terminated and dropped out into a recovery console (a special ash).
Quick research on the kernel hompage did not help.
I found an online copy of O'Reillys Kernel in the Nutshell. Two parameters -irqpoll and (the more resource saving) -irqfixup solved the problem of hangups during the boot process

Currently I boot the machine with -irqfixup as this performs significantly faster than -irqpoll (which polls all IRQs and rebuilds an IRQ table inside the kernel, irqfixup does this on the fly where needed).

LiveCD installation worked fine from there on.

As this was intended to be a server, a Gnome front end was not required. LiveCD does not allow to install the logical volume manager LVM or RAID functionality. So I reinstalled from the Alternate 64 bit CD.

Installing from the Alternative CD

With -irqfixup in place, installation went without interuption. Some issues that required consideration:

The LVM2 requires you to define physical volumes, volume groups and logical volumes. While the installation is straightforward it helped me to read through the RedHat LVM webpages to gain a better understanding and build confidence in the software (I later ran into problems that I cover in a separate blog entry). Another source of information is the LVM HowTos. Other than those two pages other web pages were mostly junk.
Ubuntus native webbased administration tool was too limiting. Only a few services were supported. I installed webmin instead. Webmin comes as a Debian package and a clear concise installation script. It supports a full range of services (including a nice LVM administration).

After the basic installation I added servers as required:

File services, I installed Samba. Configuration was straight forward. Adjusting security required a bit of fiddling as the modifications recommended on the Ubuntu wiki page were simply not correct. I followed the original Samba documentation and got usable results.
Print service, I installed a HP 4500DN on the server. The printer driver that comes with the Alternative CD is different from the one that comes installed from the LiveCD. It allows for duplex printing, 3 Trays and even PCL works fine. I copied the PDD file to all workstations and get better results and faster print times.
DHCP server installed fine. Defining scopes was straightforward, help from the ICS homepage was available and useful.
DNS server required some tweaking. I use the DNS server internally and also service several domains externally. Not so straight forward was the adjustment to allow dynamic DNS updates only internally. I will cover this in a separate blog entry.
OpenSSH requires not separate configuration
VMWare Server and web administration will be covered in a separate blog entry.

The server runs stable. LVM survived some tweaking and several power outages. Just as expected.

7.10 -> HP 8510p

2007-10-14T10:33:00.000+01:00

Started to install 7.10 Tribe 5 on my HP 8510p from a downloaded LiveCD.

Bootup worked to the selection screen
Default installation dropped out into BusyBox, an ash recovery console
Tried with kernel parameters -irqpoll and -irqfixup (both were successful on my server). No success
Tried kernel parameter -noquiet -nosplash. This showed that the harddisk would not be recognised. 8510p has a 120GB SATA which worked in native mode (BIOS setting)
Changed BIOS SATA to Disable native mode -> 7.10 booted ok from LiveCD
Installed on the local harddisk. Boot worked fine
Changed SATA setting in the BIOS to enable native mode, booted fine still

As 7.10 rc came out that very evening, I did a complete reinstall (as there was not much customizing done yet).

7.10 rc did not hickup with SATA native mode enabled. Installed without any flaws. I ran the customizing from there.

Migrating Thunderbird nx8220 -> 8510p

2007-10-13T19:41:00.001+01:00

I use Thunderbird as my Mail and Calendar client. Main reason for this is that Thunderbird has an excellent spam filter built in. My current settings are:

Thunderbird 2.0.0.6
Additional address books
IMAP and POP connections
Extended German dictionary
Dictionary switcher 1.1.2
Enigmail 0.95.3
Lightning 0.5 (2MB version that supports calendar publishing)
QuoteColors 0.2.8
QuoteCollapse 0.7
Signature Switch 1.5.4

Target machine is the HP 8510p. Here are the results:

Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 works fine.
I had trouble maintaining the date format (US format shown, EU format required).
I installed language-pack-de.
In .profile I added a line to export LC_TIME=de_AT.utf8. This did the trick
Addressbooks had to be exported on the source machine and re-imported on the target machine. Only the default address book (abook.map can be copied)
Extended German dictionary went in ok.
Dictionary switcher 1.1.2 works fine. Due to installed language pack I see all English and all German settings. This can be awkward but works
Enigmail 0.95.0 was installed from the repository (originally I installed a separate xpi). Adding the keys for communication required me to copy the folder .gnupg onto the target machine.
Lightning 0.5 could not be installed (32 bit version). Even the 64 bit version crashes the system. Installing Ubuntu package lightning-extension 0.5-0ubuntu4 works. Copied storage.db to get all calendar setting and data.
QuoteColors 0.2.8 works fine
QuoteCollapse 0.7 works fine
Signature Switch 1.4.2 upgraded to 1.5.4 without problem. Added the signatures which I kept in separate files.

Errors I ran into:

I tried to shortcut porting my settings by copying the profile folder. This did not work for several reasons:

Some files contain absolute path description
The extension folder contained the old 32 bit version of Lightning
Thunderbird crashed unexpectedly and none reproducable

I resorted to install a plain vanilla Thunderbird and add extensions and settings iteratively. There is a detailed description of porting profiles in the Mozilla knowledge base. It helped migrating address books, key rings and other account settings.

Installing Lightning from the Mozilla download site resulted in reproducible crashes. Installing from the Ubuntu repository solved the issue.

How I test

2007-10-13T10:48:00.000+01:00

I am not an expert in Ubuntu. So all I can do is

try to identify incidences
isolate the possible cause (by comparing 3 different machines, documenting changes)
check for solutions on the web
register bug (if it is one) with Launchpad

If possible, I provide additional documentation, logfiles and surrounding information.

My mayor target of testing lies in business application. I do not care much about fancy stuff. If it works, ok, if it does not, so what.

This site concentrates on Ubuntu Linux

7.04 -> 7.10 on nx8220

2007-10-13T10:36:00.000+01:00

I upgraded from 7.04 to 7.10 (Tribe 5) by simply downloading the CD and inserting.

Update started no request and went without flaws.

With 7.10 installed, the compiz desktop effects worked out of the box (until an update to xorg 7.2-5ubuntu3. Since then the nice desktop effects are gone again (Launchpad 144077)

All in all the machine is stable. I update regularly and things work pretty stable.

Some known issues:

Thunderbird does NOT honor gnome-vfs. They say it should but it does not (Launchpad 105088)
Having usplash enabled (kernel parameter splash) the machine hangs after a resume from suspend to RAM (Launchpad 106198, 146489)
After resume from suspend, sound does not work (Launchpad 146491)

Other than that there are some minor glitches that do not hinder efficient work

Wolfs configration

2007-10-13T10:05:00.000+01:00

Here is my testbed environment:

HP nx8220 notebook (my workhorse):
Pentium M 760, 2GHz, 1GB RAM, 100 GB IDE HD, ATI mobile Radeon 600 (64MB), wireless network
Ubuntu 7.10 rc 32bit

HP 510 notebook (my spouses workhorse):
Pentium M 770, 2,16 GHz, 1GB RAM, 60 GB IDE HD, Intel 945 graphics card
Ubuntu 7.04 32bit

HP 8510p notebook (my future workhorse if it survives my testing)
Intel T7700 2,4GHz Dual Core 2, 2GB RAM, 120 GB SATA HD, ATI Radeon X2600 (256MB)
Ubuntu 7.10 rc 64bit

Server
EliteGroup P956T-A (V1.08), Intel E6600 2,6GHz Dual Core 2, 2GB RAM PC5400 CL4, 1 TB SATA HD, Gigabyte GV RX155256D-RH Radeon X1550 PCI express fanless, Antec P180 case

First steps in Python

2007-05-14T12:24:00.001+01:00

In my blog Python demystified I reflected on some thoughts about computer programming and the language in particular.

Ever since then I was aware and interested in this language. Remember I said:

Without any decent IDE (like Netbeans for Java) that allows for graphical programming and UI-design, I strongly doubt that Python will ever gain momentum.

Well, I found a decent IDE: ActiveState Komodo IDE.

Except for GUI it has everything, a decent IDE needs: Syntax highlighting, code completion and code folding, integration into version control (subversion), debugging and profiling.

So just as I was to change my attitude and general opinion on Python the snakes ugly head rose from the depth of my notebooks core:

(Briefly): Python allows for object oriented programming. Objects can be created and instanciated. When going out of scope they are subjected to the garbage collector for destruction. So far so good.

I tried on example program from a popular python book - it worked.

I tried to extend the program (for better understanding) - it crashed.

Well, it terminated with an exception.

Further investigation revealed:
Python stores class definition and object instances in a globally accessible list. When program flow exits the current scope, all objects within scope are subjected to garbage collection according to this global list (and in the exact order of appearance within it).

So there is the possibility that an instance "wol" may be destructed before the class definition "Person". Changing the object name to "wolf" brings it after the "Person" identifier in the globals list and thus there is an object still in memory and valid, where the class definition is destroyed. Any following destructor of the objects instance cannot be called. The code is not there any more.

Is it just me that I find these things on my first day with the language?

Other than that I am fascinated by this elegant and slim language. Worth a try.

Krieg der offenen Dateiformate

2007-04-26T16:40:00.001+01:00

ODF vs. OpenXML

In seinem Blog [1] behauptet Brian Jones, Office Program Manager bei Microsoft, dass der Krieg der offenen Dateiformate beendet sei. Grund sei die Freigabe einer speziellen Version von OpenOffice durch Novell, welche Daten in Microsofts neuem Fileformat OpenXML lesen und schreiben kann. Tatsächlich handelt es sich nur um einen eigenständigen Konverter [2], der OpenOffice Writer Dokumente in Word 2007 Dokumente umwandelt. Ist der Krieg der offenen Dateiformate tatsächlich beendet?

Bisher speicherte Anwendungssoftware ihre Daten als ein Abbild des Hauptspeichers auf Festplatten. Dieser Vorgang ist schnell und effizient, langwierige Übersetzungen der Datenstrukturen unterbleiben. Er ist aber auch fehleranfällig. Speicherabbilder enthalten Querverweise und Verkettungen. Ein fehlerhafter Wert beim Datentransfer führt zu unbrauchbaren Gesamtergebnissen.

Im Lauf der Jahre wurden die internen Datenstrukturen immer komplizierter. Anfänglich bestanden Dokumente nur aus Zeichenketten. Später kamen Textformatierungen, Schriftarten, eingelagerte Bilder und Tabellen hinzu. Mit steigender Komplexität stieg der Platzbedarf auf Datenträgern und die Dauer, welche die Software zum Einlesen und Abspeichern benötigt. Mit jeder neuen Version entstanden Unverträglichkeiten mit den Daten der Vorgängerversionen. Die Datenübernahme anderer Hersteller wurde durch fehlende oder ungenügende Dokumentation der Dateiformate behindert. Besonders der Marktführer Microsoft verteidigte seine Position vehement, sowohl durch laufende Änderung der Dateiformate, als auch durch Verbot von Rückübersetzungen. So entwickelten Alternativanbieter Import- und Exportfilter welche rudimentären Dokumentenaustausch ermöglichen. Um das ursprüngliche Erscheinungsbild wiederherzustellen sind jedoch aufwendige manuelle Nacharbeiten notwendig.

Wozu neue Dateiformate?

Längerfristig entstanden Probleme beim Zugriff, bei der Lesbarkeit, Nutzbarkeit und Vergleichbarkeit von Dokumenten. Besonders im Bereich öffentlicher Verwaltungen besteht Bedarf, auf alte und historische Dokumente uneingeschränkt zugreifen zu können. Über Jahrhunderte wurde Papier als Informationsspeicher erfolgreich genutzt. Ein Ersatz durch elektronische Datenverarbeitung kann nur dann erfolgen, wenn die Nachhaltigkeit, Vertraulichkeit, Sicherheit und Datenintegrität gewährleistet werden kann.

Mit herkömmlichen Dateiformaten sind derartige Anforderungen nicht abzudecken. Parallel zum wachsenden Bedarf aus dem öffentlichen Sektor wuchs der Kostendruck in Unternehmen, hervorgerufen durch Unverträglichkeiten bei den Dateiformaten und daraus resultierender Ineffizienz der Arbeitsabläufe.

Langzeittauglichkeit gefordert

Führende Softwarefirmen entwickelten im Rahmen des OASIS Konsortiums [3] einen offenen Dokumentenstandard, der die gravierendsten Probleme wie Langfristigkeit, Lesbarkeit und Fehlerresistenz lösen soll. Das Open Document Format (ODF) [4] versprach ein Ende bisheriger Inkompatibilitäten zwischen Dateiformaten, sowohl versions- als auch herstellerübergreifend. Mit über 700 Seiten ist der Standard umfassend und für zukünftige Erweiterungen offen.

Öffentliche Verwaltungen und Institutionen erkannten das Potential des neuen Standards. Neben einigen Bundesstaaten der USA definierten vor allem Länder aus Südamerika und Europa sowie einige asiatische Länder ODF als verbindlichen Dokumentenstandard im Parteienverkehr und der internen Abläufe. Spätestens mit der Ankündigung des Department of Defence (DoD) im Jahr 2003, verstärkt Open Source Software und offene Dokumentenstandards zu nutzen, reagierte Microsoft auf diese Entwicklungen.

Nicht nur Mittel zur Datenspeicherung

Microsoft verfügt über einen hohen Marktanteil im Bereich des Basisbetriebssystems, der Standard-Anwendungssoftware und auch bei den Dokumentenformaten. Insbesondere die Dokumentenformate helfen Microsoft, Updatezyklen bei der Standardsoftware und den Betriebssystemen massgeblich zu steuern. Unverträglichkeiten zwischen den Versionen führen mittelfristig dazu, dass Firmen über ihre Aussenkontakte zu einem Update gezwungen sind, wenn sie nicht den elektronischen Anschluss an ihre Partner verpassen wollen. Automatisierte Systemnachbesserungen erleichtern es Microsoft, diesen Zwang nach belieben zu verstärken. Eine nachhaltige Neuorientierung grosser Kunden wie dem DoD gefährdet die Marktposition von Microsoft in Ihren Grundfesten.

Diese Abkehr war nur durch die Bereitstellung offener Standards im Bereich der Dateiformate zu verhindern. ODF als Dateiformat kommt aus marktpolitischen Überlegungen für Microsoft nicht in Frage. So wurde 2005 im Rahmen der ECMA ein neuer Standard ausgearbeitet: ECMA-376 oder Office OpenXML [5,6] wurde am 7. Dezember 2006 trotz zahlreicher technischer Einsprüche [7] durchgesetzt. Dieser Standard umfasst derzeit mehr als 6.500 Seiten, zahlreiche XML Schemaspezifikationen und deckt die Office-Anwendungen Word, Excel, Powerpoint und Access ab [8,9].

(Ironie am Rande: In seiner Proposalpräsentation vor der ECMA [10] verweist Brian Jones auf ein Dokument der EU zum Thema Open Document Standards und Vorteile der Nutzung. Das Originaldokument [11] beschreibt allerdings diese Vorteile unter eindeutigem Bezug auf ODF)

Was können die neuen Formate ...

ODF und OpenXML sind technisch sehr ähnlich. Sie speichern verschiedene Bestandteile der Dokumente als XML Dateien in ZIP Archiv ab. ZIP ist ein anerkannter und weit verbreiteter Kompressionsalgorithmus. XML ist eine erweiterbare Beschreibungssprache für hierarchisch gliederbare Datenbestände. XML Dateien sind zwar grösser als binäre Dateiformate gleichen Inhalts, lassen sich aber aufgrund der hohen Informationsredundanz besser komprimieren. Die komprimierten Archive können schneller auf Datenträger geschrieben und von dort gelesen werden. Dateiinhalte werden nicht unmittelbar in den Arbeitsspeicher übernommen, sondern zuerst analysiert und in maschinenverwertbare Form umgewandelt. Die Dateiformate sind fehlerresistenter als Ihre Vorgänger. Beide Dateiformate können aufgrund ihrer offenen Struktur automatisiert nachbearbeitet werden.

ODF und OpenXML erlauben die Einbindung binärer Informationsfragmente sowie Script- und Makrosprachen. Das führt zu neuen Sicherheitsrisiken. Keines der beiden Formate bietet hinreichenden integrierten Schutz vor ungewollten Änderungen von Dateninhalten. Sie bieten genügend Angriffsfläche zum Einschleusen von Schadcode. Es bleibt den Anwendungsprogrammen überlassen, dies zu verhindern. Microsoft Office prüft anhand der Erweiterung des Dateinamens, ob der Aufruf von Makros erlaubt ist. Dieser Schutz ist allerdings leicht zu umgehen und suggeriert daher eine nicht vorhandene Sicherheit.

Beide Formate gewährleisten den längerfristigen Zugriff auf Daten. In der Darstellung hängen Sie - wie ihre traditionellen Vorgänger - von zahlreichen externen Faktoren ab. Das optisch gleiche Erscheinungsbild kann mit den aktuellen Standards nicht garantiert werden.

... und wo unterscheiden sie sich?

ODF Dateien sind kleiner als ihr OpenXML Pendant. ODF speichert Inhalte gemeinsam mit der Formatierung. OpenXML trennt konsequent Text von der Formatierung. Das ist technisch sauberer und führt erstaunlicherweise nicht zu längeren Ladezeiten. Microsoft behält sich die Option vor, grössere Dateien auch in einem proprietären Format einzubinden, um eventuelle Engpässe in der Performance zu umgehen. Hier sind Inkompatibilitäten vorprogrammiert.

OpenXML greift nicht auf bestehende Standards zurück. Unter anderem wurden neue Standards für Grafiken, Texten, Tabellen, mathematischen Formel, Länder- und Farbcodes definiert. Damit wurde die Spezifikation aufgebläht. In der Umsetzung erhöht das die Fehleranfälligkeit von Anwendungssoftware und Formatkonvertern. ODF setzt in allen Bereichen auf etablierte Standards wie SVG, XML, mathML und standardisierte ISO-Codes.

Wie frei ist „Frei“?

ODF und OpenXML sind lizensierbare Standards, deren Nutzung unentgeltlich ist. ODF kann im Rahmen der Lizenzen durch Dritte ergänzt werden. Das Open Document White Paper verweist auf 9 Referenzimplementation [12]. Zu einigen davon ist der Quellcode verfügbar. Dem gegenüber verweist Microsoft nur auf eine Referenzimplementation, Office 2007, welche nicht quelloffen ist.

Ein Gutachten bestätigt ODF patentrechtliche Unbedenklichkeit. Sun, Hauptzulieferer zum ODF-Standard, hat einen ergänzenden Forderungsverzicht abgegeben. Der Ausstieg einzelner Mitglieder aus dem OASIS Konsortium ist klar geregelt, sodass in Zukunft Ansprüche von Altmitgliedern nicht zu erwarten sind. Eventuell zukünftig auftauchende Forderungen aus Patentrechten werden nicht vollständig ausgeschlossen. OASIS bestätigt dieses marginale Restrisiko, sieht aber selbst keinen Lösungsansatz.

Microsoft stellt die Nutzung von OpenXML jedermann frei. Microsoft verweist auf seine Patente im OpenXML Standard, gibt allerdings auch einen schriftlichen Klagsverzicht auf seiner Website ab. Dieser erschöpft sich auf die im Standard berührten Technologien und Patente. Patente, die von der ordnungsgemässen Umsetzung der OpenXML-Spezifikation in Anwendungssoftware berührt werden, sowie eventuelle Patente von Drittherstellern sind von dieser Freistellung nicht betroffen. Insbesondere bei der Einbindung in Anwendungssoftware sehen Rechtsexperten ein nicht unbeträchtliches Rechtsrisiko welches Microsoft nicht entkräftet.

Sowohl ODF als auch OpenXML sind derzeit sowohl frei zugänglich, frei nutzbar, frei von Kosten sowie frei von patentrechtlichen Einschränkungen. ODF ist für Softwareentwickler leichter zugänglich. Der überschaubare Umfang der Spezifikationen erlaubt wirtschaftliches Einarbeiten in das Thema. OpenXML mit über 6.500 Seiten und zahlreichen Schematas drängt sich dagegen dem Interessenten nicht unmittelbar auf.

Attraktiv für den öffentlichen Bereich

Öffentliche Verwaltungen und Regierungen fordern die Nutzung offener Dateiformate aus zwei Hauptgründen:
1. soll die langfristige Nutzbarkeit auch auf unterschiedlichsten EDV-Systemen gewährleistet sein. Diese Forderung wird hauptsächlich in Ämtern und Behörden gestellt.
2. soll die starke Abhängigkeit von Softwareanbietern reduziert und - wenn möglich - lokales Know-how genutzt werden. Diese Forderung stellen vornehmlich Regierungen.

Hier hat ODF einen deutlichen Vorsprung. Das Format existiert bereits seit längerer Zeit, ist einige Male implementiert und in quelloffener Form zugänglich. Der Standard wird sowohl von einigen grossen Softwareherstellern als auch von einer umfangreichen Entwicklergemeinschaft unterstützt. ODF hat noch einige Einschränkungen, die den Einsatz im öffentlichen Bereich behindern. Die langfristige Erweiterbarkeit ist noch nicht nachgewiesen. OpenXML kann auf keine substantiellen Vorteile verweisen, welche einen Einsatz zwingend notwendig machen würden. Allerdings besitzt Microsoft eine breite installierte Basis, auf die das Unternehmen starken Einfluss über seine automatisierten Updates ausüben kann.

Öffentliche Stellen können bis zu einer endgültigen Lösung der offenen Probleme die ersten Schritte in Richtung Automatisierung gehen. Notwendige Ergänzungen lassen sich in weiteren Phasen der Umsetzung nachziehen.

Attraktiv für Unternehmen?

Unternehmen agieren in kurzfristigeren Innovationszyklen. Nur ein geringer Teil der betriebsnotwendigen Informationen haben langfristige Relevanz (Verträge, Finanzinformationen) und müssen entsprechend archiviert und gewartet werden. Der Rest der Arbeitsdokumente hat eine geringe Halbwertszeit.

Eine grundsätzliche Entscheidung bezüglich eines Dateiformates ist nur dann möglich, wenn die Entscheidung bezüglich alternativer Anwendungssoftware zur Disposition steht. Das Erstellen von ODF Dateien mit Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access) ist heute nicht möglich und zukünftig nicht absehbar. Umgekehrt ist das Erstellen von OpenXML Dateien aus alternativer Anwendungssoftware derzeit nur eingeschränkt möglich. Da Microsofts Anwendungsprogramme in Unternehmen besonders stark verbreitet sind, ist der Einsatz von OpenXML zumindest dort vorhersehbar.

Bekannte Migrationsprojekte, wie jenes der Stadt München oder der Lufthansa, sind weitgehend von strategischen, politischen oder ideellen Motiven geleitet. Wirtschaftliche Vorteile bei der Betrachtung der Gesamtkosten sind marginal oder nicht vorhanden. Wer sich letztlich durchsetzen wird - öffentliche Verwaltungen und Regierungen die ODF bevorzugen oder Unternehmen die Microsoft mit OpenXML nutzen - ist derzeit nicht prognostizierbar.

Der Krieg der offenen Dateiformate ist demnach noch nicht beendet. Wir erleben bestenfalls eine kurzfristigen Waffenstillstand.

Bibliographie:
[1] Blog Brian Jones
[2] Novell OpenXML Translator
[3] OASIS Gründungsmitglieder
[4] Open Document for Office Applications
[5] ECMA-376 - Office OpenXML
[6] Office OpenXML Fact Sheet
[7] Objections to JTC-1 Fast-Track Processing of the Ecma 376 Specification v. 0.1, 27.1.2007
[8] ECMA-376 OpenXML White Paper
[9] Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File Formats
[10] Start of TC45: Presentation to GA
[11] TAC approval on conclusions and recommendations on open document formats
[12] Open by Design, ODF White Paper

Ubuntu vacation feelings

2007-04-23T11:36:00.001+01:00

After a long and discontinuous experience with Linux and particularly Ubuntu, I switched to Ubuntu over Easter.

All the good reviews

If you are interested in appraisal only reports, look somewhere else. I had so many errors, bugs and strange behaviours that I cannot fall into the choir of Ubuntu enthusiasts.

Ready for prime time - for some

If you use your computer just for E-Mail, web browsing and the occasional word processing, you will love Ubuntu.

If you watch a video every now and then, you will be excited to see that it can be painless.

but not for all

If, on the other hand, you want to use Ubuntu in a mixed environment with Windows clients and servers, prepare for some surprising incidences.

Gnome provides an interesting approach to file access: gnome-vfs (Gnome virtual file system). Its an easy to use API that allows applications to access remote and heterogeneous file systems. Just mount a volume, drive or directory and access it with any application. That's what it says on the box.

Reality quickly catches on: Only a few applications are aware of gnome-vfs and the mounted drives. Nautilus (the Explorer pendant under Gnome) can access files. OpenOffice supports gnome-vfs as well. Others don't. And they are not just any applications: Thunderbird and Firefox are among them.

Notebook misery

I run Ubuntu on several notebooks. The basic system will always work. If you want to use notebook specific features like touchpads, sleep mode or wireless LAN, prepare for nightly sessions of debugging and error discovery. If your notebook is equipped with exotic peripherals (anything other than a keyboard a screen and an external mouse will do), you will likely find it not working.

On a HP nx8220 the smart card reader is not recognized, the SD cards cannot be mounted and sleep mode will wake up with sound amiss.

My HP 510 has a built-in Synaptics mouse pad. This is recognized in my nx8220 but not in the HP510. To calm us down, sound works after wakeup.

Tiny little annoyances

As a professional developer I am not prepared to ship things that do not work. And it seems pretty clear that some things don't work. So, they should not having been shipped.

Video playback using the proprietary graphics drivers from ATI don't go well with video playback. OK, they are turned of by default. Also compiz is turned of by default, and that is good so as it conflicts with video playback as well.

There is no centralized tool to adjust regional settings. This has to be done in configuration files, logon scripts, gnome tools and sometimes within the application itself. Thunderbird for examples does not honour the system wide font setting. It also ignores regional time formats. You have to set these using environment variables.

Why do I use it?

So, if I am not happy, why did I bother migrating?

Well, I did not say, I was unhappy. There are things that really work well. Automatic update, upgrading to a new version, installation and deinstallation of software all are more stable and trustworthy than the monopolists counterpart.

There is no IE installing malware behind my back, no Office update that deletes some of my .NET framework DLLs and most of all, no DRM to tell me what I am allowed to do, see and view.

I have no need to defrag my harddisk or registry, no thrills using some low level maintenance tools. I do my work and thats ok.

If there are some issues or lack of functionality I can look under the hood and identify the problem myself. I can contribute to the evolution of a system and that contribution is valued (as opposed to Microsoft where reporting a bug will cost you money).

But most of all, I feel like a person that has left its privileged live behind. All the high-tech gadgets, the nitty-gritties, items and toys that seemed so important mean nothing. I stand here with my bare feet in the sand, watch sunrise (or sunset, whichever you prefer). I feel like I don't need all the chaos, hectic and stress.

I feel like I'm on vacation.

Finger weg from Eclipse

2007-03-27T14:10:00.001+01:00

We have this ongoing argument about not enough Java/Oracle programmers available. I took this to brush up on my Java know-how.

A friend suggested Eclipse to use as an IDE. So I listened and tried it.

Let me put it this way: I have not used such a bad piece of software in a while.

OK, it's free of charge but that's about all that speaks for it.

It's slow. Dead slow. A simple "Hello world" took 5 minutes to set up, 2 minutes to debug and more than a minute to launch from the IDE
It's complicated: To set up a project you need to go from Window to Window to set up projects, packages, classes, hierarchies and outlines
It's slow (did I mention that already?): The code completion takes for ages and even blocks text entry (System - hang - .out. - hang - println - hang ...)
It's confusing: Try to debug, does nothing. You have to select which type of project it should be (Can a Java class be debugged as C/C++?)
It's broken: I tried to update the IDE (I used 3.2). There were some updated modules. The update mechanism asked over and over which Download center I wanted to use (the automatic selection ended in a disaster). And after another 15 minutes of downloading, the IDE told me, I had not enough rights to install the update. Thanks for telling me so soon
It's cumbersome: Creating a SWT app is not straight forward. I gave up working on this one
It's slow (deja vu): You can add plug-ins easily (if you have root privilege, that is). With each plug-in, the IDE becomes slower and more unusable

Conclusion: If I have to write programs in Java, I use Netbeans (free of charge) or IntelliJ ($ 599,- incl. TeamCity).

Where does IT security head to

2007-03-23T14:55:00.000Z

I was asked to participate in a survey covering IT security. The survey was carried out by a university task group. The goal was to identify areas of security that companies were aware or unaware of.

I tried very hard to give this group meaningful data and information. However, I could not answer the questionaire past question number 13. The questions were irrelevant, ill-formulated, missleading and mostly of archaeological value.

Some examples?

x. How much will has your company spent on IT security in the last year?
(without ever asking the size, branch, turnover or revenue to put this number in relation with)

y. What IT risks are you aware of:
- Viruses
- Trojans
- Worms
- Adware
- Dialers
- Hardware errors
- User failure
- Theft

z. What IT risks do you prevent:
- (above list)

It did not start out that bad. The introduction claimed that due to increased penetration of IT in different businesses there was an expected increase in IT risks to be expected. The survey aimed to help identify areas of IT risks and security issues in these new fields of application.

Is this where university education goes? Triviality!

But the issue in itself is interesting enough to dig into.

I offered the group some thoughts about IT security. First I tried to identify areas of risk that require assessment:

System(ical) risk
Implementational and operational risk
Environmental risk
Human factors

Let me get into this a little more.

Systemical risk

Admittedly viruses, trojans and dialers are issues not to be ignored, but widely overemphasized.
Another, more severe issue are rootkits. Lacking medical and historical verbal assoziation, rootkits are anticipated something remote, arcane but hardly threatening me.

Rootkits may be introduced into a computer system using such seemingly harmless methods as playing a CD or watching a video. They lie dormant until activated by their creators. Using stealth technology they are invisible to ordinary administrative activities. They are universal in their functionality, offering a privileged environment inside the infected computer.

Virtualisation will add one layer of complexity and uncertainty to this scenario.

Extending system boundaries, the next vulnerable technology is naming services. DNS is a highly fragile system, relying on approximately 13 root servers. Adding one or taking one root server of the DNS net, has an immediate impact on 7,6% of the network load.

DNS offers some resilience like load balancing, database replication and local name caches, still a targeted combined denial of service and man in the middle attack could wreak havok in our IP based world. And this is just the top of the tree. At the bottom, vulnerabilities exist as well.

Another area pertaining to risk assessment is routing of information flow. At the basis data is forwarded from the sender to the recipient using a combination of interacting protocols. From ARP, UDP, TCP to RIP, OSPF and BGP (to name but a few) data is packed, transfered, destinations looked up, recipients verified and sequences honored. At a higher level even more protocols come into play when analyzing mail traffic, viewed web pages and exchange of authenticating credentials. Attacking on of those protocols renders the whole network useless.

And there are several attack points both known and widely unknown out in the wild.

Finally (and this is not really an exhaustive enumeration), the issue of identification and identity management will become an increasingly important issue in the future. As systems become externalized and users accessing these services in an ever mobile and volatile way, identity, authentication, authorization and non repudiation will move into the focus of future security assessments.

Another area of concern are

Implemental and operational issues

A quick query on CERT or SecurityFocus reveals that most current issues deal with programmatic problems. Buffer overflows, unrecognized error conditions and weak, template based programming are the root source of these issues. If time to market is driving engineering efforts no wonder we have such poor and instable software.

Next in this chain is the implementation of systems (combined hard- and software) by following standard How-Tos or simply clicking a few defaults. In order for a system to function in a variety of different setups, it is required to run with low security implemented. While this allows a quick start, it poses a vast array of vulnerabilities in a running environment.

Data and function exploiting techniques (like SQL-Injection), improper access to underlying data (reading native file systems), identity spoofing to name but a few. The number of imaginable attack vectors are uncountable.

A highly rated issue is data backup. Millions are spent on data backup. Hardly anything is invested into (bare metal) recovery. It takes initial effort (and thus is a one time cost) to set up a working backup strategy.

It takes permanent effort (and therefore a lasting and substantial cost factor) to test the quality and feasibilty of data recovery. And while a backup covers only a selected number of threat scenarios (more full recoveries or just file recovery), testing recovery issues has to deal with all possible cases. A change in an underlying system component may render the whole process useless.

Dealing with large data quantities and centralized storage (using NAS or SAN) increases the sensitivity of the subject.

Availablity of computing resources is another issue. While virtualization allows to use computing hardware efficiently, resilience to hard- and software failure are critical factors as the hosting components are single points of failure that may influence the quality of service and system integrity alike.

Environmental risk

Threat scenarios become wider ranging from fire to water to temperature. While the first two were always on the agenda of even the smallest operation, temperature becomes an issue in the workplace environment. As CPUs and graphics cards produce more and more heat, computer systems are ubiquitous, the heat emission will increase in the future.

I cannot go into every aspect of environmental risk here. Suffice to say that the branch of the company, the typical usage of IT systems, even legal issues and changing regulations are influencing environmental issues.

On arbitrary example might be a sales representative of a company doing business in Asia. Due to restricted information policy in some Asian countries (e.g. China, Burma) content stored on a computer hard disk might be seen as offense by the local authorities (carry a PDF covering the October revolution in China for a little adrenaline peak). Up to now, possession of computers in Burma is strongly prohibited, facing death penalty.

Another widely ignored factor is the dependency of just one single monopolist. Currently there is one major vendor dictating formats for data storage, communication, even software update cycles. This monopolist leverages each of its systems to gain more control and suffocate technological innovation that is incompatible (and therefore unwelcome) with its overall strategy.

The human factor

What can I say. Undereducated, ill trained, so called computer experts, time-to-marked driven decisions about system releases, cost based human resource policies. All of these are security issues.

Hiring a novice programmer might reduce labour cost in the programming department. It sure will increase labour cost in the help desk and call center. Does it make systems more reliable, more secure? No.

Does it make the CFO happy? Yes.

He can always point to the low wages.

Oursourcing? Let's ship our developement to India. Let's move our help desk to India. Let's move the accounting to India. Labour cost for these activities drops (for how long, may I ask). But the understanding of risk, the correct assessment of security issues still lies with the company.

More so, due to increased communication and repair efforts, cost will increase, effectively shifting expenses from production source to cost for communication and repair.

Conclusion

These are security issues I really see and anticipate for the future. In a few years there will still be some viruses, some adware and some hardware failures. But they will hardly be covered by the press.

We will see more incidents hitting one or the other areas that I described above. And the impact will hit more than one single computer or company. It will hit communities, areas and industry segments.

Customer Service

2007-03-07T23:18:00.000Z

I read this excellent article on customer service. While at my company I try to enforce good customer support, I never had my quality standards laid out in such an easy list of steps to follow.

Thanks to Joel Spolsky, here it is. Read, enjoy and act on it.

The future of video

2007-03-04T20:19:00.001Z

Currently, we are migrating our workstations from Windows to Linux. While the basic stuff works perfectly fine, we run into trouble when dealing with music and video.

Especially video.

Our video collection does not work under Linux.

While playing videos under Windows is not an easy feat, playing them under Linux provides insight into a lot of things. Unfortunately, videos are not among them.

Let's summarize:
Videos are stored in container files. To play them, codecs and decoders are required. Some, like MPEG2 and MPEG4 are straight forward, some, like DivX, XVid, H264 are embedded in AVI files.

Under Windows, you install codecs, the installer hooks them into the search path of any installed media player. OK, some honor these paths, some don't. Sometimes, helper applications like Explorer get confused and crash. But low and behold, it works pretty well.

Under Linux, you need graphics libraries, that have library plug-ins. If you ever tried to make ends meet with gstreamer, you know what I am talking about.

My suggestion

Here is a proposal of how video streams could be encoded in order to eliminate the codec problem and thus make video handling user friendly.

All video is encoded using an video and audio encoder. Mixtures are possible and exist.

A new file format could accommodate 2 parts: One, the decoder codec and two, the film itself. The codec would be extracted by a generic decoding engine and used to decrypt the film stream. The player would be a generic codec interpreter that allows for platform independent decoder plug-ins to be hooked in.

None of the above mentioned technologies is new. Platform independent plug-ins are reality in Mozilla driven XUL tools. Piggyback codecs can be attached to the video stream. Interpretation engines can both be Python and JavaScript.

This mechanism would even allow for commercial content, as the codecs may well be connected to payment systems.

I haven't given this a deeper thought. Maybe my tweaking with Linux will take me to deeper insights and eventually make me mad enough to write a prototype.

Python demystified?

2007-01-16T18:14:00.001Z

Four years ago I was asked to troubleshoot a project under tight schedule and budget. The team had committed itself to finish an ASP application within 2 years. When I was called, there were only 4 month to the deadline.

I agreed to manage the team under the condition that 2 out of 3 parts be substituted by standard OTS componenten (who needs to develop their own database or browser) and efforts being concentrated on the core functionality.

My proposal was rejected. The project team was confident that using Python programming language would give them an advantage to finish on time and budget.

Later I learned that the project failed and the company went out of business.

My argument then was that Python was not to be compared to C# or Java in efficiency. More so, no real libraries exist.

I was right about the potential of Python as a tool to finish in time.

However I was wrong about the true reason why Python has not gained momentum and probably will not in the future as Java and C# had.

Recent occupation with the subject led me to a different opinion.

1. C# is easy to use and convenient for writing software. However, C#'s strong typing requires programmers to define in advance what to do. Even with refactoring tools and support for generics changes in structure and data definition can cause headache.

Python (as JavaScript) offer weak typing. Objects can be of any type, programmers don't have to worry in advance what they have to handle. Python as opposed to JavaScript has a tight syntax an object declaration (var i, I know its var, so why do I have to state it?)
There are many more advantages to the Python language. Some of them are:

everything is an object,
strong string operations,
plethora of external modules,
integration into host operating systems,
integration with other programming languages,
etc. ...

These make Python a powerful programming tool.

Going from here, I would prefer Python to any language any day.

2. In the early days of Java, everyone wrote their own IDE. This was possible because Java offered AWT a platform independent graphics subsystem. That allowed for many programmers to adopt Java. C# is hosted in the Visual Studio IDE (with a free Express edition available). Even Mono has two prominent IDE's: MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop.

Python offers an outdated IDLE (basically a specialised shell with no charm), ERIC (a bloated QT based environment with an older version of python interpreter), PyDev, a slugish Eclipse plugin, and many more alpha and pre-alpha Editors.

Without any decent IDE (like Netbeans for Java) that allows for graphical programming and UI-design, I strongly doubt that Python will ever gain momentum.

3. There is plenty of introductory books about Java, C# or VB. There are some books around introducing Python. None of the books I reviewed showed how to set up a working python development environment. Maybe its the selection, maybe I am used to skipping chapters on how to get started with other languages. With Python I wasted hours installing, testing and deinstalling IDE's and development tools.

Without a cross platform native or Python based IDE I am pretty sure that Python will be something like Modula 2 in the 70s, ADA in the 80s and LiveScript in the 90s.

Looking back, finishing the project on time was absolutely impossible. Not because of missing power in the language but lack of a powerful IDE.

FS	MB/sec	MB on Disk
ext3	15.2	346
NTFS windows formated	13.1	233,5
NTFS ntfs-3g formated	17.1	233.5