Colin Charles Agenda

The very brave soul, was Aaron Bockover, from the Banshee media player fame (via the LugRadio Live USA 2008 weblog). There were a few interesting highlights from these gong-a-thong sessions…

Zumastor
Dan Kegel spoke about the Zumastor Linux Storage Project. Want snapshots and remote replication in your Linux filesystem? This one does just that. From the contributor list, it looks like its all Google engineers hacking on this… Yes, this is better than LVM. No, I haven’t tried it yet.

mod_ndb
J.D. Duncan spoke about mod_ndb. Here are my transcribed notes of the talk.

MySQL Cluster is a database designed to be fault tolerant, on cheap commodity hardware. Write SQL queries, and they access the data from the NDB nodes. A few deficiencies in web applications - 2 tier architecture (from PHP to MySQL), now it becomes a 3-tier architecture (PHP->MySQL->NDB). MySQL 5.0 also limited - no true VARCHARs, and entirely in memory. There are variable linked rows, VARCHARs support, and on disk support in 5.1.

Apache web server, link in mod_ndb in httpd.conf file, write something that looks like a SQL query, then you send a GET/DELETE/POST request to Apache (its a REST API). If its a GET, the data can come out of the database as JSON, XML, etc. From a browser, its as simple as an XMLHTTP request call.

Solomon Chang’s Irish Ballad
Folk at the MySQL Conference 2007 would remember active community member Solomon Chang. In fact, if you’ve read The MySQL 5.1 Cluster DBA Certification Guide, you’d also recognise the name.

Solomon went up on stage to entertain us with an Irish ballad. He used to be involved with an Irish woman, and has got the skills to mimic the accent really well, and make funny tunes. Solomon won a Neuros OSD for his efforts.

Technorati Tags: dan kegel, zumastor, mod_ndb, j.d. duncan, mysql cluster, apache, solomon chang

Miguel de Icaza from the Mono project, tells us more about Moonlight, and where the Mono project is headed, at LugRadio Live USA 2008.

- shows us about Silverlight 1.1 (Moonlight is the Mono equivalent)
- works a charm in Firefox, but there’s issues with the implementation in IE (something JavaScript related)
- Demos the chess application
- Microsoft will provide a Media Pack (they will incur the licensing costs for the media codecs) for all Moonlight users on Linux. Microsoft will also provide regression test suites, and complete specifications for implementation. Novell will deliver a 100% compatible Moonlight and will support it on all major Linux distributions (contractually, only the top 3 Linux distributions - no mention of what the top 3 are). This is the Microsoft/Novell agreement, as of last September 2007.
- The codecs come with a restriction - you can’t use it outside Moonlight. Its only for the in-browser experience. If you use Totem, you’ll need to make use of gstreamer, etc…
- The MSPL is better than the X11 license. Miguel would like to change the Mono license to the MSPL, but everyone that hates him now, will hate him more because of the “Microsoft” substring! Why is the MSPL better? It has a patent clause, so that the code you use there, if covered by a patent, you will not be sued, ever. That in a way, is similar to the Apache license.
- Self-contained applications - traditional GNU software is spread out, quite unlike Mac OS X applications where you drag an application into the Applications folder, and everything is contained in one directory. Mono has an application guideline, where everything is also in one directory.
- Like all good demos, something broke. Miguel starts debugging on stage, and fixes the problem, and the demo works!
- “Programmers have no taste for design”
- “I have a roadmap, but I don’t think anyone gives a fuck, so lets just go to questions”
- How long will it take to get mixed-mode assembly working? If you are Chris Toshok, it will take 2 weeks. If you’re not, definitely longer. He spoke to Dan Kegel from the WINE project :) Patches are being accepted… The aim is to allow WINE to run Windows applications on a fully open source stack

Technorati Tags: lugradio, lugradio live usa, miguel de icaza, mono, moonlight, microsoft, patents, media pack, licensing, codecs, mspl, wine

At the top of my head now, Linux is hitting the mainstream desktop market, in many variants:

1. Xandros, on the ever popular Asus EeePC’s
2. Foresight Linux, on the new Shuttle KPC’s (USD$199), which are basically small form-factor desktops
3. Fedora, a modified variant anyway, running on the OLPC’s
4. gOS, a variant of Ubuntu, running on the gPC’s
5. Maemo, via scratchbox, on the Nokia n-series handhelds (n770, n800, n810, and presumably more in the future)
6. Ubuntu shipping on some Dell laptops, in select regions

I’m sure I’ve missed out some really amazing devices. But that’s not the point. Do you see a problem with the above?

Xandros, gOS, Ubuntu and Maemo run DPKG, using APT/DEB’s for package management. Fedora, uses RPM. Foresight uses their own Conary based system. OK, lets scratch the package manager woes, now noting that they’re all different. Let’s focus on the desktop environment.

Xandros is some form of KDE, locked down on the Asus. Foresight presumably ships with GNOME by default, as do the Ubuntu on Dell machines. The OLPC ships with Sugar (granted, its market is specific). gOS ships with XFce. Maemo uses GTK, but is remarkably different from a regular GNOME desktop. So now we’ve got different desktop environments too.

Should I then go into package managers? Or down to the nitty gritty, where the init scripts are in a different location? Or that they all use a different method to connect to a wireless network?

So what am I getting at? Complexity.

Not only from a users perspective (say, I go out and buy an Asus Eee PC because its so cheap, and I find Linux sufficient for my needs. Then I need a desktop, so I find the Shuttle KPC which is cheap. However, at this point, the interfaces are completely different, and I’m lost.) but also from a support perspective (Windows XP, Vista is down? I’ll just call my pimply 14 year old niece/nephew to fix it. Linux is down? Problematic? What do I do?).

Some of you are saying, they should be turning to their LUGs if they needed help. Sure, but LUG mailing lists aren’t the most friendly. Newbies can be blatantly told to RTFM.

Let’s then visit their local LPI certified candidate, who’s running a support business. Oh wait, he’s only certified against RPM’s and is clueless with DEBs or Conary. You get the drift…

My beef with all of this, is that there is no standard. There is the GNOME Mobile & Embedded initiative - good. There is the Ubuntu Mobile team - great. What are their aims? To standardise on something for the mobile platform (presumably, like the Eee PCs, the Nokia n-series tablet devices, etc.). Will they achieve it, without hardware vendor buy-in? Probably not.

There lies a problem with mainstream consumer hardware running Linux. Linux is getting friendlier, but all the distribution variants only serve to complicate things, for the end user.

What do you think, the free and open source community can do, to address these issues?

(remember, I didn’t even get into varying versions of shipped software and the problems that can face… or how some devices will come without basic MP3 or DivX decoding support (Fedora has vaguely fixed this with codeina/CodecBuddy, but the others haven’t caught on)… the list can go on)

Technorati Tags: linux, consumer hardware, xandros, foresight linux, asus eeepc, shuttle kpc, fedora, olpc, gOS, gPC, maemo, Ubuntu, dell, package management, desktop environment, gnome, complexity, support, lug, lpi, standards

It has been a very long time since I looked at the LPI (training, courseware, materials, exams), and I don’t remember if this is even covered in LPI 101/102 (and I have no idea about Level 2 or 3, I’m only Level 1 compliant, and even then, back in the Red Hat 7.2 study days :P). Either way, I hope this note is useful. So, how do you check (or change) the speed of your Ethernet card?

Quite simply, with the help of ethtool. Some might be saying, why not mii-tool - well, its because mii-tool is now obsolete, though you pretty much have it on all your Linux distributions. Why? Because it comes as part of net-tools, which also provides other useful tools like netstat, route, ifconfig, arp and many more. If you don’t have ethtool installed, its available in a package, aptly titled, ethtool.

Usage is simple: ethtool eth0. Replacing eth0 with whatever your interface is, is fine. You should now be able to see the speed of your link, and if you were for instance changing it, you might do ethtool -s eth0 speed 10 duplex half or something similar (read the man page, its really helpful).

Me? I just wanted to see if I connected myself to a 100mbps switch or a 10mbps switch and was too lazy to look at the wiring closet ;)

Technorati Tags: lpi, net-tools, mii-tool, ethtool, ethernet, speed

With the upcoming elections, there have been some most interesting videos posted on Google Video and YouTube. The opposition is broadcasting on YouTube, sitting on social networks (Anwar and PKR, are on MySpace, Friendster, Facebook). The Internet is becoming more mainstream, for elections and politicians. What does this mean for the 2008 general elections? Definitely, not a 90%+ majority for the ruling Barisan Nasional, I do hope.

Anyway, on to working with video. Lets say, you have found an interesting video on Google Video, and feel that it is your sworn duty to share it with the poor who do not have access to the Internet. Google Video, on the right hand column, allows you to download it for the Video iPod/Sony PSP. Perfect.

What about interesting videos on YouTube? Naturally, you will use youtube-dl. Beware, this software changes often, as and when YouTube changes their protocol, so check back constantly if things stop working. Getting things in .FLV format, is kind of painful, which is why you’ll use ffmpeg to transform your video: ffmpeg -i foo.flv -y foo.avi.

Now, what about creating a VCD or DVD? Whats the easiest way? Hands down, you want DeVeDe. Its available in Fedora, apparently has got some bugs in Ubuntu (something about sound going wonky). Its dead easy to use. It works with Google Video MP4’s as well as AVI files you’ve converted from ffmpeg.

Let DeVeDe do its thing (which is creating a .cue and .bin file), and then, its time to write to a CD. To create a VCD? cdrdao write –device /dev/sr0 movie.cue. I understand, K3B has got all the gizmos to create this in GUI form, but that involves installing KDE libraries, and I’m sure I can use my disk space in a more efficient way. I found HOWTO Make a video (S)VCD a handy guide.

Wait… and you’ll soon have a CD that you can pop into a DVD/VCD player and enjoy viewing.

Technorati Tags: linux, dvd, vcd, devede, youtube-dl, google video, youtube, cdrdao

I bit the bullet, and picked up an Asus Eee PC today, while I failed at an attempt to get a rack. Its a 4GB model, with the webcam, and its on its 3rd run, i.e. I’ve got a model without a mini-PCIe connector. The slot is there, but the connector itself is missing - really, silly of them (can you actually save that much money, on a connector?). This batch arrived at OfficeWorks around 27/12/2007 from what I can tell (that’s whats written on the box), and its a 7C model (basically, the only model you get the mini-PCIe connector was the 7A one).

For what it’s worth, OfficeWorks and The Good Guys are price-matched for the Eee PC, while JB-HiFi comes next, with Myer holding the top retail price. Of course, all this is pending you actually getting to a store with stock of the item - I picked mine up from OfficeWorks, in Prahan (South Melbourne for instance, was out of stock).

Now, on to the machine.

Pros:

• You pop the battery in, and the boot-up process is near instantaneous, because its booting from a SSD.
• Standard applications ship with it: Pidgin for IM, Skype for
  video-chat, OpenOffice.org for all your office needs, Acrobat Reader
  for PDFs (why not just evince?) and a whole bunch more.
• The trackpad works perfectly, and even though
  there is only “one” mouse button, it provides a 2-button interface.
• Its nice to have a laptop where suspend and resume work out of
  the box.
• The external display, just works (adjusting to the size
  of the external display, as opposed to mirroring for instance).
• The power supply is very smart. You can remove the Australian plug, and
  see a US-based plug beneath. Either way, it can be used on most modern
  airlines now, even in economy (if you’re on a quality airline, like
  Singapore Airlines, for instance).
• There’s a carrying case that comes in the box, which I’m sure will be handy when I’m about to throw it into my backpack.

Cons:

• The child-like interface, that is almost comparable to, if not worse, than what Sugar will offer you.
• You might be tempted to then say, “Computer Web”, to then hear the voice of a lady then say “Web” fairly softly, and launch Firefox. Not too impressive - for example, I had the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing in the background, and in my limited use of voice control, I managed to even open up the Clock when I wanted the web browser.
• I tried the dictionary. Its nice to know there actually is an offline dictionary, but its really not too usable. The Longman dictionary is probably ideal if you were speaking/reading/writing Chinese, but I’d have taken an Oxford, or even a Webster’s anyday.
• The keyboard itself, is a tad small, but one will be able to get used
  to it. The positioning of the right Shift key, is not optimal, and I’ve
  seen hacks of people replacing the keys (physically!) and then making
  use of Xmodmap to fix it.
• 800×480 is a tough resolution to get used to. Sure, you’ve got a 7″ screen, but its an odd resolution, and some websites tend not to render properly at this resolution any longer (which is sad).

I wanted a lot more than Xandros could offer me. About the only time I felt at home, was when I hit Ctrl+Alt+T (for the Terminal). At this point, I thought of either installing Ubuntu or Fedora; naturally, I went with the latter, something called Eeedora. More about this, in another post.

What do I think of the machine? Overall, I like it. Its a great sub-notebook. Haven’t tried the battery out yet, but I hear I’ll get about 3 hours of juice from it.

I definitely need to upgrade the RAM - 512MB just doesn’t cut it in this modern world, and a 2GB chip is pretty affordable these days. While I’m there, I might as well get a nice big USB thumb drive, as well as a huge SD card (the slot does SDHC, so maybe some 8GB will be nice?).

Happy to have supported yet another vendor, doing good things with Linux. Go Asus! (similarly, go Nokia for all your beta-quality tablet devices, Dell for Linux laptops [that still haven't reached the APAC region], and I’m sure I’m missing some vendors, but I’ve not purchased from them.)

Technorati Tags: asus, eeepc, eee, asus eee pc, review, 7c, linux

Khairil talks about server downtime, and I can attest to that (hogwarts is just above gambit). The Dell arrived on Friday, popped Centos 5.1 on it, realised that if you ticked “Virtualization”, you ended up not getting a regular kernel (no big deal, eh?). Configured it as best as could be configured, then headed out to the data center on Saturday morning. This after some fiasco of sleeping for under 4-hours, seeing that I was out on Friday night.

Removed the old box, installed the new one, everything came up, and life was dandy. Went over to C-ZONE in Low Yat to get my disk exchanged - it was one-to-one, seeing that it was within the first week. Very nice. Remotely configured the box with Zimbra again, and ZCS 5.0 is working fine. Its great to see that Zimbra figured out what the problem was with the RHEL4/CentOS4 installs of Zimbra. Fixed up the database, restored the websites, all remotely - I wonder if this kind of magic works in Windows land? I just love Unixes.

The Dell box is a 64-bit box, with full virtualization support. Question now is: how do I get more IPv4 IPs if the ISP only gives you one? While there’s some negotiation going on so I can get more, it’d be a shame if I had to create some Xen VMs to be IPv6 only.

Incidentally, if anyone wanted to see what a RAID failed device looks like, here’s some output:

[root@hogwarts ~]# mdadm -D /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
Version : 00.90.03
Creation Time : Mon Jan 7 02:49:59 2008
Raid Level : raid1
Array Size : 485203072 (462.73 GiB 496.85 GB)
Device Size : 485203072 (462.73 GiB 496.85 GB)
Raid Devices : 2
Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
Persistence : Superblock is persistent

Update Time : Wed Jan 9 19:44:45 2008
State : clean, degraded
Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 1
Failed Devices : 1
Spare Devices : 0

UUID : a502d8a1:724a68ab:cac9860f:943d44a5
Events : 0.22190

Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
0 0 0 0 removed
1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1

2 8 3 - faulty spare /dev/sda3

[root@hogwarts ~]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md0 : active raid1 sdb1[1] sda3[2](F)
485203072 blocks [2/1] [_U]

unused devices: <none>

Technorati Tags: raid, dell, centos, ipv4, xen, sysadmin

If CentOS (and by the same vein, Oracle Enterprise Linux) claims compatibility with RHEL, why is Zimbra saying that the issue with ZCS 5.0, Scalar::Util, and Perl, is caused by CentOS?

QA’ing against RHEL, and not CentOS is expected, but saying there’s no compatibility between CentOS and RHEL, sounds like a bit of a fib, don’t you think?

Even better, the recommendation to use Ubuntu. Will there be a LTS release, at some stage soon? It looks like Canonical are behind schedule for another LTS release…

Technorati Tags: zimbra, zimbra collaboration suite, zcs, zcs5, qa, scalar:util, centos, perl, compatibility, rhel