Colin Charles Agenda

I had this sudden urge to get my calendar maintained. Google Calendar is what I’ve been using, on-and-off, and its generally been a bit of a love/hate relationship I’ve had with it. Its good that its online, but that also makes it bad - i.e. what happens when I need to pen something down when I’m offline? It supports SMSing me reminders for events (good), it works via my mobile phone (good), there are Twitter interfaces to the calendar (good). It lacks integration from my main email client, Mozilla Thunderbird.

Why Thunderbird some might ask, and not Evolution? Its cross-platform. And if I were placing bets, I’d be betting on Thunderbird over Evolution, any day (in fact, I’m surprised Linux distributors haven’t figured this out as the easiest migration path - Firefox is shipped, but paired with Evolution). But I digress, lets focus on calendering.

There is the Mozilla Calendar Project, which creates SunBird (standalone) or Lightning (a plugin for Thunderbird). Naturally, I’ve chosen to align myself with the latter. My first snag was finding out that the add-on I downloaded, did not work on Linux x86_64. A little work on Google, showed me how to build it; a little further, and I found a contributor build of it, on the Mozilla site. So download Lightning 0.7 for Linux x86_64.

Thunderbird changes: Today Pane button on top-right, all right there is the option of the “today pane”, and bottom-left, there are two new buttons to toggle between email and calendering view

Once that was complete, Lightning offered to import my calendar entries from Evolution. I don’t know if on OS X, it will offer to import from iCal, but it seemed like a good enough feature to have - I however, did not use it, as I’d not been using Evolution before. When Thunderbird starts, you immediately notice options to change to the Calendar, or even bring out the Today Pane.

The secret sauce is however, in installing yet another Thunderbird add-on, the Provider for Google Calendar. Once that is installed, and you’ve read the notes on the GDATA Provider, and understand its limitations, you’re on your way to using Google Calendar, right in Thunderbird!

Lightning, in calendering view in Thunderbird

Its got limitations though. Google Calendar doesn’t support categories, so they don’t show. If you decide to edit/delete a recurring event, it doesn’t work (known bug), and you still need to login to the web interface. If you create a Task in Lightning, and so happen to tack it onto your calendar on Google Calendar, it just disappears (so make sure tasks are tracked in the local calendar); this is because GCal doesn’t do tasks. By default, all alarms are set to be popup’s, and not SMS messaging like I prefer. If you’re offline, it doesn’t show entries (c’mon, cache entries at the very least). This is something that I’d love, and there is work going on to make this happen.

Verdict? These add-on’s are going to stay in my Thunderbird install. There are quirks, I still have to hop on the web interface from time to time, but it looks like as long as I’m online and in Thunderbird, I’m going to be a happy camper when it comes to calendering.

Technorati Tags: mozilla, lightning, thunderbird, calendar, calendering, google calendar, thunderbird add-on

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

Via the Fedora Miniconf, I attended Del Elson’s talk on Migrating to Fedora Directory Server. Interesting scripts, and glue code was presented, the slides (verbose, good) are online, but there’s no video :(

Tiny amount of notes:
LDAP vs. DBMS

• directory has one schema, one “row” type (”object”). RDBMS has many tables
• directory => optimised for reads, slow for writes
• directory has an adaptable and mutable schema format - good for storing information about “people”

• think about the fact, that people usually have more than one phone number…

• access protocol - ldap vs. sql

Technorati Tags: ldap, dbms, fedora directory server, lca08

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

I took the opportunity today evening to get myself upgraded (from 4.5.3_GA_733) to the latest (5.0.0_GA_1869) open source version of Zimbra - ZCS 5.0 GA. The database migration took about the longest, mainly due to some schema changes. Lots of starts and stops to the database. Its now running MySQL 5.0.45 Community.

What prompted the upgrade? A few days ago, I got a bunch of new packages, and rebooted the server (new kernel). To my dismay, Zimbra started to have issues - amavisd wouldn’t start. This meant that there was a large amount of mail, sitting in the queue, not being delivered. Things you don’t normally check for, immediately, anyway.

Turns out Compress::Zlib was too old. Well, not the system provided Compress::Zlib, but the Zimbra provided Compress::Zlib. Kind of annoying when there are two packages of software, sitting on your system, right? However, the benefits of having an easy-to-administer and use mail system, somehow I think outstrips all the pain associated.

I found the web interface in ZCS 4.5.3 to be a bit limited, even when logged in as an administrator. There was absolutely no way to restart, failed services. For this, I actually needed to login via SSH, and use zmcontrol. Running SSH on a non-standard port, and not having your laptop nearby (or remembering the non-standard port) can allow you to have some fun :)

So after fixing ZCS 4.5.3, and realising that it had some gaping holes, I decided to upgrade. The upgrade process went on pretty smoothly, till I saw:
Updating from 5.0.0_RC3
5 is only avaliable with the XS version at /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/lib/IO/Socket/SSL.pm line 30
BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/lib/IO/Socket/SSL.pm line 30, <DBCONFIG> line 21.
Compilation failed in require at /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/lib/Net/LDAP.pm line 970, <DBCONFIG> line 21.

This has largely got to do with the RHEL4 supplied Perl, as referenced by zimbra bug #22466. However, it seems that it was fixed in 5.0.0_GA_1809. Problem still seems to be around in 5.0.0_GA_1869. Verified that it existed - /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/lib/i386-linux-thread-multi/Scalar/Util.pm (and was newer than the version on the system). Verified that Zimbra saw it too - check out .bashrc in /opt/zimbra (the home directory for the zimbra user) for the various PATHs that Zimbra sees/requires. However, I was running this install, not as the zimbra user, so the Perl PATHs had to be specified.

Specifying the Perl PATH, also didn’t help. The forums mentioned just installing from cpan, Scalar::Util and letting the install progress. It still failed.

I thought I’d try a clean install. By golly, it failed on RHEL4. An upgrade of a clean install from ZCS 4.5.10 also failed. I’m almost convinced that Zimbra spent very little time QA’ing ZCS on RHEL4. Sure, RHEL5 probably works a charm, but the drive of enterprise software is not upgrading the OS too often. This is where I can so see, FreeBSD succeeding - pity there isn’t an official Zimbra/FreeBSD port.

For fun reading, check out their forums: [SOLVED] Big Fubar on 5 FOSS GA Upgrade (how was it solved?), Upgrade 4.5.7 -> 5.0 GA Failed, centos4 upgrade to 5.0 errors. I’m sure this magical list can go on and on. All purported solutions generally, do not work.

Moral of the story? Even with backups, don’t try upgrading Zimbra on a production box. Be prepared to cry, a lot.

Technorati Tags: zimbra, zimbra collaboration suite, zcs, zcs5, qa, ga, upgrades

Standardisation is important.

Tagging in Uploadr involves writing tags in the format such that its:
    australia victoria melbourne “notting hill” clayton

Tagging in ScribeFire, involves writing tags that are parsed in a different way (for Technorati):
    australia, victoria, melbourne, notting hill, clayton

Notice the commas (”,”)? Without them, your tags are all lumped together. I’m wondering if I should change Uploadr to similar behaviour as ScribeFire (or vice versa)? What do other applications do for tagging in a field?

It should be trivial to make this change, the question is if my patch will be accepted upstream. I’m already using a patched version of Uploadr, as I await the author to implement my patch (which adds a description field, which the Flickr API supports). Incidentally, PyGTK is pretty easy to get around with, with superb documentation making it easy for anyone to get on the bandwagon. More on pygtk programming later…

Technorati Tags: tagging, uploadr, scribefire, standardisation, tags, flickr, pygtk, firefox, gnome

Its exciting to see Zimbra being purchased for USD$350 million, by Yahoo!. Exciting because its a great product, exciting because I use it daily, and I guess Satish & team (of over 100 employees) deserve a big pat on the back. The other exciting thing to note is that its got MySQL in its core, and if they’re pushing it out farther and wider now thanks to the Yahoo! purchase, all the better.

There are a few things that are unclear, though, even from their FAQ:

• They mention commitment to Zimbra 5, but I’m still waiting for 4.5.7 :P (My Series 60 phone still hates IMAP via Zimbra).
• Will we see, say the AdSense Zimlet (only available in network, at the moment), disappear?
• Will they hurt the community by attempting to over-commercialise Zimbra? Compiling Zimbra from source control isn’t the easiest process, because of the dependency list, so I do hope they don’t run away from their amazing “easy” install process

I guess its good to know that they’re in the Communications & Community team. Yahoo! has a tendency to buy things and kill it in the past as well. Anyone remember Geocities? They were a better MySpace, any day. Lets hope Brad Garlinghouse ensures Zimbra stays committed to delivering their product, and remain relevant (today, I don’t see any better software for ease-of-use and integration available out there in the open source world). Again, congratulations to Yahoo! on acquiring a great company, and here’s me tipping my hat for their betterment in the future.

– a loyal Zimbra fan.

Technorati Tags: zimbra yahoo! acquisition

Its probably my fault for using MSN (Microsoft Messenger), but it seems to be most prominent among a lot of users I know. Thank goodness gaimPidgin supports the protocol just fine.

My recent usage of Facebook has wanted me to drop people profile information, via MSN. I somehow get a stupid message: “Message could not be sent because a connection error occurred:“. If you’re in a chat, you get disconnected from the chat, so you need to be re-invited.

It seems that in Microsoft’s infinite wisdom, they’re doing server side filtering, and killing your messages as they fit if they match an expression. Blocking popular items like:

• .info - yes, this includes all domains that have .info in them, which is really, silly
• profile.php? - good bye to sending Facebook profiles via MSN
• download.php?
• gallery.php

A more comprehensive list is being kept at the Adium (pidgin for OS X) wiki, at MSNCensorship. They also blogged it. I’m discouraging all my friends I talk with regularly from using MSN and moving to more sensible services.

Technorati Tags: msn, censosrship, microsoft, .info, profile.php, facebook