Cods Plaice

The sad news of the death of Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-17T01:43:00.001-08:00

The path to Atheism for most people on the planet is complex and fraught with a great deal of inner contemplation about the big issues that face us poor scared and frightened humans. It is with the help of great writers and thinkers that this process can be crystallized into your own detailed understanding and the ability to formulate your own view of these big questions.

Now, I can't say that Christopher Hitchens was the only or indeed main influence in my change of understanding. In fact he came very late to my party of transformation , which was far more deeply influenced initially by science and specifically the evolutionary writings of people like Darwin and Dawkins.

What he did bring once I discovered his work was a writer and essayist of such great conviction and clarity of thought, that it would be worth reading his work even if you were the most bigoted religious believer. The many articles and essays that covered an enormous array of topics and subjects. The realisation that this man was not just interested in a single topic , for which he has been grotesquely pidgin holed by some corners of the media, but was in fact deeply involved in many issues , of which religiosity was just one.

One thing I'm glad to say we had in common was our love of Evelyn Waugh, and thanks to his many books and essays on George Orwell, he has encouraged me to re-engage with a writer I loved when I was much younger. His insightful coverage of the many American presidential candidates and successful incumbents was always a delight to read. His characterisations of the current crop of extreme right wing religious Republican candidates was as humorous as it was salient.

I would also encourage others to seek out his many articles and essays from magazines like The Slate, Vanity Fair, The Statesman and The Atlantic to name but a few. Each one will question your beliefs and make you think about the topic being covered.

I certainly look forward to reading more of his works on Orwell, and I would suggest dear reader that it would be profitable to yourself to do the same.

Rest in peace Mr Hitchens, you will truly be missed.

Issue with git client and Ubuntu 11.10 through corporate proxy

2011-12-07T03:41:00.000-08:00

If like me you use git for storing code and configuration files, then it can become a problem when using it through a corporate proxy if you have the wrong versions.

I found today while trying to do a git clone the following error:

emote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref, unable to checkout

After searching around the web I came across this post.

http://goo.gl/hWhXp

This does indeed work.

Basically the problem is that the version of libcurl3 included with Ubuntu 11.10 has problem authenticating through a proxy. You either have to use 11.04 or upgrade your libcurl3 to the version in the next release of Ubuntu(precise), which fixes the issue.

I hope this saves you some effort.

This link also offers URL's to grab the latest deb packages to install, and more back ground on the issue.

http://goo.gl/XIttB

How to add another hard disk to your Xen virtual machine

2011-12-05T03:09:00.000-08:00

If like me you have many Xen virtual machines that have been running for a while, you will likely come across the problem of having to increase the disk space, as the services or jobs the virtual machine offers over time changes.

Now you could increase the size of the existing disk, but I always feel that offers a level of risk, which with adding a new disk and using LVM or a new mount goes away.

Ok, so firstly we need to create a new virtual disk on the physical harddisk with the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=vm01-disk2.img bs=1G count=50

This will give us 50GB of new space. You can of course change the size to what ever you require, if your physical disk space will allow it.

Then we need to edit the Xen virtual machine configuration file and add in the new disk.

On my virtual machine host this is in /etc/xen/vm01

The line that needs to be altered is obviously the disk line, like so

disk = [ "tap:aio:/opt/xendisks/vm01.img,xvda,w",\
"tap:aio:/opt/xendisks/vm01-disk2.img,xvdb,w" ]

NB Notice the slash which allows the configuration line to expand over two lins in the configuration file.

Once you have done this, you can use the virsh commands to restart the virtual machine , so that the new disk is available inside the virtual machine.

Once your VM has re-booted, you will notice another disk, which you can then either add to your LVM configuration, or just format and mount in a new directory. Here is my new mount as an example.

/dev/xvdb 50G 19G 29G 39% /opt/tomcat

Using the lightweight Fedora LXDE desktop for snappier Virtual machines

2011-10-31T07:50:00.000-07:00

While having a look at Fedora 16 beta within Virtualbox virtualization software, I decided to use a more lightweight desktop environment.

Over the last couple of years as hardware has improved the desktop systems that sit on top of X windows have started to become more complex and powerful, but as a side effect have become resource intensive, which is not ideal for virtual machines.

There are many great different types of lightweight desktop environments, but one that is now supported by all the main distributions is LXDE.

Fedora 16 installation was a breeze - though I recommend upgrading Virtualbox to version 4.1.4 before you start for better support.

The lighter desktop has indeed made a massive improvement over speed and repsonsiveness to the Gnome 3 shell I installed on the Fedora 15 image I tested.

The menus and layout my be a little legacy for some, and perhaps for everyday use, but when most of the time is spent in a terminal widow, that is not the end of the world.

Here is a snap of the initial machine once installed.

There are many new features in this release of Fedora, including the latest 3.1 kernel, deltarpms with presto , the use of systemd instead of the now very old SysV daemon management & control and the use of specifically locked ethernet hardware to configuration definitions - so you see p2p1 instead of eth0 for instance.

The final release is only a few days aways, and for people who like cutting edge open source software Fedora is a good choice.

Give it a try and see what you think.

The FUD used against Linux , really annoys me

2011-10-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

If you are not familiar with the term FUD, it stands for Fear, Uncertainty and doubt, which are more commonly described as lies in technical circles. They are used by marketing people to stop people using others products, just in case.

Over the years I have seen this tactic used many times by large corporations to scare companies into buying their product's, but none have used it more often and more perniciously than Microsoft.

Well, they have tried everything against Linux, and have told lies by the bucket load, yet still the system gains market share, where today you can almost guarantee that if you go somewhere on the web, the server powering that site will be Linux.

I have also used it on my laptops for years, and this summer on holiday put it through it's paces , but taking it with me to do some work while on the road in Spain. It never missed a beat. Every little dusty side street eating house that offered WIFI, I could connect to, I could do whatever I needed, whenever I needed, without fail. The one device that did let me down on occasion was my iPad, rarely, but it did.

So the facts are Ubuntu Linux on my Dell laptop 100% success, Apple iPad 98% success.

I love my iPad, so I'm not making some cheap point about it , but a fact is a fact.

So the next time someone tells you something about Linux, do some research and find out the facts. Linux is not perfect, but then neither are any of the systems offered, but Linux is free and you can laways help make it better.

Less FUD, and more facts please.

Here is a link to try it for yourself.

Ubuntu Linux

DNSMASQ config on Ubuntu desktop for fast DNS lookups

2011-07-03T03:47:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick rundown on how to use dnsmasq as a fast DNS cache. I was driven to set this up, as the DNS servers that my flat company supply are like treacle on a very cold day.

Help on installing DNSMASQ

Install the daemon, and then edit /etc/dnsmasq.conf to listen on port 127.0.0.1. You need to find the line that has #listen-address= and remove the hash and add the address.

Add this nameserver 127.0.0.1 into the top of /etc/resolv.conf file at the top, and restart the daemon. This is where Linux looks for it's DNS servers.

/etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

Do a DNS lookup like this to test - dig google.com
Look at the time returned, and then do it again, and look at the time difference, a lot faster isn't it.

Advanced fun and games.

If you want to look at the contents of the cache that dnsmasq is curently storing (in memory)then you need add the -q parameter to the startup scipt, just tag it onto the end. The start-up script is in the /etc/init.d directory, and you need to scroll down to the start function. You will see a long list of parameters that get passed, just add the -q to the end.

Then restart the daemon.

To look at the cache we need to send the SIGUSR1 parameter to the kill command to dump the currently held cache into the /var/log/syslog file. Use the following command to do that.

kill -s USR1 1234 - for instance where 1234 is the PID number of the dnsmasq running daemon. You can find that with the ps -ef | grep dnsmasq command.

If you want to add static DNS entries into your cache, edit the /etc/hosts file and add your required , and often used DNS entries in there. These will be read when dnsmasq starts , and will be available immediately without reference to an upstream DNS resolver. So they will be extrememly quick, which is just what I wanted.

For a quick guide on DNS look here.

Quick guide to DNS

Using rtorrent on a remote Centos server for 24/7 downloads

2011-06-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you all know a lot of information is passed around the Web using bittorrent. Most of the clients have a nice GUI front end that allow you to easily grab the torrent files and start downloading.

What if you don't have a GUI on the machine you wish to use, or what if this is to be a 24/7 service for you. Well Linux as always has solutions, and one of those is a program called rtorrent. If you only like flashy interfaces this is not for you, but it works perfectly, and is very reliable.

I use a Centos 5.6 virtual server in the cloud for all sorts of uses, like a socks proxy and an SSL endpoint, and this is where I wanted to run the client. This machine is not very powerful, so you don't need to worry on that score. There are many Linux virtual machines you can obtain these days, for not a great deal of money.

Firstly, you need to visit this web site and download three RPM's.
Site for RPMS

libsigc++20-2.0.17-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
libtorrent-0.12.6-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
rtorrent-0.8.6-2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

Now, depending on how you configured your machine, there may be other dependencies, so check when you install these as follows

rpm -ivh *.rpm

Once this is done, I would then also make sure that the "screen" application is installed, as this will allow you to start rtorrent on the remote server, and re-connect to it when you desire. Spend a few moments looking at "screen" commands on the web to understand how it fits together - like here.

Using Screen

So now, I run screen and then I run rtorrent.

Once rtorrent is loaded, read this web page for an excellent quick guide to using the application:

How to use rtorrent as pro

Once you have your torrent running, you can detach from your screen session, with the CTRL-A d command. You can now logout of remote server, and all is still running.

To re-connect, you just login to the remote server again, and then run screen -r, and you will be back looking at rtorrent happily running.

This is very useful for downloading Linux ISO distribution files etc.

Setting up an Adhoc wifi hotspot for your iPad using Ubuntu Linux

2011-05-28T03:57:00.001-07:00

Well, since moving into my flat in Berlin, I have been stuck without wifi, which has rendered my iPad a little less useful than it was before. The flats just supply you with an RJ45 socket in the wall and an Ethernet cable.

So knowing how flexible Ubuntu Linux is, I thought I would have a look around and see if there was a way to set it up. There were lots of very good articles, a blog posts on the topic, and the truth is with Linux it couldn't be easier.

You basically just have to click on you network connection icon in the Gnome panel, and select "Create new wireless network" , give it a name and select the security type.

The only thing I have read, and found with my wifi network adapter is that they don't always support all forms of security, so you will need to test.

I started with no security, then WEP 40bit, then WEP 128bit and finally WPA. Your mileage may vary, so test them all.

It works perfectly, and I was able to download my newspapers , books, films etc etc.

Changing the network settings with VMware player 3.1 on Linux

2011-03-15T06:43:00.001-07:00

I came across an issue today, where I wanted to remove one of the virtual network interfaces that gets installed when you install VMware player. This turned out to be relatively straight forward, once you know where to look.

In VMware workstation , you get a great graphical tool to amend and alter the virtual network configuration, but not so with the free VMplayer.

The reason I wanted to do this was remove the virtual interface vmnet8, as I'm not using any NAT's interfaces, so this is not needed and will only consume resources.

Firstly point your favourite editor at /etc/vmware/networking as a root user and then modify the file like so.

7 answer VNET_8_DHCP no
8 answer VNET_8_DHCP_CFG_HASH B9130F0FB783D3AC081BDA79708F4635E63130A4
9 answer VNET_8_HOSTONLY_NETMASK 255.255.255.0
10 answer VNET_8_HOSTONLY_SUBNET 172.16.73.0
11 answer VNET_8_NAT no
12 answer VNET_8_VIRTUAL_ADAPTER no

The key , is that you have turned all the VNET_8 answers to no instead of yes.

Once this is safely saved, run the following commands to re-start the networking.

sudo vmware-networks --stop ; sudo vmware-networks --start

Once you have done this, if you now issue an /sbin/ifconfig you will notice that vmnet8 does now not appear.

I have decided to become an Android Polytheist ;-)

2011-01-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

Well, after many years of trying to stick to just the one omnipotent & omniscient Deity, with no success, and all my prayers being completely ignored I decided to bring in a legion of Deities rather than rely on just one.

This course of action was brought on by the loss of my beloved Android Smartphone, so I duly put in a call to his Holiness Lord Android of Google.

I burnt a chicken - normal with my cooking skills , ran around the office like a headless chicken, and then asked for the return of my phone.

Alas, like all previous attempts with just the one, switching to a few of them seems to have the same pointless effect, but at least I got the feeling I was talking to someone via my blog , and perhaps the odd person who reads this will feel the power of the Lord Android and send me a new phone ;-).

I had a lot more success talking to the nice chap in the Phone store , who gave me a new sim chip to stick in an old phone.

Ironically, later in the day I did get an email from Google asking to have a chat about a job they have going, so perhaps Lord Android does move in mysterious ways, and I'll end up getting a Google Android phone as part of the deal.

The Christmas Tale - or the coming of our saviour Amazon.com

2010-12-13T22:34:00.000-08:00

If you have ever worked for a large multi-national company or a city based financial institution then you fully understand the concept of global capitalism. The bull faced financial and social methodology we humans have chosen for the 21st Century over and above all the leftist methodologies we tried and threw in the rubbish bin in the 20th Century.

This time of year everyone on the planet is able to get a glimpse of this system. The system we have chosen to organise our existence is in full swing, and the marketing arm is working overtime everyday to get as many people as possible involved.

The Victorian capitalist's did a fantastic job of wrapping up this cold system in tinsel and Christmas trees, snowy pictures and pretty cards. It has been embellished ever since with even the multi-nationals chipping in with the dress code for some of the fantasy members of the Christmas cast. The irony of Coca-cola giving us the red suited Santa clause is just pure marketing genius.

You of course get all the Christians , trying their hardest to try and sugar coat this time of year with fairy stories and ridiculous tales from a discredited book of scary tales, but they are now so removed from the real meaning of Christmas that it is sad to witness.

The Christmas marketing engine now appears to kick in around September, with the children coming under increasing bombardment with television adverts priming them to get their Christmas demand lists in order. The pressure increases until around December,when the full might of capitalism is thrown into the fray and then everyone is subjected to posters, TV adverts and on-line interrupt's. We are told that if only you or a member of your family owned this extra piece of Chinese plastic, their lives will be complete and full-filled. This crescendo goes on, well into the new year with January sales, where you can now purchase all the things you couldn't afford before Christmas at a knock down price.

If most people are brutally honest, the most enjoyable parts of this time of year are the meals and get together with friends , not that single day of excess. The shopping trips before hand with the stress and agony written into the faces of millions of men on every high street and shopping mall on the planet. I think some Women do enjoy it slightly more, but then all the Women in my life enjoy shopping all year around, so this is not that surprising.

Well, I have now seen the light, and have chosen Amazon this year to do 80% of my Christmas shopping. I have for years trudged around the shops, with millions of others getting hot and bothered, but not this year. It is also not a co-incidence that capitalism has invented a way to make this whole process even easier to open our wallets, in the guise of on-line shopping.The beautiful side effect is we no longer have to find this whole process as difficult as it once was.
We can now spend time on the Christmas shopping in a more civilised manor and perhaps even start to enjoy the little bit of high street adventure that is required. The visit to the Christmas market can be more about mulled wine and a gentle walk around, rather than the frenzied fight to get as many things in as short a space of time as possible. I welcome this change, and I can't ever see myself going back.

Have a merry Christmas and Happy New year, and oh yes, don't forget to keep spending, it's what the system requires of all good capitalist citizens.

Speeding up your Linux browser using a ramdisk

2010-11-11T00:15:00.001-08:00

I came across an interesting article yesterday, about someone who had speeded up their browser on Windows by using a ramdisk, and knowing that Linux can happily do this, I decided to write down how to do this for the Linux user.

Firstly we need to create a directory that we can use for the ramdisk, and get it to automatically mount everytime we start our machine.

1) create the directoty - sudo mkdir /var/ramdisk

2) then edit this file and add the following line at the end - gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

/var/ramdisk /var/ramdisk tmpfs size=512m 0 0

3) Now mount this new ramdisk to test

sudo mount /var/ramdisk

We now have our ramdisk, and we can add this to the start options for Chromium and Firefox.

Firstly we will do Chrome as it's the easiest, simple add the following line to the startup options/icon that your use to start Chrome.

--disk-cache-dir=/var/ramdisk

See below:

If you now click on Chrome, you will now be using a Ram disk, and you can look at what you are storing in that cache, but looking in the directory you created earlier.

Now, for firefox we use a different method,

Mozilla Firefox

Type about:config into the address bar, accept the warning ("I'll be careful, I promise!")
Right click > New > String
Type browser.cache.disk.parent_directory into the box and press OK
Type the path of your BrowserCache directory -- /var/ramdisk press OK
Close all open Firefox tabs and windows
Open the browser again

(Part of the above section was lifted directly from this web page to save typing - http://goo.gl/RKr7z)

That's it, you now have you cache being stored in RAM instead of on disk, which is significantly faster, for saving and reading cached pages. I have started with a RAM disk of 512m, which may be too large for you or too small, but you can adjust that once you see what your usage profile is like.

Is upgrading to the Intel i5 laptop processor worth the effort

2010-11-10T04:16:00.000-08:00

In a word, yes . As you may have read on this blog a few weeks ago , I tried an experiment with using an SSD harddisk for the operating system in conjunction with an external 500GB hybrid disk for all the more volatile parts of the OS, like /var and /tmp.

This was a resounding successful with a marked ramp in performance across the whole operating system and applications, to the point now , that all other machines seem like sloth's in comparison.

I had a need to upgrade my work laptop recently, specifically for more CPU cores and access to that lastest hardware virtualization extensions. I use the laptop extensively for virtualization, so I picked the Dell Latitude E6410. This is a really good work horse, but more importantly it comes with the Intel i5 processor.

This has had a very positive affect on the whole systems performance when running virtual guests with VirtualBox - my current virtualization platform of choice - to the extent that I can now over commit on memory and cpu's , plus the density I can achieve on this box has literally doubled.

I always keep a system monitor going to see how hard the system us working, and while on the old E6400, with two virtual machines running , the system would be noticeable slower, now with four virtual guests running, there is still plenty of head room for the other applications I need to run.

If are about to upgrade, and you need the ability to run multiple virtual guests, then I would definitely recommend the extra spend on this processor. The more memory the better, but I'm happily working with 4GB currently, but I can take this up to 8GB if the need should arise.

Well done Dell this is a grand machine for running Linux.

Ubuntu 10.10 is released and raises the bar for the Linux desktop again

2010-10-12T08:59:00.000-07:00

Well, we have been testing it for five months, and playing with all the new features and functions that the latest software from the open source community can give us. So, if you want to be pleased with just how easy this release is to install or upgrade, then give it a try.

You can read the full release notes at the Ubuntu web site for more detailed information on exactly what each version of this Linux distribution is going to deliver, but it has impressed me on every server, desktop and virtual image I have installed it onto or into, and this post is coming from my just up dated work laptop.

Ubuntu is not every Linux users friend, and I understand some of the resistance, but most open minded open source people can see a definite role for this in the whole open source universe. I use a great deal of Linux, in many different forms, but if you want a desktop that just works, then certainly look no further.

If you are currently using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, you will need to modify your software sources to allow updates from newer releases, and not just LTS releases. Once you have done that, you will be offered the choice of this new version. This will ask a few simple questions, download about 1,000 files, and prompt you during the process for a few answers. That's it , you are now on the latest version.

An amusing thing about the date of release, is that it was 101010, which in decimal is 42. Douglas Adams has already informed us that this is the meaning of life, the universe and everything, so you can't get much higher praise than that. We can now use this release of Ubuntu to figure out what the question was ;-)

Anyway, go and grab a copy and give it whirl , you won't be disappointed.

Using SSD and hybrid disks to speed up your computer

2010-10-02T03:46:00.000-07:00

I have been reading for a while about the advantages of using SSD disks for starting/booting your computer, which can be especially useful on a laptop, which you are far more likely to restart. Well I decided to put this into action and see what speed improvements these changes would make, and how it would improve the speed in several tests.

The hardware:
Dell Inspiron 6400 Laptop with 4GB Ram and an Intel Core 2 duo P8700 2.5 Ghz
OS Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS fully patched
Primary new disk drive Kingston SSDnow V+ 64 GB
Secondary disk Seagate Momentus XL hybrid drive 500 GB / 4GB SSD

After considerable thought, and reading that the SSD disk would be good for 1 million reads, I decided that I would use two disk's instead of one, and all variable data would go on the hybrid drive. This would be true for any OS, basically if the partition is going to be written to on a regular basis , then move it onto an external disk. Luckily the Dell comes with a built in eSata connector, which offers really good performance for an external unit, and I wouldn't recommend using USB 2 or firewire unless thats all you have.

I therefore moved the following disk partitions onto the Seagte hybrid drive - /tmp, /var, /home - and made sure that their UUID's were correctly configured on the internal Kingston SSD disk in /etc/fstab. The hybrid Seagate drive is housed in an Icy Box external eSata 2.5" enclosure which works really well.

So to the tests, with the original 2.5" Seagate Momentus 7200 250GB internal disk. I used my stop watch, and with the SSD fitted I suspect some of timings are do my lack of ability to react that quickly.

1) From the end of the BIOS post to a login prompt averaged - 30 seconds
2) Loading firefox 3.6.8 with 25 tabs open - 18 seconds
3) loading Google Chrome with 25 tabs - 10 seconds

with the new configuration

1) From the end of the BIOS post to a login prompt averaged - 5 seconds
2) Loading firefox 3.6.8 with 25 tabs open - 4 seconds
3) loading Google Chrome with 25 tabs - 2 seconds

It is obvious that the new system is significantly faster than it was previously, so the claims being made by the SSD manufacturers are true, your system will be quicker. I would also comment, that everything now works at a much smarter rate, and I have no doubts if I had tested more applications the same performance boost would have been measured.

This was not a cheap experiment however, and the two drives cost me in excess of £250. I was looking for a speed boost with my virtualization requirements, and that is what I have achieved, but unless you have a real need for this performance improvement , then you may well find your money better spent of other needs. I would also now like to try this with the latest Intel processors to see if I can squeeze even more performance out of the laptop.

Make using the Command line more fun in Ubuntu

2010-09-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu has spawned several really great Linux distributions, and one of the best is Linux Mint. It has always had a feature where-by when you open a command prompt, it displays a simple - often silly - message to brighten up your day before you get stuck in. To be fair this has been around for a long time in the Unix world, but is still funny.Ubuntu doesn't have this turned on by default, so I decided to enable it , and it really isn't that hard, if we borrow a great command from Mint guys.

First you need to install the fortune cookie applications and message files:

sudo apt-get install fortune-mod cowsay

You can test this has installed ok by typing the following:

fortune

and you should get a message displayed.

Next you need to create shell scipt that will do all the hard work for you - borrowed from the Mint guys

sudo vim /usr/bin/ubuntu-fortune

Here is what to put into the file

#!/bin/bash

RANGE=4

number=$RANDOM

let "number %= $RANGE"

case $number in

cow="small"

;;

cow="tux"

;;

cow="koala"

;;

cow="moose"

;;

esac

RANGE=2

number=$RANDOM

let "number %= $RANGE"

case $number in

command="/usr/games/cowsay"

;;

command="/usr/games/cowthink"

;;

esac

/usr/games/fortune | $command -f $cow

Now we need to make this file executable by doing this

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/ubuntu-fortune

Then last but not least we need to place it into one of the shell script master files so that it gets called every time when you start up a shell script. So edit the following file, and place the command - /usr/bin/ubuntu-fortune - as the last entry in the file.

sudo vim /etc/bash.bashrc

Voila, when you now start a shell terminal , you will have something to laugh at, and you can of course just type the command we created above to get a laugh on got.

Here is an example:

Now there are lots of other fortunes you can install, some of them can be very rude, so be careful, and you can grab these either using apt-get or using the Synaptic package manager.

Have fun.

Smartphone users should travel overground and avoid the subways and tubes

2010-08-24T11:53:00.000-07:00

If you are one of the many millions of new smartphone owners, it will not have missed your attention that as soon as you go into mole mode and descend into the dark, sweaty, hell that is the subway and tube lines of the western world, than you realise that most of your smartphone functionality disappears. If your commute is a long one, then it can get very annoying.

Well, today while I was sat on the top floor of a double-decker London bus, cruising to work very slowly in the early morning congestion, I realised the value of that service over the tubes. You have full access with your 3G connection and can happily check your email, surf the web and chat on Gtalk without hindrance. Now, I know you can download music with spotify and grab the latest news with the many paid for magazine and news paper apps, but you have to remember to do that before you go under ground. There is the underlying problem, if you have other things on your mind , or a hangover from a previous nights fun, thinking about syncing your smartphone is not top of your pre-journey planning.

So , if you own a smartphone, jump on a bus or grab a cab, and stay well clear of the WIFI/3G retarded tubes. I would however recommend you don't try this on your bicycle ;-)

New Tab Candy with Firefox 4 Alpha build on Ubuntu

2010-07-26T02:55:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this new feature build of Firefox 4 in my daily Google alerts, and I'm really glad that I did.

This new build of Firefox 4 offers a very new feature for tab management , that to be honest is quite frankly very impressive.

It allows you to drag and drop tabs into little organised groups, but you can happily move tabs between these groups if you like.

The best way to have a look at how this works is to view this video by the developers.

Tab Candy Video

I have been using it since I found it, and it really does make your browsing experience so much better, to the point I have started using Firefox a little more often again.

One thing to watch out for though, is don't let this alpha auto-update, as it pulls in the latest FF 4 beta main trunk code, which doesn't have this feature turned on yet. So turn off auto update, and just manually grab the latest builds from the site below.

I would recommend downloading and having a play , and see what you think.

Tab Candy web page and download

Is Ubuntu thinking about switching to Chromium in 10.10?

2010-07-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

While testing with the latest daily build I thought I would look through the App store to see if Google was in there, and instead I found a Chromium version (fully open source) version which is pinned to the exact same release code as the stable release of Google Chrome.

Now I get why in the base installation they don't want the Google Chrome release, but the Chromium version has up until now always been bleeding edge. So by taking the same stable version and just building the open source bits make it very easy to now include this.

As it stands today, you get FF 3.6, and it is very unlikely that FF 4.0 will be ready in the development timeframe for Ubuntu 10.10, but Chromium is ready now, and offers a much faster experience than FF. Now, version 5 of Chrome/Chromium is not perfect, but for 99% of peoples surfing needs it works fine.

Now, this is me finding something in repositories and making 5 from 2 + 2, but it really wouldn't take that much of a step, and it would be a real differentiator between the distro's. They must be thinking about it, otherwise why go to all this problem.

Have a look yourself and see what you think.

Problem adding the new Spotify Linux client repository security key

2010-07-22T01:09:00.000-07:00

The great news is that there is now a native version of spotify, which works really well on Ubuntu, and I'm listening to it now as I type.

While I was installing it though, I found the link - below - to install the security key for the repository was broken - timed out.
gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.de.pgp.net --recv-keys 4E9CFF4E

So I found the key manually, and I'm posting it here so you can manually install it. How?

1) Copy all the text in the key below and paste it into a text file, using your favourite editor
2) Open the software sources application and click on the Authentication Tab - see below
Import your key
3) click on the Import Key file
4) Select the file you created earlier
5) Done ;-)

Here is the key and the spotify web page that gives the other instructions

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: SKS 1.0.10
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=D9pj
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Spotify client for Linux

Using and looking at Btrfs in the latest Ubuntu Maverick build

2010-07-18T02:09:00.001-07:00

I love looking at new technologies and assessing what they might be able to offer not only me, but the people that I do consultancy for. There is nothing like being able to pluck a technology white rabbit out of the hat in front the of the decision makers.

Well, for several years the modern file system designed by Sun called ZFS, has been rightly getting plaudits for not only it's usability but the built in functionality that companies have been paying large sums of money to Symantic to have the same features.

Ironically, an open source project was started within Oracle to come up with a system for Linux that would offer the same features - the company that now owns Sun and ZFS.

Well the developers in the Linux community have been busy with this next generation file system, and it is now available in the latest Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 2 builds, and I have just installed it using the alternative iso file into a Virtualbox test machine. I will be doing this on real hardware as well next week.

The installation was easy enough using the ncurses method as opposed to the more modern GUI mode, and the virtual machine started without any issues. At the moment you have to keep the /boot partition on ext4, as btrfs doesn't work with that as yet, but it is being worked on.

One of the features I'm looking for along side the advanced features of easy command line snapshots and duplication is a speed boost, only time will reveal if this is to be realised.

Using the command btrfs from the command line you can take snapshots of subvolumes and resize the filesystem on the fly, which offers so much simplification over the tools and methods we current use, like LVM etc.

I'm looking forward to spending some more time investigating all of the features of this very interesting new filesystem.

Setting Chromium to use the search engine of your choice

2010-07-17T07:38:00.001-07:00

Chromium, like all good browsers is very flexible and allows you change things around, which is good, as one of it's default features can be very annoying. The feature , is that it auto detects which country you are in , and when you do a search it returns the information in the language of that country. This is great if you want that, but can be a real pain in the backside if you don't. As I travel between France and the UK very regularly, I need to be able to have the search engine, where ever I am, and this little trick sorts that out for you.

Well there is a easy way to fix that.

1) Go to the wrend menu and select options
2) Then click on manage search engines
3) Click on add to create a new one
4) Make it look like the picture below - substitue your country as appropriate.
5) Make it one of the defaults
6) Now test it with a search in the omnibar for something

The other great part of this is you can also set up other custom search engines for all your favourite sites , and I have set one up for the Linux Man pages , which I found on another site.

So if I now want to look up the man page for a command, I just type man command in the omnibox, and it takes me straight there.

See this picture on how I did that one.

Google web apps appear on the latest Chromium builds

2010-07-08T23:57:00.000-07:00

I have been following the development of the ChromiumOS, and one the things I liked was the way that my often used apps would appear on a menu page and be easy to load. There is nothing revolutionary about at present, apart from it's convenience and the potential of what Google has up it's sleeve for the next generation of browser based web apps.

Well, you don't have to wait for the release of ChromiumOS anymore as you can have a play with them now, thanks to these articles

Download Squad

Google Chromium blog

Basically you need to add a start up option to your Chromium start button/icon which is --enable-apps. Once this is down, download the crx files from the second link onto your harddrive, and then just drag and drop them onto Chromium. If you know press Ctrl-t , you will see the web apps displayed. Click on one and it will appear on the left of the browser.

Now, if like me you follow the PPA chromium development build, then you will find that the web apps mentioned - gmail etc - in the first article are not in place in /usr/lib/chromium/resources, so use the ones from the second article instead.

If you look at my picture above you will see the web apps on the far left of the browser screen.

There is also some interesting discussions happening on the web about what these offer over a normal extension, apart from the pretty icon above the tab, I think currently , this is showing what will be available , and how it is going to progress rather than astounding us now.

Ubuntu takes another step towards the MAC UI and away from original UI

2010-07-08T15:43:00.001-07:00

This change has been designed for the next release of the netbook remix - 10.10 maverick, but works perfectly on my Lucid 10.04 desktop setup. What is it , you may ask, well it's the moving of the application menu from the application window itself, and onto the Panel menu, at the top of your screen, just like the MAC does when you open an application. I have to say I like it , and I will be using it for a while to see how it goes.

This is what it looks like while using gedit.

It is definitely something worth having a look at and having a play with.

Here is the post on how to set it up, and make sure that you edit the file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80appmenu , and change this setting APPMENU_DISPLAY_BOTH=0. Then restart your windows session by logging off and then back on again.

The Indicator Panel - from Jono Bacons blog

Firefox Beta 1 release candidate out in the wild

2010-07-07T02:31:00.001-07:00

There have been quite a few changes between 3.7 alpha and the 4.0 beta 1 release. There is a definite change in performance again, which is always good to see. They have added a new bookmark icon on the top Chrome area which works well, and along side that is added a Feedback button to help you get more involved in the beta testing process. Whether that will continue into the final release is not clear at this stage.

They are going to change the arrangement of the tabs at the top of the window, but this has not been implemented on the Linux or Mac versions yet, but we are told it's coming shortly. Update with the release of the beta this morning , having the tabs on top is now working on Linux.

The add-ons menu has been changed and makes it very easy to navigate all your plugins, themes and extensions. See the picture below.

The Mozilla sync - which was weave - is now fully integrate and works seamlessly with the new browser.

There are also many under the hood changes which I feel will make a lot of difference to the developer community and offer extra facilities for the end user like HTML5 video codec support using WebM

See here

Get it here

July is the month for new Browsers for Linux

2010-07-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

I have been using all the latest browsers from the main standards compliant camp lately, as the heat is turned up with performance and functionality.

Well July 2010 is a real watershed in the available browsers for Linux with the arrival of the long awaited Opera 10.60 - which is a very polished, fast and extremely enjoyable browser to use. It has delivered on the long awaited promises that it has alluded to over the years. Google Chromium now has another real competitor on their hands, no doubt about that.

Also , while checking the Mozilla Firefox nightlies this morning - an oxymoron ;-) - I found that the availability of the next major release is getting prepared for it's beta testing phase on or around the 5th July. I have been using the 3.7Alpha5 for most of June, and this is what I believe will become the version 4.0 beta1, and it is a lot faster on Ubuntu 10.04 than 3.6 is, and it is now as close to Chromium and Opera as to not really be a deciding factor.

There is no doubt that Chromium stirred things up for ever when they appeared for good. We are now reaping the rewards of that entry into the browser arena, and as consumers of browsers we should all be grateful for that.

It does however now present the average Linux user with a fantastic dilemma, which browser should I use today? There is not an easy answer for that I have to admit.

I use Google Chromium now on a daily basis, as I like it's speed, auto-sync and extensions, but there are still a few rough edges , which occasionally mean I have to switch back to using Firefox to get work done. I'm working with the developers to make this situation better by reporting bugs as I find them, but it's not always easy, when you just want to get things done.

I also now have another contender in the form of Opera to switch to , as it also has far less problems with IE specific web sites, and now offers so much it really can't be ignored.

Looking at the next release of Ubuntu 10.10 with Virtualbox

2010-06-15T23:45:00.000-07:00

As the first Alpha iso was placed up on the mirrors for us all to start having a play , I decided to run it up in a virtual machine and see what - if anything - has changed. The install went fine, with my first run I just followed the usual install options , clicking next, and then install. All went fine until right at the end it had to removed some information with "dpkg" and then it started to error. I clicked through these and it finished, in what on the surface seemed to be a successful and stable install. Once rebooted however, I noticed there was something wrong with the way packages were not being installed , so I decided that this initial release had issues. I did have a good look at the errors that were being generated, and it was obvious that those errors on install, were more of a problem than I had originally thought.

Not a big problem, as I left it over the weekend , knowing come Monday on the daily builds the problem would almost certainly be fixed, and it was.

So, rather than download the latest daily iso image, I used the really useful zsync utility to just upgrade my iso - look here on how to use this utility.

Once all was installed and up and running, I had a look around. At this early stage there is not a great deal to see, except the latest kernel 2.6.35 (see the picture above). Gnome is the same and most of the apps are the same, as far as I can tell, except the software centre which has had an upgrade and looks a much improved. I'm sure most of the underlying apps have had their versions bumped, but to the eye it looks very similar to Lucid, not surprisingly.

I installed Google Chrome to see how that worked with the new OS, and all went well. It is worth doing this, as under the virtual image this gives you just that little extra performance.

At least the Meerkat is out of the cage now so I can keep an eye on where this great distribution is heading next in it's evolutionary track.

Google chrome stable is released for Linux and Mac

2010-06-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been working with the beta version of chrome and the developer version of chromium since they were released and have seen them grow into great browsers that deserve their place amongst the best on the web.

So it was a momentous day when we got a full release version on the Linux - and Mac - platforms that will now be compared to other stable versions available for these platforms , like Firefox and Safari.

There are no particular new features in this release, as the last beta had most of the news, but this is just to give a base line from which to build.

They have mentioned that when Adobe launch their flash player in a few weeks - version 10.1 - then this will be built into the browser, which is great for us , but could be a major problem for Apple and Microsoft.

You’ll be able to synchronize not only bookmarks across multiple computers, but also browser preferences -- including themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, preferred languages, and even page zoom settings. Meanwhile, for avid extensions users, you can enable each extension to work in incognito mode through the extensions manager.

The stable release also incorporates HTML5 features such as Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop. For a taste of HTML5’s powerful features, try browsing through websites developed in HTML5 such as scribd.com, dragging and dropping attachments in Gmail, or by enabling the geolocation functionality in Google Maps. We’ve also given Chrome’s bookmark manager a facelift with HTML5.

I have been testing this Browser on my Ubuntu 10.04 laptops in both 32 and 64 bit versions and found it to be fast, stable and reliable. I do use Chromium on a day to day basis as I like to help debug the future of the browser, but will turn to Chrome for it's stability when I need to book flights or do my on-line banking.

I can recommend you give it a go and just see the speed difference you will experience.

Download it here Get Google Chrome Stable

The Computer Tablet revolution?

2010-05-30T04:02:00.000-07:00

Have you bought an iPad already, is it the best thing since sliced bread or the next fruit juicer destined for the back of the cupboard?

While taking the Paris Metro yesterday on my way home from Bruxelles, I noticed there were adverts for the just released Apple iPad everywhere, and I fully expect to see the same on Tuesday while taking the Tubes in London.

This form of computer device has been tried and launched unsuccessfully before by several major companies, including Microsoft , who have never seemed to catch the public's attention, that has now apparently changed. The mood for this type of device seems to be right. I think this is due mainly to the success of the iPhone and and iTouch before it, and people can now see the benefit of this keyboard-less type of device. They are by no means perfect, but they are a lot lighter than the netbook's or notebooks must of us use while travelling so they will potentially have a place in our luggage.

There is great news for people who don't use or want to buy Apple technology, as Google have released a competing technology call Android, which is currently having a massive success in the smartphone market and now just starting into computer tablets.

The device that has really caught my eye in this mushrooming new genre is the French made Archos 7 home tablet, not least because of the cost. They start at a very reasonable £129, which means that if it does not quite meet up to what I think these devices will offer, I won't have wasted £600, like most of my friends who can't wait for the latest gadget.

The screen is smaller than the iPad - 7" as opposed to 9" - and the technical specification is a lot lower, but for what I want it for I believe it should do nicely. It can play video upto 720p, the usual music formats MP3 etc, surf the web via WIFI (but not 3G), reading books via e-reader plus access to thousands of other applications from the Archos store - not the Android store currently - but that is on the way. The Archos 7 Home Tablet.

I think one the key elements of these devices will be the web applications that are coming down the pipe from all of the major software providers. If these can all be made to embrace the touch screen input method, then this is going to be a real winner. Things will have to change though, as trying to use old legacy programs on these devices is just not going to work. It will be really interesting to see how they cope with things like blog posting and writing in general. They will be fine for chatting on all the social media like Twitter, as that works fine on my smartphone, but writing real articles is another matter.

Having used my Android smartphone for a while now, the touch system works well and offers so much. Unfortunately for me the screen is just too small for reading books or watching films, so I think this new device will fit the bill, time as always in these matters will tell and testing these features will be part of the fun.

Experiences with my new Sony Xperia Google Android smartphone

2010-05-23T06:04:00.000-07:00

I have been looking to upgrade from my old trusty Blackberry to one of the new Google Android phones for a while, so that I can completely integrate all of my information systems onto one platform. This includes email, instant messaging and e-books. The new Sony Xperia X10, comes very close to ticking all those boxes.

I have had a mobile contract with O2 since I started using mobile phones, and the first one I had resembled a small laptop rather than the tiny devices we use today, so I had to wait until they started offering some devices I felt would work. I'm glad I waited, as this unit is very easy to use and setup.

Within minutes of having it, I had sync'd my email and contacts from Gmail and had an IM chat with work, and I felt right at home. This really can't be over played, it really does just work and you are up and running in seconds. It's really not much of a surprise, as Google provide the operating system and the cloud applications, but it is very good.

The screen is clear and crisp, and offers a very good display to work with, which leads me onto the one minor problem I have with the unit. I was hoping to be able to use it for e-books, but the screen is just that little bit too small, which is as much my eyes fault as the smartphone, but I suspect others of a similar vintage will find the same.

The app store/marketplace is just overflowing with great free applications to do pretty much any task, and I have downloaded and installed everything from pdf readers to London Tube train updates.

The battery life, if you use the device smartly and don't run the 3G/Edge services all the time is very good, and very usable, and because of it's small size, makes the device light and easy to carry.

If you are looking for a good Smartphone then I would certainly put this unit on the list to have a good look at before you decide.

VirtualBox 3.2 with OSX support is launched

2010-05-19T03:35:00.000-07:00

Having just upgraded to the latest version and tested with my Windows 7 virtual image on an Ubuntu 10.04 host, I can confirm that this release has hit many of it's targets for speed improvements, and the network and disk I/O are noticeable faster.

The ability to add CPU's on the fly to OSes - that support it - will also be useful to many users, as will the support of SAS disks. It worth noting that all traces of the Sun ownership is being removed and turned into Oracles branding, and I wonder how long this will remain free ;-).

It would appear that this is going to be a key component for them moving forward, which is not that surprising.

Unfortunately, the OSX support is only for Apple hardware officially,

Here are the release notes:

Performance

New Latest Intel hardware support – Harnessing the latest in chip-level support for virtualization, VirtualBox 3.2 supports new Intel Core i5 and i7 processor and Intel Xeon processor 5600 Series support for Unrestricted Guest Execution bringing faster boot times for everything from Windows to Solaris guests;

New Large Page support – Reducing the size and overhead of key system resources, Large Page support delivers increased performance by enabling faster lookups and shorter table creation times.

New In-hypervisor Networking – Significant optimization of the networking subsystem has reduced context switching between guests and host, increasing network throughput by up to 25%.

New New Storage I/O subsystem – VirtualBox 3.2 offers a completely re-worked virtual disk subsystem which utilizes asynchronous I/O to achieve high-performance whilst maintaining high data integrity;

New Remote Video Acceleration – The unique built-in VirtualBox Remote Display Protocol (VRDP), which is primarily used in virtual desktop infrastructure deployments, has been enhanced to deliver video acceleration. This delivers a rich user experience coupled with reduced computational expense, which is vital when servers are running hundreds of virtual machines;

Power

New Page Fusion – Traditional Page Sharing techniques have suffered from long and expensive cache construction as pages are scrutinized as candidates for de-duplication. Taking a smarter approach, VirtualBox Page Fusion uses intelligence in the guest virtual machine to determine much more rapidly and accurately those pages which can be eliminated thereby increasing the capacity or vm density of the system;

New Memory Ballooning – Ballooning provides another method to increase vm density by allowing the memory of one guest to be recouped and made available to others;

New Multiple Virtual Monitors – VirtualBox 3.2 now supports multi-headed virtual machines with up to 8 virtual monitors attached to a guest. Each virtual monitor can be a host window, or be mapped to the hosts physical monitors;

New Hot-plug CPU's – Modern operating systems such Windows Server 2008 x64 Data Center Edition or the latest Linux server platforms allow CPUs to be dynamically inserted into a system to provide incremental computing power while the system is running. Version 3.2 introduces support for Hot-plug vCPUs, allowing VirtualBox virtual machines to be given more power, with zero-downtime of the guest;

New Virtual SAS Controller – VirtualBox 3.2 now offers a virtual Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controller, enabling it to run the most demanding of high-end guests;

New Online Snapshot Merging – Snapshots are powerful but can eat up disk space and need to be pruned from time to time. Historically, machines have needed to be turned off to delete or merge snapshots but with VirtualBox 3.2 this operation can be done whilst the machines are running. This allows sophisticated system management with minimal interruption of operations;

New OVF Enhancements – VirtualBox has supported the OVF standard for virtual machine portability for some time. Now with 3.2, VirtualBox specific configuration data is also stored in the standard allowing richer virtual machine definitions without compromising portability;

New Guest Automation – The Guest Automation APIs allow host-based logic to drive operations in the guest;
Platforms

New USB Keyboard and Mouse – Support more guests that require USB input devices;

New Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 – Support for the latest version of Oracle's flagship Linux platform;

New Ubuntu 10.04 (“Lucid Lynx”) – Support for both the desktop and server version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution;

New Mac OS X – On Apple hardware only, support for creating virtual machines running Mac OS X.

Using Linux kernel KVM and Virtualbox virtualization on one machine with Ubuntu

2010-05-12T07:07:00.000-07:00

As I like to use many forms of virtualization to check out new features and tricks, as they are all different, then you can hit problems with the different kernel modules that get loaded at boot time. To solve this problem I have written this simple script to unload the Linux KVM modules when I wish to use Virtualbox, and then allow me to simply load them when I want to use KVM instead.

It also allows me to check if the modules are loaded, and uses a nice graphic password prompt as you have to execute this as a root user.

During testing I have found that loading the KVM modules while you have Virtualbox running is not the best of ideas, not surprisingly ;-)

Here is the script - I have had to split it up into two screen shots, otherwise I lose the formatting, which makes it harder to read.

Upgrading my Dell laptop to Ubuntu 10.04 couldn't have been easier

2010-04-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

After many successful test's with virtual machine upgrades from 9.10 to 10.04, I decided it was time to try it for real on my work laptop.

I made a few steps before I started the upgrade:

1) Made sure I had plenty of disk space for the new OS downloads
2) Made sure the machine was fully patched and upto date
3) Got ride of the old downloaded patch files by running this command at the command line
apt-get clean
4) Turned off all third party application repositories in "Software Sources". I turned them back on after the upgrade, making sure they now point to the new lucid area.
5) Stopped all applications , apart from Chromium , as I wanted to browse while the machine was busy.

Once all that was done, I just ran update-manager -d and let it do it's stuff. There were a couple of questions on the way, which I just selected the defaults and pressed "Forward/Next"

After about an hour , the Dell Inspiron 6400 was ready to reboot, which is what I did.

The first reboot took a little longer as it moved things into the correct position, and then there I was at the login screen. This is with my two monitor configuration working perfectly.

I have since re-enabled my third party repositories and done an update, and this post is coming from that machine.

I'm really liking Gwibber, I had it installed before, but it is better integrated with the whole OS now.

I would definitely give it a go before the mirrors get red hot with millions of your fellow Linux users trying to do the same.

Upgrading Ubuntu 9.10 to Ubuntu 10.04 in a virtual machine

2010-04-27T01:43:00.000-07:00

As you will know the next major long term release of Ubuntu is about to ship in 3 days time so I thought I would do a test upgrade to make sure all was working well and there were no real show stoppers. This is a controlled environment, so won't be exactly the same as a machine that has been in use for a while, but is none the less a good initial test. If it doesn't work here, then it is definitely not going to work on a machine that has been in use for a while.

So, I installed a 9.10 i386 desktop virtual machine , using Virtualbox 3.1.6 on an Ubuntu 9.10 host. See the pictures below. This has had the Virtualbox tools installed.

I then ran a complete update on the virtual machine to make sure the machine had the latest packages before starting the upgrade.

I then ran

update-manager -d

to start the upgrade process.

Once the process had completed, which took just over an hour with a very fast internet connection, I was able to selct to remove the now obsolete packages and complete the install.

I then re-installed the Virtualbox tools, as we now have a new kernel and the system was up and running without any issues and the Virtualbox tools were working as expected, see below.

So this does leave a really good feeling for all of my machine upgrades that will be taking place after the release of the final version on Thursday.

If you are new to operating system upgrades, then I can't recommend this process enough for making sure you are confident before doing it on your work machine.

Ubuntu 10.04 Release candidate is available

2010-04-23T00:58:00.001-07:00

Well the long awaited next release of Ubuntu Linux has now reached release candidate stage, which means baring any major issues found in the code now, this is what the final released version will be.

You can get it HERE

You can have a look at the release notes HERE

There are many new features, many of which are in the "Enterprise Cloud" area for building your own internal clouds , and enhanced virtualization support.

The desktop has seen many improvements, and is a definite step forward for desktop Linux, these include the first ever built in Music Store and cloud storage.

It is definitely worth a look.

ebook reader DRM hell - and why I hate DRM

2010-04-08T00:21:00.000-07:00

There have been many articles on the web over the years about DRM - digital rights management - putting forward both the pros and the cons of the technology. The basic premis is the copyright holders ability to make sure they get paid for their work, which is perfectly sensible and correct. DRM failed in spectacular fashion with the music industry, so that now every music download site you use does not have DRM enabled. The music industry is doing extremely well and selling billions of tracks, so the need for DRM has been completely disproved.

However, the books and video industries are going to have to go through the same learning curve and get rid of this stupid technology as it is a real barrier to people legally purchasing material.

Here is my little tale of woe , and bear in mind when I tell you this tale I have 25 years experience in the IT industry, goodness know's what some people would do if hit by the same problems.

I borrowed a friends Sony PRS-505 ebook reader to play with and see if I liked the idea, and I have to say that I do so far, apart from buying books for it. I visited the Waterstones ebook web site and bought an ebook, and this is when my problems started. I needed to install a piece of Windows software from Adobe - their DRM application - which does not work on Linux. So I brought up my Windows virtual machine and installed it there, no luck it couldn't see the ereader. Now , I had previously installed another ebook piece of software called Calibre which worked perfectly with ereader, so it was not obvious what the problem was, so off to the Adobe help pages.

The issue was that I had to not only install the Sony ereader software, but I also had to upgrade the firemware ( the program that makes the ereader work) before I could progress. I would think for a large percentage of the population this would be game over, and they would give up. Don't forget here that Calibre has been working perfectly from day one, and if I had been able to just download the file I had bought, I could have spent this wasted hour reading my book I had paid for.

You also need to bear in mind , that with any firmware upgrade, if you get it wrong, you can completely mess up your device, to the point it has to go back to the shop to be fixed.

I eventually got this all sorted and the file onto the ereader - Iain M Banks "Matter" by the way - and hopefully I should have no further issues, but what a mess and a complete waste of my time and effort. I spend hundreds, if not thousands of pounds a year on books, and this is just very annoying.

This is a real barrier to using this device , and I started to understand, but not agree with, why people just buy into Steve Jobs locked down proprietary hell with the Apple iPod,iPhone and iPad using iTunes as it all just works. This is not the way technology was meant to be, and it is a disgrace that our Governments have allowed the companies to visit this nonsense on us.

O'Reilly , the technology book sellers, have solved this problem with a far more elegant solution, they just put your name and details watermarked into everybook you download. At a stroke 99.99% of people are never going to allow their bought material onto the web, would you want your name splashed over every P2P network? I know I don't. You also wouldn't have to be a particularly clever lawyer to find out where it had come from either.

If anyone from Adobe or Waterstones ever reads this post, for goodness sakes re-think this stupid policy and just make it easy for your customers to buy your books. Go visit the O'Reilly site and look how they do it with their Safari library and you will be doing your customers a big favour.

New browser usage stats on W3counter show a huge rise in Linux and Chrome

2010-04-03T13:02:00.001-07:00

I like to keep an eye on what the internet statistic people produce on a monthly basis, so that when people try telling me that internet explorer still has 90% of the browser market, and Linux usage is less than 1% I can point them at some facts.

Well the stats are just in from the W3counter web site and they make for interesting reading on both counts.

Google Chrome/Chromium continues to take junks out of internet explorer usage, and most interestingly not at the expense of Firefox, which I find interesting. You see a lot of the people I know in the Linux community have switched to using Chromium, so it would indicate to me that Firefox is also continuing to take usage away from Microsoft.

Also very interesting reading was the large increase in the number of people who are know surfing the web using Linux between February and March. This amounts to not far off a 100% increase. This figure is bound to increase during this years, with the massive increase of people starting to use Android on their Tablets and phones etc.

Anyway, have a look for yourself, and make of them what you will. Statistics never tell the whole story, and this one set certainly will not tell us the real situation, but the trends are more significant, and there are some things like the decline of internet explorer which appears to be gathering pace. This could be explained by the European Union standing up to the monopolistic Behemoth and getting the browser option presented to every user. Why the Americans and the rest of the world is not offered this is quite beyond me.

W3counter stats

Creating the Ubuntu countdown banner for my site

2010-04-02T05:14:00.000-07:00

I couldn't wait for the official release of the countdown banner so I decided to use my own:

I looked at this site for the banner images https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/LucidCountdownBanners I would use.

Thanks to Immanuel Peratoner's Design, as I liked that one the best.

I then borrowed the javascript code from the countdown banner that was used for Ubuntu 9.10 and then modified it.

Here is the javascript that I'm using for the Ubuntu banner on my blog

IMPORTANT NOTE: - To get a good picture of the code I had to shorten the "document.write" line. Everything from the "alt" parameter on the line below should be moved back up onto the line above to make it complete again, I hope that makes sense.

For those of you with programming experience will notice that I have had to set the month variable manually which is odd, but it kept reporting it is still March (3).

Anyway, on Chromium installed on Ubuntu 9.10 32 bit , this now works perfectly, please let me know it doesn't for you.

A new age of reason is dawning thanks to prominent thinkers and the Internet

2010-04-01T23:40:00.000-07:00

Unless you have been living on Mars you will have noticed the many new books on the subject of atheism that are available to anyone who cares to open their minds and read them. I thought it was apropos during the Atheist week on Facebook, in itself not an unimportant event, to post a few of my own thoughts on what is making the change to the way we think about life and the meaning of the universe, and our place in it.

I read this blog post from a fellow atheist who has travelled down the road from Christian to non-believer and found that a lot of that story held true for myself. I would recommend spending a few minutes to give it a read as it is very interesting.

In all honesty I have wrestled with the concept of an omnipotent being for most of my life, moving from at some stages of extreme upset in my life - like the death of my father- of being a real theist, trying my damnedest to believe in the whole ten yards of the Bible, including the talking snake. More often than not I was more in the deist camp, where I was happy to believe in some cloud presence who didn't listen to your prayers but was responsible for the creation of the universe. It is the study of Biology as an interested amateur, which brought me into contact with the likes of Richard Dawkins books.

These books started the ball rolling with getting me really thinking about the fundamentals of our existence and where we come from, and once you start down this road, the fables of the old testament suddenly appear as shabby and as nonsensical as they have always been, but now you can see them for what they are. I put his lack of initial clarity down to my very Christian upbringing, and having the King James Bible stuffed down my throat from a very early age. It was ironically during one of my theist periods that I actually read the book from cover to cover, and had my eyes really opened to the nonsense I was wading through in the old testament.

I felt for too many years that it was a topic that should not be discussed, as it was easier not to , and to just confirm to anyone who asked, that I didn't believe in Adam and Eve anymore, but there must be a cloud person somewhere. I don't think this now, and the internet has helped - after a considerable amount of reading - cement my beliefs and thinking. This is due to not just the pro-atheist posts but more importantly the Christian and Muslim posts, that get more desperate and extreme with every day that passes. Too many apologists for religion just can't see how bigoted and entrenched they have become, to the point they are happy to fly planes into buildings and kill thousands of innocent people. The sad truth is, if you read the old testament, there are plenty of examples of horrendous killings and slaughter if you don't worship the right burning bush or golden idol. They have been given a mandate by this two thousand year old book of ramblings and the middle eastern Arabs who dreamt it all up. We used to believe in Alchemy and Phrenology, yet anyone with a brain now laughs at these, why should religion be any different.

It is well worth the time and effort to visit Pat Condell's site on youTube, not just to listen to his posts, which are interesting in themselves, but to watch the rebuttals , which in a lot of cases are even more illuminating.

With the many authors that you can now read on this subject and the easy access to the internet, there has never been a better time to question all of your beliefs and listen to and join the new age of reason.

An Ubuntu 10.04 virtual machine with Virtualbox on Ubuntu 9.10

2010-04-01T08:19:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure most of you do, I don't just jump to the latest versions of operating systems until I have had a good look at it before hand in a virtual machine. It doesn't completely guarantee that you wont have any problems with a bare metal installation, but it will give you a good understanding before you start.

The latest version of Virtualbox for Linux - 3.1.6 r59338 - arrived two days ago and the new virtual machine guest tools make it significantly more usable. The picture below shows that version.

This enables more fine grained testing of the Ubuntu 10.04 release with much better graphics and enhanced performance, all of which are gratefully received.

I would recommend downloaded this combination and having a look at the latest offering that is about to be delivered by the Ubuntu community as it's going to be a good one.

Ubuntu 10.04 beta
Virtualbox

Ubuntu 10.04 beta 1 disk utility improvements

2010-03-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you have read on the web about the many improvments that the next release of Ubuntu is going to bring to the Linux desktop that include:

Really fast boot speeds
Openoffice 3.2
Firefox 3.6
Ubuntu One cloud disk storage
Ubuntu One Music store
New fonts, themes and window layouts
Support for iPhones
New versions of all the main components of the desktop

There is one utility that has had a upgrade in the user interface, and it really works for the better, and that is the disk management utility.

If you look at the picture above you will see a really streamlined user interface which gives you a very modern feel about the tool and offers al lthe information 99% of most users will ever need , and all the commands easily position there to help.

You can now mount/umount a drive, format, edit, benchmark and delete all from a very readable and approachable interface. You can see at a glance what filesystem a drive is using and how it is split up into it's various partitions.

You also get a really decent view of the disk controller hardware that is installed on you box.

This will not change the world by itself, but it shows that it is not just the headline applications that have been given the once over for this release, and they all fit together to make this as user friendly as possible.

VMware Workstation 7.1 beta

2010-03-19T02:53:00.000-07:00

I have just started beta testing VMware workstation 7.1 on Ubuntu 9.10 and have found that performance is not all that it should be. To be fair several other better testers have also discovered this , and the VMware team have started the investigation to get this fixed.

I have successfully installed the Alpha 3 version of Ubuntu 10.04 to test this release, and although some of the VMware tools did not work perfectly, I was able to bring up the virtual machine and have an initial look at the new OS.

Anyway, here is a list of the changes that are taking place for the new release.

The VMware Workstation 7.1 Beta includes several new features and hundreds of minor improvements. Some release highlights include:

OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Vista guests: The addition of hardware accelerated OpenGL 2.1 support to the WDDM driver enables many more graphics applications to run inside of your virtual machines.

Improved graphics performance: Significant enhancements have been made to the VMware WDDM driver that have produced benchmark results that are up to 80% faster. The updated driver also produces smoother video playback and addresses many reported rendering issues. Of course games run better as well!

8-way SMP support plus virtual disks up to 2TB in size: The virtual hardware continues to become more powerful to meet the needs of Workstation customers who are running server class applications.

OVF 1.0 support: Including the OVF Tool with this release enables users to easily import or export virtual machines and vApps and move them to vSphere or up into the cloud.

Direct Launch: Blur the distinction between running native and virtual applications by launching an application installed in a virtual machine directly from the start menu or taskbar of the host system.

Automatic software updates: These VMware applications can now detect when a new version is released and are able to update at the click of a button.

Fedora 12 virtual machines: We are excited about finally offering support for running one of the most popular Linux distributions on the planet!

Why I love environmentally friendly cars

2010-03-16T01:35:00.000-07:00

Alas, you may be thinking that I have turned into a tree hugging Greenpeace activist, but the truth is a lot more selfish I'm afraid, let me explain.

While I was walking to work this morning down the lovely tree lined road called Hammersmith Grove - which you might note is very environmentally friendly , I noticed just how many fuel efficient vehicles there where running around. They came in all shapes and sizes, like the Gwiz, Toyota Prius, Swatch Smart car and loads of little scooters. They all run on electricity and steam apparently , so not consuming loads of petrol, and this is the marvelous part of this process. I'm sure it is good for the flowers and trees that surround this area, but it also leaves significantly more petrol for my 4.2 Ltr V8 supercharged Jaguar. Now , I can't claim at any level that she is environmentally friendly in the fuel using stakes, but she certainly brings a smile to my face on nice Sunday afternoons whizzing down the beautiful country roads of France.

Anyone who knows me , will have concluded long ago that I'm a bit of a petrol head, and have owned a range of vehicles, which include everything from a Yamaha FS1E moped at age sixteen to a 6ltr V12 XJS Jaguar, and pretty much everything in between.

So, as I see it , this is a very equitable arrangement, in that people who worry about these things can run around looking particularly smug in their Duracell powered mobile shopping market trolleys , while leaving all that lovely petrol for me to use in my Jag. If you have ever owned a car like this, then you will know just how much they love that black gold. In fact when I take her for a spin on the weekend, she drinks petrol like a Jaguar who has not seen a watering hole for the last fortnight. Which is good for the French exchequer if not my bank balance.

I'm absolutely positive this is not a Politically Correct thing to do or think, but since when did that bother me ;-).

Some issues while Checking Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 Alpha 3 in Virtualbox

2010-03-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

I have been keeping up with the latest development builds of what will become Ubuntu 10.04 and all has been going reasonably well until the latest kernel install today. It appears that some of the code has been pack-ported from the latest upstream kernel - 2.6.33 - to the latest kernel in lucid - 2.6.32-16 - and it is causing an issue with Virtualbox.

After checking the forums, there is a kernel patch to fix this - see here

Basically, you need to edit this file -

/usr/src/vboxvideo-3.1.4/vboxvideo_drm.c

This code is installed with the Virtualbox tools that you must install before this file will be appear on the hard disk.

See the picture below:

Once you have edited this file and saved it , run the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup

This will stop the problems with kernel crashes and the graphics not working correctly.

If you are also having problems with the mouse disappearing, then you need to turn off the visual affects in

Menu -> System -> Preferences -> Appearance

Set it to none, and the mouse will come back to life.

This is shaping up to be a great release, and once a few rough edges have been removed it will be an extremely useful addition to the ubuntu family.

Chrome shoots to number 2 in my blog viewing figures.

2010-02-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

My Blogs visitor browser stats
Now, we must get the caveats out of the way first:
1) I know my blog is Linux/open source oriented
2) This is a very small sample set and number of users
3) I'm sure absolutely positive that other sites could have their views slued depending on the subject matter.

However, I have been using Google Analytics to keep an eye on my blog since I started it, and without fail the order of browsers visiting my site has always been Firefox first and Microsoft Internet explorer second, but not anymore. Google Chrome has moved into second place by some margin as you can see above.

In the grand scheme of the computing universe this is probably not that significant, but I have definitely seen a shift in the visitors browsers who come to this blog, which in combination with other statistics flying around the web does show a shift in peoples attitude to switching their browser.

Ubuntu 10.04 alpha has added many latest versions of it's software components

2010-02-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

I have just run up my Virtualbox virtual machine image of Ubuntu 10.04 - Lucid - to see what if anything had changed in the last week, and it most definitely has. So, we must give 10/10 to the software packagers working on Lucid who have worked extremely hard to incorporate the latest releases.

We now have the only just released Openoffice 3.2 , which will be a big win for this release of Ubuntu given the massive speed improvements and extra compatibility. There is no doubt that this software is of core importance on many desktops, as I use it on a daily basis.

Mozilla Firefox has also now been bumped up to the lastest 3.6 release, which also adds performance increases to the browser experience, and with Google Chrome in the software repository this release is going to be well supported for web browsing. I admit I would have liked to have seen Google Chrome or even Chromium installed along side, but I guess it's not that hard for people to install it now.

The kernel has been moved to 2.6.32-13, which includes several improvements, and far to many to list here.

Gnome itself has moved to the latest series 2 release - 2.29.2 - so as predicted there is no sign of Gnome 3 or Gnome-shell. This is not surprising as these will change the way people work with OS, and can't be done lightly.

It's worth noting that currently the rumoured removal of Gimp from the default install and the switch from Google search within the Firefox search box to Yahoo(Bing) has not taken place. These changes may well occur in later releases but I will be keeping an eye out for that.

The boot speed has improved in the virtual environment, but it is too early to say if this wil hit the desire of a 10sec boot on an SSD based machine.

Wow , Openoffice 3.2 is extremely fast on Ubuntu 9.10

2010-02-12T00:19:00.000-08:00

I have been using Openoffice for years, and while it's compatibility has always been good with other office products, speed has never been one of it's strong suites, but boy has that all changed with this latest release. When you click on the menu item to start the application, even on a machine that is busy, as mine always are, it is near as damn it instantly there. Now you can't get much better than that.

I will also comment that the last release - 3.1.1 - had made moves to getting faster anyway, so it is obviously something the dev's have been looking at.

On Ubuntu it has not made it into the standard repositories to install, so you have to do it manually, which really isn't that dificult.

Basically go to the Openoffice web site HERE and grab the file that contains all the installation files.

Untar this file into your home directories tmp directory and then from a command line change into the directory it creates, which in out case is the DEB's directory and run the command shown below, simples as the Meerkat says ;-)

Now, as we already have Openoffice 3.1.1 installed, setting up an icon to access the program is slightly harder, if you don't remove that version first. I didn't as I wanted to keep both around for now.

So you need to right click on your Applications menu on the task panel, and add a link to the new application manually, like so.

Enjoy

Chromium adds a slew of new security features to Chromium

2010-02-11T00:51:00.000-08:00

While looking through the latest improvements to the latest daily release of Chromium I noticed a whole new page of security management.

Now I have been reading some very foolish and childish FUD around the web about how chromium calls back to the mother ship and tells Google about everything you have ever done and what you are currently drinking. I have have always know this is nonsense, and you can control exactly what goes where if you have more than two brain cells available to you. Just switching in privacy mode is just one such option open to you.

This new screen allows you to control what happens with your cookies,images,Javascript,Plug-ins and Pop-ups, that's right you can tell Chromium never to allow pop-ups. I know Firefox has had most of these for a long time, and they could be more granular, but it really is a great step forward in controlling what your browser can and can't allow.

One other nice touch is the ability to control your Adobe flash plug-in settings which also allows you to protect yourself against some of the new breed of Flash plug-in exploits.

Yes this is a great step forward and one warmly welcomed here.

Is cloud computing really that new and original

2010-02-06T06:29:00.000-08:00

I have been working in IT for more years than I care to remember, but it seems that if you wait around long enough, technologies that I have used before, suddenly become the flavour of the month and re-appear with smart presentations from slick young people in nicely tailored suits to tell us all how different it all is this time.

This happened with virtualization, where if you are brutally honest , the only key difference to what IBM were doing decades ago, was that the technologists got it to run on the Intel architecture, with all it's horribly legacy memory management et al.

So to the cloud, which in essence is the ability to leverage the power and storage of a remote machine to achieve the task's that you were used to doing locally, sound familiar, it certainly does to me. Literally decades ago people used to share resources on an IBM mainframe to run their payroll or business finance systems, which would be physically a long way away - people couldn't afford their own mainframes - and people would attach via modems and dumb terminals.

This is exactly what we are moving towards with the concept of the "Cloud is the machine". The local device can become significantly less powerful as all the real processing of the services is done remotely. This leads to much cheaper consumer devices, whether they be phones, iPads or netbooks. The services that people also want to use today are also becoming more and more central service orientated, things like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, Email, Instant Messaging etc.

I now their are many new technologies like HTML5 and improved Javascript performance that will improve the ability of the clients to do some work locally, but they are not going to be over tasked. The new breed of Intel Atom and ARM processors will be more than powerful enough to cope with the enhanced new GPU's that are appearing almost daily.

There will always be some tasks that are best suited to having a large powerful computer locally as their are many tasks that don't virtualize well, but we are talking about a small percentage for many users who today in 2010 consider the net to be the reason for owning a computer in the first place.

Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 2 installs more quickly into virtualbox VM

2010-01-18T06:16:00.000-08:00

After installing the alpha 1 version of the next release of Ubuntu, which did take a long time, the latest release , alpha 2 is as smooth as silk, and considerably quicker. The actual installation process is much the same as 9.10, and in fact most of the screens still show 9.10 as the version ;-)

After an initial quick look around the only major difference I can find is the introduction of the new video editing software - Pitivi - by default, but gimp is still present even though it has been rumoured that is was to replace it.

See below:

One nice feature, is that with this version the Virtualbox tools are auto-detected when you click to install them, and Ubuntu auto-installs them once you have given the correct password. This is a very neat touch and brings Ubuntu fully in-line with the sort of auto-magical installs that happens with Mac OSX and Windows.

The other noticeable new feature is speed, this virtual machine boots to the login prompt incredibly quickly, and as the development cycle continues I can only see this getting faster, it will be a feature. The standard use of Ext4 and the reduction in daemons started at initial boot is bound to impact this.

Trains, Planes and auto-mobiles, a tale of an amusing journey.

2010-01-01T03:03:00.001-08:00

This actually happened a couple of weeks ago now, put this is the first chance I have had to upload it.

As you all know I spend most of life either in a car, train or plane rushing back and forth from my personal vineyard, otherwise know as the Loire Valley. Well if you think you have had a bad Friday commute, I'm about to make you feel a whole lot better.

The journey started well enough with a brisk and on-time tube ride from Hammersmith in London to St Pancras to catch the train to Luton airport. I completely missed the sign's at St Pancras and got on the wrong platform to watch the train I wanted depart on the other side. Oh well . I had given myself plenty of time to get there, so I got on the next one. I arrived at Luton airport via a bendybus transfer to find that the Easyjet flight was late, and it got later. The delays seemed to be down to people having 38 pieces of carry on luggage and the staff having to fight and pull them from the clasped fingers of the frightened passengers who were obviously worried they would never see them again. It is worth noting , that with all their surly staff, grubby planes and £48 bottles of Chateaux le Turd , Ryanair have only ever once been late for me. Easyjet on the other hand, have friendly helpful staff, with drinks that don't strip paint as a side line, but are always late. I must factor this in for future adventures.

Anyway, I had allowed plenty of time to get from Charles des Gaules airport to Mont Parnasse to catch the TGV to Poitiers, but Easyjet had taken most of that away, so as my RER train from Charles des Gaules pulled off with all the speed of a dead tortuise I knew I would be about 1 minute late for the connection, and I was right. So not a problem, I can catch the next one. Ooops that is at 6:50 tomorrow morning, great. Car hire booths had long been abandoned and the cafe owners are staring at me as if I had leprosy and serving me with a beer might cost them their lives. There is always something intrinsically annoying about service companies that want your money, but really don't actually want anything to do with you. I digress.

What to do, grab some cardboard and make like a hobo , find a Parisian absynth den and drink myself into next week, or get an hotel? I'm an old fart so I plumbed for the later, though it was a close run thing to the drinking den. I grabbed a copy of the local hotel guide and rang three hotels, all full, this is going really well. I decided that even if it meant sleeping on the Champs-Elysees in the most expensive hotel in Paris, I wanted some rest. I walked out of the station , straight into the nearest bar to gather my strengh. I chatted to the barman who explained their was a great "little" hotel Ibis just around the corner, so after a few more Stella's I thought I would give it a go. The extremely friendly and helpful Portuguese receptionist explained they had a cupboard at the top of the building which they kept especially for tired, hungry and dishevelled Anglais travellers. I was so pleased, I would have happily slept with the ironing boards. To be fair, it was just larger than a cupboard, but only just, the bed folded down out of the wall, and then their was no room anymore. It was truely a miracle of modern hoteliers ability to squeeze every last euro out of the modern traveller. The receptionist told me that the room had a tiny balcony with a great view of the Eiffel Tower, she wasn't lying, but she did fail to mention that you needed to lean out over the balcony, 200 feet up, to see the pretty lights. It was beautiful to be fair , if death defyingly dangerous on inspection this morning. The things that Stella makes me do....

Today, here I am on the 6:50 to Bordeaux travelling at what feels like an alarming speed towards Poitiers to grab my car, and hopefully I will be home in time for lunch! I have learnt a few things this weekend about travelling through Paris. Never trust Easyjet timetables, they are just vague estimations of which year you might arrive in, put up with the chavs on the Ryanair flights, they may be cruddy but they do get you there on time. If you need a cupboard for the night in Paris, look like a lost British soul and the Portuguese receptionist will sort you out, preferably with a view of the leaning tower of Eiffel. When you find a bar that will serve you beer near the train station, amuse yourself looking at your fellow drinkers as they truely will be a motley crew. The music blasting out from the poor quality hifi, will also bring a smile to your face. You never know how lucky we are to have the great music we do in Britain, until you start listening to the French chart toppers, a sort of reggae/punk fusion with lots of accoustic guitar and ballads.

Bon voyage.

Google Chrome Extensions: Blog This! (by Google)

2009-12-25T22:41:00.000-08:00

Google Chrome Extensions: Blog This! (by Google)

I know the Google community have been working hard on many new features for the browser, and in particular is an attempt to emulate the success of Firefox with their extensions.

Well here is one extension that I find is particularly useful, and will keep an eye on it's development over the coming months, as it is still missing a couple of key components like tagging and adding pictures, but I'm sure that this will come shortly.

Even in it's current form it is useful, and it allows you to blog on something that you stumble across on the web.

There are now many useful extensions in the Google repository , not anywhere near as many as in the Firefox library, but already significantly more than other popular browsers.

I also use the book mark syncing utility that is built into Chromium rather than the Linux Beta Chrome, and combined with the extensions you have a very powerful browser and feature complete browser.

Hope you find this extension useful.

How to set up your own conference room with Pidgin/XMPP/jabber and Gtalk

2009-12-23T00:22:00.000-08:00

While reading through the protocol documentation for the pidgin XMPP implementation, this protocol is the one used for Jabber and Gtalk instant messaging, I came across this easy to follow guide.

How to set up a conference.
Select "Join a Chat" from the buddy list's "Buddies" menu.

Select your XMPP account. - this will be your Gtalk/Jabber account

Fill in the following fields you see.
"Room" should be the short name of the conference. For example, "myconference"
"Server" is the server on which the conference will be created. It must be a MUC server, such as conference.jabber.org. The chat's ID will be Room@server, so the example "myconference" would have the id "myconference@….
"Handle" is the name you wish to be displayed in the chat. It is similar in concept to a nickname on IRC.
"Password" is optional for creating a new room. You probably don't want to fill this field in.
Click "Join."
You will see a dialog asking you about creating the new room. You can either accept the default configuration or configure the room, at your option.

I would recommend just selecting the default to start. Voila you now have conference room you can set up for your family and friends.

I did this using Ubuntu Linux, but Pidgin is cross platform, as is XMPP, so it really doesn't matter what operating system you use.

The Christmas Elves have been busy over at Mozilla towers

2009-12-21T05:42:00.000-08:00

I think one of the really bright spots for Linux in 2009 has been the increase in quality browsers for the platform, and at the turn of the year the pace of change and development doesn't appear to have slowed one bit.

We have just had the Beta version of Google Chrome release to the world, and packages are already available for many distributions.

Now Mozilla have not been standing still, and their next release 3.6 has just had a new beta released, and with it the ability to easily integrate the Mozilla personas, basically themes for your browser. Mozilla Personas

I also stumbled across a post on the latest and greatest new features that are going into version 3.7, and one of those, has been in Chromium from the start, and that is tab process separation, which means if one tab freezes the browser won't.

You can only do this with version 3.7, and this how you do it:

type about:config

and then type

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled

and make sure it is set to true.

It works, and I'm playing with it now, so time will tell how stable it is. The smart move from the Mozilla guys, was to use a lot of the code from the Chromium project, so not re-inventing the wheel, wize move.

I'm looking forward to the renewed competition in the new year, as the main beneficiaries are the linux browser community.

Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 1 in a virtualbox VM

2009-12-11T05:17:00.000-08:00

After the release yesterday of the first Alpha build of what will become Ubuntu 10.04, I downloaded the iso CD image and installed it into a Virtualbox virtual machine.

The first thing to note is that the installation process was extremely slow on a Dell 6400 , with 4 GB of RAM on a base operating system of x86 Ubuntu 9.10. So if you do this, be patient , as it will look like the install has stalled, but it hasn't, it's just thinking about it ;-)

Once installed, the process is identical to the previous version, karmic, and it went without a hitch. It booted fine as the pictures below show.

Looking around breifly shows that it has been bumped to the latest 2.6.32-7 kernel, and the usual suspects have been upgraded, like Gnome and KDE.

There is one new feature on the system tool menu bar which is byubo, which offers system information at the bottom of a terminal screen. The application store has disappeared, but I suspect that it is getting a major overhaul for the next release, so it is just not ready for this version. I fully expect the Ubuntu team to spend a lot of time on developing this , as it could well be a massive revenue earner for them moving forward, along with Ubuntu one their cloud based disk storage offering.

Anyway, you can download it from here --> Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 1

Google chrome is released as a beta on Linux and Mac and it is good

2009-12-10T06:34:00.000-08:00

As you will have read I have been following the builds of Chromium since they were first released, and have worked with the alpha code and helped find the odd bug or two. The one key thing to note is that yes there have been some bugs, what alpha doesn't have them, but a lot less that you would expect. I have used alpha versions of other products which are basically completely unusable. Chromium has been usable since the first release.

I suppose not surprisingly some of the biggest issues that have faced the development team have been the integration of the plugins we all use and the fact on Linux alone we have two main desktop GUI infrastructures. I'm writing this post from the latest daily build of Chromium, and although this is the development version, it is working perfectly.

The Chrome beta build doesn't currently support bookmark syncing, which is why I'm sticking with Chromium, however with xmarks now in the extensions library this is really not a big issue for many users. It may also be worth looking at xmarks if you use Firefox and Chrome on multiple platforms as your life will get a lot easier.The key point is that Chrome now has it's own extensions library and this is only going to exploded as new services are added.

The Google chrome beta is stable and extremely fast, as it has always been. The only major issue that I'm really aware of on the Linux platform is the lack of ability to automagically launch pdf files when you hit them on the web. The flash and other plugins work fine on my Ubuntu desktops, both 32 and 64 bit versions.

This is yet another step on the road to a full release of Chrome for Linux and of course a lot of this work will filter into the ChromeOS that will launch on new hardware next year. I can't wait to get my hands of one of the new machines, as I think for ultra potable devices they are going to be extremely useful.

Anyway, the installation information is there for Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora and Suse so there is no excuse not to have a play and see what all the fuss is about.

Chromium Beta on Linux

Guake is a great add-on to desktop Linux

2009-12-03T06:17:00.002-08:00

If like me you are always needing to get to the command often to change settings or have a nose around, then there is a great add-on for Linux desktops called Guake. As the name suggest's the development for this fell out of the quake game code, and it was used to talk to other players.

It is very easy to install on Ubuntu, and I have no doubt there will be rpm's for Fedora and Suse.

To install on Ubuntu 9.10 just type this:

sudo apt-get install guake

Once it is finished, start it from the Applications-Accessories menu. To use it from then on, just press F12, and you will see this:

Managing Jumpbox virtual machines with Redhat Enterprise

2009-12-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

I have long run the great Jumpbox virtual machines with Redhat EL 5 and Xen, but they have always had a different start up process to other machines, as the configuration file is slightly different.

I decided it would be much neater to control all the Xen based virtual machines with virt-manager, the GUI VM management tool supplied with RH5.4

It was a lot easier to do than I thought, basically I created a fully virtualized machine, with a phoney disk image. It is important to remember that the jumpbox VM's are not paravirtualized, and use qemu for their device's.

Now all I had to do was open the file that virt-manager had created in the /etc/xen sub-directory and edit it.

I changed the MAC address of the virtual NIC to that it was intended to be, and changed the virtual disk images that it pointed too.

The full file is below , and shows all the important parts. Voila , it run's like a charm and is now just another Xen virtual image that I can manage with the standard tools.

name = "fs-wiki"
uuid = "2d10f9db-a6df-ce50-c2b0-8255d80af734"
maxmem = 512
memory = 512
vcpus = 1
builder = "hvm"
kernel = "/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader"
boot = "c"
pae = 1
acpi = 1
apic = 1
localtime = 0
on_poweroff = "destroy"
on_reboot = "restart"
on_crash = "restart"
device_model = "/usr/lib64/xen/bin/qemu-dm"
sdl = 0
vnc = 1
vncunused = 1
keymap = "en-gb"
disk = [ "file:/var/lib/xen/images/moinmoin-1.1.9/disks/root/root.hdd,hda,w", "file:/var/lib/xen/images/moinmoin-1.1.9/disks/data/data.xen,hdb,w", ",hdc:cdrom,r" ]
vif = [ "mac=00:16:3e:16:d2:24,bridge=xenbr0,script=vif-bridge,vifname=vif12.0" ]
parallel = "none"
serial = "pty"

Using a Xen virtual appliance to manage your VMware servers

2009-11-30T23:32:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about virtualization is the amount of money you can save companies, not just in hardware costs, but also the on going costs of keeping machines in a data centre and a rack, and feeding them with power and air conditioning.

Well, I built several ESXi servers for the current bank balance filling company, and they needed an easy and affordable way to manage them on the cheap. Now, I have always thought that VMware workstation is very affordable, so I built a Vmware virtual appliance to look after the servers with Vmware vSphere client. This however proved too expensive for them and they wanted something at zero cost to the company.

It is obvious that the management virtual appliance has to be on a different virtual infrastructure to that which it is supporting, so I built another virtual appliance , this time on our Xen server. As the virtual appliance has to be built with windows XP as it's base and then security hardened, the Xen server has to have the Intel processor enhancements turned on in the BIOS, otherwise it just won't fly.

The Xen server is based on RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.4, which comes with a lot of enhancements to the virtual machine management program - virt-manager, and it is very straight forward now to configure new virtual machines.

All I had to do to allow remote management of this appliance was to turn on the terminal services process within XP, and now people can use the "remote desktop connection" program to access this VM and control the ESXi servers using vSphere client.

Xen offers great performance, and this solution works really well, and didn't cost a penny.

Playing with Google Chome OS in a virtual machine

2009-11-22T02:17:00.000-08:00

After watching the Google announcement on Thursday, I decided to build a virtual machine and compile the operating system from source. I used an Ubuntu 9.10 virtual machine , as that is what they recommend, and then followed the build instructions from the developers web site. Eventually after an hour or so of compiling , it spits out an image you can put on a USB stick.

I then booted another virtual machine from this USB stick and built the following image. You log in with your Google account and away you go. I have to say considering this is an alpha release, it works and is not that slow to have a look at. I'm really enjoying the chess game, it really shows what can be done on this platform, and anyone who thinks this OS is just going to stay on netbooks is deluding themsleves.

I would have to say, that unless you like playing with the source code, which I do, then there are lots of people publishing pre-built virtual images for you to play with, and that would be a lot easier way just to have a look. If you do want to do the compiling yourself, then here is the link - building Chrome OS from source

Here's the screen shot:

Chrome OS built from Source

Here is the demo.

If you want real virtual speed with your Jumpbox appliances use Xen not ESXi

2009-11-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

As you will have seen on my blog recently we had a situation that meant I had to move one of our Jumpbox virtual appliances from a failed Xen server to a new ESXi server. Now these servers are exactly the same specification, HP DL380 G5 with 32GB RAM and 2 x Dual Core Intel Xeon CPU's , so not exactly supercomputers, but more than enougth to do what we want with them.

Well here is the thing, Jumpbox say that VMware are one of their main supported platforms and , Tier 1 partners I think they call it, and open source Xen is Tier 3. So how come then the virtual appliance runs significantly faster on Redhat Enterprise than it does on Vmware ESXi? When I say significantly, I'm not joking. The virtual appliance is the moinmoin wiki. On the ESXi platform trying to edit a post is painfully slow, 30 seconds to open the editor. On Xen it is 1-2 seconds at most, so I don't need a stop watch to see something is wrong.

I have gone through the settings for the Vmware server, something I don't have to do with Xen, and given it garanteed resources and CPU power, no difference. I could, if I fancied wasting a small part of my life, investigate the Advanced settings for the ESXi server, but again why would I when with Xen it just flys?

I don't know the answer thats for sure, and especially when you know that the Jumpbox appliance is running with the QEMU hardware emulator on Xen, as it's not para-virtualized! Emulators as I'm sure you know are not supposed to be that fast.

I think I'm going to chat to Jumpbox about this, as it really does seem odd. The only thing that may have affected the performacne is the fact that I had to migrate the appliance to ESX format from Server format, but surely once this process is completed the virtual image should be good to go.

Google Chrome OS is alive and open to the community to develop

2009-11-19T15:24:00.000-08:00

I sat and watched the webinar this evening that launched Google Chrome OS into the wild at Google's headquarters in California.The news about their new web centric operating system is very good indeed, and they truly have thought the concept through.

Now, I'm sure the open source community will take this rough diamond and turn it into a beautiful gem, but what has already been shown is interesting enough. The system is building upon the great work of many very successful open source projects like the Linux kernel, Ubuntu, Moblin, Webkit and of course Chromium. Once the system is booted and running, you wouldn't notice a difference between running the Chromium browser in full screen mode, which I'm doing now to type this. It is this envelope use of the browser to drive the whole experience which is new and cutting edge.

The new system will be free to download and install on any system, but is being aimed at a set of reference hardware that will have 100% compatibility out of the box , and is going to be offered by several major hardware manufacturers at launch.
This bringing together of the hardware and software offers major advantages, as Apple have found, so that the whole experience just works. They have also written there own BIOS, which again will work well with the other components.

Google have also thought long and hard about security which is designed into the system from the ground floor, with multiple layers of sandbox, to protect running applications, and the fact the OS checks for updates at boot. The speed to get to the browser has also been addressed and is a matter of seconds, so the whole suspend/hibernate cludge disappears in a cloud of blistering fast bits.

The number of applications with the new native client - think of Google gears on steroids - will be virtually infinite, and the ability of Google to create and grow a web store has already been proven with the fly away success of Android. If I were a web based developer, I know where I would be investing my energies over the next twelve months, as this could be a gold mine.

I have loved the Chromium browser since it arrived, warts and all, and I have no doubt that this new OS will find a place on my netbook. I agree with the usage profile discussed at the launch, and it is unlikely to replace Ubuntu on my laptop anytime soon, but my netbook is crying out for this.

To use a phrase that this launch fits well, the operating system has just evolved.

Mozilla Weave sync application heads towards version 1.0 release

2009-11-18T23:59:00.001-08:00

After updating this extension for Firefox this morning I noticed the following information from the Weave team

"Latest Weave Update
Weave 1.0 beta 1 was released on November 16th, 2009

* Improved Firefox preference integration with sync direction choice on first-connect
* Fixed issue with connecting on Fennec 1.0b5
* Added an automatic on-demand sync if many changes are detected
* More comprehensive history sync (initially and continuously)
* Many added bugfixes

Release Notes

1. Upgrade all your clients to the latest version
If you are using Weave Sync on multiple computers, you will need to update all of them to the latest version. Weave Sync requires that you use the same version of the addon on all your computers that you want to synchronize data to/from.
2. Syncing tabs across multiple devices requires configuration
If you are using Weave Sync on only one computer, it will not sync your tabs. After you install Weave Sync on any additional computers, you can enable tabs sync. To do so, on your original computers, open Weave Preferences and ensure the "Weave will" option is set to Sync Everything. Force a sync by choosing Sync Now on all of your computers and you should now see tabs syncing.
3. Server APIs
For this version of Sync, Mozilla no longer supports the old database and server API versions (i.e. before 1.0). You will be unable to use any version of the Sync extension that is before 1.0 beta 1 with the Mozilla servers.
4. Hosting Your Own
If you are hosting your own Weave server, you’ll need to add an apache alias line for the 1.0 URL – your old server will still handle the same API "

It is worth noting that with this release you will need to update all your clients as they have obviously changed some components in the backend.

This is a great extension for Firefox, and I hope that the Chromium bookmark sync version will eventually offer the range of features that this does.

Extensions coming soon to Chromium on Linux so they are now telling us

2009-11-18T08:20:00.001-08:00

The screen shot below says it all.

Extensions library

The launch of this may be timed with the big announcements coming tomorrow from the Googleplex or maybe it is completely unconnected, but all will be revealed tomorrow no doubt.

Google community looks ready to launch a new extensions site

2009-11-16T12:45:00.001-08:00

With the latest builds of Chromium on Linux there is a new link that has appeared which is similar to the curtain for the themes that are now available.

At the moment it takes you to a Google search screen, but it is obviously limbering up to offer a whole new site full of Chrome extensions. To be fair, Firefox is not going to have to worry too much for the immediate future as they already have thousands of excellent extensions, and it will literally take years to get to that level.

Here is the link.

Bookmark syncing arrives for Google Chromium on Linux

2009-11-16T00:15:00.000-08:00

I have long talked about the advantages of Mozilla Weave and how you can securely keep you browsing information in a cloud based repository so that it can move with you where ever you decide to do your browsing. This is extremely useful and saves having lots of different bookmarks on different computers.

Well the ability has now arrived for Chromium, and it is built into the browser rather than an add-on like Weave. To enable it you need to call the browser with the

--enable-sync

setting, and it will appear in the wrench menu, see below.

Chromium sync options

The Chromium version works in a completely different manner to Weave in that once you have authenticated your Google account information your bookmarks are stored in your Google docs area as a folder. This does have the advantage that you can easily share your bookmarks with friends and family if you wanted.

This facility doesn't offer the full range of choices that the Mozilla Weave does, but it is the first iteration and I'm sure this will be developed further.

You can check the status of your synchronisation in the options menu, again see below.

Firefox 3.6 adds performance and some nice new touches

2009-11-14T22:01:00.000-08:00

As the battle for functionality rages between Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome and Opera on the Linux desktop, the features list and performance improvements just keep coming. The latest version of the javascript engine in FF 3.6 offers a supposedly 15% increase, and it does indeed seem faster on my Dell XPS 1330 with Ubuntu 9.10 64bit version.

One of the nice new touches you can have with the latest releases of the 3.6 version of Firefox is the tab preview window, see the picture below. Now at the moment there is not an easy way to turn this on, but just follow these simple steps.

1) open a new tab with CTRL-T and type in the address bar about:config

2) Press the "I'll be careful" button

3) Type this into the selection bar - "browser.ctrlTab.previews"

4) Double click on the item when it appears to turn it from false to true - it will enbolden.

5) Re-start Firefox

6) Press CTRL-TAB to see your tab previews.

This is similar to the nice feature in Chromium that you see when you open a new tab, Opera also offers a tab preview by dragging the tab window.

Give the Beta a try and see what you think.

Firefox 3.6 tab preview enabled

Upgrading VMware tools in your Jumpbox virtual appliance

2009-11-12T11:27:00.000-08:00

If you migrate a Jumpbox virtual appliance between virtual hosts, for instance, form a VMware Server or VMware workstation to an ESXi server, the already installed configs and installed drivers maybe out of date or the wrong version, and the management screens will complain and let you know about it. This is very easily cured.

Firstly , make sure you have ssh enabled on your virtual machine, and log in as root or admin. Once logged in, go back to your management application, which for ESXi will be the vSphere Client, and select the virtual machine and select install vmware tools from the right button click on that virtual appliance.

This will have effectively mount an iso with the files on, which you must now mount from your ssh terminal window using a command like this:

mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom - (you may need to create that directory)

They move into that directory and cp the file VMwareTools-4......(whatever).tar.gz to say /tmp

Go into /tmp and untar the above file, and then move into the directory it creates.

Run the following command and hit enter when asked, after reading the output, but for a standard Jumpbox, just hitting enter will do:

./vmware-install.pl

At the end of the process you can either reboot the virtual machine, or type in the following command:

/etc/init.d/networking stop; rmmod pcnet32; rmmod vmxnet; modprobe vmxnet; /etc/init.d/networking start

Make sure you have the semi colons and type it all on one line.

Voila, you now have the latest vmware tools, which means you are running the optimum networking drivers which is important for performance

Moving a Jumpbox virtual appliance from Xen to VMware ESX

2009-11-12T09:51:00.000-08:00

We had a server failure here yesterday , which was a standalone Redhat Xen virtual server with a few non critical applications on, thus the single server. While we were waiting for HP to get a new motherboard delivered I decided we needed to get our Wiki back and running quickly, and the only available virtual server was one running VMware ESXi.

When you download a Jumpbox appliance it comes ready to run on several types of virtual environment, but VMware ESX is not one of them. It happily supports VMware workstation or server, but the filesystem on ESX is different.

There are two ways to convert the virtual image, the easy way or the hard way, both work.

The easy way is to download the VMware converter utility which basically takes the uncompressed virtual appliance you downloaded, and automagically uploads it to your ESX host , if you have it on line. You can just convert the appliance and upload it yourself later if you prefer.

Job done. I could then get on with setting the IP address of the virtual machine back to it's original setting and restoring from backup it's complete configuration and data. Took about 20 minutes, but you would need to factor in the size of your appliance, the speed of your network and the size of the backup. That is one of the great things about Jumpbox virtual machines, their backup and restores are a nailed on perfect solution and have worked here everytime. We happen to use an NFS mount on our NAS server, but you can back up to Amazon EC2 if you were web connected.

The second way , is to manually upload the virtual appliance files to the ESX datastore, and then run the vmfstools from an ssh shell. Setting up the shell on ESXi is a job in itself, go here or here for more info.

There is a detailed article on doing this here.

I think you will agree that using the converter tool is just a little easier ;-).

Another very useful feature of the Ubuntu live CD

2009-11-08T04:22:00.000-08:00

I had to look at an Ubuntu installation the other day that had a problem after it had been upgraded. This problem turned out to be that the friend had previously installed an early version of the Grub boot loader and had not regressed this before the upgrade , an easy mistake to make.

The cure for this is well documented on the web and the solution is to boot your PC with an Ubuntu live CD and mount the harddisk in a chroot jail so we can then play with it and re-install the correct version of Grub. This procedure was taken from the official Ubuntu wiki.

Reinstalling GRUB 2 from LiveCD
If you cannot boot from GRUB 2 and need to reinstall it:

* Boot to the 9.10 Karmic LiveCD Desktop.
* Open a terminal - Applications, Accessories, Terminal.
* Determine your normal system partition - `sudo fdisk -l` (That is a lowercase L)
* If you aren't sure, run `df -Th`. Look for the correct disk size and ext3 or ext4 format.
* Mount your normal system partition:
Code:

sudo mount /dev/sdXX /mnt

o Note: substitue the correct partition: sda1, sdb5, etc.
o Note: GRUB 2 counts the first drive as "0", but the first partition as "1"
* Only if you have a separate boot partition:
o

sudo mount /dev/sdYY /mnt/boot

with sdYY being your /boot partition designation.
* Note: If you have any other system partitions such as "/usr" these should also be mounted in a similar manner.
* Mount devices:

sudo mount --bind /dev/ /mnt/dev

* Chroot into your normal system device:

sudo chroot /mnt

* Reinstall GRUB 2:

sudo grub-install /dev/sdX

*
o Note: Substitute the correct device - sda, sdb, etc. Do ''not'' specify a partition number.
* Verify the install:

sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sdX

o Note: Substitute the correct device - sda, sdb, etc. Do ''not'' specify a partition number.
* Exit chroot: CTRL-D
* Unmount devices:

sudo umount /mnt/dev

* If you mounted a separate /boot partition:

sudo umount /mnt/boot

* Unmount last device:

sudo umount /mnt

* Reboot.

This procedure had his machine up and running perfectly again in five minutes, but just shows how flexible this live CD is and there are no real limitations to what you can get up to once you have this up and running.

Is ranting about Microsoft Windows on a par with being a religious zealot

2009-11-05T02:56:00.000-08:00

Having studied evolutionary biology for most of my life, an interest I picked up in school, I have read a lot about many facets of the Theory, and one side junction from this is the concept of Memes. This has been described as a social/cultural equivalent to genetics and has many postive qualities that has helped the progress of Homo Sapians to evolve to our current state.

One simple example of this is the ability of parents to pass on to their children the concept that swimming with crocodiles is not a good idea for the families genetic advancement, but I think you get the picture. This has also been used as an example for the worldwide adoption of many types of religions that get handed down through the ages from parents to children with not an ounce of evidence but just firm beliefs.

This has led me on to thinking about some peoples rabid support for Microsoft Windows when the facts presented to everyone run completely contrary to the evidence. I would argue that it is Memes at play here , and I'm sure that Microsoft use this to their advantage. This post isn't going to bash Windows or put forward Linux per se, I use both and they both have there place. It just facinates me why people can firstly be so "religious" about an operating system - removing Microsofts huge PR campaigns for an instance. I have used Apples MAC OSX and it is a good system, it has some issues, but for a home user it has many advantages. It's one big draw back for me is the cost of the hardware, but thats just personal. I have used BSD, Solaris etc, and they are also good and have there place in the operating system eco system. I use Microsoft XP in a virtual machine for certain non-other-os applications, and it works fine in that role.

I choose to use Linux for many reasons, none of them fanatically idealogical. The first is that it is intellectually interesting to working within a software development environment where you can be actively involved, which I am. I talk regularly to many developers of many systems about issues and bugs, try doing that with Apple or Microsoft. The software that the various communities produce is of a very high standard and can be used in many interesting and diverse scenarios, with everything from running my desktop to type this blog post, to a mutli-million pound cloud infrastructure, all with the same basic building blocks. I also enjoy the freedom that the developers have to create many interesting and complete solutions to web based problems, just look at the most famous open source project of them all Firefox. They can just grab the components they want without worrying about costs or licenses, and I know personally that is a big plus for me.

I feel that people who enjoy the variety that the modern software world has to offer have open minds and are happy to explore new ideas and paradigms, and that the closed minds just follow the hurd into the same old ways of doing things, the Microsoft way. This is my experience and your mileage may vary, but how many MCSE's do you know would install an Apache Tomcat server to just get the job done, instead of trying to stear the entire project to use .NET?

It appears to boil down to one simple fact, that Microsoft got there first and have placed their Memes firmly in place, and like religion , it is going to take one hell of a lot of shifting. I feel with things like Andoid and Maemo people will see on their portable devices how good alterantives can be and this will start to break the mold. I also see Googles OS having a major impact to affect change in peoples minds, but it will not be quick or over night.

One thing is perfectly clear though, Redmond are not going to give in without a fight, and they know how to be extremely dirty when they have to. Anyone see the parallels here to jealous, religious zealots? I certainly do.

Well Ubuntu 9.10 has officially arrived and it is good

2009-10-30T13:31:00.000-07:00

I know this release is getting a lot of very favourable press, and quite rightly. It has delivered on all the promises that we could see taking shape in the early alphas. It boots incredible quickly, and is a real surprise to all those who see it and are used to 2 minutes to a usable desktop. The use of the latest 2.6.31 kernel has enhanced hardware support , and has move Intel graphics support to a new level with kernel mode setting.

As I have documented on this blog I took the opportunity to upgrade with this release to the 64bit version, and I'm really glad I have made the switch on the desktop. The system is unquestionable faster, but then it should be, it was built for a 64bit OS. I have only found one application that is 32bit only currently - the Amazon mp3 downloader - but that is easily fixed by using a great utility called getlibs. I think with the Mac already being 64bit, and Windows slowly moving down that road, that all the barriers to using this will melt away within the next few years.

The new application store just works, and installing software can't get any easier than this without the computer being able to read your mind. The selection of pre-installed applications is first class and are all first class. Installing additional browsers like Google chrome is now very straigt forward, and it will only be a matter of time before that is in the software store.

The introduction of the new cloud based storage option - Ubuntu one - is an extremely useful addition for those users who never get around to backing anything up. Just make sure you pop things you want to keep into that folder, and it is backed up for you. If you are worried about security, encrypt the file first, but it depends on what is in that file.

Network connections and management are just so simple with this version, and once you have told it the passwords for your various WIFI networks it just seemlessly connects. I remember a good friend of mine lent me a Macbook to try and get me to switch to Apple, and I was very impressed with it's seemless WIFI support, but Ubuntu is just as seemless now. The polish on this release just appears from every little corner.

Another point that has constantly been made about Ubuntu was the initial choice of colour schemes and the desktop themes, well this has all been addressed, and with the community themes, you can customise your machine in many different ways. The background pictures are all exceptional and are fun to play with.

Multiple screen management has in the passed been problematic, but this Dell laptop I'm using has an external monitor attached, running at a completely different resolution - 1280x1024 - to the laptop screen - 1280 x 800, and it is completely seemless as I drag applications between my monitor real estate.

I think you would be silly at this point in the software industry to now ignore Linux as a credible alternative in the majority of desktop applications. It is definitely worth your time and effort to download and play with it for a few weeks to see what all the fuss is about.

Get it while it's hot Ubuntu 9.10

The exceptional power of an Ubuntu 9.10 live CD

2009-10-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

I have been looking at some strange hardware lately, and one piece of hardware that turned up on my desk was a panel PC, with cables hanging out of the back of it. Many people had tried to install various types of OSes onto the thing with no success, that was until I turned up with an Ubuntu 9.10 x86_64 CD.

We got to a X screen within 10 seconds, while one guy was still explaining to a small group of people that getting X to work on this device would be next to impossible. Needless to say he has kept his mouth shut for over a week now, basically to stop us all wetting ourselves again.

It has many new components including a new Intel graphics chipset, and Ubuntu detected and installed a driver for them all and worked perfectly. It allowed us to test the unit for a specific task that we had, which was all that wa required at this stage.

I'm sure with the correct drivers other OSes could be made to work this unit, but why would you bother when it just works with Ubuntu.

Cloud storage helps data access across local virtual machines

2009-10-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

Another fantastic use for cloud based file storeage is to keep the information in sync between your main machine and all your virtual machines on that host. I have to keep a lot of documents around for the various projects I'm currently working on , and having to duplicate those across several virtual machines would be a complete pain in the backside. So the easy and simple way around this, while also making sure that they are constantly backed up, is to open either an Ubuntu one or Dropbox cloud account , and save your documents there.

I know several people may well advice you that you data isn't safe, or could be looked at by the company staff running the systems, but having read the security documents of these companies, and knowing the reliability of local storage, I believe the potential for undeisred access to your data is far out weighed by the massive advantages you get on the other side, of which this use is but one.

Once the documents are saved into the Ubuntu One or Dropbox folder, you can then share that folder with any virtual machine on your host as this folder is constantly available to you, even while off-line, which is great for working on the move.

I'm currently running the 64bit version of Virtualbox on my Dell XPS laptop, with Ubuntu 9.10 , and using the Dropbox and Ubuntu One cloud areas for my data. I then simple share these using the shared folder utility - see below - and can access my documents easily and securely from any of my many virtual machines which include:

Windows XP
Redhat Enterprise server - several
Fedora 11
Ubuntu 9.10 server - several
Windows 7 - toy, of no practical use

I also have to comment that I'm using Virtualbox considerably more these days on the laptop as it is just faster than VMware workstation and it's open source and free. I still keep VMware around for those virtual machines that need it, but all my new machines are now built with Virtualbox. I do fully expect VMware workstation to at some stage to be made free, as trying to compete with Virtualbox with just VMware player is not going to work as a strategy. VMware has all the other technologies knocked into a cocked hat when it comes to the server management and deployment, but the workstation has moved on.

Chromium competition has been good for Firefox

2009-10-15T03:22:00.000-07:00

It has been said many times that competition is good for the consumer, and it would appear that this is as true of the Linux browser as any other area of computing where competition is allowed to flourish and is not distorted by monopolies. Microsofts Internet Explorer being one of the most visible examples of letting a monopoly position badly service the requirments of the modern web.

Historically , due to many reasons dating all the way back to Netscape navigator, Mozilla firefox has ruled the roost on the Linux platform, and it has served it well, but has of late been made to feel a little long in the tooth due to the new kid on the block, Google Chrome or Chromium. Well this is about to change.

I have been testing the latest trunk build of Mozilla Firefox 3.7 on my Ubuntu 9.10 64bit machines, and it perform's extremely well, and is major improvement over the 3.5 version that now comes pre-installed with Ubuntu 9.10. They have also been watching the competition and have taken a couple of ideas that Google brought to the party, which is opening new tabs for clicked on links next to the original window, rather that at the end of all your open tabs. This is one of the nice features I really like about Chromium, and this does Firefox no harm at all.

I still think the designers for Firefox on Linux version could do a better job with the general layout of tabs and the icons in a default install. The other thing you get with Firefox today is the excellent Mozilla Weave cloud based bookmark/tab store, which makes switching versions simple, and the thousands of extensions and plugins you get with Firefox, which will take Chrome a good many years to replicate.

The one big thing that Chromium still lacks is the build in version check which firefox has had for years. On Linux to some extent this is mitigated by your software repositiories, but if you want to go off piste and test the latest versions, this is a very useful built in feature.

As I said at the top of this post, competition is good, and I'm sure the Chromium developers will deliver on their syncing software, and the extensions are already starting to appear, even if they are still a little basic.

Building a secure bank account access virtual machine with Windows and Ubuntu

2009-10-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

If you use your computer for accessing your bank accounts, and you use Microsoft Windows , you should be very worried at this moment in time if any of the following are not upto date:

1) Your Anti-virus
2) You Anti Spyware
3) Your Trojan detection
4) Your firewall software - all of them including zone alarm
5) You Anti-keylogger

If you don't know what any of the above are, then I recommend you immediately turn off you PC and speak to someone who does, as cyber fraud with Microsoft Windows is currently rampent and on the increase.

Having used Unix/Linux for many years, the above problems are massively reduced on that platform, and I therefore thought of a way to keep my Microsoft user friends safe as well.

So without further ado, here is what to do:

Step 1: Go to the following web site and download a piece of software for Windows, that will allow us to run Linux on top of it, without you having to change anything within Windows. You will need to be administrator to install this.

Virtual Box Downloads

Once you have this installed this we can then move onto the next step.

Step 2: Download a copy of Ubuntu Linux from the following web site. This file is of a type "ISO", you don't need to understand what that is, but we are going to use it to install our new "virtual machine". Note exactly where you store this on your machine, as we need this information later

Ubuntu Linux software

Step 3:

Load your virtual box software and click on the new virtual machine box - there are fantastic documents on the virtual box website to help but I will show a quick graphical install here. You can leave all the settings as defaults, just click next, and you can put the files into your My Document folder:

Just click on Finish and you have the bare bones of your new machine.

You now need to click on the settings button for your new virtual machine, as we are going to tell it where to find it - it's where you downloaded it from the Ubuntu web site.

You will be prompted with another screen , and you just need to select your downloaded "ISO" file. Just click on the ADD button and select the location.

Step 4: Lets test what we have.

Click on the Start button, and your new virtual machine will burst into life, just select your language and the try before install option, and that is it. This virtual machine in it's current state can not be written too, so no bad software can be installed, but it also means you would need to install Flash or Java everytime if your bank requires it. See below.

Step 5:

The next decision is upto you. You can either leave it like this and be super safe, but need to do some work each time you need to access the bank , or you can now install it into this new virtual machine and again only use it for your secure on-line communications, and never download anything apart from security updates to it. The beauty of Virtual box is the fast suspend and resume facility, which makes using this software a breeze.

Now I know for some this may seem difficult, but with a little reading and asking around it is not beyond most computer literate people. The question you really have to ask yourself, is what would you do if someone empties your bank account, how much pain would that cause you?

Enabling kernel mode setting with Ubuntu 9.10

2009-10-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

One of the great new features of the latest release of the Linux kernel, is the ability to move a lot of the graphical processing into a kernel module, which speeds up the whole graphic experience. This does not work for all graphical cards, but it certainly does work for Intel graphics cards. Testing this latest release on my Dell XPS which does have an Intel graphics card is obviously ready for the job.

The process with this version is very simple, as the ability to use this driver has been turned on in the kernel since later versions of the 2.6.30 kernel. So I just need to tell Ubuntu 9.10 to use it. You do this by adding a new file in the follwoing directory /etc/mpdprobe.d/ and you call that file i915-kms.conf. You add a single line in this file like this

options i915 modeset=1

You now need to re-boot you machine, as we need to reload the kernel. You can test that this has loaded properly by typing the following at the command line.

dmesg | grep drm - thanks to Bryce Harrington for that info

You should see something like this:

[ 8.232629] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[ 9.572258] [drm] fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
[ 9.587335] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0
[ 10.235837] [drm] LVDS-8: set mode 1280x800 10

You can also check the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log, and grep that for dri, which well tell you that driver has successfully loaded and is being used by your xserver.

(II) intel(0): [DRI2] Setup complete
(II) UXA(0): Driver registered support for the following operations:
(II) intel(0): direct rendering: DRI2 Enabled
(II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized /usr/lib/dri/i965_dri.so

You can now turn on all your graphical effects (compiz), and it will work far more efficiently and more importantly at a far faster speed.

Firefox performance is fighting back with 3.6

2009-10-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

I have just installed the latest nightly build of Firefox - Namoroka - which up until tonight has failed to live up to the performance of Chromium, but boy has that just changed. It is the 64 bit version I have been testing on Ubuntu 9.10 beta, which is also a first for Firefox directly from their nightly download sites, and it would appear that there will be a native 64bit version of 3.5.4 as well.

They have been busy with the overall performance but page rendering would now appear to be as fast as Chromium, or of such a small difference to be of little noticeable difference.

Using the Sunspider test, which is just one measure, but one none the less, I got this for FF 3.6b1

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total: 2869.0ms +/- 2.4%
--------------------------------------------

but I then got this with Chromium

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total: 781.8ms +/- 5.9%
--------------------------------------------

So the libV8 javascript engine with Chromium still rules the roost on this test, but there is more to a browsers performance than just this, and Firefox 3.6 is clearly demonstrating that.

It is definitely worth a look to see how it performs on your machine.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 64bit progressing nicely

2009-10-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well, after deciding to move to a new 64bit implementation , I plugged in the USB pendrive with the live CD version of Ubuntu 9.10 beta installed, and booted.

I decided to change the disk lay out while I was at it, as the lappy was bought from Dell with Ubuntu installed, they had created an odd number of partitions, and I just set up the three:

/, /home and swap.

After selecting to use Ext4 I just pressed finish, and let the machine carry on with it's work. That was as hard as it got, and after clicking ok to reboot, I had the new machine with new OS ready to go.

The first impression was of speed to boot and get me to the desktop, and with the virtual images and USB sticks I have tested with, it was fast. It has to be the fastest booting OS I have ever installed, without a doubt. If I were to use a new flashy Intel SSD disk instead of my functional harddrive, I have no doubt this would be 5 seconds as has been reported around the web. As it is , I'm very happy with speed so I'm not running to the shops just yet. It is also worth mentioning that the speed of all the applications is noticeable, and I'm putting this down to it now being a native 64bit OS running on 64bit hardware , at last.

All the hardware was detected and correctly installed and I was able to download and install the Chromium browser wirelessly within minutes of the re-boot, and it is from there I'm posting now. The new Adobe 64bit flash plugin works with both Firefox 3.5 and Chromium 64bit, which I'm glad about as I had tested for this before hand.

One of the really nice things about using as many cloud applications as I do is that after the install, I'm immediately productive , with access to all my bookmarks, via Mozilla Weave and files via Dropbox and now Ubuntu one.

When you consider this is a beta, and there are going to be a few lumps and bumps, I can't praise the developers enough for producing such a good product, from the kernel developers right the way through the stack to Gnome. Linux in general has come an awful long way in the time I have been using it, and this has to be the best version I have installed to-date.

I have reported one bug I have found, which is to do with attaching an external monitor. It works fine unless you which to increase the resolution, and then it fails. This has been noted by several other people on different architectures, so it is not just a 64bit issue. You would never notice it unless you wished to use an external monitor at all, which I do unfortunately.

Well I'm a happy with the outcome so far, and look forward now to the final release. When I look back on this type of change in the distant past, the road sometimes had a sprinkling of tiny bombshells waiting for the novice, well not with this version.

A funny cat cartoon

2009-10-06T12:18:00.001-07:00

Being a bit of a cat lover, I found this on Youtube while testing the 64bit flash player. If you have a cat that loves to lie on your bed, then you will know exactly what this is all about, apart from the end that is ;-)

Migrating my Dell laptop to Ubuntu 9.10 64bit

2009-10-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

I have used 64bit Fedora before on a works workstation, but I haven't until now decide to move any of my personal workstations to a 64 bit operating system. Well , as always with these decisions, there have been a couple of events that make this move now easier, though I fully suspect I will hit the odd road bump on the way.

The three main announcements that have changed my mind are - Adobe have a 64bit version of the flash player available , and both Firefox and Chromium/Chrome are available in 64bit versions. I know there are some applications like Adobe Air that are stubbornly remaining 32bit for now, but you can work around this with 32bit libraries. This is not ideal, but I can live with it for now.

I have this morning burnt the beta to a USB pen drive to test the Dell XPS 1330, and all went well, with the wireless connecting instantly and I was browsing the web within seconds of the OS booting. I downloaded the 64bit version of the flash player and it worked with both Chromium and Firefox. The one thing I noticed was how rapid the system worked, considering it was working in Live mode from a USB pen drive. This could be a combination of the new version of Ubuntu and the native 64bit applications, but time will tell on that one.

I now have to back up all the "stuff" I have managed to collect in /home over the last couple of years , and then I will blow away the currently install OS and give Ubuntu 64bit the harddisk, and unless I hit any really major problems, I 'm going to stick with this as it really does seem silly to be running a 32bit OS on the latest 64bit hardware.

I will post again shortly after the upgrade and on any issues I hit on the road.

Ubuntu 9.10 Beta in a Virtualbox virtual image

2009-10-01T03:52:00.000-07:00

I downloaded the release candidate for the beta release for Ubuntu 9.10 yesterday and installed it in a virtualbox VM without any issues. The first thing you notice is the new graphical xsplash start-up screen which is set-up by default and the speed of booting up and presenting a desktop. The virtual machine drivers work perfectly with this release , as they have done through this whole release cycle.

The default theme they have picked is very attractive and usable, but this time around there are several choices of background which will allow you to modify it easily. Combine this with the community themes and the system can be set-up exactly how you want.

I will be upgrading my machines now the beta is out, and I will report back on how that went. I will have to reverse several of my current settings, like running the 2.6.31 kernel in jaunty to be able to do the system upgrade without too many problems. I will also get rid of some of the old kernels I have kept lying around.

It will be great to have many of the features I have installed manually like Firefox 3.5 and the latest version of Openoffice already build in, it makes the maintenance easier. The new release does have several new features including Ubuntu one cloud disk storage and the new software store, but as always with Ubuntu this is more evolution than revolution, which is fine by me.

It is always at about this time though I feel my laptop is perfectly setup and does everything I need , just to upgrade it ;-) . Without being willing though to go through one or two minor issues you will never have access to the latest in software development , which is what I want.

The final beta should be out today, so it is well worth grabbing the iso and at least running it up in a virtual machine.

Another convert to open source

2009-09-29T06:40:00.000-07:00

While visiting my daughter last evening, her friend passed me her laptop and explained that the copy of Microsoft office she had bought wouldn't install on her Vista machine. I said I would have a look , and pushed in the DVD to find sure enough, Microsoft Office was refusing to install itself on a Microsoft operating system. The error seemed to indicate that it needed the original Operating system disk for some reason, which on the surface is extremely counter intuitive. This on it's own is laughable, but considering she had just paid £60 for the software, it was extremely annoying for her.

I asked her what she wanted office for, and as usual with 90% of all office users she only needed it for writing the odd letter. So I explained about Open office, and said I would install that and she could take a look. I downloaded the latest version, 3.1.1 and it installed without any silly error messages. She took one look at it and said that it would be perfect for her needs and the Microsoft office DVD went back in the packaging for resale on E-bay I suspect.

While I was at it , I also installed Firefox 3.5, and she couldn't get over how much faster it was than IE and really liked the whole idea of extensions. I would also have put Chromium on there as well, but I thought one new browser in a day is probably best ;-)

I think the lesson I take away from this is very clear, that when users have access to someone who can clearly explain the choices and show them the options available, they don't always need or indeed want Microsoft/proprietary products, it's just what they keep getting fed.

The real issue here for all open source advocates is how on earth do you actually change this for the vast majority of users, one user/machine at a time? If we take that approach then it is going to be a long and hard road. I think the approach being taken by Intel Moblin and Google Chrome OS, offers the best route to success. Introduce people to a system that works really well and does everything they need and then up-sell the idea of using this great and now familiar software for other things and other uses.

Well, we have one more advocate for open source this morning, and I just hope she tells all her friends and family how it saved her money and does everything she needs.

The Greatest Show on Earth

2009-09-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

Mozilla's new Adobe Plugin version check

2009-09-24T03:03:00.000-07:00

With the latest release of Mozilla Firefox there is a built in check of the version of the Adobe flash plugin you are currently using. As this is the most popular plugin, and virtually everyone will have it installed if they want to use Youtube etc.This is a massive step forward for browser security, and assures people that they are using the most up-to date plugins when they are using the most up-to date version of Firefox. The problem comes when you have people who don't understand or are unwilling to upgrade, but that is problem that every software provider faces, regardless of design philosophy.

Since the launch of Firefox 3.5.3, Adobe reports a huge increase in the numbers of people downloading updates, and current reports show this to be in excess of 10 Million, which is a lot of machines with a previously unpatched bug. It was highlighted by the fact that the latest version of OSX for the MAC - Snow Leopard - shipped with an old version of the plugin, which effectively made the machines vulnerable from a default new install.

I think Mozilla are to be applauded for this, and it is something all browser suppliers should look at implementing to help remove vulnerable software from peoples machines.

Google drops a bombshell on Microsoft

2009-09-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

Reading through the Chromium blog this morning I noticed this post "Google Chrome Frame".

This is effectively showing Microsoft in a particularly bad light and they have been caught with their proverbial pants down. If you think about it for a second, what Google are saying is that Microsoft are unable or unwilling to become standards compliant, so we have done it for them.

The implications for corporate IT departments is potentially far reaching , if they embrace this technology which extends extensively what the old IE warhorse can achieve. It is also nothing more than insatlling a browser extension, which is something that corporate IT departments are well capable of doing easily.

To use Tim O'Rielly's expression - Web 2.0 technologies - can now be rolled out to the corporate desktop, which is where I believe this move is squarely aimed.

Anyway, have a look at the video and make your own mind up.

Mozilla are hard at work at producing some fantastic new add-ons

2009-09-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

I have blogged before about the marvelous Mozilla Weave plugin that saves all your personal browsing data anonymously in the cloud, so you can keep your bookmarks always to hand.

What I have installed and started playing with today is Mozilla Ubiquity and I have to say this is also going to be an extremely useful addition for easy and productive browsing. It also allows you to leverage even more of the great apps that Google have out there, like calulator.

Simply search the add-ons for Ubiquity and it will install as it is a typical add-on format.

You start the add-on by typing the ALT key and the Space key togther. Now on my Ubuntu machine this keyboard shortcut was already taken, so I changed that for Gnome, and I was ready to go.

The add-on comes with a very useful tutorial, which I recommend you take to fully explore the sort of facilities you have at your fingertips.

This is going to be a great new addition to my web surfing armoury.

Mozilla Weave changes completely in new version

2009-09-18T15:05:00.001-07:00

Well, I just started Firefox 3.5.3 to test a web page , and it prompted me to upgrade my version of Mozilla Weave, your friendly bookmark syncing extension. The Mozilla guys have been busy, and not only have they moved the control from the preferences page to a new about:weave, but they have added some really groovy animation. They have also added some performance in there as the syncs are quicker and the log files are happier than they were previously.

This is an excellent piece of work, and I would heartily recommend you give it a try, as keeping tabs - pun intended ;-) - on your bookmarks etc just got so much easier.

Turning on the new xsplash in Ubuntu 9.10

2009-09-18T14:50:00.001-07:00

It is very easy to turn on, and here is how to do it.

sudo apt-get install xsplash

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-xsplash-artwork

Having read a lot of post's from the developers working on this, it is the base for the next generation of speedy start-ups, but in this release of Ubuntu will offer little externally over Usplash except a new design and different animation. It is what is happening underneath that is important for boot speeds in 10.04

I like the look of it anyway, and I hope thie theme/colour change is a sign of things to come with the potential late drop new artwork for the distro. We shall see.

Installing your Virtualbox drivers in the Ubuntu 9.10 alpha 6

2009-09-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

While playing with Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 in a newly created virtual machine, I noticed that the normally easy install of the kernel drivers , well wasn't easy at all.

Basically with the version of virtua l box that I use - 3-0-3.6, the virtual drivers CD didn't appear on the desktop as normal. The iso file did appear on the config page, so virtualbox new that it had changed.

All you have to do is to mount the drive that is indicated on the bottom panel, which for my Dell M1330 , within the virtual machine was /dev/sr0.

Once this was mounted , the usual drivers could be downloaded and installed as normal, and the testing could commence.

Hope this saves you some time from hunting around to find out why the image doesn't auto mount.

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 is out today

2009-09-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

I have been keeping an eye on the download page for the latest release of Ubuntu, as I always tend to upgrade my machines when the beta is released, and this Alpha release is the last development release before we get the Beta, as it will be almost completely feature complete.

I do however feel the Artwork team are keeping something up their sleeve for late inclusion, but I might be wrong on that one.

There is no doubt that the open source community is going to be having a busy time at the end of this year and the beginning of next, with Ubuntu 9.10, Chromium and potential some developer releases of Chrome OS. There are also lots of rumours about a moblin netbook being released at LinuxCon next week.

These are all developments that are truly ground breaking and original rather than the same old regurgitated OS that Microsoft will be trundling out in October as if it will offer anything remotely new and interesting.

Well the torrent file is downloaded and the iso is on it's way.

Hers the link

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6

Google announces version 3.0 of Chrome

2009-09-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

As the development of the next generation of browsers for all operating systems gathers pace, Google have released version 3 of Chrome, which offers significant performance enhancements over version 2 on the windows platform.

Google Chrome version 3

They are also working flat out on the release of Google Chrome for Linux and Mac, and as the current development builds show, these are also going to be extremely useful enhancements to both of these fine operating systems. The current information would appear to point to a years end release for these versions.

The versioning and numbering is going to be interesting however. The version of Chromium I'm using to post this is 4.0.209 on Ubuntu 9.04, so will there ever be a stable - full release version 3 - for Linux or Mac remains to be seen. The latest development build from Google, also sports the 4.0.207 release number, which may well indicate that windows could get another version by years end. You can't say the guys in the Chromium community aren't putting their shoulders to the wheel, as they obviously are.

Firefox are not sitting idly by either, as their next release 3.6 is well underway, with version 3.7 also being worked on.

Problems with Ubuntu Chromium builds from launchpad

2009-09-14T09:20:00.001-07:00

If like me you have been following the Ubuntu builds from launchpad you will have noticed that in the last few days, they have been failing to build.

As there have been many changes in chromium lately, and it has now moved to version 4.0.209, then this is how to get the latest builds from the Google build bots.

Simply go to the following page Chromium builds and grap the the highest numbered build zip file.

Just extract it into any directory and run the chrome file.

Once the Ubuntu auto builds are back up and running, you can then run these either side by side or stick to this method. They do currently generate about 10 builds a day mind, so you could be busy keeping up ;-)

Latest VMware workstation release works well with Ubuntu 2.6.31 kernel

2009-09-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

I recently upgraded the kernel on my notebook to play with the kernel mode setting to speed up the graphics with the Intel graphics card, which it did admirably, so I would be loathed to go back to an earlier kernel.

VMware and the latest kernels haven't always got along nicely , but on this occasion it was simply a matter of attempting to start VMware player, it detected a new kernel, and compiled the drivers for me, can't get much easier than that.

It then allowed me to start my old VMware images without a hitch.

Here is a screenshot of what it did:

The version for Linux has come a long way since it's early days, and it really is very simple to use now for even the most new learners of the platform.

The only problem that I'm currently having with this version of workstation is the resume from suspend ,which is extremely slow, but this could be down to the debug code in the installation. VirtualBox truly puts it to shame on the same hardware currently, but only a true comparison can be once it is released.

Using a Mozilla XULrunner application to edit your Sqlite databases

2009-09-09T02:10:00.000-07:00

I have needed a tool to edit/change sqlite database, and have been using this great Firefox extension, but it requires you to load Firefox, which I don't always do while I'm testing Chromium. You can get this great extension here:

Sqlite Manager

So I noticed today, that they also offer a downloadable version which works just with XULrunner on it's own. It's not that surprising as many extensions leverage the power of this component, but it means you can launch this on it's own , which is handy.

So all you do is download the zip file, and make sure you have XULrunner-1.9.1 from your favourite Linux repository and unzip the file where you want, /opt is a good place for most.

Then just add a launcher on your desktop to start the application like this:

/usr/bin/xulrunner-1.9.1 /opt/sqlitemanager/application.ini (or where you unzipped it)

Voila, you have a great utility ready to run.

In the picture above I'm having a look at the cookies I've downloaded while testing Firefox 3.5.2

I also came across this web site while checking out how this fitted together, which gives you a good intro into developing your own XULrunner apps.

Howto create your own XUL applications

Setting up the SSH daemon on your Netgear 1100 NAS server

2009-09-08T05:59:00.001-07:00

After having installed one of these units for a small project , I wanted to get passed the web interface to have a look at the detailed error logs on this NAS unit.

I had a look on the Netgear forums and there are several add-ons you can apply to the unit to enhance or modify what it is capable of doing. As this is basically Linux running on Sparc, you will be able to do pretty much anything you like. It would appear that virtually every appliance these days runs Linux or BSD, and getting an SSH CLi onto these units gives you a lot more granular control.

When you have a look around the configuration on this unit, the company that actually built these devices before Netgear bought them - Infrant - has it's fingerprints all over the place. When you look at the processor for instance, it reports itself as an:

Infrant Technologies, INC - neon version: 0

When you dig around in the kernel libraries it becomes clear that this is a sparc CPU.

Anyway, back to the project in hand. You need to download these two files:

ToggleSSH_1.0.bin and
EnableRootSSH_1.0.bin

You then need to install them one at a time using the software update screen - below - and reboot the unit after each install. Why they are bin files is not obvious, as a simple script file would have been sufficient, but it may be to do with the extension install mechanism. It would appear all they do, is enable the SSH daemon in /etc/init.d and configure the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow root access.

Once you have re-booted for the second time, point your favourite SSH client at the IP address of the NAS server and log in as root, like so:

SSH root@192.168.1.1 - or whatever your IP address is

voila!

Trying out Kernel mode setting Intel acceleration with Ubuntu Jaunty

2009-09-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

*** Be Warned this is highly experimental and could cause you hours of wasted lifetime if you don't fully understand what you are doing. You can just wait for the next release of Ubuntu, when this will be built in. ****

I have had one or two minor graphic problems on my Dell XPS1330 with Ubuntu jaunty, which is to do with the transition of the type of graphics driver which is going to be installed with the next release of Ubuntu. One of the key features in the next release of Ubuntu will be the ability to use kernel mode setting which shifts responsibility for selecting and setting up the graphics mode from X.org to the kernel. This speeds this up, which means a better experience for the user.

Here is how I did it on my Dell.

First download these .deb files from here:

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.31-rc9/

linux-headers-2.6.31-020631rc9_2.6.31-020631rc9_all.deb
linux-headers-2.6.31-020631rc9-generic_2.6.31-020631rc9_i386.deb
linux-image-2.6.31-020631rc9-generic_2.6.31-020631rc9_i386.deb

Install them, but don't reboot just yet.

Next install the latest Intel graphics drivers using these links:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main

Then in a terminal run this:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Now create this file /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf and add this line.

options i915 modeset=1

Then finally run this command at a terminal.

sudo update-initramfs -u

Now re-boot your machine with your new kernel and test to see if you get improved graphics performance, I most definitely did. You might also want to check in /etc/X11/xorg.conf that you have a line like this:

Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" in the "Device" section.

Have fun.

Chromiums latest build on Linux is the best yet

2009-09-06T15:37:00.001-07:00

While testing the latest version, shown above, it has dawned on me that I haven't come across a site it doesn't like for at least two weeks. I'm sure there might be some but I haven't found one.

Today , I was happily surfing the web, and listening to the latest one day cricket international on the BBC web site using the Linux Adobe flash plugin, with 25 other tabs open and working well. It was seamless, and the experience was very pleasant.

I have noticed that the developer task manager is working properly, and the "stats for nerds" also now display a proper page. I also stumbled across a feature that I had been missing, which was the ability to grab a tabbed window, and move it's location on the list of tabs. This is a very useful feature, and is working really well.

I'm sure that a beta/stable version of Google Chrome for Linux can't be far away, as then we can really get stuck into bug tracking and reporting. I can't wait to see what other distro's will package this, especially with Google offering their own OS. I know that I will be getting it into the Eeebuntu repos, once it is stable. I fully suspect that the fur will fly for some, and a minority of die hard Firefox supporters will be flinging some mud, but the simply truth is, Chromium is significantly faster that FF on Linux, and once the extensions are added to Chromium, and they are on the way, then speed becomes the deciding issue. I'm also testing FF 3.6 and it is better, but still nowhere near as fast as Chromium.

I'm certainly not going to knock FF, it has served me well upto now, it's just that the open source wheel has turned, and there is a new kid on the block that just does everything faster. The Cloud + fast browser speed = good experience, it's as simple an equation as that.

I'm obviously an early adopter and have switched completely now, but I'm also convinced that once people test and experience the difference in performance, then they will to, regardless of extensions. To be fair FF has been in competition with many good browsers on other OSes for a while, but it's had the lions share of installed browsers for Linux, it now has some real competition, and they are going to have to improve or suffer the same fate as their nemesis on Windows.

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 5 has a completely reworked install dialogue

2009-09-04T04:10:00.000-07:00

If you have installed Linux over the years ,you will have noticed that the distros tend to fall into one of two camps, those with minimalist feedback when you press the install button, or those who offer news and detailed information about the Linux you are about to install. Well in this release Ubuntu have moved from the former camp into the latter camp, and here is the evidence.

The kernel has been moved up to 2.6.31-9 and there is a new Ibus application that I have not seen before, but will investigate.

It is still installing in a VirtualBox virtual machine while I type this, so I will report back on performance and any other new features I find.

Redhat 5.4 is released with major virtualization updates

2009-09-03T10:03:00.000-07:00

Have a look here at the release notes.

Redhat EL 5.4

This definitely looks like a worthwhile update, and I will definitely be running this up several servers to see how it performs.