24hrs is not enough

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve posted here, but here’s a quick run down of what I’ve been working on:

Back up solution: I looked at Amanda, Bacula, SimpleBackup, and Backuppc. Backuppc won in the end because it was easy to install and get running, and had all of the features I wanted. Amanda and Bacula were too complicated, and all of the tutorials were for Red Hat based systems (I’m a Debian/Ubuntu guy). SimpleBackup was just, well, too simple. I’ll probably write an blog post later about how I set up Backuppc and how I’m using it.

NSLU2: I’ve been pulling out my hair trying to get Debian installed on my Linksys SLUG device. It works fine when I use an 8GB flash drive, but when I add another drive or try to install on non-flashed based drive, it fails.

Boxee: I’m trying to find a small form factor/cheap PC to install Ubuntu and Boxee on. I’m hoping to put a Boxee system in my living room and eventually dump my cable TV and Tivo.

Long time, no blog

Hi, my name is Steve and I’m a WoW addict.  That’s right, I said it, I play WoW and it’s taken up A LOT of my time recently.  Hence the lack of blog posts.  However, now that my hunter on WoW is level 80, I probably won’t be playing as much and will try to post more often.  Now, to the point of this rant/post:  Why do users of 64-bit Linux distributions seem to always get the shaft?  Case in point, Twhirl, a great Twitter client that works beautifully on my Eee PC running a 32-bit version of Ubuntu Eee.  On my desktop, I’m running the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 8.10 and had to do some crazy hack just to get Twhirl working.  And then today, I tried to upgrade Twhirl to the latest version, and it stopped working.  After trying for 30 minutes to get Twhirl working again, I gave up and switched to Gwibber.  This lack of support for 64-bit Linux distributions has to end.  To all you developers out there, 64-bit is the future!  Get with the program (no pun intended), and stop leaving 64-bit users out in the cold.

OSSEC v1.6 released

OSSEC 1.6 is out.  Looks like lots of goodies:

http://www.ossec.net/main/ossec-v16-released

Nokia OS2008 Update

After hearing about the latest Nokia OS2008 update, I had to try it out on my N800.  Two of the new features caught my eye:

• New email application based on Modest and the tinymail framework.  It now supports multiple email services (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail) out of the box and allows you to set up multiple accounts.
• Seamless Software Upgrade (SSU): After this upgrade, all future updates will be over-the-air.  No more manually flashing your Internet Tablet!

I really like the idea of not having to do flash upgrades anymore and can’t wait for the next update so I can try the SSU feature.  The new e-mail application has been a little disappointing though.  I was able to set up a Gmail IMAP account just fine, and it works great.  However, when I tried to set up a regular IMAP account to access my work email, it only retrieved one or two folders and none of my email.  Also, the e-mail application repeatedly prompted me to enter my account information.  I’ll play with the e-mail application some more and check the forums for a fix.

E-mail application problems aside, I would suggest upgrading to this version of OS2008.  The “future proofing” of the SSU feature alone is worth the upgrade.

Ubuntu Eee 8.04

I’ve been running Ubuntu 7.10 on my Eee PC since I got it about six months ago.  It took some tweaking to get everything working (suspend/resume was a pain!), but once set up, the little laptop has been rock solid.  I was planning to upgrade my Eee PC to Ubuntu 8.04, but I read about the 8.04 release of Ubuntu Eee on the eeeuser.com website and thought I’d give it a try.

My Ubuntu 7.10 installation was running on an external 8GB SD card, and I had an extra 8GB card, so I thought I’d install Ubuntu Eee on the other 8GB card.  If things went horribly wrong, I could just pop the 7.10 card back in and be up and running again.  I was also running WinXP on the internal 4GB SD card.  The XP install was for some Windows only VPN software I needed for work.  However, I recently started tunneling RDP sessions with ssh to get into my Windows machines at work, so I no longer needed the XP installation on my Eee PC.  Bye, bye Windows!

For me to switch to Ubuntu Eee, I came up with five things I thought should work “out of box” without any tweaks, scripts, or patches:

1. Wireless
2. Suspend/Resume
3. Webcam
4. Sound
5. Compiz

On my first attempt at installing Ubuntu Eee, I set up the partitions like so:

Internal 4GB SD

/ – 4GB

External 8GB SD

/var – 4GB

/home – 4GB

With this partitioning set up, everything except suspend/resume worked.  It would suspend each time, but would only resume correctly about half of the time.  I reinstalled Ubuntu Eee, and this time I put everything except /home on the internal 4GB SD, /home went on the external 8GB SD.  Suspend/resume worked every time with this partitioning set up.

The only problem I ran into with Ubuntu Eee was my Eee PC would sometimes not shutdown all the way.  The screen would turn off, but the power would stay on.  There’s a workaround to the shutdown issue over on the Ubuntu Eee website.

I’ve been running Ubuntu Eee 8.04 on my Eee PC for a couple days now, and so far I’m happy with it.  I really like having access to the newer software with Ubuntu 8.04 and having everything work on my Eee PC without having to run extra scripts.  If you have an Eee PC and you’re thinking about installing Ubuntu on it, I’d suggest giving Ubuntu Eee a try.

Make like a PDF and split

I was recently asked by a user to help with merging and splitting multiple PDF files.  I’m sure Adobe Acrobat could handle something like this, but I’m not that familiar with Acrobat and my user couldn’t afford the full version of Acrobat.  Being a command line junky, I looked for something I could run in a terminal window.  The first application I found was pdftk.  If you’re running a Debian based distribution, just use apt-get to install pdftk.  The command to merge multiple PDF files is really simple, and goes something like this:

pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf cat output out.pdf

pdftk worked fine for a couple files at a time, but then my user wanted 50+ pdf files merged into one file.  I tried the following:

pdftk file*.pdf cat output out.pdf

The good news is pdftk merged all of the files, the bad news is the pages were out of order.  I’m sure there’s a way to make sure the files merge according to a specific order.  However, my user had a deadline fast approaching, so I had to find something else.  I did some more searching and found a gem of an application called PDF Split and Merge (pdfsam).  pdfsam is a java app, so it will run on Linux, MacOSX, or Windows.  I ran pdfsam on my Linux box by using the following command:

java -jar /pathwhereyouunzipped/pdfsam-1.0.0-rc1.jar

Once started, you get this nice GUI interface:

To merge PDF files, simply select the Merge/Extract option, add the files, arrange the files in the order you want by using the “Move Up” and “Move Down” buttons, set your output file, and click the “Run” button.  There’s even an option to change the Acrobat version of the output file (6, 7, or 8).

Splitting a PDF file into multiple files is just as easy:

I’d suggest going with pdftk for quick and dirty merging/splitting of a few PDF files.  If you have to work with a large number of PDF files, or if you want to set up something you can easily teach a non-techy person to use, I’d recommend going with PDF Split and Merge.

DIY Security Camera System

If you are in the market for an inexpensive security DVR/CCTV system, I might have a solution for you.  First, you’ll need a computer to install the video surveillance software on.  If you need something compact and low powered, I would suggest going with a computer like the decTOP.  You can pick up a decTOP computer for around $100.  I modified my decTOP by removing the 10GB hard drive that comes with it, and instead used a 32GB compact flash card.  However, if you want to keep costs down, the standard 10GB drive will work just fine.  The other piece of hardware you’ll need is a USB webcam.  I’ve had great luck with the Logitech Pro 4000 series.  I’ve also used the Orbit and Pro 9000 cameras, but they require a little more work to get running.

For the software, head on over to Zoneminder.com and check out the documentation and wiki.  I used Debian to run the Zoneminder software, but there are several how to’s for other Linux distributions.  If you do use Debian and a decTOP, be aware the only way I could get Debian installed on the decTOP was to make a bootable network install of Debian on a USB drive.  For some reason, the Debian installs I tried from an external CD-ROM drive always failed.  I would highly recommend using Debian with Zoneminder, because once you have Debian running, installing Zoneminder is simply a matter of adding a repository to your sources.list file, and doing an ‘apt-get update;apt-get install zoneminder’ command.  If you run into any problems, be sure to check the Zoneminder forums and wiki for help.

Since Debian and Zoneminder are free and developed by volunteers, be sure to make donations to both projects if you find the software useful.

Debian Donations: http://www.debian.org/donations

Zoneminder Donations: http://www.zoneminder.com/donate.html

If a network crashes and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

What do you do when your network is down?  How do you notify your users/customers there’s a problem if you can’t send out an email or post something to a website?  At my day job, I’m the sysadmin for a medium sized network and I occasionally encounter this problem.  Here are a couple solutions I’ve come up with:

• The Web 2.0 Way: I created an IT Twitter account that I post network/server outages to.  Of course, if the entire network is down, this doesn’t do much good.  However, if the problem is intermittent, or if the outage is scheduled, I can get something posted to the Twitter account quickly.  To get the Twitter announcements out, our IT website displays the RSS feed of the IT Twitter account.  I also encourage my users to follow the IT Twitter account, if they have their own Twitter accounts.
• Listserv/mailing list: Once again, only works if the network problem is intermittent or scheduled.
• SMS: I haven’t put this one into production yet, but just about everyone in my department has a cell phone capable of receiving text messages.  I just need to find a way to create call lists and automate sending out the SMS messages.
• Groove: This is a collaboration suite from Microsoft.  Groove has built in IM/Messaging and will keep working on your local subnet, even if your external Internet connection goes down.  Groove is a Windows only application, so your Linux and Mac users are out of luck unless they run it in VMWare, Parralels, etc.
• Old School: Posting a note on my office door and changing the voicemail greeting on the IT helpline.  Old fashioned and low tech, but it works even when the network is in the toilet.

If there’s anything I’m missing, please let me know.

OSSEC 1.5 is out

If you’re looking for host based intrusion detection software, I would highly recommend checking out OSSEC.  Version 1.5 was released on May 1st, and the new features look awesome.  Installation is simply a matter of downloading the gzipped tar, extracting the files, and running the install.sh script.  You can run OSSEC in either a client/agent mode where all your agents report back to a central server, or you can run it in a “standalone” mode.  If you have a mixed environment of Linux and Windows machines, there’s even a Windows version of the agent.

Hardy Upgrades

So far, I’ve upgrade three Ubuntu workstations and two servers to Hardy Heron 8.04.  Of those five upgrades, I only had problems with one of the workstation upgrades.  The other workstation and server upgrades were painless.  The workstation upgrade I had a problem with was due, I think, to my Nvidia video driver.  I ended up doing a clean install instead of taking the time to track down the problem.

The server upgrades were effortless.  I did one upgrade remotely via SSH and during the other upgrade I was logged into a console locally.  One upgrade was from 7.10 and the other was from 6.06.  I was expecting the 6.06 to 8.04 upgrade to go horribly wrong and I had a 8.04 Server CD standing by to do a clean install, but it went off without a hitch.

If you haven’t upgraded to 8.04 yet, I would suggest taking the plunge.  But, always remember to first back up!