Tomboy ssh sync

I recently started using Tomboy Notes, because the post-it notes around my desk were starting to get out of hand. I liked Tomboy so much, I installed it on my work desktop, my laptop, and my home desktop computer (all running Ubuntu 7.10). I quickly became frustrated if I needed a note from one computer, while I was working on another computer. Luckily, Tomboy has a nifty synchronize feature that allows you to synch your notes from various locations. In my case, I decided to sync all my Tomboy Notes to a central location on my home server using the Tomboy SSH synchronization add-in. Here’s how I got the ssh sync feature working in Tomboy 0.8.0:

1. Install sshfs on your server and client computer(s)

2. On each computer you installed sshfs, do a “sudo adduser username fuse” Replace username with your username and this will add you to the fuse group. I had to log out and log back in for this change to take effect.

3. Generate a ssh public key on your client(s) and copy them to your server. I followed the HOWTO located here: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-30709.html

4. Create a directory on your server where you want to store your notes. I just created “~/tomboy-sync”, but you can name it anything.

5. Enable the SSH Sync Service Add-in located in the Tomboy Notes preferences (Add-ins tab).

6. Go to the Synchronization tab in the Tomboy Notes preferences and change the service drop down menu to SSH (sshf FUSE). Enter the name or IP address of your server in the Server field, enter your Username in the username field, and the path to the folder you created in step 4 in the Folder Path field.

7. Click Save and if all goes well, you should be prompted for your SSH key passphrase.

Once you get the SSH sync working, to synchronize your notes, click the Tools button while in a note and then select Synchronize Notes.

Ubuntu System Management

I’ve been using Ubuntu’s new system management tool called Landscape, and I have to say I’m really impressed. I registered for the beta a few weeks ago and was accepted. The only downside is the beta limits you to managing a maximum of five Ubuntu machines, and will end in 60 days. However, this is just enough time and capability to show off Landscape’s impressive features.

Adding clients to your Landscape account consists of adding a repository to your sources.list file, adding an OpenPGP key, and installing the Landscape client with apt-get. Once the client is installed, you must log into Landscape and approve the computer. The interface is completely web based, easy to use, and very quick. Here’s a snapshot of the main dashboard page:

Updating your clients is easy, just select the computers you want to update, go to the Packages section, and click the Request Updates button. A few minutes later, you’ll need to approve any updates that need to be installed, and the Landscape client takes care of the rest.

Landscape has a tagging system that’s handy for grouping your computers. I like to create tags based on the function of the client (file server, desktop, mysql server, etc.) There’s also a system inventory feature, performance reporting, system history, and user management.

As for pricing, if you are Canonical support customer, Landscape is free. If you are not a Canonical support customer, you have to pay $150 per client. I thought that sounded like a lot at first, but if you consider the time you’ll save managing your Ubuntu systems, Landscape will pay for itself. If you manage a large number of Ubuntu systems, Landscape is definitely for you.

Big Timesink

Do you often feel like you have too much time on your hands or you are being too productive? Well, head on over to Astro Empires and it will fix you right up. If you are into space strategy/empire building type games, this game is for you. The game is entirely web based, so you can play it on just about any device with an Internet connection and a web browser. I’ve even been able to play it on my Windows Mobile phone.

Car charger for Eee PC

If you need a car charger and a spare AC adapter for your Eee PC, you might want to check out “The Continental” from Incipio Technologies. I picked one up for $24.99 + shipping, but it looks like they have recently raised the price to $39.99. Still not bad considering an AC adapter from the ASUS EStore costs $39.99 by itself. The Continental comes with a wall outlet adapter with four different plug adapters, an airplane adapter, and a car adapter.

Tivo Crash

The family unit and I were watching the latest episode of Lost on our Tivo, and about 30 minutes into the show, our Tivo appeared to lock up and then it restarted. No big deal, I thought, it’s a computer and computers sometimes crash. After waiting a few minutes, Tivo is back up and we’re watching Lost again. About ten minutes later, the same lock up/restart occurred. Uh, oh. One crash could just be some stray electrons, but two crashes in less than an hour means trouble. This time I unplugged the Tivo, waited a bit, and then plugged it back in. While I was leaning down by the Tivo, I heard the hard drive making some strange grinding noises. Crap! Hard drive failure. I’ve been meaning to upgrade the hard drive in my Tivo for a while, but just never got around to it. Now, I had no choice.

The first thing I did was disconnect all the cables and took the cover off the Tivo. I have a Series2 80 hour dual tuner Tivo. This model requires a torx screwdriver to remove the case screws and the hard drive mount screws. Once I had the case off and the 80GB hard drive removed, I downloaded a copy of MFSLive Linux Boot CD and burned it to a CD. I connected the 80GB Tivo drive and a spare 320GB drive to my computer (Tivo drive set as master, 320GB drive as slave), put the MFSLive CD into the computer and booted up MFSLive.

If you aren’t comfortable with Linux, there’s also a Windows version of MFS. There’s a great step by step quickstart guide on the MFSLive website for copying your Tivo settings and recordings to a new hard drive. It took about 2 1/2 hours to copy everything from my old Tivo drive to the new drive. Once the copy was complete, I installed the 320GB drive in my Tivo, put the case back on, re-connected all the cables, and PRESTO! I had a working Tivo again AND my Tivo now has 300+ hours of recording time. A big THANK YOU goes out to the MFSLive folks.

Why I dread calling tech support

At my day job, I routinely call various tech support/customer service departments for a variety of software and hardware support issues. It’s usually for replacement parts or when doing a Google search fails to find a fix to a particularly strange problem I encountered. Normally, I don’t mind calling, except when it comes to a certain U.S. telecom/cell phone company. I won’t name any names, but it starts with S and ends in T. Where I work, we have about 30 cell phones and about the same number of EVDO modems from this particular company. Every time I have to call their tech support, I know I’m in for 30 minutes to an hour of frustration. For example, the other day my boss brought her EVDO modem (it’s of the USB variety) to me and said it just stopped working. I tried plugging it into my laptop and another desktop computer, neither would recognize the USB device. I did the usual uninstall/reinstall bit, still no luck. Time to call tech support. To make a long story short, I was transferred four times and spoke to five different customer service and tech support reps. It wasn’t until the fifth rep that I found out the EVDO device was out of warranty. I ended up sending an email to my sales rep and just ordered a new EVDO modem.

What’s the lesson I learned from all of this? Always ask about the warranty, FIRST. I won’t say the one word that comes to mind when I think of this company’s tech support, except that it starts with S and ends in T.

wicd is NOT wicked awesome

I kept hearing about how much better wicd is than network-manager, especially when connecting to wireless networks. I encountered very few problems with using network-manager, except for its annoying habit of automatically connecting to open wifi networks named “linksys” without asking me first. I thought I’d give wicd a shot and see what all the fuss was about. I have to say, I’m not impressed. I followed the Ubuntu installation steps on the wicd website, restarted my Gnome session, and there was wicd in my tray. After I clicked on the wicd icon, a menu appeared with all the available wireless networks near me. I configured it to connect to my wireless network and clicked the “connect” button. A nice status bar at the bottom of the window indicated wicd was connecting and obtaining an IP address. That was about as far as I got. I tried connecting about a dozen times, reconfiguring my wireless settings, making sure I had the WPA key entered correctly, and still no joy. I tried connecting to three different wifi networks (two WPA & one WEP) in two different locations, and still no luck. After messing with wicd for a days and not have much success connecting to wireless networks, I decided to go back to the tried and true network-manager.

ClusterSSH

A big “Thanks!” goes out to Linc from The Linux Link Tech Show for mentioning a little gem called ClusterSSH. It’s a SSH app that allows you log into mutiple SSH sessions. All the commands you issue are executed across all your SSH sessions. I have about a dozen Ubuntu servers at work that I keep running. Whenever I needed to update them, I’d have to SSH into each one and do an apt-get update;apt-get upgrade command. Now, I issue one ClusterSSH command (cssh) to log into all of the servers, enter the apt-get command once, and it’s executed on all the servers. Nice! If you are running Ubuntu, ClusterSSH is in the main repositories so it’s easy to install.

Tiny laptop con’t

I just installed mythtv-frontend on my Eee PC (Ubuntu) and it works great. Here’s a picture of MythTV running (don’t mind the messy desk).

The more I use this thing, the more I’m impressed with its capabilities.

Tiny laptop

I recently got an Eee PC (4G galaxy) at work. I’ve been spending a lot of time fiddling with this thing. The stock Xandros OS looked nice, but it wasn’t long before I started installing different OS’s on it. So far, I’ve tried Ubuntu, eeeXubuntu, BackTrack3 beta, and Windows XP. All of them run great. The only frustrating thing is I can’t get suspend or hibernate to work with anything other than Windows XP. I suspect this has to do with the fact I have XP installed on the internal SSD and the other OS’s installed on SD cards. Here are some sites I’ve found that deal with everything from how to install Ubuntu on your Eee PC to how to get your EVDO modem working: http://del.icio.us/pcfreak/eeepc