The Kriptonomicon
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Sat, 20 Dec 2008
Bluetooth on Fedora Core 10
f you're having trouble with Bluetooth support on FC10 - the gnome applet not listing the adaptor, not promping for a pairing PIN etc, then search fedoraforum.org for similar issues - I wasted about three hours trying to get my BB Bold to act as a 3G modem with a FC10 laptop (working fine under FC9), until I found a post stating that it was a buggy bluez package, and enabled the testing repository and pulled down the latest package - fixed all the issues.
On the bright side, FC10 fixes the problem with OpenVPN where it couldn't set a default route on ppp connections, which made 3G dongles and BB modems no use for remote use for work. Might be a Fedora only problem, though - didn't try on Ubuntu..
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Sat, 06 Dec 2008
Fedora Core 10
So, I run FC 9 on my HP 2510p at work, and a week after FC10 came out I thought I'd try upgrading. I used the preinstall method, and then the DVD install, but neither worked. The first method complained about a partiton (one it had created in memory!) being too small, and the latter about not being able to mount the /home partition. To be fair, I had encrypted the entire disk of the HP, to try out the functionality, and the interaction between the installer and that probably caused it..
The encryption worked well, BTW, from a protect all the laptop content angle, but as I was aiming at protecting the content should the US's DHS require me to turn it on, and copy it, this would have been of little use, since you have to input the password at boot.
Anyway, I'm borrowing a Lenovo Thinkpad X200, and installing from scratch. So far, everything is detected out of the box, with the only exception, from the limited time I had to test, was the built in EVDO modem (but I might need to activate this on Vodafone via Windows, not looked into it as I don't intend to use it), and the webcam, which Cheese hung on trying to get the picture, although the light showing the camera was on did light up.
I'll do a follow-up post with the packages I add after installation, for interest..
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Mon, 07 Jul 2008
The Website is down
Warning, requires flash.
I'd like to think this doesn't conjure up a sense of familarity, but...
the website is down
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Mon, 25 Feb 2008
Hasta La Vista
I've been using Vista at work for about nine months and
recent developments
meant I'd had enough, a week or so shy of SP1 coming out. Given that I'd crammed 3GB of RAM into the X60 I was using, and it was still sluggish, I'm concerned for the future direction; we'd have to replace or substantially upgrade most of the computers in the company if we made the switch, especially with the OEM's being forbidden to ship anything but Vista by MS in the next couple of months. Its work around-able, of course, but is this the right direction?
Having spent a fair amount of time with Vista, I decided to do the same with Linux. First up, RHEL4 on an IBM T61. First impressions were good, but alas the screen resolution wasn't as good as you could get with windows, nor did the sound, bluetooth or wireless work. Using Codeweavers, I'm able to use Office 2003 (and most importantly Outlook), and its fairly usable. It requires quite alot of work before I could give it to anyone outside of IT, though.
What has been noticeable is the increase in performance using Linux rather than Vista. Granted, I was on a machine with more grunt, but less memory. Vista had taken away the ability to map drives like we do with Group Policy, so I was used to the manual connections. When I setup a symlink to the autofs mounted areas, it became even easier. Likewise, I couldn't manage windows servers with Vista, so I was used to remote desktop; also available under Linux (anyone know a rdesktop client with tabs?). OpenVPN works flawlessly, of course, I just need to get the wireless and Vodafone USB GPRS modem working..
Next we're trying RHEL5 and a VMWare XP session - this should support more hardware and give me more flexibility. I have to use RHEL, alas, as Fedora would probably work even better (I can't use Debian, either, alas, and a test boot with Ubuntu wouldn't get past the loading screen)..
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
UKUUG - Files and Backup
Work paid for me to attend
this conference
, at the Imperial hotel in London last week; tues and wed. A fun journey; when I got there, they'd decided to close the entrance to the underground (no explanation why), and I had to navigate by iPhone to the hotel. I also discovered that
a) the Vodafone 3G USB data modem works great all the way from cambs to Kings Cross, even on Vista
and
b) a recent Vista update had broken OpenVPN (2.1_rc7), which refused to set the default route or assign an ip address.
The conference was very interesting; I think I was the least qualified person to be there - everyone else appears to be a kernel developer of some kind (I sat next to one of the AFS developers on the first day), or distro maintainer. It made me feel rather inadequate, but reminded me of how much I like tinkering around with Linux. This has IMPLICATIONS, as you will see from the next post (or at least some of them. I'm not sure what they others are yet). I did pick up enough from the conference to keep my up to date with some cutting edge linux developments, and some recommendations to go back to the team with.
The talks were varied; the high availability talks were nothing new, and not very well delivered - not that I could have done better! The acamadicians who presenter were much better; clearly more used to doing this kind of thing. Highlights were the Bacula talk, given by the inventor and lead developer and the AFS talk.
Now I have to persuade the boss that its worth me (or someone from the team) attending the Spring Conference..
UKUUG have several conferences coming up. I'm tempted by the OpenTech one-day event on 5th July. Anyone interested?
p.s. - I don't need one, but after seeing the 'must have toy' of the Conference, I so want one..Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Fri, 03 Nov 2006
Apple not using Trusted Computing chip set
According to assorted sources, despite it being included on the motherboard of Apple's computers, the company is
not using the Trusted Platform Module.
I'm very glad about this - the TPM chipset and drivers cause me serious headaches with the Lenovo Thinkpads we have (running windows XP), and its not even being used for anything by Windows! Just installing/updating the driver causes us more headaches than anything else. God help us when Vista comes in and starts getting its sticky little fingers into it..
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Thu, 31 Aug 2006
Talking to Sysadmins
John 'Bynkii' Welsh has nailed it with this blog post;
Talking with Sysadmins, a programmer's primer
Amen, brother, amen.. :-)
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Mon, 29 May 2006
Munin
I encountered this excellent piece of software after a slashdot article pointed me at this
tutorial.
Its a server monitoring tool, which can be expanded to graph and monitor a whole spread of system resources - to think I spent hours configuring MRTG to do this; writing custom Perl scripts etc.
I've just set this up on my two home Linux machines, and its already been helpful identify mail queue problems I didn't know I had.
If you have a Linux machine, go check it out - very useful and you can have a basic monitoring system up and running in no time!
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Wed, 12 Apr 2006
Promoted!
I was offerred, and accepted, the position of I.T. manager at my current workplace. So now I'm responsible for the companies entire IT strategy.
Gulp.
:-) So far so good. Enjoying it, but am spending all my time sorting things out and not doing anything technical. This trend may continue for a while, despite the job spec saying '50% of time technical'.. ;-)
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Thu, 09 Feb 2006
My mobile no is changing/unavailable
Don't phone me on my mobile at the moment - its with the sales director as his Blackberry went Titsup, and I had to replace his with mine (very long story). Unfortunately, this also includes my SIM, so if you phone me, you wont get me. I'll have a replacement mobile & SIM tomorrow, so email me if you need my number.
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Thu, 26 Jan 2006
Don't touch that button..
Of course, he did, and now I have to fly to the US to rebuild two servers.
Posted at: [/work] permanent link