DNS

Just finished reading the section on 'DNS' from 'Linux System Administration' by Tom Adelstein and Bill Lubanovic from O'Reilly press. They tried to present a complex topic in a straight forward manner, but I think generally they failed.

Anyways, I'm reading the book partly because of my new job as a Linux sysadmin for a small company called Primesoft. I'm gonna have to replace a Linux box which currently acts as a firewall/router not to mention god knows what other services it provides. But still it should be a good experience.

On the other hand I figured out finally how to get multi boot linux to work properly. I set up my laptop with two different versions of Ubuntu and I finally installed Fedora. My impressions of Fedora were good to start off with, while it was installing. The Anaconda installer is a really well polished piece of work. But upon logging in I wasn't so impressed. For example I couldn't find the Fedora version of Synaptic. I'm sure there must be one, anyway it just shows how important Synaptic is to Ubuntu.

My new laptop - Acer Aspire 4315 Review

I needed a simple, cheap laptop that I could take to university so that I could work on stuff there and not have to hope and pray that there'll be enough working computers for me when I get to university.

The Requirements
The requirements for my laptop weren't great. All it had to do was have WiFi (802.11 b/g) and be powerful enough to run a simple development web server (LAMP). The other requirement and the most important one was that it had to be cheap. After looking on the Laptop section of PriceSpy I came upon the Acer 4315 going for $699NZD (plus a $99 cash back offer from Acer) which was the same price as the Asus EEE (after the cash back). The laptop came preloaded with Ubuntu 7.10, which was great for me, since I probably would have installed it anyway. So it was a tough decision, whether to go for extreme portability and just a really cool little gadget or to go for a rather standard (if a little old laptop).

I made up my mind when Dick Smith had a computer sale and discounted their laptops by 10% lowering the before cashback price of the Acer to $630NZD. So one Saturday I went down to the store and brought it home.


You get what you paid for
For $630 you don't get a laptop bag or any other extras. Just the laptop and the power cord. Although the salesman offered a upgrade package including more ram, a bag and something else (usb mouse??) for $99 which i declined. Other than the laptop and the power cord there was also the warranty booklet from Acer, a pamphlet on how to put in the battery and turn on the laptop and two instructional bits of paper.

Two bits of paper
The first piece of paper starts off by thanking you on purchasing the computer loaded with Ubuntu, followed by a blurb about linux and Ubuntu in general that sounds like it came from the Ubuntu marketing department.


Near the bottm of the page a section titled "Some system limitations" informs the users that the E key, Wireless key, modem and microphone are all disabled "due to limitations of Linux". (The E key I'm guessing launches some kind of Acer software package that came with the laptop and the wireless key enables/disables the wireless card). It would have been more accurate of Acer to say that the E key is disabled because their developers put out software only designed to run on Windows. The wireless key does work, but in an interesting way. When connected and you push the wireless button it will disable the wireless card, but in such a way that the network manager app doesn't know that the device has been shut down, so the interface is still active and it tries to connect, but ends up failing. Pressing the wireless button again and telling the network manager to connect to the network again seems to work for me. The microphone doesn't work at all. The modem I haven't tried, but I don't really need an analog modem with my laptop anyway.

The other side of the first bit of paper tells you how to set up an account once the computer is turned on. It basically consists of selecting your language, time zone, keyboard layout and your name, username and password. It also tells you how to create a regular user account once you log in.

The second bit of paper tells you how to connect to a wireless network on one side and on the other it gives a detailed list of how to install the automatix dvd and playback codecs.


About the Ubuntu installation

• The laptop came with Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 32-bit installed
• The main partition is ext2, not the usual ext3. Leading to a faster system, albeit a less secure one for your data. (ext2 does not have journaling)
  
• The swap partition is not encased in a linux extended partition but is directly mapped onto the hard drive and has a size of ~4GB
• The computer name is set to ASUS
• The Atheros wireless driver is enabled from first boot

The Cashback

In order to get the cash back offer it turns out you have to go to acer's website and register which model you bought, where and when. Registering was easy, but on the website the folks at Acer try to get you to abandon your cash back offer and instead use the money to buy their extended warranty, with the website claiming that the average laptop service costs $328. I just skipped this part and asked for the money. It turns out that in order to get your cashback you have to send in the barcode from the box the laptop came in, along with your receipt to an address in Australia, within 30 days or no deal. Not to mention the fact that if you don't register on the website within 14 days of your purchase you can also forget it. But the best part is in their terms when they say to allow up to 8 weeks after they receive the request to receive the cash. Seems like a bit of a double standard to me, them giving you only 4 weeks to send your barcode and receipt in, but allowing themselves up to 8 weeks to send you your money. So it seems it'll be sometime in June when I get my money back, a nice little birthday present for me :)

Issues I have with the laptop

• microphone doesn't work
• suspend doesn't work
  
• specialised buttons on side don't work (wireless button works but not fully)
• screen flickers when plugging/unnplugging the power cord
• to disable the touchpad while writing you have to press the 'function' button and one of the F keys.
• the latch at the front makes it sometimes tricky to open the laptop, requiring you to use your nail. But I do like having a latch.
  

All in all, I'm quite pleased with my first laptop. I wanted something basic for a bargain price and I found it. The lack of a microphone is a shame, but I can't remember the last time I used a microphone anyway and the lack of suspend was to be expected. I have yet to install the webserver software so it'll be interesting to see how well it runs. I'm also liking the rough plastic finish on the outside of the laptop, it gives it quite a solid look. The mousepad also feels quite good, compared to some other laptops I've had a go with. Another good point is the fast boot time, which feels even faster than my desktop computer. This is most likely due to the decision to use the 32-bit version of Ubuntu and to use the ext2 file system as opposed to the slower ext3.

Bookmark overload

I just updated my links section of the blog. As you can see it is now huge. The story behind this is that I'm trying to clear out my bookmarks in firefox and I thought the best way to do so would be to post the links on my website and then have a post for each site (or several sites) explaining what the site is about and if it's any good. So hopefully more to come later.

So there's only web development...

So, after talking to a friend of mine he came up with a statement that I believe sums up the New Zealand IT industry pretty well. "Its all web development". The industry here contains a few large companies, which hire some CS/SE graduates, but the vast majority will find themselves after university working on some aspect of developing essentially web pages.

For someone who doesn't particularly enjoy web development, this is a rather bitter pill to swallow, learning that if you want to work in any other aspect of IT, you should probably move to Australia/UK/America.

What's even more disappointing is that during my 5 and a half years at university, there was hardly any emphasis placed on web development. I think in total there were 2 courses that dealt with any kind of web development. This leaves a large gap in my education, as people that are hiring are looking for experience with CSS, Javascript, AJAX, technologies which the university does not teach at all, and PHP/ASP.NET, MySQL/MSSQL which the university does a poor job of teaching. In fact looking at the curriculum the only thing that the Computer Science degree seems to prepare you for is more Computer Science.

So anyway... It's no use bitching about the past now. If I'm doomed to become a web developer then I might as well become the best fucking web developer this side of the equator. But this is going to involve a lot of learning. The type of learning I dread and generally avoid. Learning by yourself, in your own spare time. Having to force yourself to read another chapter after coming home from work tired and worn out from your shitty job. The really hard kind of learning... fuck.

But I do in fact have a plan. And having a plan keeps me from having a total nervous breakdown, something which I've been really close to this last month.

My plan essentially involves learning everything about web technology, from the ground up, from setting up a LAMP server to AJAX. This is an ambitious goal for me, one which might take over a year or more to complete as I don't know how much time I will be able to commit to my "2nd education". But I do know roughly what it will involve.

Step 1: Wiring up my house. That is to say put in ethernet cables connecting the bedrooms of the house, the living room and the garage. This will allow me to put my de facto webserver (old HP pentium 4 my girlfriend was going to throw out) into the garage and to have it running full time. This computer is a mixture of web server and storage server (after adding a 320GB HDD) and will serve files to the internet and to the different devices around the house (in the future I could have a separate machine as a file server and a webserver) This should also give me experience on how to set up a network for a SOHO (Small Office Home Office).

Step 2: Domain Name. Opening an account with a dynamic dns provider and setting up a domain name. Probably going to use dyndns.com as it seems to be quite popular.

Step 3: Learning about webservers, file servers, ssh servers, nfs servers, ftp servers, proxies etc... Because I want my web/storage server to be universally accessible it needs to be able to serve files across a wide range of protocols. For each of the types of server I need to

1. Install the software
2. Configure the software i.e. get it to do what I want securely

Luckily I have found a resource that deals with these issues and a lot more. The resource being www.linuxhomenetworking.com. The website is well written, easy to read and up to date. It's also free.

[NOTE: I should mention now that I intend to use only OSS software as a part of this education, for reasons which I will probably write about later]

Step 4: Install software for the management of my server. This includes things like Webmin, MySQL Administrator, PHPMyAdmin and perhaps some software to configure Apache (is there a decent GUI frontend for Apache or does it come down to editing config files?)

Step 5: Installing existing CMSs' and understanding how they work. Looking at software such as Joomla!, Drupal, Wordpress, Blogger (is the blogger source code available?), Silverstripe (Go NZ!) etc... and looking at how they are made, paying particular attention to how they handle extensibility (add-ons, extensions) and theming. However for the basic ideas on how to create a CMS I'll probably start with php-mysql-tutorial.com. It should be interesting to see how much difference in the designs of these CMSs' there is and the benefits/disadvantages of each approach.

Step 6: Learn Cascading Style Sheets. I have a real love/hate relationship with CSS. That is to say I f***ing hate CSS. As far as I'm concerned, CSS is a great idea (separation of content and presentation), implemented in a totally illogical, counter-intuitive, overly complex way. But to be fair, that's what I thought of a lot of programming languages I learned until I "got" them. So maybe sometime in the future I will really love CSS, but I wouldn't bet money on it. I'm probably gonna go with the tutorials from W3Schools or failing that get a book from the university library on CSS.

Step 7: Learn Javascript. Again, I feel like I'm 10 years behind the learning curve with this one, but thanks to university (and my own lack of interest in web development) this is another area which I have hardly any experience with. With this one I'm gonna follow the W3Schools tutorials and if needed get a book from the uni library.

Step 8: Learn XHTML. Another one from W3Schools. Basically need to learn along with Javascript to be able to understand AJAX in step 9.

Step 9: Learn AJAX. Start with W3Schools tutorial on AJAX, then can move on to other examples on the internet. There's so many on the web that the biggest problem learning is going to be information overload. A book might be useful as well.

So then the question arises as to what to do with all of this new web development knowledge and the server sitting in my garage. The thing to do I guess would be to make a website to showcase my talents which could be a point of reference for people seeking examples of my skills/knowledge.

Also the idea of creating a photo gallery CMS based on the work I did with LaPhotographie is an idea I've had for a while. Such a system would, of course be open source and perhaps some day take off and become more than a pet project.

And the possibility of turning the setup in my garage into a web hosting company is there as well.

So there you go, that's my plan. It helps me to keep busy and ignore the fact that I'll probably end up doing web development for a long, long time.

Nuff said

Ubuntu's new website http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/. Best idea ever. Nuff said.

Don't feel like downloading another CD?

Trying out Linux doesn't have to mean downloading a 700MB CD image and then having to burn it onto a CD. Thanks to the university software mirrors you have at least three places where you can go to get CD images for free.

Option 1:
http://mirror.cs.auckland.ac.nz/ - The Department of Computer Science software mirror. Clicking on the 'iso' or 'linux' folders will give you access to a large variety of the most popular distributions, including some less known ones. The mirror is kept fairly up to date and if they don't have what you're looking for you can always email the CS mirror maintainers and ask them nicely to help you out. The mirror has a host of other software as well and it's all FREE!!

Option 2:
http://intraftp.ece.auckland.ac.nz/ - The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering FTP server. Although compared to the Computer Science mirror the FTP server has a sparse collection of Linux distro's, they do host an Ubuntu and Debian software repositories, which have most of the software programs you are ever gonna need.

Option 3:
http://dist.ec.auckland.ac.nz/ - This is the server which all of the Linux machines in the labs get their updates from. Not much in the way of CD images here, just a Debian, Ubuntu and possibly RedHat repository.

Once you've chosen your distro, download it to /tmp, under Linux or C:\usertmp. under Windows and then burn it to disc (most of the CS lab computers have CD burners). If you try to save the CD image to your afs drive (H: drive) it will most likely tell you that it can't do it due to a lack of space. The default allocation for Science students is about 300MB. If you download to the temporary folders though, don't expect to be able to access your files the next time you log in. The files in those directories are deleted regularly.

Keep your Ubuntu System up to date for free

Have you ever been at home just browsing the net, when all of a sudden that orange update icon pops us? You click on it only to discover a new version of Open Office and an associated 200MB download. You look at your internet usage only to find that you are only 250MB away from your monthly limit with two days to go. So reluctantly you click to download and install the package and then realize you have to go find something to do for half an hour while the package downloads.
This how-to tells you how to avoid having to waste time and bandwidth by using the university's repository. It should be particularly useful for people with slow connection speeds or low monthly data allocations.

To do this we need to first write down the names of the packages that need updating, their version numbers and which section of the repository they are from (main, universe, multiverse).

1. Start up Synaptic and click on the section 'Installed (upgradable)' in the left hand listbox. In the right hand section of the window you should see the packages that need upgrading.

e.g. tcpdump from version 3.9.5-2 to 3.9.5-2ubuntu1

2. Right click on a package and select 'Properties'. In the 'Common' tab, there is a line which says 'Section: .....'
Packages from the main repository will just have the section name. Packages from the universe repository will have '(universe)' at the end of the line. Packages from the multiverse repository will have '(multiverse)' at the end of the line.

e.g. for our example package tcpdump it says 'Section: Networking' meaning that it is in the main repository.

We now have the info we need. Now we can go to uni and navigate to http://intraftp.ece.auckland.ac.nz/. This is the ftp server of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is only available at uni. The server has a lot of software available, so feel free to look around.

3. The part we are interested in is the ubuntu repository. So we are going to navigate to ubuntu --> pool --> [the repository of your package] --> [the first letter of your package] --> [the name of your package] -->

e.g. -> ubuntu --> pool --> main --> t --> tcpdump -->

4. Once there, simply find the files which match the version number of our upgrade and end in .deb

e.g. tcpdump_3.9.5-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb
tcpdump_3.9.5-2ubuntu1_i386.deb

5. Select the file which matches your processor architecture and save it to your USB drive.

6. Take it home and double click on the file. You will get a warning saying that the package is available through the internet and that you should install it from there. Ignore it and install the package.

If you have a laptop or you feel like taking your computer to uni one day the process is even easier. Simply open your sources.list file and add

Code:

deb http://intraftp.ece.auckland.ac.nz/ubuntu/ feisty main restricted universe multiverse

and then run apt-get or synaptic.

This method is also good for upgrading or installing new software.