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Open Source means that users have the freedom to see how software works, adapt it for the own needs, fix bugs and limitations and contribute back to the community.

TrixBox 2.0 Beta released

By on October 26, 2006 in LAMP, Linux, MySQL, OpenSource, PHP, Technology

LXer reports trixbox 2.0 released. “Trixbox 2.0 beta will be available for download on Wednesday. This release will be Fonality's first big contribution to the trixbox/Asterisk community after the recent Fonality acquisition of trixbox. which certainly caused a stir within the Asterisk community. I spoke with Chris Lyman, CEO of Fonality, to find out more about this major new release of trixbox.”

I've seen TrixBox 1.0 demoed at MonadLUG in June by Tim Lind and it was an impressive piece of software. Looking forward to seeing what improvements are available in the 2.0 version. Tim's doing an Asterisk presentation in December at CentraLUG; perhaps he'll show off 2.0 there.

Oracle Linux v. Red Hat Linux

By on October 26, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource, Technology

An interesting development. Oracle has announced they will be selling and supporting their own distribution of Red Hat, with base prices lower than those offered by Red Hat. This is perfectly legal, of course, as long as they follow the rules respecting the trademarks and copyrights associated with Red Hat's logos and names. It's already done by CentOS, which offers an “upstream” version of a well-known branded distribution. This is one of the points of Open Source: building on the works of others. The licenses make it clear that while you can build, you can't steal; many licenses require you share back your improvements you make, improving the lot of everyone.

I'll be interested in hearing how this works out. I don't know if it will prove economically feasible to Oracle. I applaud their innovation.

Others don't see it this way. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols decries “Oracle's Red Hat rip-off: “Here's the truth of the matter. Red Hat does a darn good job of supporting its Linux, and charges a fair price for it.” I think that's true, and I think it will be borne out by the marketplace: some big Oracle shops may switch to “Oracle Unbreakable Linux” (hah!), but most shops will be more comfortable staying with the Red Hat vendor they know. And trying to undersell Red Hat on price? Oracle customers are generally not thought to be too price-conscious.

Time will tell. I see it as another endorsement of Linux as a valid platform for mission-critical line-of-business applications. That's a win.

CentraLUG, November 6: Digital Forensic File Carving Techniques

By on October 23, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource, Security, Technology

The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central NH GNHLUG chapter, happens the first Monday of (most) months on the New Hampshire Institute Campus starting at 7 PM.

Directions and maps are available on the NHTI site. This month, we’ll be meeting in the Library/Learning Center/Bookstore, room 146, marked as “I” on that map. The main meeting starts at 7 PM, and we finish by 9 PM. Open to the public. Tell your friends.

For November’s meeting, Andy Bair will present “Digital Forensic File Carving Techniques.” Data carving techniques are used during digital forensic investigations and existing file carving tools typically produce many false positives. This briefing describes new tools and techniques used by the winning team of the the 2006 File Carving Challenge held at the 6th Annual Digital Forensic Research Workshop (DFRWS). The current briefing is also located here.

In December, Tim Lind of Computerborough will present TrixBox, the Linux distro for running the Asterisk PBX software, formerly known as “Asterisk @ Home.”

January’s meeting falls on the first, so we’ll likely skip the month’s meeting. However, stay tuned for some exciting meetings coming up in 2007! More details on the group and directions to the meeting at http://www.gnhlug.org.

New toy, day two…

By on October 21, 2006 in Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

A little more study on the ThinkPad T40 leads to the great Linux On Laptops web site with some specific advice on the T40 models and a tremendous amount of details on setting up the millions of little devices – mouse buttons, touchpad, IR, video, sound, modem, ethernet, power management, volume control, wireless – whew! – that make a laptop such a pleasure to use.

After setting the hidden non-partition to “Secure” so that no application would attempt to overwrite it, I used an Ubuntu 6.06 LiveCD to resize the WinXPPro NTFS partition down to 18 Gb and set up a boot, root, and swap partition and then install Ubuntu. I set up all the optional repositories that Ubuntu comes with, update the local machine with 200Mb of updates and reboot. Up and running and current. Pretty cool.

Restarting in Windows, WinXP started CHKDSK, since the partition size had changes and it completed and forced a reboot. On the second start, Windows cheerfully reported it had “installed new devices” and needed to restart. What new devices? Hmm. Restarted again. Sheesh.

OOBE as it was meant to be…

By on October 20, 2006 in Apple Macintosh OS X, Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Security, Technology

I've been holding off on purchasing a new laptop until IBM/Lenovo had a Linux-compatible ThinkPad T61p with the Merom (“Core 2 Duo”) CPU installed. “End of October” is the latest estimate, but knowing how long Real Soon Now can get to be, I elected to pick up a bench spare laptop Just In Case. My primary machine (“Lucky”) had a dead LCD, fried USB ports and a flaky wireless card. My older beater laptops have about bit the dust. I shopped around the BigBox stores and they were selling consumer junk. I looked at the Apples; they're sweet machines, but the software's still proprietary. If I was going to go for an Apple, I'd want to pick up a monster machine, and the budget doesn't allow that. So, for a while I was stumped. Finally, Laura suggested I look at a lower-model ThinkPad to tide me over.

IBM/Lenovo has a site for refurbished machines. I shopped over a couple of days. Keep an eye on the site, as inventory is changing often. I finally selected a T40, Pentium-M 1.5GHz, 256 Mb RAM (with a free upgrade to 512), 40 Gb HDD, WinXPPro, 1024×768 and CD-RW/DVD for just under USD $700.

With UPS ground shipping, it took less than a week to get here. The Out of Box Experience was perfect. Clean and well-packaged, the machine looked new. Other than a couple scratches on the serial number label, you'd think this thing had been vacuum-packed since it was manufactured in June of 2003. The HDD was a clean install of WinXP, and the “preinstallation” process took about an hour to install XP, forty million patches, IBM custom tools and drivers. A couple onerous registration forms (Yes, I want to register, no, I don't want you to have your “partners” send me mail) and I was up and running. First, a trip to Windows Update. A “new version” of Windows Update (the dreaded Windows Genuine Advantage check — I passed! Whew!) and I was up to date. I was surprised to find that Windows Firewall was not running — I had forgotten is was off by default, and was glad I was within a reasonable safe network as I raised the shields.

Next, a backup before I broke things. Booting onto a Knoppix CD, I followed the same process I used in July to upgrade Laura's hard drive: with the machine off, plug in an external drive and Knoppix, boot, Ctrl-F2 to a root console,

mkdir /media/target
mount /dev/sda1 /media/target
partimage


and in eleven and a half minutes, the 4.5 Gb is backed up. Magick!

I was suprised to see that the recovery partition isn't a partion at all, according to the machine, but unpartitioned space at the end of the drive. That makes it a bit more difficult to make a backup copy for the inevitable hard disk drive failure. IBM's help file tries to explain how this is a feature to keep you from mis-laying a Recovery CD (You'll have to order one from IBM when the hdd fails, it explains. Of course, it will be a little difficult to read the help file on the hdd to discover this once it's failed.) Google, of course, will point you to solutions that can work around pretty much any “feature” the vendor throws in there.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the machine, and it will work great as a stopgap between Lucky and the next machine, and at a good price. Now, off to tinker some more…

MerriLUG: Rob Lebree on What's Inside a Mobile Phone

By on October 18, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource, Technology

The monthly meeting of the Merrimack Valley Linux User Group takes place on Thursday, the 19th of October at Martha's Exchange in Nashua, NH. Dinner is at 6 PM and the main meeting (upstairs) at 7:30 PM. Driving directions can be found here

From the group's announcement:

“Rob Lembree from JumpShift, LLC [Edit: fixed broken link] will discuss the components and processes involved in the development of a modern mobile phone, from the processors and radios to the operating system technology, middleware and applications that bring the package together. He will also discuss the peculiarities of the mobile industry that make bringing a handset to market a unique challenge.”

“Rob will bring lots of mobile platforms with him in various states of completion for show and tell. Rob has two decades of experience in operating system technology, many of it in the embedded computing space, with three and a half years applying this experience to the mobile platform industry. When Rob grows up, he'd like to start a research and development company, hire smart people, and develop cool stuff that scares the heck out of big companies.”

Hope to see you there!

Baystar exec says MSFT behind high-burn-rate funding of SCO

By on October 10, 2006 in Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

OSNews is pointing to the story that Microsoft's SCO Involvement Revealed. “A declaration by SCO's backer, BayStar has revealed that the software Giant Microsoft had more links to the anti-Linux bad-boy. The declaration made by from BayStar general partner Larry Goldfarb has turned up as part of IBM's evidence to the court. Goldfarb says that Baystar had been chucking USD 50 million at SCO despite concerns that it had a high cash burn rate. He also claims that former Microsoft senior VP for corporate development and strategy Richard Emerson discussed “a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would 'backstop', or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment”.

I don't think it's really a surprise that MSFT and SUN are behind the funding of SCO to take a poke at IBM and slow the adoption of Linux through FUD. If you'd like to learn more about this incredibly complex case, GrokLaw is the place to visit. But be warned: it's easy to be dragged into all the fascinating nooks and crannies of the case.

The real question for me is whether MSFT and SUN succeeded in their ventures. SUN has done a turn-around and is re-inventing themselves as the green company with better price/power/performance for the internet. MSFT has… almost shipped Vista. Linux, meanwhile, has moved, up, out and around, scaling to greater multi-CPU architectures, developing a better virtualization story, making huge progress in hardware compatibility, and fielding several worthy desktop competitors. LAMP is not a risky choice for IT; it's a question of which commercially-supported distributions and stacks to choose and ensuring the eager technicians in house get the training they need. If the SCO case cooled enthusiasm and take-up any, it gave FOSS advocates time to get their act together and pay a little closer attention to governance and provenance and licensing terms, cleaning up their houses and getting their story straight. Meanwhile, Microsoft… almost shipped Vista.

If SCO/Baystar/Microsoft/SUN thought that IBM would roll over and settle out of court, they badly miscalculated.

Ubuntu print to PDF

By on October 3, 2006 in Linux, OpenSource

Working on a new install of Ubuntu 6.06 and needed the functionality of printing to PDF out of a variety of applications. OpenOffice.org has it built-in, but other apps don't. There's lots of support in Linux for PostScript as the preferred output format, but the magic of invoking pstopdf is magick to me. Enter cups-pdf, a printer driver that generates PDF files. Following the instructions here (especially the hint in comment 15), I was up and running and generating PDFs in ten minutes. Way cool!

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