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DLSLUG, 2 Nov-2006: FOSS in Schools

By on October 30, 2006 in OpenSource, Technology

Bill McGonigle announces the November 2nd meeting of the Dartmouth-lake Sunapee Linux User Group meeting, at a different location than usual:

The next regular monthly meeting of the DLSLUG will be held Thursday, November 2nd, 7-9PM at Dartmouth College, Silsby Hall, Room 312. All are welcome, free of charge.

“Open Source in Schools” presented by Dave Clifton

Dave will be talking about the use of Free / Open Source Software in schools and will chronicle the growth of the infrastructure at the Plainfield Elementary School (NH SAU 32) since 2002. There will be an emphasis on choosing appropriate software, the real costs of going down the F/OSS path, and some potentially surprising stories about what the Plainfield School is doing today.

Dave is currently a Senior Systems Administrator for
Ansys (formerly Fluent) in Lebanon, NH. He holds a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins and spent ten years doing consulting work for various government agencies and Bell Atlantic before escaping from DC to the Upper Valley in 1998. He got his start as a sysadmin in the mid-1980s running Masscomp Real-Time Unix and SunOS 4.0.3 and has subsequently worked on more operating systems than he wants to remember.

SLUG 13-Nov-2006: Google Earth

By on October 30, 2006 in OpenSource, Technology

Ben Scott announces a presentation on Google Earth by Rob Anderson at the upcoming Seacoast Linux User Group:

  • What : Google Earth
  • Who : Rob Anderson
  • Day : Mon 13 Nov 2006
  • Time : 7:00 PM
  • Where: Room 301, Morse Hall, UNH, Durham, NH

This November's SLUG meeting will be on Google Earth, with Rob Anderson leading the discussion. We're hoping everyone will get involved for a group learning session.

What is Google Earth?

“It's a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route.”

— from http://earth.google.com/

Google Earth is free for personal use, and is available for Linux,
Mac OS X, and something called “Windows”.

About SLUG

SLUG is the Seacoast Linux User Group, and is a chapter of GNHLUG, the Greater NH Linux User Group. Rob Anderson is the SLUG coordinator. SLUG meets the second Monday of every month, same time, same place. You can find out more about SLUG and GNHLUG at the http://slug.gnhlug.org/ and http://www.gnhlug.org/ websites.

Meetings take place starting at 7:00 PM. Meetings are open to all. The meeting proper ends around 9ish, but it's not uncommon to find hangers-on there until 10 or later. They take place in Room 301 (the third floor conference room), of Morse Hall, at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham.

Ubuntu releases Edgy Eft

By on October 27, 2006 in Linux

LXer points to Ubuntu 6.10 Released. “The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 6.10, codenamed “Edgy Eft”. This release includes both installable Desktop CDs and alternate text-mode installation CDs for several architectures.”

Just when you thought you had caught up! Now, unlike some other OS platforms, this doesn't mean you have to drop what you are doing and try to switch to a new OS. Edgy is evolutionary and not revolutionary. News GUIs are add-ons to existing ones. Most packages are updates that you can get for your existing OS. The Ubuntu folks have stated that the last version, 6.06, “Dapper Drake” is the “Long Term Support” version, so the intent is the next couple with be edgier, more beta-like versions. So, if you want to play with cutting edge stuff, Edgy Eft is for you. If you want the staid and stable version, stick with the Drake.

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…

Coming soon to a PC near you: more of the same

By on October 18, 2006 in Microsoft, Technology

In a June column, InfoWorld's Oliver Rist wrote, “Vista may just mark an OS revolution.” By September, the glitter of shiny things had worn off, and in “Vista's not so revolutionary after all.”

“I just finished previewing Vista Release Candidate 1 for the Test Center, and I suddenly realized I[base ']m more underwhelmed than I anticipated. A few months ago, in this very column, I used the adjective revolutionary instead of evolutionary. I[base ']m changing my mind.”

These positions are striking, and I wonder how much of that is due to the way Microsoft has spent millions positioning and repositioning the product. In the years (and years and years) before the product shipped, Microsoft regularly announced earth-shaking features that would make Longhorn/Vista the most incredible OS on the planet, keeping the buzz going among the techorati and tempting the early adopters. When the product finally (Finally!) is getting close to shipping (*exactly* on time, regardless of all of the press to the contrary), wouldn't it be in Microsoft's interest to make the new OS as harmless and uninteresting as possible, so that the vast majority of users just accepted it as an update and not a revolution? If the choice isn't revolutionary (read: risky), there's a lot less reason to consider alternatives like OS X or RedHat or SuSE.

It's the same disk file system, despite all the initial buzz over WinFS. It's the same AD-domain-group-user permission scheme, despite the fundamental security failings of that design. It's the same old desktop metaphor, albeit with outrageous demands for graphical processing power. (When the vast majority of business still gets by on black-and-white printouts of words and numbers in rows and columns, the point of enough GPU power to play video games at 10x7x32pp@120fps is baffling to me. What new information are they conveying in translucent dialog boxes?). It's the same old apps.

Where are the solutions to the hard problems? Where's universal and ubiquitous and secure access to your stuff? Where's immediate backup and recovery of all of your files, settings and gestures? Where's secure, unimpeachable, identification in a wallet where you control your personal information and can enforce iron-clad privacy? Where's simple wireless roaming? With five years in the making, thousands of employee's efforts and millions of dollars expended, where are the solutions that you can't download from any free Linux distribution? Where's the innovation?

Microsoft fought hard to be the dominant leader in the industry. It is sad to see them abdicate their leadership with yet another more-of-the-same product.

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!

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