Linux

For some reason, in Ubuntu, the Apache default configs seem to include a plethora of calls for 'NameVirtualHost *:80'. It seems that the very second you install Apache, it starts complaining about 'NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts'. While this is just a warning and can be safely ignored, it is a brand new box and you probably want it to run nicely. I know I do. So I started hunting. I removed all calls for "NameVirtualHost *:80" in ./apache2/sites-enabled/ and that didn't seem to help, there were still warnings about it. Turns out there is one extra call tucked away.

Go into /etc/apache2/ports.conf, find and comment out: "NameVirtualHost *:80"

Piece of cake, if you know where to look. Really Apache should give file names with your warnings, but that would make it user friendly. We can't have just any old peon being able to work Apache, that might run some Linux geeks like me out of a job.

In the old days of running Linux, I used to change timezone of a machine by running time --set= at the command line and simply including the timezone code (PST). These days, Debian, Ubuntu, and the other similar derivatives have made life so much easier. If you want to change the timezone, all you need to do is run (as root):

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

It will pop up a little config screen, asking you where you are and will summarily set your timezone. These is much easier than the old way since you don't even have to know your own timezone code (though... who wouldn't?).

Sometimes I feel like all I do in my job and personal life is shuffle data around from one location to another. Last week it was re-installing Windows 7 on my two daily-use machines. This last weekend it was completing a server migration. Of course, I had just completed a migration 4 months ago.

To clarify, at the beginning of December I received an email from my hosting company letting me know that my VPS host was to be moved. At that point in time we were heavy into our project and I summarily ignored it. Not too long after that I got an email saying that my VPS had been replicated over to a new location and to check it out since I only had 3 days before they shut down the old server. Fun times, migrate all the data changes, make sure everything is functioning properly and then change the DNS. Not really a big deal but of course we were busier than hell with work.

A few weeks ago I warmed up a VPS with a new hosting provider. I wanted to play with Gallery 3 beta and the old VPS was running Ubuntu 8.04 with an old, old, old version of PHP. I had heard good things about this new company, and they offered Ubuntu 9.04, so I tried it out. In the end, I decided against using Gallery 3 and went over to SmugMug to host Snowulf Photography, but kept this new VPS. So I did yet another server migration (it feels like I do one every week) to this new setup.

All the sites I host have been moved and so far everything is working out. Really the only troublesome portion of a migration is dealing with MySQL. I exported everything from the old host which was running 5.0 (I believe) and the new one is running 5.1. They changed some of the setup in the `mysql` database, especially the `users` table which has caused some issues. In the end it got scraped and rebuilt by hand.

In the move I did some upgrades, like the blog software (Serendipity) and other minor fixes. So if you see something funny, odd, strange or generally broken, please let me know.

I've got an ASUS Eee PC 1000, and it is a fine little device. Originally it came with Xandros, which quickly became Ubuntu. I was especially happy futzing about with UNR 9.04. Unfortunately for Linux, Windows 7 was coming out, so I wanted to try that out on the netbook. I like Windows 7, but it wasn't designed specially for Netbooks; I find that it runs a lot of background processes that slows the machine down. So with the release of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, it was time to re-install again! Of course, I wasn't going to install the regular Ubuntu when there was the Netbook remix available. I have written my review in the form of pros/cons. Much of my comparison is based on UNR 9.04 (what I remember of it) and Windows.

Continue reading "Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 Review" »

==Background==
The other week Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty was officially released, to my great enjoyment! Of course, I'd already been running it for a while on my ASUS Eee PC 1000. The one issue I had with it was that the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Alpha that I downloaded was for i386, and the Eee runs an Intel Atom processor (it was compatible, but not the same). I had assumed that once 9.04 was officially released, they'd put out a LPIA (Low Power Intel Atom) optimized version of the aforementioned remix.

I downloaded the Netbook Remix on release day, but didn't notice until a few days later that the download was for i386. The image file name was "ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix-i386.img". I thought this was extremely odd since the UNR download page says 'What do I need to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix?' and then 'An Intel Atom processor'. Very strange indeed. So I went and asked about it on the Ubuntu Forums. As it turns out I was not the only one that noticed this little "issue". Later I also found a bug report for this problem and the reply from one of the mucky mucks of Ubuntu stated:

i386 was a safer bet for the first release of UNR, also having an i386 and a lpia version double the QA time; however we will consider this idea for 9.10, there are some issues with lpia still.

So.... No LPIA version for the first official release of UNR. Granted there was a UNR for 8.10, but it was sort of hacked together after the fact. I can accept that. After all Ubuntu doesn't release for a ton of platforms like Debian does. But the question came up in the forum thread, is LPIA optimized code really necessary? Some claimed that LPIA gave them an hour more of battery time, other claimed it was crap. This, of course, hearkens back to the early days of x86 versus x64 operating systems. In fact I found an article about 32bit versus 64bit on 9.04 which I ended up using as a base for my own series of tests.

==The Tests==
I installed Ubuntu 9.04 Alternate i386 and Ubuntu 9.04 Alternate LPIA on my Eee PC 1000, both with the most minimal installs. I then proceeded to run the following tests:

• Convert an Album of MP3's into Ogg Vorbis
  
• Bunzip2 the Linux 2.6.29.2 kernel tarball
  
• Untar the kernel
  
• Compile the Kernel
  
• Bzip2 a 400+mb ISO of Wikipeida

==Results==
===i386===
uname -a : Linux happyfeet 2.6.28-11-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
dir2ogg : 9mn 45s
bunzip2 : 0mn 54s
tar -xf : 1mn 51s
make : 196m 18s
bzip2 : 7m 6s

===LPIA===
uname -a : Linux happyfeet 2.6.28-11-lpia #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:56:10 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
dir2ogg : 9mn 58s
bunzip2 : 1mn 1s
tar -xf : 1mn 28s
make : 163mn 12s
bzip2 : 7mn 16s

===Differences===
dir2ogg: LPIA was 3% Slower
bunzip2: LPIA was 12% Slower
tar -xf: LPIA was 21% Faster
make: LPIA was 17% Faster
bzip2: LPIA was 3% Slower

==Summary==
The test was fairly inconclusive. With the exception of compiling the kernel (which took 30minutes less on LPIA), the difference in times between i386 and LPIA were statistically insignificant (for dir2ogg and bzip2). Frankly the tar -xf and bunzip2 tests took so little time that any minor flux on the machine (say a cron job) could easily skew the test in either direction. The kernel compile was, in my book, significantly faster. I think LPIA is worthy of a trial run on my Eee. Of course I noticed, as the bug stated, that there are a few issues. For example the wireless did not work out of the box like it did with the i386 Alpha I previously installed. This may be a quick & easy fix, but so far I haven't had the time nor energy to actually fiddle with the machine.

For those that are interested, after the jump I've got more details on exactly what commands I executed for the tests
Continue reading "Benchmarking: Ubuntu 9.04 i386 vs LPIA on Eee..." »

Recently, we've had an upwelling of spam at the office. The most problematic component of which is the fact that all the text is gibberish with only the images being "Spam". If your spam filter doesn't have an OCR plugin, it's not going to do a very good job stopping the spam - which is exactly where I was. To make a long story short, getting an OCR plugin for my implementation of SpamAssassin was going to be a royal pain in the ass, so I figured I'd give some alternatives a try.

I spent a little time looking around at anti-spam appliances before I remembered Untangle, an open source gateway. I've run into them a few times at places like LinuxWorld, but never really had a chance to give them a try. Their gateway offers a plethora of "applications" you can install with a single click, such as: spam blocker, web filter, firewall, VPN, and routing. The reason why I was never that inclined to give them a try was because I had all the features I needed & wanted already built into my current firewall (with the exception of QoS - not to be confused with Quantum of Solace, which is just awesome in general). Now that my spam blocker wasn't up to the task, I figured I'd give theirs a try. Plus if it worked well, I could use it to replace my current gateway/firewall completely.

But... I never got that far. I can't even tell you how well the spam blocker works, because I could never get Untangle running properly. I installed Untagle onto a VMWare image with enough system specs to make it happy, and 2 network interfaces. I installed it in Router/Gateway mode as that is how I'd end up using (as opposed to the "Transparent" mode which makes me nervous).

I suppose a majority of the problems I have with Untagle comes in the form of the forum goers. The people I talked with essentially told me that the spam blocking "just works transparently". When I tried to explain to them that you can't go modifying packets after they've already been sent (you can't go marking emails as spam until you've read the entire email) and therefor it must store the entire message (if nothing, in buffer), they gave me more "it just works transparently" crap. After that I tried to get help on actually getting the damn software to work. Ya know, accept emails and send them along (however the hell it was suppose to work, I didn't care at this point in time). I got some info about it, and a lot of lip. As frustrated as I was at this point in time, I followed the directions on the linked wiki page... and it still didn't work.

Apparently even with setting up port forwarding and installing the Firewall application to allow access to port 25, you're not allowed to access port 25. Kind of hard for a device to "just work transparently" when it is blocking access to the port. So after spending almost an entire day dicking around with the software and not even being able to forward emails through it (let alone anything else), I said "Fuck it". Untangle is supposed to be "point and click" software. If I'm reduced to SSH'ing into the box to flush IPtables just to get the machine to work halfway... I'm better off building the system myself. Which is EXACTLY what I'll do instead of EVER touching Untangle again.

Update 2009-05-01 20:13 UTC: Seems my Untangle thread friends found me. ROFLCOPTER!

As John was behind the wheel this past Saturday, I had many hours to burn; thus, I decided to try my hand at getting tethering working. I was attempting to tether my AT&T Tilt (HTC Kaiser II) with my Eee PC 1000 running Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04. When I was buddy breathing (IE Charging) the Tilt off the Eee PC the night before, I had noticed that it showed up as a wired network connection to the Ubuntu - tinkering ensued. I spent about 2.5 hours google'ing around under PIE (Portable Internet Explorer... sigh) on the Tilt while trying to find an answer. This is especially difficult on a tiny screen; visiting sites not designed for a mobile device; and then of course there's the cell service dropping periodically.

Anyway, I plugged in the phone and found out that it did indeed act like an Ethernet adapter to the computer, and even provided it an IP address via DHCP (169.something). I could ping the phone, but that was about it. I had remembered previously a "modem" application of some sort on the device so I found it, WModem Modem (Under Start > Settings > Connections) and launched that. Whenever that was enabled, the phone stopped providing network service and Ubuntu picked it up as an iPaq on ttyUSB0. I spent a good long while tinkering around here with the assumption that I could simply dial the phone like any normal modem. I found out that under Jaunty if I right clicked Network Manager and clicked Edit Connections there was a tab titled Mobile Broadband. I added some connections; thankfully, they had pre-made ones for AT&T and AT&T w/ Tethering. That was cool... so easy... but... I couldn't dial them. I'm not a newb, but I don't know what the new dialer is called apparently (and many applications are hidden in Netbook Remix, as far as I can tell). I spent a longggg time trying this approach but eventually gave up, being unable to dial the connections.

As I had exhausted all possible google's that I could think of centering on Ubuntu, I switched to the phone. Then came the magical google 'internet connection sharing at&t tilt'. As it turns out the HTC Kaiser II comes with an application called "Internet Connection Sharing" (which I had seen mentioned elsewhere), but it is removed by AT&T and replaced with that god awful "WModem Modem". Luckily for me (and you) the handy hackers at XDA Developers have ripped it out and provided the cab for download!

You can get the application on the XDA Forum (Login Required) or by my local mirror.

It is damn simple to use, and worked like a charm for me. Download the .cab to your device (via computer then ActiveSync, or just PIE it up directly from your device). Install the CAB. Launch Internet Sharing (Start > Programs). Make sure your USB cable is already plugged in. Click "Connect" and enjoy. For me, it kicks out the Phone<->Computer connection momentarily and comes back with the computer assigned to a 192.168 address. At this point the computer is online using the phone as a gateway. Shiny!!! While I didn't conduct many "benchmarks" other than actually using the connection (offline Gmail is extremely handy for its flaky connection mode), I can say that when I did an apt-get install (while in full 3G coverage in Sacramento) I got a max of 100KB/s download; I was floored. Granted the average was much slower, but 20-50KB/s for a mobile connection is still awesome. It was enough bandwidth to pull up and watch the Caltrans Live Traffic Cameras, which were helpful for our trip, but that is a story for another post.