Utah Open Source Planet

I've been trying to use Capistrano for application deployment over the last few days, writing rules to do some common tasks, figuring out how it works, etc. One problem I ran into is that I have a private CPAN bundle that I use to ensure a machine has all the right Perl libraries when I deploy to it.

The problem is that CPAN is often run interactively and so module writers often assume the user will be present. That means that it stops in the middle and asks questions about skipping tests, etc. I searched for a while to figure out how to get a default answer to questions. It's not Capistrano's job and CPAN didn't seem to have a configuration option that worked. Turns out it's in MakeMaker.

MakeMaker is the Perl library that the CPAN modules use to automate the build process. There's an environment variable called PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT that when true causes the MakeMaker prompt function to assume the default answer.

So, here's the task from the capfile I came up with.

task :load_bundle, roles => :local do
     run "cd /web/lib/perl/etc/kynetx-private-bundle; 
          sudo perl -MCPAN -e 
             '$ENV{PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT}=1;
              install Bundle::kobj_modules'"
end

This works fine. Of course, you also need to make sure the account you're using for installs can sudo without a password or this will fail as well. Maybe there's a better way to do sudo inside Capistrano? I'd like to know about it.

Tags: kynetx sysadmin ruby perl

Just the other day we were having a discussion on using the root shell in Ubuntu.  Now, remember, the root user account is disabled with no assigned password on a default Ubuntu system so administrative tasks need to be done using the sudo command.  For nearly all of the administration you would need sudo will be adequate.  There are occasionally those fringe cases where you might require a root shell.  Below I have a few alternatives and then, if you must, the correct way of opening a root shell.

For more information please see the RootSudo page on the Ubuntu Community Wiki.

Alternatives To A Root Shell

One of the most common reasons that a user might need a root shell is due to output redirection not working as expecting while using sudo.  This can be bypassed fairly easily.  Let me outline an example:

sudo echo “foo” > /root/somefile

The above example will not work because the normal user does not have access to write to the root user home directory, and combining the redirection in the command we’ve lost sudo access.

An alternative that will work would look something like this:

echo "foo" | sudo tee /root/somefile

This will echo the output on the console but the tee command ('man tee‘ for more information) will also take that output and write it to the file as expected.  Also note that 'tee -a' will work in the same fashion as >>, appending the data to the current file vs overwriting.

The Proper Way To A Root Shell

If you still need a root shell (perhaps you’ve come across a different scenario? perhaps you’re just lazy? perhaps you’re coming from another distribution?) let me outline the proper way to gain a root shell.

DISCLAIMER: This should be avoided if at all possible.  It is not suggested to run a root shell on an Ubuntu system.  Use at your own risk.  See examples above, etc.

sudo -i

The command sudo -i is the equivalent to the 'su -' command.  This will properly change to the root user, switch to the root user’s home directory, use his (her?) environment values, etc.

sudo -s

The command sudo -s is the equivalent to the 'su' command.  This will change to the root user but will not properly use his (her?) environment values, etc.

The WRONG Way To A Root Shell

Please DO NOT use the following methods to gain root access:

sudo bash, sudo sh, sudo su -, sudo su, sudo -i -u root

If you currently do use these methods this post was written for you!

UPDATE: Based on the feedback in the comments for this post I’ll try to expand the reasoning on *why* the right way is the preferred way.

First of all we need to understand some background information.  When a user creates a session there are a number of environment values that are set.  To have a look at some of these try this command:

env

This will output a number of details about the current working environment.  These environment values may be different for different users.  Some of the values are generated by way of the .bashrc file (assuming a bash shell, of course), the .bash_profile, etc.  Take a look at the .bashrc in your users home directory and compare it with the .bashrc in root’s home directory.

diff -u ~/.bashrc /root/.bashrc

You should see some differences, and this is just from one of the multiple files that are read during a proper login.

When creating a root shell by using ‘sudo bash‘ you are not incorporating the root environment properly.  You are creating a shell with root privileges but the env output is still that of your user.  Each user, whether unprivileged or root, should have unique environment settings to truly be that user.  This will be the case for ‘sudo bash‘, ‘sudo su‘ and ‘sudo sh‘.

Random Posts

• Quick Update
• A Little Help From The Readers…
• Backing Up Media To Multiple DVDs : Ubuntu
• Ubuntu Live : Lunchtime Recap
• WGA and Activation Failures Don't Faze Redmond
• Install Flash 9 Beta on Flock Ubuntu (6.06 / 6.10)
• Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” Beta Release Now Available
• Thinking Outloud…
• How to install Sun’s Java Development Kit (JDK) v5.0 : Ubuntu (6.06.1 / 6.10)
• XGL / Compiz on nVidia Dapper

I decided to play with my hotel cheesecakes again this week. This time I had some new equipment in my arsenal, and a couple of new ideas for proper cooking.

I've started carrying various cooking utensils with me. Most are either plastic or rubber, with the exception of my Oxo mini-whisk. I also have a small rubber spatula, some plastic measuring spoons, and a small stack of silicone muffin cups. Most of these were purchased with the intent of not getting into trouble with the TSA. The muffin cups were supposed to save me from having to buy new paper cups all the time. When I opened the package, I discovered they had the added bonus of being more stable, so that they don't collapse from the weight of their own filling when unsupported.

My last experiment involved using just the yolk, rather than a whole egg. This succeeded in lowering the water content which was making the batter too loose, but it unfortunately lowered it too much. The resulting cheesecakes bore more resemblance to over-cooked scrambled eggs. Obviously, I needed to loosen up the batter again. I had considered using heavy cream, but the idea of sour cream appealed to me. It's a common cheesecake ingredient which I had scarcely considered before. I was also short on sugar packets this trip, but had managed to pick up a tiny bottle of Kentucky honey at the Cincinnatti airport. Perhaps an invert sugar would help, as well as providing an interesting flavor profile.

I started with about a tablespoon of honey and 4 oz of softened cream cheese in a paper bowl. I mixed them together with the spatula, adding in about a tablespoon of sour cream. When it seemed liquid enough, I switched to the mini whisk and added the egg yolk. When it was nice and smooth, I poured it into two silicone muffin cups, foolishly ignoring the fill lines that the manufacturer had so graciously provided for me.

This microwave had a manual knob with no power control or turn carosel, so I knew I had to be careful. I cooked them in bursts of 15 to 20 seconds, manually switching their places with each burst. After 3 or 4 bursts I got brave and did a 30 second burst. The cheesecakes, which were undoubtedly slightly aerated from the whisking, had started to rise over the tops of the muffin cups. I put them in the hotel mini-fridge to cool and waited till morning.

The next morning's taste test revealed what I expected: an overcooked, grainy center. Interestingly, the outside was slightly undercooked, mostly silky smooth with the occassional graininess. This, I surmised, was because I hadn't given them time to cool properly by themselves. The shock of the icebox had stopped the carry-over cooking, and possibly forced some of the proteins to prematurly coagulate. The flavor was decent, but a little bitter from the honey. Also important, I noticed that even though I was nuking these at 100% power, the over-coagulation was not nearly as bad as with earlier attempts with lower power. I decided that the added mass (cooking two at once instead of just one) had a part to play here.

I had one more night to experiment with the other 4 oz. I added a tablespoon and a half to it, along with two packets of sugar to counter the slight bitterness of the honey. After mixing with the spatula, I added in two tablespoons of sour cream, mixed a little more, and then switched to the whisk. I added in my egg yolk, and just for kicks, a packet of True Lemon powder. Honey lemon is a pretty classic flavor profile, right?

Because of the extra sour cream, I had enough batter to fill three muffin cups right to their fill lines. I hoped the extra mass would help even more, but I had another trick up my sleeve. I added a cup of ice water to the center of the microwave, and placed the filled muffin cups in a triangle around it. Water has a very high specific heat, meaning it has to absorb a lot of energy just to raise it even one degree farenheight. My hope was that ice water would absorb even more of the microwaves in the oven, effectively limiting the power attacking the water molecules inside the cheesecake. I was careful not to overfill the water cup, just in case it absorbed enough energy to actually boil.

I went with 20 to 25 second bursts this time, each time rotating the cups with each other manually counter-clockwise one position. It took 6 or 7 bursts before I noticed that the centers of the cheesecakes had sunken in slightly, and the sides were starting to climb the muffin cups. They were overdone, I just didn't know by how much. I let them cool for about 45 minutes by themselves and then moved them to the mini-fridge.

In the morning, I tried all three. They all ended up pretty much the same, just slightly overcooked and grainy in the center, but almost perfectly cooked on the outside. I'm thinking that had I ditched the last burst of cooking time, they might have been perfect. The flavor was better, not too sweet, but not bitter either. I wish I had added a second packet of True Lemon. There was a slight hint, and I think just a little more and the flavor would be perfect. I noticed something else interesting though. The edges of the cheesecakes seemed to have pulled slightly away from the cups, and from the looks of it, I'm wondering if it's not because of steam from the cup. Would hot water have been a better way to go about it? How about a cup of hot water in the center to provide steam, and a couple of cups of ice water elsewhere to soak up excess energy?

I'm a few steps closer to hotel cheesecake perfection. Extracting the first two cheesecakes from their cups was a pain because of how rigid the cups were. I had already decided to try putting paper cups inside the silicone ones next trip, but now I'm reconsidering. Perhaps if I swiped some pats of butter from the breakfast bar, and brought a small brush with me to paint it to the sides of the cups. Since I'll be using butter for the crust after I get the filling figured out anyway, maybe it's not too far of a stretch.

From what I hear, my next class is tentatively scheduled in Toronto. Will Canadian cream cheese behave differently? They do have cream cheese, don't they? Will I even have a microwave in my hotel room? Or will I be so totally entranced with Toronto that I don't even bother with hotel cookery? Only time will tell.

I’ve been watching some Batman recently, and just barely ripped season two on my myth box. I made snapshots of the title screens of every one, and put them in the cartoon gallery.

I absolutely love all the artwork on all the original Batman cartoons. There’s actually a book dedicated to the artwork of the series, called Batman Animated. I’d love to get a copy someday.

I keep resizing these images to 360×270, which is 50% the original size, and of course is more than large enough for my TV, but on the website, it sure seems a bit lacking sometimes. Next time I think I’ll leave them at the original dimensions. I also think I should probably get a flickr account and put them up there, so that they just don’t sit on my obscure little website for people to randomly find.

Great stuff.

I'm going to be in the Bay Area next Thursday (May 15) with the day free and would love to get a few meetings with venture firms who might be interested in hearing about what we're doing with Kynetx. I don't know many VC's in the Bay area well, so if you wouldn't mind doing an intro to your favorite Bay Area VC, contact me.

Tags: kynetx

If your in the greater Salt Lake area and love python swing by the meeting this evening! We’re doing a python editor head-to-head, should be fun!

This summer, we had an instructor cancel on us for three classes we had scheduled.  Unfortunately, we don’t have the staff to cover these classes, so we are looking for a contract instructor that would be interested in teaching these classes, non-credit, for students should they register.  If you are interested or curious, please contact Inita Lyon at 801-585-1964 for details.  

vi Editor
The first class is the vi Editor class.  It’s scheduled for June 18th, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.  

Shell Scripting Level 1
An introduction to shell scripting taught in the evening, scheduled for June 3rd and June 5th from 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM.

Shell Scripting Level 2
Also an evening class, taught June 17th and 19th from 6:00 PM to 9:30 PM.  

If anyone is interested in teaching these classes, please let us know as soon as possible.  Inita will be happy to answer any questions, give you an idea as to how the class should be structured, and which books are being used.  

Thanks in advance for anyone who signs up! 

Date: May 14th, 2008
Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Location: Omniture, Inc.
Details: http://www.plug.org/

MySQL will be flying Jay Pipes (North American Community Relations Manager at
MySQL) in to Salt Lake on the 14th for the sole purpose of addressing PLUG
(and all other local SIGs). Please spread the word. Set your calendars. Blog
it. Spread it. Tell everyone.

To be clear: THIS WILL BE AN IN-DEPTH TECHNICAL PRESENTATION. Expect this to
be one of those killer, mind-bending, and deep technical presentations. The
kind that leaves you barley able to drive home. Jay will keep the presentation
as language agnostic as possible - and focus just on the SQL-fu Jay
specializes in. This is one presentation you don’t want to miss.

There will be prizes (books and MySQL swag). And we will have drinks. There
might be food, but don’t plan on it.

His bio:

Jay Pipes is the North American Community Relations Manager at MySQL.
Co-author of Pro MySQL (Apress, 2005), Jay has also written articles for Linux
Magazine and regularly assists software developers in identifying how to make
the most effective use of MySQL. He has given sessions on performance tuning
at the MySQL Users Conference, RedHat Summit, NY PHP Conference, OSCON, and
Ohio LinuxFest, amongst others. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife,
Julie, and his four animals. In his abundant free time, when not being
pestered by his two needy cats and two noisy dogs, he daydreams in PHP code
and ponders the ramifications of __clone().

-Ryan

— Books we have to give away:
- A book regarding Fedora.
- A “Head First” book from O’Reilly on SQL.
- Several very excellent “Pragmatic Programmers” books:
- Programming Ruby (very good)
- Java to Ruby
- Enterprise Integration with Ruby
- Agile Web Development with Rails
- Agile Retrospectives
- Practices of an Agile Developer

IT Conversations redesign! (click to enlarge)

Doug Kaye has been working for months to redesign the infrastructure for the Conversations Network, including It Conversations. Much of that work hasn't been visible to IT Conversations listeners, but it's made the management of the network and production of shows much nicer. Now, that hard work is showing on the site as well with today's launch of the new IT Conversations.

The new design is cleaner, brings lots of features, like ratings and playlists, out to the homepage, and automates things like "current series" and "topics" so that they're more up to date. Ratings are also more reliable in the new system--I'm already seeing more meaningful ratings data come through. The old Personal Program Queue has been updated and is now called a Personal Playlist (under "My Programs" on the top menu bar).

With all the great changes to the homepage, you might be tempted to stay right there, but take time to click through to the program detail pages. They've also been reworked with better ways to comment and share programs with your friends. Also, the new recommendation box on the right hand side shows other programs you might like.

As with any launch, there will undoubtedly be things that don't work. Be sure to let us know and we'll try to get things fixed as soon as we find out about them.

Tags: itconversations

I went to the doctor again a few days ago, this time just to a clinic, because I’d been having problems with my stomach since the past week. The whole scenario strikes me as really odd, since none of the symptoms that would cause problems have been present, which are usually stress and me eating crappy food. Ever since I was in the hospital three weeks ago for throwing up for four hours straight, I’ve been keeping a closer eye than ever on my intake. This just kind of came out of the blue, though, with some acid reflux showing up all of a sudden for a few days.

The only thing that I have any idea that might be causing it is that since it’s finally started to get warm over here, I’ve started up my nightly regimen of going skating every night that I can, usually for somewhere between 30 minutes to 3 hours. I imagine that the stress on my stomach muscles was probably unexpected and just kind of threw it for a loop.

It didn’t help much that the doctor at the clinic was pretty impatient, and I didn’t feel like he was really giving me proper attention. He gave me a prescription for Prilosec, which also kind of annoyed me since I could have gotten that myself. I tried it out and it made me really dizzy, so I’m not going with that one again.

I’m trying to setup an appointment with a specialist to figure out what the story is once and for all. I know that a few years ago I was diagnosed with *starting* to get a peptic ulcer, and in times of extreme stress and anxiety the same area in my stomach will start to flare up again and cause some general discomfort … or I’ll start throwing up. I haven’t had any major stress though, not since the hospital incident, but there is just some minor nagging down there. For now, I’ve just come to the conclusion that I have a sensitive stomach.

I’ve started looking at diets for people with acid reflux, and so far the lists seem kind of arbitrary of what you can and can’t eat, in the sense that none of them seem related. The idea of a restrictive diet always seemed normal to me, but I always assumed it would just be to stay away from anything strong or spicy. Not something random like mashed potatoes, butter cookies and ice cream. But, whatever. Hopefully I’ll get this thing figured out soon.

When I was a young boy my parents owned a bus touring agency ("Hanks Tours"). They would load up a bus full of senior citizens and drive around the country for 2-3 weeks at a time, stopping at prominent landmarks along the way. On certain occasions I got to tag along as a bag boy (the poor kid who got to haul all the luggage from the bus to each hotel room). Because of this I was able to visit many of the United States and a handful of the Canadian provinces. As a kid I was able to visit Disneyland, the Redwood Forest, the Calgary Stampede, Alaskan glaciers, the Gateway Arch, Disney World, NASA, a World's Fair (Louisiana Expo), Washington D.C., Niagra Falls, Mt. Rushmore, Gettysburg, and many more interesting spots. One tour took us to Egypt and Israel.

Perhaps it was these tours that instilled in me a great love for a good roadtrip. Packing up the car and heading down the Interstate still gives me a bit of a thrill. I love to see new places, and half of the fun is stopping at odd, out-of-the-way (though interesting) spots like Wall Drug, and the Mitchell Corn Palace.

Today KSL.com ran a story about 3 guys from Utah who set out to travel to the 48 states in the span of just 100 hours. You can read about their adventure at The Great American roadtrip. Makes me want to pack up and try it myself.

Comments

When I was a young boy my parents owned a bus touring agency ("Hanks Tours"). They would load up a bus full of senior citizens and drive around the country for 2-3 weeks at a time, stopping at prominent landmarks along the way. On certain occasions I got to tag along as a bag boy (the poor kid who got to haul all the luggage from the bus to each hotel room). Because of this I was able to visit many of the United States and a handful of the Canadian provinces. As a kid I was able to visit Disneyland, the Redwood Forest, the Calgary Stampede, Alaskan glaciers, the Gateway Arch, Disney World, NASA, a World's Fair (Louisiana Expo), Washington D.C., Niagra Falls, Mt. Rushmore, Gettysburg, and many more interesting spots. One tour took us to Egypt and Israel.

Perhaps it was these tours that instilled in me a great love for a good roadtrip. Packing up the car and heading down the Interstate still gives me a bit of a thrill. I love to see new places, and half of the fun is stopping at odd, out-of-the-way (though interesting) spots like Wall Drug, and the Mitchell Corn Palace.

Today KSL.com ran a story about 3 guys from Utah who set out to travel to the 48 states in the span of just 100 hours. You can read about their adventure at The Great American roadtrip. Makes me want to pack up and try it myself.

Comments

While still vague in regards to details, Facebook today released some important information regarding their new design that is sure to excite those users that are considering leaving for other networks. The first of such features seems to be a slap in the Face (and maybe a token from former Google Execs) to Google Employee-founded FriendFeed. Facebook is calling the feature, “Publisher”, and from the Developer Wiki,

“The Publisher will be a central focus of communication and sharing in the new profile. It sits right on top of a user’s Feed inviting the user or others to add content. Applications can integrate into the Publisher to provide rich experiences for creating or finding content to post into their own and their friends’ Feeds…

This has replaced the old Wall Attachments feature. Now, Wall is just one type of application for creating content (text content), on par with posting links, or uploading photos or videos. For example, to add a video with the Video application, the user no longer creates a Wall attachment and adds the video. Instead, the user posts a video to a friend’s Feed just as if she were writing a Wall post.”

From the screenshots (to the left), it appears as though you can also comment on each posted item, further encouraging a “conversation” amongst members of the Facebook community. What’s most interesting is the integration with the Facebook Platform API and ability for developers to present items for discussion within a particular user’s Feed. It appears as though your applications will be able to actually utilize the text box within the publisher to present information on a user’s feed in different ways. More information regarding the new combined Feed/Wall can be found here.

Also very interesting is it seems as though Facebook will soon allow, via the publisher, the automatic playing of Flash, and onload events within FBJS. It seems this is Facebook’s answer to the demand from users migrating from Myspace and the competition from Bebo who allows such onload events.

In addition to the publisher, Facebook has released more information via their developers wiki about the Tabs that will be available, and how applications will be displayed via those tabs. It appears as though at first, all applications will be rendered in their current form in a tab called “boxes” (they mentioned earlier today that name may be temporary). What’s new though is it seems as though your application will be able to give the user options to render other forms of profile boxes to an “Info” tab on the user’s profile. It’s unclear, but this could mean your application will be able to have multiple forms of displaying itself within the user experience beyond just Canvas pages, profile boxes, and feeds. A new FBML tag has been created for this purpose called “<fb:add-section-button/>” which appears to give your application the ability to have the user add a “section” to their profile. (I now need to update FBML Essentials!) Such section will have the ability to display image objects or text that the user can type and provide to your application.

Facebook is also allowing your applications to register an “Application Tab URL” which will have your Application appear in a list of applications next to a “+” (plus) sign in the list of tabs. The user will then have the option to add your Application as a tab, offering an alternate canvas view of your application for the user’s friends to see.

Beyond the Info and Boxes tabs, it’s a bit unclear as to what the other tabs will be called. The most recent screenshot by them includes a “Photos”, “Wall”, and “Feed” tab, but it seems as though the Wall and Feed may be combined to produce the “Publisher”. It could be that the current “News Feed” will be under the Feed tab, while the combined Mini-Feed and Wall will be under the Wall tab. I’m sure we’ll see more screenshots soon. Also of note is that the Action items, the links below your profile image currently, will be no more. Instead you’ll be able to offer your users interactivity via the publisher and other integration points throughout the user’s profile.

It also seems as though the separate News Feed/profile is no more when you log in. It seems they are bringing the focus on the profile and including what is now the “News Feed” to become what will be the “Feed” tab. I like this new concept and hope it catches on - I think it will be a win-win for both Facebook, users, and developers in that it will bring a more fluid experience to users, and encourage discussion and people more than anything else.

With the release of this information to the developers wiki it seems Facebook is on the verge of releasing the new design very soon. I would expect to see such features in the next week or two, considering it was originally supposed to launch last month.

UPDATE: Facebook just released their official announcement here: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=107

This past week has been a beast.  The weekend before, my car would not start.  It just died, with no apparent reason for the problem.  It’s a Volkswagen Jetta 2003 TDI.  I’ve had little problems with it before, but now that the warranty has gone out, I get the major one.  

Of course, I’m of the school of thought that it’s easier to fix your car than to take it in.  Boy was I wrong.  The last car I had to fix was my Geo Metro, which is more of a toy, and has mostly all mechanical parts.  I loved it, because I could troubleshoot and replace just about anything on that baby.  I was real cut up when the thing finally gave up the ghost, and I needed a new car.  

I chose the Volkswagen because they had a good reputation for reliability, and they were filled with the features I was looking for.  Also, they had a Turbo Diesel Injection engine that gets up to 52 mpg with the Jetta (the New Beetle got 60).  That’s why I really wanted it.  Sure, diesel was more expensive than regular gas, but I could burn biodiesel. 

Well, biodiesel hit a snag when I found out about a Salt Lake County law that prohibited the transportation of used cooking oil without a $million insurance policy.  My guess is a company business was being protected from biodiesel hobbyists, but none the less it put a dampener on my plans.  Still, it was cheaper to drive my car than my wife’s Subaru, because I got just great mileage.  

Well, now the thing will not start, and I have to take it into the shop.  It’s not the starter as I originally thought, but something with the electrical equipment.  Add that with my botched attempt to tow the sucker (apparently there isn’t a tow hook on the front of the thing), it’s going to be rather expensive to get it fixed.  

So now I’m looking for a new car.  With the option of biodiesel pretty much null, I need another vehicle with excellent fuel economy, and will be comfortable for me, my wife, my son, and the new baby on the way.  So, I started checking out Hybrids. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I would rather have another alternative, i.e. electric car, but currently there isn’t an electric car option that will give me the range that I need.  The batteries are just not efficient enough (though they may be in the next 5 years).  Hydrogen isn’t really an option, because there isn’t an environmentally friendly way of creating it in a timely manner.  That, and fuel cells are just too expensive (can’t imagine why, with all that platinum).  

The Hybrids I checked out were listed on http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/hybrid_sbs_Cars.shtml, which is the government’s fuel efficiency listing of vehicles.  I was looking for a cost-effective vehicle that would get roughly the same fuel efficiency that I get with my Jetta TDI.  

The Prius
The first car I think of when I think Hybrid is the Prius.  At first I thought it was a joke, not getting the fuel efficiency that most other economy vehicles get.  But then I actually took a ride in one.  It’s nice, very geeky, and has a great display.  The ride was smooth, and when running just on battery power, it’s very silent.  You can also urk more bang for your buck if you let the wheels charge the battery for you.  For those on a hill (like the one here at the U), it’s great!  And finally, the fuel efficiency is about 50 mpg on the Highway.  That I like. 

The Civic
The runner-up is the Honda Civic Hybrid.  It’s a little more expensive, gets almost the same mpg, and has roughly the same options.  Why didn’t I choose it?  because it’s a little more expensive!  I’m a Scot, after all.  ^_^  

Other options were looked at, but nothing else came even remotely close.  I looked at GM cars, Ford, and others, but none offered the same level of fuel efficiency as either the Prius or the Civic.  I never thought I would go back to a Japanese car after driving a German one, but it looks like I may.  After all, my Korean vehicle lasted longer than any other car I’ve had. 

There is still one thing missing before my wife and I actually get the car, and that is the ability to car-pool.  Once we get that worked out, we will be all set.  It means one of us relocating our work spaces, which could happen soon, and it will not be me.  ^_^ 

I know, these blog posts are boring if you don't personally know the blogger, but I don't care, I'm blogging it anyway.

My daughter, Linden Paige Franklin, was born on May 5th, 2008. Yeah, I'm freakin' out a bit, but mostly I'm very excited. I was so glad to meet her. I only hope that I can be everything she needs me to be.

Plus, this post allows me to add some much needed color to my blog with this nifty little doohicky from Google's Picasa:

In doing this month's top ten for IT Conversations, noticed two things:

First, since Doug put in our own code for ratings, the number of ratings per show is way up. I think with the new homepage design (oops! Did I let that slip?!?) we'll see even more ratings. We've not had enough in the past for me to put a lot of confidence in them, but that's changing.

Second, the number of overall downloads is down. We recently had to update the feed URL and this didn't get propagated correctly in all feedreaders and podcatchers. Please take a minute to check right now and make sure you're still getting IT Conversations on your MP3 player. The correct feed URL is:

http://feeds.conversationsnetwork.org/channel/itc

The following is the list of the top ten shows on IT Conversations (by number of downloads) for April 2008.

1. Phil Libin - Personal Outboard Memory (Rating: 3.69)

   Phil Libin was the CEO of CoreStreet when he appeared as the first guest on Interviews with Innovators. Now he's back as CEO of EverNote, a company that aims to build the memex, or personal outboard memory, that Vannevar Bush famously imagined in his 1945 article "As We May Think."

2. Scott Sigler - Infected (Rating: 3.39)

   Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Scott Sigler, who talks about his bioterror thriller "Infected." While it's based on the premise of a biological weapon on the loose, he's actually a modern day Charles Dickens.

3. Amory Lovins - Energy Efficiency in Buildings - Part 2 (Rating: 4.79)

   Well-designed buildings not only conserve energy and reduce costs but also create conditions for better health and wellness. Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, uses several examples to show how the right mix of materials, resources, and expertise can create structures that celebrate living. From MAP.

4. Wagner Au - The Growth of Second Life (Rating: 3.44)

   Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Journalist Wagner Au, who embedded himself in the virtual 3D online world, Second Life, and talks about its incredible growth.

5. James Reinders, Dirk Hohndel - Exploiting Parallelism with Multi-core Technologies (Rating: 2.90)

   There has been a lot of talk about the difficulties of parallel programming, but Intel has decided to do something about it. Intel representatives announce the open sourcing of Threading Building Blocks, a product used to simplify parallel development. TBB has been around for several years as a proprietary tool, and Intel hopes that by opening it up, it will reach a broader audience and be adapted to more situations.

6. Jeff Hawkins - Why Can't a Computer Be More Like a Brain? (Rating: 4.20)

   Despite amazing strides, computers are still relatively poor at performing high level activities that come naturally to the human brain. Co-founder of Palm, Inc., Jeff Hawkins, describes recent breakthroughs in the modeling of brain functions based on the theory of Hierarchical Temporal Memory. New insights into how the neocortex supports cognition, inference and prediction can be applied to a variety of problems using Hawkins' Numenta computing platform.

7. Matt Zimmerman - Ubuntu Technical Roadmap (Rating: 3.20)

   Matt Zimmerman delivers exactly what his title promises: a technical roadmap of where Ubuntu has been and where it is going. He discusses the collaborative development process, an overview of past and future releases, the expansion of Ubuntu from the desktop to server and mobile environments, and what's next for Ubuntu. Highlighting key features of the latest releases, this presentation will be of interest to existing Ubuntu users as well as anyone considering migrating to this popular linux-based operating system.

8. Werner Vogels - A Web-Scale Computing Architecture (Rating: 3.83)

   Developers are increasingly using Amazon, not only as a source of technical books, but also as a web services platform to build robust and scalable infrastructure. Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels, reveals how to make the most of the popular S3 service and uncovers some of the features underpinning the new EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud) service. As a bonus for Conversations Network listeners, there's even a cameo appearance from our own Doug Kaye, who explains how Gigavox Media is exploiting the web services functionality Vogel describes.

9. Jamais Cascio - Metaverse Singularity (Rating: 3.55)

   Technology is becoming more entrenched in every part of our life, and we need to be aware of where that might lead us. Jamais Cascio gives four possible scenarios based on whether technology is used to augment or simulate reality and whether it is internally or externally focused. Because of the human bias inherent in any technology, he argues that we need to democratically include all of the world's stakeholders to avoid having these scenarios become dystopias.

10. Fred Krupp & Miriam Horn - Earth: The Sequel (Rating: 3.22)

    Today a complement of new energy technologies exist, but are they economically feasible? Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn, from the Environmental Defence Fund, about their new book, "Earth: The Sequel."

Tags: itconversations

After the MiniDV videotape camcorders and before the explosion of hard disk camcorders,
several manufacturers were making these camcorders that would record directly to DVD media. A handful of them recorded to full-size DVD media, but most recorded to a small (~3 inches in diameter) mini-DVD media. One of these discs can hold about 30 minutes of SD (740x480, 30 frames per second) video or about 1.4GB of data.

A couple years ago, I was working on a video editing project and one of my sources was from one of these mini-DVD camcorders. One of the perks of the mini-DVD format is you can throw it right into a DVD player and it plays it, without much grief, like a normal DVD movie. There's even a scene-selection menu that shows you thumbnails of images to select scenes recorded on the DVD.

I think the mini-DVD format was a great idea for people who just want to videotape an event and throw it in the DVD player, but it's not so good for someone who wants to edit the video on the computer. The camcorder manufacturers probably shipped the cameras with some kind of conversion program to extract the video from the discs and convert it into an editable format, but since I didn't own one of these mini-DVD camcorders, I didn't have such software.

A little googling and I found the answer!

Check out this command:

mplayer dvd://1 -dumpstream -dumpfile dvd.vob

This mplayer command may be familiar to those who rip video from DVDs to convert it to an MPEG4 format or something similar.

I can't edit a VOB file, so I needed to convert the VOB into, preferably, an AVI. Most of the AVIs I edit are DV format AVIs that I get off my DV camcorders. I knew if I could get the video on the mini-DVD into that format, I'd be in heaven. I didn't find a direct way to do this, but I did find two more steps that would do it.

ffmpeg -i dvd.vob -target dv dvd.dv
cat dvd.dv | dvgrab -f dv2 -s 0 -stdin

The first command (ffmpeg) converts the VOB into raw DV data. This is data you could stream to a camcorder and store on a tape. It's not in an AVI container, but it's close. The next command (dvgrab) is usually used for capturing video from IEEE 1394 (Firewire) video devices, but being that it has an option (-stdin) for reading data from standard input, we can use it to convert our raw DV data to an AVI.

Voila!

I received a copy of the cover for FBML Essentials last Friday. I was waiting to figure out what the bird was on the cover before I shared it. The bird is a White Throated Dipper - from Wikipedia:

The White-throated Dipper (Cinclus cinclus) is an aquatic passerine bird found in Europe and the Middle East, also known as the European Dipper or just Dipper. The species is divided into several subspecies on colour differences, especially of the pectoral band.

My Editor tells me that usually they don’t have reasons for the animals they have on the covers of O’Reilly books, and that they usually choose an animal that fits well with the look and feel of the book. I guess one could say that most birds are “Social” - anyone know anything more about the White-throated Dipper? Here’s a video of one in the wild:

You can pre-order the book here - it should be available in print around June or July, based on the production schedule they sent me. There’s always a chance it could be at Graphing Social Patterns in June. If not, look for it at OSCON in the O’Reilly booth (and who knows - maybe I’ll be there to sign your copy!).

UPDATE: I forgot to mention - Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook.com, and Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews.com did the Foreword and Afterword for the book. Thanks to both of them (Rodney wrote his Afterword on his birthday!) for putting the time in for those! It’s an excellent read and reference for all already into or looking to get into Facebook development!

Our Utah Social Media Developers Garages (UTSMDev) happen every second Tuesday of every other month, and that is coming up one week from today. Our next meeting will be on May 13th from 7pm to 10pm at the same place as last time, Bungee Labs. We’ll bring the Wii or Xbox in case there’s time to play afterwards.

At this event, Bungee is going to show us a simple “Hello World” for Facebook using their Bungee Connect Platform. For those unaware, Bungee had “Platform as a Service” down before Google App Engine came out, and have recently even partnered with Amazon EC2 in order to provide full server access beyond their current platform. I have some videos of their stuff I took while at Web 2.0 Expo that I’ll try to post later this week in my “Utah Startups” series.

I am still looking for businesses to sponsor snacks and drinks (or even a full dinner - Bungee supplied Fuddruckers for our last event!) for the event - if your business would like some exposure I’ll be sure you get the credit. It could be a great way to meet new developers, Social Media experts, and bloggers!

As usual, while this event is targeted towards developers, everyone is welcome at the event, as it could be a good way for your business to meet developers in this area, as well as just learn a little more about the Social Media space! For future announcements of UTSMDev events, be sure to subscribe to our Google Groups mailing list here!

Bungee Labs is located in the old Wordpress building on the second floor - you can find directions here:

625 E Technology Ave B2300
Orem, UT 84097

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=625+E+Technology+Ave,+84097&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.724817,82.265625&ie=UTF8&ll=40.325575,-111.679738&spn=0.008163,0.020084&z=16&iwloc=cent

Please RSVP on our Facebook Event Page.

(I’m beginning to move much of my activity over to FriendFeed lately. Scoble calls it the “World Wide Talk Show” - please subscribe to my feed to comment and participate!)

I was going to write a few more of my annoyances with Twitter today, but a few pleasant announcements have come out of Twitter lately that I thought I’d share.

First, just announced today, Twitter will be shutting down accounts entirely that they have marked as “spam” on their blacklist. What??? Twitter has a blacklist? Yes, you heard it right.

Before today, Twitter would mark accounts as “spam”, but not tell the owners of the accounts they marked them as spam. Those owners of the accounts could follow others, but no one was able to follow them, and there was no way for the owners of those accounts to know they had been blacklisted. It was the same with the API - it was actually a huge headache for me as a Twitter API developer because despite me following the user, Twitter would respond with nothing as though the follow went through, but the next day the user would show up again as not being followed. I checked with Twitter and they confirmed the accounts I was having trouble with were indeed accounts that were on their “blacklist”.

Today, Alex Payne confirmed on the Twitter Dev mailing list that from now on users marked as Spam on Twitter will have their accounts suspended entirely for violating the Terms of Service. He also confirmed that they would avoid the headaches Facebook has had (aka Scoble’s account being suspended) and contact the owners beforehand to let them state their case.

I strongly welcome this new practice - Twitter has all the stats on their end to flag accounts as possible spammers, and by removing their accounts promptly this will make Twitter a much nicer place to use. The only other thing I would suggest they add now that this is in place is a way for developers to notify them of possible Spam accounts. You can do this as a user by “blocking” the account in question - I have no way to do this as a developer that I’m aware of.

The second, very welcomed feature is the addition of a “since” variable when requesting the friends or followers of an individual. In the past on SocialToo.com I had to do a request on all of an individual’s friends and all of an individual’s followers, and do a compare to see which of those following you, you weren’t following. For several A-list bloggers with near tens of thousands of followers, this was taking a few hours to complete the entire script, not to mention increasing the number of HTTP requests back to Twitter’s servers, I’m sure further burdening their already overburdened bandwidth.

Now, with the “since” variable, I can keep a tally of when I last checked your following/follower ratio and only do a request on those friends that have followed you since the last check. I can now go from checking those you follow on a daily basis, to checking almost every minute!

Last, Twitter has added the ability to determine, with one API call if a friendship exists between two individuals. Now rather than having to get a list of those you’re following, and then those that have followed you, I can just get a list of those following you and check to see that a friendship exists.

It is very refreshing to see such an active effort on Twitter’s part to help out the development community. I hope they continue to maintain the relationship they have with us, and continue to listen - many of us really want to see them succeed.

After reading through CrackBerry’s Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone is NO BlackBerry I thought I should compare it to my situation.

I really like my AT&T BlackBerry 8820 a whole lot. I really hate Windows Mobile devices, and dislike the Treo line. But I still want an iPhone really badly. This article makes it sound like BlackBerrys are better. I disagree.

10. The iPhone’s Not Designed for One-Handed Operation

Duh, I call this a feature, not a problem. Even when I am not driving, I still hate typing with one hand. I could care less.

9. Every iPhone is Created Equally–At Least on the Outside

Again, so what. The one model of iPhone is the model I would want.

8. No Removable Battery, No Backup Power Supply for the iPhone

Based on my BlackBerry usage, the removable battery is completely unnecessary. I generally only charge it once every 2 - 3 days. I have never replaced a battery on a cell phone ever. I usually replace the phone before the battery dies. Even if the iPhone’s battery doesn’t last 3 days, charging it once a day is not a problem.

7. The iPhone Has No Native Video Recording Capabilities

And neither does my BlackBerry! I have an 8820, no camera at all. I mean WTF?! I have to step down to the Curve which is a rickety P.O.S. to get a camera? No way.

6. The iPhone Is Too Darn Expensive

Considering I didn’t pay for my BlackBerry (my company did), this doesn’t apply to me again. Plus the difference between an 8820 and an iPhone is worth the benefits.

5. The iPhone Doesn’t Support VoWi-Fi–Even Though It Could and Should

And neither does my AT&T BlackBerry! Not that I really care though since I am on my company plan with huge voice and data discounts.

4. iPhone User? No GPS for You

Ok, this point isn’t completely negligible. I did run TeleNav on my BB for a while. It is incredibly cool, and does some very awesome things with GPS. But in truth I never really used it. GPS for Google Maps was plenty for my usage.

I’d miss the GPS in Google Maps on an iPhone but not seriously enough to not buy one.

3. Want an iPhone? Hope You’re Ready to Switch Wireless Carriers…

Wrong again! I’m already on AT&T. I’m already suffering with Edge (no 3G on AT&T BlackBerrys).

2. No Physical Keyboard? No Thanks.

I am pretty good with the BB keyboard. I will concede that using a virtual keyboard will suck for quite a while. But I will get over it. I am flexible and adjust quickly. The increased screen size is worth the short period of adjustment.

1. The iPhone Third-Party Apps Debacle

The only apps I would miss, that either don’t already exist, or don’t have a webapp replacement, is my Google Talk or an IRC client. There are ways around both via Webapps, though not quite so pretty. Oh well. not a big deal.

In summary, BlackBerry has GPS, better 3rd party app support (for now), and a physical keyboard. iPhone has a camera, huge screen, total hawtness, awesome mobile web browser, media player that doesn’t totally suck. I can certainly say I’m going to get an iPhone as soon as I can.

Here are the details (there is also a calendar):

Utah OpenSUSE user group wiki page

Tonight we are having our first openSUSE User Group meeting, we’ll be discussing 11.0 Beta 2.

* Date/Time: Tuesday, May 6, 2008 @ 7:00pm.
* Location: Applebees, 105 E 12300 S, Draper, UT
* Google Maps: Click Here

You can get more information on the group here.

Today my wife was feeling really bad, and we needed to work out a way for my son to get to school and get home.  So, I took a sick day to take care of my wife and my son.  So I ran to work first to set up the CCNA Bootcamp that started today, and then I ran back home to take my son to school.  

Once there, I checked with my son’s teacher and told her the results of his psychologist visit.  Jonathan couldn’t wait to start playing, and ran right in with the other children.  

I then came home, did some yard work, got some Jello for my wife, and then headed back to get my son.  He was sitting on the teacher’s lap, and looking at a book!  Now, you may think this isn’t a big deal, but my son has no attention span for books as part of his disorder.

As we were leaving, he gave his teacher some eye contact.  Eye contact!  He doesn’t give people eye contact, as part of his disorder.  This is a huge advancement for him.  It means that he is working through his disorder in order to communicate.  

Overjoyed, I brought him home.  He then asked for juice, which he never has before.  His vocabulary is growing, and each day I get more and more excited.  He’s spending more time indicating, and less time trying to make me get what he wants.  Of course, he still wants to do things on his own, and I’m still willing to let him dress himself and get his own dinner.  But all things considered, I’m excited that he is willing to include us in his life.  

Well, usually I forget to take pictures, because either A) I forget my camera [I brought it this time] or 2) I get wrapped up in the event and forget to bring it with me.  But this release party, I plain just forgot to charge my batteries for my camera, oops!

Fortunately, I was able to snap a few pictures with some of the spare, also not fully-charged, batteries I did have on hand.  However, others took many pictures and I’ve listed them below.

• Sheri Bigelow took some great pictures.  She is a great local photographer, web designer and the local webmistress.
• Tristan Rhodes, a local Asterisk Entrepreneur posted a good blog post.
• Here’s the pictures I took.  Not nearly as many, or as good.

To summarize the party, much celebration was had with foosball, a chess game on one of the largest chess boards around, video games, air hockey and much more was provided by CodeGreene.  The FedoraProject and Utah Open Source sponsored the food and prizes.  If you’ve never had a Chipotle burrito, they are the best burritos around.

I was able to spend time with about 5-7 people myself sharing the Preview Release of Fedora 9 (codename Sulphur) including two who had never had previous success with Fedora or Linux in general.  It was very satisfying to see things work for them.

The Ubuntu folks were there in strength as well.  The Hardy Heron (8.04) CDs were being passed out, while we Fedoran’s provided LiveUSB versions.  I even saw people taking advantage and obtaining both!  Its great to see communities come together and celebrate together.

The party continued at Salt Lake Pizza & Pasta for another couple hours.  Lot’s of talk about the releases, upcoming events, and general mayhem took place including having Heartsbane shoot beer through his nose when I swore at him!

All in all, quite a successful evening and I look forward to helping others in November at our next release party.

Cheers,

Herlo

Education is an interesting beast.  Everyone wants to learn as much as possible in as little time as possible, so that they can apply what they have learned right away.  Unfortunately, the human mind doesn’t work that way.  Instead the brain keeps your short term memory locked up and passes on only a small portion to your long term memory.  So no matter how much you can technically cram into a small amount of time, only a small portion will be translated to long term memory. 

So what is a professional trainer to do?  How do you deal with cognitive load while still giving a high-quality and timely education experience?  it’s a problem that educators have worked on for generations. 

I was thinking about this in preparation for a training trip.  I will be participating in training to expand our Mac OS X 10.5 Certification offerings, and I want to be sure that any feedback will be timely and well placed.  So I started reviewing in my mind the events, lectures, and material from the first couple classes I attended. 

For those couple of people who have been following my blog, you may recall previous posts that covered these events.  The materials have a much better design, and provide a lot of great material.  But that’s just the problem:  they have a lot of material.  

Both classes have been tight to teach in the allotted time.  Why?  Mostly because the exercises tend to be longer, and there are more details in the topics.  In fact, both classes would do well to have an additional day added to the course format.  

So what can we learn from this in terms of cognitive load?  More is not better.  In fact, more is definitely that:  just more.  Instead, the material should be either watered down (so more time can be spent on reinforcing the concepts), or more time should be added to the course. 

But what’s the magic number?  How do you determine the cognitive load distribution for your students?  The best way would be to 1) make your lecture time and exercise time half the total course time, and 2) Multiply the Lecture time and Exercise time by the number of skills and knowledge per sub-task.  This gives you roughly equal time per sub-task for students to focus on.  And finally, 3) take the time of day into consideration:  morning is great for lecture while after lunch is best for an exercise.  

Of course, in reality, one doesn’t necessarily have complete control on the amount of time the training can take.  Most employers want a content-heavy training so as to decrease the training costs.  So the best thing a trainer can do is provide additional, supplemental information in an external resource.  Online materials are ideal.  Also, continuing discussions long after the training is over is wonderful, if time and resources allow.  With reinforcing materials provided in a central repository (either online or in take away materials), the learners are able to refer back to what they think they recall, but can’t quite remember. 

Yesterday we held a release party in Salt Lake City, Utah to celebrate the release of several open source operating systems. The original announcement only mentioned Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and Fedora 9, but we realized during the party that OpenBSD 4.3 was released on May 1st.

We were all happy to celebrate the goodness of open source, without arguing over which distro was better. The Fedora guys showed us some cool improvements, and the Ubuntu guys also demonstrated some neat improvements. The great thing about open source is that all of these improvements will be shared by both distributions in a future release.

I want to say thank you to our excellent sponsors who made this party a success. First, the amazing location was provided by the web-development company Code Greene. Second, the delicious Chipotle burritos were donated by the Utah Open Source Foundation, ran by Clint Savage. Lastly, thanks to the Fedora project who contributed funds, and Ubuntu/Canonical who contributed swag (including hundreds of 8.04 CDs).

Here is a picture of the three Ubuntu babies! This is the second release party for my girl Chloe (on the right).

We had an estimated 50 people at this party, but there is not one shot that includes them all. We do have physical evidence that 32 burritos were eaten and many people did not get one.

Here is Clint Savage doing his best impression of a good speaker. Just kidding Clint, you did a great job! Thanks for helping foster open source communities in Utah.
Notice the Fedora posters and foosball table in the background. This web-development company also has a kitchen, ping-pong table, an air-hockey table, a gigantic over-sized chess set, and a high-def theater that was playing the original Star Wars. Sounds like a great place to work!

I’ve been hearing more and more recent requests (at OpenWeek -chat and in blog comments) regarding a request for a GUI on top of ufw.  I wanted to take a second and outline more clearly what ufw is, which will likely stop these requests.  I think its just a simple matter of not truly understand what ufw does which leads to these.  Bottom line, there are already a number of GUI firewall applications, adding one for ufw would be basically pointless. (Before you argue that point, keep reading.)

What is ufw?

ufw, or “uncomplicated firewall”, is simply a management tool for creating kernel-level firewall rules which is done via the netfilter kernel module and iptables userspace tool.  iptables has been around for quite a long time, is very, very robust and very widely used.  It is installed by default on any Ubuntu system, but no “rules” have historically been applied to it.  (Technically, every Linux system has a firewall utility built into the kernel, but if no rules are applied to that filter nothing is actually being specifically allowed or denied.)

The reason ufw was developed (I sat in on the sprint at UDS for this) is that we wanted to create a server-level firewalling utility that was a little bit more “for human beings”.  While iptables is already installed and available for use, the syntax can be complicated.  For example, lets say you wanted to block all connections from the IP address 10.100.0.5:

iptables : sudo iptables -A INPUT -s 10.100.0.5 -j REJECT
ufw: sudo ufw deny from 10.100.0.5


Another slightly more complicated example could be written for blocking specific ports and protocols:

iptables: sudo iptables -A INPUT --dport 22 -s 10.100.0.5 -j REJECT
ufw: sudo ufw deny from 10.100.0.5 to any port 22

ufw is creating the iptables / netfilter rule “under the hood”, but allowing us to create the rules in a simpler way.  Both of the commands above basically do the same thing, ufw simply “uncomplicates” the process.

For those that are looking for a GUI on top of ufw, remember that you already have tools such as Firestarter or lokkit, etc.  Those are graphical tools which create and manage iptables / netfilter rules “under the hood”.  ufw is simply a command-line tool to manage iptables / netfilter rules “under the hood”.

The existing GUI tools (Firestarter) and ufw both use iptables underneath, so adding a GUI to ufw would basically be re-creating Firestarter, which is not really needed.  ufw is simply a less complicated way to create firewall (iptables) “rules” on the command line.

Random Posts

• Vim Tip of the Week - Encryption : Aug 3, 2007
• How To Reset the MySQL Password : Ubuntu 7.10
• Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” Beta Release Now Available
• Fast User Switching Applet : Ubuntu 7.04
• The 100 Best Products of the Year
• Novell’s Xgl.. Great Linux eye-candy
• Happy Birthday To Me
• Mutt Question For The Masses
• Server Transition & Thanks
• Beginning Ubuntu Linux : From Novice to Professional

Spring is in the air in Salt Lake City, so it's finally warm enough to get back into R/C flying. To that end, I ordered the new Electrifly L-39 electric ducted fan (EDF) jet. It's getting great reviews, and I'm excited to fly it. I've read that the stock brushless ...

Now that most of the modern world has upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 I’ve begun to see comments regarding VMware Server no longer working.  You may have used my previous article, Installing VMware Server on Ubuntu 7.10, which has worked great.  Now that 8.04 “Hardy” is installed things have become a bit more complicated unfortunately.

The problem is that VMware has not updated their latest versions to make use of the latest kernel, GCC or gnome libraries.  So, we’ve got two options.

1. Wait for a new VMware release and hope they patch everything.
2. Follow the rest of this tutorial and get your hands dirty on the terminal.  We can make it work, but we have to hammer it into submission.

So, I’ll assume because you’re still reading that you’ve opted for the hammer into submission option.  Let’s get started.

Downloading the Requirements

The first step, of course, is to download VMware Server 1.0.5.  You’ll have to agree to the EULA (actually twice.  Once before download and once during installation.  Remember, VMware is free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-speech.)

The second step is to install some development tools that we’ll need to get things running.  Use the following command or click the package names to install the requirements:

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-kernel-devel linux-headers-generic xinetd


The third step is to download one more tool to help in the manual build process for VMware Server 1.0.5.  What we need is a script which will help in the custom config hosted at Google Code.  Download the vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz.

You will also need to generate a serial number to run VMware Server.  Visit this link to register and generate the number of codes you might want. Remember to print the codes or write them down because in my experience they are not emailed to you.

OK, at this point we should have all of the requirements, now we can get to work…

Installation and Configuration

Let’s unpack the VMware archive that we downloaded and run the VMware installer.  NOTE: After some basic configuration it will ask you to run vmware-config.pl.  DO NOT RUN vmware-config.pl, WE ARE NOT READY YET.

tar xf VMware-server-1.0.5
cd vmware-server-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl


When it asks you to run vmware-config.pl you want to answer “no” and this is where the vmware-any-any-116.tgz patch comes in.

cd ..
tar xf vmware-any-any-update-116.tgz
cd vmware-any-any-update116
sudo ./runme.pl

After this runs it will ask you again if you want to run vmware-config.pl.  At this point select “yes”.

The Last Step

If you attempt to run vmware at this point you might notice that it spits out some nasty errors and complains at you.  There is one more thing we need to setup. (Hey, VMware, if you’re reading this will you please incorporate these fixes into your official download already!)

Basically VMware is missing and complaining about some cairo libraries and gcc.  So, the simple fix for this is to point to them by using a symbolic link:

sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.2.3/libgcc_s.so /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1
sudo ln -sf /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/libpng12.so.0

At this point you should be able to launch vmware and enjoy some virtualization goodness.  Please stay tuned for virtualization updates regarding virtualbox and the new KVM!

sources: I want to throw a big thanks to my buddy Igor for helping figure out these tweaks.  Check out his blog, with these and other instructions, here.

UPDATE: based on some of the comments below I’ve added the “-f” to the symbolik link options.

Related

• Extended Display on the MacBook (with xorg.conf) : Ubuntu 8.04
• Upgrade To Ubuntu 8.04
• Upgrade Ubuntu 6.06 to Ubuntu 8.04
• How To Upgrade Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04
• Announcing the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy” Rocks My Servers Socks!
• This Site Will Be Upgrading To Ubuntu 8.04 Server Today
• Upgrading From Beta To RC And Beyond…
• Dapper To Hardy Direct Server Upgrade Works!

I have disliked the Twitter syntax since I’ve been on it (you can find me via @JesseStay on Twitter - go ahead and follow me!). As a long-time IRC user, everything seems backwards! I have often referred to Twitter as “IRC 2.0″. I’m not sure I can fully embrace that concept though.

For those unfamiliar with IRC, it predates even instant messaging. It brought out the original concept of a “chatroom”, and exists even today on various servers throughout the world. Ustream.tv currently uses it for its users’ channel chatrooms. It is the home for almost any “live” activity of any open source project (log into irc.freenode.net to see - I’m often in #utah there, as well as recently #codeaway). Traditions have been established, and virtual friendships have been bonded. In many ways it could have been the original concept of a “social network”, the first concept of linking friends together in a single place on the internet.

I was at a Perl conference just last year, and was happy to see the #YAPC chatroom in irc.perl.org open during the banquet. We had a ton of fun with that! Now, just this year, when I go to conferences, I see speakers leaving up Twitter, and answering questions via Twitter. The two seem to be serving similar purposes, in different ways.

That’s why I was astonished when I got on Twitter for the first time, and started seeing public messages directed to individuals with “@” signs in front of them! Is there a source for that that I’m not aware of? I know of no known documentation that Twitter themselves created to establish that tradition. In IRC you simply type “username:”, and then your message, and it gets highlighted in that user’s chat window in most IRC clients. Better yet, I can start typing the username and it tab-completes. You can’t do that in Twitter. That tradition and method has been around for years, yet Twitter seems to break the mold for some reason.

IRC also supports commands - I can type “/nick newnickname”, and it switches my username, automatically! It’s a basic standard that all clients support, open, and available for all to use. Twitter I have to go entirely to their website to do anything, and it’s extremely limited in what you can do. To direct message someone on Twitter, I have to type, “dm username message”. In IRC it’s just a simple command, like all other commands, and I can always type, “/help” if I don’t know what the commands available are. I simply type, “/msg username message”, and it messages the user, and again, it tab-completes the username!

Why couldn’t Twitter just use the IRC standard in their platform, and then expand upon it to improve the IRC standard and bring it to a mobile world? By all means many of their scalability issues may have been taken care of had they done so. Not just that, but they would now be able to support groups, and less development would be needed to manage their platform. Twitter says they have an open API - I question that openness. It’s not based on much of an open standard, and IMO, it’s causing them problems now because of it.

Looking to start a project? Always look at the open solutions that are out there first, then build upon them - you’ll have much fewer headaches if you do.

(Photo courtesy GapingVoid.com)

Sontek and I have talked several times about SuSE, and that I should use it. I have used it, in a VM, and I have to agree when I am told that it isn't really fair to say that using a vm is the same as having a native install. Not in para-virtualization anyway. So, I installed OpenSuSE 10.3 on my laptop just