Utah Open Source Planet

As promised, here is my review for the Mac OS X Deployment 10.5 T3 that I attended this last week.  

First, the location.  Of course I’m biased, but I have always loved Chicago, and as such enjoyed the trip Villa Park and Oakbrook Terrace.  The hotel was nice, and the location of the training facility was fairly easy to get to.  The only problem:  no sidewalks.  It makes it difficult to walk when you don’t have sidewalks, and there isn’t enough room to walk on the street (without getting hit).  Other than that, the location was nothing to complain about. 

The materials:  There are quite a lot of material for this class, and I was a little concerned that it would be impossible to fit it all into a 2 day training.  Luckily, that was the thought of the course developers as well, and as such the training was extended to 3 days.  That fits in perfectly with my training schedule I have planned for the University, so I didn’t complain. 

The Subject Matter:  There was still a lot that I wanted to cover but couldn’t in the class, mostly those focusing around the command line.  But then, there is a separate class for that, which I will be attending in two weeks.  ^_^  But those important topics, such as deploying through the command line, and imaging through the command line, were covered in depth.  Also planning, scaling, and third party utilities for managing a deployment option was well covered.  

One really nice thing I liked about the class was a mandate for the student to immediately apply what they have learned to a real world situation.  They do this through a Deployment planning sheet, which the trainer should have printed out for each student.  We didn’t have it, but it was made available to us in PDF form, and there is a link that comes with the learning materials to PeachPit’s website for the same PDF.  Once the form is filled out, the last chapter talks about real world solutions in many large companies, school districts, and training centers, and gives the student time to go through their document to see what they find useful, and what they don’t need, in their deployment of OS X.  

The Requirements:  It is essential the student have a command of both the Mac OS X GUI and have command line experience before starting this course.  Basically, students would need to have completed at least the Server Essentials course, and be able to manage a UNIX command line experience.  Why?  Because at the beginning of the course you are just expected to set up your computers with little assistance from the book.  At this point, it is expected that the student knows already how to set up a brand new install of Mac OS X. 

The command line experience would be more along the lines of familiar with syntax of commands.  Most, if not all, of the commands used are Mac OS X Utilities and not your typical UNIX commands, yet the syntax is the same and therefore the student needs to be familiar with that syntax.  There may be some situations when troubleshooting is necessary, and as such the student will need to know how to get to the man pages.  

Something else that would be important before taking this class is having troubleshooting knowledge, and an understanding of what you are being prepared to learn.  This way if something doesn’t quite work they way it’s written in the book, you can step outside of the given examples and find alternatives.  That’s part of learning, something that many students I have had in the past didn’t quite understand.  It requires reading/studying ahead of time, asking questions, and being attentive.  

The Pace:  Unlike both Support and Server Essentials where we pend a lot of time trying to catch the class up after some really long first setup exercises, this class is paced just right for the materials.  We as a training class (of 10 trainers) finished with plenty of time on the last day to cover some topics more in depth, and that was with us doing the majority of the optional exercises.  So with a typical class at this level, the pacing will be such that students will have some time to play with some configuration, or perhaps have a long lunch as a thank you for coming to the class.  

Overall, it is the best designed Apple training course I have attended so far.  The materials are well designed, the pace is just right (low to medium cognitive load), and the course talks well to adult students (through Constructivist methods).  This is a class that may not run often here in Utah, but will most likely be a well attended class when it does.  It is by far my most favorite class to date.  ^_^  

Also, I’d like to say thanks to everyone that attended, because they gave me some very welcomed constructive criticism, and the Master Trainer was a great host.  If only the Cubs could have won all three games I was there, rather than just one of the two.  Oh well, there is always next time.  

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.

The Apple TV update has been released within the last week, and I have finally had plenty of time to play with it, so here is my review.

Declaration of Bias
First off, I want to let you know my bias with regard to all things Apple. Yes, I love Apple products, but not because they are from Apple. It's because I like the functionality that they give, the simplicity in their setup, and the power of UNIX at the core. So, now that you know my bias, on with the review!

The Interface
I've heard a lot of complaints about the interface, some from a "design" aspect, some in regard to the blatant iTunes marketing. But to tell you the truth, it's just plain easy to use. It's not fluid, but because of the new features they offer in the upgrade it doesn't seem possible to make it fluid.

The only real difference from the UI in Take 2 from the original is the box that shows up. I actually prefer the two column box because menu options come up while your music plays, and doesn't stop it like before. So in that aspect, it's a better interface.

Is there anything that I don't like about the interface? Just entering text. It's awkward using the Apple remote to enter text, and as such takes too long to do any real searching. Would I want a bigger and more cumbersome remote with a built in keyboard? Absolutely not! It would then be too difficult to use, and too confusing for new users. And I know what you are thinking: if they don't want to learn how to do it, why should you cater to them? Because those people have money to buy the product. Simplicity is what makes the Apple TV a joy to use.

Movies
One thing that I don't think people understand about the potential of iTunes is the potential to cater to the cult classics that you can't get anywhere else. Want to watch "Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine"? It's there. It's all about the rare, and getting that rare to those that would buy it.

With that in mind, let's look at rental. It's a great idea, and I really like it. There are a lot of movies that we purchase and only watch once or twice... That's $30 down the drain, when instead we can rent it from iTunes and watch it to our hearts content (once or twice within a 24 hour period), and only pay $2.99 to $3.99. Do I care about HD? Not really, because I only have an Standard Definition TV. I've heard reviews and seen screen shots that compare the quality of the Apple TV to HD Cable shows, and it's been favorable with the Apple TV. But again, it's dependent on services and the TV you are using.

Browsing shared movies is similar to the original Apple TV, if only vaguely. It's actually easier, because you can browse to them from the Movies menu instead of having to go to Sources to find the source. In fact the navigation let's you get to other sources easier than before.

Renting is simple, though there isn't a lot out there to rent. But what is there is a fairly diverse genre spread that would make most people interested at least. If you download a movie, it will sync automatically with your main source machine. If you don't have a main source machine, it stays on your Apple TV. ^_^ That I really like. Once you are done renting (i.e., 1 month of not watching, or within 24 hours of when you started to watch the movie), it automatically deletes itself from your Apple TV/iTunes.

TV Shows
This was the only annoyance I had with the update. By default, it displays your TV shows by show, time stamp, and then alphabetically. There looked to be a way to organize the display, but no simple way to be seen to organize it. I was doomed to deal with my TV shows out of order, until I tried to just hit the right skip button on the remote. It then organized the TV shows by show, which was what I had before the upgrade.

One welcome addition to this view was the division by season, and then give the numbers of each episode. It makes it easier to see if you have all the episodes, and make sure they are in order. Needless to say, the one major complaint I had against the Take 2 upgrade was resolved.

Music
I don't listen to a lot of music, but my wife does. One thing that is a great improvement is the Air Tunes option, where someone can play their music from their mac on the Apple TV. I like it, because I can leave the TV off to get to the music, and it gives more space on the Apple TV for movies and TV shows (soon to no longer be an issue, if I can talk my wife into the hard drive upgrade for the Apple TV).

Other than that, it's pretty much like movies or TV shows, with sharing very easy to navigate, and a huge emphasis on iTunes.

Podcasts
I love podcasts. I listen to several, mostly from NPR. The search isn't the best (see complaint about entering text), but sharing is great and easy to navigate. One great thing is the video podcasts for movie trailers. Because our wireless broadband network is, well, rather unreliable at times (anytime UTOPIA becomes ready, I'm dumping it), downloading to the Apple TV to watch a preview can take quite a bit of time. So, I would rather download the podcasts for the movies at work, and then bring them home to watch.

Photos
Photos are not often used on our machine, other than as a screensaver, but the Apple TV does allow for connecting to Flickr and the .Mac repository that my wife would have had access to (but never used, thank goodness for trial accounts!). They are easy to set up, the settings are in the same menu (no more hunting), and you can also view shared photos from machines. WIll it be a good move? Well, only if I find a use for browsing through Flickr files on a regular basis. Until then, it's really a non-issue for me.

YouTube
I just recently got my wife interested in YouTube, and created an account for us to use on YouTube. Now I connect at work, find interesting movies, and I can bring them home and have my wife watch them on the main TV. The only drawback is the broadband network we are on, and the problems we seem to have with bandwidth. Ah, well, perhaps one day it will be a good tool to use. In any case, other than search, the Apple TV is a really good tool to watch YouTube on a big screen.

Settings
The settings were pretty much the same, though they had an added option to add your iTunes account to the Apple TV directly. It's time consuming, but keeps it on file and not in RAM. Good thing, because occasionally my son likes to play with the power strip into witch it is plugged. Other than that, it's pretty much the same.

Final Thoughts
The main drawback to the Apple TV is the hard drive size. The good news is that it's fairly easy to upgrade the hard drive (out of warranty, of course), and will cost just a little more to upgrade an Apple TV 40 GB to 250 GB than buying an Apple TV 160 GB.

Also, there are a number of hacks that can be loaded to the Apple TV, one of which is the Safari HD plugin, allowing someone to use Safari on the Apple TV without having to install a full version of OS X. They have a version for the new Take 2 update, so once I can talk my wife into letting me upgrade the hard drive, I'm going to look into it. You can also enable SSH, which makes upgrading the Apple TV that much easier.

So, is the Apple TV worth it? With the hacks, most definitely. Without the hacks, it is very usable, simple in it's navigation, and therefore a definite keeper. Can you build and configure a more expandable device? Sure, if you want to go through all the work, time, effort, etc. Frankly, I like the fact that the Apple TV is just so simple to use. I can rip my DVD's with Handbrake, add them to iTunes, and as such they are viewable on the Apple TV.

And finally, of course, it saves my DVD's from my son's fingers, and the fingers of his cousins.

So I have been working with the new version of Nagios for this Migration that we are doing at work.  I have been impressed with what has been happening with the Nagios development.  Now I haven’t done a whole lot with Nagios since 2.4 so some of the features that I mention may have been implemented before but I am going to try and check them from he what’s new section of the Docs.

One of the first features that I have noticed is that flap detection actually works.  Now I may have not just set it up right before, but I never got it working before.  This time around, I haven’t done anything special and I am getting flap notifications.  It is nice for when a box is bouncing up and down.

Using Hostgroups as host group members, is one feature I have really used.  Since we have duplicates or more of every type of server,  It is nice to have them all in one hostgroup.  And then instead of name each individual host for the more general host groups, I can just add the hostgroup for each computer type.  That saves a lot of work and makes it easy to add new hosts.

This is one that could have been there before but being able to add hosts to hostgroups in the host definition is great.  Then I can look at a host and tell it what groups it is part of rather than editing the group definition as well.

The Parallelization of service checks is a great addition to Nagios 3.  I know you could do this before with a setting in the config file, but it should have just worked out of the box that way.

As I am reading through the what’s new, I see you can use multiple templates for a host or service.  I might have to play with this one.

Performace gains:  I have noticed that Nagios is a lot more  responsive in the interface.  Also, when I schedule a check in the interface it gets done a lot quicker.

The predictive server dependency checks looks like it is a nice feature.  It will basically start checking dependencies the moment it gets a soft failure.  It will also check all the dependencies up the chain, so you get the alert quicker.

A lot of work has been done on Host Checks.  They now run in parallel which speeds up Nagios a lot.  They had the predictability mentioned above.  They can use active host checks much more effectively.  Lot of other little changes have been added too.

Timerperiods have gotten something they needed.  The ability to rotate around a set period of time rather than just days of the week.  This means you can actually put a pager rotation into timeperiods and schedule admins around it.  I haven’t set this up yet but it is one my list to get done after the migration calms down a bit.

Splunk got integrated into the nagios interface.  We don’t use splunk, but I am considering it.

There are a bunch of other features that were added to Nagios 3, but those were some that I thought important.  It is nice that it doesn’t require a big change for the configs in upgrading to the latest version.  There are a few things that were deprecated and a few things that were added, but nothing in terms of major functionality.

I am also working on being able to have a failover server.  I am going to follow the documentation for this.  I will let you know how it goes once I get it down.

I'm not generally one for video shorts, though I have seen thousands (particularly computer animated shorts). I also have a fairly limited field of likes when it comes to film, with most of the movies I enjoy coming from before the 60's. That being said, I read about this animated short on various websites, and decided to give it a try.

The Animation
The first thing that actually drew my attention was the animation. I'm pretty sure it is computer animation because of the precision, but it looks like shadow puppetry. That in and of it self is really cool! Shadow puppetry hasn't been seen in mainstream US markets (as far as I know) for years. It's neat to see someone take such an artistic turn in their animation. I'm really impressed.

The Setting
The setting is in a very steampunk world. Airships, coat tails, mad scientists that would rather kill others than think logically on how to get a monster back to a city. Yes, it just screams steampunk, and as such captured my attention. The machines used for locomotion are heavily geared, and there appears to be no natural ground. All land is floating in the air (rather cool, I'd say), and makes one wonder what kind of physics governs the world.

The Story
Something I have learned from watching years of animated shorts is that the animation can be excellent, but if the story is lacking the experience suffers. Apparently the creators of this little gem understood that, and wrote a complex story that is grounded in a history as to yet explained, giving the experience a richness that is usually lacking in other animated shorts. The story could have fallen directly from Jules Verne. It's rich, has just enough reference to technology to make geeks drool, and has such an intense ending that you are left wanting more.

A quick synopsis: A young navigator, haunted by a fatal mistake in his past, has been reassigned to his old ship. The crew are on a routine mission to a new trade route when they came across a derelict vessel, with all the crew dead, and yet still in complete working order. They follow their old heading at the behest of their one passenger, a biologist, and discover an uncharted island. The adventures start there, with excitement, horror, and a discovery of just what man can do when determination overrides reason.

If you have not seen this short, which has won many awards and was nominated for an Oscar in 2006, I would highly recommend that you do. If you can't find the DVD to purchase, you can find it on iTunes for $1.99 (plus tax). It's 26:05 minutes long, and every minute is gripping. I highly recommend it.

A few months ago at the Utah Open Source Conference, DirectPointe handed out a CD for their Central Pointe Server. This server was a compilation of a bunch of open source software that tied together with a web interface and designed to be a drop in solution. That was the way that I understood from what was said at the conference. I took the free CD and decided to look at it later. The situation came up a few months later. My grandmother was staying in the hospital fighting cancer. The hospital was block outbound port 25. I am sure this was preventing any of the computers inside the hospital from being part of a botnet, but it also prevented my grandmother from sending emails. Since I am the tech guy of the family, it was up to me to save the day. Since I had a machine that had a public IP that just got freed up from what it was doing before, I thought it would be a great project to use this software that DirectPointe had given.

So I installed the CPS. The installation went fine with no problems. Once the system was installed, I was present with a semi gui prompt. It was X or atleast and was a common xdm type login prompt. I logged in as root and found that all I could do was to change the networking information. I was confused. I had to get the manual that was included with the CD to see what was going on. I learned that the system is designed to be all controlled from the Web interface. So I got on my desktop and launched a browser to the server’s web interface. It is a nice web interface. It isn’t very confusing and has lots of options for you to work with. I was impressed with all the features that were available. It has Postfix, Apache, Spamassassin, Snort (IPS), SnortSam (IPS), a firewall interface, printing, file shares, mysql setup, etc. Basically anything a standard business would need from a server, it is included.

I started by trying to setup port forwarding to redirect a high level port to port 25 as this seemed like the easiest possibility. I went in to the firewall section and set up the port forward. Easy I thought. I then tried to telnet to the high level port in order to send an email and test the functionality. At this point let me tell you that there are two modes that you can can choose when installing the server. There is the standalone mode (which is what I chose) and there is the gateway mode. Well my telnet test didn’t connect. So I tried to setup the port forwarding using the advanced section of the firewall. Again, It didn’t work. After a couple of tries, I couldn’t navigate around the interface anymore. It would just timeout. I got back on my console to the box and after a little while got on a command prompt and found that snort had locked me out since I was using telnet to go to a non-standard port. It thought I was a hacker and locked me out.

Once I got back into the system, I decided that maybe I should register the machine and see if there was an update or a bug with why the port forwarding wasn’t working. I signed up for an account on DirectPointe’s website. I found that I couldn’t add a computer because I didn’t have a subscription. Odd I thought. I could register the system to my account for the same reason. I also couldn’t find a place for updates. Around this time, I felt I had spent enough time messing around and I needed the system to be up and working. I installed Ubuntu and set postfix to listen on the high level port.

At this point, I thought I was done with the Central Pointe Server. However, I get an email a few days later from DirectPointe. They want to see how I thought of the system. The offered to take me out to lunch. Free lunch, who can say “no”. So I went. I was really surprised how they were. They listened to my whole story. Then they asked how it could have been better. I was floored. I was expecting them to come and tell me all the things I did wrong and how it wasn’t their software’s fault. I was impressed. Needless to say, the port forwarding didn’t work because I was in standalone mode rather than gateway mode and port forwarding isn’t enabled in standalone mode. That make sense but it wasn’t written anywhere. They told me that this was a new product and that is why I couldn’t find a subscription for it and why I had troubles with registering the system. I came away from the lunch impressed with the company.

Overall, I liked this product. It has a lot of capabilities. It is one of the best packages I have seen with everything up and running. If I was a business owner without a full-time IT staff, I would definitely be looking into one of these servers. However, as a Geek, I didn’t have the same mentality that this product did. That being said, I think this system has some great potential, and with a few tweaks could even satisfy the geeks out there. Now we just need to wait for the ability to download the iso right from their website and keep it updated.

I found this company through a couple of different programs that I was looking at out. This is there complete Nagios/Cacti/Monitoring solution. It is much more than Nagios. Nagios maybe a portion of the backend, but they have integrated a number of opensource projects into this compilation. I was really taken by this project initially. It had everything I needed. It had the monitoring stuff and performance graphing. I was excited. I installed it and went through the basic configuration and just found it lacking. Maybe I just didn’t have the time to play around with it as much as I wanted. I think though I was put off by the philosophy of the program. They have a Pay program that is built on the opensource program with a lot more features in it. This is not the way we should be doing open source software. I understand and support selling support and services in addition to open source software, but I am put off when a company tries to take an opensource version of a product and limit it because they have a version that they sell.

For example, GW has added this concept of templates that go beyond a nagios template. The template sets up everything about the server, from monitoring to graphing and the like. Then you create the server with a name template and ip address. Done. Easy to add multiple hosts. And hosts can have multiple templates. However, they include 3. Thats it. One is a basic SSH template and I forget the other two. Templates are hard to create as well. I looked through creating one and got confused. Why not include more templates? Because there are tons in the paid version.

Groundwork Monitor uses a lot of Ajax for its web interface. It makes it smooth and enjoyable to use. Setting up hosts was a little complicated, since you weren’t setting up the host for Nagios, but also for Ganglia and other tools that are packed into this compilation.

Overall I liked this package. I don’t think that I will be using it in production, however. I am not sure how much I will follow the development as well. It will be interesting to see where this project ends up in a few years.
One of the other projects they Groundwork owns is called Fruity. Fruity was a configuration tool for Nagios. The author of the tool as recently left and is creating a fork since groundwork is sitting on the tool and not updating it. I am looking forward to see what this fork brings. Fruity looked like a great configuration tool.

OpsView is a Nagios wrapper found here: http://opsview.org/ . It is an impressive add-on for a business wanting a basic monitoring solution. There is a Web gui that allows you to configure Nagios with out touch a config file. They have added a few cool features like categories and the ability to have slave servers with hot failover. This means you can keep one central server that has on the configs. All you need to do is modify this one server and it will push out configs, scripts and what out to all the other servers that are setup in the interface. The interface is simple and easy to use. I was impressed as I started to use this.

Once I started to try and configure things is where I started to see problems or rather things that didn’t have enough polish. One of the biggest thing for me was that the web interface was slow. It took forever (10-15 seconds) to save a changes to a host or a service check. I had 40-50 servers that needed modification from the import of the current config. I got though a handful before I started editing the database directly. I could handle this problem because once you have all the machines setup you don’t need to do a whole lot of changing.

There were a few confusing points to the whole thing. Opsview uses host categories and service groups to figure out the contacts for each alert. I couldn’t find a good way to see how these were setup. It was confusing. It seemed like all the users that are associated with a server category got notified based of what the service was told to notify. Very confusing.

They don’t have support for host templates. We use these a lot in my environment at work. We have a bunch of servers that do the same thing. There are times when I need to make a change to all of them. This is where the Host template comes into play. I can just make the change to the host template and it gets changed on all the servers using that template.

A couple other things were issues for me. The Slave servers had to be setup from the master. You setup ssh keys and push out a script. You can’t install the software and say “you are a slave to X” and tell X that the server is a slave and have it work. In addition, I had to spend a bunch of time trying to get the packaging to work with CentOS 5. I eventually got it and reported what was needed back to the developers. Just frustrating. One last thing that is an annoyance, is that all the nagios scripts have to begin with “check_”. A lot of the custom scripts that we use don’t use that convention, since it makes more sense to call them something else.

One nifty feature that OpsView added to Nagios was the exceptions. You can specify a check with a given parameters and change it for a given host or a given time period. Very nifty feature. Not one that I currently need, but I can see the benefit for it.

Overall, I though this was a great package. I was impressed with the overall layout. I am sure that if you bought the package with the support, it would work a lot better for you. Since I am fairly knowledgeable with Nagios already, it had a few shortcomings. One of the best positives for this program is that the developers are fairly active in the Nagios community. I have seen them respond to people on the user list and submit patches back into the main Nagios line. This is how projects like this should operate.

I have been looking at add-ons to Nagios. At work we have a decent number of servers to monitor. I wanted to see if there were some products out there that could help reduce the management of our Nagios installation. There are three main additions that we wanted to add to our current setup.

The first is Failover between Nagios servers. This is for redundancy. We don’t want each system to be running checks but we want to keep them in sync as much as it is possible. I have read through the documentation and seen how Nagios has said how to do it. There was also a paper out by Ricardo Martins that uses perfParse to increase the sync between the two servers. After looking over the different solutions, I am still not sure how we want to do it. That is why I am also looking at alternatives.

The second benefit we would like to see is an easy administration of the config files. Since we have three different environments that we operate in, it becomes messy to maintain them all. I am trying to make it easier so that we don’t have to go and hack on the files all the time. This is becoming less of a possibility. There are a few solutions that I am still looking at. Ultimately we would like to use our HostDB to dump out Nagios config files.

The third benefit would be to set up a dedicated on-call rotation that would alert with out any manual interaction. Unfortunately, I haven’t found anything that would do this for us. It might have to be a hack to get this to work. We would need to setup escalations as well so if the on-call person didn’t respond in a given time, the rest of the systems team would be notified.

So with those in mind, I am in process of looking at different Nagios add-ons to improve our Nagios environment. I am going to try and review the ones that I test. Those should be my next few posts.

Well, I got a new Blackberry Pearl on a couple of recommendations. I have had some mixed feelings on it. I finally got it to sync, using schedule world and OTA (over the air) syncing that I found in Ubuntu’s forum. I tried to use the open source project barry to sync it directly but I couldn’t get it to recognize the device. I thought it was charging but I don’t think it really was. It is a shame. The project has some far. It might be that I am running on 64-bit Gutsy, but I don’t think so. They are getting there. I am excited to see the development of it.

So then you ask how do I like it. Well it is different. I have done a lot of other things to make it easier. The syncing is a big thing. That also meant that I had to update all my contacts to include phone numbers. That was good since I didn’t have a lot of contacts in my computer. Now I do. I need to add some more, but it is nice knowing that there information is there. It also crossed off another thing on the list. Speaking of lists, since the syncing doesn’t do todo lists I haven’t done that yet. I am still getting used to the keyboard layout and input more that a basic text. It works great. I am also getting used to having an extra column of keys on both sides of the numbers. I was dialing a number today and failed 2 or 3 time because I pushed a letter key and not the number key.

I am disappoint in the volume of the ring. It doesn’t seem very loud. I wish it were loader. Maybe I need to tweak a few things. Plus when the phone is on the home screen and you push the volume up, it should turn up the ringer. It just sits there. One other annoyance that I have is that if you have the keyboard locked, and a phone call comes in. After the phone call, the keyboard is unlocked. Something I wish I could switch. and maybe I can. I haven’t found all the shortcuts yet. I am sure there is one for locking the keyboard, but I am still going through the menu to get it.
I installed mini Opera on it and have been very impressed how it handles. It is cool to see these webpages really small. My years of being on broadband really hit home though. It is tough to wait on the download speed. I guess it would be better if I had tabs or multiple browser windows, but only one page at a time. The good thing is no popups.

I love that alot of the features are just buttons in the menu. Like the keyboard lock. It doens’t ask for confirmation. One added thing that would be nice is to pop up the text message so you could read the subject if the keypad was locked. I haven’t set up any extra email yet. I did download and use the gmail app. It is nice. Not many other apps have worked. I think it is because it is the new version of BBos. I think it is 4.2.

A feature I really like is the voice dial. No more going through menu’s. I push the button and say “call jessica mobile” and it calls. Sweet.

Well that is it for now.

While working as a SysAdmin (System Administrator) there are many tasks of different types. Any good sysadmin knows that there is always room for improvement. Some actually go so far as to script and/or automate everything. These types often end up spending weeks or months developing automation systems while the rest of their duties suffer as do their users.

I once saw an article describing this dilemma. Basically all tasks can be broken into categories based on the difficulty of the task and the frequency of the task. Steps to reduce the time and effort to do these tasks should be prioritized by category. Tasks that are easy to do, that you do frequently, should have shortcuts applied when possible. An example might be using your shell’s alias feature. Tasks that are easy, that you do rarely, don’t bother over complicating it yet. Hard stuff that you do frequently should be automated as much as possible. Perhaps you could try your hand at Shell or Perl scripting. Those rare tasks that take some time on your part should be clearly documented to take out the guess work, perhaps even include copy/paste’able code fragments as well.

I highly suggest these two books by Thomas Limoncelli. The Practice of System and Network Administration, and Time Management for System Administrators. The first book covers a lot of general theory of system administration, not necessarily platform specific but there is lost of unix information. The second book offers excellent ideas and tips on managing your time better, reducing distractions, and getting rid random people interrupting you to ask why their email is slow.

Sorry, one more post on the topic of fitness and fat loss. I picked up ($4 with shipping) and reread Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week by Laurence Morehouse, Ph.D. and Leonard Gross, and it's as good as I remembered. For various reasons I didn't follow through with the plan laid out in this book last time I read it years back, but the principles I picked up stuck with me, and influenced my search for my custom and sustainable fitness program. I had a question that I thought was answered in this book, and so I picked up a copy and started reading. I'll give you a synopsis and review, then I'll divulge my (finally) finished custom plan.

First, this book is older than I am (1975). Naturally, that means we've learned some things that Dr. Morehouse (a Ph.D. in exercise physiology at UCLA) didn't know. On the other hand, most of what he did know back then, especially the basic foundation on which the program is based, is just as true now as the law of gravity remains. The book shows its age, but in ways inconsequential to successfully losing fat and/or gaining fitness. Indeed, it worked for people in the 50s, 60s, and 70s and there's no reason why we should be any different now.

And not just any people. Dr. Morehouse worked for NASA on exercise programs for the astronauts. Thanks to him astronauts on extended missions were able to walk (if a little shakily) rather than be carried on stretcher when returning to Earth. Low gravity is worse than sitting in front of a computer when it comes to atrophying muscle.

If I had to boil this whole book down into one paragraph, this would be it: Eat balanced meals, exercise with a balance of simple equipment-free strength training and aerobic exercise 3 times a week for a total of 30 minutes a week, live a bit more actively (take the stairs, etc.), and take note of and respond to feedback to stay on track. To get into shape (generic good shape, not athletic shape), that's all you need. To lose fat, you chart your course of 1 lb a week on a piece of graph paper. If you're above the line that day, you eat a little less (skip that piece of pie or extra helping). If you're below, you eat normally.

The book and method are very straightforward. There's no gimmicks here. It won't get you ready to run a race or climb Mount Everest. There's no confusion here between being an athlete and just plain getting in shape. The book is a little wordy, and could be half as long and just as informative. But that may be because I'd already convinced myself of most of the points he drives home in this book and didn't need the persuasive arguments.

This book is very much along the same lines as the Hacker's Diet I reviewed the other day, except it emphasizes exercise much more (for its own sake, primarily, not as a primary means for losing weight). Both use the simple view: calories in and calories out. Both emphasize the importance of feedback and the realities of measurement. Both give you a sustainable and easy-to-follow program (this one is easier than hacker's diet since you don't have to count calories).

So combining these two books and everything I've read from the web (everything from fat-loss zone heart rate cardio training to the bodybuilder mantra "cardio is useless for fat loss"), I have come up with my own personal plan. Time will tell if it works.

If I'm going to exercise, it's going to be swimming. I told myself that many many times over the years, and I meant every word. So I go swimming 3 days a week. There's my cardio. It's also part of my strength training, when doing intervals. The other part is on the other 3 days when I do some simple equipment-free strength training (5-10 minutes). I'm basing my exertion on the combination of perceived exertion (primarily how hard I'm breathing) and heart rate. I aim for staying aerobic and jumping the lactate threshhold on the hard intervals.

I'm convinced you can't lose weight in a reasonable amount of time without adjusting your diet, unfortunately. The numbers just don't add up otherwise. Every pound of lean mass you add burns some 10-20 kcal a day, and you're a lucky bodybuilder if you can add 1-2 pounds a week. That gets you no closer to burning off that extra pair of twinkies than the hour of jogging. Exercise alone, in the sense of that thing you do for an hour in the morning, is not enough to raise your energy usage enough to create a calorie deficit without adjusting your diet (especially since if you have too much fat you've probably been eating a calorie surplus). No, you have to adjust your diet. That doesn't mean you have to starve, it just means you need to be conscious.

Exercise does, however, apparently act as an appetite suppressant, and it will make you feel better and so you'll be a hair more willing to walk instead of ride, stand instead of sit, etc. Water is apparently another appetite suppressant, and it is important to drink plenty for other reasons especially when losing fat, so drink plenty. If for no other reason than because it fills your stomach partially, water can suppress your appetite if you drink it before a meal. So on my above-line days I'll be drinking a couple glasses before meals.

Dr. Morehouse says not to lose more than 1 lb a week. The consensus on the web is similar, but says 1-2 lb a week. I'm a little too impatient for 1 lb a week, but probably too lazy for 2 lb a week, so I'm aiming for 1.5 lb a week. I shall have lost my goal 40 lb by mid April.

To recap, I'm watching feedback (heart rate and weight) to fine-tune my eating and exercising in order to stay on track for a reasonable goal. No starving. Only the exercise I like. Reasonable and sustainable. Why don't you play along at home?

So I bought a new motorcycle a couple of weeks ago. It is a Kawasaki KLR650 (street-legal and rides well in dirt). I took ‘er out Friday for a spin amongst the vast hilly region to the west and south of my house, just about all of which belongs to the Bureau of Land Management (sweet, this means no neighbors on that land). There are some fun and interesting things to be found there.

I had gone up this really sweet incline, the view from which was cool and all that. Proceeding back down the incline, I realized that I was riding almost entirely in the finely powdered dirt commonly found in that area. All too quickly, I discovered that when you apply the rear brake going down an powdered incline, the back tire locks up readily. Problem is, going down hill, using the front brake is a no-no because if that baby locks up, you are gonna eat some dirt (and perhaps a rock or two).

About that moment, my guts shoot up into my throat as I realize that I am now headed down a steep, curvy incline essentially with no brakes. As I’m bouncing down that hill, wrestling the 337-lb bike to stay on it, I realize something… “Boy, it would sure be cool to have a good PDF manipulation tool.”

Well, the story has a happy ending, because I found that pdftk (included in openSUSE) can do an astonishing number of things with and to a PDF. Not only that, it can handle multiple PDFs at once. Go, Linux.

Bunches of Open Source applications exist that allow PDF creation, such as OpenOffice, Firefox, KGhostView, etc. Every once in awhile, you need to cut out some pages, or combine multiple PDFs. Maybe you want to rotate some pages, grab metrics, add watermarks, or even repair a corrupted PDF. pdftk does all of this.

One of the reasons I use it is to merge several PDFs into one. This is very simple:

pdftk first.pdf second.pdf third.pdf cat output final.pdf

A superb page with large amounts of great info on pdftk is right here.

pdftk is a lifesaver when you need to manipulate PDF files. Take a look.

In all fairness, pdftk will actually work on Windows and Mac, in addition to Linux.

In my move to eventually be platform independent, and be able to work from any location at any time with any device, I have been looking for one of the most basic tools to accomplish this: a universal document creator and repository. I've thought about network drives, standardized document tools that can handle the same document type though have different features across the board, and even limiting the hardware I would use, just to be sure I would be able to accomplish this goal.

But then I started to play with Google Docs. I have to admit, at first I didn't want anything to do with it, because I didn't think that it could be functional enough as a web application to make it worth while. I was wrong.

The first rule you need to know about documents, or indeed any office software, is that no matter how many bells and whistles that are on it, most people use just the basic features. This is because, in a sense, the business world in general doesn't needed anything more than a typewriter for their documents and email. As such, pretty much any word processor program can handle about 90% of all office needs, regardless of the amount of bells and whistles that are added. That being said, there are some people that need fancy tools, imbedded graphs, etc. For those people, I would not recommend something like Google Docs, but rather a more robust word processor.

But for the rest of us, Google Docs works great! I started by importing some documents, both Word and Open Office documents to them, and they work great. Formatting remains pretty much the same, and everything else looks great. I then uploaded a spreadsheet, and even though Safari isn't technically supported (Curse you!), it still works great in Safari 3.0 Beta.

So what's the real benefit? Storage space and accessibility. You can store your documents on Google's servers, and then download them and print them in any format you like, even PDF. You also can organize them within folders, to be sure you know where all your documents are. It also means that your documents are not located on your computer, but rather on the web, where you can access them from any location with an internet connection.

Currently, I am using it to write a long-standing project that I have been meaning to finish for years. I'm writing a book, and can write each chapter as a separate document, work on it from any location or any device, and still be able to download and print it from a location with a printer. I still haven't tried testing Google Docs from the iPhone, but if it works, that's just one more utility that I would have wanted on a mobile internet device that is resolved. Now, if they would just release an iPhone version of iChat, I might consider purchasing one.