undertakingyou

A while back I wrote about my trepidation with Lucid. I have used ubuntu linux ever since my first linux introduction 5 years ago. But recently the changes in Lucid and general pain-in-the-butt install issues have had me very scared to install it. I have not updated any of my machines to Lucid but the other machines that I have updated have been less than spectacular.

So, I finally got around to installing Debian on my home desktop machine. I have been holding off because I am lazy. So far everything had worked, but I had a weekend off and away we ran with it.

First, I did have two little issues. I installed lenny and my update to squeeze crashed and burned. Once I used the Testing installer all was well. Also the installer didn’t like hooking to the wifi even though my wireless driver is included in the kernel as the ath9k driver. Aside from that this was the smoothest install I have ever had. Ever. Of all time.

Some things that I really liked. Once I installed the system I was up to date and running full steam ahead. No need to update and wait and download everything. That was already done as part of the install. Usually there are some configuration things and little get it together issues. Once I associated my bluetooth keyboard and mouse I have not had to do anything else. Everything has just fallen into place.

Also, rolling releases are just an awesome idea. I can stay on testing and I will always have an up to date system. Furthermore, the packages in the repositories are not archaic, but actually quiet up-to-date.

All in all, I am very pleased with my Debian install.

I want to take just a moment to introduce my company, Open By Design. There are many reasons that I made this company and picked this name.

First, the reason that I started this company. My job responsibilities at work took a sudden change in December. Basically instead of just being the ‘Computer Guy’ I now manager one of our satellite locations. With that I meet nearly every family that is served there, and go on all of their services. This has severely curbed my ability to dedicate time to computer issues. So, I made this company to offload work from my job, to my business, which saves overtime for them, and gets me extra money. Truth be told extra money is always good.

The name is really a reference to my passion about the use of open source software. Seemed better than Wild Smith Productions. In addition my goal is to leverage open source software in any way that I can for the clients that I have/get. I am really targeting small businesses where I can help with infrastructure and web design. We’ll see how it goes.

I have been a fan of ubuntu linux since the first time I installed it 4 and a half years ago. I have tried many others over the years and always come back to ubuntu linux. But with the latest release some things have me worried.

For starters, this is the second LTS that has huge oversights or where not enough time was taken. LTS suggests a machine that is out of the box stable, and that will remain so for at least the two year cycle to the next LTS if not until the 3 years of support is up. With the 8.04 Hardy Heron release there was beta software included, the reason behind this that it would allow greater function in the future. But that isn’t what an LTS is about, it is about a stable machine out of the box, not when the box gets updated software in one to two months.

With this latest LTS there is once again things that made me think that the designation Long Term Support is something that just comes along every two years and has nothing to do with the actual stability of the system at hand. I had a friend that went to upgrade and now can not get his system up and running. The graphics drivers have completely gone baserk. He has ATI graphics in his laptop and according to this bug report ATI graphics just don’t work with Lucid right now. The explanation being that ATI is closed Blah Blah Blah, and ATI hasn’t put out a kernel module compatible with the kernel we used blah blah blah.

Bullshit. Complete and utter rubbish. What about the open source radeon driver? Why wasn’t that developed so that people could actually view what the system has to display? Or better yet, get off the pride wagon and delay the release until it is something that could truly be called LTS. What? You couldn’t do that, it would be absurd? Dapper Drake was released two months late so that it could be polished. That delay was something that impressed me about ubuntu in the first place.

I am beginning to think that I should part ways with ubuntu. It will be a bitter day when I pull the trigger and move on to another distro. Until then I sit here using the last edition of ubuntu which I finally got tuned in to the point that I need. I would consider updating sooner but I need to work on projects using the computer, not work on the computer.

Of all the distros that I have tried I like the debian base over the ‘traditional’ rpm based distros. I am seriously considering trying out Debian Sid. Or at the least Debian Lenny. Any suggestions of other debian based distros to try I am open to and I would appreciate you passing them on.

The other day when compiling a kernel for a friend I had an interesting issue, Grub had been installed on a drive other than the root drive. Installing grub became something of an issue. Even though I ran update-grub after compiling the kernel I could not boot. But instead of an error like ‘grub error 22′ I was given a grub prompt. With that I could set the root drive and say where the kernel image and the initrd was and voila I was in business. Pretty sweet.

Once again a great example of *nix offering people solutions that are meant to work even in the most un-ideal situations. Anyone else have any good Grub 2 experiences?

Further reading: ubuntu community docs on Grub 2

I know that I have talked about it before. Many have talked about it before. But there really is additional hardships that come with administering a windows machine.

In this particular instance the machine has been running Windows XP fine with no problems whatsoever. No viruses, no spyware, nothing. I have this machine at my second office and VNC into it to do quite a bit of server administration (for my 3 windows servers) and using Microsoft Office when there is no alternative. So, I go to get into the machine today and it is acting weird. Stuff won’t open. For instance I get an error when trying to run adobe reader. So I restart the machine. I think nothing of it but I can’t ping the machine. Since the box is at a different location I just wait till I happen to be there.

What I find is that the machine will let me log in but when applying my ‘personal settings’ it sets there for a long time and then boots me out with the following error.

“A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license for this computer. Error Code: 0×80090006″

Two issues I have with this message. First, what problem. Is it that files can’t be found? Is there some corruption on the disk? Is Sagittarius in special alignment with Saturn? What? Next, the cryptic error code number. If I only have one computer, what good is that code really going to do me? Even with web access why not tell me the issue right there. They have the code, and know what the code means. Put two and two together. This points back to number one issue.

So after a google search for this cryptic code I get some advice to reregister some DLL’s while in safe mode. No dice. Can’t get to safemode. So I do safemode with command prompt, and log in as the local administrator. I can get in. Apparently it doesn’t check the license in this case.

I reregister the DLL’s and low and behold . . . . no dice. Still won’t let me in. I get the same error message so I look at some Microsoft KB article on the subject. Do you want to know what Microsoft’s advice is for this particular message? I know I do! Reinstall your operating system. Yep, whatever magically happen it is way to mucked up to be fixed so we are going back to the drawing board on this one.

Even as I type I am trying one of the Windows XP’s ‘repair installs’ to see if this will work.

By way of comparison, I have messed up my Linux machines bad by changing file permissions or deleting my home folder. In each case a specific message is given saying what is wrong so that I can know how to fix it. Also, the answer is never an exasperated ‘just reinstall and start over’.

+1 for Linux.

I am trying to figure this out. I am now supposed to be supporting a web application that is on our local intranet. It is made by one of our suppliers and although it is supposed to be a client management system its real purpose it to sell more of their product. As a free software lover I use firefox for web browsing and I was hoping to just use firefox to administer this website. But they use VBScript to do some of the work on the website. VBScript only works in Internet Explorer so I can’t use linux to use.

Now I know about ies4linux, and PlayOnLinux and stuff like this. But they suck and don’t work 90% of the time.

So this may be something beyond my brains ability to understand but, if you want to sell more product wouldn’t it make sense to use technologies that everyone can access? Why limit your demographic at all?

Maybe another way that open is ultimately better.

Early Bird discount ends tomorrow! So, if you want to take advantage of it please register. If you do miss the early bird stuff don’t worry. We still want you to come and if you belong to a local user group you can get a 50% off code. Contact your lug leader for the code.

More info on the conference

Big thanks to our sponsors: Salt Lake Community College, xmission, Utah Governs Office on Economic Development, OpenSUSE.

Another look forward to presentation from this years Utah Open Source Conference.

Web content filtering for home or office by Jeremy Willden.

I don’t know about you, but I have family and friends ask me about an open source ‘Net Nanny’ all the time. Excited to see about this one.

Also, as a side note, the early bird registration expires this week on Sept 19th. So please register. I am very excited about The Utah Open Source Conference this year and would like to thank some of our wonderful sponsors: Salt Lake Community College, xmission, the Utah Governs Office on Economic Development, and openSuse. More information is at 2009.utosc.com.

Another favorite presentation from the 2009 Utah Open Source Conference.

Managing and Securing Your Office With pfSense: from nothing to secure firewall using pfSense. I have set up pfSense at work and like it a lot. I can do many things with it including content filtering and OpenVPN in a snap. Joseph Brower works professionally getting pfSense hardware ready and configuring pfSense to do just about anything you could want from a firewall and I hope to learn some new tricks from him. Also, he is excited to present. He has been asking since April when he could submit his abstract and was one of the first we received. This promises to be a great presentation.

So, if you haven’t heard about it the Utah Open Source Conference will be October 8-10 at the Salt Lake Community College Miller Campus. More information can be found here.

There are a lot of presentations this year at the Utah Open Source Conference. We had over 120 submitted presentations. With so many to pick from you can imagine how hard it was. This year we let you pick. Attendees that were registered prior to selection closing and presenters who had submitted abstracts could vote on what presentations actually made it to the conference. A true community effert as it were.

All in all some 50+ presentations actually will be there at the conference and out of those there are some that are my favorites.

Let me introduce one such favorite: Getting Things Done – Life Without a GUI: how to do just about anything with the command line. I have know Jared Bernard, the presenter, for years (he used to be my wife’s boss), and I am very excited to see this presentation.

If you haven’t registered for the conference early bird registration is still available. See utosc.com for more information.