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How to install Vista in two minutes
Okay, so I’m slow to post this.
Posted by markus on Thursday, July 03, 2008
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serial console, quick fix
A common problem with remotely managed Linux servers is console access. Not everybody is lucky enough to have KVM-over-IP readily available, but for most uses a simple serial console on a hardwired line to a suitable box nearby suffices.
The configuration is simple enough.
First, to run a login prompt on the serial line, add this to /etc/inittab:
T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100
Second, to run both the VGA and serial console, add this to /boot/grub/menu.lst (on Debian, for other distros, take your pick):
serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1 terminal --timeout=10 serial console timeout 10
This will set up the VGA and serial consoles and prompt on both for attention and once that timeout expires, the grub boot timeout will commence. In a nutshell, this setup gives an operator on either the VGA or serial console a chance to intervene and interact with grub (to pick the kernel to boot, say); failing any interaction, the server will (try to) boot unattended.
To make the kernel aware of all of this, an additional edit in menu.lst is required. Append console options to grub’s default kopt line
# kopt=root=/dev/mapper/server-root ro console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8
and then run update-grub (on Debian).
Posted by markus on Sunday, June 01, 2008(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
another reason to give Vista a clear miss
Forget about the WGA! 20+ Windows Vista Features and Services Harvest User Data for Microsoft
That’s quite a lot of phoning home…
Posted by markus on Thursday, July 12, 2007(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
Linux Genuine Advantage
Linux Genuine Advantage™ is an exciting and mandatory new way for you to place your computer under the remote control of an untrusted third party!
According to an independent study conducted by some scientists, many users of Linux are running non-Genuine versions of their operating system. This puts them at the disadvantage of having their computers work normally, without periodically phoning home unannounced to see if it’s OK for their computer to continue functioning. These users are also missing out on the Advantage of paying ongoing licensing fees to ensure their computer keeps operating properly.
To remedy this, we have created a new program available as a required free download: Linux Genuine Advantage™!
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Posted by markus on Saturday, February 10, 2007(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
Debian forks cdrecord
The short version is that cdrecord tools is apparently comprised of source files and a build environement sporting a mix of licenses, the specific combination thereof the Debian team deemed as unacceptable, because in their opinion it would prevent them from distributing binaries for the cdrecord package.
There’s an amusing thread on /. about whose interpretation of the license is right or wrong - among other topics. Most posters miss the point entirely, though. It doesn’t matter whose interpretation of the legal situation is correct - the only issue that matters is whether or not the author of cdrecord can convince the relevant people at Debian that they can legally distribute his software; failing that, they had no choice but to remedy the problem, which in this case led to the creation of a fork from the last unencumbered version.
Interestingly enough, Fedora reached a similar conclusion.
There’s precedent for this pattern, other “characters” have been deemed to difficult to work with, to the point where it’s less painful to rewrite or fork their code. It will happen again.
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so about the lack of PC games…
I haven’t done a lot of gaming in recent years, but I do peruse the shelves of game purveyors once in a while. I’ve noticed that in the last few years, console games are crowding out PC games. According to Id’s Kevin Cloud, it’s piracy whodunnit.
Without a doubt, piracy results in lost revenue, although credible analysis is hard to come by and piracy as the default culprit for lagging sales is getting old. The people commenting on the story make a number of valid points. PC games have increased in price, while not offering much in return other than eye candy. The PC is a fragmented platform, which drives up development cost at a time when game publishers are squeezed to develop on the cheap. Intrusive copy protection and in-game product placement are not likely to boost sales. And so on…
I myself am somewhat of a curmudgeon when it comes to games. I never cared for the types of games I associate with consoles and that well is poisoned beyond recall; on top of that, I’m not willing to spend money on (more or less) single purpose hardware, when I have plenty of perfectly good general purpose PCs around. I haven’t had all that much free time to play games in recent years, but I would make the time if there were games that I could get into. The Sims and other god games are fun, right up until the point when the inevitable micro-management spoils it. FPS and real-time strategy games don’t much interest me and decent adventure games are few and far in between. So what’s a gamer to do…
Posted by markus on Monday, August 14, 2006(3) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery • In the news
hope that one does NOT come handy
Recovering from file system corruption using TestDisk
I seem to recall at least one of the tools being used in forensics, too.
And here’s another thing I always have to look up:
Creating and Using SSL Certificates
And finally: How to restore a hacked Linux server
Posted by markus on Monday, July 24, 2006(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
Drupal vs. Expression Engine, pt4
I found a way to handle access control for the family site. It’s not quite as elegant as I’d hoped, but it works. Not quite sure what to do about the other site(s), but one step at a time.
Looks like it’s time to get serious about writing a few throw-away tools to migrate selected content, like private messages, posts, and comments.
On a related note, I should perhaps review the formatting options of the posts on this site. For that matter, perhaps a different theme/template…
Posted by markus on Wednesday, July 19, 2006(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
CodeIgniter
Enter CodeIgniter, from the good folks at pmachine.com and of Expression Engine fame.
It looks like a more than decent framework for PHP web applications, sort of like PHP on Rails. I hope to be able to make the time to play with it, because it looks like just the ticket to crank out a few small web-based apps I never got around to doing from scratch.
Posted by markus on Tuesday, July 18, 2006(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
Drupal vs. Expression Engine, pt3
Learning EE is an ongoing project. After having spent some time with the software, here are some impressions to share.
I have a tough time finding what I want in the documentation, particularly with regards to the template system. The template language also has some quirks that take some getting used to.
Drupal has a regular node structure, whereas in EE the articles, photo albums, file uploads, the wiki, and the forum all have “their own thing” - which makes EE’s back end/control panel a bit cluttered.
What I struggle most with, though, is mapping the sundry Drupal access control schemes like taxonomy_access and organic groups to EE templates. This is exacerbated by the way EE handles multiple sites running off a single install. In Drupal, each site gets a seperate database (or at least, a distinct table prefix), but in EE the database and all user accounts are shared. Our family site has public and private content and photos; even this simple binary scheme is harder to implement than I expected. I run another Drupal site with multiple organic groups, where members have widely differing permissions. Even though the painful upgrades of this site prompted me to look at EE in the first place, I’m not ready to tackle that migration just yet.
Posted by markus on Tuesday, July 18, 2006(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
Drupal vs. Expression Engine, pt2
One of the more delightful features of Expression Engine is oddly enough the lack of one-click themeing.
In Drupal, the page layout is relatively rigid. With few exceptions like the contributed side-content and front page module, all blocks, node types, and forms are displayed in a well-defined page region and it is up to the theme engine to render and plonk into their proper spot on screen. This implies that themeing revolves around components and where to place them. EE produces the same end result, with the profound difference that each page/form/whatever is designed as a distinct template. This allows for great flexibility and with the use of embedded/nested templates also avoids excessive cut and paste between templates. On the flip side, since each theme is custom built, it is virtually out of the question to change the theme on the fly.
I never made the time to wrap my head around theme design in Drupal, but I find it most straightforward to port themes to EE. The basic approach is save a copy of the stylesheets as a CSS template, then copy and paste the source of a sample page, then merge in the EE template tags as needed. Finally, break out nested templates from the index page and set up whatever other pages are needed.
Posted by markus on Tuesday, July 04, 2006(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
Linux on 5th generation WRT54G routers
A while ago, I swapped Linux firewalls - moving off a full PC to an old WRT54GS running OpenWRT. Due to the constrained environment, there are a few things this gadget cannot do that the old firewall did, but I am very happy for having made the swap. It set off a ripple effect, reducing the number of permanently running servers and allowing me to move the remaining one to a space where the noise doesn’t bother me.
It’s too bad that the contemporary Linksys routers (with the possible exception of the -L models) cannot support OpenWRT. It’s good to hear that there’s now a way around it: Linux hackers re-claim the Linksys WRT54G.
Predictably, what can be made to run on the 5th and 6th generation WRT54G’s is a very slim distro, but at least it can be done.
Posted by admin on Tuesday, July 04, 2006(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
Drupal vs. Expression Engine
This site started out on PostNuke, followed by several major editions of Drupal, and is now running on Expression Engine. The reason to for the most recent migration can be summed up as “because I wanted to"… Drupal and EE are both very powerful and complex packages, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, which I hope to write about. What ultimately prompted me to look at EE was a painful upgrade of another Drupal site. Drupal is feature-complete as far as my modest needs are concerned - with the possible exception of themeing, something I never tried - but many features I consider essential are provided by contributed modules and not the core distribution. After going through this process a couple of times, it became increasingly urgent to switch to a package that was feature-complete right out of the box. It so happens that EE qualifies.
What I immediately liked about EE is the template system. I run another of my sites on the free EE Core package and it took only an hour or so to port a theme from openwebdesign.org to EE. On the downside, I miss Drupal’s input filters, books, and the access control system - particularly the ability to stick a user into multiple groups at once. It remains to be seen how much effort it is to implement the equivalent of Drupal’s taxonomy access and organic groups modules.
Posted by markus on Friday, June 30, 2006(0) Comments • Permalink • Generic Geekery
So you want to self-host?
This article is intended as a high-level overview of the issues relating to self-hosting of Internet services. Rather than use the services of a web hosting provider, you may want to self-host some or all of the pertinent Internet services. Reasons to support this decision include, but are not limited to:
Click to read MORE...Posted by markus on Saturday, August 30, 2003
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Automating Website Backups
Proper backups are vitally important and websites are no exception. The following article provides a blueprint for an automated backup procedure of a website running on Linux or other Unix-like operating systems. The scripts will likely function under cygwin on Windows. The procedures are aimed at a shared hosting environment without shell (SSH) access, although they can be extended to dedicated or co-located servers. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with Linux system administration.
In the typical hosting environment, there are three classes of data to be backed up, files, databases, and control panel configuration.
Posted by markus on Sunday, August 17, 2003
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