Linux in Indiana Schools

Now a Married Man

2008-06-23T11:17:00.002-04:00

Saturday afternoon I was joined in sacred matrimony with my soul mate.

It was on the most perfect blessings in my life; right up there with being born and the family I was born into.

That is all.

HOWTO - Work with Disk Images

2008-05-14T16:51:00.001-04:00

Warning! Extra Geeky Content Ahead!

What is a disk image?

The way I'm using it, a disk image is a bit-by-bit copy of the information on a data storage device. For a broader exploration of the topic, check out the "Disk image" article over at the Wikipedia.

I'll talk about hard disk images, and CD images (the infamous .iso file).

Why would I care about disk images?

Maybe you wouldn't. Mostly, I think we want to interact with our disks through the standard filesystem tools to work with files.

There ARE several situations where working with disk images might be useful. Among them might be:

Downloading and burning the latest Ubuntu Live CD.
Copying a CD, to distribute or to have a backup copy just in case.
Accessing the contents of these CD images without burning them onto CD.
Duplicating smaller disks (e.g. SD cards, CompactFlash cards)
Saving a perfect data copy of a disk as a first step in sensitive situations involving data (e.g., data recovery or forensics work).
Keeping an archival copy of a disk (e.g. I have a disk image of the 120MB hard disk from my old 386 computer for nostalgia purposes; one of these days I'm going to figure out how to emulate it...).

Note that while technically possible, imaging a large number of computers this way is a very long process compared to tools that are specifically designed for that sort of work (such as partimage and the SystemImager suite).

What tools do we need?

In UNIX (and Linux, and BSD, OSX, etc.), we will use the dd utility to access data from the storage device directly (as opposed to via standard file manipulation, which is (thankfully) abstracted from direct access through concepts like partitioning and filesystems) in order to be able to read and write disk images.

dd, or a version of it, is available for every platform, I believe.

I'll also discuss using the UNIX mount utility to mount the disk images as if they were real disks. I believe Mac OSX has a similar functionality built right in, and I know there are all kinds of programs for mounting virtual drives in Windows.

Creating a Disk Image

You'll need the disk you're copying from to not be mounted. You'll also need a place to save the image file that has sufficient free space. This may mean:

You're copying from a smaller disk to a larger disk—with more free space than the smaller disk has total capacity— neither of which is mounted on your computer.
You're booted into a Live CD environment in order to have un-mounted access to your main (operating system) disk in order to be able to copy it off onto an external storage device, be that over USB or over the network.

Whatever the case, once you have things ready, the syntax we use is:

# dd if=input of=output

Where input is the disk device node and output is the file you want to write the disk's data to.

SO, if I want to take /dev/sda and make a disk image of it called sda.dd in the current working directory, I run:

# dd if=/dev/sda of=sda.dd

And now I have a file named sda.dd which contains an exact bit-by-bit copy of my /dev/sda disk!

Writing a Disk Image to a Disk

So, you created a disk image of your drive, and then you did something stupid and ruined the contents of your drive? or your drive died and you got a new one? or (more optimistically) you're just duplicating the hard disk and that's why you have an image? No worries, we can simply write the image right back onto that disk!

We'll need to have access to the disk image file, and the destination disk will need to be available and unmounted.

The pattern for dd stays the same:

# dd if=input of=output

Except now input is the disk image file and and output is the disk device node you want to write the disk's data to.

SO, if I want to take /dev/sda and write a disk image called sda.dd onto it, I run:

# dd if=sda.dd of=/dev/sda

Partitions

Incidentally, you can also do this with a partition rather than a full disk, by giving it a partition node instead of a disk node (e.g. /dev/sda1 is the first partition on /dev/sda) so dd will create an image of just the first partition rather than one of the full disk).

CD Images

Compact Disc images have been made really easy to work with.

In Ubuntu, you need only to right-click on a .iso file in order to be presented with the option to Write to Disc.... Also, using Brasero, you can run a "Disc copy" project and copy your disc to a "File image".

Alternatively, on the command-line, CD images work just like you might expect from the above. In order to create them you can just:

# dd if=/dev/scd0 of=discimage.iso

And in order to burn the disc image to a blank disc, you can just reverse the direction:

# dd if=discimage.iso of=/dev/scd0

Accessing Disk Image Partitions

So, we can write the disk images onto disks...

We can also access and manipulate them directly by treating the image file as a disk. I'll be discussing the use of the UNIX mount utility, which is responsible for mounting disks onto the UNIX file system, to do this.

The pattern for using mount (for this) is:

# mount -t fstype -o options device directory

Where:

fstype is the type of filesystem you're trying to mount; necessary if you're working with non-native filesystems, like NTFS.
options are extra options you may need to use, e.g. loop is the option we feed mount to let it know we're feeding it a disk image file rather than a real disk. If we want to mount a partition from inside a full disk image, we'll also need to use the offset option to let it know where the partition starts.
device is the device (in our case disk image) to be mounted.
directory is the destination directory in the UNIX file system where you want the image mounted.

So, in order to mount a CD iso, we just do:

# mount -o loop cdimage.iso /media/iso

And now running ls /media/iso will show us the root directory of the CD.

On Ubuntu 8.04 (and others), so long as you mount it in the /media directory, an icon will show up on the GNOME desktop to represent the "disc".

If we have the image of a disk partition, we can similarly mount it as above with:

# mount -o loop partition.img /media/partition

However, if we want to mount a partition from inside a full disk image, we'll first need to locate the spot in the image that the partition begins.

We need to use fdisk to get the needed information out of the disk image, with the -l option to list partition information and the -u option to show us the sizes in sectors.

For example, as I was working on recovering data off of a teacher's dying hard drives, I got this response:

root@om:/mnt# fdisk -lu output 
You must set cylinders.
You can do this from the extra functions menu.

Disk output: 0 MB, 0 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 0 cylinders, total 0 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9dc96e9e

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
output1              63       80324       40131   de  Dell Utility
output2   *       80325   464840774   232380225    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(1023, 254, 63) logical=(28934, 254, 63)

So, from the above we can tell that the second partition in the disk image "output" starts at sector 80325.

We also know that each sector is 512 bytes.

Multiply the two and we know that the second partition starts at byte number 41126400.

We can also tell the partition type is NTFS (It's a Windows XP partition...).

I created a directory called /mnt/C to be the mount point for the NTFS partition, and plugged all the information in the right order for mount:

root@om:/mnt# mount -o loop,offset=41126400 -t ntfs output C

And voilà!

the second partition of the disk image file "output" is now mounted on my system under the /mnt/C folder!

I proceed to grip all that teacher's years of work and yank it back from the jaws of oblivion. (For this, I just used graphical filesystem tools to copy out his Documents and Settings folder)

Conclusion

There are certain situations where knowing how to work with raw disk data can be useful.

These are the things I had to learn to figure out how to do it right. Now I've got a reference to look back on the next time I have to do it.

Also, hopefully others will find it useful or at least mildly entertaining.

:-)

HOWTO - Reconstruct failed RAID 0 arrays for fun and profit.

2008-05-01T17:39:00.004-04:00

Hey, I had an experience I couldn't resist blogging about. :-D

WARNING! Ultra-Geeky Story Ahead! No, Really! You've Been Warned!

So, this teacher brought in his computer from home. It was a high-end Dell XPS, about 5 years old. He had ordered it with two 120GB hard disks striped in RAID 0, and recently he went to boot it up (into Windows XP) and it would not work; some very important system file was corrupt. He went round and round with Dell support before bringing it in to us to see what we could do.

At first glance, the situation was grim. He'd run diagnostics and knew there was a physically bad sector on the second disk of the array. Popping in the XP install disk and telling it to "R"ecover brought no luck, nor did booting up to a Bart PE disk; neither knew there was a disk there. Windows basically wanted nothing to do with the failed array.

So, in went the Ubuntu Live CD. It saw a disk, and I thought, "Great! We can at least get the data off the array, and get SOMETHING out of it. If nothing else, there's dd and photorec..." Except, after trying to mount the Dell utility partition, listing its contents gave us crazy garbage.

"Oh, well," I thought, "dd it is." So I ran dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/dev.sda (having NFS mounted a network drive on /mnt) and left for the day (it takes a while...).

The next morning, I saw the file's size was 120GBs...which is HALF of what I expected to see. Only THEN did I notice that Ubuntu was also seeing a /dev/sdb drive.

See, the two disks were plugged into a "RAID controller" card that we had all assumed made this "Hardware RAID" so that the OS didn't have to know anything to use it. Well, so apparently that "RAID controller" card relied on some software component somewhere, somehow under Windows to function right, and Ubuntu did not know it was supposed to be RAID.

Vern suggested we throw the disks into a software RAID utility to see what came out. Unfortunately, nothing.

So we felt pretty much defeated, since even if we got all the data off both disks, it'd be scrambled and useless. Still, for some reason, I couldn't quit thinking about this problem. It seemed like there should be SOMETHING we could do with the data from the disks to recombine them into something useful.

I needled Vern with questions about how RAID 0 works, and looked it up online myself. IF RAID 0 worked as simply as I figured it SHOULD, I should be able to figure out how to solve this problem. I had a fuzzy idea to work from, no experience with anything like thing, and I could not say I'd succeed. However, I figured, in order to save several years worth of this teacher's work, it was worth going for it and giving it my best shot.

I would write a Python program to "de-interlace" the two disks into one image. I had already written a program that worked with the sorts of tools I would need to use (though it was written with the opposite problem in mind) during my trek through the Python Challenge, so I looked it up, modified it, and came up with a simple program that would:

Open two input files to read from (in binary mode).
Open a output file to write to (in binary mode).
Take a certain amount of data from the first file and write it to the output file, then take a certain amount of data from the second file and write it to the output file.
Wash, rinse, repeat until there's no more to read from either input file.
Close out all files.

All I needed to know was, what is "a certain amount" supposed to be? I could only find offers to sell me commercial solutions and vague descriptions of RAID theory, no concrete implementation details, through Google. I decided it can't be THAT hard to figure out, right? ;-).

Well, being a computer, we figured it probably had to be a power of 2. I grabbed the first 100,000 sectors of each drive's image to play with (drive 2, the failed one, STILL has dd grinding away at it as I type; it's taking at least around an order of magnitude longer to recover that data than from the first, functional, disk). I tried guessing a few times, 512, 4096, etc. to no avail. I would go to mount the Dell utility partition and ls's output came back scrambled.

I decided to instead pull out a hex editor and take a look at the raw data, to see if I could find any patterns. I found all KINDS of patterns :-), none of which seemed to pan out when it came to testing them, until I found this strange sequence of bytes, a pattern at the start of /dev/sdb:

00000000  01 40 02 40 03 40 04 40  05 40 06 40 07 40 08 40  |.@.@.@.@.@.@.@.@|
00000010  09 40 0a 40 0b 40 0c 40  0d 40 0e 40 0f 40 10 40  |.@.@.@.@.@.@.@.@|
00000020  11 40 12 40 13 40 14 40  15 40 16 40 17 40 18 40  |.@.@.@.@.@.@.@.@|
00000030  19 40 1a 40 1b 40 1c 40  1d 40 1e 40 1f 40 20 40  |.@.@.@.@.@.@.@ @|
00000040  21 40 22 40 23 40 24 40  25 40 26 40 27 40 28 40  |!@"@#@$@%@&@'@(@|
...[etc.]...

Then, later at some point, I noticed this strange sequence in /dev/sda:

...[etc.]...
0000ffd0  e9 3f ea 3f eb 3f ec 3f  ed 3f ee 3f ef 3f f0 3f  |.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?|
0000ffe0  f1 3f f2 3f f3 3f f4 3f  f5 3f f6 3f f7 3f f8 3f  |.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?|
0000fff0  f9 3f fa 3f fb 3f fc 3f  fd 3f fe 3f ff 3f 00 40  |.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.@|
00010000  91 89 76 7c 8c 5e 7e 66  c7 86 80 00 ff ff ff ff  |..v|.^~f........|
00010010  8b d6 03 56 0b 89 56 78  8c 5e 7a 1e b8 70 00 8e  |...V..Vx.^z..p..|
00010020  d8 8e c0 33 ff f3 a4 1f  89 7e 72 8c 46 74 81 c7  |...3.....~r.Ft..|
...[etc.]...

A strange break in a strange pattern at precisely a power of 2! On further investigation, the strange pattern would continue flawlessly if the start of /dev/sdb continued it. So I took ffff, which is 65535 in decimal, and plugged that into my script. This time the ls looked much more promising and still weird, with filenames like sdos s.ys', onfig s.ys and utoexecb.at.

D'oh! I was one byte off! So I add a byte and Bam! the Dell utility partition worked precisely as it should.

So, strictly speaking, I don't know if we'll succeed in getting the data off the array. We'll have to wait a few days to find out how the rest of the second hard drive fares, as it's taking an inordinately long amount of time to get that data off. However, whatever happens from here, my theory payed off!

That's a beautiful thing for a geek like me. :-D

Oh, and it's cool that we might be able to save all/some of that data, too. ;-)

Source

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#
# deinterlace.py
#
# INTENT = This is a script for deinterlacing two raw dd images
#     taken from a failed RAID 0 array into one "valid" image file
#     that we hope to be able to recover data from.
#
#          This is strictly experimental.
#
#                               Thursday, May 1, 2008 -Simón A. Ruiz
#

inputFiles = [open("dev.sda","rb"),open("dev.sdb","rb")]
outputFile = open("output","wb")
chunkSize = 65536

# And, so as not to have to figure this out every time through the loop...
numFiles = len(inputFiles)

i = 0
while True:
    nextChunk = inputFiles[i%numFiles].read(chunkSize)
    if not nextChunk:
        print 'Done! No more data.'
        break
    outputFile.write(nextChunk)
    i += 1

outputFile.close()
for file in inputFiles:
    file.close()

Stay tuned for a post on mounting disk images as if they were real disks.

[My next post talks about disk images in depth]

Creative Commons announces "Approved for Free Cultural Works" seal.

2008-02-21T09:05:00.004-05:00

Via GNUosphere.

Interestingly, I was just having this very discussion on a mailing list.

A license of CC-BY-NC-SA was proposed for a work that the whole community was going to participate in.

I proposed CC-BY-SA as being more in line with our principles (we're a community based on Free Software), and posited that since we enjoy the freedoms granted by the GPL, we should pay it forward by granting the same freedoms in our works.

"It'll protect the work", they said, "from being used in an inappropriate context. We want to make sure no one has to pay money for the fruits of our labor, and anyways it's a CC license; it's free!"

I argued along the definition of freedom, based on the GPL, proposed by Benjamin Mako Hill, that free (libre) does not include works that are restricted from being used non-commercially.

I pointed out that, as a commercial clause, NC is only benefits to a copyright holder would be in the commercial sphere. Like, say a company puts out some training material as CC-BY-NC-SA. This allows them to get some of the benefits of CC licensing (publicity, mostly) while still maintaining a monopoly on the commercial use of the materials.

(Canonical recently did this, announcing an experiment to license their commercial work CC-BY-NC-SA and that they intend to use the NC clause to make sure that anyone who uses their materials commercially (seriously huge amounts of material) has to "pay" for that privilege by giving back to the community.)

I can understand the use of a NC clause for a commercial company licensing a commercial product they would otherwise be copyrighted, I said, but a community that doesn't plan on maintaining a commercial monopoly receives no benefit from an NC clause. They're merely restricting freedom to no real purpose.

I believe the Attribution and ShareAlike clauses are protection enough to keep people from using a work inappropriately. GNU, Linux and Ubuntu are excellent examples.

Interestingly, I managed to sway the original proponents and supporters of the NC clause to my way of thinking, but by then they'd already convinced enough other people, who didn't really understand my points, that a vote came to a tie and the matter was left unresolved.

I think it's really cool, and absolutely appropriate, that the CC foundation is taking this step. Hopefully, it will help educate people about what freedom means.

P.S. If you've gotten this far in my post, YOU WILL CARE ABOUT THIS: Lawrence Lessig is considering running for Congress under his new Change Congress campaign. Do yourself a favor and see what he has to say.

P.S. Lessig started the whole Creative Commons movement, for those who don't know.

More worthwhile video at his site, including his final lecture on "Free Culture" given at Stanford. Like I said, do yourself the favor of watching it.

P.P.S. I hope to start posting more frequently. We'll see.

Take me out to the LinuxFest! (OLFU Eve)

2007-09-27T23:16:00.001-04:00

We just arrived, the ride went smoothly, though I decided to take a scenic route part of the way in defiance of Google.

We walked around and situated ourselves. I saw the room where the scheduled event for tonight (7-10 tonight, we got here at 10:30) had taken place, and there was lots of pizza out and about the big room, but when I peeked my head in I recognized Beth Lynn in a small group of four people talking intensely and the rest of the room was deserted; I figured it'd probably be best NOT to bother our event organizers, so I didn't.

Got back to my room and went to plug in my laptop to write a little bit only to find that *gasp* I didn't bring my laptop's power supply (idiot!).

I'll either need to use my fiancée's laptop for class tomorrow, or maybe someone there will have an HP/Compaq laptop power supply that I can mooch off of for the duration.

Whoops!

It's sleep time...

Beginning of the School Year

2007-09-16T19:33:00.001-04:00

Boy, summer was interesting, and the school year is underfoot.

Summertime...and the livin's easy...

Let me share a little bit about my summer.

First of all, I got to spend a good month worth of vacation. For the first week, my fiancée and I visited my family out in Kansas. I got to spend some good time with my grandmother, who I hadn't seen in a while, and who passed away around a month later. I must say that I'm grateful that I got to spend that time with her; I think it may have been much sadder for me if I hadn't.

We spent the rest of our vacation visiting family in Venezuela, my beloved fatherland. My fiancée had been there before with me, last year for about a week, but this was the first time that she'd been there for any sort of extended period of time where it wasn't rush, rush, rush. Unfortunately she did become sick when we ate somewhere we really shouldn't've, but otherwise we had a beautiful time there.

Back to work

The day I got back from vacation, we had to move the Technology department's office (desks, supply storage, servers, etc.) into it's new location (did I mentioned I started work here immediately before a nine million dollar renovation project?). This wasn't SO bad, except for the power got turned on about halfway through that day, the network drops weren't done until few days, and it took a few weeks to get our cabinetry in.

Oh, and the water...yes, the water. It turns out that whoever is responsible for scheduling the construction project thought "Let's hope it doesn't rain!" is a valid plan when it comes to ensuring the most expensive and critical technolog equipment in the school is safe.

Yes, they moved us into a part of the building where the roof was being removed to make way for the new addition on the second story. For the next four weeks, it consistently rained once or twice a week, and all that water ended up in our office.

It turns out Dell servers are pretty well designed to withstanding falling water on them, though I somehow doubt that was deliberate as, who in their right mind would put servers in any danger of being rained on? Needless to say, we became intimately acquainted with the joys of tarping everything every night before we left work.

As a result of that situation, as well as running around doing disaster recovery type stuff—like, say, finding a hundred-foot extension cord to get power into the network closet, since someone had sawed through a main power line—we became sort of swamped between the work we had been hoping to do over the summer, the work that needed to be done with picking up the pieces from the ongoing renovation, and the normal beginning-of-the-school-year work.

I'd like to get more HOWTOs posts up here—I'd love to—but we've been doing a lot of work to sort of maintain our technology situation, so I haven't gotten too much of an opportunity to sit down and improve it to have any good writing material.

Teaching

<My classes are going well, co-teaching with my boss Vern. We have a Python class and a Java class, and I've got to say that so far I prefer Python. I've played with Python before, but I always quickly forgot it because I didn't use it; this class is a concrete project to use it and get it learned, and the more I learn about it, the more projects I should be able to use it for.

The Indiana LoCo Team & Ohio LinuxFest

The Ubuntu Indiana Local Community Team has become a bit more active after the summer break, and we're looking to meet up at the Ohio LinuxFest this year. If you're into Ubuntu and you're in Indiana, I encourage you to get involved in the team, and if you're anyone reading this I encourage you to go to the Ohio LinuxFest—if you fall into both camps, come join our gathering during the lunch break, we'll be the big group of people with matching T-shirts having a great time. :-)

Also related to the Ohio LinuxFest, this year they're having an Ohio LinuxFest University day of classes the Friday before. It's a little bit more expensive than just going to the LinuxFest itself, but I'm hoping it's worth every penny—I'm going to take the Linux Professional Institute Level One Cram Session class, and take the LPI 101 exam on the Sunday after.

I've been warned that it's quite the difficult exam, so I look forward to the challenge. I'm going through O'Reilly's LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell book, and reading man pages and playing with stuff (including a Fedora 7 virtual machine, as "Use Red Hat Package Manager" is one of the most important things tested) to see if I can pass it this time.

Note, I will get this certification, the only thing in question is whether I pass the 101 exam on my first try. The test is designed for people with "two years of experience" with Linux system administration. I've got about half of that, maybe, but I've also got an interest in it, and determination. We'll see how it works out, either way I'll learn a lot about the tools at my command. :-)

Until next time

I hope to post more frequently here. The bar has been set dramatically low since I moved here, so that shouldn't be much of a challenge. I'll keep a neuron out for some interesting post fodder as I go about my work, maybe soon we'll get to the point where I can work on some good system improving—that often makes for some interesting stuff to post (interesting to me at least).

Until then, take care!

First from Fort Wayne - He's Alive!

2007-05-20T20:41:00.001-04:00

I've been left with very little time to work on personal stuff since the move, but I'm fighting to make some time. It's all a bit overwhelming, but I'm having an awesome time at my new job. I learn about 50 new things a day as I get a feeling for the new system and the culture of the school.

System-wise, I'm now responsible for everything...that means I can no longer tell people "Well, that sucks, I'm going to have to call the tech. She'll be in tomorrow, hopefully, or the day after" or "Yeah, that's a server thing and we really have no control over that" since the buck stops with me. I'll have to take complete ownership of everything over the next 5 weeks or so as I gradually learn the ropes from my predecessor (I'm incredibly glad I decided not to try to wait until the end of the year to show up and learn the ropes...) and take them over bit by bit.

I've learned alot from Jeremy and Vern already, and I'd like to think I've taught them a little, too. I can see a few things in the current system that I'd like to work on changing, but my number one priority right now is learning the system as it is.

I'm going to have to refamiliarize myself with Python and do more than scratch the surface this time, since I'm going to be teaching a Python class during the Fall semester of next school year. Ditto with C during the Spring semester (though I actually have no previous experience with C). It's going to be an interesting challenge, and I'm up for it.

Culture-wise, there are quite a few changes to get used to. For example, I've got to wear a shirt and tie to work for the very first time ever. I did not have a very suitable wardrobe when I moved up here and I actually made the investment of going to a "Big & Tall" store so I could find nice clothing that I could stand to be in for that long every day.

I'm no longer Simón to the kids, I'm now Mr. Ruiz.

I've not done much in the way of expanding my social life outside the context of work besides going to the local Linux Users' Group activities. I presented this past Thursday for them showing off the new Feisty Fawn installed on an HP Tablet PC (tc4200, if you're curious), and we've been talking about trying to host a LinuxFest here in Fort Wayne.

I really need to put in my presentation proposal for the Ohio LinuxFest already. They sent out their call for presenters before I left Bloomington...

I and my new boss, Vern, have been discussing putting together a full-day workshop for next year's HECC conference (this year I helped out Mike Huffman and Forrest Gaston with their Indiana ACCESS workshop). It also seems like work might pay to send me to NECC this year, which sounds pretty cool.

Anyhow, just wanted you all to know I'm still alive. I'm going to try to post more often (yes, I know, that's not too hard). And yes, I know I need to change my blog's title RSN.

Moving Week!

2007-04-24T01:01:00.001-04:00

So, this past Friday was my last day of work at Bloomington High School North, and I have a week to pack and get moved up North to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where I will begin my new job at Canterbury School May 1st.

It's going to be a hectic week...

You can find the final state of my Image Definition for North (version one point oh) at http://www.north.mccsc.edu/indianaaccess/imagedefinition.html. This describes each and every thing I did to get an image put together for our classrooms from a standard Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft install.

Unfortunately, for some reason (and I don't know if it may be because I installed a few things from source), they don't upgrade smoothly to Feisty Fawn. However, I'll be working with Ubuntu in a very similar environment here at Canterbury, so I'll likely adapt the Image Definition for Feisty.

One of these days, I'll need to figure out how to package things...

I'll no longer be available at sruiz <at> mccsc <dot> edu, so if you want to get a hold of me use my personal e-mail simon.a.ruiz <at> gmail <dot> com.

IU LinuxFest 2007 revisited - with Photos!

2007-04-19T12:38:00.001-04:00

I'm back with some photos of the IU LinuxFest!

I don't have anything more to SAY about the LinuxFest, as I've already said it all before. I just wanted to post some photos, cause I like photos ;-)

Click on them to read the Flickr descriptions!

First of all, here is the Indiana Ubuntu LoCo Team Presence:

And one from my presentation:

And that neat airplane computer I mentioned:

Laptops not Autoconfiguring

2007-04-18T12:19:00.001-04:00

Frustrating little things seem to pop up right as I feel like I've tied up my loose ends here, like the fact that the laptops, after being imaged or updated were NOT autoconfiguring themselves properly, even though they have the exact same autoconfig script and the only difference in their /etc/rc.local script was what MAC address not to autoconfigure on.

To make it even more perplexing, if I dropped to a command-line and ran $ sudo /etc/rc.local everything went off without a hitch. Since I know /etc/rc.local is run at the end of the boot-up process, I thought MAYBE there's something different on the laptops in the realm of when certain devices are available.

I based this theory on the fact that obviously the scripts were correct, as I could invoke them manually, and the fact that, since the autoconfig scripts starts out with a wget, it would simply error out if the network interface wasn't up yet.

I had to test my theory, so, in order to give the laptops a little more time to get the network adapter up and running, I made the following modification to the laptop's rc.local script:

test `ifconfig | grep -c $GOLDENCLIENTMACADDRESS` == 0 && test `cat /etc/hosts | grep -c nordx--image` != 0 && . /home/administrator/scripts/autoconfig

became

test `ifconfig | grep -c $GOLDENCLIENTMACADDRESS` == 0 && test `cat /etc/hosts | grep -c nordx--image` != 0 && sleep 10 && . /home/administrator/scripts/autoconfig

And it worked. So I'd be inclined to say my theory is correct, or at least useful.

Scripts!

2007-04-17T14:43:00.001-04:00

I'm finally done writing out scripts and documenting their use as I look towards my last day of work on Friday.

If you want to check them out, go over to my Image Definition page, the "Scripts" link is at the bottom of the "All Workstations" and "Server" lists.

What kind of scripts?

We use bash scripts to automate a lot of stuff around, which saves us quite a bit of work:

Automatically reset the default settings on student accounts.
Automate the setting up of iTALC on teacher workstations.
Automate common SystemImager tasks such as retrieving images, updating workstations, and setting up USB auto-install disks.
Automate the configuration of workstation after they've been imaged by SystemImager
Manage scripts

If any of this sounds useful, go check 'em out.

HOWTO Automatically Configure Clients After Imaging Them with SystemImager (Any Distribution)

2007-04-16T11:48:00.001-04:00

You've imaged your 300 workstations, now they're identical

Do you need to run around and manually set up things, making sure that they have unique hostnames? that they they're setup to the right printer? Heck no!

With this handy-dandy system, let them do all that work themselves!

Disclaimer

I've only been working with Linux for about a year and a half, even less than that with SystemImager. There may indeed be a better way to skin this cat. This is what I've figured out and used, and it's worked fine for me. Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV).

Some familiarity with bash scripting will allow you to modify this basic concept to better suit your particular needs. It's just a couple of bash scripts and a text file, but it's saved me a lot of time and work.

The setup

There are a few pieces to this puzzle, so let's describe them and then explain what will happen during the imaging process to save us so much work:

`/etc/rc.local`

This is a script that is run at the end of the booting-up process, we'll use this in order to set it up so the workstations know when they need to execute the workhorse of this process. We simply add the following lines somewhere in the script (probably the beginning, right after the comments):

# This bit will launch the autoconfiguration routine when it's needed


# i.e. if the MAC address does not match the golden client, and the hostname is nordx--image


GOLDENCLIENTMACADDRESS="00:16:76:B8:A3:1F"


test `ifconfig | grep -c $GOLDENCLIENTMACADDRESS` == 0 && test `cat /etc/hosts | grep -c nordx--image` == ` && . /home/administrator/scripts/autoconfig

Note that you should put your Golden Client's MAC Address there instead of mine ;-)

Also note that we don't have a laptop that is dedicated to be a Golden Client. We use Laptop #1 as a Golden Client, and then we put it out for use. When we need to modify the laptop image, we re-image Laptop #1 back to it's Golden Client state, modify it how we want it, grab the new image, and then we put it back out for use. This means that we cannot rely on the /etc/rc.local script to know when it's time to configure this particular laptop and need to tell it manually. We do that by simply running $ sudo /home/administrator/scripts/autoconfig when we're done using it as a Golden Client.

`/var/www/workstations.csv`

This comma-delimited text file is stored on the server (nordx-server, here at North) and is available through the server's Apache server (via the wget command in the autoconfig script.). It contains a listing of every workstation with their MAC address, their hostname, what classroom and workstation number they are assigned, and some comments. This information will enable the workhorse of this process to perform the correct operations on every workstation.

A short example of what ours looks like:

MAC Address,Hostname,Classroom,Workstation,Comments


00:16:76:64:6F:A3,nordx--60500,605,0,210L teacher


00:16:76:64:77:FB,nordx--60501,605,1,210L


00:16:76:64:75:E1,nordx--60502,605,2,210L


...


00:13:20:90:7F:16,nordx--60900,609,0,170L teacher


00:13:20:99:D6:BE,nordx--60901,609,1,170L


00:13:20:90:8E:C5,nordx--60902,609,2,170L


...


00:16:76:64:68:E2,nordx--70601,706,0,210L test machine


00:13:20:99:DC:EF,nordx--70602,706,0,170L test machine


00:13:20:D7:E9:E3,,,,170L Replacement 1


00:13:20:99:DD:37,,,,170L Replacement 2


00:13:20:D8:1D:C1,,,,170L Replacement 3


00:15:C5:73:2F:A8 00:16:CF:A4:41:63,nordx--lap01,lap,1,1300


00:15:C5:73:0C:2D 00:16:CF:A4:43:C9,nordx--lap02,lap,2,1300


...

The MAC address is a unique identifier on each computer that will allow us to know, by reading the rest of the line, to know what computer we're at. Note that the laptops have two MAC addresses separated by a space rather than one; this is because they have both an ethernet adapter and a wireless network adapter.

If a computer were to die, we would replace it with one of our replacement computers, and change it's MAC address in this list for the one on the replacement computer, re-image or update the replacement, and it'd be good to go!

`/home/administrator/scripts/autoconfig`

This is the workhorse of the process. Everything else is in place to make sure this script knows when to run and where it is running.

This script will run all the post-imaging configuration we want to do to the recently-imaged workstations. You can set this up to do whatever you need on that unique workstation based on information gleaned from workstations.csv on the Apache server.

It's pretty long, so I'll just direct you to a copy of the one we're using, if you want to check it out. You'll need a basic understanding of bash to modify it, but bash is pretty human legible, so you can probably get the gist of what's going on by taking a glance.

The important part to note is the very top, here:

#      First, let's determine where we are by searching for our MAC address


# in the workstation information file, and pass that information into usable


# variables.





MAC=`ifconfig | grep -m 1 HWaddr | awk -F 'HWaddr ' '{ print $2 }'`


wget http://nordx-server/workstations.csv


CSVLINE=`grep $MAC workstations.csv`


NEWNAME=`echo $CSVLINE | awk -F ',' '{ print $2 }'`


CLASSROOM=`echo $CSVLINE | awk -F ',' '{ print $3 }'`


WORKSTATION=`echo $CSVLINE | awk -F ',' '{ print $4 }'`


rm workstations.csv

We're wgeting the workstations.csv file from the server and then, as the comment says, we're finding out what workstations we're running on by greping for our MAC address. Then we're putting the relevant information into three variables that we can then use to figure out what needs to be done at this workstation: $NEWNAME, $CLASSROOM, and $WORKSTATION. Now, using those variables and a little bit of bash-jitsu, we can configure the workstations however we need.

So, in human language, what's happening?

Every time that a workstation is imaged or updated using SystemImager the workstation is brought back to its pristine proto-form, except for any directories such as the teacher and student home directories, as well as the iTALC private teacher key, that are specified in /etc/systemimager/updateclient.local.exclude.

Then...

The image wakes up in its new body, it notices that the time has come so it unleashes the autoconfig script.
The script reconfigures the workstation into its desired form, and then shuts the computer down.

To make a long story short: After you set this up to your liking, your workstations will configure themselves whenever they need to so you won't have to do it for them.

SystemImager Client Update Excludes

2007-04-13T15:26:00.001-04:00

The si_updateclient command run on an SystemImager client doesn't just update the client. It searches for any differences between it and the image and deletes, overwrites, or adds any files that don't conform.

What if there are some things you would prefer don't change on the workstation when you update them? You guessed it, exclude to the rescue!

/etc/systemimager/updateclient.local.exclude

This is a configuration file kept on the client that determines what files are left alone during an update. It is delivered with the first image and, as long as /etc/systemimager/updateclient.local.exclude is not actually listed in itself, it will be updated with each update. Keep in mind, however, that it is the file on the client being updated, not the file in the image that matters. Check it out with your favorite super-user editing command:

$ sudo gedit /etc/systemimager/updateclient.local.exclude

What kind of changes might I want to make?

Well, let me talk you through some changes I've made in that file to make things run smoother here.

Under the "Debian stuff" section, I've commented out the /etc/hostname entry. This is because I have an autoconfiguration script that assigns the hostname the first time the workstation boots up after being imaged. By keeping /etc/hostname from remaining the same after an update, I can rename a workstation by modifying the autoconfiguration settings and updating it. If you prefer to have the hostname remain the same, I'd suggest adding /etc/hosts and /etc/samba/smb.conf to the list as well, so those aren't modified either (though this would make updating Samba preferences less than convenient).

...


# Debian stuff


# /etc/hostname


/etc/network/interfaces


...

I've also commented out /home/* in the "generic stuff" section because I want the administrator home and the student account default settings to be updated. I amend this a little later...

...


# generic stuff


/etc/fstab


# /home/*


/mnt/*


...

The following section I added to the end:

# North specific stuff





/home/teacher/*


/home/student/*


/etc/italc/keys/private/*

The first two are to compensate for commenting out /home/* above; I don't want anything that's saved on the users' Desktop to vanish. The last one is to keep from having to set up iTALC's private teacher key after every update of the teacher workstation.

HOWTO Use SystemImager with BitTorrent (Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft)

2007-04-13T13:01:00.001-04:00

So, now that you've installed SystemImager, and gotten the basics working, you realize that rsync is a very slow and restricting way of imaging those three-hundred workstations? You wish there was a better way of imaging them, huh? BitTorrent to the rescue!

BitTorrent is a file transfer protocol that alleviates the strain on the originating server by enlisting each downloading participant to help out. So instead of everyone downloading 100% of the file from the server, each participant downloads some of it from each other participant, while uploading what they've already gotten to them. The same amount of data transfer happens, but the server is not responsible for uploading 100% of that; as a result the whole thing happens much more efficiently.

This scales up fantastically so that one server can potentially server an unlimited number of clients, which compares very favorably against the rsync method of distributing files which gobbles up the server's memory and does not scale very well at all.

Don't stop the rsyncd server!

It's probably worth noting that we still need SystemImager's rsyncd server running, even after we get BitTorrent running, as it serves a quick purpose during the imaging process by passing the torrent file to the imaging workstations. Also,updates do not use bittorrent, which is why I script updates to run in serial, not at the same time - again, more on scripts in a future posting.

Install BitTorrent dependencies

$ sudo aptitude install python-wxgtk2.6 python-twisted python-crypto python-psyco python-zopeinterface

Install BitTorrent 4.4.0

This took me a little while to figure out because a) the package in the official Ubuntu repositories is version 3, and b) the deb package advertised at the official bittorrent site is version 5. Neither of these are adequate.

Andrea, SystemImager's developer, asked me to try it with bittorrent 4.4.0

The following is written for Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft.

We first need to go in and remove the bittorrent package through Synaptic package manager. This removes the ubuntu-desktop and gnome-btdownload packages as well, but I couldn't find a way to get this working without removing ubuntu-desktop. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU KNOW A WAY!

Then we need to grab the deb package for version 4.40 and install it. Either download it to your desktop and double-click on it, or you can just go ahead and click on that link and "Open with" in your browser.

Make sure the SystemImager Bittorent Server is installed.

If you installed SystemImager from source as I outlined in my earlier post, then SystemImager is already set up to work with Bittorrent. No worries, there!

If you've installed SystemImager from packages, then you might need to make sure that you have the SystemImager Bittorent Server package installed.

/etc/systemimager/bittorrent.conf

We need to get in and edit this file, so: $ sudo gedit /etc/systemimager/bittorrent.conf

First, if your network interface is different than eth0, make sure you put that under the BT_INTERFACE option.

Now, in order to save time when we can, let's change the BT_UPDATE option to n or else everytime we turn on the BitTorrent server, it'll re-tar each image directory and create a new torrent file; an unnecessary pain.

Now, make sure you list the images you want to distribute via bittorrent under the BT_IMAGES option. For example, I put BT_IMAGES=210,170,1300 which is all of my images.

The USB boot keys, revisited

If you created USB boot keys in our last episode, we'll need to recreate them with an extra append option, check it out:

$ si_mkautoinstalldisk --device /dev/sda --append "IMAGESERVER=$ImageServerIPAddress IMAGENAME=$ImageName BITTORRENT=y SKIP_LOCAL_CFG=y" --yes

The intricacies of the SystemImager Bittorrent Server

So, in order to be able to image the workstation now, we need to have SystemImager's BitTorrent server running, so let me explain how this works (as far as I've figured it out, anyhow).

When you first run the server, it will tar your images and create torrent files for them; this takes a long time, be patient. Also now, when you update the image on the server, before the bittorrent server starts serving out the new image, you'll need to delete the image's tar and torrent file (located at /var/lib/systemimager/tarballs and /var/lib/systemimager/torrents, respectively) and restart the server so it can re-create the tar and torrent with the updated image. I use scripts so that I don't forget to do this - more on that in a future post.

So, how do you start and restart SystemImager's BitTorrent server? Well, let me tell you:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/systemimager-server-bittorrent start

and

$ sudo /etc/init.d/systemimager-server-bittorrent restart

You may want to put the start command into your /etc/rc.local file.

After you first start your BitTorrent server, you might run $ /etc/init.d/systemimager-server-bittorrent status and make sure that both the tracker and seeder components are running.

Imaging

Imaging works functionally identical to before, just faster: boot to your USB key and let 'er rip.

Now instead of rsyncing the entire filesystem, the imaging workstations will download, via torrent, the tarball of the image (and spit out the percentage progress as it goes), then it un-tars the tarball. Otherwise, everything works the same as before.

I think that's it, re:BitTorrent...

...for now, at least.

CD-ROM wouldn't auto-mount

2007-04-13T11:34:00.001-04:00

Ubuntu Edgy on our Dell 210L workstations would not auto-mount CDs...but I could manually mount them just fine.

Show how much I use CDs on them, huh?, if it took me this long to figure that out.

Anyhow, I managed to get them to work properly by running $ sudo mkdir /media/cdrom0 so they had a mount point to use.

Strange that they didn't have that to begin with...

IU LinuxFest

2007-04-12T15:45:00.001-04:00

I had a blast!

I had fun manning the booths and representing the Bloomington Linux Users' Group and the Indiana Ubuntu Local Community Team.

There was some really neat stuff including an 8 LCD screen display, and a computer with exposed components built to look like a prop plane.

My presentation, Learning with Linux at every Desk, went very well. I sort of told the story of my experience working with the Indiana ACCESS program here at Bloomington High School North. It was fun, I think, and people seemed interested. I got some really good questions at the end (after a long silence during which I feared I'd bored everyone catatonic). I was even asked to sign a book; I felt like a rock star. ;-)

I did record video of the presentation on that toy Mustek DV-5500 I got at the HECC conference last year. As soon as I figure out how to transcode and compress the 215 MB .ASF file, I'd like to share that with anyone who might want to watch it. Watch this space if you're interested.

HOWTO Use SystemImager Once You Have It Installed (Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft)

2007-04-12T15:17:00.002-04:00

Anonymous said...

Can you post a system imager how to? We are a 1:1 school in New Palestine.

Well, since I've been working on this, your wish is my command! :-)

First of all, here is a HOWTO install SystemImager from source on Ubuntu Edgy Eft. The following instructions apply only after you've succesfully installed SystemImager on both the server and at least one client.

Second of all, the number one constraint under which we are working here at North is that we do not control the DHCP server, because of this we miss out on a lot of neat possibilities, and can't rely on the defaults being correct. If you do control your DHCP server, you might have an easier time following the Official Quick-Start instructions. These instructions are designed to work in our environment, and you're encouraged to diverge from them where it makes sense for you to.

Thirdly, I'm writing from the perspective of someone who has installed everything on Ubuntu Edgy Eft. Chances are that most of this applies regardless of your distribution, but it's possible that there are differences between distributions that I don't know about. Forewarned is forearmed.

And finally, these are instructions to get you up and running in the basics, there is a bit more to a smooth SystemImager installation than this, and I'll go more in-depth in the near future about the specific customizations we make here at North to have everything work smoothly, but until you have these basic processes working, those customizations won't do you much good.

Grabbing an image

After you have the golden client set up to your taste, the first thing you want to do is grab its image onto the server.

On the Golden Client, run:

$ sudo si_prepareclient --server $ServerIPorHostname --yes

When that drops you back to a command-line, you're ready, run this on the server:

$ sudo si_getimage --golden-client $GoldenClientIPorHostname --image $ImageName --quiet --exclude '/media/*' --exclude '/lib/klibc/events/*' --exclude '/etc/iftab' --update-script YES --ip-assignment DHCP --post-install reboot

Got that?

I use the golden client's IP address, since they all have the same hostname (nordx--image), and I use the number from their model number as my image name (all the images are the same except from the model they are built for) (170 for the 170Ls, 210 for the 210Ls, 1300 for the Inspiron 1300s). --quite is a personal choice of mine. The first two --excludes I plagiarized from the Official Quick-Start instructions, the third is to keep the imaged workstations from trying to use the wrong network interface information. The rest are to set up the auto-install script for the image so that the workstations reboot when they're done imaging. (Here at North, I have a script that configures the workstation's name, printer options, etc. the first time it is booted after the imaging process and then shuts down the workstation.)

It should be noted that if you control the DHCP server, you're likely running SystemImager on said DHCP server and you should examine what choices you want to make about how you use the auto-install script. You have a lot more flexibility than I do here, and may have better options available to you...

Your server should now be downloading the contents of your golden client via rsyncd and creating an image for you.

Use these same instructions to update your image whenever you modify your golden client (updating packages, installing or uninstalling, or modifying.)

rsync

We'll be using the SystemImager rsyncd server to run all this. This is the most basic way of using SystemImager, the default, and it's functional. It does have drawbacks when you want to image three-hundred workstations, though, so if you have that situation you may want to look at using the multicast and/or bittorrent transport methods after you get the basics set up. We'll discuss bittorrent as a compliment to this system in another post.

We need to make sure the server is running before we distribute images:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/systemimager-server-rsyncd start

If you're going to use the server a lot, it's probably a good idea to add the above command to your /etc/rc.local

Imaging a workstation

So, now that you have an image prepped and ready, how do you blow it out to your waiting workstations??? Well, the way we do it is we set up some USB keys to boot from that take care of everything. You plug a USB key into your server and:

$ sudo umount /dev/sda


$ si_mkautoinstalldisk --device /dev/sda --append "IMAGESERVER=$ImageServerIPAddress IMAGENAME=$ImageName SKIP_LOCAL_CFG=y" --yes

NOTE: Make sure you substitute /dev/sda above for the device path of your USB key. Especially if you have SATA hard disks, or if you have other USB drives mounted, it may not be /dev/sda. An easy way to tell what that is is to plug the USB key in, wait for the icon to appear on the Desktop, then run mount in a terminal and look at the last line, the very first item should be the device path for your USB key.

Now take your shiny auto-install USB key over to a workstation you intend to image and boot from it.

Note, you can pull the USB key out as soon as the kernel and initrd.img are loaded (as soon as the screen text turns grey and starts scrolling really fast) and move on to the next workstation you want to image.

Be aware that using the rsyncd server places certain limits and the more workstation you have imaging, the slower the process will go. rsyncd also takes a lot of memory on the server, so if you don't have much memory, don't do too many workstations. We have 512 MB of memory on the SystemImager server and could do one classroom of 32 workstations overnight ok, though the server slowed to a crawl. When we tried to image two classrooms, 64 workstations, the server started killing off rsyncd processes because it didn't have enough memory to run them all.

Updating a workstation

So, you've imaged the workstation, but a huge critical security patch has been released, or want to install a new application? (Any change you want to make, really)

Well, first update the golden client however you want it. Then grab the image again; there is no difference between grabbing the image the first time and grabbing it for an update.

After you're done with updating the image on the server, go to the workstation you want to update, and run the following:

$ sudo si_updateclient --server $ImageServerIPorHostname --image $ImageName --reboot

It will connect to the server, and download all the new files, (note that any changes made on the workstation will also be overwritten/deleted unless they're in a file or directory specified in /etc/systemimager/updateclient.local.exclude), and reboot.

That's it for the basics

I'll write some more about using bittorent with SystemImager, and such, in the near future.

Indiana Ubuntu Local Community Team - IU LinuxFest

2007-04-11T01:25:00.001-04:00

I've totally not mentioned the Indiana Ubuntu Local Community Team on here yet, have I??? Well shame on me!

I've put together, with people from around the state, an Indiana Ubuntu Local Community Team, so if you're in Indiana and use or are interested in using Ubuntu, come check us out! There are plenty of ways of getting a hold of us; we've got a mailing list, an IRC channel, a forum, etc. and we're here to help you.

Incidentally we'll be manning a booth at this year's IU LinuxFest later today, (Eep!). I'll also be giving a presentation at the LinuxFest about the work I've been doing with Linux at North.

I should probably finish up my notes for the presentation and get to bed, huh?

SystemImager Successes

2007-04-04T13:56:00.001-04:00

Success!

I've gotten SystemImager to work well and have imaged eight of our nine classrooms to our latest image, and this evening I'm imaging the ninth one. Woohoo!

We had a nasty surprise when we tried to image two classrooms in that the image server simply could not HANDLE 64 rsync connections with 512 MB of memory. Luckily, rather than keel over and die the server started killing off the connections it couldn't handle so instead of having to re-image two whole classrooms, we only had to re-image half of one.

Luckily, I've been able to get SystemImager's bittorrent delivery method up and running so this is a moot point now.

iTALC Memory Limitations

On a side note we're also experiencing memory limitations with iTALC, connecting to 30 or 31 workstations is a bit much for 512 MB of memory, so iTALC periodically dies--luckily it's simply a matter of opening it back up. We're looking into beefing up the memory on our teacher workstations to compensate for this.

Hooray for bug filing!

2007-04-03T10:02:00.001-04:00

I just filed a bunch of bugs in Launchpad. Most of them against Samba performance on Ubuntu Edgy (testparm errors by default, which may be the root of the rest of my bugs). One about how our Dell 210Ls randomly (about 3%-10% of the time) do not shut down when told to (they get to the point of powering off and, instead, decide to turn a fan on full blast). And one about how our Dell 170Ls do not show the "thermometer bar" boot-up and shutdown screens.

This is the first time I've filed a bunch of bugs, so let's see how successfully this goes...

A little later

I guess I didn't publish this post when I made it, so I've actually gotten a comment on one of my bugs! I was asked to try some different vga kernel options to see if that would resolve the issue with the 170Ls and their boot/shutdown screens not showing up. It didn't, but it is nice to get suggestions.

Speed Tweak Recant and Apology

2007-03-23T13:29:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the various communities I am a part of, I've been taught better than that little Speed Tweak I posted earlier.

Apparently it's bad practice and can break stuff and, in my case at least, the performance gain was due to the fact that I formed my /etc/nsswitch.conf files incorrectly out of ignorance, having it check for hostnames via wins before looking at the hosts file. It seems that by assigning it to 127.0.0.1, it began resolving it from memory.

I had no idea when I made that change that the computer would be checking for it's OWN hostname everytime it went to run a program. Seems like a strange practice...

So, by correctly forming my /etc/nsswitch.conf with files at the beginning, I'm still experiencing a noticeable speed boost, but this wouldn't help anyone who didn't bugger up their /etc/nsswitch.conf file in the first place.

I'm sorry for advocating a bad practice. I was simply excited that it seemed to work for me.

Code Monkey

2007-03-23T10:14:00.001-04:00

AHHHH!!!!! I can't get this song out of my head!

Not that I think inflicting you all with it will help me at all, I'm just sadistic.

May contain strong language, depending on how strong you rank "god damned".

True Diversity - Jono Bacon

2007-03-21T17:39:00.001-04:00

...

Today things are different. We are really seeing true diversity. When I am on the road, I meet hundreds of different people who contribute to free software in so many different ways. I have met hardcore kernel hackers, application developers, documentation writers, artists, journalists, musicians, testers, advocates, event organisers, bug triagers, trainers, translators and more. Many of these people come from different walks of life, have different opinions, different experiences, different skills and get their switches flipped in different ways. There is one distinctive connection though - they believe in free software. Although the ferocity of this belief varies greatly between different groups of people, the key point to remember is that freedom and free software connects us all. We are all fighting for the same thing.

We have the opportunity to do such amazing things and to touch peoples lives in different ways, and this never ceases to inspire and hearten me about the incredible community we are all part of. In our community we conduct our work in the way people should conduct their work - we believe in equality and merit, we believe in giving people a chance to do great things, and we do it together, not as individuals, but as a combined entity. It really is a direct connection between ability and outcome - if you are good, no matter what your age, experience, gender, race, income, political orientation or otherwise, you can do incredible things from your computer and have thousands or even millions of people experience it. It is the greatest game in the world; nevermind Second Life, nevermind video games - our game has real implications and opportunities for real people.

...

-Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager

http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=924

Ubuntu Speed Tweak - /etc/hosts

2007-03-21T12:19:00.001-04:00

It's come to my attention that this is bad practice.

For those of you using Ubuntu, though likely not applicable ONLY those using Ubuntu, this little tweak gives your application load time a HUGE boost--that is, it makes application load times noticeably shorter.

~~<disclaimer>I have no idea why this works</disclaimer>~~

Edit your “/etc/hosts” file:

$ sudo gedit /etc/hosts

You should see something like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 martin-laptop
(and if your in Feisty, some lines about IPV6

Now, add the following:

127.0.0.1 localhost martin-laptop
127.0.1.1 martin-laptop
(Replace “martin-laptop” with your hostname)

Save. Should work instantly, or sometimes on reboot.

~~Read at Martin Albisetti's blog (via the Ubuntu Planet RSS feed).~~

To be perfectly honest, I didn't even notice I was taking a performance hit because the sorts of load times I got before this tweak were comparable to load times I've been used to expecting on Windows for a long time.

SystemImager HOWTO Updated - Some Big News (for me, anyhow)

2007-03-16T13:55:00.000-04:00

I've update my HOWTO Install SystemImager from source on Ubuntu Edgy page, and it works like a charm now.

Some updates

I've come in over Spring Break so I can get some work done with the Ubuntu workstations. I have motivation to wrap everything here up into a nice neat well-documented package soon (more on this later), so I'm coming in even though I can't put this time on my time sheet.

It's amazing how much faster work progresses when I'm not interrupted every few minutes. Plus, I've had the liberty of working in the classroom in more than one-period windows. I've got one room set up and imaged using SystemImager, and another on the way (it takes a while to image a 31 workstations with 2 GB images via Unicast on a 100Mbps network).

It's pretty nice...but destined to end on Monday when all the distractions come back.

I've smoothed out a few rough spots in the imaging process, all the sorts of things that needed to be trialed and errored out, and now I'm going to work on getting the iTALC suite set up and configured for the one classroom I've got imaged.

The Big News

The big news, and the motivation for my wanting to get everything wrapped up and well-documented, is that my last working for Bloomington High School North is April 20th. I've received an offer I can't refuse to work at Canterbury School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, about three hours away.

I have loved my job here at Bloomington High School North, and the community I've served. The only thing I haven't loved is the pay, which is not nearly enough for me to start my life with. I've been looking for other employment for a while now, though I've been apprehensive of exchanging a job I love with inadequate pay for a job I hate with adequate pay. I've not been happy with the prospect of having to stop working with the Ubuntu community that I've sort of immersed myself in, or the prospect of no longer working in education.

With my new job as Senior Tech Specialist at Canterbury School I can continue to work in the field that I love, with the community I've grown to love, while receiving enough pay to actually start my life. The job description seemed to have my name already written on it when I first read it, it was uncanny.

I am very sad to leave North, which has been my home for almost a decade now; to leave my friends and family to move to a completely new city and sort of start over. At the same time, though, I'm excited to be taking the next step in my life, and am looking forward to the challenges that lay ahead. It's been a long time coming.

Printer Setup

2007-03-09T12:04:00.001-05:00

I added a page on Printer Setup to our Image Definition. The only really remarkable part of it is the issue we're having with our brand new HP LaserJet P3005n printers.

For some reason, everything prints out of them just fine except for OpenOffice.Org.

The Test Page is fine, printing from Gedit or Firefox is fine. Everything is fine, it seems, except for OpenOffice.Org - the one application that will most be used to print to it.

Everything is printed badly aligned, so far up the page that the first line of a Writer document is cut off at the top, even though the Print Preview shows it looking properly aligned.

For what it's worth, it even prints fine using OpenOffice.Org on a Windows XP box...

Does anyone out there have a clue as to what might be my issue here?

iTALC HOWTO updated

2007-03-05T14:39:00.001-05:00

Tobias has mentioned one final package I needed to have before the build that, now that I've got it running, has all the major functionality working (a few annoying bugs still plague the less necessary functionality, but he's been made aware of them).

I've edited the HOWTO to reflect everything to this point.

SystemImager Success!!!

2007-02-28T23:36:00.000-05:00

With the help of Andrea on the SystemImager mailing list and my friend David, I've finally emerged on the other side of the tunnel. I've gotten SystemImager installed and working!

About fifteen minutes after I was supposed to have gone home I was waiting for my test imaging process to finish, expecting only to copy down the new error message to look into it tomorrow, when--Lo and Behold!--I was greeted by the smiling, shiny face of an Ubuntu log-in screen.

I heard an angelic choir and everything.

The last piece of the puzzle was going back and adding PREFIX=/usr during the SystemConfigurator installation.

Documentation will be forthcoming, I can assure you!

We don't depend on Norton Ghost for imaging any longer. One of the most crucial pieces of the puzzle is now in place.

Now begins the real work of figuring out how to leverage SystemImager most effectively into our system.

Wish me luck!

I just submitted my last-minute entry to the Win Loyd Case's Old PC! contest. It involves sending him a 500-word essay on "Why I deserve to win your old PC".

It can happen.

Wish me luck!

iTALC and SystemImager progress - Ubuntu Indiana LoCo Team???

2007-02-27T11:40:00.001-05:00

iTALC

I've made contact with Tobias, iTALC's developer and maintainer and, with his help, I've been able to address some of my earlier concerns. He's fixed a bug or two as well that I brought his attention to, and I'm hopeful that we'll have everything working soon.

This is what I love about Open Source:

"I'm having X problem with this program."
"Oh, that was a bug, it's fixed now."

SystemImager

I gave SystemImager another try now that I've got the latest version compiled (Actually, they just went and released a new stable version, 3.8.0) and I've gotten much further along the process. I'm communing with the mailing list to see what I'm screwing up, and I see light at the end of the tunnel!

Ubuntu Indiana LoCo Team?

The Ubuntu USTeams Project has made it its goal to have an approved LoCo team for every U.S. state by 2008. I've been sitting back and watching, and hoping, and waiting for someone else to step up and start an IndianaTeam, since I think there should be one, but nothing yet has happened.

I'm now looking through the documentation and considering doing it myself. If you're in Indiana and would be interested in an Ubuntu Indiana LoCo Team, let me know in the comments, or in email.

HOWTO Install iTALC from source on Ubuntu Edgy - WITH CAVEATS

2007-02-20T14:52:00.000-05:00

DISCLAIMER

First of all, I haven't gotten all of the functionality to work yet.

Hopefully, when a final stable 1.0 comes out, italc-master and italc-client 1.0 will just be two more packages in the Ubuntu repositories...

X.Org Module: record

We need to add a module to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, so we'll need to superuser edit it ($ sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf), find the Section "Module" section and add the following line before the line that says EndSection:

Load "record"

Dependencies

Let's first make sure we have all the dependencies installed. This may take a while...

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libqt4-dev qt4-dev-tools libjpeg62-dev zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libxtst-dev

Source Tarball

We now need to get the source tarball at the iTALC website. (Go to "Download", select the link under "Source code", and select the file ending in .tar.bz2, in my case, italc-1.0.0.0-rc4.tar.bz2)

When you've got the tarball downloaded, you'll need to extract it to its own folder. (Right-click and "Extract Here" works well.)

Install iTALC

Now we'll compile the source code.

Drop to a terminal, navigate to iTALC's new directory (for me, $ cd ~/italc-1.0.0.0-rc4) and run the following commands:

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr

$ make

$ sudo make install

Voila! iTALC is installed!

You're not done, yet...

Set the iTALC Client Application to run on login

This is necessary for both the teacher and student workstations.

You'll need to superuser edit /etc/gdm/Init/Default and /etc/gdm/PreSession/Default ($ sudo gedit /etc/gdm/Init/Default /etc/gdm/PreSession/Default) and add the following at the very top of both of them (just below the introductory block of comments):

killall ica

/usr/bin/ica &

The first command kill any previous ica session that's running before the second command starts a new one up. This allows iTALC to interact with the clients during the login screen as well as after the user logs in, without calling up multiple instances of the client application.

Set up authentication keys

This will allow iTALC to talk to its clients in a secure manner.

The command to create the keys is: $ sudo ica -role teacher -createkeypair

After running this command, you will have a pair of keys in your newly created /etc/italc/keys directory.

/etc/italc/keys/private should be readable only to the accounts that should have access to run italc, and should only exist on the computers that will be used to run iTALC. Here that would be the "teacher" and "administrator" accounts on the teachers' workstations. See below for details on accomplishing this.
/etc/italc/keys/public should be readable to all, which it is by default, and should exist on every workstation.

One way to make the /etc/italc/keys/private directory readable to only the necessary accounts is as follows:

$ sudo addgroup italc

$ sudo adduser teacher italc

$ sudo adduser administrator italc

$ sudo chgrp -R italc /etc/italc/keys/private

$ sudo chmod -R o-rwx /etc/italc/keys/private

Test it locally

Let's run a quick test just to make sure everything's working ok. We're going to set up iTALC with our own local computer as a client.

iTALC needs to have the Client Application running, and a pair of keys set up in order to launch. If you've been following closely, this should already be done.

Run $ italc to bring up the teacher's iTALC interface.

Now, in the Client-Manager tab on the left, right-click in the list and "Add classroom", then "Add client":

Name is only relevant to this iTALC interface and is how iTALC will refer to this particular client. It doesn't have to be, however I've just been using the client's hostname since the hostname we use is indicative of the classroom and workstation.
IP/hostname is just that, either the client's IP address (only really useful if you're not using DHCP) or hostname (it's important that you have name resolution set up correctly to be able to find the if you're using hostname; we use WINS).
MAC address is important for being able to remotely turn the workstations on (You can find this information by running $ ifconfig and looking for the string labeled "HWaddr", it should look something like 12:34:56:78:90:AB).

Now you should see a thumbnail of your own screen inside of the iTALC interface. Yay, recursion!

BE CAREFUL! If you spend too much time staring at the recursive effects of iTALC on itself, you might end up going a little loopy:

Play around with the interface a bit to get a feel for it, it's pretty intuitive.

Broken Functionality

I've yet to get the following functionality working quite right:

The Login button does nothing. (Apparently it works for Windows clients, though)
If the student account is forced to logout through iTALC, logging back in freezes the X server.

It's a pretty good product otherwise, and now that most of the functionality is working, I am looking forward to deploying it.

SystemImager HOWTO - Oh, Yeah!

2007-02-20T13:57:00.001-05:00

After my first attempt at compiling SystemImager on my golden clients, it didn't work!

I remembered the one step that I didn't include in the HOWTO I just posted a couple days ago. It's not quite intuitive, see, so I don't feel bad about about having forgotten it.

For some reason, the linux-headers package in Ubuntu (at least version I got when I was writing the HOWTO, linux-headers-2.6.17-11-generic 2.16.17.1-11.35) is missing a couple of key files. Did I forget that linux-headers-generic is necessary for the build process??? Drats!

Don't worry, though, it's easily solved:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic


$ sudo cp /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-11-generic/include/linux/compiler.h /usr/include/linux


$ sudo cp /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-11-generic/include/asm/unaligned.h /usr/include/asm

It should work after that...

Note

I've already updated the original post, so it should be fine now.

HOWTO Install SystemImager from source on Ubuntu Edgy

2007-02-16T09:15:00.001-05:00

We now return you to your regularly scheduled post!

First, we'll need to set Ubuntu's /bin/sh to bash instead of dash.

I don't know why...well, besides the fact that not doing it will bugger up the compilation process.

$ sudo ln -sf bash /bin/sh

Dependencies

Next, we need to install the dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic libappconfig-perl cramfsprogs e2fslibs-dev ncurses-dev libreadline5-dev rsync python-dev libtool gettext zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libxml-simple-perl perl-tk uuid-dev flex bzip2 syslinux libdevmapper-dev mtools

We also need to copy a couple of files, because as of the time of this writing, linux-headers-generic is missing a couple of files (linux-headers-2.6.17-11-generic 2.6.17.1-11.35). If this post is relatively old, you might just check first to make sure that /usr/include/linux/compiler.h and /usr/include/asm/unaligned.h exist on your system. If they don't, you can just (mind the emphasized directory, make sure that's the correct one for you):

$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

$ sudo cp /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-11-generic/include/linux/compiler.h /usr/include/linux

$ sudo cp /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-11-generic/include/asm/unaligned.h /usr/include/asm

Source tarballs - System Configurator SystemImager

Then we get the source code tarballs for systemimager and system configurator (a systemimager dependency that we'll also need to build from source in order to have a compatible version):

After they're downloaded, extract them (right-click and "Extract Here" works fine) into their own folders

Install SystemConfigurator

We need to install SystemConfigurator first, this is pretty quick since it's just perl. Navigate to the directory that you extracted it (on my system, I just $ cd ~/systemconfigurator-2.2.2), and run the following:

$ perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/usr

$ make

$ make test  #This should say "All tests succesful" right before finishing#

$ sudo make install

Install SystemImager

This is what takes a little while. Again, navigate to the directory that you extracted the source tarball (again, on my system $ cd ~/systemimager-3.7.6) and run the following:

$ ./configure


$ sudo make


$ sudo make install_server_all #If you're on the Server#


$ sudo make install_client_all #If you're on the Client#

Assuming you don't get dropped out of one of the above commands by an Error, you should now have SystemImager installed!

EDIT:By the way

You can now delete the source tarballs, and the directories they created.

Acknowledgements

I got the base beginning point for this HOWTO from a page on the SystemImager wiki, and I got lots of help beyond that from the SystemImager mailing list, and my friend David Ernst.

Thanks a lot, guys!

Compilation Successes!

2007-02-16T08:09:00.001-05:00

So, yesterday I was finally able to succesfully compile both SystemImager and iTALC.

Here's a snapshot of iTALC, from iTALC:

Shiny.

SystemImager is all command-line stuff, so it's not all too exciting visually...

Now I need to write these into my Image Definition, and see what I can do about replacing our use of Norton Ghost with SystemImager.

Apparently it took me this long to compile SystemImager because the last time I gave it a go, I made a typo! Oh well. You live, you learn.

HOWTOs forthcoming.

lpadmin headaches

2007-02-15T14:17:00.001-05:00

I was trying to figure out how to install a printer via command-line in Ubuntu, so as to install them during the auto-configuration process after re-imaging a workstation.

After beating my head against lpadmin's man page, and trying everything I can to get the -m switch to pick up the right model printer, I've decided to give up on going that route.

Instead I'll just have the printer installed to begin with (We only have one model printer in four of the classrooms), and have the autoconfiguration script either set the IP address on it correctly, or remove it entirely (in classrooms without printers).

Compilations

Since I couldn't get the italc .deb package that Niko pointed me to to install correctly over unsatisfiable dependencies (I guess there's enough of a difference between Debian and Ubuntu to make this a problem), I'm going to go ahead and give compiling it a shot, as Kevin Mark suggested in a comment on this blog that it should be easy.

We'll see. Wish me luck!

Refresh default settings on reboot!

2007-02-09T10:56:00.001-05:00

All of our students are using a generic "student" account to access their Ubuntu workstations. This isn't a long-term solution; I am planning to get them to authenticate against our corporate directory (an Active Directory server) when I figure it out. In the meantime, however, there are a few issues involved with everyone sharing a generic user account that are kind of annoying.

The vast majority of the time when I get called into a classroom for help it's because some student has modified their desktop to the point that another user can't use it. They've unmounted the locker drive, or they've removed the taskbar, or something like that. Now, this doesn't really happen all that often, the kids are surprisingly responsible about not modifying the desktop to the point where their peers won't be able to use it.

But it does happen, and I've been asked to keep it from happening.

I've decided the best way to do it is to simply have all the default user settings refresh on reboot so if someone DOES make too much of a change, the next student can simply reset the computer and have a fresh Desktop to work with.

At first I thought that removing the /home/student directory and replacing it with an archived copy would be the way to go. However, I'd like to keep from deleting the students' work on reboot (in case, for example, the reason they need to reboot is because they can't get to their locker to save their work).

After some experimenting, and a bit of communion with my local Linux Users' Group via our mailing list, I've settled on a simple way of accomplishing the goal.

First, I've made an exact copy of the default /home/student at /home/student.fresh (sudo cp -a /home/student /home/student.fresh).

Then I've set it up to remove just the settings files from the student account, and replace them with the originals by editing /etc/rc.local and adding these lines in before the exit 0 line:

# These lines replace all the settings for the student account with a fresh copy of the defaults

find /home/student -maxdepth 1 -iname '.?*' -exec rm -rf '{}' \;

find /home/student.fresh -maxdepth 1 -iname '.?*' -exec cp -prf '{}' /home/student \;

It's that simple!

Consideration

Anytime after this that the student's default settings need to be changed, it be a matter of logging in as student, making the changes, logging back in as administrator so you can sudo rm -rf /home/student.fresh and sudo cp -a /home/student /home/student.fresh again before you restart the computer.

MAC address gathering fun!

2007-02-08T12:44:00.001-05:00

#! /bin/bash

# MAC address collection script



MAC=`ifconfig | grep HWaddr | awk -F 'HWaddr ' '{ print $2 }'`



echo "$HOSTNAME,$MAC,$*" | ssh administrator@10.100.5.91 'cat >> macaddresses.csv'

EDIT:Oops, I didn't add line breaks at first!

Problem: You need to get a list of MAC addresses for a bunch of computers. You can't remotely connect to them because their WINS service is not properly set up to allow you to connect to them by hostname and their IP addresses are assigned randomly by DHCP. A lot of them actually share a hostname because spending the time to name them properly didn't seem to be a useful way to spend an hour when the WINS service isn't working anyhow.

This will unfortunately involve some leg-work. You know how to look up the MAC address at each station, but you don't want to have to write out every MAC address by hand and then type it back in later. (You're lazy, what can you say?)

Solution:The above script! Keep it in /var/www (apache2's web root directory on Ubuntu) of your server, make sure to use YOUR server's ip address. Then you can just:

Log in to a station.
Bring up a terminal.
$ wget 10.100.5.91/macgather
$ bash macgather identifying comment here (wget'ting a file removes execution privileges, pointing bash at the script is faster than chmod'ing and running it. If the station's hostname is unique and helpful in identifying it, you don't really need to add the identifying comment.)
Answer a couple of prompts ("yes" you really do want to connect to the server, and enter the server's "administrator" account password).
Log out.
Lather, rinse, and repeat on every workstation you need.

After you've had a nice tour of where all the stations are (several classrooms in my case) and ran the script on each computer, you'll have a nice comma-delimited file that you can manipulate in just about any spreadsheet program you got. It'll have three columns: the first will be the stations' hostname, the second will be the stations' MAC address, and the third will be the identifying comment you supplied (if any) at that station.

Yeah, I know...

This will likely not be useful to anyone but me, but I spent a while figuring out just the right commands to do this--with the help of my local linux user group's mailing list--so I'm recording it for posterity.

Angels DO exist!

2007-02-05T15:23:00.001-05:00

Niko, from Finland, has offered to create those .deb packages I needed. Hooray! This could free me up from spending so much time figuring out how to compile stuff so I can concentrate on USING the software. Nice!

He pointed out that .deb packages italc for are already available in Debian experimental at : http://packages.debian.org/experimental/x11/italc-master and http://packages.debian.org/experimental/x11/italc-client

When trying to install italc-client, though, I get an error: "Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libqt4-core". I tried installing libqt4-core to satisfy the error, but to no avail; the version in the Ubuntu repositories is too old, I supposed. I looked at the information page for the italc-client package, however, and it lists "libqt4-core ( 4.2.1) \ Package not available" as a dependency.

I'm confused, and the feeling of hope I had when I read that the packages were available has flagged.

Can I use these Debian experimental packages under Ubuntu? How?

Is there some way I could temporarily activate some Debian repository, so that I might be able to satisfy these dependencies?

I'm sorry if the answer is obvious.

Image Definition

In other news, I've prettied up my image definition page and moved it to http://www.north.mccsc.edu/indianaaccess/imagedefinition.html. Maybe this would be useful to someone else trying to use Ubuntu in their school. I'm hoping to add to it as I figure things out.

Free Software Diffusion

I've always told people that if they wanted a copy of any of the Free Software available on our Indiana ACCESS workstations that they should bring me a CD-R and I'd burn them off a copy. Noone has really taken me up on it, so I've decided it's time to do some active advertising to educate our school's community on the Free Software alternatives that exist.

To that end, I'm trying to put together a well-publicized avenue for people to have free software available to them. Specifically I've decided to make Software for Starving Students CDs and Ubuntu CDs available to the school population (well, to make the service of burning these CDs available, we can't really give away CDs).

I've put together a statement at http://www.north.mccsc.edu/freesoftware that I plan to advertise through our school's front page, on our staff and parent mailing lists, and on posters in various key places around the school (e.g. every computer lab).

Any comments on this idea, or the statement I linked above, would be appreciated, especially from people who have experience trying to do this sort of Free Software advocacy in a school environment.

Well, I should have left twenty minutes ago...Goodbye!

Image Update

2007-01-19T11:47:00.001-05:00

The following packages have been added to my Image Definition:

winbind msttcorefonts sun-java5-jre sun-java5-bin sun-java5-plugin gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse

This will fix the WINS resolution not working, add the Microsoft TrueType Fonts people are used to using, add Java support, and provide CODECs for most RestrictedFormats (though not for Windows Media formats, as I understand that would be ilegal in the States)

Until I get iTALC running, though, none of the original four classrooms want anything to do with the new image. And until I get SystemImager running, I can't just push out these updates in any simple manner.

Packages, iTALC and SystemImager

2007-01-19T10:21:00.001-05:00

There are two software packages that I would really love to work with, that I think most anyone in my situation would really love to work with, but they don't have .deb packages of the latest versions and the versions available from the Ubuntu repositories are far too old to be useful (all requests for support are answered with "first of all, you need to be using the latest version").

iTALC is one - Intelligent Teaching and Learning with Computers - which is a classroom management tool in the Big Brother tradition, which gives a simple, intuitive interface for the teacher to be aware of what their students are up to, and also give them a few remote control options that are pretty cool.

The other is SystemImager, which I've mentioned here before is a utility for installing and updating large numbers of identical computers (such as the 300 or so workstations I'm trying to manage).

Now, one of the great things about Ubuntu is the Package Management it inherits from Debian. I really dig apt-get and Synaptic. The only real problem with it is that most small free software projects (ok, generalizing based on personal experience here...) only seem to provide their releases in Red Hat's .rpm package format as well as in source.

While I have trudged my way through installing SystemImager from source on a server, with great hand-holding help from Andrea on the SystemImager mailing list, I really would rather not install stuff from source on the workstations. So, the other option would be building .deb packages from source on the server and installing the .debs on the workstations.

Only problem is, I have no experience with any of this. Compiling SystemImager from source was my first real compilation ever, and I wouldn't even know where to begin...

I was directed to http://www.debian.org/devel/, which unfortunately flies right over my head. I could beat my head against this for a while in order to figure this stuff out, but I really am hoping someone might be able to direct me to a simpler HOWTO that assumes a little less experience and hand-holds me through the process. Anyone?

P.S. It's my understanding that using alien to convert .rpms to .debs is not really a great solution. Anyone have experience with this?

Samba Fun, Resolved but...

2007-01-18T11:13:00.001-05:00

Ok, so, installing the "winbind" package gets the WINS services working correctly (I feel slightly sheepish about this, since I must have installed this on the old image to get it to work...) AND the /var/run/samba directory errors seem to go away...

Adding "passdb expand explicit = no" to smb.conf makes the other error (about that switch, though default, being deprecated) go away...

Cool...

So, why doesn't the "Domain" field come up with "MCCSC" filled in automatically, now? It works fine on our old installs...

Although this particular strange behavior is simply annoying, it makes me wonder a) what other smb.conf options are being ignored? is this a symptom of a larger problem? or b) do I need to be changing a different setting elsewhere???

Samba Fun!

2007-01-11T10:45:00.001-05:00

I'd been wondering why a couple of things on our new Linux image weren't working quite right.

When students went to log into their lockers (hosted on a Samba share), it prompted them for their Username, Domain, and Password and the Domain was filled in as "WORKGROUP". I figured this was rather strange, since it showed up as "MCCSC" on the old image, what it should be.

"Oh well," I concluded, "I've got too many things coming at me to worry about this little thing, the students can type 5 extra characters when they want to get to their lockers, it's no big deal..."

I'm starting to wonder now whether it's not just the symptom of a much more basic problem.

The thing that got me to re-evaluate my conclusion was the fact that on the new image, WINS resolution just isn't working. After conversing with my friend, Google, and consulting my other friend, Book, I stared at the configuration file that I had DEFINITELY set correctly. I compared it to the configuration file from the old image, the one that works right, and everything was the same, but the new image just wasn't behaving properly.

Although feeling vindicated in that I did not cause the problem, I'm perplexed because that means I can't undo any stupid mistakes and have it fixed. Not to mention, since it's not working right I'm still got a bad feeling that it's my fault.

I ran the "testparm" command which is a very basic diagnostic that just tells you whether /etc/samba/smb.conf is correctly formatted, and *gasp* there's an error...but not in the smb.conf file! I ran "testparm" on the old image and no errors.

These are the three errors I get running "testparm" on the new image:

ERROR: lock directory /var/run/samba does not exist

ERROR: pid directory /var/run/samba does not exist

WARNING: passdb expand explicit = yes is deprecated

The strange thing is that these errors pop up AFTER it already says that it "Loaded services file OK.", so where the hell is it getting "passdb expand explicit = yes" from?!

Still not quite convinced that I didn't break something somehow, I booted to the Ubuntu Live CD, absolutely fresh image, ran testparm and BANG! Same three error messages!

It's NOT my fault! Hooray, I have proof!

Now...what gives? and how do I fix it?

Google is not being helpful at all with these error messages, which is rare.

I wasn't able to flag a live person on #samba on irc.freenode.net. I said the following there:

I am running Ubuntu Edgy Eft (testparm -v = 3.0.22), and I noticed that none of the parameters I was specifying in my smb.conf file seemed to actually be DOING anything. I looked long and hard and consulted online documentation, Google, even a book (Linux in a Windows World), compared my smb.conf to one I had on an earlier installation (Ubuntu Breezy Badger, testparm -v = 3.0.14a-Ubuntu) that was working fine, and came to the conclusion that I had everything correct.

After painstakingly assuring myself that my smb.conf file was correctly formed as I wanted it, I tried "testparm" and noticed that I got three strange error messages AFTER being informed that it "Loaded services file OK.", these were "ERROR: lock directory /var/run/samba does not exist", "ERROR: pid directory /var/run/samba does not exist" and "WARNING: passdb expand explicit = yes is deprecated"

None of these errors are present when I run testparm on Breezy. Anyhow, just to make sure I hadn't made any stupid mistakes along the way I booted to the Ubuntu Live CD, ran testparm, and got the exact same error messages.

What gives? More importantly, how do I fix it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

About Me

2007-01-11T01:35:00.001-05:00

So, well, I've noticed that this blog is kind of dry.

Boy, it took him long enough...

I talk about the project I'm doing here at North, and not too much else. I was hoping this blog might be a good way to publish my work in an easily followable format, following the spirit of open source in the hopes that it might be useful to someone out there...and, admittedly, I did have the hope that people would be tripping over themselves to give me useful pearls of wisdom that would help me solve the issues I come up against.

It hasn't really worked that way. And that's ok. I really had (have, to be completely honest) no idea what the most useful way to do this whole blogging thing is. I've found an excellent way not to make it useful.

I was surprised, soon after beginning this blog, at how many people I met in real life at events and in the online community who were already following along with it (especially since people rarely comment). I wouldn't be surprised now to find that I've bored you all to the point of unsubscribing me from your RSS feeds. My one saving grace in this regard may be that since I post so infrequently, you might have simply forgotten to unsubscribe me.

In an effort to liven my blog up a bit, and maybe give you all a little context on who the man behind this particular curtain is, I've decided to write a blog post all about...

...ME!...

Ok, so it's a bit narcissistic, I know, but hear me out:

If you're reading this you might actually be interested. If you're not, then I won't be offended if you skip it. I however, find that I like getting to know the people whose blogs I read, so I'd like to give anyone out there who feels the same a chance to get to know me. I'll see what I can do about keeping it all more or less on-topic.

So, split into a few sections:

Basic Info (or, Vital Statistics, Plus!)

My name is Simón Anibal Ruiz Rolfs. I was born almost exactly 24 years ago in Cumaná, capital of the Venezuelan state of Sucre and the oldest living European city on the American mainland (home of the oldest American castle, as well). My father was born in the same Venezuelan state, and my mother was born in the U.S. state of Kansas. I am a citizen of both Venezuela--where I live in Puerto La Cruz, Anzoategui--and the Unites States--where I live in Bloomington, Indiana.

I also have bouts of insomnia, thus this post.

Education and Me (or, Learning My Way)

Education flows through my veins. It's the family business.I grew up with both of my parents working as professors at the university level; my father taught electrical engineering and my mother, a linguist, taught English as a Second Language at the Universidad de Oriente. Nowadays my mother continues working with ESL at the Intensive English Program at Indiana University, and my sister teaches Spanish up in Chicago.

I love learning! That said, however, I can't say the same about the education systems I passed through: some classes were great and really taught me a thing or two, and in some classes I learned despite the teacher.

My experience of education as I was growing up was quite diverse; bouncing back and forth between two different countries, two different languages, two vastly different cultures and education systems ensured that. I have attended both private and public schools, even one all-boys Catholic school; I've been in a school where one classroom held 50 screaming second graders, and a school where the dozen or so kids in my classroom were split between 3 grade levels; I've encountered a wide variety of both inspiring and revolting teachers and classmates; etc.

I'll be honest, though, I was not the ideal student: just ask some of my former teachers (some of who are now my co-workers). In elementary school I was a hyperactive mess. I probably turned in about half of the homework I was assigned in high school, most often late. Some classes I slept or read a book through (though, in my defense, I aced all the tests in those classes more or less effortlessly). I would not wish having me in class--as I was in primary through secondary school--on any teacher.

After graduating from Bloomington High School North in 2000, I took some time away from school because I had a very vivid presentiment that if I continued right on to college I would just crash and burn...that, and my GPA was too low to be accepted into Indiana University here in Bloomington, Indiana. I worked a few jobs, and got some living under my belt before I started taking classes again, part-time at Ivy Tech Community College, also here in Bloomington. The break from school was just what I needed to re-evaluate how I approached my classes, and I have managed to keep a 4.0 GPA so far in my college career.

Although I was very impressed and pleased with the quality of the General Studies classes I took at Ivy Tech--they have some AMAZING teachers--their degree programs are too narrow and focused for someone like me. I want a more general and well-rounded education than they're built to provide. At Ivy Tech you pick a very definite course of study--like say Cisco Networking, or Novell Networking, or Microsoft Networking--and you do not deviate from the required credits for that degree (usually none of which go above the 200 level). There are no real electives beyond the 100 level General Studies courses. This is a beautiful setup for some people, but not me.

I intend to continue my higher education by getting accepted to IU either this coming summer or in the fall. I do not have plans to declare a major too soon (I know, vicariously, the dangers of declaring a major that your heart just isn't into), but rather to take a good variety of introductory level courses from various schools at IU. That said, I expect to study something to do with computing...and I've been told by my mother and my sister that it's useless for me to fight against getting a degree in Education. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up double or triple majoring in different fields.

Like I said, I love learning!

Technology and Me (or, Before Linux)

Technology also runs in my family. My father is a retired electrical engineering professor. His father was the first telegraph operator in the town my father born in. I remember growing up surrounded by all the fascinating, cool gadgetry, and have always felt a pretty strong affinity with technology, especially computers.

One of my earliest memories is the excitement of getting a computer in my room: A four megahertz Epson QX-10 running a version of CP/M (one of DOS's ancestors) or VALDOCS (an Office Suite/Operating System). This thing had a green-screen monitor, and two big 5.25" floppy drives (no hard disk). My dad's computer, the one in the office, was an IBM PC running MS-DOS with an amazing four-color display. Donald Duck's Playground is one of the first games I remember playing. I also spent a LOT of time with the original Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?, and later Prince of Persia. (P.S. I've had a lot of fun rediscovering a lot of these old titles recently using dosbox on both Linux and Windows XP. If you remember these days, you should check it out as a good chunk of these titles have become "Abandonware", and available for download from the Internet.)

I learned the very basics of programming with BASIC back then, using MBASIC on the Epson, and GWBASIC on the IBM. I also learned to navigate my way around the DOS command prompt, at times with a little help from Norton Commander. When we eventually got a computer than could run Windows 3.0, a Goldstar 386 "IBM-Compatible", I was pretty impressed with the graphics (Jumping from CGA to SuperVGA was pretty dramatic), but otherwise unimpressed with the environment and kept to the more powerful command line, except for when I had to type up a paper for school using PFS:WindowWorks. I was playing Wolfenstein 3-D in those days, along with Ultima 6: The False Prophet and Ultima 7: The Black Gate.(Again, titles I've had the pleasure of re-discovering thanks to dosbox!)

It was with this Goldstar that I began to discover the world of modems, connecting to Bulletin Board Systems on my trusty 2400 bauder with Procomm. There was a great little Bulletin Board here in Bloomington that was my favorite hang-out, The Good News BBS. When that died, I found the Metropolis BBS, which was actually accesible from any Big Ten or Big Twelve college town. I started chatting with people all over the country and thought that was pretty amazing.

My freshman year of high school, I spent in Venezuela, and my father bought a 686 computer that ran Windows 95. I remember very clearly being pretty upset that the computer didn't boot to a command line by default; I was impressed by the vast improvement of the Windows GUI from 3.0, but it was a memory hog and had a habit of crashing. I saw the trend in Microsoft Operating Systems of distancing the end-user from having control over their computer, and I was NOT happy, but I didn't know there was any alternatives. I mostly played Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3-D during this time.

With that computer, I discovered the Internet, and that cost my father dearly because we were charged by the hour for Internet service and by the minute for the local phone call. The bill reached over $100/month with as much time as I logged on the web and on IRC. Good times...

Working my way up through Windows 98, NT and XP (I missed ME, thank goodness...), I stayed a Microsoft user. I was the go-to guy among my friends and family when it came to anything to do with computers. I lived and breathed them, so it wasn't too surprising to anyone when I got a job supporting people's use of them...

Back to Bloomington High School North (or, I Meet Linux)

It is late, so I'll save this part for another time...

A request from ME to YOU, dear reader!

I'd like to know a little bit about who all is reading this stuff. Since you made it this far I would greatly appreciate it if you could spare a minute to comment on this entry and let me know who you are, where you're from, where you found me, and maybe a little something about yourself.

I always feel like noone reads my stuff because noone ever comments, so let me know if that's not true!!!

Merry Christmakwanzukah

2006-12-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

And so, Winter Break begins...

See you next year!

Images, cont.

2006-12-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

My Image Definition Documentation

I'm making my notes available here publically in case anyone is interested, I exported it to HTML from Tomboy Notes.

Another issue creeps up

So, now I've noticed another quirky aberration in the laptop image. All the laptop clients that get imaged are using "eth2" and "wlan0" as their wired and wireless network interfaces when they were "eth0" and "eth1" on the original. I don't think this will actually affect their functionality, but it's kind of weird.

Looking to the future

As I look towards what I should do next on the images, I'm faced with what looks like a pretty open-ended roadless landscape. There are a few things that I can think of off the top of my head that would really improve our image:

I need a way to make a change to an image and have that change pushed out to the clients that use that image. This is ESSENTIAL to being able to steer the development of the workstations. Without a good method for deploying my work, I'll be using a good chunk of time running around and Ghosting the clients. I believe that if I can get the SystemImager Suite up and running, it should fit this need well.
Very closely linked to being able to update the clients easily and simply is the ability to manage the various configuration DIFFERENCES between the clients. For example, their hostnames, any printer configurations by class, etc.
Getting the iTALC classroom management suite up and running is definately the highest priority next step for the image. I have 4 classrooms where the teachers have decided that if the new image doesn't have iTALC, they want nothing to do with it. Luckily, iTALC development has picked back up (There's a release candidate for version 1.0.0.0 out!), and it's actually now for both Linux AND Windows. I've subscribed to the iTALC mailing lists in order to get the support I'll need to get the most out of it.
Microsoft Active Directory Integration is something I think needs to happen. It's not a particularly high priority yet, though. I'll be working with the ubuntu-directory team on this one. We hope to have this sort of thing automated into Ubuntu by Feisty's release. One new issue with implementing this will be figuring out how to get the laptops to authenticate to the network; the current default behavior is to connect to the network AFTER logging in.
A better "Locker" system is a must, though again not a particularly high-priority need. I'd like the locker to map onto the local filesystem automatically on login the way it works on our Windows workstations so the students don't have to give it a second thought.

There's a lot of work still ahead.

Jeremy Allison leaves Novell

2006-12-22T09:32:00.000-05:00

I don't know the guy.

I did hear about him a bit, and listened to him a few times on different podcasts. I guess I got a good enough idea about who he is that when I heard about the Novell/Microsoft deal, one of my first thoughts was "I wonder if Jeremy Allison will quit over this"...

He has. And I quote:

"Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is nothing we can do to fix community relations."

It's interesting to me to see what's happening here. Novell has made a move that, although maybe historic, is not particularly controversial in the proprietary software world. It's a simple business decision that, regardless of the risks, is directly related to a corporation's basic raison d'etre: the bottom line.

I can't imagine they didn't expect a community backlash from this, though. Question is, did they really not understand how much using a legal loophole to sidestep the license most of the Open Source community uses as the very BASE foundation upon which to work would offend some people? the very people their business depends on?

The GPL is much more than a license to the Open Source world; it's an expression of the philosophy and spirit of the community. To sidestep it is, at its very simplest, to show that one doesn't agree with this philosophy and spirit.

One thing I had been noticing is how silent the voice of dissent is from Novell employees. A lot of these people are heavily involved in the community, people like Miguel De Icaza and Ted Haeger. Noone had yet, as far as I have seen, stepped up and said "You know, I work for Novell, and I don't agree with this decision." And now the only Novell employee I've heard express a dissenting opinion does so in the context of quitting.

Interesting.

As an aside, one of the things I like about Canonical's involvement with the community is that Canonical employees can disagree publically. Mark Shuttleworth can say he believes that Ubuntu should move in one direction, and Jono Bacon can articulately and clearly disagree with Mark. I find that refreshing.

Image Progress

2006-12-21T10:38:00.000-05:00

Progress!

Alright, so I now have three Ghost images: one for each hardware configuration. As I type this, though, I'm updating the software on them after which I'll have to re-create the images in order for them to stay up-to-date. (There were a LOT of software updates between yesterday when I left work and this morning.)

This is the current state of the images:

170 Desktop Image

During the boot and shutdown process on the imaged client, the screen is completely black(no progress bar). It works fine on the original "golden client". This is kind of annoying because the progress bar lets you know that everything's loading smoothly.

Any ideas?

210 Desktop Image

Haven't tried this one out yet...

1300 Laptop Image

I had to create a new Ghost boot disk for this one in order to be able to see the network; I just took the old disk and replaced the DOS drivers.
Needs to be booted to a Live CD in order to sudo dd if=laptop.mbr of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=61 it before it will boot to the new image. This is a pretty common issue when using Symantec Ghost 8.0 with Linux, and now that I understand it it's a pretty simple problem to fix. (Only needs to be done once per laptop.)

Other than that, smooth sailing on this one. I'll need to figure out how to connect to the wireless network BEFORE logging in if I'm ever going to get these to be able to authenticate against our Active Directory, but I'm not likely to have time to tackle that issue anytime soon if history is a guide.

Samba Weirdness

I'm overall satisfied with my first set of "standardized" images. They're very basic, nothing flashy, but so far the teachers haven't really gone beyond using the very basic apps that come with Ubuntu. Most important, though, is the fact that they give me a good foundation to work on and this time, since I'm keeping good documentation, I'll be able to duplicate my work even if my workstation gets wiped clean again.

I am kind of annoyed by one minor thing...

I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to define the "Domain" variable for when one tries to connect to the lockers. When one double-clicks on the "lockers" icon, one is prompted to enter one's username, domain, and password. The domain should ALWAYS be "MCCSC", but it always comes up as "WORKGROUP".

The "workgroup" variable in smb.conf doesn't affect this field, oddly enough.

I have this working correctly on my Edubuntu 5.10 image! The students don't need to worry about the "Domain" variable on those, because it's already set as "MCCSC"...I was just not bright enough to keep decent documentation of HOW I set it correctly...

Any ideas?

Image Standardization

2006-12-20T15:36:00.000-05:00

During the home stretch of this semester, I'm putting priority on creating a standard image that will work on all our hardware. Well, not exactly, I'm creating an abstract definition of what our images should be, I'll be applying that abstract definition to three actual images (based on hardware platform) to fill our needs.

The first step in the process was writing a well-documented definition of what exact changes need to be made to the base Ubuntu install in order to make it suitable for our needs

I then installed Ubuntu on each of the three different hardware platforms (Dell 170Ls, Dell 210Ls, and 10 Dell Inspiron 1300s), followed the script laid out by the definition, and boom: I have an image for each hardware type.

Getting the SystemImager Suite working has taken quite a bit longer than I expected, so we're still depending on Symantec Ghost 8.0--in Unicast mode--for all our imaging needs.

We now have what it takes to complete setting up the final classroom (which, for some reason that escapes my ken, has both 170s and 210s in it).

Since I have not gotten a working classroom management suite on the new image yet, the original four classroom teachers do not want to be upgraded to it yet.

Update

2006-12-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

Long time no post. Progress has been slow and I've been working some issues in my personal life so I haven't had much to report, but I figure I should offer some sort of update, in case someone actually misses me.

Work

I continue to work on getting the SystemImager suite to work here on an Ubuntu server that IS NOT the DHCP server for the network. Not complicated work: I try and then I tell their mailing list where and how it broke, they give me suggestions, lather, rinse, repeat. It is taking while, though I take comfort in the fact that after I get this working, I can contribute that back to the community and keep people like me from going through this in the future.

Once I get a decent imaging/update system in place, I'll be able to push any work I do on the images out to the workstations with minimal pain, and keep all the workstations consistent. At the moment I have 4 classrooms full of Edubuntu 5.10 machines that I tweaked a bit last school year and 5 with Ubuntu 6.10 that I haven't had much chance to tweak this year. I want to take the best of the work I put into the 5.10 machines and put that on a 6.10 image for every classroom.

I'm beginning to learn the utility of keeping good notes and documentation.

Silly

While playing around with Apache at home, I got quite the shock:

Ack! No! I didn't mean to!

Published

I was approached through flickr and asked if one of my photos could be used in a book by an independent publisher in Hong Kong. I was offered three copies of the book in exchange for permission to use my photo in the book. With no expectations, and in fact a little suspicion, I played along.

Today I received my three copies and found that my photo is the featured photo on the Miyajima Island section/spread:

Even though I can't find any information on the book online through Google besides the flickr pages, I have three beautiful copies of it. Pretty spiffy honor if you ask me!

BTW, the book's name is "Legends of the Dragon" ISBN 988-98899-6-X

That's it

One more week til Christmas Break!

Jorge Castro

2006-12-04T14:31:00.000-05:00

Jorge Castro has made me sad by saying goodbye to the community.

Jorge was one of the first people I met in this community, and I hope his exit is not final.

1:1 Classroom Progress

2006-11-21T12:55:00.000-05:00

Today, Steve and I finished putting the hardware together on the last of the Linux classrooms, just in time for me to test out a real live SystemImager install.

We've also received our 10 new laptops, Dell Inspiron 1300s, and my official verdict on those is that their screens are very dim. I'm not sure whether that's a driver thing or not, I'm going to have to look at one of them with the pre-installed operating system intact and see how dim it is that way. I've managed to get the screen resolution on Ubuntu to match the laptop screen's native resolution, so I've got a little progress done towards making a workable image on the laptops.

It's my understanding that laptops pose some interesting extra questions when it comes to getting Linux to run properly on them, hopefully I don't run into any of them as I figure out how to use the wireless adapter. Any information on how to accomplish that might be nice to have before I get started; please, if you have experience with this leave me a quick comment about it to help me out.

I'm currently ghosting a 210L with the 210L partition, I'll update it and pull a SystemImager image off of it and see what I can do about creating an autoinstall CD for systemimager to use on the 210Ls in Mr. Hayes's room. We'll get this working, yet, woohoo!

BTW, I'd like to thank my friend, a fellow from my LUG, David Ernst for helping me out with this SystemImager stuff, his invaluable experience and Linux savvy has saved me all kinds of headaches and "learning experiences" I might have otherwise had.

Which remind me, I should communicate with downtown about my mailing list mail being filtered as spam...

P.S. I was pleased to see Novell's CEO address some of my concerns, in an Open Letter to the Community from Novell:

In closing, we wish to be extremely clear that Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software. We recognize that the community of open source developers is essential to all our activities in Linux, and we welcome dialog with the community as to how we can continue to work together toward these common goals.

How to foster a community?

2006-11-19T20:30:00.000-05:00

Mike Huffman and I spoke, on the first day of HECC, about the need for a community to support the Indiana ACCESS High Schools, for both technical and non-technical users. I told him that in my experience the open source communities that I am a part of function primarily through mailing lists, and blogs, and IRC, and such online communication tools.

He thinks that a mailing list wouldn't work, or IRC, or blogs, because most of these people already get too much e-mail and don't want to learn how to use IRC or how to blog, and would just prefer a website they could go to.

We're trying to promote the use of http://www.schooltechperson.com, running Moodle, as a community focus.

Moodle has a lot of cool features, but megapixels don't make a community. How can these resources be used best to encourage the growth of a vibrant community around the 1:1 access initiative?

I think it's essential for the Indiana High Schools involved in the Indiana ACCESS project to interact with each other and connect with the real power behind Free Software, it's very backbone, Community.

Anyhow, I invite comments: What do you believe are the qualities of truly effective online communities? How can we encourage those qualities?

My school's gone to HECC...

2006-11-18T17:49:00.000-05:00

The Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators' Conference, that is.

Day Two, Friday, lots of fun!

The second session I went to was a talk about the i-SAFE Internet safety program. Pretty cool program, it's free (gratis, that is, by way of government funding), and aimed at various sectors of the populations though mostly geared towards schools. They provide curriculums, handouts, videos, presentations, and stuff to educate people about how to be safe on the internet. They have a program through which they encourage high school students to become i-SAFE Mentors to elementary school kids, which I think is great: involving the kids rather than talking at them.

Besides the school-oriented stuff, they have an i-PARENT program for parents, an i-SHIELD program for law enforcement officers, and even an i-FIFTY+ program for older people who are just now getting their first experience of the 'net.

It's reassuring to see someone see the dangerous side of the Internet and not just say "It's evil! Keeps kids away from it!" as that's about as effective as promoting abstinence as the only way of fighting HIV-AIDS. Honest and open education is the only effective way to empower people to make informed decisions and be safe in a frankly unsafe world.

Some interesting statistics: According to the i-SAFE guy 90% of parents think they have a pretty good idea of what their kids are doing online, while 60% of kids think their parents have NO IDEA what they do online. Think about that. Don't quote me on this, though, as I'm not notorious for my photographic memory.

While waiting for the session to start, I was approached by the Technology Director and Assistant of Canterbury School who are joining me in using Ubuntu in their 1:1 computing classrooms. Welcome to the community, Vern! I told him they absolutely HAD to join the Ubuntu and Education Community Mailing List, so I hope to see them both on there soon.

The third session I attended was a "Discussion of Web Filtering Practices" which, unfortunately, turned out to be a sales pitch even though it was not listed as a vendor session. The first ten or fifteen minutes were sort of unbiased, a discussion of why we might want to filter. Moot, though, since we would forfeit federal funding if we DIDN'T filter. The rest of the time was spent explaining why we should buy this particular vendor's filter.

Lunch followed, which was pretty good. Timothy Magner from the U.S. Department of Education talked about School 2.0, among a few other things. One thing that kind of bothered me--though it may just be that I misinterpreted him--was his repeated emphasis on the United States needing to be competitive against the rest of the world, especially India and China, whereas the way I see it we should be cooperative with the rest of the world.

We are one planet, stewards of the same Earth, aren't we?

The next talk I was at was on "Educational Blogging", Sandra Doran gave an introductory talk about blogging with her son John, who is a very animated and delightfully knowledgeable speaker. John even treated the audience to a demonstration on how to install Mozilla Firefox along with a couple of his favorite extensions. Way to fly the Free Software flag, John!

I was flattered and slightly flabbergasted to see my blog on Sandra's bloglines aggregator list screenshot. Noone ever comments on my blog, and Blogger doesn't keep track of how many hits I get, so I'm always a little surprised to learn I'm not just writing to myself.

Thanks for helping bring blogging to the education world, Sandra, I believe it's a very worthwhile tool (obviously).

The last presentation I saw was a run-through of some good Open Source Desktop Applications by Lance Woods, from the Southern Indiana Education Center, he went through several good applications and showed them off a little bit. I talked to him a little bit afterwards, and he's a very cool guy.

He was still running Breezy though, on his laptop; I suggested he update to Edgy. It was neat to see someone else running Ubuntu, though, so mad props for that!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators' Conference, Day 1

2006-11-16T16:52:00.000-05:00

Day 1 of the HECC Conference found me helping Mike Huffman and Forrest Gaston run their workshop where they had people install OpenSUSE 10.1 from a 5 CD set and showed off some of the programs that are available. Jeff Henderson, the principal at my high school, was there, though he had expected more emphasis on application usage where there really was a heavy emphasis on installation stuff.

Nothing incredibly exciting, just some basics for people who needed them.

I found that I could figure my way around OpenSUSE pretty well, but I disliked the way everything was set up by default. The icons on the desktop look cluttery, it's all single-clicking which means people (myself included, the first time) end up opening twice as many instances of everything, apparently if you let your mouse hover over an icon it runs, things like that; not irreparable, but annoying. I don't know whether that's KDE in general or just OpenSUSE, but blech!

I wore my Ubuntu shirt to the conference, and gave away the rest of my CDs and a bunch of brochures. I was a little wary about having lunch courtesy of Microsoft, though, in that attire. ;-) Microsoft is also sponsoring some big casino event with prizes and gifts and all kinds of stuff for the HECC attendees tonight...no thanks...

Mike Huffman showed optimism that the Microsoft-Novell deal will be useful to the community. I expressed my skepticism, but he seems convinced. I hope he's right; Novell has done a lot of good for us in the past, it's certainly possible.

Overall it was an interesting day...AND I got a shiny new toy out of the deal!

Round two tomorrow!

Productive Day

2006-11-15T15:42:00.000-05:00

A fellow BLUG member, being contracted by our IS people, came and helped me beat my head against the wall that so far has been SystemImager for me. We broke down or climbed over or walked around quite a few walls that would have stopped me flat, otherwise. Not everything's taken care of yet, but progress is progress!

For the next two days I'll be at the HECC conference in Indianapolis, woo hoo!

One Reason I like the Open Source Community...

2006-11-14T13:09:00.000-05:00

The Scene:

Someone asks a question on a mailing-list I subscribe to. I answer it. I get the response:

yep.

thanks a lot.

thats what i did and it works lika a champ!

Java now under the GPL

2006-11-13T11:48:00.000-05:00

Yeah, very exciting stuff! (If you're a geek like me, at least)

This move by such a HUGE name in computing will hopefully prompt other big players to take a second look at Freedom as an option.

Brain Rest. - Novell Conclusion

2006-11-10T09:31:00.000-05:00

Besides keeping up with e-mail and such, I'm going to give my brain a rest today and tidy up a bit around the workplace, as it could use to look a little more orderly.

Regarding the Novell-Microsoft announcement, I think Mark Shuttleworth put it rather succinctly and lucidly at (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/10/shuttleworth_oracle/):

And on Microsoft?

"Fundamentally, I think Microsoft is making an intellectual property play. The second thing is 'follow the money.' We see $240m from Microsoft and $40m back from Novell.

"I am sure that Novell just got paid $200m to be on that stage, and Microsoft is going to expect a return on their investment. And not from Novell.

"They are looking to establish, I believe, a framework which gives them a revenue base regardless of the OS.

"We haven't seen the details of the deal. Novell hasn't seen the real plan. The industry is littered with companies that have fought with Microsoft, then went to Microsoft as a cowered partner to do some small deal and then just got axed. Palm, Sybase and, um, Novell." ®

Novell and Microsoft, Part 4

2006-11-09T12:40:00.000-05:00

Yesterday evening, Ted Haeger released his latest Novell Open Audio podcast in which he puts some of the community's questions to the Novell CEO and General Counsel.

All the work that will be done between Novell and Microsoft will be for the use of Novell and Microsoft, none of that code will be given back to the community.

The GPL issue was addressed, and it seems that, since the GPL governs copying, distribution, and modification of software and not its use, and since Microsoft is making this covenant not to sue with Novell's customers and developers, that they're sidestepping the issue by simply allowing Microsoft to threaten to sue anyone who doesn't use Novell Linux.

Ron speaks of "Linux" and "community", when I find no compelling reason to believe he means anything besides "Novell SuSE Linux" and "Novell customers". Correct me if I'm wrong (Please!), but when he speaks of spreading Linux, he's speaking of spreading it as a vehicle for Novell proprietary code that's designed to lock customers into using Novell as a vendor (who is now paying royalties to Microsoft).

While denying quietly on one FAQ aimed at the community that Linux uses Microsoft patented Intellectual Property, it lets Microsoft claim loudly and publically everywhere it can that it does with impunity, which is tantamount to condoning the claim as far as I can see.

Why shouldn't this be interpreted as Novell collaborating with Microsoft in its attempt to fear everyone into using Novell's SuSE Linux, in exchange for royalties? I don't know, Novell has not addressed that.

How is this anything but monopoly-seeking maneuvering? I don't know, Novell has not addressed that.

How is this in the spirit of the Open Source community from which you draw the vast majority of your product? How are you giving anything back to us through this deal? I don't know, Novell has not addressed that.

Prove me wrong, Novell, speak to the Linux community (we are much more numerous than just your customers) and convince us why we shouldn't see you as traitors. You've yet to address us, and you owe us at least that much.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm losing patience with the word play. Either explain yourselves, or admit treason.

Novell and Microsoft, Part 3

2006-11-08T10:15:00.000-05:00

I'm still confused as to the actual specifics.

Microsoft claims that a covenant not to sue (based on the idea that anyone who uses Linux is infringing on Microsofts patents) was a big part of the agreement, but Novell claims that this is in no way a part of their agreement. In the webcast, though, they seem to stress the importance of this patent issue.

The distributors of other versions of Linux cannot assure their customers that Microsoft won't sue for patent infringement. "If a customer says, 'Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work?' Essentially, If you're using non-SUSE Linux, then I'd say the answer is yes," Ballmer said. [http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2050848,00.asp]

Right...

Does Linux infringe on Microsoft Intellectual Property Rights? Microsoft: <shout>YES!!!</shout>. Novell: <whisper>...no...</whisper>.

Novell, why don't you voice your opinion on this HALF as loudly as your new partners??? Why are you allowing them to say it in such a way as to imply your belief of it?

The only thing that's clear to me is that Microsoft, no longer able to ignore Linux's steady creep onto the Desktop, is now trying to figure out how to profit from it through Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. By saying they won't sue anyone using SuSE, they're creating the mirage that they can sue you for using Linux, and that the only legaly safe Linux brand now is Novell.

Does this matter to people who are already using Linux? Not really as far as I can tell, except it seems to be pushing people like us away from Novell and SuSE, overall.

Is this going to matter to people who aren't yet using Linux? Of course, fear is a proven effective way of influencing markets. Novell and Microsoft both benefit from the illusion.

Where is the money? You got it, with the millions of Microsoft customers who have yet to pick a version of Linux to use. Microsoft sees that Linux is reaching the point where anyone can switch to Linux pretty easily, so instead of fighting it they're picking one distro, making sure they get paid for it, and marketing it exclusively (not to mention spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about anything else). As far as that goes, this will help both Microsoft and Novell.

Will it work? I don't know, but there's a LOT of money behind it, not to mention a monopoly's resources. We'll have to see. The fact is, this couldn't work in a world where Microsoft had already lost their monopoly so they had to jump on this strategy now, before it became completely moot.

Will it help the Linux community? I can't honestly say I see this helping anyone in Linux besides Novell (assuming it can survive a partnership with Microsoft, an unprecedented assumption). All of the work Microsoft will be doing as far as "Linux" inter-operability is actually "Novell" interoperability, as far as I can see. It's obviously in Novell's favor to say this will help us all, but I just really don't see it.

Who cares that Microsoft has made a covenant not to sue SuSE customers or developers working code into SuSE? Microsoft and Novell do, they're the ones making money both off the sales of SuSE, and off the idea that SuSE is the only safe Linux. So does everyone they can dupe into believing their illusion.

Who cares that Microsoft has made a covenant not to sue non-commercial developers? No one, this is more worthless FUD as far as I can tell.

Is it time to ditch Novell? I don't know. We'll have to see if they really ditched us. I'm moved to give them the benefit of the doubt because they HAVE done so much work for the Linux world so far. However, they've yet to clearly communicate with us what this means to the community, so I'm certainly wary.

Doesn't Novell know that a lot of its customers are using them on principle to avoid giving money to Microsoft? How betrayed would you feel? I'm glad I'm not invested in using Novell the way a lot of their disgusted customers are.

A comment I left on Ted Haeger's blog post about the Microsoft/Novell deal. Leaving Ted a comment is likely the best way to get your question addressed by Novell from a community standpoint:

Hi Ted!

You may remember chatting with me at the Ohio LinuxFest After-Party, I’m the guy involved in Indiana ACCESS that uses Ubuntu.

I just want to say that until proven otherwise, I’ll still respect Novell.

Innocent ’til proven Guilty.

Regardless of the big, flashy explosion of this news (that we’re all understandably wary of), Novell has contributed a lot to the Free Software community and we shouldn’t forget that.

In fact, you’ve sent several people to the Ubuntu Developer’s Summit happening now at the Googleplex, which I applaud.

Now, Microsoft is using this as a way of propagating their FUD, but that’s to be expected of ANY move Microsoft makes.

What we need to know is your story.

I’m patient to hear from you what Novell thinks it’s doing, and what all implications this will have for our community before making any judgements.

I put more stock in your word than any FAQ or press release.

Also, I would consider it a huge faux pas for Novell not to release the full text of all involved documents. We as a community have plenty of our own legal geeks to interpret it, and we would trust them more than any Novell legal geek interpretation on this one.

If you’re really a part of the Open Source community, then there is nothing to hide, right?

To All Citizens of the United States of America:

2006-11-07T15:53:00.000-05:00

I voted, have you?

Imaging System - Can One Image work for Two Different Model Workstations?

2006-11-06T11:41:00.000-05:00

Okay,

So I used Norton Ghost to blast an Ubuntu 6.10 image created on a 170L (IDE hard disk) over to both a 170L and a 210L (SATA hard disk).

After the image was installed both machines had GRUB failures on reboot (this makes sense, since Ghost does not mess with the MBR), so I had to use GRUB to fix them (actually for some reason on the 210L grub did not recognize /dev/sda as (hd0,0), so I had to dd the first 61 512b sectors of the 170L's /dev/hda onto the 210's /dev/sda which did basically what I wanted.

The 170L booted up fine after that (except that the UPSTART screen did not display during the boot process, hmmmmm...), and now I'm going to experiment to see if I can get updateclient to work from the hard disk.

The 210L did not boot up fine, first it showed a usplash screen (6.10 should be using UPSTART) which was frozen, and after a while it dropped to a BusyBox prompt.

I'm going to experiment now to see if /etc/fstab might be responsible for this, and if maybe I can write it to be a little more forgiving...

Novell and Microsoft, Part 2

2006-11-03T18:24:00.000-05:00

Now that I've had a chance to digest.

Curious how as soon as Novell is about to make its product incredibly interoperable with Windows, Windows decides to help out. This will give Microsoft royalty payment for every Novell installation, and Novell a sure shot into every Microsoft Shop that's looking at deploying some cheaper workstations.

Here's the rub: we don't need Microsoft's "help". I'm working right now on a Launchpad team to make this interoperability happen on Ubuntu, with Free Software--as in beer, as in speech. And Novell already made a proprietary version of what we're working on now.

This deal has FUD written all over it. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, it means: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Microsoft is using this deal to tell a story, written explicitly in the paragraph I quoted in my earlier blog post:

As part of the agreement, Microsoft said it would not file patent infringement suits against customers who purchase Novell’s SuSE Linux.

The story is: Using a computer is dangerous if you don't pay us. If you're GOING to use Linux use Novell so we get a royalty, or you'll live in fear of lawsuits.

Well, sorry Microsoft, we're not eating your FUD. If you're going to compete with Linux, at least try to compete on quality; this desperate attempt at holding onto your monopoly through fear is only a clear signal that you've recognized the Penguin Army amassing.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate Microsoft. I use Windows XP and am in fact using it as I type. I'll likely use it as long as there are so many apps written for it, since I like Adobe products and modern games. I'll pay for a license in order to be able to use them.

But, frankly I wish they'd spend more time on improving their product, and less time devising ways to keep their monopoly as that's what got me into Free Software in the first place: it's made for quality, not revenue generation. The money is in the service and support, not the bits and bytes.

Novell and Microsoft, huh?

2006-11-03T13:45:00.000-05:00

As I walked in all bleary-eyed this morning I check my e-mail to find the following link from my mom (she sends me things she thinks I might find interesting): 2 Giants in a Deal Over Linux

Later, I saw a few more things about this, including Novell's Official FAQ about it. I guess it wasn't just my sleepiness that made it sound weird: Microsoft is now in the Linux business.

I respect Novell for all the work they've contributed upstream. I'm concerned that they're making a bad decision for themselves; Microsoft doesn't make partnerships to help out its customers, AFAIK, it makes partnerships to help itself out.

I'm also just a little concerned about what it all means for the wider Linux ecosystem, and I'm not particularly optimistic about it to be honest. For instance, what the hell does "As part of the agreement, Microsoft said it would not file patent infringement suits against customers who purchase Novell’s SuSE Linux" mean? Language like that makes it clear that Microsoft is not any friendlier to Open Source than it ever was.

On the short-scale, short-term side of things, I'm going to make a prediction about what it means for me: Our corporate IS people are going to want us to switch back to Novell.

*sigh* We'll see what all happens...

CINLUG Meeting on the 1st

2006-11-03T10:33:00.000-05:00

I didn't post yesterday cause I wanted to put some photos on my blog, for once.

This is me during my 5-minute address on behalf of Ubuntu and Canonical.

The CINLUG Meeting went very well.

I don't believe Mike Huffman's talk was directed at me, as I'm in the choir, but hopefully it was effective in informing those people who were there who were not the choir.

I succeeded in generating some interest in Ubuntu, and the Ubuntu and Education community. Although I only had 5 minutes up in front of people, I did get people to approach me personally. Which is good, because I kept thinking "Oh! I should have mentioned this! I should have mentioned THAT!".

I think I'm much better one on one in meandering conversation than up on stage with a time limit.

I got to meet Spencer, who is my counterpart over at...Greensburg? (Ack! Memory Failure!) Anyhow, Spencer is my counterpart at the other school in the state that doesn't use Novell; he uses Red Hat.

I emphasized the need to become involved in the community in order to really get the power of Open Source Software, and hope he'll be joining the Bloomington Linux Users' Group and/or the Central Indiana Linux Users' Group. I told him that physical proximity is not a prerequisite, mentioning that I'm a founding member of the Venezuelan Fraternity of Ubuntu Users even though I'm far from home right now.

Welcome to the community, Spencer!

This is Mike Huffman checking out the Ubuntu swag. Photo Op!

Random Updates

2006-11-01T12:06:00.000-05:00

CINLUG Meeting Tonight

I will be giving a short 5-minute spiel on Ubuntu at the CINLUG meeting tonight on behalf of Canonical/Ubuntu. 5 minutes is a short time to introduce such a massive topic, but I'll do my best.

Ghost Issues

This has been a great excuse for me to jump into SystemImager and see if I can figure it out. So far, I've been able to create an image, but had no luck autoinstalling it. Any SystemImager gurus out there?

Network Management Stuff

On top of SystemImager, I've got to think about how am I going to manage all kinds of stuff on the network (updates, desktops, printers, classroom management, etc.) and I've been getting headaches. I've decided to just tackle one issue at a time, so I'm going to concentrate on understanding SystemImager.

In the meantime, I'd like to gather as much information about the stuff I'm sort of forcedly trying not to think about so that when I have the time to think about it I'll have some good resources. In that spirit, I've shot off an e-mail or two asking people who're in similar situations as me what sort of systems they're using to manage their networks.

If you're reading this and can offer me some advice, please do so.

Beryl on Edgy

I read the official Beryl Project Ubuntu Edgy Installation instructions here, and they aren't kidding: It's simple.

You can get it up and running without jumping into a config file or command line at all! Just use the graphical equivalent commands in Synaptic when they say to do certain things like "edit /etc/apt/sources.list" or "apt-get ...". Of course they document it as modifying text files and dropping to command lines because it's simpler to explain it that way...

Well, that's all I can think of for now, I hope you're all doing well!

Ubuntu-Directory

2006-10-27T14:17:00.000-04:00

My last post's grand gesture was neatly shot down by Jorge Castro (as it should have been, thank you Jorge).

It seems there is a newly created Launchpad team just for that at https://features.launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-directory

Cool, and now I get a chance to learn how to use The Launchpad. I've had an account for a while now, I needed one to order CDs through shipit, and I've been wondering what other cool stuff it'd be useful for...

Ubuntu / Active Directory Integration Call to Arms!

2006-10-27T12:11:00.000-04:00

The following was sent out in an open e-mail (open because I'm posting it here too, hoping anyone else might be interested):

Good day. I hope this finds you in the midst of a beautiful day!

I thought I'd start a discussion about Ubuntu/Active Directory Integration and copy several people who I think would be interested in this. If you are not interested, please excuse my rude intrusion and let me know.

I suggest we can have this discussion using "Reply All" to make a short-lived "mailing list" type entity. If anyone thinks this would be more appropriately discussed in a different fashion please let me know, I'm new to this whole Open Source community dynamic thing.

This e-mail is an open e-mail, and I am going to post this to my blog hoping other people would be interested in joining this discussion.

My name is Sim♀n Anibal Ruiz Rolfs, and I have called this Round Table together for purely selfish reasons. I need Active Directory Integration to be a simple part of Ubuntu, so I want you all to help me make that happen...well, that and it would help Ubuntu immensely as far as being a viable alternative as a workstation in previously homogenous Microsoft environments, which is a fair description of most big IT shops in the United States. Ubuntu has to play nice with the locals if it's going to even be considered.

I don't know if there is a project out there for addressing this as a whole already, or not. If not, it needs to be created and I'm willing to do whatever I can to make that happen.

I'm the Technology Assistant at Bloomington High School North, and I blog about my work on (http://indianalinux.blogspot.com). I'm also an active member of the Bloomington Linux User's Group (http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org and #bloomingtonlinux on freenode), Venezuela's Fraternity of Ubuntu Users (http://www.ubuntu.org.ve and #ubuntu on irc-hispano) (oh, btw, I am Venezuelan by birth and a dual citizen of Venezuela and the United States), and Ubuntu's new "Ubuntu and Education" community (https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-education and #ubuntu-education on freenode), among other things.

Steve Cole is my boss, so I copy him on this sort of stuff to fool him into thinking I work from time to time.

Nathan Lavender is the main Active Directory guru for our corporate IS department that serves our entire school corporation. I'm copying him in case he'd be interested in participating in this discussion, though I understand he's been tasked with no time to help out with any of this so if he does join the discussion it will be out of the kindness of his heart and on his own personal time. I apologize if you're not interested, Nathan, but I thought I'd give you a chance to participate if you want; I understand if you simply don't have time for this, but I think the perspective of a Microsoft System Administrator of your caliber would be invaluable to this discussion, and I figure you might be interested in having some sway in what decisions I make here at North since they'll probably affect you somehow.

Jorge Castro is the man I saw give a presentation on Active Directory integration and Ubuntu at the Ohio LinuxFest last month. He writes a blog at (http://www.whiprush.org). I know from talking to him that he's got quite a bit of clue about Kerberos and LDAP and also about some network management sysadmin tools that I think are pretty essential to Active Directory integration in large organizations: sabayon and lockdown. I warned him I would bug him to suck his brain on these topics and so far have not had the time to do so. As our deployment phase enters the home stretch, I've come back to fulfill my threat.

Clay Berlo had the misfortune of showing up on my radar by writing "I managed to get winbind authentication to work and can login members of an Active Directory setup with automatically created home directories (which works rather nicely, I might add)" on one of the edubuntu mailing lists which gives him cred in my book.

He went on to ask about pam_mount to mount Windows shares on login, and I'll mention that what I envision as my first attempt to address that (because we have Samba share lockers too) is to use mount.cifs to mount the entire Student Lockers share to /usr/lockers, and then make a symlink from ~/locker to the current user's actual locker. (Any thoughts on this strategy?) I believe most Active Directory deployments use Samba shared lockers in this manner, though I have no proof of this I'd be surprised if it didn't turn out to be true.

Robin Shepard had the misfortune of catching my attention by writing "I was wondering whether anyone has attempted to get Edubuntu to authenticate users with a windows domain as yet??" on an edubuntu mailing list which means two things to me: first that interest in this exists in places other than the U.S., and secondly that in the time since that post Robin may have made some progress to share with us. If not, then the perspective of someone who wants this without knowing too many technical details would certainly be welcomed and appreciated.

Richard Weideman had the misfortune of actually having me catch his attention. He is the Education Programs Manager over at Canonical, and the primary figure in our new "Ubuntu and Education" community. I've let him know how important this functionality will be to Ubuntu being acceptable in the education system here in the States so I figure he'll be interested in this. Rich, if you can think of anyone else either at Canonical or in the Ubuntu community at large who needs to be in on this I trust you to include them.

So, introductions aside, here's the first main question: Is this a good medium for this discussion? Some of you with better community engineering skills please advise on this.

Secondly: Is there a project out there for this already? If so, WHERE?!?!?! If not, can we start one?

Thirdly, and this is where Nathan comes in if he can: Is there anything beyond LDAP and Kerberos that you think would be good to set up on the Linux workstations from the Microsoft System Administrator's side of things in order to really integrate Ubuntu with Active Directory?

Discuss.

And again, please Reply All.

Sim♀n

Ubuntu Presentation ONLINE!

2006-10-25T02:07:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Tom Hoffman, who I'm actually just now finding out as I write this is the project manager for SchoolTool on top of writing a damned good blog (or two) that you (who are spending time reading my blog) might be interested in, the beginner-oriented Ubuntu presentation I did for the BLUG is now available online!.

Just point your browser on over to:

http://hog.tuttlesvc.org/video/presentation.mov

I'm excited that Tom took my request seriously and is helping me bring this presentation to a wider audience than I had success attracting in person.

Please check it out, I welcome comments!

Ubuntu Presentation Video Hosting Call

2006-10-24T13:27:00.000-04:00

I have a .mov compressed version of my Ubuntu Presentation put together, annoying in that you can't really make out any detail on the screen the way you can on the DVD but then what can I expect?

Anyhow, our downtown IS people wouldn not be too happy if I put it up on my webspace and advertised it. SO, would anyone be interested enough in this to donate bandwidth by hosting a 69,669,268 byte video file for me? *bats eyelashes* Please?

I looked at YouTube and got all the way up to "Upload a New Video" when I found out that they limit videos to ten minutes. Not good enough.

Confirmation

2006-10-24T12:50:00.000-04:00

Downtown did change a setting in the switches. They turned on IGMP filtering.

Apparently, this year when we've used Ghostcasting, it has created problems. I quote, "During the Ghost multicast, all ports on every switch I looked at ran a sustained 100% utilization."

They were told that IGMP filtering "would solve the problem by allowing multicast to intended targets and protect the rest of the network." Though the gentleman I'm quoting also mentioned that when he contact Hewlett Packard, "They asked explicitly about Ghost. Apparently, they've had quite a bit of trouble with it due to Norton's non-standard implementation of multicast."

They say: There are a couple of options. 1) configure the Ghost server / client relationship to run in unicast. I'm told Ghost Server has 3 options -- unicast, broadcast, and multicast. Or 2) I can remove IGMP filtering in the 600 wing "one-to-one" switches. Option 2 requires that server and clients run within these 5 switches. Anything more will require research, test, and implementation time and I'll need a clearance for that kind of investment.

Reverting to Unicasting doesn't seem a particularly appealing solution, and there are several reasons option 2 wouldn't work including the fact that a) not all the clients are on those switches and b) the server software only runs on Windows, and no Windows computers are located on those switches.

Until this is resolved, we've been effectively hobbled as far as rolling out the classrooms...

Incidentally, this situation is simply one more symptom of a greater problem of lack of communication that desperately needs to be addressed, and soon.

Ghost Test Results

2006-10-19T12:03:00.000-04:00

Ghost Unicast Tests

Unicast to new classroom, English pod: Success
Unicast to old classroom, English pod: Success
Unicast to computer in my office: Success

Ghost Multicast Tests

Multicast to new classroom, English pod: FAILURE
Multicast to old classroom, English pod: FAILURE
Multicast to computer in my office: Success

Conclusion

Although neither the server or the client circumstances have changed, Multicasting to the English pod is now not possible. A setting has been changed in some network hardware between the server computer and the English Pod client computers that does not affect Unicasting (the client computers can see the network and can see the server computer), but thwarts any attempt at Multicasting (the server computer starts sending out the multicast packets, but the clients never receive them).

Someone from our corporate IS department has been playing with our network hardware without talking to us about it, and they've done it since.

ACK! NETWORK PROBLEMS!

2006-10-18T11:25:00.000-04:00

So, the last period of the day, yesterday, I spent connecting the aforementioned second-to-last classroom up to a GhostCast session (Symantec Ghost 8.0 is what we use to image the workstations) and was having very strange problems.

First of all, the NIC link lights were all flickering the way they should, network connectivity was there. However, every other time I tried to connect to the GhostCast server it said it couldn't find the session, and to check the server to make sure it was ready to accept clients. Grrrrrrr. Drop to the A:/> prompt, autoexec, and run it again and Bam!, it would work fine this time. (Sometimes I had to drop to the A:/> prompt several times to get it to work, but it would eventually work)

I have NEVER had problems connecting to the server before, so I was a bit wary. When I tried to run the session it claimed to be in progress, but no information was being sent. I left it overnight and this morning it has simply crapped out with an error (GhostCode 19922) that might mean the wrong NIC drivers (no), might mean that the client has 2 NICs (no), that the server has more than one IP address (no), or that the file has permissions issues (no).

It's my impression that this error code is one of those vague errors that could be just about anything. It's my impression that the problem is a network switch in there. I can run Ghost fine anywhere else. I found, this morning as I've been troubleshooting to figure out what the problem really is, that when I'm imaging a machine outside of the English pod, it goes at 400 MB/s or more!

I just self-censored a lot of not-very-constructive chatter that would have gone here.

*grumble*

Some news

2006-10-17T12:56:00.000-04:00

First of all, I'm working on getting the video of my Ubuntu presentation into a shareable format. After slapping iMovie around for a bit, I think I've convinced it to do what I want it to do, though it still thinks it's funny to crash on me randomly. More on that when I've made more progress.
I've put some of my administrative documentation up online from the older Edubuntu 5.10 image. You might get a kick out of the very convulted imaging system I concocted last year.
I'm hoping to get that second-to-last classroom imaged today. I was planning on doing it yesterday so they'd have use of them today, but our corporate IS department wanted me to shut all the Linux computers down at the end of school and leave them shut down until 8 this morning to rule out the Linux computers as the cause of some network errors.
I've been approached by the new Education Programme Manager at Canonical, lead sponsor of Ubuntu, as a more of less direct result of starting to do this blog. Wow.

Canonical is looking at restructuring the Edubuntu brand to make it make more sense, and part of this restructuring is creating an "Ubuntu in Education" community which I'm very excited about participating in.

Another cool thing (well, I think it's cool, anyhow) to come out of this communication is that I've been asked to represent Canonical at the next CINLUG meeting, where Mike Huffman--the man responsible for the Indiana ACCESS program--will be speaking. Canonical is one of the sponsors of the meeting, has five minutes of talk time as a result, and they'd like for me to talk on their behalf.

That's all I can think of right now!

Four down, one to go!

2006-10-13T13:15:00.000-04:00

We've gotten all but one classroom put together now, though in the last classroom we put together more than half of the computers couldn't see the network.

We've engaged the corporate IS department people in fixing that.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

2006-10-13T12:34:00.000-04:00

So, the teacher workstations were booting up to 640x400 resolution.

We had this problem last year, and we knew it's related to the teacher workstations being connected to a really long vga cable to the ceiling-mounted LCD projectors.

I figured out how to convince X.org to stop trying to be so helpful (It was probing the cable, noticing the loss of signal from the really long cable, and choosing an appropriate resolution based on that information).

I give you a chunk of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "DELL 1505FP"
    Option        "DPMS"
    HorizSynch    30-61
    VertRefresh   56-76
EndSection

Notice the bolded entries, they keep X.org from autodetecting those settings and thus fixes the issue we had...I'm sure you don't care, but I was enlightened. It only took me a little less than a year to figure it out.

The BLUG Ubuntu Meeting - Decompression

2006-10-11T00:15:00.000-04:00

So my gimmick was that I walked my fiancee through the whole thing, I was supposed to never touch the keyboard and mouse, but I did once :-(, though I don't think my lapse of integrity really affected the overall impact of the presentation.

It was a successful meeting, indeed, and my presentation went off without a hitch. 8 people showed up, and three were family of mine, but I think I succesfully convinced most of the people there that Ubuntu is good.

There was one person who showed up who I'd never met before that kept me on track by asking lots of appropriate questions. It would have been great to have more questions, though, cause I missed a few things.

I missed some of the things on my outline--which sucks--and I can't believe I lost my composure (and resolve not to grab the keyboard or mouse) over the brightness and contrast levels in MPlayer. That said, it was a resounding success even considering how few people actually benefitted from it. I'll be an optimist and say that it contributed to the intimacy of the room.

I did tape it, though, and now I have to wonder what the best way of sharing this over the internet is, so that maybe it can benefit more people out there.

Would there be an audience for something like this?

Progress

2006-10-10T11:02:00.000-04:00

We have three classrooms set up and plugged in (I've only got to go through and rename 5 computers). I'm pretty excited to see how the teachers will use these tools at the students' fingertips. We've got the whole gamut of teachers, from those who I know will barely use them and only so the students can type assignments to those who I anticipate will come up with creative and useful ways to push the envelope.

When we get all 5 labs up and running with this sort of "mostly useful" image, I'll be able to work on hacking together a comprehensive network management system, and having our workstations interoperate with the Microsoft network more seamlessly.

Some tools I'm thinking I'll have to figure out are Samba, LDAP, Kerberos, SystemImager, Sabayon, and Lockdown, and of course I'll need to learn more about GNOME (I've already warned Jorge Castro I'm going to bug him about this if/when I get the time to breathe).

I'm also pretty excited (and sometimes nervous, I'll be honest) about the Ubuntu presentation I'm giving for my LUG. I may be able to post video of that in case anyone is interested, I'm going to tape it.

The BLUG Ubuntu Meeting

2006-10-08T20:22:00.000-04:00

So, on Tuesday at 7:00 at the Monroe County Public Library, I'll be giving an Ubuntu presentation for the Bloomington Linux Users Group.

I've also tried to do a little advertising to get people who would normally never consider showing up to a BLUG meeting to show up.

So far my plans are as follows:

First of all, I'm going to limit my interaction with the computer to explaining to my fiancee--who has no previous Linux experience--how to do stuff. I will not at any time physically touch the keyboard or mouse (except during set up and tear down).

First we'll boot the computer to the default PC operating system and show the cool stuff the Ubuntu CD has that can be installed on said default operating system, for those who'd rather take baby steps. I'll also point out the "YOUR COMPUTER MAY BE AT RISK!" red alert balloon that must be appeased on that operating system, lest horrible things befall ye.

Then I'll have her reset the computer to phase two: The Live CD. (Should I make it so she has to go into the BIOS to change the boot order???)

I'll simply point out here the import things about Live CDs: that we're running the actual Operating System off the disc, and that we can play around with this all we want without making a single change to the hard disc.

I'll probably show off the Ubuntu video with Nelson Mandela that's in the Examples, as well as the excerpt of "The Official Ubuntu Book" (of which, of course, I'll have a copy on hand), maybe note that out of the box, Ubuntu doesn't support proprietary media formats. (I can't decide whether to do this before or after the actual installation.)

Then I'll run her through the installation proceedure, and demonstrate how to install it side-by-side with the existing operating system.

During the long waiting periods I'll do some question and answer stuff, assuming people have questions. Maybe I'll just have to find something to talk about if they don't.

Then we'll reboot to the new Ubuntu partition and talk about the interface, and included programs. Maybe have some Office files to open in OpenOffice.org. Maybe how to set up Evolution (I'd personall download Thunderbird, but I figure since it's what comes with Ubuntu, it should be what I demonstrate).

What else do you think people will want to see on the default ?

I'll demonstrate how to install programs, both with and without Synaptic.

I'll show Automatix here, and then play a few proprietary format media files to demonstrate that it works (should probably demonstrate before-hand that they don't).

I'm also going to demonstrate how it reacts to plugging in an iPod, and a digital camera.

I may be able to demonstrate the installation and use of compiz or beryl. Oooh, glittery eye candy.

Here I'm way open to suggestions about: If you had never seen Linux in action, what would you want to see? Let me know!

I'll also be open to suggestions as late as during the presentation, but :) the more prepared I am the better, I'd think.

The whole "show" is going to be more-or-less improv though, anyhow, since there's no way I can rehearse with Sarah how to do everything before-hand and have the "no previous Linux experience" gimmick be real.

I'm thinking about taping the whole thing, as well.

Ubuntu Presentation Next Tueday

2006-10-05T10:56:00.000-04:00

I forgot to mention no more viruses, adware, or spyware. I'll incorporate that before I get permission to send this out to our parents/community mailing list. This is what I sent out on our faculty-staff mailing list here at Bloomington High School North:

Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings - Invitation

Perhaps you've heard of Ubuntu.

From South Africa to 9 classrooms at Bloomington North, the Ubuntu community has been bringing the world of Free Software to normal, everyday people everywhere.

Bloomington North's own Technology Assistant, Simón A. Ruiz, will be hosting a demonstration and question & answer session this coming Tuesday, October 10th at 7:00 pm in room 1B at the Monroe County Public Library about Ubuntu.

The demonstration part of the evening will feature a very special guest with absolutely no previous Linux experience being walked through the installation process.

Please come by and take a peek at the future of computing.

If you're interested in coming, please contact Simón at sruiz@mccsc.edu so he can have some CDs available for you to take home with you, absolutely free of charge.

So, what is Ubuntu? Read on...

Ubuntu: Linux for Human Being

Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!

The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.

These freedoms make Ubuntu fundamentally different from traditional proprietary software: not only are the tools you need available free of charge, you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.

Ubuntu includes more than 16,000 pieces of software, but the core desktop installation fits on a single CD. Ubuntu covers every standard desktop application from word processing and spreadsheet applications to web server software and programming tools.

http://www.ubuntu.com

Swamped here at work

2006-10-05T08:29:00.000-04:00

We're putting the five new classrooms together now, physically, and it's taking up most of our time.

Yesterday we finished the first classroom that's been put together and imaged with Ubuntu 6.10, Mark Helmsing. I'm excited to see what Mark does with it, as he's the one teacher that really integrates technology tools into his class already, without having a 1:1 computing environment.

He was the first major user when I set up a small Moodle box, and he basically single-handedly drove its turning into the beefy rack-mounted system our Corporate IS department cares for downtown, which is now available from outside our corporation firewall. He's still the main user of it today.

When I'm not putting computers together, I'm running around fixing things and doing tech support. So I'll be posting more interesting stuff when I get a chance to sit down and actually have some time to work on the design of our workstations.

In the meantime, Jorge Castro mentioned my blog (WooHoo!), and some Ohio LinuxFest people who found me through him decided that I should do a presentation on what I've been doing here next year.

Wow!

I even got the following e-mail from Jon "maddog" Hall, encouraging me to just go for it:

Simon,

> I just don't know, off the top of my head, what I could talk about that
> would be worthwhile.

I hear this over and over again, from people who have done fantastic things.

I heard it from the guy in St. Petersburg, Russia who was using Linux to run his
Steam Turbine Testing lab.  I encouraged him to write an article, and it made it to
the front page of the Linux Journal.

For some reason people seem to think that no one would care to listen to what they
did....too bad, since case studies (people talking about what they did) are the
number one selling tool in computer science.

I agree with Greg....go for it.

md

I'm going to.

Also, in Jorge's post, he seems to allude that maybe I should not move away from Edubuntu just because it doesn't provide us--in our particular current situation--anything except a few cool educational games. (Forgive me if I read something into nothing.)

In our particular current situation, the boxes are in English classrooms, and they're used mostly for web browsing (Like our Moodle) and word processing/presentations, anything extra on the desktop is just a game as far as the teachers are concerned.

What do you think?

I'm still subscribed to the edubuntu-devel list, and *almost* all the activity surrounds LTSP deployment, which is why I didn't figure it made much difference if we used Ubuntu or Edubuntu, I can always switch to Edubuntu at some future date if our situation changes so that Edubuntu can offer us something special, and we can actively contribute to that community.

Should I just keep the school on Edubuntu, simply because we're using Ubuntu in an educational setting, on the off chance that someday the program will spill over into non-English areas of the school?

Make yourself heard in the comments!

The man is an idiot...

2006-10-03T08:08:00.000-04:00

So I asked people to post comments, but had comments enabled for "team members only".

D'oh!

Thanks for letting me know!

Ohio LinuxFest Rocked

2006-10-02T14:42:00.000-04:00

I went to Ohio LinuxFest over the weekend and it was great! (Please leave a comment if you went, so I know you're out there.)

I'd write more, but I'm in rush mode trying to get a working Ghost image to use in setting up our 5 new classrooms.

I would have preferred to be able to take the time to understand what I'm doing enough to make an elegant solution off the bat, but we need something and we need it fast.

I hope to get this done soon, so I can work on the real next image.

Take care!

Some background information.

2006-09-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

Bloomington High School North was approached by the State last year and offered an Indiana ACCESS grant in order to outfit 4 English classrooms with computers to be powered by Linux. They paid for the computers and the desks, and we paid to wire the classrooms with electricity and data. For the last half of last year, then, we had 4 classrooms equipped with computers.

The teachers were impressed enough with it that they banded together and submitted a grant proposal to the same program and we're in the middle, right now, of being outfitted with another 5 classrooms, bringing the total to 9 classrooms and 279 Linux workstations (30 students and 1 teacher per room).

What the grant does not provide for is support, though. Our school corporation's existing IT support structure is completely invested in supporting the Microsoft-running machines on our network.

Without support, however, the project would fail. Regardless of Operating System, computer-centric projects need support.

I, as the Technology Assistant here at Bloomington High School North, have taken responsibility for providing the support this project needs. I did not know a thing about Linux when I started out, so it's been an interesting education thus far.

The vast majority of my education has come either through the trial and error Joy of beating my head against brick walls, or through the less painful route of community interaction. I've received a lot of help along the way from the Bloomington Linux Users Group.

The distribution that came with the workstations was Novell Linux Desktop 9, at least our image of which was heavy-weight and bug-laden. I decided to create an image from scratch using Ubuntu 5.10, Breezy Badger, which ended up being much smoother and bug-free despite the fact that it was a total kludge hacked together by a Linux newbie.

(As an aside, we're using Edubuntu 5.10, however the Edubuntu project seems mostly focused on LTSP technology which does not apply in our situation so our next image will stick with the base Ubuntu distribution.)

When version 6.10, Edgy Eft, comes out here next Monday, I'll begin work on our new image, a major upgrade which should smooth out most of the hard bumps that linger in the system as a result of my ignorance-spawned incompetence.

This blog will contain an account of my day-to-day battles and learning experiences.

Thanks for reading, and make it a wonderful day!

Simón

Hello World.

2006-09-27T10:17:00.000-04:00

Hello World.