Planet HantsLUG

By the time this blog entry goes live I'll be running upon my new machine. The migration process was mostly straightfoward and followed my plan:

• Using my existing desktop system as a PXE server to install Lenny over the network.
• Copied over important directories.
• Restored backups.
• Turned off old machine.

Of course it wasn't that simple in practise, as previously mentioned the whole reason I was looking for a new machine was because the software RAID upon my old desktop was failing - One of the two drives was completely dead.

As I'd feared the second drive failed partway through my migration. But thankfully I'd copied off the important stuff before then, and the backups I have off-site mostly covered everything else. (The things I lost were things I can find again such as ~/Music, ~/Videos. On the one hand they're too large to backup, on the other hand I should probably do it next time as they never change.)

Unfortunately the version of X in Lenny refused to work with the GeForce G210 video card I had. To be more correct using the Vesa driver I could get a picture and a smooth desktop, but when watching videos with xine I got maybe two frames a second. Both the open nv driver and the closed nvidia driver failed to support the card - so I swapped hardware, and I'm now running with the GeForce 7300 GS card from my previous desktop. This allows me to watch videos at full-screen with no issues. (Desktop size is 1600x1200 FWIW).

So now it's just a matter of tweaking the system. I've installed enough to be useful:

• miredo - So I have IPv6 connectivity despite Virgion.
• squid - So that I have a decent cache for surfing.
• pdnsd - So I have a caching nameserver and am not at the whim of Virgin.
• kvm - So I can setup scratch machines for play.

I've still got to setup pbuilder, but that'll be done shortly, and I've installed backported packages such that I can watch youtube videos. I'm currently running firefox from lenny but I expect that will change soon enough - not least because that version fails to support "adblockplus", only "adblock".

Two partitions md0 for /boot and md1 used as LVM, from which I've taken /, /home, etc:

Filesystem                      Size    Used    Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/birthday--vol-root   9.9G     2.8G   6.6G  30% /
/dev/mapper/birthday--vol-home   22G      4.3G  16G    22% /home
/dev/mapper/birthday--vol-music  127G    43G    78G    36% /mnt/music
/dev/md0                         988M    38M    901M    4% /boot
/dev/mapper/birthday--vol-kvm    22G      8.8G  12G    44% /mnt/kvm
/dev/sdg1                        163G    143G   12G    93% /media/disk
skx@birthday:~/hg/blog/data$

 

skx@birthday:~/hg/blog/data$ sudo pvs
[sudo] password for skx:
  PV         VG           Fmt  Attr PSize   PFree
  /dev/md1   birthday-vol lvm2 a-   464.82G 274.51G

Update: Three irritations with this machine:

1. As supplied the BIOS was set with "USB Mouse" and "USB Keyboard" set to "disabled". I had to beg the loan of a keyboard from a neighbour.
2. As supplied the BIOS had virtualisation set to "disabled". Not a huge shock, but it caught me out regardless.
3. As supplied the system had only a single SATA power connector. Annoying given that the motherboard is advertised as having "onboard RAID" and I'd purchased it with two hard drives. Happily I had a spare adaptor to hand.

I'd still recommend Novatech, but the last point had me swearing for a few minutes until I realised I did have a spare adaptor in the house.

ObFilm: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

...Borg Queen assimilates ECS Drone.

And yes I'm so going to get slapped for that one tomorrow. Hard. And I'm going to deserve it!



Says it all really!



Speaking of facebook relationship status (as we were) this made me smile.

The patch I use against Z-Push is now on my wiki, here. It fixes several long standing bugs with Z-Push that haven’t yet made it in to SVN (will they ever?). It also adds the ability to turn debugging on/off, otherwise the debug.txt file grows beyond belief.

I’ve been using Z-Push+Dovecot with my iPhone for some time now and so far, so good. Only issue I sometimes get is when someone sends a stupidly large attachment and PHP dies as it exhausts the maximum allowed memory.

If you have any issues with my patch and need some support, best to direct it at the Z-Push forums and not me. Although feedback is always welcome.

My home server, where this is all served from, was running Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (Sarge). Sarge was first released on 6th of June, 2005. Almost a 5 year run without a reinstall. Pretty good going. Unfortunately the time had come to upgrade as I needed access to MySQL 5.1 and PHP5. I did try an upgrade from Debian 3.1 to 5.0.1 (Lenny) but this didn’t go too well. I over-looked running a hand rolled 2.4 kernel with grsecurity enable. I got in to a situation where I couldn’t run any commands at all. As I didn’t have a CDROM drive connected to the server and couldn’t be bothered taken things apart, I accepted that the installation was horribly broken and decided to bite the bullet.

To cut a long story short, I put in two new hard drives, TFTP booted Ubuntu 9.04 and started a clean install of my server. I took the opportunity to configure everything from scratch again. I didn’t fancy trying to re-use old configs and fixing them up to work with the much newer software packages that had jumped a major version or two. It’s now almost complete. Just a few things to finish off, like a hand rolled kernel with grsecurity etc.

As mentioned, one of the main reasons for the upgrade was to gain access to MySQL 5.1 and PHP5 so I could run webapps such as Wordpress. My old blog which I wrote from the ground up was too cumbersome and why reinvent the wheel? I just don’t have the time anymore. So here it is.

I’ve also got DokuWiki on the go, so I can easily document specific configs. Mainly so I remember what was done and why and also to help others out there. For example, at the moment I’m writing up my Postfix+Dovecot+dspam notes as the documention I found was bitty and not very well explained.

Also to be wikified will be my High Availability Linux iSCSI cluster notes and a patch for z-push to make it work properly (specifically with the iPhone).

Some time ago I bought a Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop. At the time it was the fastest thing I could buy. It was also the heaviest! With a 17″ 1920×1200 screen and all the toys, it’s a bit of a dead weight. It was always intended to be a desktop replacement, so it mostly sat on my desk all of its life so the weight wasn’t an issue. Having nice big screen was lovely for desktop use and playing the odd game.

It has a 1.8GHz Pentium CPU and an nVidia 6800Go video card. Not long after I bought it, the video card failed. I blogged about the issue and the rubbish Dell Support.

Well, it happened again just after the warranty ran out. Convenient, huh? Exactly the same problem as previously happened – corruption on the screen indicating hardware failure. I contacted Dell and they basically said they couldn’t help, but if I wanted they would sell me a new video card for £200. I was torn and frustrated. I could get a cheap entire laptop for not much more than that, but not one with a decent 3D card and 17″ 1920×1200 display. I was irritated that they couldn’t see that this was a recurrent issue with the machine which made me less inclined to pay more money to them.

Whilst on the phone the guy asked me at the end if I was ’satisfied’ with the support. I said ‘no’ of course which he was surprised at and after trying to argue that I should change my mind, he forwarded me on to his manager. The manager then proceeded to argue that I should change my answer to ‘yes’ because the agent had provided me with the correct answer – which was that he couldn’t help me. I was pretty peeved by this point that someone asked for my opinion of whether the transaction was a success and when I voiced displeasure, was badgered for a further 20 minutes to change my mind. I didn’t.

So since then (October last year) my dell laptop has sat in a drawer, unused, wasted. I have jumped on ebay now and then to try and get hold of a 2nd hand video card – it’s a modular MXM 6800Go – but never bought one. They’re quite rare and command similar prices to what Dell quoted me.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a co-worker about his broken Playstation 3. He’d read threads online about how the fault he has may be a common one, where many online suggest slamming the motherboard in the oven for a bit to ‘reflow’ the solder. Many reports online say this works.

I was in one of those moods yesterday, and dug out the laptop and managed to figure out how to take the thing apart and get the video card out. I wound the oven up to 200 degrees C and put the card in for 9 minutes. I figured I had nothing else to lose. If all those posts online were a massive conspiracy to get thick people such as me to put delicate electronics into a hot oven then they succeeded!

30 minutes later the card was cool enough for me to put it back in the machine. I carefully put it all back together and booted it up. It worked! The video corruption had gone. Well, almost. I was left with one vertical purple line about 3 pixels in from the left, which I can totally live with. In the drive was an old Crunchbang CD which booted up just fine.

So now, have I joined the ranks of the internet crazies who say putting electronics in the oven might cure it? Yup. Don’t do it though, because it might all go horribly wrong and I wouldn’t want you to blame me would I?

Tomorrow, all being well, I'll receive a new computer.

I've always run Debian unstable upon my desktop in the past, partly because I wanted to have "new stuff" and partly because I needed a Debian unstable system for building Debian packages with.

However I'm strongly tempted to just install Lenny. I use that upon my work desktop and it does me just fine for surfing, building tools, and similar.

I can use pbuilder, sbuildd, or similar to build packages for upload to Debian, and if I want to experiment with new-hotness I can use a KVM guest or two.

Providing the hardware works with Lenny (and I have no reason to believe it won't) then there's no obvious downside I can think of.

The only potential complication will be restoring my backups, it is possible that my firefox databases, and similar things, might not work on older version. Still we shall see.

I plan to install software RAID, and run the system on LVM because quite frankly it rocks. Unless my current system fails in the next 24 hours I can use that to do the installation (My current desktop acts as a TFTP/DHCP/NFS server so I can use it to PXE-boot).

Anyway now I need to go eat food, tidy my desk, and decide what to call the machine .. At the moment the choice is between "march.my.flat" and birthday.my.flat, as my 34th birthday is on March 10th.

ObFilm: 300

I asked last week if anyone knew of any cool podcasts I should subscribe to. I had a few suggested, one of which I’m now hooked on. Hacker Medley is a fairly new podcast started by Alex Graveley and Nat Friedman.

So far they’ve cranked out 3 episodes and in my opinion they’re all great. They’re all quite short but nicely packed with useful geeky information. Many Supreme Overlord geeks will probably say the content isn’t geeky enough, but it’s pitched at the right level for me. I learned plenty from all three episodes which covered quite different subject matters.

The first went into a little detail about the GSM vulnerability that’s been talked about recently, and how one might exploit it in practice with some amusing and alarming suggestions. The second episode gave an introduction to NoSQL which I’d heard about and roughly knew the basics, but didn’t appreciate why they existed or how widely they were used. In the third Nat and Alex talked about Web Sockets which again I had a slim passing knowledge of, but nothing I’d put on my CV.

I listened to all three episodes on the way to work this morning, and was left ‘wanting more’ which is always a good position for a podcaster to be in. The short duration (10-15 mins) and conversational style make for easy listening. The sound quality is great and the content is nicely paced. The presenters clearly know their stuff so can speak authoritatively on the subjects they discuss, which makes for a refreshing change from some podcasts.

I hope they can find time to crank out more episodes and sustain the quality. I’ll certainly be looking out for more of these and prioritise them accordingly in my player queue.

 $ wget http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/asm/asm/3.1/asm-3.1.jar
 [...]
 HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden

 $ wget -U "Pointless arseholes" http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/asm/asm/3.1/asm-3.1.jar
 [...]
 HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Was there some purpose to this minor irritation?

Last week we went live with a revised EDI process we have with one customer. The original process has been running since I started my job - how to implement it was an interview question - but it's been running on a Windows box. Our IT department wanted to decommission the box so I took the opportunity to port the application from Windows to Linux.

It's still a Perl application but the new one has better logging and configuration. It's been live for a few days and so far it's working perfectly well. It'll be a real shame when it's finally replaced with a vast SAP PI middleware framework, but in the mean time an awful lot of money has flowed through that simple Perl application!

Test

I’ve got my ticket for Farnham Beer Exhibition 2010 (along with 5 others) which takes place (as usual) at Farnham Maltings in Farnham, Surrey, UK. The tickets cost £7 each and there’s a tradition of queuing up to get them when they go on sale at 7AM at the Maltings itself. Yes, that’s 7AM on a Sunday morning. What’s even more bizarre is that in order to get within the first 50 people you need to be there before 5AM!

This was my first time queuing for tickets, and only my second Beerex visit. Last year one of “The Alans” from The Open Learning Centre kindly queued up to get me a ticket and invited me along. This year I am returning the favour. So my alarm went off at 4AM this morning and I duly drove over to Farnham to join the queue. by 4:45 it was about 35 people in length, with a friend of mine at about 10th position. I stopped to chat, but of course queue etiquette means I had to join the back of the queue so couldn’t chat with him for long.

Being British we’re a reserved lot who generally don’t talk to others in queues, on public transport or in a disaster. There’s the general subject matter to start off with including the weather (a British staple), how long until the door opens (this is well known, but we all like to talk about time when we’re in a queue) and appropriate attire (mostly me grumping because I didn’t have a hat).

But the Beerex queue conversation and atmosphere is somewhat different from other queues I’ve been in. People are very friendly, some offering coffee, chocolate and even Guinness (at 5AM!) to other queuers, which takes away the pain of being cold and tired with nowhere to sit for 2+ hours. One guy even unpacked a barbeque from the back of his car, lit up and had a fresh breakfast of various cooked meats – I can’t be more descriptive than that, it was very dark!

Overall it was a cold experience but with a great payoff in the form of beer and a glass for each attendee. I’d probably be happy to do it again, when my turn comes around of course

Now there’s only a month to go and I can look forward to an evening of friends, dodgy music, real ale, cider and perry from my own commemorative half-pint glass as I look around at people I met in a darkened queue and think to myself “I know you from somewhere”.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and install Lucid Alpha 3 to my laptop last night, mainly due to the fact I couldn’t wait to experience the shininess of the new design and the “light” themes. It all went well and it booted, which was a significant improvement from Alpha 2, even if [...]

People often (yes, really) ask me which audio podcasts I listen to and which video ones I watch. I have recently rationalised my list as I migrated from iTunes on the Mac to gPodder on Ubuntu.

I thought now would be a good time to publish the list of what I subscribe to. I’ve attached an OPML file that was exported from gPodder (subscriptions -> export to OPML file). You can just import that OPML into your podcast client, or just open in a text editor and pluck out the interesting URLs and use those instead.

I don’t listen to every episode of every podcast, but usually I get around to most of them at some point. A couple of them might be unsuitable for minors, specifically the ones involving Richard Herring, and Answer Me This! The rest are pretty mainstream. They’re in all sorts of formats – mostly MP3 or M4V because the feeds came originally from when I was using iTunes.

Update: Thanks to Ellwyn I now have synchronised my podcast subscriptions to my.gpodder.org. Clicking the image below will take you to my subscriptions.

I’m interested to know if you have podcasts that you like and you think I might enjoy, let me know in the comments, or if you’re brave, post your OPML file. Make sure to remove any podcasts that you might have paid for, and that have username/passwords in the URL.

Just a quick update.

Matt Griffin has updated the Ubuntu One Music Store FAQ with this gem which is probably one of the single most often asked question.

Q: Ubuntu can’t play MP3s out of the box so how will we play purchased songs?
Canonical has put effort into making the customer experience as effortless as possible. When you visit the Ubuntu One Music Store, it will detect if you have MP3 support installed. If you don’t, the store will install the Fluendo MP3 plugin for GStreamer. The MP3 plugin is distributed worldwide at no charge under a license from Fluendo. An Internet connection is required.

So, we have a free legal mp3 decoder in the repository which semi-automatically installs and makes it easy to play back mp3 files. Whilst this will likely still not please those who ‘need’ their music in Vorbis or FLAC format, it certainly makes it easy to get up and running with the store, and play existing music.

Following the theme changes in Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) development version, the most recent (0.1.5.4) update you will notice that the “window management”  buttons have moved over to the top left, this is a design choice with the most recent changelog for that package sporting “correctly set the wm buttons on the left corner”:

The development version is a wonderful area to try new concepts, and this is something that is being tested.  I tried to use this for nearly an hour and found that my habit was too strong, and it’s not one that I currently wish to change.  I decided to revert it to something i’m used to (the far right), I’m not aware of an easy (graphical) method to do this, which means that we need to pull out some gconf -foo (hurray)!

Lets open gconf via holding ALT+F2 and typing “gconf-editor“.  This will open the application and allow changes to be made. I should warn that fiddling with gconf, and making errors could cause bad things to happen.

In this screenshot I have navigated to “/apps/metacity/general/” and double clicked the “button_layout” option.  On the end of the line (highlighted) there is a “:”.  This colon needs to be moved to the beginning of the line, so it reads - ”:maximize,minimize,close” rather than “maximize,minimize,close:” which it currently reads.

When you press OK, the buttons will automagically move over to the side we are all accustomed to.   However, if this design decision isn’t reverted then you will need to fix this on the rare occasion that the theme is updated.

Here at Bitcube we use KVM as our preferred virtualisation platform. It has the best Linux support and is the standard for all Linux distributions. Whilst it still shows a bit of immaturity at times, there is an upside - rapid development and improvements.

read more

Seriously, I can’t be the only person who does this?

Incoming flash blob (or HTML5 video if you have a decent browser)

Combining this with my compulsion to watch -n 0.1 cat /proc/mdstat, I clearly need help. Is there a support group for people like me?

At least one person thinks so:

Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:07:33 H0600
Subject: SOS [PORTSMOUTH FC}
To: website@darkskills.org.uk
From: James Cox 

Good Day,
         My name is James cox kennedy,the chairman of Cox enterprise & Cox
communications Incorporation.I was reading a news about a football club
in england {PORTSMOUTH FC} and to my understanding it seems the club is 
about to go into administration but i have made some enquiries about the 
club but it seems they are not ready to deal with americans but i am very 
interested in purchasing this  club i have the funds but im just looking 
for a  good british business man/woman that can be my frontperson on this
deal ,we will sign an agreement through our lawyers before i put my money
down on this and everything else will be taking care of,Please get back
to me as soon as possible if you are interested.
James Cox Kennedy.
Cox communications,
Chairman,
ww2.cox.com
speak2cox@gmail.com
+1-404-547-8736
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Kennedy

Billy Fitz is your new SUSU president.

Charlotte Woods is VP Media.

Chris Pidge is the VP Ed and Rep.

Emily Rees is the VP Welfare blokette.

and some really big tall guy is the AU Pres.

Oh yes and after years and years of standing Ron finally won something.

R.O.N. is now WSA President. Whoops!

Once again Dark Side Chaplaincy has the news before susu.org :P

We’ve just released the latest episode of the Ubuntu UK Podcast. In this episode we’ve got an exclusive interview with Stuart Langridge about the Ubuntu One Music Store. We also discuss the new branding for Ubuntu, which has just been announced! There’s a whole heap of other stuff in there too – a Command Line Lurve, the “Bit About Ubuntu” and some great feedback. Download it now!

Time for a change..

The new style of Ubuntu is driven by the theme “Light”. We’ve developed a comprehensive set of visual guidelines and treatments that reflect that style, and are updating key assets like the logo accordingly. The new theme takes effect in 10.04 LTS and will define our look and feel for several years.

Back in October 2008 at the Ubuntu Intrepid Release Party in London we celebrated the release of Ubuntu 8.10. It was a great party with loads of Canonical and Ubuntu Community representation present. In the UK the London release parties are usually an opportunity to kick back, have a beer or five and celebrate. One or two laptops can usually be seen, but most hands are tightly grasping glasses of ale than CD-Rs.

I was lucky enough to have a chat and couple of beers with our sabdfl Mark Shuttleworth. We talked about the latest release, video editors and the default theme. I just want to say:-

Ubuntu 10.04 was my idea.

Ok, not really. One thing that Mark did talk about was the need for long term plans for the desktop look and feel, and how he envisaged the Ubuntu Desktop in the years to come. Being impatient I wanted to know what was going to happen, and I wanted whatever it was to happen now! He didn’t say anything specific about the detail at all. When I pressed him I think his exact words were an incredulous “I’m not telling you that!”.

One thing we discussed in detail was the user experience, and how we (the Ubuntu project) need to raise our game. He was keen on the prospect that users didn’t see Ubuntu as an 2nd class citizen when compared to the alternatives like Windows and OSX. He said he wanted people to actively “choose Ubuntu” because of its features and how beautiful it is. He wants to show new users that we’re better than the competition, rather than people just considering us an also-ran.

I came away from that evening with my head spinning.

I was very, very drunk.

Almost exactly a year later I attended an event setup by BT, IBM and Canonical called Accelerating Enterprise adoption of Open Source Software along with The Alans from The Open Learning Centre. The event itself was a great idea, but didn’t quite get the attendance we’d hoped for.

Photos © Paul Sumner Downey

Mark took part in some open discussion moderated by Glyn Moody, and gave a keynote speech. In it he focussed on cloud computing, the underlying technologies and convincing businesses of it’s advantages. However he introduced the keynote with a little story.

He told of how he’s keeps getting people approach him saying “Love Ubuntu, but dude! brown!?”. This of course caused a ripple of laughter from members of the audience familiar with the brown desktop some of us have come to know and hate love. He continued “more recently my design team have approached me and said ‘Mark! Aubergine!’”. He highlighted that he was wearing an aubergine coloured shirt and then pointed to me (in the front row) and said “popey! shush!” which I thought was amusing, but which also left me perplexed.

Well, with todays announcement that ‘aubergine’ comment makes sense.

The new brand has been announced and documented which shows the significant work that has gone into the Ubuntu brand refresh. Canonical have put together a world-class design team to come up with these changes. It’s no secret that over the last few releases Ubuntu has been changing, with some of those changes making it through to the release already. The new notification system, a brighter default desktop background, changed update manager behaviour and multiple delivered backdrops to choose from are all stepping stones towards something bigger. It’s alll change for the font, logo, colours, brand and textures.

Whilst the fact that Canonical have been working on this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone close to the Ubuntu project, today it’s become public. With the announcement just released we can now talk about the new Ubuntu brand, and start working on integrating the proposed changes.

Canonical reached out to the governance boards of the Ubuntu project to gain feedback and ensure they approached this in the best possible way. Numerous key members of our community were invited to Canonical in London to learn how the decisions had been made, and the current plans for the project. In the past I think Canonical might have just dumped this on the world with no consultation, so this is a great step towards more openness and helps dispel the myth that Canonical don’t engage.

The refresh covers a lot of ground. One of the most notable (prompting this blog title) is the move away from brown to orange. Personally I’ve never really had a problem with the brown. I quite like it in fact. I realise others don’t though, and whilst I’m a little sad to see us move away from the human, earthy colours of our heritage, I’m also happy to embrace the new look and feel. It’s fresh and polished, just as it should be.

The colours from the circle of friends logo will be missed, but some might argue it’s time for the logo to mature. Perhaps the old logo looks too child-like, which has suited Ubuntu for over 5 years now, but now we’re a big 6 year old, it’s time to move on, put away the crayons and grow up.

The new logo at the top of this article has a new typeface called ‘Ubuntu’ and whilst it’s nowhere near finished (last count I think they had about 15 characters done) it will eventually replace the old Ubuntu Title font.

Canonical are looking to get community involvement in helping develop this font – which looks like it will become the default at some point. Clearly the first characters to be done were “ubnt” for Ubuntu and “CANOIL” for the Canonical logo – which borrows a person from the Ubuntu circle of friends and sticks her in the “O”.

Indeed there will need to be a lot of community involvement across the board. From desktop developers to community website contributors and everyone in between.

I’m loving these themes.

What do you think?

Wonderful though Puppet is, it can be frustrating when it spits out an error message which makes no sense.

We could keep all this useful information to ourselves, however we are a caring, sharing company and so we've spilled the beans.

Without further ado, please see our guide to Puppet errors.

In which Ade blogs about how massively complicated and onerous the Ubuntu One Music Store sign up process is when compared to Amazon.

Ade, I’d reply to your blog but I’m not about to sign up to yet another system just to leave a comment, and I’m certainly not giving your blog my twitter password, or encouraging the use of Facebook as a single sign on. Maybe you should look at getting an Ubuntu One account, I hear they are implementing Single Sign on.

“Maybe its just me, but am I missing something?”

You are. You’re missing the bit of my blog that you copied and pasted into yours which reads:-

“Right now the process by which a new user to the Music Store is walked through the sign-up process is in flux. It could be a popup application which prompts for an email address, account name and password, or something embedded within Rhythmbox. Alternatively a browser could be spawned which sends the user to the sign-up process at login.ubuntu.com. Once Ubuntu Lucid releases in April, this process should be sorted out, but for now I’d recommend signing up to Ubuntu single sign on before using the Ubuntu One Music Store.”

In which I explicitly detail that this process isn’t the final one, and that there is still some work to do on the whole sign up process. The reason for the blog post was so that people could be ready for when the open beta of the music store starts – which is apparently real soon now.

Those of us who have already been using Ubuntu One to sync files and notes won’t have to do any of the stuff in that blog post because we’re already set. The store merely requires the file sync setup to be working, and my blog post aims to cover all the bases of making sure that’s the case. Yes it’s long winded, yes it’s comprehensive but as I previously said – its not finished.

What’s also important to note is that your friend Stuart is keen to get this finished and doesn’t have a massive amount of time to do that between now and Lucid release at the end of April. So I thought I’d do the ‘nice’ thing by creating a blog post which gets potential testers (who could be very useful to Stuart in terms of finding bugs) ready to get going with no delay. It also (as mentioned in the blog post) serves to reduce the amount of time Stuart has to spend triaging bugs, marking duplicates and basically ‘not coding’.

Leading on to where you asked “Really?? What a pain in the arse !! Why would anyone prefer the later?”.

You’re sat in a hotel on a business trip, bored with the TV and you left your ipod at home. So you spark up the music store and purchase some music. But disaster, on your trip the laptop gets mashed/lost/stolen and you lose the valuable data, work, emails – and your music. If you’re lucky and have the presence of mind you might be able to get the tracks from Amazon up to a certain number of days after purchase. With Ubuntu One, your music (and potentially your data, address book, email, notes) will all be safely backed up in the cloud. That’s quite a compelling reason to use the store for me.

There’s also the fact that the Rhythmbox plugin is open source, supported by Canonical and in the repositories. Compared with the binary-only 32-bit only Amazon deb which isn’t any of those things.

Of course there’s also the benefit that Ubuntu One gives me file sync as well as music download, plus Tomboy notes sync and whatever else they’re cooking up for the future which helps me to keep all my stuff backed up.

Maybe my blog post wasn’t clear enough, if so, I apologise and hope this one clears it up.

Also hotlinking is bad mmmkay.

Ubuntu has a strong emphasis on the colour brown.  Prior to using Ubuntu, I don’t think I owned any brown clothes, and didn’t particularly like the colour.  However, I’m increasingly aware  that my wardrobe has a prominent focus on brown.  I have a feeling that my wardrobe needs replacing.

I’ve previously blogged about the Ubuntu One Music Store. Since then along with a few others, I’ve been helping privately beta test the store. Very shortly it will enter an open beta phase. In this blog post I’ve outlined some preparation you can do to be ready for the beta test.

In the default install of Ubuntu Lucid, the music store will be found in Rhythmbox. Other music players (such as Banshee and Amarok) may also get the functionality later, but right now the first and only delivered client for the store is the default player, Rhythmbox. To access the store, simply open Rhythmbox and click “Ubuntu One” under “Stores”.

Note the open beta has not started yet but it will do very soon. So right now you won’t see the store in Rhythmbox. In the meantime, you can get yourself ready for testing with the guide below. To do this you’ll either need to be running an up to date Ubuntu Luicd on your machine, or in a virtual machine such as VirtualBox or kvm. Testdrive is a great way to test Lucid on a previous release of Ubuntu.

Before we go on, some important notes:-

• The music store is not finished yet, so if things break, or the store eats your music, your money, your credit card or your cat, then act appropriately
• The look and feel of the store may change between these screenshots and the final release
• Not all music is available in all regions/countries. This is pretty much out of control of Canonical and the Ubuntu project
• The world is carved up into ‘UK’, ‘US’, ‘Germany’, ‘Rest of EU’ (i.e. not UK & Germany) and ‘Rest of World’ (i.e. excluding all those previously mentioned territories)
• It’s possible that purchased tracks may not immediately download/sync to your computer. This may be a bug or due to server-side maintenance during the beta. Patience helps here
• Some of the 5 regional stores (see above) contain some free (of cost) music, so if you would like to test the store without spending any money on tracks, you can do that. Unfortunately this only applies to ‘UK’, ‘US’ and ‘Germany’ store, not ‘Rest of EU’ or ‘Rest of World’
• Bugs can be filed against the Rhythmbox plugin or Ubuntu One Client tools as appropriate
• I’ve shown screenshots of the Ubuntu File Sync service however note that you will not be able to see your music through that web interface. I have shown these only to illustrate getting file sync working which is a pre-requisite for using the music store

So with that said, if you’re unhappy about any of the above, I’d recommend you don’t use the store until Ubuntu 10.04 is released. If you’re okay with testing, filing bugs and don’t mind if the store breaks (which it could) during the period leading up to release, then crack on!

These are the steps I went through to prepare for the Ubuntu One Music Store Beta. As with the store itself, some of these screens may change between now and release time. The process by which a computer is authorised will certainly change, but the main bulk of this is valid and still will after the release.

Ubuntu One Account

In order to buy stuff in the store you need an Ubuntu One account. You can connect to Ubuntu One using an Ubuntu single sign on account (confusingly).

Historically this was your Launchpad.net account, so if you already have one of those, you can use that. New users who have not previously signed up at Launchpad.net or login.ubuntu.com will need to create a new account.

Right now the process by which a new user to the Music Store is walked through the sign-up process is in flux. It could be a popup application which prompts for an email address, account name and password, or something embedded within Rhythmbox. Alternatively a browser could be spawned which sends the user to the sign-up process at login.ubuntu.com. Once Ubuntu Lucid releases in April, this process should be sorted out, but for now I’d recommend signing up to Ubuntu single sign on before using the Ubuntu One Music Store.

You need to confirm your email address by clicking the link in the mail.

Clicking the link takes you back to the Ubuntu One sign up process.

Click continue.

Enable File Sync

The second step which needs to be setup before the Music Store works is file syncing with Ubuntu One. Music purchased in the store is delivered directly to your Ubuntu One synchronised folders, so this has to be working or you’ll never actually get the music you buy. Configuring Ubuntu One is detailed at one.ubuntu.com/support/installation although for Lucid there’s very little to do other than activate as the components are pre-installed. That documentation should be updated before Lucid is released.

In these screenshots I subscribed to the free 2G plan. The screens are slightly different if you choose the 50G paid plan.

Login using your Ubuntu One (or old migrated Launchpad.net) account.

Confirm you agree to the terms and conditions..

Now you’re signed up to Ubuntu One.

At this point there are no files in the ~/Ubuntu One/ folder, in fact it doesn’t even exist yet..

Activate a Computer

To enable the file sync on this laptop I needed to add/authorise this computer. When Lucid releases there should be a graphical ‘control panel’ for Ubuntu One which allows you to press a button to connect a machine to your Ubuntu One account. You can of course connect multiple machines to one account in order to keep them all in sync. That tool doesn’t exist yet, so I had to run the following to trigger the process below.

u1sdtool -c

Once the system has been connected to Ubuntu One once, there is a ‘Connect’ icon in nautilus file browser, but in a typical chicken/egg problem, that ‘Connect’ button doesn’t appear until you have connected at least once.

Pretty soon after that the ~/Ubuntu One/ folder should appear.

Which is of course initially empty. There is another special folder in which stuff appears that has been shared with you by other people. It too is initially empty.

Testing File Sync

It’s a very good idea to test the file syncing service, because if it doesn’t work the music won’t download, no matter what else you do. It could save time during bug triage if users ensure this file sync works before filing bugs in the music store.

A simple test of the file sync is to create a folder or upload a file via the web interface and wait for them to appear in your ~/Ubuntu One/ folder on the local machine. Alternatively create files on your local PC in ~/Ubuntu One/ and go to the website to see if they appear.

Here I’ve created a file on my computer in the ~/Ubuntu One/ folder

If I then go to the Ubuntu One web interface I can see the file has arrived.

So at this point you’re ready to test the Ubuntu One Music Store. All you need now is some disk space and some taste in music. Neither of which I can help with – as my friends and family can confirm.

As previously mentioned I've switched my webserving over to a mixture of apache2 & thttpd.

I chose thttpd as it is simple to configure for my needs, and supports the execution of CGI scripts. Some of the other simple webservers available to Debian's current stable release (such as nginx) don't support CGI so they were ruled out.

Of course prior to choosing thttpd I looked at the state of the Debian package. Distressingly the package has no current maintainer and has several bugs open, including some that have been open for several years without comment.

I've just made my second upload fixing a couple of bugs, including ones that I could see affecting myself, but now I'm done with it.

In conclusion:

• I've fixed a few bugs.
• I suspect that many of the open bugs are 100% unreproducable and should be closed after checking with the submitter.
• The package could do with a volunteer to maintain it.

On the one hand it is "just another webserver", on the other hand it is genuinely small, simple to configure, and has a couple of compelling features (CGI + throttling).

So. Go. Adopt. Maintain.

Pretty please...

ObFilm: Red Sonia

Recently I was flirting with the idea of creating an online game, but I got distracted by wondering how to make the back-end more flexible.

To communicate the state of the game to N connected clients I figured I needed some kind of server which would accept "join"/"quit" requests and then make changes available.

To that end I came up with the idea that a client would make requests via HTTP such as:

http://example.com/server/game/chess/join

This would regard the originating client as part of a new chess game, for example, and return a UID identifying the "game channel".

http://example.com/server/changes/1-2-3-4

This will retrieve a list of all events which had occurred in the game which had not already been sent.

(Here 1-2-3-4 is obviously the UID previously allocated.)

http://example.com/server/submit/1-2-3-4/move

This would submit the move "move" to the server.

After mulling this over for a while it seemed like a great reusable solution, I'd make an initial "join" request, then repeated polling with the allocated UID would allow game moves to be observed. All using JSON over HTTP as the transport.

It was only this morning that I realised I'd have saved a lot of time if I'd just proxied requests to a private IRC server, as the functionality is essentially the same.

Still I'm sure this pattern of "join"/"poll"/"quit" could be useful for a lot of dynamic websites, even in the non-gaming world. So although the idea was mostly shelved it was an interesting thing to have experimented with.

D'oh.

ObFilm: Conan The Barbarian

This is just a short blog post to note that Matt Griffin has updated the FAQ for the Ubuntu One Music Store that I previously blogged about.

Most notable is probably this update:-

There will be no embedded ‘watermarks’ of any kind on the MP3s in the Ubuntu One Music Store.

Which is of course good news. This came up in a recent bug filed against the Ubuntu Community and later the Rhythmbox Plugin. In it Ryan expressed concern that music files purchased in the store might be tagged or watermarked. This would be to enable back-tracking should the files be copied contrary to the license under which they were distributed.

This pre-dates the edit Matt made to the wiki, so at the time of the bug comment nobody really knew the answer. I asked around a few fellow beta testers to see if we could compare songs and identify if the files were indeed watermarked. The theory being we could each use a tool like sha1sum to generate a fingerprint of the file and see if they were the same or not.

Luckily I found one beta tester online and he provided me with a sha1sum of a file he’d bought from the store. Unfortunately there was a bug in the store today which prevented me from buying the same track! Foiled! I did however find a friend on IRC who wasn’t a beta-tester of the Ubuntu store, but was a 7digital store customer. I convinced her to buy a song from 7digital that I already had purchased from the Ubuntu One store.

As it turned out she didn’t need much convincing (even refusing my offer to pay her back the £0.59 in costs ) and bought an Amy MacDonald song which we compared sha1sums on. As you can see in my comment on the bug report (reproduced below), the files seem identical.

20:54:17 @popey> alan@wopr:~/.ubuntuone/Purchased from Ubuntu One$ sha1sum Amy\ MacDonald/This\ Is\ The\ Life/This\ Is\ The\ Life.mp3
20:54:17 @popey> b576a6695cce410521c862301f74deeb3ced22e4 Amy MacDonald/This Is The Life/This Is The Life.mp3
20:59:38 +Dee> [dee@jane Dropbox]$ sha1sum Amy\ MacDonald\ -\ This\ Is\ The\ Life.mp3
20:59:38 +Dee> b576a6695cce410521c862301f74deeb3ced22e4 Amy MacDonald - This Is The Life.mp3

We’ll set aside the statistical unlikely-hood that both files were fingerprinted but still came up with the same sh1sum. While friends still pointed out to me that the sample size of one wasn’t exactly comprehensive proof, now we have Matts wiki edit I think that concern can be put to bed.

Another gloriously news free day. I don't mean the real news, you know, Portsmouth going into administration and the MI5's dubious detainment record. No I mean me related news.

Nothing to report.

Except today I got myself a wage slip. 4 to go!

The following jobs are now available: Derby University, Nottingham Trent University, Keble College, Oxford and Queens College, Oxford.

One thing I noticed was that most of the jobs now advertised have interview dates in April. They say that once a Vicar gets a job it takes a minimum of three months to move and start work. All of which means if I don't stay here, a period of unemployment is inevitable.

In contrast to the wonders of the recent Microsoft advertising where everyone is trying to claim responsibility for Windows 7 (is it just me that sees this, along with the terrible launch party idea, as a desperate attempt to build the sort of community that open source software has?), I would like to make it publicly known that Windows 7 is not my fault. I’ve been working on installing it recently, and really don’t want to be associated with the palaver involved in doing so!

First off, it totally fails to recognise the controller my hard disk is attached to, so I have to add it in on install. This is a Silicon Image 3512 based SATA PCI card, and it also failed to recognise the ITE 8212 PATA card I tried. Once I’d installed I found that it seemed to think I had a USB2 CDROM drive attached, which I don’t, I don’t have one (well, bar a case in a box that is waiting for an ATAPI DVD-RW to be installed!). It also failed to detect my network card.

So after a reboot, just in case, I decided to take a further look. It seems that Windows 7 lacks drivers for my NIC (SIS 900), SCSI card (Adaptec 2940) and sound card (AC’97, either Realtek of SiS, depending on whether you believe the Gigabyte website or lspci!). The NIC and sound are on the motherboard, whilst the, admittedly old (it was purchased when I built my first 486!) SCSI card is PCI,

So, after some fun with Google, and a bit of downloading, I installed a Windows XP driver for the SiS900, and tried Windows Update. This found 22 updates, totaling around 155M give or take, and proceeded to install. Sadly, 5 updates failed to install properly, including the updated SiS900 driver and the AC’97 audio driver!! The others were the SiS AGP driver, Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and updates for Windows Defender. Nothing critical then, just network and sound drivers and protection from anything nasty (which you won’t need with no network will you!).

Thankfully, after a reboot, another run of Windows Update, and another reboot, I seem to have a basic install of Windows 7 that works. I just need to decide what to do about the SCSI card, sort out anti-virus, and adjust my network settings (for some reason I seem to have been connected to two when I only have one, and I need to change the workgroup). Then I can start looking at getting some actual software installed to make the machine useful.

Anyone who claims Windows is easier to install and has better driver support than Linux really needs to think again!

On my way home today, I spotted a cat bounding along to my left. It passed me the cut across my path on the pavement then out into the main road right in front of a passing car. The driver stopped the car at once as he felt the "thump" but the by then then cat had bounded off into someone's garden. The car most definitely hit the cat and there was a puff off white fur, but the cat lept away without even so much as a limp!

Isn’t playing with a computer BIOS fun? No? Of course it is!

I’m rebuilding my main desktop system at the moment. It isn’t anything spectacularly new, in fact it is based on a Athlon XP 2800+, but it runs Linux (Ubuntu 9.10 currently) with ample performance for my day to day tasks. Windows XP runs on it adequately, when it actually works (I clearly use it too little because it sulks and ‘blue screens’ every few months, requiring a repair or reinstall).

Anyway, as part of this rebuild I decided that it made sense to get everything bang up to date, including the BIOS. The board is obsolete now, so the BIOS was a few years old and should be stable enough – wrong! The board is a Gigabyte GA-7S748-L (GA-7S748 with on board LAN), and was running the F5 revision. Updating was simple enough, just boot of my DOS USB key (yes, I have a USB key with DOS installed!) and run the utility. This brought things up to revision F9, which was the latest, and is where things started to go wrong.

The first thing I noticed was that my Windows 7 installation couldn’t see the HD, so I reached for a driver (Vista was the most up to date) to add during the install process. This didn’t work, and further investigation showed that the BIOS of the PATA PCI card the drives were connected to wasn’t active. It turned out that enabling USB legacy support disabled the card BIOS. Unfortunately, in order to configure the card BIOS you needed a keyboard, and since mine was a USB one, USB legacy support was required to use it – catch 22!! After trying a PCI SATA card instead I found that this was clearly a motherboard issue and not specific to one card or chipset.

So the next thing to do was to back off to the previous BIOS (F8 in this case) to see if the bug had been introduced in the latest BIOS upgrade. Unfortunately it seems that the F8 BIOS was completely bug ridden (so it is a shame it is still available for download). After installing it the computer wouldn’t boot at all, although it would allow use of the BIOS itself. This board has a facility to flash the BIOS from a BIOS based utility (Q-Flash), which sounds pretty handy in this case. Sadly it didn’t work, although thankfully, the failure didn’t damage the installed BIOS any further. After a bit of research with Google, I found that if you disable USB support completely you can boot to a floppy and re-flash the BIOS using a DOS based utility (will DOS ever die?!).

So, with this information I managed to get back to the F5 BIOS and all was working again. Out of curiosity I then tried the F6 BIOS and found that the USB legacy support clash with the PATA card BIOS was introduced there, so presumably exists in F7 too. Back to square one again then, with the original F5 BIOS and a working PC!

Updated 28/2/10 01:07AM

The developers behind the Ubuntu One Music Store have put a FAQ online, which I’ve reproduced below. I’ve been beta testing the store out for a few days and have bought some singles and albums directly in Rhythmbox. In fact I think I was the first person to buy an album in the store It works really well, but clearly it’s not quite finished. There’s also a lot of rumour and misunderstanding around the store, so it’s great to see the developers putting this information out there.

Note: Just running Ubuntu Lucid Alpha 3 will not enable the online store. You need to be a beta tester to get the ‘magic’ that makes the store work.

FAQ

Q: What will be the store’s name?
The store is called the Ubuntu One Music Store.

Q: How is Ubuntu getting access to popular music?
For the Ubuntu One Music Store, our primary goals are to 1) provide a wide selection of popular songs to users and 2) enable Ubuntu users around the world to have access to these songs. Among the partners evaluated, we chose 7digital because they had the largest selection of songs available without digital rights management (DRM) for the most regions around the world.

Q: What desktop application will include the Ubuntu One Music Store?
The standard Ubuntu music player, Rhythmbox, will be used for the music store. We know that people still want choice in their music player application so The Ubuntu One Music Store was developed as a plug-in that can be re-used in some other music applications. We have received approval from the music labels for the Ubuntu One Music Store to be embedded within Banshee, Amarok, and a few other applications. Please contact the Ubuntu One Music Store team for information about this process and implementation support.

Q: How is this different than Jamendo and Magnatune?
Jamendo and Magnature will remain in the Rhythmbox music player. These are both great sources for creative commons and open licensed songs. The Ubuntu One Music Store extends the catalog of music available to Ubuntu users and will include mostly songs from minor and major label artists. These are songs that you typically find on the shelves of your favorite record shop…except in a downloadable format.

Q: What are the details about the music in the Ubuntu One Music Store?
Songs purchased through the Ubuntu One Music Store are available in high quality 256 kbps (sometimes higher) MP3 audio encoding and without digital rights management (DRM). MP3 purchases can be:

• burned to a CD any number of times
• played through any software on any type of computer that you own that supports MP3
• synced to any MP3-enabled device such as a portable music player

You may occasionally find songs in WMA format. We’re working with our partner to remove these songs from the Ubuntu One Music Store. Until this is resolved, we don’t recommend purchasing these songs in this format. An MP3 version can typically be found by using the store’s search feature.

Update 27 Feb, 2010: There will be no embedded ‘watermarks’ of any kind on the MP3s in the Ubuntu One Music Store.

Some have asked for songs in other formats such as Ogg Vorbis or FLAC. Acquiring popular songs in this format was not possible at this time, but Canonical will continue to look for future opportunities to improve the quality of the songs found in the Ubuntu One Music Store.

Q: What are the ’system requirements’?
If your computer can run Ubuntu 10.04, has Rhythmbox installed, can play sounds and connect to the Internet, then you are ready to use the Ubuntu One Music Store.

Q: Will these downloads play on my iPod or portable media player?
The MP3 format is widely supported on portable media players such as the iPod. Rhythmbox works with most portable media players without additional configuration and a Rhythmbox plug-in (libgpod) is available that provides support for most iPods.

Q: What are the features of the Ubuntu One Music Store?
The Ubuntu One Music Store has features that users expect from an online store.

• Search by artist, album, or track
• Browse recommendations and genres
• Discover new releases or just released songs each week
• A convenient shopping basket
• Support for a variety of payment options

Q: How is the store related to Ubuntu One?
An Ubuntu One account is required to purchase songs from the Ubuntu One Music Store. Ubuntu One accounts are free and come with 2 GB of personal cloud storage. Purchased songs are automatically transferred to your cloud storage, synchronized to all of your computers, and added to Rhythmbox. Customers will find a new library that contains purchases from the Ubuntu One Music Store. You can also fetch your music from your personal cloud storage through a web browser, just like all your other files.

Integrating the Ubuntu One Music Store with Ubuntu One gives consumers the security of online backup as well as convenience of auto-synchronization.

Please note that Ubuntu One synchronization does not support users who connect to the Internet through a proxy server. These users will need to download their purchases from the Ubuntu One website and manually add songs to their Rhythmbox library.

Q: What does it mean by x downloads remaining?
The Ubuntu One Music Store’s partnership with the music labels limits the number of times customers can download a purchased song from the music store to three (3). While this gives people some security in case of catastrophe, additional downloads should not be necessary as purchases are backed-up in the customers’s Ubuntu One personal cloud. The initial transfer from the music store to a customer’s Ubuntu One personal cloud will count as one (1) download. Any synchronization of purchased songs stored in your Ubuntu One personal cloud to any number of your computers does not count against the music store’s download limit. Clicking to download again will transfer songs to your Ubuntu One personal cloud again and will deduct from the downloads remaining. Customers shouldn’t need to do this though unless they delete the song from their cloud storage.

Q: What regions of the world will be able to purchase songs?
Most popular songs are licensed by territory (basically by country). Our starting territories will be the UK, US, Germany, the rest of the EU (EU countries outside of the UK and Germany), and the rest of the world (countries outside the EU and US). Customers who use the EU store will have access to purchase songs from two of the four major labels. Customers who use the World store will have access to purchase songs from independent labels.

Update 27 Feb, 2010: Perhaps we could have been a bit more clear about this. Customers who use the UK, US, and Germany stores will have access to purchase songs from all major and independent music labels.

Canonical will analyze usage of the EU and Rest of World stores after the 10.04 launch to decide which territories would be best for expansion. Watch the Ubuntu One blog in the months following the launch of Ubuntu 10.04 for more information.

Q: How do independent artists from the Ubuntu community get their songs into the store?
The Ubuntu One Music Store has great potential for the Ubuntu community and we want members to be able to contribute their own works (especially if it was produced on Ubuntu) to the store. Our partner, 7digital, works with various digital distribution companies that represent artists. Here are a few that you can contact to get your songs added to the 7digital catalog and the Ubuntu One Music Store.

• ioda
• The Orchard
• FUGA
• CI
• D23

Q: I’ve found a bug. I have a great feature. What do I do?
Please submit bugs and feature requests to the Ubuntu One Music Store project in Launchpad. The development team monitors this area and reads all messages.

Q: Where do I get help?
Customer support is available by clicking on the Help button in the Ubuntu One Music Store.

Q: How can I install and test the store?
The store isn’t quite ready for wider testing. Watch this area or the Ubuntu One blog for more details coming soon.

Lets say that hypothetically speaking you’re running an application or two which are known to not work behind proxies. What a pickle, especially if those applications have some desire to be online, to communicate with online services. But they can’t.

After a bit of a chat with my friend and fellow podcaster Dave Walker I came up with a solution. It involves 4 pieces of software, all of which are in the Ubuntu repositories. There are guides online to using each piece of software, but none that I could find which brought them all together.

Note: This is a bit of a mess, and whilst it works, it’s not pleasant, and is only really useful for this very specific requirement. I’m just blogging it in case someone else happens to be running the same software as me, and is also stuck behind a poxy proxy.

Here’s the simple non-graphical ‘diagram’ to show the software used and path to get out.

Application -> via tsocks -> ssh (socks proxy) -> corkscrew -> poxy proxy server -> (Internet) -> External host -> ??

In addition to the software required, you’ll also need a box on the outside of the network into which you have ssh access. This is required because we’ll be tunnelling traffic to that machine, so that any software can send/receive packets as if they are on the outside of the firewall/proxy. If you don’t have a box on the outside of the firewall that you can ssh into, give up with this guide now, it’s a pre-requisite.

If you would like to rent a virtual private server (VPS) then I can highly recommend Bitfolk, and if you sign up and mention my name, I get nothing Debian gets a financial donation though, so that’s something good. Alternatively you could leave a cheap low-power computer permanently switched on at home. Or maybe wake it up when you go out, and switch it off when you’re back home to save some power. I’d probably forget to do that, so mine’s always on and it only draws 8W, so I don’t feel too bad about the constant power drain.

On the server outside the firewall

You’ll probably want to do this setup before you’re stuck behind the nasty nasty firewall and proxy. You can get into a bit of a chicken and egg situation where you can’t configure SSH for this process because you can’t SSH in to change the SSH config.. etc ad infinitum.

Ensure SSH server is installed

For Ubuntu/Debian users this is in the repository, so sudo apt-get install openssh-server is sufficient.

You might want to do some of the usual security things on the server like configuring the SSH server to only accept key logons and not passwords. You may also want to limit what IP addresses you can connect from. Other security options are beyond the scope of this post, but if you have any suggestions, leave a comment below.

Configure SSH to run on port 443

This will only work if the server in question has nothing else running on 443 – like an SSL enabled HTTP server.

The relevant setting is on the server in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and is usually fairly near the top, it’s “Port”, just change the value. You can then restart SSH on Ubuntu/Debian with sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart.

Probably good at this point to test the setup, to see if you can indeed SSH to the box now you’ve monkeyed around with the SSH config.

On the PC inside the firewall

Install Corkscrew

Corkscrew tunnels SSH traffic over the proxy server.

For Ubuntu users this is in the repository, so sudo apt-get install corkscrew

Configure Corkscrew

Edit ~/.ssh/config

Add the following line, replacing ‘proxyserver 8000′ with the hostname and port number that the proxy server runs on. Note that the path to the Corkscrew executable is right for Ubuntu, but may need to be modified for other distributions, or if you compile it yourself.

ProxyCommand /usr/bin/corkscrew proxyserver 8000 %h %p

Test Corkscrew

Try and logon using SSH on the command line, specifying the port number, username on the remote box and host name of the remote (external) host or IP address.

ssh -p 443 myusername@mylovelyexternalhost.example.com

Pro-tip! Edit ~/.ssh/config and add the following lines to save you having to type so much.


Host myhost
Hostname mylovelyexternalhost.example.com
Port 443
User myusername


Then you can SSH with this:-

ssh myhost

Install tsocks

Tsocks is some lovely magic that forces applications to send their (potentially non-HTTP and thus non-proxy-friendly) TCP traffic over a socks proxy. Install it as you would the other packages, again it’s in the Ubuntu repo, so sudo apt-get install tsocks should sort that in a trice.

Configure tsocks

Edit /etc/tsocks.conf

Ensure lines exist that look like this. This will configure tsocks to attempt to make an outbound connection over a SOCKS5 proxy (which doesn’t exist yet, but will in the next step) which is running on port 1080.

server = 127.0.0.1
server_type = 5
server_port = 1080

Start the socks proxy

At this point all the config is done, all the steps above need only be done once. The stuff below is what you do each time you want to setup the SOCKS proxy, and subsequently send data over it.

ssh -D 1080 -vvv myhost

The -D sets up the persistent SOCKS proxy over the connection to myhost (via corkscrew).
The -vvv makes SSH a bit chatty, causing it to spit out detail whenever we use the SOCKS proxy. This is helpful in determining if things are working. Once you have it working, you can choose to remove that parameter.

Start your application using tsocks

The final step! This is where we use tsocks to send network traffic over the proxy we just brought up.

There are two ways to start tsocks, either using LD_PRELOAD or by prefixing the application you’re running with the tsocks command. Here’s two examples:-

Starting the Ubuntu One Syncdaemon – in which first we disconnect from Ubuntu One, then start it using tsocks and in debug mode, and then reconnect. Then start Rhythmbox. All the traffic for both applications will go over the tunnel to the external box.

$ u1sdtool -q
$ export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libtsocks.so
$ /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubuntuone-client/ubuntuone-syncdaemon --debug
$ u1sdtool -c
$ /usr/bin/rhythmbox


Starting Firefox – in which we can see the other way to use tsocks. Again, all TCP traffic will go over the tunnel.

tsocks /usr/bin/firefox


The only thing that won’t go over the tunnel as far as I can tell is DNS lookups which according to the man page for tsocks:-

“tsocks will normally not be able to send DNS queries through a SOCKS server since SOCKS V4 works on TCP and DNS normally uses UDP. Version 1.5 and up do however provide a method to force DNS lookups to use TCP, which then makes them proxyable. This option can only enabled at compile time, please consult the INSTALL file for more information”

Hope that information is useful to someone, and if there’s any mistakes or omissions, please leave a comment.

I'm currently at this year's dev8D.

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The people behind Full Circle Magazine – the unofficial, community maintained electronic Ubuntu mag – have started a new audio podcast. Created by Robin Catling, Ed Hewitt and Dave Wilkins with additional audio bits by Victoria Pritchard, the first epsiode can be found here in both Ogg Vorbis and MP3 formats.

I was able to listen to a preview of the show a few days ago, and I’m impressed. They have the kinds of elements that I like to listen to in a show including news & opinion, techy segments and a bit of fun. The team have managed to put together a tight, interesting and fun show which is no mean feat for episode one. It’s clear that they’re finding their feet in the first epsiode, but that doesn’t mean it’s low quality. There’s some harsh editing, which we also suffered from in the early days, and the audio levels are sometimes a little wobbly, but these are things that usually improve with practice, and aren’t showstoppers in my opinion.

In their favour they have some strong personalities who have their own areas of expertise, and can feed off (and back to) the Full Circle Magazine which can help them to build an audience and gather contributions. I understand they’re all spread around the UK, but are keen on getting contributions from around the world – given the magazine as a global project team and readership, this makes sense.

I hope they can find time and resources to crank out some more episodes, and can get contributions from the community to help them build up their content. Give it a listen and let them have your constructive feedback.

So, I thought to myself, the press (I say the press I mean the Southern Daily Echo and The Church Times) have gone away, I wonder if anyone wants to know what is happening next.

The problem there is I thought I could just tell the story as it unfolded. In a sense it was a bit like Round Ireland with a Fridge only less contrived and written-after-the-events-and-tidied-up-to-make-it-more-entertaining it might also involve an actual proper bloody fridge.

The problem though as I found out is that actually there isn't always much news, for example I thought by now there would have been quite a few meetings with the Diocese and all sorts of discussions. I would love to give you an idea of how fund raising is going. My conservative estimation is that we now have about £9000. Which is approaching a third of what we need, but I have no idea what the diocese have on the table. The trouble is, almost 3 months after the synod vote, there is still nothing definite on the table. That includes the option where I loose my job. Yes, that's right, I still haven't been given my formal notice, so I could well be staying.

Then there are the e-mails I have received, that start something like "look don't tell anyone that I told you this, but did you know there is a pot of money stashed here. Someone should probably point this out to the Bishop." Of course, I don't know if any of that is true...I suspect that any hidden pots of money have long since been identify and raided.

Then there is confidentiality. I have lost count of the amount of conversations in which people have told me stuff and and then said, but I need you to keep this to yourself.

Finally there is the left field stuff...which only one person knows about.

In fact there is so many layers of stuff going on, I would love to tell you but I can't. I can't because it's conjecture, or rumour, or confidential. I can't walk around with all that in my head and not have it explode. So I have told two people. One is very close to me the other is all the way away in Bethnall Green.

Basically currently MSD is talking to EFD about the possibility of JEC. Meanwhich DS is talking direct with CEFD about JFI. There are HR problems that ADS has identified which much be resolved before MCD and USC and BRM can sign off on JEC. MSD is not currently talking to AJS2BT but probably will in due course. VBP has spoken to DS and he says all is good to go. There have been e-mails from F G T and L. 24BR is on the table...and off again.

Meanwhile AL has contacted YMS and asked him to meet BTL and BB to discuss X. Which no one was expecting and indeed after that X has become Y and threatens to become Z which will shock everyone. If it ever happens. Which it probably wont. Meanwhile KAHOUAT is trying to hold everything together. TJSS is excited JLKS has very little of any intelligence to say and MDSS is upset.

All of which reminds me of another time in chaplaincy, and actually that all ended well, indeed A and C are getting married and as for B... well along came ECS#3172 and well, who knows where that will end. And even the D is getting some. So if God can solve all that back then...then he can sort this one out too. I promise you this I will tell you everything as soon as it is all sorted out. It should just be a blog post, but if it gets any more complicated then it will just have to be a book.

It wont involve a fridge.

It will involve a kettle.

We moved house this month and we're still off-line at home. That means I can only email and do web stuff from work, which is much more limited and I don't do as much.

If all all goes well my ISP will hook us up again with ADSL just in time for the next move into the house we intend to buy. Joy of joys! Once we own our own home it's time to get structured CAT-6 installed throughout and build a proper mini-server room...

Thu 18th Feb

I previously blogged about the training for Ubuntu available from Canonical. Today I went through the sample chapters – which incidentally is insanely hard to find. I was told the training was available in the Canonical store. I happened to know the url for the store so went direct to shop.canonical.com but if I’d googled for ‘canonical store‘, ‘ubuntu store‘, ‘canonical shop‘ or ‘ubuntu shop‘ I would have found it okay. But the path to get to the training samples is like a bad adventure game with only the exact convoluted path taking you to the prize:-

http://shop.canonical.com/ -> Click “Training”
http://shop.canonical.com/index.php?cPath=21 -> Click “Online Ubuntu Desktop Training”
http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=134 – Click “Ubuntu Online Training page”
http://www.ubuntu.com/training/e-learning – > Click “Check out two lessons for free – click here (registration required)”
http://training.canonical.com/enrol/oscommerce/actions.php?action=proceed_to_shop&trial_action=1&id=2

This took me to the launchpad login where I used my launchpad login to gain access. Of course if my mum is going to be doing this she will need a launchpad account of her own. The next page had the following text “You have successfully enrolled on the introductory taster of the Ubuntu Desktop Training (Elearning) course. This means you can access two out of the ten lessons of the course. To access the complete course, please consider purchasing the full version in our store. To enter the course, please click the Continue button below.” so I clicked “Continue”. Next I get “Ubuntu Desktop Training has been designed in a modular manner. Ten lessons in total will provide you with all the information required to get up and running with Ubuntu, as quickly as possible. You can go through the same lessons as many times as you like, or skip those which are less relevant.” and some more details including the requirement for Adobe Flash.

Surprisingly it says:-

“Follow the next three steps to get started:
1. Cancel any pop-up blocks; the course can not load without this!
2. If you don’t already have a Flash player installed, download one of the following plugins: Flash (choose: tar.gz if running Ubuntu) or Gnash (available soon) then:
3. Click ‘Enter Course’ to proceed and enjoy!“

I’m somewhat surprised (and a little alarmed) that we’re telling people to grab a tarball from Adobe rather than use the package manager to install Flash. Of course ideally we shouldn’t use Adobe Flash for this at all, but that’s a completely separate argument.

Finally I click “Enter Introductory Taster”.

Well, I say ‘finally’, in fact my browser blocks the popup and I get yet another page to click a link to “« Click here to open the course »” with the tip “(you may need to turn off pop-up blocking for this website)” in small text.

This whole process is insane and needs to be made easier to find and get into. My mum would have given up long ago and gone off to make a cake or something more productive. Not requiring Launchpad for the logon would be a start, and making a link directly from the store to the sample training material would also help.

Getting access aside, the course is presented in a pop-up window containing a flash based application. The window is resizable up and down, and the content scales well which is helpful given my Mum has a fairly low resolution screen at the moment.

The free sections are ‘Introducing Ubuntu’ and ‘Exploring the Ubuntu Desktop’ with a short ‘Course Introduction’ which explains the way the course works. As I mentioned previously the course is based on Ubuntu 7.10, but is being updated for 10.04 right now.

The available sections seemed to be paced well with clear diagrams and easy to understand narration. The interface is straightforward with simple navigation options for ‘home’, ‘back’, and ‘next’ at the bottom of the screen, and ‘help’, ‘glossary’ and ‘exit’ at the top. A slider along the bottom shows how far through the current lesson you are, and a page count below that shows how far through the course you are.

As this was only an introductory taster I couldn’t tell if the whole course would be suitable, but given the rest of the subject, it seems to fit with what I expect Mum will want out of the computer. The rest of the chapters are ‘Using the Internet’, ‘Using OpenOffice Applications’, ‘Ubuntu and Games’, ‘Customising the Desktop and Applications’, ‘Making the Most of Images and Photos’, ‘Playing Music and Videos’, ‘Ubuntu Help and Support’ and finally ‘Partitioning and Booting’. Much of that will be useful to Mum, I’m sure. Some less so – I don’t think she’ll be doing much in the way of disk partitioning, but you never know, from small acorns do mighty something something..

I look forward to evaluating the 10.04 version of the course, and will in all likelyhood set this up for Mum as it will cover a lot of ground that I wouldn’t have time to do well. In fact I’ve already set her up with a Launchpad account which will help not only with this training but will also allow her to buy music online, share files, sync notes, file bugs (hah!), ask technical questions and whatever else Canonical add to Ubuntu One in the future.