Nozell, rhymes with Oh Hell: June 2004

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Cool -- Wireless at Ford dealership

I'm waiting for my car being serviced at the local "Best" Ford dealership and they provide wireless access! Well, I don't see any signs around in the service area, there is a small wireless network.

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

RedHat Desktop presentation at Greater New Hampshire Linux Users group

I apologize for the formatting -- the textrite formatting module for blosxom can sometimes be 'too helpful'

This evening Havoc Pennington gave a RedHat Desktop presentation to the GNHLUG. We meet at Martha's Exchangein Nashua -- the Belgian Ale as well as the steak tips with Gorgonzola were excellent!

Havoc brought three other desktop engineers from RedHat's Westford, MA office, but I didn't catch their names. Attendance was good, perhaps about three dozen people.

Slides:

Ready for the Desktop?

Now -- many using it now.

Three years much improved for more types of people. "Don't want
people who aren't ready for desktop trying to use it. We are focused
migration from Solaris/HP-UX workstations"

Next step is for limited corporate managed desktops and starting
to move into general purpose corporate desktop, not home yet.

Today have RedHat desktop (Launched May 2004) which is a variant
of RHEL 3 with corporate desktop pricing only in 10 seat minimum.
Includes Gnome, Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice and Bluecurve user
interface. Targeting technical workstation (UNIX replacement), single
user client (eg: Call centers, Point of Sale, Thin clients),
enterprise desk (managed desktop)

The RH desktop dev team will be expanded 5x by end of year.

Fedora Project

Fedora/RHEL distinction does not correspond to desktop/server split.

They are for 2 different audiences

Fedora will be essential part of Red Hat operating system, one part is
the desktop interface.

Audience Question: What is the Java stategy for desktop? It is on the
'extras' cd which is 3rd party, proprietery stuff. It includes
multiple JVMS (IBM is the default JVM), but also BEA JRocket, maybe
Sun's also.

But discussion about porting solaris apps to linux. redhat not
possitioned for it. I suggested that hardware vendors are happy to
help the migration.

Open Source Architecture

See the Red Hat Technology roadmap http://www.redhat.com/software/architecture/

Describes whole 'enterprise stack' and components

One of the components is desktop OS.

Other components: directory services, single signon/authentication,
security features, management tools, etc

Support in all critial areas to create complete architecture.

Work on three development fronts

Usability & features

Interop and (windows) migration path

Mgmt & security

Usablity

Gnome 2.6 and 2.8

openoffice.org 1.1.1 and 2.0

Mozilla/Firefox/Epiphany

Evolution 1.4 & 2.0

Server side: file/print share/mail/collaboration/directory

Interop/Migration

Linux clients dropping into microsoft infrastructure

exchange

active directory

file/print sharing

linux servers replacing microsoft infrastructure

file formats and proto

running windows apps

Misc questions and comments from the meeting:

Will probably use 'cairo' X server graphics (when?) that Keith
Packard.

Bunch of questions about accelerated X drivers - not writing them,
ATI/NVidia are releasing some proprietary stuff.

Discuss about needing good style guides for Gnome

Mention new 'self discovery' of things on network (OpenSLP?)

'DBUS' for plug-in play infra for storage

Working on automatically configuring printer in CUPS

SaveGrafton blog focuses attention on FreeStateProject and FreeTownProject efforts

The whole FreeStateProject / FreeTownProject / SaveGrafton.org blog is hitting the fan and getting a bunch of negative press.

This morning's NHPR Exchange program was all about it.

Here is the abstract:

The Free Town Project
Laura Knoy

They're for fewer laws and less government. They want to dismantle
planning commissions and public education. And, they hope to
convince several hundred libertarian minded citizens to move to the
tiny New Hampshire town of Grafton where many current resident
arent exactly waiting with open arms. It's the Free Town Project
and we're talking about it on the next Exchange. Laura's guests are
Mike Lorrey, Grantham, New Hampshire resident, an original member
of the Free State Project and a member of the Free Town
Project. Lisa Rogak, writer and 13 year resident of Grafton, NH
who's one of the leading advocates against the Free Town
Project. Tim Condon, lawyer living in Tampa, Florida, director of
Participant Services for the Free State Project and one of the
original organizers of the Free Town Project. Amanda Phillips,
National Media Representative and President of the [34]Free State
Project and John Richard, he and his wife created the [35]"Save
Grafton" website. Click [36]here to read an essay on why Grafton,
New Hampshire was chosen entitled "Finding the Free Town in the
Free State" by Tim Condon

I credit the SaveGrafton.org blog for getting Graftonites and other Granite Staters interested on what the FreeStateProject and the splinter group, FreeTownProject, are up to.

The SaveGrafton.org folks (Hi John!) are also pointing out some of the revisionism the FreeStateProject is doing, like removing Tim Condon's "Finding the Free Town in the Free State" (fortunately it was mirrored on the FreeTownProject site and available in the google cache) and being relentless on trying to get answers from the FSP leadership.

Links:

FreeStateProject site http://www.freestateproject.org

FreeStateProject forum (a bunch of interested NH folks are now partipating) http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php

FreeTownProject site http://www.freetownproject.org

FreeTownProject Yahoo mailing list (lots of inflamatory stuff there) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free_Town_Project

Shared del.icio.us bookmarks on nh, freestateproject, freetownproject and savegrafton.org. They are mostly mine, but get an account and add to it.

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Configuring Debian/Sarge for Dynamic DNS

Out of the box, when debian/sarge requests a DHCP address, it doesn't send up a hostname for a dynamic DNS server to use.

It is simple, but seemingly different on each distribution. But for debian/sarge, create a file /etc/dhclient.conf and put this in it:

send host-name "yourhostname";

Of course, you can put other options for dhclient in there too.

Looking for how to do this for Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Look here

Configuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Dynamic DNS

Out of the box, when Red Hat Enterprise Linux requests a DHCP address, it doesn't send up a hostname for a dynamic DNS server to use.

It is simple, but seemingly different on each distribution. But for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, create a file /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf (or /etc/dhclient-eth1.conf for eth1, etc) and put this in it:

send host-name "yourhostname";

Of course, you can put other options for dhclient in there too.

If you poke around in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup you'll see how it is used.

Looking for how to do this for Debian/Sarge? Look here

Friday, June 11, 2004

Real sweet folks responding to a Reagan critic

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Shared bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/

I've fallen in love with del.icio.us. Not only is it a nice way to have my bookmarks available from any system, it is a snap to add a new bookmark and categorize it. And it is an endless source of other URLs that other people consider worthwhile. From your bookmark page you can explore sites that others have similarly tagged.

Oh, yeah, it supports RSS feeds! Subscribe to my bookmarks RSS/XML

, just my 'linux' RSS/XML

related sites, everyone's everyones bookmarks RSS/XML

or everyones linux bookmarks RSS/XML

. Sweet use of RSS.

(Not to mention a sneaky way to point folks to the most disgusting video I've ever see on the net. Don't have any food in your mouth when you watch it! Come to think of it, you may never want to eat again.)

McDonald's "Big Mac Meal Tracks" doesn't support my PC

I just submitted a complaint at McDonald's website about their latest free music download promotion.

I really *did* want to see what DRM-encrusted music format they were using and if it would play on my computer.

Here is what I had to say:

I stopped at the McDonalds drive through today and specifically ordered the Big Mac meal (instead of my usual cheeseburger) because of the 'Big Mac Meal Tracks'. When I got back to my desk and tried to redeem the 'free' connect access code the connect.com site said it doesn't support my computer! I've looked on all the McDonalds packaging and the only requirementis a 500Mhz Pentium or better and 128MB RAM or better -- nothing about the operating system that I choose to run on my PC. I use a very modern PC running Linux. The connect.com site doesn't mention Linux but it does say that MacOS is not supported either. I feel duped by your 'free' music download promotion. -marc

We'll see if they even bother to reply.

Nozell, rhymes with Oh Hell