Bend in the Weather (Entries tagged as gnome)

Linux Printing - where is the fun in that

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:16:00 +1100

Ahh the good ol' days.

I distinctly remember the days when you would stick a printer on the network and then wrestle with the sucker getting the right settings so your printouts didn't look like Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Installing custom filters and weird control files were all the norm. Not so much now.

Thanks to Michael Fox advice, I purchased a Brother Mono Laser printer this week (that handles Duplex/Networking as well). The Brother HL-5250DN works 100% under Linux and just required installing the PPDs off LinuxPrinting.org (though it was working fine prior to that just via CUPS and the included driver). What's even more surprising is that they have a Linux section on the Brother website.

I had the printer uninstalled from the box, read the 'setup instructions' included (plug this, remove that, etc), and had it printing duplex in < 10 minutes!

Before Michael's advice -- I had avoided Brother printers -- mainly due to having a PoS Brother plain-paper Fax machine. It seems their printers are much better than their Faxes.

So a big thanks to Michael.

So I ask Linux developers... stop making it so easy to install hardware. Otherwise everyone will be running Linux before too long!

Now -- I only need a bookcase in my office, and I've completed my new office setup!

A visit to Ballarat this week

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:35:00 +1000

This week saw me head to the Victorian regional city of Ballarat for a few days to undertake some RHEL5 x86_64 builds for work.

Whilst it's not as exotic a destination as an unnamed colleague visited nor did it see me returning without my pants or shoes ( sorry Jon, I couldn't resist! ), it was a productive visit.

Traditionally we undertake builds remotely, however these servers are likely not to appear on our network or even administered by ourselves, so it made sense to go onsite to undertake the work.

I stayed in the Doherty Ballarat Hotel and Convention Centre which literally is on the opposite side of the road to Sovereign Hill (and no I didn't have time to go there!)

View Larger Map

Whilst I spent most of my time in the office battling with hardware that had been incorrectly ordered (ie: missing hardware and/or non-compatible hardware (ie: 3.5" SATA drives ordered instead of 2.5" SAS drives for the internal enclosure)), I did venture back to the hotel in the evenings for some R&R.

The hotel room was quite pleasant, and what something a corporate traveller expects. There was no surprises out of the ordinary (which you really don't need when travelling), though I did have two strange nights of sleep due to external factors:

1^st night: Apparantly it's Koala mating season. Staying in a hotel room surrounded by forest is lovely to look at during the day, but it's also the playground for randy koalas of a night. So thumbs up to the 'big boy' who kept me up for several hours in the early hours whilst he ravaged the local female population. Koalas aren't dying out in this region whilst this bloke is still kicking! Seriously, I thought those types of noises I may have heard from other hotel rooms, not above my hotel room.

2^nd night: Local Football season must have finished. Seems some of the local players didn't head over to Bali to celebrate but decided our hotel was a great place to party.

In depth conversations at yelling level could be heard at around 3am. Answers to lifes biggest questions such as "Can you scull beer or bourbon faster?" were asked repeatedly. Finally after about an hour when it took that long for the gorillas to realise that they couldn't order a pizza to their room (and yes their was going to be surcharge for anything delivered to their room), the group of 6 decided that bundling into a car and heading down to the local McDonalds whilst tanked was the sensible thing to do.

I passed out after that, though it appears they were successful (if not foolish) as their car was there in the morning without any visible signs of damage. It seems the drink and driving campaigns don't apply to footballers.

I made sure I made enough noise as I passed their room at 7am heading off for breakfast, however in their drunken state the night previously, I doubt I would of woken them. It did bring me mild relief to my simmering frustration/anger from the previous nights interruption however.

The crazy and overpriced Internet costs in the room ($0.20/1MB with both uploads/downloads charged or $0.15/min) ensured I had a relatively Internet free week night. I really didn't miss being connected, though it did remind me how often I relied on just 'quickly looking up something'. Items like news, weather and even a TV guide via the Internet seems to have become the 'standard' method of information retrieval for me. It became more of an inconvenience than anything. I realised then that there was indeed a TV guide in the room. I gathered a quick round-up of news/weather using local radio. So this is what life was like prior to the Internet? (It seems so long ago now!)

Traditionally I use Google Reader to keep abreast of my feeds (as it allows me to bookmark, tag and share feeds easily), but being disconnected from the Internet was going to make that impossible.
I did however utilise a RSS reader, and was pleasantly surprised how easily it actually integrated into my Gnome desktop (particularly as it's a KDE app). The tray-icon and minimize/restore from tray all worked flawlessly (mostly due to the fact it's probably coded using FreeDesktop specs). I went with Akregator over Liferea after hearing reports that recent versions were prone to 100% CPU usage.

One thing I did notice, is that current RSS readers do allow for 'offline' mode - though it would be nice if it gave you the option of a 'full download' of certain feeds. Offline mode that only sucks down text is quite frustrating at times, as the associated image (being discussed in the article) isn't available. It feels like over-hearing a discussion you weren't meant to hear!

Whilst it's probably prudent allowing it to be set as a 'per feed' setting as I suspect many people may not want to download a full page for every article on every feed. (Particularly those feeds you only 'scan', and read a small amount of, or those that are overly heavy with graphics/flash, and embedded video.)

Since returning I did notice that Gnome also has the Straw Reader. Hopefully that comes along nicely as it appears to be in early development.
Ideally I would love to see an RSS reader that integrated WebKit with a good OPML import/export feature, as well as good support for RSS (0.91, 1.0 and 2.0), RDF as well as ATOM formats. Having a feature that allowed you to selectively do a full download of certain feeds for offline mode would be fantastic. I'll whack that down on my ever growing todo list (I think I'll need to live to 800 to ever complete it!)

One nice feature I discovered is the room had direct dial-in, and due to poor mobile reception in the room it was much more cost effective to have Pauline call me direct over VOIP. It also meant we could speak for much longer.

The staff I met at the Ballarat office were extremely friendly and actually quite enjoyable to be around. ( Sorry MrPointy, they were more cheery then you! ) They appreciated the effort I put in whilst down there (it's always nice to get some recognition) and appreciated the attention to detail. It was quite good timing as I will relocate offices to this one once I move into our new home (probably 4-6 weeks away). Heading into the Ballarat office is much closer than the Melbourne offices from Bannockburn. I've already made some good inroads into getting to know people there. I'll be the only member from my team at this office location, so it makes sense to build some bridges.

I did add two things to my 'travel-list' when travelling for work:

A cheap mini 10/100 switch.
This is invaluable when you're stuck in a room with one Ethernet port attempting multiple server builds, and also wishing to have your laptop online at the same time. I headed out the first day a picked up a cheapie TP-Link 5-port 10/100 Switch. Cost me $20 from a local computer store, but saved hours of frustration.

A decent power board with surge protection
In hindsight I should have also taken/purchased a decent power board. The room only had 4 power outlets which meant I could only have one server up at a time. It would have been nice that I could have multiple machines up at the same time, as these were identical builds (besides their hostnames), I could have used something like clusterssh to undertake the same tasks across all the machines at the same time -- ensuring I could have finished the job in a fraction of the time.

We live and learn.

Improving the Gnome terminal

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:46:00 +1000

I've been hearing ramblings on a few blogs about a little app called Terminator. (No it isn't Arnie hitting ya desktop), but in fact a terminal program that can do split screens and a bunch of other funky stuff.

Here's the blurb straight from the Terminator website:

Terminator is an attempt to maximise useful space on a given desktop for terminals. Im a sysadmin by trade, so I live in ssh sessions and thus terminals. An extra line here and there over all those hours seems like its worth trying for.

Much of the behaviour of Terminator is based on GNOME Terminal, and we are adding more features from that as time goes by, but we also want to extend out in different directions with useful features for sysadmins and other users. If you have any suggestions, please file wishlist bugs!

It can be found in the Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) repositories, and the Debian Sid repositories.

If you're running those distros, you can just click here to install terminator

Those still stuck on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) can also install it. Just add the following lines your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-terminator/ubuntu gutsy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-terminator/ubuntu gutsy main restricted universe multiverse

Once done run the following: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install terminator

NB: For Gutsy users, you will get a warning that there is no authentication on the package. As it's from the ppa area, that's quite normal.

The next version 0.9 is supposed to also have tabs and some other nice goodies like drag n drop... (take a peep over here)

One thing I've found is that I like the extra real-estate. No annoying menu to get in the way. I use a lot of keyboard short cuts (like Ctrl_+, Ctrl_- and Ctrl_0 to resize the font sizes). I've found most of the Gnome shortcuts work.

Even better, it seems to be less of a memory hog than what the default Gnome Terminal is.

The developer is breaking the bonds that hold it to Gnome, so in theory you should be able to use it on other Window Managers like KDE, Enlightenment, etc in the not too distant future.

And now, for the sample screen shot!

Well it appears I'm hooked. I'm looking forward to 0.90 but for mind, the current version does all I need. (Small, efficient and easier to view multiple screens in one window).

If you haven't used it, give it a try you'll be glad you did!

Network Manager Woes

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:59:04 +1100

Dear LazyWeb,

NetworkManager appears to have become the de-facto networking tool under the dominant graphical X-Window manager environments (Gnome or KDE; which uses KNetworkManager).

As such it's heavily coupled into most Gnome and KDE desktop environments these days.
Whilst NM works well in a wired environment, it seems to trip up for many on wireless networking setups.

I'm wondering if someone who's dabbled a bit further than myself can provide me a solution?!

The Background is:

MythTV runs on a PC in the lounge connected to a Plasma TV.
Distro is a fresh x86-64 Ubuntu 8.04 (beta release) install. All updates applied.
Automatic GDM login is enabled (no-one wants to type in a username/password just to watch TV).
Network Manager starts, and decides it needs to get access to the Gnome-Keyring to get the WPA2-PSK key for the wireless card.
The Gnome-Keyring password has to be entered before NetworkManager can access the actual keyring.

An example of Gnome Keyring prompting for a password so Network Manager can connect is below:

Above: Starting Linux with a password-less GDM login,
Network Manager won't start until the Gnome-keyring password is entered.
(Click picture for a larger image)

Other interesting features:

It appears some users have had success with Network Manager auto-connecting if they do enter a password at login. It appears they accomplished this by modifying /etc/pam.d/gdm. (this includes installing pam_keyring).
Obviously with an automatic gdm login, the file in question to edit is /etc/pam.d/gdm-autologin; however doing so it does not appear to actually work. (You're still prompted for a password by gnome-keyring).
The docs on the GnomeKeyring/Pam wiki page also highlights the need to login from the GDM manager. Automatic login doesn't appear to be catered for.

My question to the LazyWeb is this:

"Using an autologin gdm environment, can one get NetworkManager to start and connect to a PSK wireless network without prompting for the default Gnome-Keyring password?"

Feel free to post comments or shed any suggestions, experience or working solutions.

Update: It seems the answer was easier than first thought. Just load gnome-keyring-manager and change the password to a blank password. Thanks to a comment written in Bug #181281 documented in Launchpad, I discovered the simple solution!

It works a treat!

Laptop clarifications

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:30:58 +1100

Early this morning I blogged in relation to the OLPC and my own thoughts on solutions for Labors Digital Education Revolution policy.

Russell Coker picked up my thoughts and wrote an interesting article regarding Laptop vs Book Weight and made some good points.

To continue the discussion in the Blogsphere (man I hate that phrase!), I thought I would answer some of his questions, and clarify some of my initial comments.

What OS does the ClassMate PC ship with?
The Intel Classmate PC by default ships with Microsoft Windows XP. Close inspection of the images on their website suggests so. The Interactive Manual also clearly demonstrates a Windows based OS. As such, the default shipping system does not meet my own requirements -- without the removal of pre-installed operating system and software.

What age bracket does the ClassMate PC suit?
I did state in my article to mention that "The Classmate PC looks like more of a rival to the XO laptop more than anything." and whilst not clearly stating it; I see it more focused on primary school children then actual high school students. As such it fails the Digital Education Revolution policy (Years 9-12).
As Russell correctly points out it is 'designed for primary students (ages 5-14)'. It is also important to note that Intel have also have left the OLPC project. They are now squarely focusing on the promoting the Classmate over the XO laptop.

What computer candidates for high school children then?
I pointed to the fact of the Everex Cloudbook and Asus EeePC as two possible candidates. In addition it appears that others are about to hit the market in the next few months including a model from MSI as confirmed.

I do agree with Russell that whilst the EeePC is probably the front runner (with a SSD over a traditional HDD), though the screen size (7") is far too small. I would add that the keyboard would also be annoying for any length of time. WithUpdate: potentially 6 hours a day working on this beast, it's likely to be light enough for students to throw across a class-room in frustration.

I am also of the belief that Tablet PCs could also be reworked into a small form factor and low price (sub $500-$600AUD). It allows students to either elect to use a keyboard or a pen-based solution if preferred. In addition, drawing diagrams on a tablet is much easier. TabletPC screens generally are larger as well, making it suitable for viewing for long periods.

There is some partial Linux support for Tablet computing, but traditional Linux applications are likely to require linking to the correct libraries to provide support for native 'writing'. It seems Toshiba are also thinking along the same lines about a Tablet PC rework. TabletKiosk shows it can be done, and use OpenSuSE as an option on their range of Tablets.

Russell's main point that the he disagrees with my statement "A traditional notebook is far too heavy for high-school kids to lug around". In the adventurous mode that is Russell; he went digging through his old school books, and a set of scales to prove that current high-school text books are indeed heavier.

I could have saved him the pain... they are indeed heavier.

However, I'll stress again that my personal belief is that a traditional notebook is far too heavy for high-school kids to lug around.

Let me clarify this point.

Text books (those awful paper form) are currently required. Adding another 1-1.5kgs (weight of a notebook) to a schools bag in unnecessary.
Parents are already concerned with the weight of school bags already, adding extra kilograms to the bag won't go well with them and is likely to be met with resistance.
The Victorian government has already published details on concerns of the weight of school bags. Some interesting statistics come out of a study undertaken by the Australian Spine journal:

The weight of the average backpack is heavier, proportionally, than the legal load-bearing limit for adults.
79.1 per cent of children say their backpacks feel heavy.
65.7 per cent report feeling fatigued by the weight of their backpack.
46.1 per cent report back pain caused by their backpack.

The backpack should weigh less than 10 per cent of your childâs body weight â for example, a child of 40kg should carry less than 4kg in their backpack. Ideally, the child in this example should only carry around 2â3kg of books.

I agree with Russell's idea of using digital text books and ensuring the children only carry the notebook. However I do see situations where this will be hard to enforce:
- Book publishers are unlikely to be swayed into a digital age for distribution, as much as other publishers in the entertainment industry (movies and music spring to mind) have been dragged kicking and screaming.
- Whilst Creative Commons licensing would be the nirvana; I could only see this working if a 'redemption' process works. ie: Each student registers with the school the texts they are using (based on the enrollment of a course), this could be then billed to the students family and the revenue collected is given to the publisher).
- Another process would be to have Book publishers provide their text books via USB Keys. A student places an order in a central location, and a USB Key is shipped to them; with all their classes loaded on. This form is however likely to require some form of DRM; which many (including myself) will be opposed to.
- The most secure approach would be centralization of text-books. A school intranet or a government based education server that requires authentication is utilized that records the student accessing which book. A semester bill is then generated. Internet access is almost mandatory for each child, and if not available at home the local library or school premises could be used to access the text. This is probably my preferred method.
Using the argument, 'it was fine for me when I went through school' some 20 years ago, doesn't hold any water. When I went to school, corporal punishment was still in place! Things change over time, new research and practices also come to light. Little work had been undertaken (around 1988) in relation to lifting loads of children at that time. Much has changed. Remember, Linux wasn't even an itch in Linus' pants 20 years ago.

I think the discussion and response from Russell is healthy. I appreciate Russell's input and he does raise some of the questions that will need to be addressed. Hopefully more people feel prompted to express their opinions and insights. The FOSS community is wide and diverse; many of these hurdles can be addressed and a superior and less expensive solution is likely to be found. Whilst traditional system vendors will only look at the opportunity to increase revenue, those in the FOSS community are likely to focus on the end-user experience.

The current focus by the Federal government also helps narrow down the desired solution for high-school students. It is a perfect time to introduce our next generation of adults on the virtues of OSS. These students will take that experience into the workplace of the future. This will assist in a wider adoption of OSS solutions not only in the workplace but in homes around the nation.

Placing computers in the hands of our students and replacing legacy paper-based text books will address two areas in one swoop. That surely is a Digital Education Revolution and one that both doctors, parents and students will be grateful to take a load off their backs!

Update: Steve Walsh correctly identifies that the ClassMate PC does indeed ship with a Linux variant. I admit, I also missed that myself! As such the ClassMate PC is also suitable for an alternative to the XO Laptop.

OLPC Update

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:21:24 +1100

Recently I penned about the OLPC and Labour's Digital Education Revolution policy.

After some consideration the following day I drew the conclusion that the OLPC XO is better suited to primary school children than that of secondary children.

Jeff and Pia Waugh both contacted me with exactly the same sentiments.

In fact, Pia informed me that work was underway in relation to trailling the OPLCs in Australian primary schools. A website has been setup (content still coming!) and a mailing list is available.

Those interested in being involved should join the mailing list.

Those in high school some of the latest sub notebooks are more appropriate such as:

With the focus from the Federal government on secondary schools for computers in Year 9-12... these little machines might be perfect for high-school kiddies. The CloudBook or the Eee PC are probably the choice machines at present. The Classmate PC looks like more of a rival to the XO laptop more than anything.

A traditional notebook is far too heavy for high-school kids to lug around, and a sub notebook is light (normally under 1kg) and could be even loaded up with school text books to save on back strain.

I'm hoping that the government advisors undertaking the tender process look at such items and just don't become 'deer eyed' in front of the glare of glitzy sales-pitches from traditional laptop makers.

Running a Linux based OS also makes sense for teenagers, as it severely limits the ability for the machine to become infected by worms, trojans and viruses. These traditionally target Windows operating systems, and become docile on a Linux based machine. Whilst I would still recommend an AV scanner on the machines, the impact and damage these nasties can take is severally limited; thus reducing the overhead in support costs keeping them clean.

Plenty of food for thought...

OLPC and Labor's Digital Education Revolution policy

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:47:11 +1100

I found it refreshing to see at the last Federal election that the Australian Federal Labor Party had policy on providing each and every secondary student in Years 9-12 with their own computer.

The Digital Education Revolution was a major piece of government policy that saw the party win in a landslide in 2007.

The policy goes on to state:

$1bn over 4 years to be spent.
The National Secondary School Computer Fund will provide upto $1m for schools to provide new and upgraded ICT equipment.
$100m to be spent on high speed FTTP provisioning to schools.
Training of school teachers in the effective use of ICT to assist student learning
Development of web-portals for parents to participate in their child's education.

This will mean a complete transformation of many schools, and bringing them in line with 21^st century teaching practices.

Whilst this all does sound appealing, in it's present form I can see Microsoft and their solution providers clammering on the software/operating system space to bleed the government dry of the funds.

I think this is a perfect location where the OLPC could see the amount invested into such a scheme. The use of XO Laptops are perfectly suited for the classroom, and even more so in remote rural areas.

Take into consideration the requirements for most students:

Ability to write documents (Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) The traditional 'Office' application
Ability to communication with fellow student (Collaboration works)
Ability to send Email
Ability to browse the Web
Ability to use digital content (Audio/Video/Graphics)
Ability to undertake course material in a digital age

These are areas where the XO Laptop shines. It's not a general computer, but one specifically built for students in mind.

The $1m AUD could therefore be used to ensure ALL children in high-school (Years 7 - 12) are provided with a laptop, and thus ensure to double the reach of the initiative.

OSS software in the school would be seen as something that could greatly enhance to dollar spend and provide a rich and full learning experience for the student, assist the teacher in providing the appropriate tools.

If the average laptop is say $1200AUD, it is likely that they can replace one such laptop with 4 OLPCs. If a traditional laptop requires say $300 worth of software (Operating System, Office, Utilities, etc), this further increases the value of the OLPC as the software required is built into the laptop, thus avoiding any additional expense.

So comparing functionality and cost -- it's likely 1 traditional laptop could be replaced with 5 OLPCs.

The OLPC is rugged and made for demanding students, add to it that it's easily repairable, ensuring ongoing costs are minimized.

I would expect that money saved with laptop rollouts could be used to further enhance the OSS stack and provide a full OSS stack in the school.

OpenLDAP authentication servers
Samba file servers
OSS Webmail solution (something like Zimbra that allows students/parents/teachers the ability to access it outside school hours).
Linux based firewalls protecting the school infrastructure.
Web-servers based on LAMP.
The use of an ECM like Alfresco for ease of content management.
Collaboration servers such as Jabber.

The XO Laptop was on display and handed out to many of the conference attendees at the recent LCA08. Many people marveled at it's simplicity and pure beauty. (I'm sure it's something Intel and AMD will pour over for months to come!)

If people from Linux Australia are interested in putting together a submission to the Federal government on such a proposal I'm happy to donate my time.

I see investing in the future education of our children paramount to moving Australia into the digital age, and the use of OSS ensures they get the best start possible!

I feel this is one area the OSS community can make a massive contribution to computing in Australia that is likely to touch nearly every Australia family. Whilst deploying OSS solutions will also ensure it's familiarity is likely to rise to unseen levels in this country. Adopting OSS principles at an early age with students is likely to ensure that the next generation of Australians are very OSS savvy and will continue the great work their previous generation have commenced.

If you're interested, please contact me.

SuSE Linux 10.1

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 19:16:53 +1100

For those interested, SusE Linux 10.1 is scheduled to be released on Thursday, April 13^th 2006 (That's likely to be Friday 14^th for us Aussies!)

The move from 10.0 to 10.1 will include some nice upgrades features:

Linux Kernel 2.6.16 (currently at RC3)
Glibc 2.3.90
Kexec (boot Linux directly from Linux without going through the BIOS - meaning you could use a IntelMac for Linux!)
NetworkManager
AppArmour
Xen 3.0
Evolution 2.6 Beta
Firefox 1.5.0.1
OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 RC2
SpamAssassin 3.1
Thunderbird 1.5
Gnome 2.12.1
KDE 3.5.1

There is nothing ground-breaking coming in 10.1... it's more a polished update. For those with 10.0 -- the biggest thing you will notice is the added polish and updated versions of either Gnome or KDE (which ever you use). AppArmour is also something that will be on by default and adds additional security to your system.

Expect the final release will update a few things (like Firefox and OpenOffice and a final released kernel), but it will remain pretty static until then.

In any instance it will build on the great work already there and add additional polish. It's also likely to boot much faster with some of the cleanup from the Super project being added.

I'm hoping that Xgl is included in the final build... as this would be fantastic to use!

Next generation Linux Desktop

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 11:51:26 +1100

There has been a lot of debate whether Linux is ready to be a desktop replacement for Windows over the last 5 years.

Companies like Redhat (Redhat Desktop and Fedora Core), Novell (Novell Linux Desktop and OpenSuSE), and Canoncial (Ubuntu Linux) are doing a lot to make that a reality.

Novell is forging ahead with some major new components that will give Linux desktops the edge when it comes to eye-candy and stunning graphical displays. Novell is working on both Xgl and Compiz that will turn desktops upside turn (literally!)

Novell will ship the Xgl components in their upcoming OpenSuSE 10.1 release that is scheduled for March 2006. Other Linux distributions will follow shortly after.
This will beat Microsoft's next version of Windows - Vista to market and provide users and graphic artists with a modern and dynamic working environment.

A 3D desktop - as shown above is only one of the fancy features that Xgl will deliver. You can see a range of demos from the Xgl webpage at Novell. These include true transparency and shading, some interesting ways to manage multiple windows on your desktop and the like.

It's great to see Linux is not only bringing many of the graphical features people love but also pushing the boundaries with new and exciting ways to work.

The days of finding an excuse to remain on Windows is very quickly disappearing!