Adventures in F,O, X, & 0

I've had some fun with this... Rather than the "simple appliance" that we really wanted, we've ended up with all the joys and pains of Linux/Postfix/Amavisd/Spamassassin - but adding MySQL/Apache/Maia, and PHPMyAdmin and Webmin. Fun. Had some real fun when I flooded the system by: (a) turning off connection-stage blacklisting and, (b) cranking amavisd logging. Massive backlog of queued mail... then crashed due to filling the disk! Panicy attempt to mount in some more disk space before I found the d**n amavids log lurking in some dumb place. Well, I learnt a few things :-)

It's interesting to think back to the promise of past apps ..... then see why Wave is so much better Open, Free, Cross-platform. It just makes sense. I remember being very impressed with the MOSS Sharepoint when it came out, but then it was ruined by the typical layers of licensing bullshit, bizarre cost models and lack of cross-platform OS/browser support. Rubbish. Looking forward to bring able to install a Wave server asap....

Just looked at Plone vs Drupal vs joomla using this. Joomla was the clear winner, so prbly what I'll use for our home site. Which will move to ec2. I need to do a full"scrape" of it asap

A quick post test from my iPhone

Crazy. However, just moved to the new more Google-integrated system, and also put a link to the PBwiki that i also don't update very often :-)

At LCA2006 I saw a presentation on Plone by an HP staffer (concentrating on its use as a collab tool and knowledge-base for internal teams), which encouraged me to review the state of such things. Spent a bit of time yesterday and today researching and decided: * Plone is the way to proceed * If the Big Boys can live with its database being ZopeDB (no option for MySQL or MSSQL) then so can I * No it's not PHP or Perl, but Python is cool too The others I considered were Drupal and Mambo/Joomla. Plone has a few 'cons': (1) - Unusual Zope/ZopeDB underpinnings and (2) - Steeper learng curve. Also not as easy to 'skin'. The 'pros' were (1) - SMB & NTLM Authentication, (2)Workflow engine, (3) - WebDAV support - along with positive comments on its scalability, and flexability. Overall my impression is that it seems to have more potential as a 'solution for all situations'. Having said all that, it seems to be a bitch to install on Debian - I failed s...

Having a couple of old system failing on a client's site. A pain - you advise all the scanning and repairing but you know they're going to die. Reinstalling all those specialist apps is going to be No Fun At All... Just spent quite a bit of effort ofver 3 days setting up a nice little stealth monitoring box from an old Thinkpad with a dodgy screen. Screen not a problem since I'm using SSH and VNC (which goes Really Well over a LAN), but last night it locked up, and ClunckClunkCluck... this morning on boot. Mucked about tryiong to get it to boot Knoppix and do a fsck - but it died for good. Bugger! So, off on the scrouge for some other old kit...

OK, tonight I want to do this - passwordless access to my Linux box from Windows over SSH. This site looks like what I need - and of course because I'm coming in from a Windows box I'll be using Putty - and this is the story for that part of the equation. So, At the PC, run 'puttygen' (taking all defaults - RSA, SSH-2, 1024 - but no passphrase) and save the resulting private key - in my case to priv-key.pps - and copy the txt at the top of the Puttygen screen labelled "Public Key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file" Now ssh to the Linux box, type ssh -V to check that we're using OpenSSH, then (assuming we want to login as root): mkdir /root/.ssh cd /root/.ssh vi authorized_keys "Public Key for pasting into OpenSSH..." text we got from Puttygen > chmod 700 .ssh chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys Right, now start Putty and create a config - but in the Connection,Data, AutoLoginName enter root , and in Connection,S...

Cool fun! Something I've been meaning to do for a while. Steps were: - futz with sshd.conf (very easy) on remote Debian box to enable X forwarding - install and run Cygwin/X on the home machine - type startx at the Cygwin bash prompt - tick X forwarding in 'putty' on the Windows box at home - Putty in to the Linux box, "init 5" (normally runs in text-mode runlevel 2) and type "xclock" - It Just Works! - init back to 2 on the remote Linux box Windows firewall needed to be told that this was all Ok, but all worked fine - and was not in as "Administartor" on Windows - although of course had to RunAs the Cygwin setup as Admin... Cool.... PS: Spent *ages* trying to find info on xsabre or even a screenshot- mabe I just have to apt-get it and try it over this funky new system!

Looks like RSS is going mainstream too, with IE7 going to support it - big announcement at Gnomedex last week. Bunged the newly stable 'sarge' Debian on a box a week or two ago and roughly setup MySQL, Apache2, PHP and Wordpress. A bit of a mission, and needs some tidying up. Used Bastille to lock the box down - very nice. Also installed 'psad' which is generating some interesting info - looks like the Phillipines is the latest hotbed of crackers and/or bots! Filezilla does a wonderfull job of scp'ing files across however (removing the need for FTP), but it's obviously expecting at least a 1024 wide screen by the way it lays out its screen. OK on my work machine, but a pain at home.

A few points: 1 - Paris Hilton started her own podcast (crappy as it turns out, but it may well improve...) 2 - Podcasting and Adam Curry were on mainstream TV the other night - I missed it, but A saw it 3 - Adam Curry's now launched his much-talked-about Podshow site - and is just one of about 20 similar ventures!

Gnome package "Planner" is now available for Windows ( winplanner on sourceforge ). Looks really nice. Needs latest GTK installed first, but that's painless. There's a couple of 'gotchas' on the printing: (i) In the print dialog there's an option to "select views" - if you select nothing you get noting, and (ii) words come out upside down - buggy printing - but , there's a work-around - just print first to PDF, then open and print the PDF with Acrobat Reader. Funky! (I tried GanttProject - a Java app - but it was quite basic and horrible by comparison)

Added quite a bit of content last night - TS'd in to work, then web'd across to the wiki running on my workstation's port 82 - sweet. I'm impressed by how easy and natural it is to add content. A bit more worryiong is the process of re-doing the 'style via CSS. I'm keen of course, but it looks like a bit of work! I think the best ide may be to print out all CSS then read it through.

Doing my "P" items (planning) today - and started marking the Imortant ones "I" and the Urgent one's "U" ...ended up with 9 IU's ! (mayby I'd better get cracking knocking them over rather than blogging about it...)

Boy, this is *nice*.... Installed it today and very very pleased. I'll spend a while bashing the 'look' into shape then really get rocking with it because it has a lot of potential - mainly because its so easy to setup and use. - oo PS: Being wx-based it's possible it'll get ported to Linux too, which would be nice.

Suppossed to be a stripped down 'Grandma's Edition' of Ubantu, which is Debian - so should be a good basis for > to use. Will burn it donw tonight and give it a whirl...

Just another test

So, seemed like a good idea to pull down the lates Knoppix and try to use the iPod as a way to keep my settings, docs etc - using the "persistant home" feature. First hurdle was cutting K - but then problems with it getting a decent resolution on my screen. After all that I don't think it actually found the iPod.... Oh well, I'll just try again tonight on my home machine. Fun fun fun!

Right! - this email is composed in HTML - and has the hash-end-thingy at the bottom of what I have to say - to strip the "disclaimer/advt" off the end of my email   Lets see how it goes....