Yesterday evening I planned the upgrade of a server I share with a few friends. This server already hosts some bigger sites like Mechelenblogt and Hackerspace.be.
The server ran Ubuntu Jaunty but we needed to upgrade to Karmic because of new features in Apache we wanted.

Suprisingly Ubuntu has a better day to upgrade than the debian apt-get dist-upgrade + change your /etc/apt/sources.list to reflect the new repositories.
You simply need to type do-release-upgrade followed by enter and an interactive upgrade process will do all the work for you.

There were no issues at all with the upgrade. With all the reading and double checking what it did the upgrade took only 50 minutes. Ubuntu++, Linux++, opensource++ is my conclusion.

Normally, to configure IPv6 (and v4) forwarding on a Linux system you should edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and change the lines like this:

# Uncomment the next line to enable packet forwarding for IPv4
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

# Uncomment the next line to enable packet forwarding for IPv6
net.ipv6.ip_forward=1

This way your kernel will load the forwarding parameters on next reboot.
To activate the feature without rebooting do:

# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/forwarding 
# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/forwarding

But suddenly you get the following error with ipv6:

# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/forwarding 
-bash: /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/forwarding: Permission denied

In my setup I run Linux as guest in OpenVZ. It seemed my OpenVZ wasn't fully configured to allow IPv6. (I run it trough Proxmox). To enable full IPv6 support I edited the /etc/vz/vz.conf file and set IPV6="yes".

This still didn't solve the problem, even after rebooting the server completely.
Currently I couldn't find a way to get it working correctly, so I created a fully virtualized machine with bridged networking.
I hope to find a way to get ipv6 forwarding working correctly in OpenVZ soon, a post with the solution will follow then.

It has been approximately 5 years I finished using stolen or pirated software. I must admit: I love it!
I love the look on the face of others when they hear I have no illegal software on my machine.
I love the feeling of being legit with all that software.
I love to help others do their first steps in this uncommon world.
And no, I love my money and don't spend it when it's not necessary.

It's all about the attitude.

The most difficult part is the attitude that needs to change.
My previous attitude was to look for a well known brand, download the software, crack it and play with it. If it could do what I needed it for I kept using it. But what with all the unused features? What with the price of this software? That's not important, it's "free" says the thief.

Like with everything in this world there are different options you can choose from. But do we have the choice with software?

Sure we have. I usually see two different options: a) use open source software or b) find an alternative that is worth it's price.
Many (almost all) open source software packages are available for free. Many are even of a great quality, but finding the right packet is difficult. There is a great site around called osalt. It's a huge list with well known commercial software and their similar alternatives in the open source world. There is a short description and a list of supported operating systems. Be sure to check out this site and find what you need.

In the rare case it is possible that you can't find what you need, just look around for other software that is less expensive. Dare to try free beta's, usually when pre-ordering you get a reduction.

aether - Mac OS X

On my Mac I have three commercial software packages that need to be payed for. The first one is Mac OS X, but this one I payed for when buying the computer.

The second one is VMWare Fusion. When I was in then need for a hypervisor on my Mac the only open source alternative was Q. Unfortunately it had a huge performance impact on my machine. So I tried Fusion's beta program. The product worked very well and a few months before the final release there was a 50% off from the price of $80 making it $40 or €30 (by then).
Right now you can use VirtualBox as alternative, but that wasn't available yet when I needed it.

The third commercial software is called Bibble. I couldn't find a good open source alternative that ran on Mac and Adobe Lightroom 2 with it's $300 is really to expensive for me. So I bought Bibble that delivers the required features for $130 or €83.

What about the rest? It's fairly simple here's a short list:

• Browsing - Mozilla Firefox
• Email - Mozilla Thunderbird
• Office Suite - OpenOffice.org (or NeoOffice in the past)
• Chat - Adium
• Launcher - Quicksilver
• Notification - Growl
• Video - VLC
• Burning - Burn
• (s)FTP - Cyberduck
• Code editor - Smultron
• Backup - iBackup (not open source, free for personal use)
• ...

sws00448 - Microsoft Windows

This is the computer I have from my company. I'm 'forced' to use many commercial software but they do pay for it. So it's not really my problem. Let's skip that boring non-Office or administrative software if you want.

• Browsing - Mozilla Firefox
• Full-Disk Encryption - TrueCrypt
• Secure Erasing - Eraser
• Office Suite 2- OpenOffice.org
• PortableApps - Portable Apps
• Chat - Pidgin
• Launcher - Launchy
• Video - VLC
• Burning - Infrarecorder
• (s)FTP - FileZilla
• Code editor - Notepad++
• Shell - Cygwin
• ...

neptunus - Linux / Ubuntu

No need to make a list here. For all the software you want just got to the "Add/Remove Software" menu item. In contrary to some other Operating Systems you can really add software in this place.

Conclusion: I changed my attitude

Do I miss something on my machine? No, and I'm really happy with the things I use, and (almost) all for free.

Jump on the bus and try out free software.

This weekend I chose to reinstall my MacBook. The main reason was that, some time ago, I screwed up my language support be removing all unwanted languages with Monolingual. MacOS X application bundles usually come in Universal Binarys and can contain many translations. This nice monolingual application enables you to remove all these unwanted PPC binaries and unwanted languages. Stupid as I am I didn't realize that by removing Dutch and French my spellcheck would also loose these languages.
Unfortunately MacOS X isn't documented like Linux and I couldn't find what files I was missing. The only solution: reinstall.

I took my courage with both hands and started making backups on my LaCie USB disk of 250 GB. After 30 mins of intensive tar cf /Volumes/UNTITLED/backup/${name}.tar ${name} all my data was backed up on my disk.
A simple tar tf filename.tar showed me that my files were indeed present in the tar archive.

Time to reinstall my Mac ! Everything went fine, except...kernel panics when installing the updates. Looks like Mac doesn't like unknown kernel modules running when doing such a big update. Reboot not possible, Reinstall... Finally my mac was installed and updated. Only then I started to reinstall the software I need. In such situations you really miss package managers like Linux has. This means going to every website and downloading that one piece of software from there, and hopping to the next website...

Like all unix platforms I know MacOS X has a centralized place for the user-preferences. /Users/$username/Library/ it is.
I connected my ext2 disk to my Mac and realized again that I needed a driver for that. Ex2fsx it is. Unfortunately that stupid driver went weird and screwed up my filesystem.

The pleasure starts now. Well, fortunately I was able to copy my Documents and mails before it all went wrong. So with old backups I could live without the need for a suicide. But first let's do some data-recovery...
No problem, been there, done that. Take work-laptop, boot linux, plug in the USB disk, that is automagically mounted, start copying data, done. NOT !
For obscure reasons my USB device (/dev/sdc*) disappeared from /dev/ when trying to copy/access data. The dmesg output said things like Buffer I/O error on device sdc and EXT3-fs error (device sg1): ext3_find_entry: reading directory blablabla.

I started to panic a little. Some FOSDEM related things were not in my 2month old backup. What should I do?
Trying different ways to access the data or repair the partition: fsck, dd. But they all failed. Well, time to get some sleep.

This morning I concluded I had only one solution: Open the case and connect the disk to a computer directly, and so bypassing the SATA-to-usb-controller. Maybe this will work better. But how should I do this? I can't find any screws on the case... With some patience I could find the right way to open the black-box.

Here are the instructions to open a black LaCie USB case:

Finally I connected the disk to my parents machine that has SATA support. Booted it again from my BT3-live-usb, mounted it manually, quickly backed up the data. Did a fsck /dev/sda2 and took a deep breath. All data recovered !

From be.comp.os.unix ...
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:
>> Hallo,
>>
>> Ik probeer om xserver te starten door ssh.
>>
>> Wanneer ik een verbinding maak via ssh en ik geeft het comando startx.
>> Dan start x wel op mijn unix machine maar niet op de host die ik op dat
>> moment gebruik.

Zo gaat dat niet.
Ofwel start je een X server op je 'remote machine' en neem je dat scherm over met iets zoals VNC.

Ofwel start je een X server op je lokale machine (windows, linux, mac,...) en pipe je de applicaties door je SSH tunnel naar je lokale Xserver.
Hoe gaat dit te werk? In mijn situatie run ik MacOS X op mijn laptop. Soms heb ik toegang nodig tot linux-only apps (ofwel ben ik te lui om het te recompilen met alle deps).

Op mijn Mac OS X laptop start ik X op. (X11.app)
Vervolgens open ik mijn shell (terminal) en typ ik:

$ ssh -Y 192.168.1.141

(je kan ook -X gebruiken, zie manpages) Zo geraak ik ingelogd op mijn remote linux bak en heeft SSH al direct mijn $DISPLAY variable goed gezet.

Vervolgens start ik gewoon mijn grafische app op, de applicatie wordt door de ssh tunnel naar mijn MacOS X X11 server gestuurd. (aether = MacOS X, chri-desktop = linux onder virtuele machine)

chri@aether ~
 Tue 10 Apr 22:05 $ echo $DISPLAY
:0.0
chri@aether ~
 Tue 10 Apr 22:07 $ ssh -Y 192.168.1.141
chri@192.168.1.141's password:
Linux chri-desktop 2.6.20-11-generic #2 SMP Thu Mar 15 08:03:07 UTC 2007 i686
Last login: Tue Apr 10 22:07:32 2007
chri@chri-desktop:~$ echo $DISPLAY
localhost:10.0
chri@chri-desktop:~$ firefox&
[1] 5593
chri@chri-desktop:~$
[1]+  Done                    firefox
chri@chri-desktop:~$ exit
logout
Connection to 192.168.1.141 closed.
chri@aether ~
 Tue 10 Apr 22:09 $

Om Mark (en de Linux beweging) even te steunen... quote his mail:

*** GRAAG DIT BERICHT DOORSTUREN AAN KENNISSEN MET MOGELIJK INTERESSE*** Beste, Ben je enthousiast vrije software-gebruiker? Dan ben jij degene die we zoeken! Op 1 juni wordt namelijk Ubuntu Linux 6.06 "Dapper" gelanceerd. We willen zoveel mogelijk pers- en publieksbelangstelling kweken. Daarom bouwen we tegen 1 juni een netwerk van Ubuntu-steunpunten. DOEL: Mensen laten voelen dat vrije software leeft in hun buurt of streek. Iedereen de mogelijkheid bieden in zijn streek een installatieset op te halen, misschien zelfs een korte demonstratie of hulp bij een eerste installatie te krijgen. DOE JE MEE? http://vrijesoftware.be/steunpunten/formulier.html (zelf steunpunt worden) http://vrijesoftware.be/steunpunten (kaart van huidige steunpunten) WAT VERWACHT JE DAN VAN MIJ? Gedurende enkele maanden (je kiest zelf hoe lang):

• deel je Ubuntu-installatiesets uit aan mensen uit je buurt die je daarom vragen.
• geef je - ALS je dat wenst- een demonstratie Ubuntu Linux aan mensen uit je buurt die daarom vragen.
• help je - ALS je dat wenst- bij het voor het eerst installeren van Ubuntu Linux. Je hoeft dus geen speciale kennis rond vrije software of Ubuntu te bezitten, al kan dat natuurlijk wel helpen.

NOG VRAGEN? FOUTEN MELDEN? Wiens initiatief is dit? Hoe zit het met privacy? Deze en andere vragen vind je beantwoord op http://vrijesoftware.be/steunpunten/faq.html. Is dat niet zo, spreek me dan aan met je vraag: mvdbo...@gmail.com. Alvast bedankt! Mark Van den Borre enthousiast vrije software-gebruiker deelnemer ubuntu-be

In Juli 2005 werd er een poll gehouden bij lezers van 'Network Computing' betreffende het gebruik van Microsoft Windows Desktop als besturingssysteem. Het resultaat was 87% MS Windows Desktop gebruikers Als ik even naar mijn omgeving kijk (en dit zijn niet enkel ICT mensen) dan schat ik dat zo'n 60% illegale software heeft van Microsoft. (hier reken ik niet meervoudige illegaliteit door meer applicaties) Als ik goed kan rekenen is dat zo'n 50% van de computergebruikers dieven zijn... Bevragen waarom ze die producten niet kopen heeft, na vele gesprekken, bewezen nutteloos te zijn. Naast een handvol standaard-antwoorden komt er niet veel creativiteit te pas.

• "Je wil toch niet betalen voor zoeits?"
• "Goe zot, die hebben geld genoeg."
• "Dat is toch gratis? Zie je kan het zo downloaden. :-)"

Dankzij zijn aanpak betreffende illegale versies heeft Microsoft een enorm deel van de markt kunnen inpalmen. Maar de vraag is :"Hoe gaat dit verder evolueren?" Nu stel ik mij de vraag wat zo hip is aan het illegaal gebruien van dergelijke software. Ik moet toegeven dat ik 4 jaar geleden in die situatie zat, maar door een beetje motivatie ben ik er probleemloos uit geraakt. Oh zo blij ben ik dat ik enkel legale applicaties gebruik. Maar hoe is dat bij godsnaam mogelijk? Enkel legale applicaties? Ben ik dan zo rijk? FLOSS is de oplossing. Ik zal mijn eigen laptop even als voorbeeld nemen. Naast mijn gewoon besturingssysteem (Linux) draai ik ook MS Windows. Voor de meest gebruikte applicaties bestaan namelijk OpenSource/Vrije Software concurrenten. Voor de gewone gebruiker heeft de meeste OpenSource Software een enorm voordeel: het is meestal gratis. Ik wil hier geen vergelijking maken van verschillende producten, maar zal even een lijstje opsommen van applicaties die ik onder Windows geinstalleerd heb. Mooi per functionaliteit.

• Bureausuite: OpenOffice.org - Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw
• Compressie: 7-zip
• Imaging: The Gimp
• Foto collectie: XnView & IfranView (niet OpenSource)
• Internet: Firefox
• Email: Thunderbird
• Chat: Gaim (icq, msn, jabber,...)
• Anti-virus: ClamWin (niet realtime = geen snelheidsverlies)

Bij deze wil ik graag een oproep doen aan allen: "Het is mogelijk legale software te gebruiken, en dit zonder je dood te betalen. Probeer het eens, je zal snel merken hoe gemakkelijk het is en hoe goed het voelt. En laten we samen 2006 het jaar van de legale software maken..."