Source Guru

So, this post is being written from Xubuntu.

As most of the people who know me will know, I’m a huge KDE/Kubuntu Fan. However, I’ve been sort of “donated” an old laptop to play around with for a while. And seeing as how old it is, I decided to install xubuntu on it.

I’ve only hit a few issues so far, so I’ll outline them.

• I downloaded the Dapper ISO thinking that it was the Feisty one – this was probably a case of PEBKAC
• Feisty crashes X when trying to load a terminal (and probably other things, I reinstalled when I tried for the 13th time to open a terminal
• When booting, between the grub loading and X starting, I just have a blank screen (I’ve heard this is an issue on laptops with *buntu though – so I don’t know – It worked fine on my old laptop!)
• No IRC client installed by default
• Slow responsiveness (but it’s faster thanit was in windows!)
• No Launch Feedback – when I click an icon to run something, I don’t know if it’s actually running or whatever. This is a feature I sorely miss from KDE as I just ended up loading 5 file managers as I thought that it wasn’t loading!)

In general though, other than the points above, I’m finding Xubuntu a nice clean distro. Looks wise, I haven’t had to change anything, as I do with kubuntu (what’s with those squished title bar buttons?) and it all looks nice clean crisp and fresh.

It’s a nice Distro. I think I may look at using it on some of my other machines in the future, even if it is GTK-app based, it’s still a nice alternative.

I just recieved a pingback for my latest blog post from opencontent.info.

It seems that they think I’m someone called Randy Charles Morin.

I like the name, I think I might use it.

It’s nice to be syndicated even if I don’t get credit for my work

Recently, Baz blogged about 2 people being arrested for using other people’s wifi for free access.

I actually read this in the Metro on the bus on the way home today, and I think it’s ludicrous. OK, some people don’t like it, but then most if not all Wireless Devices have the ability to use something along the lines of WEP/WPA etc. Surely, you can either blame the people setting up the wireless router for not setting it up in a secure way, or blame the manufacturers for not getting across the point of how WEP/WPA are good, and should be enabled? I can find a basic description in my routers manual, which doesn’t explain what these technologies are, just where to type in a key in the routers configuration screen.

I purposely leave my wireless open to the public (allbeit with traffic shaping so that my bandwidth doesn’t get molested!) And so far, have had 7 “visitors” with one actually taking the time out to research who I was and email me telling me I had an open access point, and how to fix it. How kind of them, but I replied and explained to them what I was doing.

I urge anyone out there to have a look at Fon – free wireless for those who share theirs Enjoy!

Every now and then, I go through my junk folder in Evolution, and check it for any emails that should have got to me.

I’ve just checked it and found that there were more emails that weren’t junk in there than were. It’s been filtering innocuous emails for no apparent reason, including a couple relating to a Job application I was going for (this was the reason I was checking it today, so luckily I spotted it!)

It’s annoying when spam filters get too smart though. It’s things like this that make me start wanting to use fetchmail/procmail, so that only the stuff I want marked as junk gets marked as junk.

Ah well, it’s easy enough to turn off Evolution’s Junk mail filtering.

So, it seems that the issues I’ve been having with Lethargy are because supybot is not by default utf8 compliant. Meaning that it wont pick up RSS feeds that are.

Zeth Green came up with the following solution

<+zeth> back up that file
<+zeth> sudo cp -a /usr/bin/supybot /root/
<+zeth> you see the line import sys
<+zeth> after that add these 2 line
<+zeth> reload(sys)
<+zeth> sys.setdefaultencoding(‘utf-8′)
<+zeth> then restart Lethargy and see what happens

Well, it worked, now if only I could find the supybot bugtracker

<+zeth> that is why those Launchpad people have a point
<+zeth> One bugtracker to rule them all

I totally agree

So, after a few issues with Paypal (damn them!) I’ve finally managed to be able to actually send my payment(s) for my VPS, and it has now returned.

Over the years, I’ve been hosted in many places, from Tripod, to Freedom2surf, to lyximer (man, I miss that place!) enhosting, one&one, and now to bitfolk and over all that time -I’ve used many a different Control Panel (except for lyximer – those were the good old days of getting down and dirty with the configuration files)

Well anyway, in Source Guru’s past implementation, I used ISPConfig which did exactly what I wanted, to an extent. It automated the creation of new domains, including mail, DNS etc etc. However, it lacked in a few features. It was horridly coded, and well, cause me more hassle than was worth (espescially when trying to upgrade)

So, now I’m using webmin, usermin, and virtualmin, and I’m surprised at how well Webmin actually interfaces with the config files actually on your server. You can add as many obscure settings as you want and webmin either recognises them, or just leaves them alone.

Unfortunately, It’s still not up to scratch, for me probably more than most. As I’m hosted by bitfolk I have access to 5 other DNS secondaries. It’s nice to know that you’ll be able to access your DNS even if things go wrong. However, using VirtualMin to create sites (for things like Realist Anew) it doesn’t actually create the proper Nameserver records, meaning that the Secondary Nameservers won’t take the transfer requests.

If I use Webmin’s DNS settings to create it, I can add in a nice bit that will add all the nameservers for me, but it seems that Virtualmin doesn’t interface with this! Gah!

So well, yeah, it’s getting down and dirty again in the config files to make things work (Many thanks to Andy Smith for helping me out with this one)

Anyways, other than a nice swap death, my server’s been up and playing nicely, now I just need to import all the old websites I had on there!

But it does lead me to want to start making my own “Control Panel” software … … …