Source Guru

So, fanatical readers of my blog (are there any?) may remember a long time back that I got bored and wrote a little script that amused me.

While testing something out yesterday, I needed to find a domain that I wasn’t using in production so I could test on it. I stumbled across Cheese Nibbles which had a lovely “We’ll be back with something cool soon” message on it.

So, I did my tests, and they worked. Everything’s good. I’d actually forgotten what was on Cheese Nibbles in the first place, so I started rooting round in the code. I found the old site, and I decided to resurrect it.

I posted in a couple of IRC channels, to see if other people found the site amusing, and got the following back in response

<Daviey> neat
<Daviey> Mez: rss feed needed
<Mez> Daviey: *chuckles*
<Mez> but then it’d be twitter
<Daviey> sure, but a shared account
<Daviey> Or.. make it twitter when changed

So, well, thanks to Dave Walker‘s suggestion, I did a quick google, and within 6 minutes, had it working. You can find the twitter feed at http://twitter.com/cheesenibbles

Also, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working with Zeth from my local LUG (and the tech, who shall remain anonymous, like “The Stig“) on a podcast, which we are, for now calling “The Podcast” (imaginative I know).

I was interviewed in the first podcast (which Zeth did alone, and I (apparently) provided the comedy element for) and presented with Zeth for the second one. Also, as the second one was recorded during the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam, of which I was running one of the venues, I actually allowed myself to be interviewed for it aswell. The podcast is very rough around the edges at the moment, and well, we haven’t got a website, or an RSS feed yet, but you can find the show notes here, and download the podcast episode in either MP3 Format, or OGG Format

All comments/thoughts/suggestions welcome!

Yes, that toything. Hehe.

Ok, so after one of my Flatmates decided to tread on my wireless dongle (which I had trailing on a long USB cable down the stairs outside my room so I could actually pick up the signal!) and break it, I haven’t used my Desktop machine in a good few months. It was pretty much of a case of without internet access, it was pretty useless other than for watching DVDs on (which is when I’d boot it up) – so I used my eeePC instead.

Anyway, I went out and bought a nice new PCI Wireless card today – no chance of it being trodden on. And I got a nice one with 2 aerials, for connectivity purposes (and I can say – it’s boosted my signal from what was on average 15% on the wireless dongle to on average 65%!)

I’m happy and actually surprised that Ubuntu picked it up straight away, and even used the settings from my old Wireless dongle to connect straight away!

Anyway, after a while, I hardlocked…. I hate hardlocking… tis so annoying. So I rebooted into the Hardy Installer CD (This still has Gutsy on) and tried an install… Another hardlock…

Uh-Oh I thought …. and ran memtest86+ – no problems… Try again.. another hardlock.

Ok, reopen PC to see if wiggling the wires does something…. OW! I burnt my hand…

My PC was seriously overheating.. So – I had a look – MY PSU and CPU fans were clogged up with orange dust. :’( damnit.

So I took a walk down to Maplin and went and got myself some compressed air… Something I’d learnt from my IT Technician days was a godsend for cleaning CPU Fans.

Anyway, My PC is now sparkly and shiny inside, and on a plus, I’ve gotten rid of the annoying rattle it’s had for the past year… I thought it was the CD drive… as it would always stop when I whacked the CD drive (another trick I learnt as an IT Technician!)

So yeah – I’d suggest that any geek out there goes and invests in a can of compressed air (or ‘airduster‘ as it seems to be branded these days) – It is the magic computer fixing tool… if it can’t be fixed with compressed air, (and/or wiggling the cables) you might as well replace it – it’ll save you time and stop you banging your head against the wall

I just wish I’d thought and taken photos of how dusty it was (It was orange dust too – which was strange… I think the dust puppy’s are becoming Ubuntu themed)

So – after my post about wanting a conference laptop – I went out and bought one today. I got myself a nice, large, Dual Core 17″ Jobby. Ok, I’ve realised afterwards that it might be a bit of a gas guzzler, but, at least, as long as I have power, it should meet all my needs. And it’s the first machine that I’ve had where, out of the box, everything works perfectly, and the first where I’ve been able to properly use the Desktop effects (Darn proprietary Video Cards!)

Anyway, along with this – I’ve now installed Ubuntu on it. Actual Ubuntu – rather than Kubuntu. This means that I now have nearly a full shipment of *buntu that I’m regularly using. Kubuntu @ work and on my desktop at home, Xubuntu on the eeePC, and Ubuntu on this new Laptop.

I also had fun thinking up another name for the laptop. I’ve called it synergy. Which basically means lots of small things working together to make something greater in whole than of it’s component parts (Think of two muscles working together to give you a sort of idea) – The reason? Well – partly because my computer naming scheme revolves around the “I can’t be bothered of thinking of a name” (put politely) – and – synergy, is of course, ultimate laziness, putting small things together to make something bigger (convoluted excuse I know!) and well – it completes my having what my idea of the 3 primary WM’s are (Gnome, KDE, and XFCE), and means that my experience of Linux as a whole, is a more rounded and richer experience (Again, convoluted!) but anyway – here are my machines and what I call them (from the newest acquisition to the oldest)

• Synergy – The new “Conference” Laptop
• Stupor – My VPS for running the important things on
• Lethargy – My eeePC
• Coma – My work PC
• Anorak – Radio Amarok’s primary server (named after a Radio Amarok inside joke)
• Torpor – My “playground” VPS (where I keep all the non-critical stuff)
• Apathy – My Home Desktop

So – those are my machines, but, knowing that I have a similar naming schema to Daniel Silverstone, it begs me to ask.

What do you call your machines and why?

Ok, by popular demand (aka ompaul) I’ve decided to do a mini-howto on setting up networking on an ubuntu server, for those who are new to it.

In Ubuntu itself, when you install the desktop version, you get a nifty little tool called “Network Manager” (you may have noticed the icon, espescially if you have wireless) which pretty much does everything for you. However, if you’re using the server, without a GUI then this isn’t generaly available.

So, where to start?

It really depends on your network setup, you need to know a few things about your network before you start this.

The first and most important question you need to find out is whether there is a DHCP server on your network that will assign you an IP address. If so, your networking setup is very very simple, so I’ll start off with that.

Networking with an available DHCP server

When you have a DHCP server available on your network, things are made a lot simpler. Cut short, a DHCP server sits on your network and hands out configurations to the different computers that ask for them. I won’t go into detail, but, generally you’ll find these on small home networks (your router will generally work as a DHCP server, which is why you (usually) magically find your way onto the internet when you plug yourself into a network with a router on it)

First of all, find out whether you actually already have an internet connection. I’ll assume for now that you have a keyboard and monitor hooked up to the computer you’re setting up as a server, and have logged in as a user with sudo rights.

Type in the command “ifconfig” (without the quotes) and you should hopefully see something like this:-

mez@stupor:~$ ifconfig

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:3E:7F:AC:B2
inet addr:212.13.30.94  Bcast:212.13.30.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
RX packets:3576458 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1886783 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:10
RX bytes:836607596 (797.8 MB)  TX bytes:291514569 (278.0 MB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
RX packets:73611 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:73611 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:15252378 (14.5 MB)  TX bytes:15252378 (14.5 MB)

The important bit we see here is the block of text starting with “eth0″ and espescially the line

inet addr:212.13.30.94  Bcast:212.13.30.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

This generally means that the computer already has an IP address! yay!

Next, try the command

ping google.com

Hopefully, you’ll get back a response saying something along the lines of

PING google.com (64.233.187.99) 56(84) bytes of data
64 bytes from jc-in-f99.google.com (64.233.187.99): icmp_seq=1 ttl=245 time=100 ms

If so, you have a working internet connection! Go you! you can now start using your computer on the internet (though the IP address given above might only be accessible from an internal network, depending on your setup – going into howto get this IP available on the internet proper is beyond the scope of this blog post)

If not, you’ll get one of two errors, either a “no route to host” or a “cannot resolve google.com”.

The first issue is a complex one, which again, is beyond the scope of this article (though feel free to email me to ask questions – or catch me on IRC – I will *try* to answer them)

The second one generally means that you do not have a nameserver setup.

Open DNS is a project that provides Accessible DNS resolvers for the whole world to use. More information can be found out about OpenDNS here

For now however, lets open up your DNS resolver settings

sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

This file should be edited to contain the following lines only

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

Hit Ctrl + O then enter, then Ctrl + X to get back to your command prompt.

Try pinging google again, and hopefully it should work. If not, something went wrong somewhere, again, try emailing me or poking me on IRC.

So, what if you don’t have an IP address?

Well, assuming that you DO have a DHCP server running on your network, lets first of all check that we have a working interface on our system

ifconfig -a

You should hopefully see a couple of lines here, one starting with “lo” and another starting with “eth0″ (or similar) – remember this name

Now, open up your /etc/network/interfaces file (sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces) and make sure it contains the following

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Assuming that it does, we should be able to do the following

sudo ifup eth0

Which will (hopefully) bring the interface up. Go back a step if you cannot resolve google.com when trying to ping it. You might have to setup a resolver (though your DHCP server should provide these details for you!)

Voila! hopefully you now have a working network interface

Networking without an available DHCP server

Now, here is where things get more interesting. To be able to setup a network without having a DHCP server readily available, you need to know the following

• The IP address that will be assigned to your host
• The netmask for the IP addresses being used
• The default gateway’s IP address (usually the IP address of your router)

It may differ how you get this information, however, I cannot tell you how to do so, I’d ask your network administrator if I were you (or your hosting provider)

So, I’m assuming here that you have the above details, are logged in at your machine and ready to go

I’ll only be brief about this setup, as a lot of the details are covered above.

First of all, make sure that your interface is down

sudo ifdown eth0

next, edit your /etc/network interfaces, replacing the information between < and > with
the information from above

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
	address <IP Address>
	netmask <Network Mask>
	gateway <Default Gateway>

So, you should have something like this

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
	address 212.13.30.94
	netmask 255.255.252.0
	gateway 212.13.30.1

Now head back to your console, and try

sudo ifup eth0

To bring your interface up. Hopefully, now, everything should be working (if not, go have a look at the DNS stuff above)

If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment here, or email me (martin AT sourceguru DOT net) and I will try and answer, though I make no guarantees!

Thus concludes Mez’s basic guide to server networking on ubuntu – I’ll try and add some more interesting stuff in a later blog post (IPv6, IP Aliases, etc etc)

It’s official, The President said it

On another note – one heck of a day at work. I need a drink

Radio Amarok is looking for a design for their new website.

As a community project, we’re opening up the design as a competition to the general public, so if you’re an arty type, want to contribute to Open Source, and want your work out there, then please do enter the competition.

Requirements

Minimum requirements for a submission are as follows

• The design must be released under a Creative Commons licence
• We must receive the minimum of a PNG mock-up, and SVG/PSD sources
• All entries must be made before the 31st October
• All submissions to be made to submissions@radioamarok.com

After the 31st, the top designs will be picked out by the Radio Amarok team, and a vote will be put out for one week to the general public to decide which design they want for the site.

So, get your virtual paintbrushes out, and get designing – we’ve had some great entries already, and haven’t even announced it yet!

More information will be available soon at http://www.radioamarok.com/

Generally, I’m pretty lax when it comes to Firewalls in Linux, for the simple fact that I use kubuntu/ubuntu, which opens no ports by default. So any open ports on the system, I generally know about.

Anyway, as I’ve recently had a new server setup for Radio Amarok (many thanks to BitFolk for this, who have provided this service for us) and I knew that it would be something that’s going to be in the public eye, I thought that I better get a firewall up and running

So yes, I’ve been learning how to use Iptables correctly, and having to learn more about how TCP/IP works. I knew the basics, but actually sitting down and learning more about it is definitely interesting. Though, I’ve still not much idea on some issues, like why Aaron Krill’s ISP can’t route him to the Radio Amarok server (Andy Smith tried explaining – but I still had no idea what was going on!)

On another note, Radio Amarok is still looking for help. So if you have anything to offer (we’re looking for sponsors, artists, DJs, and web developers/designers (and at some point we’ll be looking for a sysadmin)), so if you have anything to offer us, feel free to pop into IRC (irc.freenode.net #amarok.radio) or email me (mez AT radioamarok DOT com)

It seems that since I’ve started using gutsy, my PC does not want to play (well, display) any video files played through xine. Which is very very very very annoying. It worked fine originally in fesity, then, when I upgraded to gutsy, the video I wanted to watch decided not to play (and OGG/Theora video)

Then, due to issues, It still won’t play. I’ve tried everything, adn xine itself isn’t thtrowing up anything in the log that’s making me think it’s an issue with that.

Does anyone have any ideas, or would anyone be able to tell me where to look to sort this out? I’ve been all over my xorg.conf, the Xine settings, all to no avail.

Any help would be muchly appreciated! This seems to be one of the only problems I’m, having with gutsy atm!)

Ok, so recently, I thought that my status as an ubuntu developer had expired, as I’ve had emails about my membership to ubuntu-dev expiring, and when I tried to send an email to a list in ubuntu (kubuntu-devel) it got bounced back to me. Now of course, I thought that the bounce was because the list was restricted for posting to developers only (as is ubuntu-devel)

I finally got a hold of a member of the Ubuntu Technical Board (thanks keybuk!) who explained to me..

<Keybuk> ubuntu-dev is a dead team
<Keybuk> rather than reject everyone, we’re just letting the membership expire naturally
<Keybuk> motu is the active “universe upload” team

So I then went to look what was going on with my email.

As my ubuntu email recieves a HUGE amount of traffic. (I dread to think but just checked and it seems I’ve had ~15000 emails go through it since march… a lot less than I’d expected) I have it setup in launchpad to go through a gmail account which means that I don’t overload my own server (as I was doing before when I hadn’t learnt to tweak my mailserver so it’s settings didn’tput my server into swap death!)

I was also sending outgoing email from my ubuntu email address through gmail’s smtp service.

However, it seems recently, that gmail will now rewrite an email address if it isn’t the one you’re sending through. If I send an email as if it’s coming from mez@ubuntu.com, then gmail’s smtp server will rewrite it so that it comes from mez.ubuntu@gmail.com…

I’ve now changed my email setup to use my server for all outgoing mail.

So, yes, a lot of things have forced my hand, and I now have to be in Wolverhampton tonight, at the pub, to try and find an overnight home for 2 Laptops Hopefully it wont be that hard to do!

Other than that, i’ve got to say, I love the FLOSS community just for the simple fact that so far I’ve had three people offer me a lift. Well, I’m still stuck on who I’ll be taking it off, trying to whizz round and organise everything, but one way or another, I’ll be there tomorrow @ 9.

That’s if I don’t pass out from alcohol poisoning tonight.

I must say, someone remind me tonight to take the piss out of whatever Aq decides to drink, just for comparing me to his granny last year (and that winky was for Jono!)

If you read this, come say hi to me at some point. I’ll probably be wearing a nametag tomorrow, but, to be fair,you’re probably reading this through one or another of the planets, and they all have Gotchi’s

I may look strange, but I’ll be recognisable.