So, Tuesday was powerwashing day. My dogs couldn't figure out what the heck was going on. One of them, a 1-year, 1-month-old girl named Piyomi, decided the house was most certainly under attack. When she's worked up she doesn't just bark. It's hard to describe... something like, "Woof! Woof! Woof! ArrroOOoooOOoooOO! ArrroOOoooOOoooOO!" Her whole front end bounces up and down like half of her is on a pogo stick. It's pretty funny when someone else in the house isn't trying to sleep!

More fun is that when the house is actually painted, I won't be here. I'll be down in California teaching a class. This means I'll probably come home to a house that I'd drive right past thinking it was someone else's place.

Ah, modern life.

Digitally Yours,              
Dee-Ann LeBlanc       

GnomeEGGS

Choosing a Distribution, Part VIII

Since Lindows was such a brat to me, I encouraged people to write in with their Lindows experiences in order to balance out the coverage. I got a few responses, so I'll include them in this space. First, Carl writes:

"Just a quick comment on your note on Lindows. I'm not sure exactly what you were doing to have such a difficult time. Two of my students in my basic (and I do mean basic) IFSM class - total, complete newbies to Lindows and Linux, decided to try it out. It is/was available at the PX here on base (Iwakuni, Japan). They wanted to upgrade from the Windows 98 SE they were running, and liked what they saw of Open-Office, etc., that they could easily download. It installed easily on both of their old (2-3 years old) desktop systems, and within 30 minutes - with no input from them other than setting the date/time zone and the basic registration information - they were up and running and hooked up to the Internet. The next day, they told me in class that they basically liked it, and that when they got new machines for themselves and passed the current ones on to their kids, they would probably stay with some flavor of Linux and would keep Lindows on the machines when they passed them on to their kids.

"Other very newbie students had a similar experience with both the latest release of Red Hat Professional 9.0, and Mandrake 9.1 (Bamboo) standard. Their hardware is not particularly new - all 1-2 years old, all arrived with Windows of some flavor on it (ME, or XP Home or Windows 2000). They had only used Windows as a simple consumer before - running the preinstalled software packages provided by Dell, Compaq, or HP when they originally purchased their machines. All were finding some problems with or limitations of the older Windows OSes they were using. They downloaded the latest distros of the two Linux OSes they wanted to try over a fast line on base, burned it on to a CD (in one case, had one of the techs burn it onto a CD because they didn't want to mess it up), took it home, followed the instructions, and installed it. All have found the latest (and I stress latest) versions of Linux as easy to install, and put on the basic programs they need, as Windows. In fact, the students who tried Lindows said the installation was actually quicker and easier than with their older Windows OSes.

"Maybe you overdid the 'newbie' thing a bit."

Joel writes:

"I read your article on Lindows 4 and thought I'd give you my scoop. I threw together a computer with an old Soyo 6xv7 motherboard with an 800mhz PIII CPU, 256MB RAM, and a random assortment of cards I had lying around.

"I put in the Lindows disk and let it go. I was expecting it to go belly up or not find some of the hardware, as ALL other flavors of Linux have done (I have a stack of Linux CDs six inches high). It completed the install, and I entered in the obligatory setup items. All looked good at this point. I then checked to see what messed up. Couldn't find anything wrong. I opened the browser and it dialed up the modem (through my USRobotics 8022 AP/switch/print server w/serial port) and connected to Lindows.com.

"Everything worked 1st time - EVERYTHING! I haven't had this much luck or ease of install on ANY Microsoft product, let alone a Linux-based one. I expect there are computers (especially laptops) that won't have it as easy as mine. The only glitch was I couldn't print through the AP print server because USRobotics does not support Linux on this device (but I already knew this, so no surprise). If you or anyone out there in the open-source world has developed a Linux printer server driver for the USR8022, PLEASE let me know."

Monte writes:

"It's funny.... I had quite a similar adventure installing Lindows. The main difference, I think, between my newbieness and yours is that I'm new to Linux, and it will probably will take quite some time before I can say I'm not. I have two machines side-by-side - my older one has two drives, and before installing Lindows, I had 98 on one drive (I made a switch so I could 'exchange master and slave') and the other had XP Upgrade (its an AMD550k62). I purchased Lindows 3.0 for $60, which included a full-year membership to 'Click and Die' (I mean 'Run'). I mainly purchased it thinking I could get into Linux and possibly quit supporting that Bill dude.

"My install actually went well and suprised me. I have my 'puters linked by a crossover cable, and it read it and actually made my second 'puter dial-up a connection. I was on CNR 15 minutes after the mail came... five minutes to open the box, ten for the install. My second 'puter has one drive, 40GB split partition (20/20GB). After a few days of downloading and surfing CNR, I found I could get Lindows 4.0 for $10 bucks.. ($16 after shipping) which I wanted to use on my newer (second) machine AMD2000+. I use it to record my music, mostly, but I'm having songwriter's block recently... hmmm, maybe it's computer-related... anyway, the install went well for that one, too.

"I like the idea of LindowsCD, because you can plop it in and search your drive. Now, if they added a virus scanner, it would rock. There are those quirks, though, of course... even that "OTHER OS" has them. 3.0 has a problem with graphics when they move horizontally; i.e., move the horizontal scroll bar back and forth and you get vertical lines messing up the screen. Probably something simple, but not to a 'new b,' and it can't find the dang modem in that one. (It found the Internet on my crossover but not the dang modem.) Understandably, on my second one it couldn't find my Echo MIA sound card. I haven't tried to use the DVD, TV tuner, USB MIDI, and 50 other devices I forgot I put in it, though.

"Overall, I'm happy with what I got. I wish I could do more, Linux-wise, with it, but there are not too many Tips or How-To's around with easy-to-follow Tutorials, you might say. I don't even know if you can install (I hate that word) software manually from other distributions. It's all so confusing to newbies: RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Mickey Mouse... you name it, it's out there. That's where you more than likely know a lot about stuff that takes a long time to learn, and newbies don't have patience for that. But, I'm still gonna try and stick it out; learn a little here, go nuts a little there, forget what I learned here, etc. Well, now I'm going to quit boring you and try to read about how to unzip and install a file on Lindows... or is that tarball... gz!... shoot... what directory do they save to? Well, good night. Oh... and it's not raining much here either."

"I downloaded the latest Lindows, to try it out on my new machine. Asus p4p800 with Intel 865pe chipset. The rest doesn't matter, because shortly after starting I got the message: 'Lindows does not recognize this chipset,' then it quit. I had used it before on AMD900, and it worked okay."

Submit a Resource | Discuss | Recommend It!

GnomeCHICKS

Compiling Software from Source, Part XII

We actually ended on an up note last time, getting gnome-media installed. From here, it's mostly widgets of various sorts. Little software tools like file-roller (handy when you don't want to have to remember all of the individual commands for compressing, packaging, and more. I'll just go through alphabetically in the listing: acme (any Road Runner fans out there?), atk, at-spi, bug-buddy, and eel; are all just bunzip2, tar xvf, ./configure, make, make install, again and again and again (or skip the bunzip2 and use tar jxvf).

When I get to eog, I find out I need librsvg, and I haven't installed that yet. That library installs very simply, so it's back to eog, which installs perfectly. After that, it's file-roller, gconf-editor, and gdm. When I get to gedit, it wants libgnomeprintui, and somehow I suspect that's going to want libgnomeprint, so I do that one first. Soon, I've got all three of those installed, and I'm off to do ggv... and it just keeps going on smoothly.

Frankly, I think we've squeezed about as much as we can out of this series! I know I'm ready to move on to something else, and I suspect there are other folks who are as well. For the first time in a long time for this section, I get to say:

Next week: Who knows!

Submit a Resource | Discuss | Recommend It!

GnomePENGUINS

System Administration Best Practices: Documentation

There are tons of best practices out there, but it helps to keep things to a theme. Documents are our theme this time. I've got other plans for this section next week, but this can be one of those stop-and-start series if people are interested.

Documentation comes in two forms here: policies and history. You document policies as far as those little details, like onto which directory you mount the project files on all of the machines (hopefully the same one each time), and from which machine those project files are mounted, using what protocol (NFS? SMB?).

Policies can also include the terms of use for your staff. What are they allowed to access? What aren't they? How is it monitored and policed? What are the penalties for breaking the rules? How do you make sure the staff is aware of the rules? (Very important!) In this case, you have to have discussed these with your management and maybe even a legal expert, and then you need to make sure everyone signs off on having read the policy, and repeat this whenever the policy is updated.

History is equally important, but for a different reason. One day, you might be on vacation, and suddenly you get an urgent phone call from work because no one can figure out what the root password is for a particular machine, and they desperately need access to get things up and running.

Of course, the danger of putting passwords down on paper or in electronic files is that someone unauthorized might find them. Put the master passwords list under lock and key in the server room with only the top level administrators having access. Or, if you put them under a combination lock, if you have to you can walk a junior admin or your spouse through opening the safe, logging in, and so on.

If you have to put things like this down on paper, be sure to not put, "Here are our most vital passwords" on the front of the notebook in hot pink paint! Figure out a way that the people who need to find them know what to look for, but it's not obvious to the casual observer.

You also have the option of using some kind of password management tool. There's a lot of them out there on the Web. Some people just use a PGP-encrypted file to store all of their passwords, so they only have to memorize one keyphrase and the rest they can look up when needed.

Robert LeBlanc shares one of his documentation strategies here. He's both a system administrator and programmer, and tends to build everything from source, so this is of course biased toward such an approach:

"[This] is the sort of thing that every system administrator should be documenting for himself somewhere, for every package installed on his system. It's another kind of 'backup,' in case you have to rebuild your system at some point in the future, and it enables other system administrators who may inherit your work to understand how you've configured everything. Most organizations of any size should be requiring their administrators to maintain such documents (sometimes called the 'system bible' or somesuch) for that very purpose, and an up-to-date printed version should be stored along with your backups (on- site and off-site). It's just good policy, even if you're a one-person shop - one day, you may have to re-install or upgrade something, and you'll be thankful you documented all the little 'trouble spots' the first time around.

"My own system documents tend to average around 100 pages or so, due to the fact that I also include the complete contents of every configuration file. At the beginning of the document I provide an overview of the system - the hardware specs, OS, library versions, build environment, the partition table, and a list of the IP interfaces and domain names the machine services. After that, I list the installed packages in alphabetical order, with the following information about each one:

• Installed version
• Installation date (date this version was installed)
• Installed by (the admin who installed this version)
• Purpose (one-sentence description of the package)
• Package URL (the software developer's website)
• Download URL (where to get the latest version)
• Configure options (list of flags for ./configure or make, if applicable)
• Application path (where the application is installed)
• Configuration path (where the config files are installed)
• Logs (where the application writes its logs)
• Data (where the application's data is stored)
• Serial number (registration key, if any)
• Prerequisites (any other packages that must be installed first)
• Modifications (any patches applied to the package)
• Notes (any additional notes regarding this package)
• Configuration files (full contents of all of the application's config files)

"This is just the good practice of documenting your work, especially if you maintain multiple systems - keeping track of what exactly is installed on which system can lead to serious headaches without some sort of documentation. :) The next time you have to build something like PHP from sources, you'll be thankful you kept a list of the 20+ configure options you used last year, believe me. It's also nice to be able to easily find out where the documentation for the package can be found, where to check for and download the latest version, and where on your system you actually installed the various components of an application."

"There's a new magazine called Linuxworld at my grocery store's (Kroger) magazine stand that has a DVD with a lot of software for Linux. The magazine costs $9.99. The web site for the magazine is www.linuxworld.com. I bought one but I don't have a DVD drive at this time."

The first issue cost $9.99 due to the DVD. The subsequent issues will cost less. In fact, issue #2 is going to press right about now!

Submit a Resource | Discuss | Recommend It!

GnomeMAN

Larry writes:

"I'm a newbie and I probably got ahead of myself, but I'm trying... I acquired four 23GB SCSI drives, a dual processor MoBo and a pair of 400MHz CPUs. I purchased SuSE 8.1 and played with it, then downloaded Mandrake 9.1 because I wanted to set up a server. I have a router, cable coming in, and there will be at least four systems connected to it. Now, the confusing part (to me!!)... when I installed Linux as a server system, I got a command line screen, not the (excuse me) Windows screen. Did I mess up, or is that what I will have to work with? I still plan on playing with Linux, as I started computers back when you plugged in your tape recorder if you wanted to save your hours of work programming and debugging (ELF II). I knew all six machine languages by heart. I've got a dozen books from a library sale on C++, but I'm not ready to set up a server from command line. Just a quick answer or a direction to find one would be appreciated. "

Are you seeing something like the following when you read the command line screen:

SuSE Linux release 8.1
Kernel 2.4.9-8

localhost login:

If so:

1. Type the login name for the account you created during installation.
2. Press Enter.
3. You'll be prompted for a password. Type the password you created for this account.
4. Press Enter.
5. You're given a command prompt. Type startx.
6. Press Enter.