Richmond Open Source Community - The Richmond, Indiana Open Source Community

Job Posting: open source Sysadmin and Web Hosting Tech Support Rep

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:16:12 -0400

Summersault, LLC is a small website development firm based in Richmond, Indiana, and we provide web hosting and co-location services for our clients. We seek to hire a qualified UNIX system administrator and technical support representative to manage and secure our hosting infrastructure, resolve technical support requests from clients, while incorporating a passion for Summersault’s particular mission and vision.

Flickr is_nazi?

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:23:03 -0400

Today while using Flickr, instead of returning a normal response page to me, it dumped a giant data structure to the screen instead. It appeared to be nearly complete set of all the details it stores about me internally. Some details were not all that surprising, like:
'stats_cluster_id' => '3',
That would indicate that they have multiple clusters of computers that serve their statistics, and when I access my stats, I'm talking to the third cluster of computers.

A few bits of data were especially intriguing. The appeared near the bottom of the list, which is perhaps an indication that they were added more recently:
'is_nazi' => 0, 'vitality_opt_in' => 0, 'has_used_beehive' => 0, Now, what would Flickr be using the "is_nazi" flag for? As for "Vitality" and "Beehive", perhaps these are new feature or services that are not public yet.


There were about 100 other details in the data, but these were the ones that jumped out at me. 
I notified Flickr through their help system the day I found this, and have not heard anything back yet. However, the behavior is no longer reproducible.



Adobe Pushes DRM for Flash
Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:33:37 -0500
Just thought that people should know that Adobe is adding DRM to Flash 9.  It is not going to be used by default but it is up to each website whether they turn it on or not.  The DRM should be transparent to the user.  There is no way for the end user to know if they are using a DRM'ed flash vid or not.  The idea is that they can keep people from copying the vids to your hard drive.  So because of this I have uninstalled flash, and have installed gnash instead.  Gnash is a free (as in speech) flash clone.  If you are as angry as I am please join my boycott of flash.  blow is some more info from the EFF.


Use F11 for Full-Screen in Ubuntu
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:33:10 -0500
With the increasing popularity of laptops, getting the most out of small screen sizes has become a priority for computer users. 
Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon helps with this by providing a consistent keyboard shortcut for a "Full Screen" mode. Pressing "F11" in many standard Ubuntu applications allows you to to toggle the application in and out of a full screen mode. Today I tested that the following key applications support this:

Firefox
Gimp Image Editor
Eye of Gnome Image Viewer
Evince Document Viewer
Totem Movie Player
Rhythmbox Music Player
Terminal

Now that I realize the shortcut exists and is widely supported I use it regularly to get the most out of my 14" laptop screen.  I did find one key application had a full screen model and used a different shortcut. Open Office mysteriously uses "Ctrl-Shift-J". I have filed a bug to suggest that Ubuntu make this consistent as well.


Ubuntu tip: Automatically turn off streaming music at night
Fri, 21 Dec 2007 23:33:29 -0500
I've been known to accidentally leave a stream of music running all night when I'm not there to listen to it anymore. That wastes bandwidth and energy. 
Here's a quick tip to prevent from happening, by causing any music playing to be turned off at 7:00 pm each night.
On Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10, add these lines to "/etc/crontab". You can edit this file with "gksudo gedit /etc/crontab":
Note that "rhythmbox" and "vlc" are the names of the music players I use.  Change as needed. 


# stop streams from playing all night.

0 19 *   *   Mon-Fri     killall --quiet rhythmbox vlc




Hidden Gem in Ubuntu 7.10: "Run Command"
Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:10:36 -0500
For several years Linux has enabled to run a command by name with a little "Run Command" application, often accessed by pressing Alt-F2.
This is my favorite way to launch applications since it can be done with the keyboard by just remembering the name of the application. 
In Ubuntu Gutsy, this little tool has become more useful. 
No longer do I need to remember that the program run by OpenOffice is called 'oowriter'. 
Now I can just start typing "OpenOffice", and it will show me the icon and name for "OpenOffice Writer" as an option. 
If I type "Mail", it shows me the options for the "Thunderbird" and "Evolution" e-mail programs. Great!


Microsoft Windows helpfully protects user from accessing the internet. At all.
Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:22:13 -0400
Restricting freedoms in the name of safety and security can go too far. 
Take this recent tech support call from a family member. She hadn't been able to get on the internet for days. She called Comcast, which provides her cable modem. Things looked fine on their side, they said. They suggested something on her computer wasn't working right. Using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer as the web browser might be the problem, they offered.
Having used this Windows XP computer myself, I'm familar with all the popups that the ZoneAlarm security utility generates. "Someone is trying to attack your computer on Port 80. Do you want to allow it? [YES] [NO]".


Okay NOW you have no reason not to not try Linux
Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:02:20 -0400
Look we (the Community) have tried to make Linux easy for everyone, non-text installs, Live CD's and DVD's, LUG's, install-fest's, etc, etc. But now we have done the one think that makes trying Linux as brainless as installing Windows apps.
Now I'd like to show you Wubi.
Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.
Wubi is Safe
It does not require you to modify the partitions of your PC, or to use a different bootloader.


One great thing about Ubuntu
Sat, 07 Jul 2007 23:33:27 -0400
I recently decided to do something I had never done before. I decided to do a dist-upgrade. Now a dist-upgrade is the equivalent to to running Windows XP and Being able to upgrade all of the packages to Vista via the internet and without any kind of disk media. This is usually not recommended (you really do accumulate a lot of crap and should blow your system clean every once in a while) but can be a fun experience. **NOTE** BACK UP BEFORE YOU DO THIS, SOMETIMES UNEXPECTED THINGS HAPPEN AND YOU DON'T WANT TO LOOSE DATA **
I went from Ubuntu 6.06 LTS "Dapper Drake" to Ubuntu Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft". This took an entire night over my DSL connection but I was still able to use the computer. It is really cool to have Firefox 1.5 open, close it for a little bit, and open it sometime later to 2.0. This actually surprised me because I was not watching the terminal for the status. after I got all of the available updates for edgy, I went ahead and dist-updated to the newest version of Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn". Which the the whole next day.


An Important Security Patch to the MadWiFi driver
Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:25:18 -0400
!!!ATTENTION THIS POST IS REALLY TECHNICAL!!! I'm posting all of this info becuase I'm sure there are many of you use this non-free driver in you Linux (and other free desktop systems) this is a huge flaw that isn't usually the kind of problem that you find in Linux...
At about 6:30 UTC, the flaw in the MadWifi driver has been patched for Ubuntu Feisty.  Here is why this is important:
    This patch fixes susceptibility to remote abuse of Channel Switch

    Announcement Information Elements by injection of Beacon Frame

    packets and improves the reliability of channel switch procedure under


K Menu Gnome (Fedora Core Package)
Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:41:32 -0400
I was looking through the KDE Apps site to today and came across this,

and wish that it was for Ubuntu:
K Menu Gnome (Fedora Core Package)

Description:

K Menu with Gnome folder and extra icons for KDE 3.2 or later.
If you install both KDE and Gnome then K Menu will become a mess with

overpopulated submenus. Some distributions try to solve this by hiding

many Gnome apps in KDE and most KDE apps in Gnome. I do not like that.

I want to access Gnome apps in KDE and KDE apps in Gnome. So this is

my attempt to both maintain desktop interoperability and unmess the

menus.
Why should one install both KDE and Gnome at all? You might share your


Dell Sells Computers with Linux Pre-Installed
Fri, 25 May 2007 19:50:13 -0400
When Dell surveyed their customers to see what they wanted on their IdeaStorm feedback site, one answer was loud and clear: "We want Ubuntu Linux pre-installed".  And now, only about two months later, they have it.
Dell is now offering Ubuntu pre-installed on three machines. Not only is the open source foundation of Ubuntu a great choice for consumers, the price is lower than buying the machines with Windows Vista, and having Dell pre-install the software means that they have certified and support this specific hardware to work with Linux.


Five Immediate Customizations for Feisty Fawn
Mon, 07 May 2007 22:22:32 -0400
Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is a great operating system, and I've already helped install it on a number of systems. Here are five customizations I make right away to make it a more pleasant system to suit my taste:

Install the Flash and Java plugins. Ubuntu already has packages for these, but I believe they turned on by default for licensing reasons. Go to Applications: Add & Remove Applications and search for "ubuntu-restricted-extras". This will install Flash and Java plugins, as well MP3 support and some nice free Microsoft fonts. Check the boxes next to the listing and click "Apply" to finish the job.   The Java plugin installs some things into the menu system that I think I'll never use, so I remove the entries for them. To edit the menu, right-click on "Applications" and select "Edit Menu". The menu editor should be fairly intuitive, and allowing you to remove "Java Web Start" and anything else you want. (Note: removing the menu items doesn't un-install these applications).


Puppy Linux gives new life to Windows 95 Laptop
Tue, 01 May 2007 22:24:46 -0400
Recently I was asked to help revive a Windows 95-era laptop by installing Linux on it.  Windows 95 didn't seem to have functional USB support on the laptop, and modern web browsers like Firefox weren't easily available for it. 
My first attempt was to try Xubuntu Linux, which seemed to still be too resource intensive for this 96Mg RAM, 150Mhz processor laptop. 
My second attempt, Puppy Linux seems to be working rather well. Except for some files I needed to copy by hand, the install went very smoothly, and the system does indeed run with low requirements, idling well below the 96 Megs of memory the system has.


Ubuntu Feisty is out!!!
Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:33:55 -0400
Today is release day for Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn, which I've been playing with in beta for almost a month now.  I must say this is the best Ubuntu release yet.  I've never been happier with Linux on the desktop.  
Most of the release notes are about upgrading fro Edgy to Feisty but they did say that the minimum memory requirement for Ubuntu 7.04 is 256MB of memory. With only the minimum amount of memory available, the installation process will take longer than normal, but will complete successfully, and the system will perform adequately once installed.
And here is a link to 11 things that are awesome in Feisty http://leetcode.net/2007/04/11-things-you-havent-seen-yet-in-ubuntu-feisty-fawn