The Author – Bart Busschots
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May
17
Microsoft Start to Crack
Filed Under Computers & Tech on May 17, 2007 | 4 Comments
It’s no secret that I’m no Microsoft fan. Their business practices annoy me and the way they treat their customers like criminals makes my blood boil. I mean really, what exactly is the genuine advantage consumers like you and I get from ‘Genuine Advantage’? I’m a big fan of open source. I like the openness and the community and I think that approach leads to better software in general. Having said that I’m no Linux zealot. I do use it both at work and at home and do run it regularly as both a desktop and a server OS. However, I’m also a dedicated Mac user. One thing I do not own is a Windows machine. Linux and OS X all the way for me!
This week Microsoft provided me with yet another reason to hate them. They are now threatening to sue open source users for supposedly using their patents. Leaving aside the fact that I find software idea patents objectionable and a bad idea and that I think the American patent system is a disaster, this all strikes me as a great big load of FUD. MS are not naming the patents. They are just making threats. They are trying to use fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) to scare people back to MS software.
[tags]Micorsoft, Litigation, Patents, Linux[/tags]
May
2
Three 2.0s of Note
Filed Under Computers & Tech on May 2, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This seems to be the time of year for 2.0 releases. Three pieces of software I use on a daily basis have gotten their big 2.0 update recently. Mozilla Thunderbird, the dashboard widget Pakze, and the iStat family of tools from iSlayer. (I discussed both Pakze and iStat in my post on Dashboard widgets for Techies.) In all three cases the most obvious change is a new coat of proverbial paint. Thunderbird and iStat in particular have really benefited from the addition of a little more polish to their interfaces. However, there is more to these upgrades than just looks.
[tags]Mozilla, Thunderbird, iStat, Pakze, Dashboard, Widget[/tags]
Feb
26
Two Tips for Getting More out of Thunderbird
Filed Under Computers & Tech on February 26, 2007 | 7 Comments
I’m probably a very rare beast, a Mac user who uses Thunderbird rather than Apple Mail. The reason I use Thunderbird is because I don’t like lock-in. I’ve had my same mailboxes on Windows, Linux and Mac, so I know that as long as I use Thunderbird I can move to any OS I want at any time and keep all my mail, contacts and settings completely effortlessly. I’d just have to copy one folder. It can certainly be argued that Thunderbird is less polished looking than Mac Mail and it has a few less features but on the whole it’s a very capable client that works well.
I’ve been using the basic features for years but of late the sheer volume of mail I have to deal with at work has led me to start experimenting with ways of making my life easier. The first optimization people generally think of is message filters so I’m not going to talk about those because I think they are pretty obvious and people are used to using them. Instead I’m going to give two hopefully less obvious tips.
[tags]Mozilla, Thunderbird, Email, To Do, Organise[/tags]
Jan
1
Running NMAP on Intel Macs
Filed Under System Administration, Security, Computers & Tech on January 1, 2007 | 4 Comments
Before I switched to an Intel based Mac I had always used NMapFE as my nmap front end. Since I only need to run nmap on my G4 MacMini at home and my G5 PowerMac at work I didn’t notice until today that NMapFE doesn’t work in Intel Macs. I had recommended NMapFE to Allison of the NosillaCast and she replied to tell me it didn’t work for her. I tried it on my own MacBookPro and sure enough, it doesn’t work. So, I went hunting for a good nmap GUI for Intel Macs and eventually came up with a good solution. The bad news is that this solution involves installing three things separately. But, don’t worry, all three are small and painlessly simple to install.
[tags]nmap, security, Mac, OS X[/tags]
Dec
22
Rogue DHCP Detection Plugin for Nagios on RedHat
Filed Under My Projects, Security, Software Development, Computers & Tech on December 22, 2006 | 9 Comments
I’m pretty sure this is useless on most versions of Linux because the default DHCP plugin that comes with the Nagios Plugins distribution has this functionality and seems to work just fine everywhere except on RedHat-based distros like RHEL, Centos and Fedora Core. On these systems the default plugin does not seem to work and fails to detect any DHCP servers. This plugin is different to the one I gave instructions for before which tests whether a particular DHCP server is answering requests, this plugin finds rogue servers, it will not alert you if any of your actual DHCP servers are down. Hence, you should probably install both. This plugin is not very polished, it is rough and ready but I know it works on RHEL4. If you’re running a different system you may have to do some minor tweaks but this should serve as an excellent starting point none-the-less.
[tags]Nagios, DHCP, RedHat, RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, Linux[/tags]
Nov
26
arRsync – an Rsync GUI for Mac OS X
Filed Under Computers & Tech on November 26, 2006 | 48 Comments
When it comes to efficiently synchronizing data between hard-drives there is a great Unix/Linux command-line tool, rsync, which is installed on OS X Tiger (and perhaps previous versions too) by default. OS X only contains the command-line tool though, not a GUI to provide easy access to it. This is where arRsync comes in. All it does is provide a simple GUI and the ability to store profiles, but that’s all that’s needed to make rsync available to regular users. You might wonder why you would need to efficiently synchronize data between two hard-disks? The answer, backups! I use rsync (via arRsync) to backup all my important data to external hard-drives. The nice thing about rsync is that it only replaces files that have changed, so even if you have hundreds of GigaBytes of data, you’ll still be able to update your backup in a reasonable time. Oh, and arRsync is both free and open-source!
[tags]Backup, arRsync, Rsync, OS X[/tags]
Nov
24
Nagios DHCP Checking on RHEL4
Filed Under Computers & Tech, System Administration on November 24, 2006 | 4 Comments
One of my current projects in work is to set up a Nagios install to monitor our network. We have been monitoring with the free version of BigBrother for a while now but BB isn’t as good so we’re switching to Nagios. I had plenty of problems getting Nagios running on RHEL 4 because in work we try to do as much as possible using only RPMs. I’m working on simple how-to for setting up Nagios on RHEL4 which I’ll publish here soon but the base install does not give you DHCP monitoring. I tried to look for RHEL rpms that provide check_dhcp but I couldn’t find any. There were lots for Fedora but they don’t work on RHEL (I tried FC4 and 5 rpms). I tried to manually build the latest version of the Nagios plugins which do contain a check_dhcp binary but there is a problem with that binary that results in it always showing your DHCP server as down. I know the problem is with the binary because if I watch the logs on the DHCP server I see it issuing an offer and tcpdump on my Nagios server shows the offer arriving, yet the plugin still insists that the service is down. The solution is to use this Perl script. However, if you follow the instructions on that page it won’t work on RHEL. I spent an entire day beating this script into submission but in the end I got it working.
[tags]Nagios, RedHat Enterprise Linux, RHEL, RHEL4, DHCP[/tags]
Nov
17
Java Goes Open Source – So What?
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Software Development on November 17, 2006 | 3 Comments
Java going Open Source is old news at this stage but it’s taken me a while to digest. Ideologically I think it is a great move, I’ve always been a little annoyed that Java was not GPL or similar. So it’s good for me as an Open Source fan, but is it also good for me as a Java Programmer? That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out for the last few days and in the end, I think it is.
[tags]Java, Sun, Open Source, GPL[/tags]
Nov
14
Installing mod_jk for Apache 1.3 on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
Filed Under Computers & Tech, System Administration on November 14, 2006 | 8 Comments
I’ve done a few previous articles on Apache Tomcat (one for installing it on Linux and one for installing it on OS X), but I haven’t yet mentioned installing the JK Connector (mod_jk) in any environment. For those who are wondering what on earth I’m on about, mod_jk allows the Apache web server to serve your Tomcat web apps so they appear on port 80. There are a number of reasons why you might want to do this. Firstly, it provides a simple and secure way to get Tomcat to respond to requests on port 80 without having to have it run as root. Apache is more efficient at serving static pages so it can help increase the efficiency of your web app, and finally it allows you leverage all the power of Apache’s many features for your Java web app.
[tags]Tomcat, Apache, OS X, Mac, mod_jk, Tomcat Connectors[/tags]
Nov
8
Switching to Subversion – First Thoughts of a CVS User
Filed Under Software Development, Computers & Tech on November 8, 2006 | 8 Comments
I’ve been a CVS user for years but have spent most of those years cursing its short-comings. The main reasons I stuck with CVS despite this were:
- Lock-in – there is a lot of code in both my personal CVS repository and the one for the EVE project. If it ain’t broke …….
- Maturity – CVS has been around for donkey’s years. The code is stable, people know how to use it, and there are loads of tools and tutorials out there. Subversion is a lot newer and still changing.
- Inertia – it took a lot of poking and prodding over the years to get people using CVS, people don’t want to have to start the learning curve all over again!
I’ve been reading about how great subversion is for ages but had never quite gotten round to trying it myself. The reason I hadn’t tried it was because I’d never had an excuse to dedicate scarce time to it. However, a few weeks ago people in work started voicing an interest in Subversion so I took that as my cue to finally give it a go.
[tags]Source Control, CVS, Subversion, SVN[/tags]