Slowing down?

Trends are deceptive - but I haven't come back to this blogging in a while :)

I did my first Windows XP install for a while today for friends. Their machine had slowed to a crawl and _needed_ a disk format and reinstall. Three sets of media to find, three sets of 20 digit codes to type in. Printer software not found - so they'll have to go and download a huge program bundle from the manufacturer's site. [And it always takes an alleged 39 minutes from first reboot irrespective of the actual speed of the hardware :) ]

New hardware put in - a DVD writer to replace a CD writer which had lasted ten years and moved between at least two machines - that's spectacular in this day and age. The new drive is also 10% of the cost of the old one - £17 instead of about £200.

Total time to put on Windows XP, an AV product, get Firefox and to get part way through an Office 2007 install was about three hours. That's without setting up any accounts, shared directories (or network - the attached wireless router didn't need any changes).

I could do a Debian install onto the 40G disk in well under half that to include X windows, openoffice.org, iceweasel and a desktop environment. It would also run far better in 512M which is what this machine has.

Thankfully, they have data backups and an older laptop which has been the family workhorse - and a new netbook which attached to the network readily, has more disk than all other machines in the house combined, and cost less today than the "big machine" cost ten years ago at about 3 x the performance.

Intelligent questions were asked about Linux - I _wish_ I'd known about Ken Starks' radio advert or had it to hand at the time. See the Blog of Helios at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com for details - it's Free/Libre/Open Source under a CC Atttribute Share-alike 3.0 licence, and is available in a short version used in the radio advertisement .ogg or .mp3 or the longer version (.ogg .mp3 All in all, a balanced and a reasoned argument for switching based on nearly everybody's real life experience :(

[UPDATE] - The owner of the machine was up until 1 a.m - 11 hours total - because the machine decided to do a defrag. :(

WiFi, GSM _and_ Bluetooth?

Just for fun on a Sheevaplug - add a powered four port USB hub. Inspired by the fact that a cheap Bluetooth dongle was recognised out of the box, I added a Netgear WG111v2 (rt8187 driver) and the Huawei GSM/3G E220 dongle to the hub. All were recognised in the 2.6.30 kernel and ID'd correctly.

Given that the Sheevaplug has GB Ethernet and the power to be a good firewall - this might make an ideal multi-gateway for an emergency / conference or whatever.

I haven't actually configured up any of the wireless interfaces - but all should work, though the RT8187 may be only 22Mb and may not support WPA2 - I can't remember.

ACPI for Acer Aspire [SOLVED] - and RHCT

As a follow up to the last post - and with many thanks to PC World tech. support staff :)

This happens occasionally: the fix recommended at the barbeque was to remove power cable and battery for a period of time and try again. It transpires that you need to remove the battery and power cable AND also press the on/off button for 30-60 seconds which resets the laptop motherboard ACPI status. Who'd have known ? :)

Also, I'm now a Red Hat Certified Technician - if anybody should ever need one of those in a hurry. My day job is keen on Red Hat and the firm paid for the course. My thanks go also to them for their patience with me over some years - and to the Red Hat instructor who knows me fairly well. I had to promise not to mention Debian for the week so as not to disconcert the other students :)

Madly dysfunctional family barbeque

At Steve's house in Cambridge. First Debian party I'd been to. House full of people I knew only from email, some very old friends. Wires and leads filling the front room floor - laptops _everywhere_ . [My netbook died with nasty ACPI errors - since fixed/worked around - it was practically the one place in the world where I could yell for an ACPI expert and folk knew what I was talking about :) ]

I wish I'd taken a camera - I was there for 1/2 hour before I realised I was only about three feet from a large TV which then became the focus for competitive Wii Fit archery :) Thirty second rule on sofa space - if you left for more than about 30 seconds you had to sit on the floor when you got back (I jammed myself onto a corner of the sofa once I realised I'd barely get through the crush :) )
[Forget students in a mini / UK telephone box - how many DDs can you fit into a very narrow kitchen :) ]

It's a huge, dysfunctional family with its own rules, geeky humour and in-jokes but it's MINE - it's the people I want to hang out with and, as perverse as it sounds, just being there gave me a whole new reaffirmed sense of identity and a large amount of determination to carry on "wasting my time with Linux" and Debian

Thanks to those who signed my key for me (and Noodles who didn't sign but gave a very intelligent rationale as to why he couldn't at the moment :) )
Thanks to Steve for quintessentially being and being the perfect host - and I hope to be back next year. And the food was excellent - chilli popcorn comes highly recommended :)

UKUUG conference and other pleasantries

To Birmingham (UK) on Friday and Saturday last week - first time ever :) Friday was a rather laid back tutorial day: I was learning about Arduino boards and playing a bit with electronics. Good fun - not least watching Phil Hands cursing Java and getting his hands dirty with the command line. Back on Saturday to represent Debian, man a T shirt stall and generally talk. I didn't go to any of the staged talks but did sell a couple of T's. Sheevaplug got some interest :) Lots of interesting people - all sorts of sideline conversations.

Moving computers on Monday: lots of muttering but I think I've got it sorted now: one computer needs connecting to keyboard/mouse/monitor purely to tell it to ignore errors when it hasn't got keyboard/mouse/monitor :( Smaller room so we'll see how it pans out: Desk has 1 mini-PC, speakers, 1 laser printer, 2 x wireless routers and 1 x 8 port switch, 1 x 4 port KVM, desk light, radio and tiny clock on top and 4 x tower cases underneath in 0.75 x 1.5m

Looking to republish useful snippets of blogs to illustrate an argument at (paid) work has meant that I have had to ask explicit permission from other bloggers/mailing list contributors. For any bloggers/contributors in a similar position who may want to quote this drivel of mine in the future.

Boring legal bits
In the absence of any other more restrictive licensing from me, feel free to treat this blog as GPL version 2.0 or later / CC-BY 3.0 or later for the purposes of extracting any quotes or other information This relicensing applies to all prior posts in this blog. I'd prefer that you didn't misrepresent me so preservation of context where practicable is desirable but not essential.

Sheevaplug - now with Apache, X and KDE :)

If I'd had lots more money ($249 instead of $99) and been about a month later - before the current back order situation - I'd possibly have been tempted by an OpenRD board. [Think Sheevaplug in metal box, with audio, video, SATA disk connections also brought out]. As it is, I didn't get the chance.

Instead, and to help demonstrate the capabilities of the little box, I added some packages - it now has X Windows, KDE and Apache installed.

I opened up SSH to allow a friend to pick up the files needed to install up to date U-boot, the Debian base system from Martin Michlmayr and the "I bricked my Sheevaplug" alpha installer. He, in turn, took great delight in running various X applications on the Sheevaplug and has promised me screen captures :)

From Sheevaplug -> Atom machine -> cable modem with port forwarding -> cable modem with port forwarding -> firewall -> firewall -> his machine and STILL acceptable performance :)

Now with added wifi :)

It looks as if an Edimax (Realtek rt73 chipset) USB wireless dongle may work with no other modules needing compilation. Thinking of putting Apache on and putting up a wireless web page - Saturday/Sunday is a UK Unix Users Group (UKUUG) conference in Birmingham. Debian should be in attendance and it would be cool to have a web server small enough to fit in my pocket.

I could take complete Debian and Ubuntu archives - but the terabyte disk is about four times the size of the server and wirelss dongle together.

So, for the person that asked me what I was going to do wth the Sheevaplug - that might be a start :)