Talk of Linux and Technology carefully hidden inside the academic world.
Well? The more or less official version is here:
It doesn’t work with Fedora 10/11 which has changed the format of uname -r ever so slightly. (I actually like the change.)
So I’ve included what I am currently using with my experimentation with Fedora 11 in the FedoraKmod project. So if folks are interested you can find it in the Git repo there.
Posted in Personal.
– June 9, 2009
Today I spent time with the Fedora 11 Preview release. I wanted to setup some KVM VMs which I somehow have never done before and start testing configurations for the workplace.
I ran into trouble trying to get virt-manager to used bridged networking to PXE boot and install the VMs. I also had trouble finding the right information from Google. Finally, I stumbled across the below:
http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Networking
Mainly, turn off NetworkManager and turn on the network services. Configure your firewall with the following:
-A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged -j ACCEPT
Setup your bridged devices properly as described by altering the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files.
Suddenly, virt-manager was quite happy and gladly PXE booted / network installed our standard setup. Quite nice.
Posted in Personal.
– May 13, 2009
Today’s fedorakmod git tree includes support for Yum 3.2.22. Comparing package objects changed a bit so I needed to compare the RPM equality of packages from the yum repos against the installed packages a little differently.
Posted in Personal.
– May 1, 2009
If your [IT] upgrade plans include staffing a “war room” to handle the customer issues arising from the upgrade….you are doing it wrong.
Posted in Personal.
– April 27, 2009
The FedoraKmod project has a couple updates today. I’ve added enough magic so that a package is easily built from the Git repository with “make srpm”. I’ve also fixed a condition when a kernel was removed from the transaction set because not all of the required kmods were available that some kmods requiring that kernel were still left in the transaction. Yum would install the kernel then anyway.
Posted in Personal.
– April 24, 2009
The Linux Czar has a secret life. Okay, not really secret that I’m a classical musician and a bit of a British audiophile. Mucking about with 2 channel hi-fi systems makes me happy. It seems that most of my sysadmin friends are into photography…I think I’ve found a hobby that’s just as expensive if not more so.
Using a PC and Linux is a horrid, horrid way to listen to music. It sounds like crap and is affected by all sorts of interference. (That buzz when you download something?) When Rythmbox decided to start popping loudly at the beginning and ending of each Ogg Vorbis the Linux Czar decided that he has had enough of bad sound at work. Even at home with Fedora 10 verses RHEL 5 at work the new PulseAudio crap doesn’t seem to be able to process sound information fast enough with out having drop outs. My Fedora box at home sounds like a cell phone call that’s about to lose the digital signal. Choppy.
Enough! I bought a Squeezebox Classic for use at work. Watch for Logitech’s 10% off sales. It seems to be one of those devices that has found the perfect mix of open and proprietary standards and software. It has been a real joy to use. The software the streams music from your PC works on Linux and really just about any platform with perl and mysql. The streaming format is open and you can find extra plugins on the net. The hardware decodes a number of formats including Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. It plays flawlessly when I’m compiling code or just browsing LWN.
I have also thought about getting a headphone amp to go with the Squeezebox. A set of speakers are probably a bit much for the office. Turns out, the Squeezebox Classic’s headphone adapter is powered by a very weak internal amp. The wiki admits this and suggests “low-end” headphones only. Truly, the Grados I have at work are totally underpowered. So a dedicated headphone amp is next on my list. Tubes anyone?
So, there you have it. The Linux Czar’s work Hi-Fi system in progress.
Posted in Personal.
– February 28, 2009
I run my own mail server. I enjoy the extra flexibility and being able to SSH into my server with my screen session and mutt running. No to mention all my custom filtering. The problem being, I wanted Spamassassin to trust (more or less) the results from NCSU’s Puremessage spam tagging engine. I wrote some custom spamassassin rules to do just that and wanted to share.
Discuss.
Posted in Personal.
– February 26, 2009
Well, there’s talk on the yum-devel list about removing the kernel module helper plugins from yum-utils. This appears to include the plugin I wrote to support the Fedora Kmod standard which is now a bit out dated by the work in RPMFusion. (Although, I still use it heavily with RHEL 5.) Things don’t appear decided yet, but Fedora is not a friendly place for kernel modules. Unfortunately, this seems to apply to standards and code that would make third party kernel modules easier to deal with as well.
In any case I now claim to be upstream for the FedoraKmod yum plugin. The Git repo is below and you can find a Git Web interface link on the right side navigation menu. I should have a dedicated page up for it soon.
git clone git://linuxczar.net/fedorakmod.git
Posted in Personal.
– January 31, 2009
LinuxCzar.net has completed its move. Enjoy!
Posted in Personal.
– January 23, 2009
I believe linuxczar.net will be soon on the move. I’ve gotten fantastic service from RimuHosting over the years but the grass looks a little greener at Linode.com. So I’m working to expand my own personal set of servers and infrastructure and will soon move my web presence to Linode.
I’ve taken the time this weekend to setup a new server to handle my email and IRC needs. As I begin to fear the safety of my mail at work coupled with wanting my IRC and email on a server in the proper environment I decided it was time to set this up. I wanted to document, at least for me, pointers to all the notes I used to make it go on a CentOS 5-ish server.
Folks at work pointed me toward SnertSoft and the collection of sendmail milters and such there. Not what I ended up using, but interesting to poke at anyway.
I discovered a Linux Home Server HOWTO that had a really fantastic section on setting up sendmail, clamav, and spamassassin. This is most of the information I used having avoided (with good reason) setting up my own mail server in the past. Very well written.
Technoids.org has a page full of sendmail related information. What I found most useful here, and used most of the concepts shown, is the article “Help! My Mail Server Is Being DoSsed.” There is also interesting things like setting up the DNSBLs and whatnot.
I also discovered a great iptables tip to block SSH scans. The downside is that it will catch normal users if you start up too many SSH connections, but the number of connections is easily configurable.
Posted in Personal.
– January 19, 2009
