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Picked up a Wacom Graphire 3 tablet yesterday which is a pretty cool piece of kit. Had quite a few of these running when working at Greencroft in the art department, and was impressed by them. With a new hush hush project being worked on (apart from those that have had sneak peeks…), it’s ideal, as is so much easier doing graphics work with a pen + tablet rather than a mouse.

Running off the desktop rather than the MacBook, as even with 2Ghz RAM, it doesn’t like manipulating 600-700Mb graphics files, so back to trusty Kubuntu and the GIMP (no jokes please!). Works like a charm, and sod the 2 CD’s of tablet drivers and associated software to allow it to work properly. Most modern kernels will have wacom support compiled as a module, so it works as a regular hotplug USB device straight out the box. Did add the following into the xorg.conf though (thanks to http://www.shallowsky.com/linux/wacom.html) to ensure it used the full size of the tablet and the eraser:

# Wacom graphics tablet
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "stylus"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "Mode" "Absolute"
Option "USB" "on"
Option "Threshold" "10"
Option "Device" "/dev/wacom"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "eraser"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Type" "eraser"
Option "Mode" "Absolute"
Option "USB" "on"
Option "Threshold" "10"
Option "Device" "/dev/wacom"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "cursor"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "Mode" "Relative"
Option "USB" "on"
Option "Threshold" "10"
Option "Device" "/dev/wacom"
EndSection
# End Wacom section

Section "ServerLayout"
[ ... ]
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
[ ... ]

Definatley recommend a graphics tablet to others now I’ve spent a bit of time using one rather than simply seeing them in action elsewhere, and even when I’m skipping between apps or browsing the net, I’ll quite happily use the stylus. Helps combat the old RSI too I guess!

And no, you’ll have to wait to see what I’m working on

Open-Xchange on the Gentoo Sparc64 was just a nightmare! Along with taking an age to run through emerging each package, too many packages weren’t in ‘stable’ on the Sparc platform, and stepping back to Blackdown JDK rather than offical Sun-JDK was causing a lot of problems compiling the Java dependencies during the base system install.

So, plan B is running Open-Xchange on my dual-PII testing system. Although mainly for trying out various distros and desktop environments, it’s speed helps, and the fact it’s x86 based! Initially I’ll follow through installing it running off a local OpenLDAP server before complicating matters by powering it from the OpenLDAP server currently configured on one of the Ultra 5′s for user logins and Samba authentication.

Although I’m a little disappointed not to be able to run everything off the stack of Ultra 5′s, I’m more interested in the actual systems configuration and connections across the network than arsing around resolving annoying package dependencies on what appears to be a platform not really receiving much attention for Open-Xchange!

So, I’ve done bugger all with my stash of Sun Ultra 5′s since well before Christmas, and since getting back from my holidays I haven’t been bothered either. Terrible waste of equipment, I know!

But, having received an e-mail from the Open-Xchange team about further migration support and whitepapers from SLOX 4.1 across to Open-Xchange, figured that sooner or later our mail server at school is probably going to be shuffled across. If possible, I’d like to get this done before I leave in May as with SLOX support no longer, applying updates is a right pain, and it’s going on for 2 years since it’s been in operation anyway.

One thing I’ve been looking at for a while is expanding the e-mail systems to incorporate external mail functions as well. At the moment, it’s only handling internal e-mail, but bridging the gap seems logical. I’d want to bring in virus scanning of attachments and spam filters for that, which is why I’ve already been looking at ClamAV and SpamAssassin for my Gentoo network systems.

Anyways, I’ve actually got the 3rd Ultra 5 now running Gentoo Sparc64, integrated with the LDAP server (now I know the steps for creating the certificates from configuring the Samba server…) and have made a start on Open-Xchange on Gentoo. Running Sparc64 has already brough up an issue in that there’s no stable Sun-JDK, though there is a blackdown-jdk ebuild I’m currently compiling.

Of course, running it on such an old system means this may take a while, and since the 2nd package on the (long) list of base software has already caused problems, it may take even longer! But, I do like a challenge…

Truth be told, I just haven’t had the time to play around with this project as much as I wanted. Maybe with it being close to Christmas and stuff winding down at work (plus, just wanting to be in Alaska by now!), I just don’t have the energy on an evening to sit down and crack on.

But, Samba has been running quite happily for a week or so and integrated quite nicely with OpenLDAP. Running on two different severs, thus simulating what you’re likely to get in the network environment, has been a bit of a struggle. All the documentation with regards to running the two of them together are aimed at them being on the same physical machine. Taking out SSL makes this fairly easy and doesn’t cause problems, but most of the tutorials on enabling SSL make it harder. This has been the cause of most of my problems.

In the end, a combination of Samba-OpenLDAP howto from Idealx (a bible almost!) and the LDAP SAMBA PDC Howto from the Gentoo Wiki (always excellent resources!) have got things up + running. Moving between the two doucments is fairly easy, but for the SSL parts, stick with the Gentoo Wiki version – much easier.

Configuring the client machine has been fairly non-eventful in terms of authentication – a couple of simple changes to PAM and configuring of the OpenLDAP connection all that is required. Logging in works fine, correctly authenticating and determining group privileges. It’s getting the correct drives mapped across that’s a challenge at the moment, and this is what I just can’t be bothered to figure out right now!

Again, almost all the tutorials expect you to be running Windows clients, which make it dead easy to configure using the login.bat scripts. However, these don’t work for Linux clients, requiring your own logon scripts. I’ve pretty much got it handling the home directories and the associated shared network drives. I’ve had a quick play with How to Implement Login Scripts into a Pure Linux Environment from the Novell KB which seems to do the trick, but I’m not too happy with the method of grabbing the groups and writing them to disk before mounting them.

Overall, aside from my mistakes and ignorance in not fully understanding SSL connections between the servers, and the struggle in getting login scripts to handle network drives, it’s all been fairly easy, albeit slow going! Certainly the smbldap-tools from Idealx have given the power required to add new users, create these Samba groups for shared network drives, and adjusting the user + group permissions.

For me, one of the core features of a network system for end-users is to allow any information they need to be accessible from anywhere, no matter the machine or OS, hence the design around Samba to facilitate Windows machines, as opposed to going for NFS (a much easier method considering the bulk of the work + clients I’d use would be Linux). This basic setup shows this is possible, but fiddly when compared to the Microsoft AD and NTFS shares it’s designed to replace.

Once additional features such as the web caching + filtering get built-in along with e-mail (both on separate servers – more work!), the true power and benefits should become apparent since they’re all running from a single authentication point and directory from the word go, without the need to hack things together as is the case with current MS AD / Samba connectors.

Well, my first Gentooserver is up and running on the Sun Ultra 5′s quite happily. It wasn’t as problematic as expected to be honest. I guess having done a few Gentoo installs before helped too!

The only couple of things I found was the system didn’t compile the network card driver correctly. I had to go back into the config, de-select the card, exit, head back into config and re-select before re-building the kernel. Plus, with a 3.5Mb limit on 2.4 kernel size on Sparc64, I only just managed to get it down to 3.4Mb after stripping off .comments and .notes as detailed in the excellent Gentoo Sparc Handbook.

Also on this first server, which will become the OpenLDAP server, it wouldn’t set console fonts correctly on boot, causing the system to hang. The correct setting had been applied, but booting off the CD and doing a quick “rc-update del consolefont default” and rebooting cured it with no ill-effects.

Lack of ssh access by default is a bit of an annoyance, but that’s just the way the Gentoo installer does things, so then had to leave the system a while compiling OpenSSH and setting it load on boot. Is easier controlling via ssh then switching back and forth with KVM’s and keyboards.

Onto OpenLDAP, and more great documention from Gentoo in the form of the Gentoo OpenLDAP handbook got everything up and running without too many hassles. The only issue was not including the full hostname within /etc/hosts – it must be hostname.domainname.extension, in this case fatcontroller.homelinux.net, not fatcontroller.homelinux or communicating with the LDAP server would fail. Enabling SSL is a doodle, and importing users, groups, etc. from the local box was fine with the migration-tools. Not sure about how it would handle an import from existing LDAP server such as a Microsoft Active Directory, which would have interesting to try out. Not having one in my pocket hindered that slightly!

My test machine with a Gentoo system already installed has been commandered as the network client since it’s already setup, and a few simple changes to PAM got the workstation authenticating with the LDAP server. The next stage is implementing a Samba server to handle network home directories and profile storage, so whilst authenticating against the LDAP server, you also have the appropriate network drives mapped to the account.

Speaking of which, the Samba server itself installed within one evening having learnt from the problems building the first server. I decided it probably wasn’t worth the hassling unplugging everything, slaving hard drives, imaging them, then plugging everything back to together. Of course, making judicious use of [scp to move the kernel .config file and such across helped a tad! Also, the Samba server didn’t experience the console fonts problem on boot, so is quite happy booting. Currently, it’s starting to compile all the tools as per the Gentoo Samba3/CUPS/ClamAV HOWTO.

Overall, the speed of the systems in terms of booting up and running things seems quite okay. Compiling is a slightly different matter, as to be expected from the hardware. Won’t break any records for compilation time, but it seems fairly stable and that’ll do me! Am looking forward to getting my teeth into this project once Samba is up + running to really start manipulating the LDAP server to control shared group folder permissions and logins in the same manner network clients + users would in the workplace. Sticking an e-mail server into that will be next, but intend on having some fun with OpenLDAP + Samba first!

eBay is a naughty, naughty place. It draws you into buying stuff against your will. Well, not quite, but you get the idea.

The latest idea is playing around with some high-end network services under Linux. OpenLDAP servers maintaining an entire LDAP directory, with integrated Samba file + printer sharing on per user/group basis including virus scanning, e-mail solution containing virus + spam filtering tied into the LDAP structure, and of course Internet content filtering + Squid proxy cache complete with Intranet portalset all based off permissions from the directory. So, I needed some equipment.

Space being limited, and also wanting a decent challenge as opposed to running them off my usual testing machines based round PII 400Mhz’s with 128Mb-256Mb RAM, picked out some Sun Ultra 5′s instead. Since the Ultra 5′s are IDE interface based, they take standard hard drives and CD drives making them cheap to get parts for. These 4 cost £45 plus shipping – 3 x 270Mhz with 128Mb RAM + 6.3Gb hard drives, plus 1 x 330Mhz with 256Mb RAM and 6.3Gb hard drive.

What’s going to run on these? Gentoo Sparc64, of course. Support seems very good under Gentoo, with active forums, mailing lists and IRC. Although compiling will be slower compared to the other alternative, Debian, I’m interested to see how much Gentoo can harness the 64-bit processing, plus how well Gentoo actually stands up in a server environment. I’ve always ran Debian on servers due to ease of installation and updates, but since I’m not in the production environment, would try something else. Whilst this is purely for development and learning, the reasoning behind it is an integration of these technologies into our Windows network at work, or for future reference depending on employment status in a year or two.

Once the keyboard + mouse arrive, will make a start trying to install Gentoo in the first place! Hoping to simply create a base install, then image the remaining three drives, allowing me then give each machine it’s own roles without having to run through building each system from scratch.

Since I’m a good guy at heart, I set up a couple of old Compaq Deskpro EN’s for Belmont Parish Hall that had been donated by Phillips during their factory closure. The machines weren’t bad – PIII 1Ghz, 128Mb RAM, 20Gb hard drive with the usual on-board graphics, network + audio. Quite impressive little machines. I called them Bill + Ben.

Anyways, without the money (or rather the need) to pay for Windows licences, Office licences, etc. and without me wanting to constantly patch them and remove viruses + spyware, Linux was called for. Having toyed with Ubuntu and Edubuntu with a possible move of some school workstations to Linux, I decided to give Kubuntu a whirl for these computers. The reason for my switch away from Debian + Gentoo is quite simple – the computers needed to be as simple to use as possible, and resemble the look + feel of Windows.

Debian is a little too slow on the uptake with updates to KDE, and I didn’t fancy running them from testing without me taking control of them. Ubuntu runs Gnome by default which is a little too different out-of-the-box for a user coming from Windows. Edubuntu is too much for kids. Knowing the Debian base would hold steady and apt would make it easy to update stuff at the click of a button, Kubuntu rolled out painfully easily. Everything was picked up during install, only requiring Firefox + Thunderbird to be installed once the install was finished. A quick tweaking of KDE to remove the desktop pager, wastebin + KNote from the system try, and dropping desktop icons for OpenOffice.org Writer, Calc + Impress (turning off Java + setting MS Office default file formats) along with simple shortcuts to E-mail, Internet, My Documents, Floppy, CD-ROM, etc. meant sitting my mother down at the screen resulted in a smile on her face rather than puzzlement.

Actually, my mother is no slouch with computers now, but as with most people, doesn’t like change. For her to be comfortable using it hopefully means the other users at the hall will be too. I have another one to do tomorrow which will be the main office one, and looking at bringing another two older machines out of the garage to setup in the same manner giving them 4 machines for open access at the hall. With each of the machines setup to automatically download updates, along with a restore image created with partimage, shouldn’t be much that can go wrong.

Here’s hoping so!

So, I got bored at lunchtime. I always steal a newspaper from whichever nice person leaves one lying around. Inconsiderate sods that they are, didn’t leave it on the table where it should be, ready for me to half-inch whilst eating my sandwiches.

That lead to messing around playing uber-geek. Messing around with my Palm, I setup the Bluetooth connection into my Nokia 6820 to automatically bring up the o2 Active GPRS connection to use web-browsing and e-mail on the Palm. It’s never something I could be arsed to do as I never saw the point, but that’s what boredom does to me I guess.

Anyway, that all ran fine, so then I configured the e-mail client on my Nokia to grab my o2 e-mail, which I never used. It downloaded my welcome message from January… But, it got me thinking about moblogging.

Like accessing the Internet off my Palm, I’ve never really seen the need for posting crap on here from my mobile, mainly because pMachine can’t do it. A minor setback. Newer weblogs can, or at least posting via e-mai which most mobiles can do easily, and there is stuff floating around about adding in functionality to post via e-mail, but the couple of scripts that were done a couple of years back aren’t available anymore. So, I grabbed the WordPress wp-mail code and the SquirelMail POP3 class and knocked up some code.

So long as this appears, it works fine! Not that hard, fairly basic stuff, and includes basic authentication to ensure every Tom, Dick + Harry can’t post via e-mail. Nicely cleans things up by deleting e-mail after processing, though doesn’t include posting images. If I can be arsed, might include that at some point. Probably won’t even use all this anyways!

Of course, this might not even work…

So, the idea was to make my main computer a bit quieter. Sounds easy. I also wanted something to cut my teeth into, literally. I do like my power tools and hadn’t played with them much recently. For a few years have toyed with the idea of water cooling, not really for overclocking purposes as I’m not a PC gamer and don’t want to eek out a extra few Mhz. I just wanted something that kept things cool, was quiet, and looked good. Couldn’t be that hard, could it? Well, no, except for the company all the gear was bought from.

Anyways, this how the machine looked before it all started. A bit messy, but it was tucked away under a desk so it didn’t matter much:

First came marking out the location of the radiator mounting and cutting it to size. The fun stuff. Out with the jigsaw and makin’ some noise! Was fairly straightforward, though drilling the holes still caused the drill to slip a little due to the upper casing being shiny, but nothing a bit of downwards pressure didn’t fix

Done and dusted, the radiator was installed, and the water block, radiator and pump connected together. Once topped up and left for leak testing, all seemed to be going smoothly. Not so. The self tapping screws the radiator ships with are too long, meaning when installing into the case, the screws run straight through the radiator casing and into the radiator itself. Not so smoothly then… Wasn’t having any of it trying repairs and I wasn’t too keen on having a patched up radiator sat at the top of the computer, so had to order a new one. Whilst waiting for this, on with cutting out the side window:

At the point of ordering the replacement radiator I also decided that due to space restrictions I should use angled barbs out of the radiator which were now in stock having been out of stock first time round. 6 days later, 3 replacement barbs, and finally I get the right barb sent through after the wrong ones constantly being supplied and delays in the postal service. But, eventually they came through so back in it went, including drilling and installing a switch to the side to control neon lights to be installed later:

The inside of the case all got a nice coat of black paint to get rid of the ‘orrible silver shine caused when people install neons into cases that just bounces off the finishing of the case. With the radiator and exhaust fans installed and water dye added, this started looking pretty cool. The exhaust fans are needed to get rid of the heat pushed out from the radiator, which although not huge, I wanted rid of. They’re about 18dB a piece running at 2000rpm so they’re drowned out by the power supply anyway:

With the rest of hardware installed back into the system, lights installed, and put back in place, the ‘On’ switch was tentatively pushed and a little whisper told me it was on. The power supply is the loudest thing, which is pretty quiet anyway, and a massive improvement over before. The side window, lights and water dye set it all off quite nicely – may as well make it look good even it is a little sad + geeky (before someone comments on it!).

As for how the computer runs, the system temperature is about 2-3 degrees celsius warmer than before due the radiator heat, and the processor itself is about 10 degrees celsius cooler. Quite happy with that, as the fans on the radiator move very little air across the radiator, but are very quiet. More powerful fans will move air, thus cooling the water passing through it more and dropping the CPU temp more, but I’d rather not have the extra noise that goes with it. Think I’ll stick with these for now.

I’ve also had some people asking about my other machines, so here goes:

Main computer (homer): Athlon XP 2800, 1Gb Crucial DDR3200, 1 x 160Gb Maxtor SATA hdd + 1 x 80Gb Maxtor IDE hdd, Sony CD-RW, NEC DVD-RW, Creative Audigy 2, 128Mb nVidia GeForce4 4200ti, Netgear 54g wireless adapter
Webserver (marge): Pentium II 400Mhz, 192Mb Kingston PC133, 30Gb Maxtor IDE hdd, Sony CD-ROM
Test-bed machine (bart): Dual Pentium II 400Mhz, 256Mb Kingston PC133, 80Gb Maxtor IDE hdd, Sony CD-RW
Media Center (lisa): Shuttle SN45G XPC, AMD Semperon 2400, 512Mb Crucial DDR2700, 160Gb Maxtor SATA hdd, Sony DVD-RW, Creative Audigy 2, nVidia GeForce4 4200ti + TV out
Laptop (barney): Toshiba Satellite Pro L10, Intel Celeron 1.5Ghz, 512Mb DDR, 60Gb hdd, DVD-RW

And yes, for the observant of you, all named after Simspsons characters, which goes back years – the machines have all had numerous hardware changes but keep the same roles, and I can’t be arsed to modify the hosts + DNS settings (the router is called maggie, just complete the family…). From left to right – homer, marge, bart, lisa:

Well, the car still hasn’t blown up or worse, caught fire. Sitting in traffic trying to get to work on a morning is so much more fun when you can just turn the bass up and annoy all the other drivers stuck in their cars listening to Classical FM or Radio 4. Doesn’t even have to be loud, the bass just rumbles through anything like a knife through hot butter. Love it.

Anyways, maybe all the in-car audio made me old brain go all funny, but I’ve also agreed to have a bit of jam tomorrow afternoon with a couple of friends that have been trying to get a band going. Not sure it’s my kinda music (they wanna try playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath so I’ve dug out the tabs for it, is pretty easy) so this could be an experience…

So, distortion pedal at the ready and hope their neighbours realise how loud my guitar amp goes. Think I’m starting to develop an obession with noise pollution.