Linux installations
As a part of getting used to Linux, I installed VMWare on Demeter, in order to allow both Windows and Linux on one machine. Since the disk on Demeter is limited, the virtual machines are on an external disk – making it easy to do the same on any other machine. I now have 3 Linux installations: Ubuntu 8.7.04 LTS (Long Time Support), and a second one that I upgraded to 8.10; Last I installed CentOS 5.2 – this is a clone of RedHat, and because RedHat is leading the market, it is the base for the LPI certification; the first exam is scheduled on 20-feb…
So far, I’m doing well on the exams that come with the course book.
On Aphrodite, I have Ubuntu installed as a working environment, aside the second WindowsXP Pro installation, this one is still needed because not all software has a equivalent on Linux: the Garmin software is not available on Linux, and what’s available to process the images is not what i need – too limited and uneasy to work with. Second, the sound driver just works Stereo, on both front speakers, where Aphrodite contains a 7.1 sound system: two front speakers, two side, two rear and a center one – and a bass box. Advantage: the ATI video card does handle the nice video features that come with the software (once I got the non-standard drivers loaded).
But I got the mail working. To read the Outlook personal folders, I had to install Thunderbird on the new Windows environment, after moving all messages that were store ‘on top’ to a directory. Otherwise Thunderbird didn’t read them. I still have to move the files, but when that’s done, I will normally use the Ubuntu environment, and start the Windows environment only when I need it. It’ll save be $400.- for Office Standard – though I may still purchase it. Or just the Home version. I’ve not yet decided on that…
PHP once again
It’s weird. What blog I want to administer does matter. Login on teh SYSMGR blog is no problem – not at all – but the Trips,Tracks and Travels is quite another story. Login doesn’t fail but the admin page will simply fail to show. Case seems to happen: “www.grootersnet.nl/Tracks/” causes problems, retrying “www.grootersnet.nl/tracks/” works. Only with the admin page….Stop the PHP engine and retry – and all of a sudden it works…It raises the suspicion that the new PHPWASD, as a runtime environment, poses a problem with PHP. However, the SYSMGR blog – this one – does not have these problems and works like a charm – mostly, and it’s just the administration environment: accessing the blog itself simply works…
It might be that the problems with the previous version have something to do with installed images, or used libraries. I did do some debug there, and found that somewhere in PHPSHR, an access violation blocks processing. Even running the PHP_INFO script.
HP must have received quite some response: the new PHPengine has not been released yet.
15-Jan-2009
New kikd on the block?
Since last week, most rejected requests are the same sequence:
aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd - - [11/Jan/2009:21:37:14 +0100] "GET /nonexistenshit HTTP/1.1" 302 341
aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd - - [11/Jan/2009:21:37:15 +0100] "GET /mail/bin/msgimport HTTP/1.1" 302 341
aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd - - [11/Jan/2009:21:37:16 +0100] "GET /bin/msgimport HTTP/1.1" 302 341
aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd - - [11/Jan/2009:21:37:17 +0100] "GET /rc/bin/msgimport HTTP/1.1" 302 341
aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd - - [11/Jan/2009:21:37:18 +0100] "GET /roundcube/bin/msgimport HTTP/1.1" 302 341
aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd - - [11/Jan/2009:21:37:19 +0100] "GET /webmail/bin/msgimport HTTP/1.1" 302 341
It seems a new scripts has become available. It won’t work here, and if I had this type of software, I would disable it immediately. Still to find out what package that may be; ot it’s somewhat standard.
14-Jan-2009
Linux installations
Last weekend I obtained a license for VMSWare Workstation – needed to be able to create multiple VMs (not related to OpenVMS :)) on Demeter – the laptop – and (perhaps) Aphrodite – my normally used system. I kind of need them to run Windows and several Linux distributions side-by-side, to study Linux. As I tried VMWare hypervisor and found it not usable for my intentions, this is the only solution that allows me to travel and do whatever I need. A mere EUR 160 – well doable.
The Linux course I went to supplied me with a CentOS – Community ENTerprise OS – version 5.2 – DVD in a IA32-64 version. Since none of my systems have that type of processor, I had to download it from the CentOS site. First I got the LiveCD – thinking it would be fine for installation. But it just runs off the CD, there is no easy way to install it that way. So I used Diana to download the DVD – image (3.7GB, in order to get it all in one go, I couldn’t use the Windows systems – connection is lost once in a while and I might have to do it all over again ), burnt that on a DVD (That I could do on Aphrodite) and had it installed yesterday evening. Doing so on an empty VM on Demeter took about 2 hours…
But today I can use Windows XP pros (SP3), OpenVMS, Ubunto Desktop and CENTOS (desktop) on one box. Side by side, abeit slower than stand-alone.
Office Suite
Now running as a trial on the alternate Aphrodite Windows installation, my licence on Office Standard will expire next month. Today, after 10 days, I got a message stating “it’s time to think about an upgrade to my trial version” in some form.
I checked the offering on the US website and I learned the Microsoft Math.
The Home and Student edition is $150, including OneNote, but it lacks Outlook. Outlook by itself is $150 as well. Office OneNotes separately costs $100. The Standard Edition misses Notes but adds Outlook, plain, without business additions.
In my way of calculation that would mean :
$150 (H&S) + $150 (Outlook) – $100 (OneNote) = $200.
Ok, I could live with $250, or, in lesser extent, $300. But a list price of the Standard Edition being $ 400 ? So it’s cheaper, with the same functionality, to buy the S&H edition and Outlook separately, than to obtain the standard edition – and you get OneNotes as an extra. For free.
Should I do so? I tried OpenOffice on both Linux and Windows. But the implementation isn’t flawless at all. And though it is stated to be “office compatible”, it’s too limited. Since the company uses Microsoft, as do my customers, this is not acceptable. But when running Ubuntu, there is no real alternative. For Outlook, there is: Evolution seems to do just what I need – that’s why I want Linux running aside Windows on Aphrodite! Except I cannot add external ‘mail files’ the way I can add personal folders in Outlook. At least, I coundlt find how to yet.
Well, there is still some time. And I can always rely on Demeter otherwise. Office runs fine on the laptop.
Page server
Two days a week in a hotel also means two days dinner in a restaurant or 2 Foodpanda deliveries of my choosing. Paid by the company :). Waiting time there allows me to do some work on the web page generator. It’s now getting into shape. It will definitely be limited in functionality compared to WordPress, especially in the administration area, but massively faster: it’ll be a native VMS executable. I re-found an example of a nice xhtml-based interface, though somewhat outdated, but it might well be very usable. Otherwise I’ll keep it all very basic HTML.
Where my data will come from is still a matter of research. I could use the WordPress databases in MySQL5, but I could also use RMS indexed files, or another database. Or a combination, of course. Or make the choice configurable. All possibilities are still open.
Since my plan is to do this development in C or C++, where have little experience, it’s nice to have a reference site full of examples. And I found ione, thanks to a collegue at my curent job. Despite it’s name, it offers entries to a world of other languages, including Javascript, Python, PHP, and to database information, inclusing MySQL: www.java2s.com . Worth keeping at hand.
Things may get a bit less important if HP takes my (and others) comments serious and will offer full support for MySQL5 and Ajax in the final product, and solves the stack overflow I’ve run into now and thern. Well, MySQL5 support I could do myself, as soon as the sources are available. I’ve done it before. But whether that will be the case remains to be proven.
Nevertheless, it’s a good excercise and offers a far better efficiency. That alone makes development worthwhile.
04-Jan-2009
Irene re-thought
Irene, the Intel system that is used by the family members to access the Internet (and do a lot of other things) has been working, abait slow, for a number of years now. However, performance was gradually decreasing and so this was the moment to take a look. I found the original purchase papers, that learned the system is based on a MSI motherboard, featuring an ADM processor and 256 Mb of memory. Three disks, as it turned out: 80, 14 and 8 Gb. Enough, I think, for the type of usage.
Biggest problem is the lack of memory. 256 Mb – with 64 shared with the built-in video card, means 192 for Windows XP professional – way too many for a reasonable performance.
What I have to do anyway is add memory – but that’s hard to get on a Sunday 🙂
So the first hit is to add a graphical card and do not use the built-in. I do have an AGP-based card that should work – but it was found it didn’t work properly, the monitor falls into power-save mode annd could not be taken out of it. So that was not a solution.
Next, I minimised the size of the shared memory. It may limit the video in speed and facilities but it works.
Next, I moved all files on the 14 Gb disk to the 80Gb one – there is enough space to accommodate all that’s on the system. Especially after removeing all files that are no longer needed. The pagefile and the Internet caches have been moved to the 8Gb disk, and that concludes the Windows-XP installation.
The 14Gb disk now holds an Ubuntu installation, that my family may use – once it’s properly setup and explained.
Software problems solved
On Aphrodite, my main workstation, some software simply failed to work properly all of a sudden, without a real reason. Or I may have cleaned the registry a bit too rigorous. I mailed the problem to the supplier and he canme up with a typical Windows solution: Remove it all – inclusing hacking the registry – and re-install. It looks like it did the trick. Now I can add the latest tracks…
01-Jan-2009
Housekeeping December
Mail statistics:
PMAS statistics for 12
Total messages : 4413 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted : 2537 = 57.4 o/o (Files: 31)
Relay attempts : 782 = 17.7 o/o (Files: 31)
Processed by PMAS : 1094 = 24.7 o/o (Files: 31)
Discarded : 460 = 42.0 o/o (processed), 10.4 o/o (all)
Quarantained : 261 = 23.8 o/o (processed), 5.9 o/o (all)
Delivered : 373 = 34.0 o/o (processed), 8.4 o/o (all)
That’s quite a lot more ignored messages. Especially the number of relay attempts need further investigation. As for the last days, there was little that was delivered. Most simply rejected, not even filtered.
Of course, all of 2008 is now archived. I moved all that was created before 2008 to off-line storage (DVD, mainly).
PHP notification
I compiled a short notice to HP on the findings on PHP 5 – and a small note to Mark, I think there’s something within PHPWASD that may cause a problem. And I still have to figure out why PHP4 cannot be started….