Qemu - My fault for being bleeding edge!

Those that know me will be aware that I am a fan of Debian - I love the package management and you don't get the dross or quirks that come with Ubuntu et al. Anyway, since the announcement that Debian Etch (or v4) was to be released back in December I figured why not upgrade?

Unfortunately, Debian being as stable as it is means that they won't release a version until ALL the major supported platforms (something like 9 out of 15) are completely bug free. As you can guess this is pretty tricky to do... hence the slow pace of new Debian releases.

Because I couldn't curb my enthusiasm, I've been using the release candidate (aka Testing) and I'm very pleased. Anyway... I digress.

As a result of my using this 'bleeding edge' OS, I'm currently running kernel version 2.6.17 which is perfectly stable IMHO. However, to test out my Pykota instructions (see earlier post), I wanted to install VMWare Server (another one of my favourite profucts) but to do this you need the kernel header files and for some reason these haven't been made available in the Debian repositories!!!

What does all this have to do with Qemu? Qemu is an open source virtualisation product which is very easy to install on Debian since it IS in the repositories.

After downloading the Debian Testing install disks (again - I keep leaving them places!) I've started up the app and kicked it off installing. All seems to be going well so far (touch wood) and I will write an update when I've had chance to test it further. It has certainly got around my problem for now though so I should be able to test my Pykota instructions ;-)

PyKota - Another update!

Following on from yesterday's update, I managed to find some more time between a Nedap meeting, meeting with the architect and cabler for the new extension and ringing DELL to arrange for a new motherboard to be sent out to take another look at PyKota.

I tweaked some accounting settings and re-added the test users. The printing AND accounting now works a treat! YAY!!!!

As a result, I decided to publish my installation notes on EduGeek so that others can learn from my experience. I will be refining these to create a 'proper' installation guide as soon as I get chance.

In the meantime, anybody who is interested can check out the guide at http://edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7100

Update on Pykota

OK... so I've been playing with this Pykota lark in every free minute that I've had at work (and many at home too!). I'm sure that it could be a lot easier than this but I'm still learning... I'm by no means a Linux guru.

When I've got the whole thing working, a howto guide will be produced... this is something seriously lacking with Pykota IMHO. There are lots of installation guides but they all seem to make a lot of assumptions and miss significant (if menial) parts out.

Anyway... back to the progress so far. I have configured CUPS with Samba - this was relatively easy. As I mention above, Pykota was the tricky part but it all seems to be working now, bar one 'tiny' detail... it isn't counting the pages :-( This has a knock-on effect in that it prevents the user from printing :-s

Anyway... back to trawling the net for ideas and re-reading the config files.

A Quick Guide to Thin Client Computing

Many people on EduGeek have recently been looking into thin clients as a way of reducing TCO in their schools. Many of these people have turned to me as I am somewhat of an authority on this. As a result, I promised to write a little guide explaining some of the basics. The guide can be found at http://edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7035 - enjoy!

As a background, my network setup uses 6 terminal servers running Windows Server 2003 and Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 to server approx 200 thin clients... most of the clients in the school are thin clients.

Eagles of Death Metal @ The Manchester Academy

So... the long awaited Eagles of Death Metal gig was last Saturday at the Manchester Academy. I haven't been to the Academy before (only Academy 2) and I was impressed by the venue. Beer was cheapish (only £2.45 for a pint of Grolsch which is VERY cheap for a gig!) and the room was just the right size.

The support act was Mother Vulpine... a pretty heavy indie rock band comprising of a singer/guitarist, bassist who bounced around like Zebedee, a drummer and a female guitarist. I was quite impressed... their music was OK and the female guitarist wasn't too unppleasent on the eyes ;-)

Then the gig started proper and when EODM came one we bounced our way to about 5 rows from the front! It was great and everyone was having a good time! The only problem is that it was a little warm and cramped so I had to bounce back a couple of rows to try to cool down. My old age (of 25) meant I later had to go back further still as the sweat was still pouring off me!

EODM were fantastic and played a great set. It really was one of the best gigs I've been to in a while. Definately worth watching again!

Kaiser Chiefs @ The Manchester Apollo

On Thursday Pete, Kath, Caroline and myself went to see the Kaiser Chiefs at the Apollo in Manchester.

The first support act were called Ripchord and can only be described as The Beatles on speed with a touch of Geaorge Formby chucked in for good measure. I was not overly impressed.

The second support band were called Th 1990s (I think) and they were much better.

Next was the Kaiser Chiefs who were very good - although not quite as good as the last time I saw them. The set was a mixture of existing material as well as material from their new album which I believe is out tomorrow.

The gig itself was quite short, finishing at approx. 10.45 but it then took us half an hour to get out of the car park!

On the whole then, a very enjoyable evening.

Motorola KRZR

Well my Motorola RZR finally gave up the ghost the other night. The battery had been going for a bit and I think that I have had it nearly 2 years. Anyway, on Friday night it finally packed in and will now no longer turn on!

Anyway, Sunday I got around to ringing Vodafone and arranging a phone upgrade. After a good chat about the cheaply available handsets and my requirements, I decided to shell out £25 for a MOTO KRZR.

The phone arrived yesterday, whilst I was out but from using it to make a couple of calls and send some text messages it seems OK.

The thing that did worry me slightly was the slowness of my old RZR but this has been much improved and the clarity of the keypad is far better too. The silver mirror finish puts my black RZR to shame and it certainly looks dated. This finish looks equally good on the included bluetooth headset too.

Talking of bluetooth, the bluetooth connection worked flawlessly when transferring names from my PDA. I'm also glad to see that Motorola have finally decided to implement a 'proper' phone book that allowss you to save multiple numbers with each name.

Jodrell Bank and the Dog Inn

Well yesterday I had a lovely day out with Caroline, taking advantage of my holiday.

It was decided that we should go to Jodrell Bank because we often see the large Lovell Radio Telescope from the motorway.

For the princely sum of £1.50 each we were admitted entry to the small visitors' centre and, after declining tickets for the shows in the '3D Theatre', we had a quick look 'round and watched some videos about the Lovell Telescope - although the screaming kids making a lot of noise made it somewhat difficult to concentrate.

We then had a walk around the base of the Lovell Telescope, which was unfortunately parked and so wasn't much to look at, before have a look at the 'Granada Arboritum' - a rather pleasant landscaped area full of trees.

After having a good look around we ventured off in search of a pub with a humorous name... we had a couple that we had found by trawling the web earlier in the day but the directions (courtesy of the RAC) sucked. We did happen upon 'The Dog Inn' and it was decided that the name was suitably humorous (plus it was in Lower Peover - which is a funny name in itself).

The pub was quite quiet, only a few customers other than us and the service could have been a little quicker but the food was excellent and the atmosphere was lovely too.

Wolfmother @ The Manchester Apollo

Well, last night we braved the elements and went to the Manchester Apollo to watch Wolfmother.

By the time we reached Domo's in Farnworth, the snow was falling quite heavily but we got some lovely chinese food and then off we went... by the time we reached Manchester the snow had vanished... although this didn't prevent some stupid woman nearly driving into the side of me!

The support act for the evening were called Wolf & Cub. Their set started well... 2 drummers and a prog-rock style! This soon deteriorated into some trashy indie rubbish.

Anyway, the support act was soon finished and Wolfmother came on. Wolfmother were far better and it was most enjoyable. Very loud and some strange 'chicken-dancing' by the lead singer!

CUPS and Pykota

I decided a couple of days ago, after reading more about the capabilities of Pykota, that it may be the way forward for print accounting and management. For those not in the know, Pykota is an addon to CUPS (the printing subsystem for Linux) which does lots of clever accounting and reporting stuff on a print server.

Some of the particularly interesting features of Pykota and CUPS are:
* Users are not charged if the job does not print
* Jobs can be 're-processed' to add headers and the like that could include the username!
* Ability to save PDFs of all the jobs printed for keeping an eye on the little darlings
* Windows clients only need a single printer driver - CUPS then converts to the relevant format for the printer

We currently use Print Manager Plus and I don't have an issue with it. I recently upgraded to an MSDE backend and since then it has been VERY stable (not that it was unstable before) and it takes care of charging the little darlings like it should.

The reason that I decided to take the plunge with Pykota though, is mostly cost. The annual software maintenance is approx. £200 and if this cost can be saved it could be better spent elsewhere. There is a nominal fee of €25 for Pykota (I paid £25) which is a kind of donation to get access to the downloads of current and future releases - even just for an initial play it's probably worth it and it supports open software too.

Anyway... software downloaded and armed with a spare server from the cupboard (loaded with hard disks in case I want to start saving PDFs) I began the install.

I'll post more soon... possibly a mini-howto. It's just a bit of a steep learning curve at the moment since I've never run a Linux print server before.

StumbleUpon

I heard about a great Firefox addon in Linux Format recently called StumbleUpon - you can check it out at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/138/

Basically, it gives you a button in the toolbar which you press and you will be sent off to a random web page based upon your pre-defined preferences. This thing is great for finding new sites and general time wasting when there is nothing on TV.

EduGeek @ BETT

It's taken me a while to get these pics up but here we go...
Monday - The Week Begins

We arrived relatively early on the Monday to begin the preparation of the stand and were presented with an empty shell.

Nothing could really be done until we had some hardware stand so we decided to go off for a wander amongst the ensuing chaos of stands being built to find our very kind sponsors to collect bits and pieces.

Anyway, we had pretty much no luck fining anyone... in fact we discovered some people wouldn't be turning up until Tuesday afternoon! However, we eventually managed to grab somebody from Promethean so we could set up the interactive whiteboard and projector that they loaned us.

Of course, all the time that this was going on, Tony was being mithered by work about SIMS stuff which made my eyes glaze over every time he tried to explain it to me.

By this time we had begun to start getting hungry so we popped off for lunch... to a traditional english pub - except that the entire menu was made up of curries! Quite odd. Upon our return we didn't have to wait long for a delivery from LapSafe - a nice kiosk to display our fancy web site on :-)

Tuesday - Not long to go

So Tuesday came and we eventually got some hardware. Firstly a box on loan from Stone Computers to run demonstrations on and connect to the Promethean board.

Then came the SmoothWall box - kindly donated to TickMike after we'd been let loose on it!

Then, in the afternoon, came the monster DELL server (which we would later name BEAST). This quad-dual-core Opteron with 16GB RAM and SAS drives was quite something. The only problem was that it had no OS and no setup disks.

When we did eventually get the server going, it was quite something to look at as it sat there without breaking a sweat with 6 virtual machines running!

So anyway.... there wasn't much time for picture taking during the show's opening hours. Steve Thomas from Novus did get rather tired of the standing at one point though.

And Tony made time to print some additional promotional material.

Finally a quick thank you to Art Lader - our Moodle Evangelist that was flown in from the States by Sun to help out on our stand. Well done for pulling that one off Tony ;-)

I'd also like to thank Jo (aka LinuxGirlie) of Koroshi fame.

Another thanks to our sponsors who had people helping out on the stand. Of course there was Steve Thomas (Novus), two experts from RM and two experts from Solutions Inc. (Apple experts). We also had a helping hand from Mandy Brereton and Sacha at EuroLaser (who also donated 2 laser printers as prizes and are generally very nice to everyone).

If there's anyone or anything I've missed out (I know that there is a lot!) I'm sorry.

EduGeek North West Christmas Gathering

Yesterday was the Christmas Gathering for EduGeek members in the North West... organised by Dos_Box himself!

We had hoped for a larger turnout, however only 4 of us made an appearance. Despite this pitiful showing, a good time was had by all with drinking and a nice curry.

Nagios Update

OK... Chris pointed out that I am a numpty... spotting that I hadn't installed a VRML plugin into my browser. Plugin installed, I can now view the 3D status map... not that it's very exciting!

I have also just found out why my icons were missing. For some reason they weren't in the website folder! This is very strange because I remember putting them there and I have even changed the permissions on them. :-S All fixed now though :-D

I spent an hour or two today splitting my config files into template-based versions. This was easy enough to do but it was very time consuming - I'm monitoring a lot of services and hosts! What this should mean, is that I can more easily add new hosts and service checks to existing hosts.

All that remains is to complete the NRPE_NT installation on the remaining servers and possibly passive SNMP trap checks for devices like the SAN and Citrix which don't respond to SNMP get commands.

Oh yeah... I need to fix the mail on that box so that it emails me properly ;-)

VPNs and Nagios

This last week, I have mostly been playing with the new VPN that CLEO have set up for me. After much argument, trying to tell them that the ACLs were wrong, they finally caved and admitted it!

Since then I have been playing with my Nagios box in the evenings - sad I know...

I have uninstalled the installation of Nagios that I installed using the package in Debian Unstable in favour of compiling it myself. I found that the installation structions documented this quite well and barring a couple of minor problems it went on painlessly. I only need to fix the icons for the hosts and the 3D status map now.

I have re-installed all my old config files successfully too and can now process 'external commands' successfully (the main reason for switching to the compiled version).

Tonight's forray into Nagios has involved the setup of NRPE_NT. This involves installing a service on my Windows Servers so that plugins can be run when the check_nrpe plugin on the Nagios box polls them. This has allowed me to monitor disk usage, memory usage and CPU utilisation... items that should prove quite handy!

My next task will involve the installation of NRPE_NT onto the remaining 11 boxes, fixing the problems with images and splitting my config files into neat little template-based ones ;-) Maybe a job for the weekend?

I'll also post something about my trip to Edinburgh soon :-D

Ross Noble in Manchester

At the weekend I went to see Ross Noble at the Opera House in Manchester. We had rather good seats, 3 rows from the front of the circle, which allowed us to see all the hilarity unfold. Right from the outset, you could tell we were in for a treat... a short animation with dancing characters asking people not to make a noise and ensure that their telephones were switched off.

Mr Noble started by heckling the late comers and it just got funnier and funnier from there on. Skits about 'Cheeky Cheeky Muslims' (involving pearly-queen dancing), arse-faced children being bummed in the face by baboons and much more besides had us all in stitches!

For anybody who has the opportunity to see Ross Noble live, you MUST go. I cannot recommend it enough!

Where did I go?

Thanks to Chris for pointing out that my blog vanished!

Something bizzare appears to have happened to my Blogspot space... a quick republish and all was well. That will teach me for neglecting my blog I guess. :-D

It just gets better!

OK... when I just think I'm starting to make some inroads into my HUGE workload, the next problem crops up. The stoopid standalone licenses for Sibelius were registered by phone on Friday and I today enterred the magic numebrs into the machines... first machine i get to says "invalid registration code" - I tried every possible permeatation of spaces to no avail! The idiots at Sibelius have given me the wrong code!

Next up... the 30 wireless laptops have stopped talking to the network. I take all 28 out of the trolley (2 are dumped elsewhere at the moment) and find that the WPA authentication on ALL of them is buggered! I restarted the Bluesocket controller to see in a vain attempt to get it working again... fat chance! I knew that these things were going to make my life hell!

Then... the deputy head announces the latest SIMS upgrade. Of course I have to install this since the stoopid county support team installed SIMS on a partition that is too small. This upgrade should have been a simple 5-10 minute job. I was quite impressed that I got it installed in under 1 hour and I only had to run SOLUS 5 times and DBUPGRADE 3 times (with the /nobackup switch)!!!

Anyway... tomorrow is another day and I'll have to see what I can think of with the wireless. Here's hoping that it all magically starts working ;-)

Those Bloody Macs

OK... after weeks of trying to sort out the 11 new iMacs for the Music Department, I finally got them into a state where I was pretty much happy with them.

I have an image with the basic software on (albeit with incorrect permissions on ONE file for some dodgy old piece of software). The macs are connected to an OS X server for locking them down with Open Directory and they authenticate against my Active Directory network. Not bad considering I'd never really touched a Mac a couple of months ago.

Anyway... back to these iMacs... I decided to take the plunge this afternoon and take them over to the room where they are to live. This would also entail moving some PCs out the way... into the room next door.

I slowly went around the room unplugging and removing the PCs and pulling the iMacs out of their boxes and associated swathes of packaging! After plugging the things in I set off NetRestore loading the image onto them and when this was finished I renamed them and sorted out the OD and AD authentication.

So from 2pm I plodded through this and by 5.10pm I had fully installed 7 iMacs and the eighth was still loading the image. In the meantime, the two music teachers had been wandering back and forth through the room... . Obviously it's my fault that it's taken me 8 weeks to get these things into a workable state without their stoopid Sibelius software which I haven't had time to sort out the new network licenses for after they puchased a load of dumb-ass standalone ones... each requiring an activation key that you have to telephone for.

So tomorrow I will have to install the remaining three Macs (which are already built and what-have-you) plus plug in all the PCs which I have abandoned in the other Music room. These will also need to be rebuilt because the music-types aren't happy with what software is installed! Then of course there is the other work for me to fit in around them!

I've finally got around to the VLANs

For ages now I have been putting off the setup of the VLANs on my switches for the implementation of my Bluesocket wireless network. With only a skeleton staff in School at the moment, the time has finally come and with the installation of some new switches imminent, now seemed like as good a time as any.

I decided that to configure the switches I would use my shiny iBook G4 which I got a while ago with the idea that some of the network managlement tasks would be easier using the BSD-based OS X. Before I could begin, I downloaded and installed the drivers for my 'Prolific' USB-serial adapter. I then found out how to communicate with the switches... you simply open a terminal window and type:

screen tty.usbserial 9600

The tty.usbserial is my iBook's device name for the serial adapter. IMHO this is a lot less hassle than using HyperTerminal in Windows.

Anyway... starting at the outer-most switches in the areas of the School that are currently not being used, I have been reconfiguring the switches (remembering to give my 'data' VLAN an IP address for later configuration) and labeling the up. At the same time I have also been tidying some of the cabs, using different coloured patch leads for uplinks, wireless links, telephony links and 'regular' ports. I've even got some new cable management bars to help things along!

Once all this is done I will move the Bluesocket controller into the server room (I'm pretty happy with most of the config now) and start mounting the APs and, if all goes to plan, they will all connect to the controller automagically.