Ubuntu Mint “Helena” is out!
Sunday, November 29th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
Finally! Can’t wait to install it. I’ll let you know how it went.
Category: Misc
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Author Archive
Subsonic streaming server on FreeNAS
Saturday, November 28th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
Today I decided to share my experience of installing the Subsonic streaming server on FreeNAS.
Why Subsonic? Well, it’s nice looking, it’s free, it can play any format and it uses a web-based player.
Most of the info I took from this post.
Before I start, I wanna mention that I’m using the latest FreeNAS version, which is 0.7, based on FreeBSD 7. This is important, because I don’t know whether lame will work in other versions.
more…
Category: Linux at home, Music
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Linux vs. Windows - my 2 cents
Sunday, November 01st, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
Hey,
So as you ALL know - Ubuntu 9.10 is out. Also, as you ALL know - Win7 is out. Actually, so is Snow Leopard, but I’m not an apple fanboy, so I don’t care much about that.
If you google any of these 2 words (win7 and ubuntu), you’ll find 7 billion posts telling you about all the new features, bug fixes, comparisons between the previous versions and of course, the most popular topic is the comparison between these two OS’s. And the most obnoxious eternal question is “Will this Ubuntu version be the windows killer?”
And since I’m being asked about this topic once every few days myself, I decided to post my personal opinion on this. Don’t expect it to be too objective, cuz I’m obviously a Linux fan. But don’t expect me to defend it no matter what, too.
First of all, if you’ve read my previous posts, you’d know that I’m using Linux Mint 7, based on Ubuntu 9.04. Plus, I run win7 in VirtualBox. I should also tell you that I only tried Ubuntu 9.10 for 15 minutes running in VMWare server on WinXP at work, so I don’t have much to say about this particular version. I’m waiting for Mint 8, since I like its polishing better than original Ubuntu’s.
So I’ll rather express my opinion regarding the general Linux vs. Windows issue than Ubuntu 9.10 vs. Win7.
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Category: Linux at home, Misc
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Windows 2008 on IBM x335 - no-go!
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
Hey,
well, here’s one for you:
I had to set up a server last week. It had to be win2008 on an IBM x335. Now, most of you will just say: so? Let me tell you. The chances you can get it to work are pretty much 50/50. In my case it was a big fat 0.
There are two things you’ll be struck by: optical drive and SCSI controller. The first one was not that much of a problem for me, but it sure can be for you. You see, the Redmond guys decided that in 2008 (and later) there’s no chance you have a CD-ROM drive in you server. Because all new servers come with DVD now. Which is true. But what about the older ones? As far as M$ is concerned: it’s your problem - deal with it. The only format win2008 comes in is DVD.
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Category: Admin's scene
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Azureus/Vuze hangs on new torrents
Monday, October 19th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
This morning I woke up and first thing I did was finding and starting to download the new “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode. Imagine my surprise when instead of actually starting, Azureus (now Vuze) turned grey (I have compiz installed) and hanged. I repeated the process, re-downloaded the torrent - no success.
From the comments on mininova I realized I wasn’t the only one. The guys suggested to upgrade Azureus, so I did. Restarted - nothing, it just hangs the minute you open this specific torrent.
So I went to eztv.it, which is the original releaser of the torrent and saw a topic regarding the issue. The topic linked to the azureus’ FAQ, which said that they do know about the recent problem and they did release a fix, so all you have to do is upgrade. But I did that already!
So the other suggestion they had is to turn off this option:
Tools–>Options–>Connection: Uncheck the “Prompt for selection when a download with an anonymous tracker is added”. Well, that did the trick!
Hope it helps someone.
Ozzik.
Category: Linux at home, Misc
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My home setup
Sunday, October 04th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
OK, you know what? It’s almost midnight and since I’m not ready to go to bed just yet, I thought of something I can write about. I know it’s no interest to anyone, but hey, it’s my blog, right?:)
So I decided to write about my home setup.
I have a 1 bedroom apartment, with 1 balcony from the living room and 1 from the kitchen. And guess what? Each and every room/balcony has a PC in it:) Go ahead, laugh. But it’s not because I’m crazy - it’s just my comfort. Well, mostly:)
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Category: Misc
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M$ 7 and VirtualBox
Sunday, October 04th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
Forgot to tell you. I have the need to run the M$ OS at home for work purposes sometimes, so I used to have the XP on VMWare server 2.0, and it was sooo annoying, especially the slow awakening. I tried the VirtualBox once in the past and it didn’t have the bridged networking out of the box, so I blew it off.
But now I decided to give it another shot. Plus they finally added the bridged network. And since I had to do the fresh install anyway, I decided to give the M$ 7 a shot. Well, I can sum up with this: I’m really happy with the speed - it simply flies. The so called OS from Redmond still sucks. It’s the same crappy thing that gave them the “great” reviews last year, but a bit faster. I’m using the final release from July or something.
So before you run buying this piece of shit with a brand new PC or a laptop - think twice. It’s the same, just a bit faster than the previous one. Why am I not returning to XP? Because clearly they decided to move in this direction (look at win 2008 server - it’s pure vista) and I gotta keep up.
Ozzik.
Category: Admin's scene, Linux at home
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What to expect
Sunday, October 04th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
Hi,
Everyday I tell myself I have to post something, but it’s kinda hard to write after a long day at work, and I’m trying not to think about computers on weekends.
Anyway, till I do post, here’s some stuff that was released lately and some to be released very soon:
pfSense 1.2.3 is supposed to come out sometimes in October I think, but then again the guys are not in hurry with release cycles, they believe it should be released when it’s ready.
pfSense: The Definitive Guide - a book by Chris Buechler and Jim Pingle is about to hit the stores any day now.
Ubuntu 9.10 will be released October 29th. The beta testers say it will boot in 10 seconds.
Amarok 2.2 is already out and is believed to be pretty good - they’re catching up with all the functionality from 1.4.
I’m really looking forward for the 0.7 release of FreeNAS. Meanwhile there’s only an RC1. So hopefully it’ll happen real soon.
Untangle 7 is out, and while I never really used the distro myself, it’s supposed to be really good - at least the functionality list is pretty hot. Although I wouldn’t use it as a firewall, I would put it behind pfSense for every other task.
Warning: it’s not completely free - they’re licensing the multiwan and some other add-ons.
Some other great news arrived last month from Clear Foundation. It appears, they bought the ClarkConnect distro and in a couple of days will be offering it for free - even the former commercial add-ons - and they’re open-sourcing the whole thing. I actually used this distribution at home for about a year (until I found pfSense and FreeNAS) and was pretty happy with it. But when I installed it at work as a secondary gateway for the office, I faced some problems with the connection to my ISP. We bought the 1 year license of the office version or something. So I turned to the level 1 support and after some mailings the guy told me to look for some other distro as they can’t help me. I was pretty upset about that kind of treatment and like I said I did find another distro, which I’m recommending to everyone ever since - pfSense and FreeNAS. But now that it’s gonna be open source, including the multi-wan, it could be the time to test it again - for some other purposes.
I guess that’s about it.
See ya,
Ozzik.
Category: Admin's scene
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The server every admin needs, part 3
Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
So here we go, we have Xymon, Ntop and Plone already installed.
We’re left with Splunk, syslog-ng and a small surprise afterwords.
Splunk is not really an open source software, but it’s definitely the best there is so far. It is free though, I mean, if you have less than 500MB of indexed data a day. Some will say it’s way more than they need, but then again some will say they have 10 times more than that on a least busiest day.
I do know that if you want to get a license - it will cost a lot of money. I think they even removed the prices from their website - not to scare people off:) To download the software you’ll have to register - no big deal.
Download it from here. Note, this line when you choose your version: 2.4+ kernel Linux distributions with NPTL / x86 2.6+ kernel Linux distributions / x86.
It’s not very clear, but if you need x86 - this is the one you want, don’t be fooled by the 2.4 kernel at the beginning of the line. I was - downloaded the 64bit version instead and set for 15 minutes trying to figure out why it’s not working.
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Category: Admin's scene
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The server every admin needs, part 2
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 | Author: Ozzik
So, what’s next?
Let’s spend some time with the easier things.
Ntop. This one’s installed right from the standard repository (we already did so in the previous post).
The big question is why do you need it, right? Well, it’s a great tool that you can use for all kinds of purposes, but personally, I use it to monitor the Internet activity, or traffic loads to be exact.
The idea is very simple. If you have a setup like this: modem–>router–>firewall–>switch–>LANs, and you feel that the Internet is very slow, you just know that someone’s downloading something from the rapidshare.com or maybe even a new MS small DVD image of 3GB, how do you know who’s the asshole?
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Category: Admin's scene
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