Canllaith.org

I keep promising myself that I wont do this again. It’s actually getting a little embarrassing, really. I can tell that my friends think I have a problem, but are too polite to mention it. This time I managed to go entire *months*, but I’ve succumbed again, and bought another netbook.

HP Mini 1001TU

CPU: Atom N270 1.6 GHz
Hard drive: 60 GB
RAM: 1024 MB
Screen size: 10.1″
Native resolution: 1024×600
Wireless LAN: 802.11b/g
Bluetooth: Yes
USB ports: 2
Weight: 1.09 kg

The Mini 1001 from Hewlett Packard is easily the most attractive netbook available in New Zealand stores to date. At only 1″ thick with an attractively understated swirl design on the lid, the Mini looks like a far more expensive machine. The notebook’s palm rest and keyboard are a matte black plastic that feels good to type on and avoids becoming greasy with fingerprints. The 92% of full-size keyboard is easily the best keyboard available on a netbook at the moment, with the possible exception of the Vaio P. The layout is standard, and the keys are large and have excellent feedback.

The touchpad is reminiscent of the Acer Aspire and the original HP Mini, with the mouse buttons positioned either side. I’ve read a lot of reviews that criticise this placement, but I found I adjusted to them very quickly. It helps that the buttons are quite large compared to other touchpads of this type, making them an easier target. There’s a hardware switch just above the touchpad that allows you to toggle it on and off. Given the size of the notebook, I find this extremely handy to stop myself from hitting the touchpad with my palm while writing long articles and emails.

The screen is 1024×600, standard netbook resolution, but here the similarities to other models end. The display is similar to that featured in the current model MacBook Pro, recessed behind a glass panel for an edge-to-edge appearance. The colour, contrast, and brightness are exceptional although reflections are high. This is not a netbook that would be easily used outside - glossy screen haters beware.

The Mini features 2 USB 2.0 ports, an ethernet jack hidden behind a small rubber door and an SD card reader. Two proprietary expansion ports are also included. The expansion port on the left can take an optional VGA adaptor for video out, and the storage port on the right is recessed to fit a particular model of HP ’storage module’ - basically a USB stick. Some may be annoyed by needing to purchase accessories to make use of these ports - I consider the expansion port at least a reasonable tradeoff, as including a VGA or DVI connector on the body of the notebook would have increased it’s thickness.

Linux compatibility is a strong point with the HP Mini. The current release of Ubuntu Linux, Intrepid Ibex (8.10) supports the system almost flawlessly. Suspend-to-ram, wireless, bluetooth, and the webcam are all supported. This isn’t terribly surprising given that HP’s own Linux interface for the Mini, the Mobile Internet Experience (MIE) is based on Ubuntu Linux with a custom front-end.

The MIE is the most polished interface of it’s kind so far. Like most netbook specific distributions, it provides a simplified interface to commonly used applications and integrates media playback. A rebranded firefox is used for webbrowsing, with Thunderbird providing email and Pidgin instant messaging. Sunbird and OpenOffice are included for productivity. Media playback is handled by a HP proprietary application with a simple and attractive interface. Skype is included for video calling, although the Mini’s webcam is really quite awful. Don’t get this netbook if you use the webcam a lot.

When the HP Mini Note 2133 was released last year with an underpowered VIA processor that struggled to run it’s pre-loaded Vista, I remember looking at it’s excellent keyboard and wishing for an atom version. HP have gone one better and delivered an atom version that’s lighter, slimmer, and even more stylish. Standardising on Ubuntu and the Mini’s excellent Linux compatibility is just the icing on an already extremely delicious cake. Bravo HP.

I started a new job as a Linux Systems Administrator this week. My backup disk I use for my laptop died on the first day. While I’m not exactly being terribly useful here yet, it’s still been a tense few days while I waited for my new backup solution to arrive. Especially when I realised that my backups have actually been becoming slowly more corrupted for the last two weeks - yay for failing IDE controller.

The old disk and enclosure were PATA. Looking at the prices of SATA disks now, it seemed it was a pretty good time to switch to using SATA for externals as well. I’ve paired the Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock with a Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB.

The NexStar dock takes a less traditional approach to hard disk enclosures, providing a toaster-like slot that allows installation and removal of drives without a single screw. It supports both 3.5″ ‘desktop’ sized drives, as well as 2.5″ laptop drives. There’s a quick-release button to the right that releases the drive from the dock, and a large, easy to press power button on the front that glows with the ever-present accursed blue LEDs. At least it’s relatively easy to ignore in a brightly lit office.

The dock supports both USB2 and eSATA, including a bracket to convert an internal SATA port to an eSATA port on a desktop machine. It’s fairly lightweight but feels sturdy, and becomes heavy enough to not be at risk of being knocked over once you put a hard disk into it.

For the price I’m very impressed with this device. A dual slot version is also available, allowing you to use up to two disks in the enclosure at once. There’s also a slightly more expensive option that includes Firewire. For the sysadmin or technician who tends to swap drives around between devices fairly often, or use enclosures to recover data from failing systems, this device is a life saver.

My flight from Wellington to Sydney can be easily chalked up as one of the most painful experiences of my life - alongside military service, breaking a bone, and supporting Windows 98. Things improved markedly when, after approximately three hours standing in line, my colleague and I boarded our flight from Sydney to Hobart.

We were playing spot-the-conference-attendee - a Linux cap here, a summer of code shirt there - when Linus Torvalds boarded our plane, looking a little sheepish at all the adoring stares. I ran into him again after we disembarked - standing in my way at the baggage carousel. I forgave him. After all, I’ve heard he’s a KDE fan.

The University turned out to be a very expensive but scenic twenty minute taxi ride from the airport. Hobart is nestled in thickly forested hills with stunning ocean views. The University itself is set to a backdrop of stately Australian bush, with a view of the city and the water from my room. The accommodation is better than any year I can remember - I and four others are sharing a spacious modern apartment with a very pleasant living and kitchen area.

After a pleasant Italian meal and a good night’s sleep, I started my conference experience by alternating between the Sysadmin and Kernel miniconfs. Matthew Garrett’s talk ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love ACPI’ was entertaining and informative, as expected. I counted no less than 10 instances of the word ‘magic’ during his explanation of how ACPI suspend happens. After my misspent youth digging into making Linux go on laptops I fully believe him that magic is involved. Dark magic. Involving animal sacrifice. Possibly the animal operating the computer.

On the systems administration side of things, I listened to Richard Keech talk on “Rapid, repeatable provisioning of Linux systems” using the Red Hat kickstart framework. There were some very good points to this talk, but my colleagues and I agreed we thought our current methods were better. Perhaps we should get around to putting in a talk for next year’s conference. Devdas Bhagat’s presentation on “Automating system administration” was great, looking at the people as well as the technical aspects and discussing how to make the business case for spending time on building these frameworks. I’ve felt the truth of his comment in the past, that “… any sysadmin can blow up a box, but to blow up an entire bunch of machines takes a sysadmin with a configuration management system.”

So far the highlight of the conference for me came in my schwag bag. This is my Tasmanian devil-tux. Yes, that’s a penguin beak strapped on with string. He’s adorable, but I confess to an uneasy feeling that he’s trying to get in amongst the penguins for nefarious reasons. There’s something a little too smug about that expression.

Tomorrow I plan to again alternate, this time between the Security, Systems Administration, and Virtualisation and Management miniconfs. For now, tassy-tux and I are going to go and see what happened to our pizza delivery we ordered an hour ago. He looks hungry.

First posted on LinuxJournal.com

January is here and it’s that time of year for penguin-lovers everywhere to make their annual migration south to Australia to flock together. Linux.conf.au is one of the world’s most popular technical Linux conferences, and for it’s 10th anniversary is being held at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. The conference runs for a week, with two days of mini-confs followed by the main conference programme and culminating in an Open Day on Saturday.

I’m looking at attending the Linux Kernel and Virtualisation mini-confs, with a glance in at the LinuxChix and Systems Administration streams. The main body of the conference I haven’t looked at too closely yet - a traditional part of the fun on the first day is sitting down with my colleagues and going over the programme to see which talks we’ll be attending. It’s a given that we’ll be attending Steven Ellis of OpenMedia’s talks to heckle support our former colleague.

This year I’ll be blogging my impressions of the conference for LinuxJournal.com, thanks to our wonderful webmistress Katherine, who is exotremely patient with my inability to remember how to use my LinuxJournal account for longer than 24 hours at a time.

I’m trying very hard to take fewer gadgets than last time, although the list of shiny things I can’t bear to be parted from is growing alarmingly. My excuse is that I’m a journalist, and I need them to do my job. Honest.

I’ll be using my EeePC 1000H running Intrepid as my main computer for blogging, processing photographs in Canon RAW and keeping in touch. I’m taking my Canon 400D DSLR with the 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS as my standard walkaround, with the 24mm f/1.4 L for capturing shots of the conference indoors. My 50mm f/1.8 is coming too by virtue of being cheap, light, fast, and sharp.

Now I just need to finish packing and see if I can squeeze in another EeePC, and I’ll see everyone there!

First posted on LinuxJournal.com

To mention that VMWare’s free virtualisation product, Player, now features Unity under Linux. For those who haven’t seen this feature before, Unity lets you break applications out of the virtual machine’s window and seamlessly use them beside your native applications. There’s a few rendering quirks and it’s a little slower than using them in full windowed mode, but I have high hopes these will be smoothed out. This feature was previously only available using the OSX desktop virtualisation tool Fusion, so I’m pleased to see a premium feature filter down into the free-as-in-beer product. Thanks VMWare!

I recently went looking for a good beginner’s resource for a budding Linux user, and came across Linux in Easy Steps by Mike McGrath. It’s an excellent primer for the new Linux user. Focused on the Ubuntu Linux distribution, Linux in Easy Steps covers installation, desktop configuration, and basic command line use in a slim volume with plenty of screenshots.

The ground covered makes an excellent prerequisite for more serious tomes on Linux systems. At the end of the book the reader should have managed to install Ubuntu and customise it to their liking, and have a general understanding of the Linux filesystem heirachy, the command line, and vi with which to embark on more complicated projects.

The pace is thorough without unnecessarily belabouring simple concepts. Preparing your system for Ubuntu is covered in reasonable depth, and the install process is detailed with step-by-step explanations. Once installed, the basics of desktop customisation are covered before moving on to a discussion of the Linux file structure and manipulating files in the graphical file browser.

OpenOffice is covered in some detail, and the last desktop-centric section rounds off with a look at working with internet and media applications, including how to get proprietary codecs.

Fully half of the book covers the shell and administration, and is a credible crash course in the basics of understanding the shell, manipulating text and files, and performing administration tasks. A command reference finishes the shell section wiith a clear, well formatted list of useful utilities.

Every section in this volume is colour-coded, making it easy to turn back to as a reference. Current Linux users who are shell savvy will find nothing here, but to the person holding an Ubuntu CD thinking ‘Now what?’ this may just be the book for you.

Working with as many systems as I do, I have to keep track of a pretty huge number of user accounts and passwords across many diverse environments. For a long time I used a GPG encrypted text file to store this information, but recently I went looking for a more structured solution. I found KeePassX, and promptly fell in love.

KeePassX is a password management application for Linux and OSX. It supports the same database format as KeePass Password Safe for Windows, providing a cross-platform solution for managing passwords securely. It’s database is protected using either AES or Twofish encryption with a 256 bit key, which provides adequate encryption for the majority of users.

The interface is extremely simple. Select ‘File -> New Database’, and then enter a password or passphrase. KeePassX has the option to also use a key file for authentication - allowing you to place a key on a USB stick to add a physical authentication token to your password for added security.

Click for larger image

Once your database is created, choose a name and location for it with File -> Save Database As. KeePassX sorts your passwords into groups that you define for easier organisation. To create a group, right-click in the group panel of the dialogue and select ‘Add New Group’ or select the ‘Add New Group’ option from the ‘Edit’ menu. Name your group, and then select it in the group pane and click either the small + symbol on the toolbar or ‘Edit -> Add New Entry’.

The ability to attach a file to an entry I find extremely useful to attach keys, seed files, or other tokens that are linked to this account. I also find the feature to generate passwords directly in the Entry dialogue extremely valuable, saving me from making transcription errors when I store or change a password.

Click for larger image

While KeePassX doesn’t natively support any kind of synchronisation, a service like dropbox would easily allow you to keep your password databases in sync between your Windows, Linux, and OSX machines. I use Subversion to make sure that my passwords are up-to-date on every machine I use them on. I also maintain separate databases with separate passphrases for home and work use, allowing me to only check-out the database I need on that particular host.

A feature I find surprisingly useful is that KeePassX will copy usernames/passwords to clipboard without the text being viewable. In an office environment where I often have a vendor or another consultant sitting by me assisting, being able to get at infrequently used passwords I haven’t memorised without showing them to all and sundry is a relief. KeePassX will clear the clipboard of secure information within a configurable time period, to minimise the risk of accidental pastes of root passwords into work IRC. Yes, $colleague, I’m looking at -you- =)

Click for larger image

For those using locked-down or shared Microsoft Windows workstations, KeePass Password Safe is available as a portable app from PortableApps.com.

EDIT: As people have pointed out in the comments, there are also mobile versions of KeePass - in fact I have the J2ME version on my Nokia S60 cell phone. Unfortunately my insanely long passphrase is almost impossible to type in even with qwerty on a phone so while it’s a great idea to have access to the database on my phone I find myself unable to really use it =)

It’s been overcast but warm most of the time we’ve been here and we’ve had a very lazy and rellaxing holiday of walks along the beach and a little swimming. Evenings are being spent working our way through the local restaurants with some very nice finds. A Touch of Salt, down by the Ross River, served up a sublime eye fillet with baby carrot and whole baby beetroot. I mistakenly ordered a dreadful Pinot Noir, but the exceptional late harvest Viognier that arrived with my apple pie more than made up for it.

We’re a little bewildered as to what people actually do here - the city mall is half empty, with an entire row of shops vacant due to the planned construction of a new plaza. There are a couple of bars and a scattering of places to eat but compared to Wellington, Townsville is lifeless. We did visit the local aquarium, which features living coral and is the largest of it’s kind.

I took the opportunity to go and visit some gadgets that aren’t easily available in stores in Wellington - the Acer Aspire One, for which a review should appear in Linux Journal soon, and the 10″ EeePC. It’s enormous for an Eee, but with it’s 80GB hard disk and 95% full size keyboard it compares very well against my partner’s 11″ Sony Vaio, and is much the same size and weight.

It’s incredibly relaxing to be able to walk around in shorts and sandals and breathe easily without fighting Wellington’s cold winds. The only real problem we’ve had so far is that the hotel WIFI is dreadful. Not only do the cleaners unplug the AP every morning to vacuum, but the internet connection seems to be running off a 56k modem.

Oh, and don’t ask about the coffee.

We awoke at 0340 to make our 0600 flight to Brisbane, only to find once we’d gotten to the airport that the flight was cancelled. We were lucky enough to be the last two people transferred to a flight to Coolangatta, approximately 100km south of Brisbane. Never heard of the place? I don’t blame you at all. It’s like ending up at Levin rather than Wellington, except that Levin doesn’t have tropical beaches.

AirNZ did look after us very well, providing a reasonably comfortable air-conditioned coach to take us to Brisbane airport where we had a very long wait for our next flight. Poor Oliver wasnt feeling well after we’d been foolish enough to induldge in some pre-packaged sandwiches at Wellington airport so instead of spending the day in Brisbane we found a comfortable pub in the airport with squishy seats and camped there until our evening flight to Townsville.

Unfortunately Oliver accidentally dropped his bag and for a few moments we thought he’d destroyed his camera. Experimentation showed it was actually the lens, and probably just that the mounting ring where it attaches to the camera was slightly wrenched in the fall. Other lenses are working fine, and hopefully we can get the damaged one repaired or replaced in Townsville.

That screw is really not supposed to be sticking out like that.

Our flight to Townsville was pretty uneventful, apart from a child throwing up all over the waiting area just before we were to board. Thankfully said child was not sitting anywhere near us on the flight. Our first day in Townsville all we’ve done is a little shopping and getting our bearings as it’s quite overcast. Sun is forecast for the rest of the week and the swimming and beach lounging part of the holiday should commence tomorrow.

I picked up the ASUS EeePC 901 Windows 12G edition in black from Ascent about a week ago and I don’t think I’ve gone anywhere without it since.

I’m getting between 5 - 7 hours battery life pretty consistently and it runs cool to the touch. I’m unconvinced about the chrome touches, but there’s no doubt the glossy black finish and rounded edges make the Eee 901 look like a far more expensive gadget than it is. The touchpad is nicely improved over both the 701 and the 900, and the slight extra weight from it’s more solid construction and larger battery balances the machine far better on the lap. The keyboard is exactly the same, but I’ve gotten fairly used to it by now.

It’s been drawing comments everywhere I go. Everyone seems to want to hold it, and I’ve had many conversations over the last few days explaining where to get them and how much they cost.

I’m running Windows XP on it until Ubuntu Intrepid is released, which is slated to have 100% EeePC compatibility. I’m looking forward to it. Now for the mods! I’ve ordered a 30GB 1.8″ ZIF hard disk from trademe, and I intend to swap out the second SSD for it, and see what that does to heat/performance/battery life.

I’ll be blogging the process for anyone else who wants to do a similar mod - all I’m waiting on is ZIF cables to arrive from dealextreme =)