On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

Note: I’m aware that I haven’t had a chance to approve and reply to many comments this week, bear with me, I aim to get on top of it this weekend — it’s very busy at work right now and my evenings have mostly been spent away from the Internet!

Software

Ok with that out of the way, I have finally got my network working and have a few tips for other people who are possibly looking to create a small network that allows for a more centralised storage platform and sharing amongst computers apart from the obvious sharing of directories over a workgroup (which is notoriously unreliable!)

• For a home network that has a bit more oomph than a simple Workgroup setup, dare I say this: Windows NT 4 Server works bloody well for a 12 year old server operating system.
• I picked up a brand new boxed retail copy with five CALs for £7.50. That had to be worth trying. In fact, I’ll be honest — I built the Samba domain controller and it worked well, but NT 4 Server was just easier to manage so my chosen domain controller is Windows NT 4 Server. (For a small five computer network including the server, Active Directory isn’t really too important.)
• Samba 3 makes a good primary domain controller (PDC) for Windows NT networks akin to what was the main domain service with Windows NT 3/4. Sure ActiveDirectory has long succeeded this but it is still useful. Allow yourself about three hours from start to finish to set Samba up properly. An excellent guide of how to turn Ubuntu 7.10 Server into a Windows PDC is here: http://www.rrcomputerconsulting.com/view.php?article_id=3
• Windows up to and including XP (and maybe Vista, not tested), Mac OS X and Linux distributions with Samba installed (which is most by default) work very well with a NT4 PDC.
• On Mac OS X, in Directory in utilities folder, you can configure the SMB/CIFS protocol’s workgroup to be a domain instead
• You can create a drive mapping on Mac OS X (tested in 10.4 Tiger) that is reconnected after a reboot:
  1. First browse to the share and mount it (so the share icon is on the desktop) as usual
  2. Open System Preferences
  3. Click Accounts
  4. Select the Account which the shares should be automatically mounted for
  5. Select the Login Items share
  6. Click ‘+’ to add an item and browse to the desktop, select the share in the file dialogue box and click Add
  7. Voila, share will be reconnected every time you log in. To save on it asking for the password tick the save password to keychain box.
• On Mac OS X when mounting shares, when asked for the username and password, ensure you enter the username and password given the access rights on the share itself, not your current Mac OS X account’s user name and password.
• If you are connecting to a PDC domain and are using Windows with a wireless connection to the domain controller, leave about 20-30 seconds before hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del to log in so that your wifi card has negotiated a successful connection to your wireless access point, otherwise login scripts, home directory connections and roaming profiles may fail to download/execute.
• Finally on Windows 2000 and XP, make sure that the network adapter that is connected to the switch/hub (that connects onwards to the server) is configured in the TCP/IP protocol’s advanced settings to allow NetBIOS over TCP/IP when using an NT 4 PDC domain.

I have to say so far it is working like a dream.

Hardware

This is the server:

• Dell GX150 – Celeron 800MHz, 128MB, CD-ROM, Floppy, Serial, VGA, Parallel, 10/100 Ethernet, 1 x AGP, 1 x PCI, integrated video/VGA, 20GB Hard Disk – £10.50
• Windows NT 4 Server with 5 CALs, retail boxed, brand new and shrink wrapped – £7.50
• DLT IIIXT 15/30GB Fast SCSI tape backup drive – FREE
• 1 x DLT IIIXT 15GB tape – £3

Eventually I will replace the hard disk but the main point here is that for what will be mainly a file server (and possibly a print server) – a Celeron 800 is absolutely fine. The server is connected via 100Mbit ethernet to the switch/router.

To be continued…

After some experimentation with Zenwalk 5.0 I was very impressed with the distribution. The only problem is that I am on Ubuntu and to migrate everything right away would be a problem. However I have seen some of the benefits of using Xfce and other applications in my experimentation with Zenwalk and/or Xfce.

I don’t have a particularly ‘bad’ notebook specification: Pentium M 1.5GHz (Banias), 1GB RAM and a 160GB hard disk. Ok it’s a five year old laptop but actually it’s very good in terms of speed. (Seriously — you do not need a dual processor to word process!) So it runs Gnome and KDE fine; but I really have fallen for Xfce and I’m not exactly sure why but it just works very well and my laptop now works a lot faster.

As such I have switched my Ubuntu 7.10 install to use Xfce (a bit like using Xubuntu in a way!) as the desktop system.

I’ve also got rid of network-manager which whilst nice looking, is a horrendously buggy and problematic application in a few instances with Wicd. Wicd configures both wired and wireless connections but does so very well. Since switching to Wicd I have had no problems with reconnecting using the wireless interface after a suspend/hibernate cycle like I frequently encountered on Network Manager.  This is remarkable considering that the Intel Pro Wireless 2100B whilst a weak card in reality, I found it to be utterly useless on Windows but now on Linux it works as good as any other wireless card I have used.

I’ve also been using Abiword and Gnumeric a bit more, not all the time as OpenOffice.org is seriously good in most respects.

Finally, it’s pretty attractive as far as user interfaces go.

I have nothing but praise for Virgin Mobile. Certainly the best carrier I have been on as they are backed by T-Mobile’s rather good network. (Can’t remember when I was last without signal and I tend to go to remote places.) Anyway remember my post about Virgin Mobile’s recent offer if you take out an 18 month contract at £25 or more a month (new or existing customers) you could choose from an iPod nano, PSP Slim or £100 credit? Well they’ve turned up the goods before Christmas.

Even better is that they rang me on Wednesday to say that it was going to be dispatched and confirm it was the iPod I had chosen. Excellent service.

So yesterday I went over to Newhaven to get it. On the way I understood why Yahoo’s Weather had been telling me on Worthing.gov.uk that the weather was FOG. It seems the whole of Shoreham, much of Brighton & Hove and East Sussex beyond that was covered in some of the worst freezing fog we’ve had in a long time. Couldn’t see bloody 3ft in front of me in the car. Anyway got back safely and have unwrapped it. The packaging is a lot smaller than when I used to work selling Apple gear and iPods in ‘05. I remember iPods coming in big cube shaped boxes (mostly because Apple actually included the accessories you need.. another story) and I was there for the iPod nano’s first generation’s launch and those boxes were in themselves pretty tiny compared to the iPod 4g’s and Minis. Now it’s stupidly tiny!

Anyway I’m no fan on iTunes on Windows. The last time I used it was on Mac OS X 10.4.8 I would guess and iTunes 7 actually ran perfectly fine on a G4 1.4GHz but on Windows, I have yet to see a PC that bats it around like a little play thing. It’s a dog. Plus I don’t wish to be locked into DRM either. So iTunes is a no go.

Especially when my ThinkPad runs Ubuntu and to top it all; my Dell GX240 runs Windows 2000 now (another thing to write up) and the iPod Classic and Nano 3g require Windows XP SP2 or Vista.  Long and short of it is that to remain legal and to keep my Nikon Coolscan LS-30 working I have to stick with Windows 2000.

Easy ways to get iPod Nano 3g/Third Generation and Classics working without iTunes:

Windows:

• MediaMonkey 3 (Currently on RC-5) — very good. Works on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and Vista. Much more lightweight but very full features. Supports iPod Nano 3g and Classic out of the box. Freeware with paid for version offering all features. Download Version 3 Release Candidate. (Version 2 does not support the new iPods)

Ubuntu / Debian Linux in general

THIS IS ONLY NEEDED FOR iPOD NANO 3rd GENERATION or iPOD CLASSIC MODELS (FALL 2007 MODELS)

1. Download from here: ftp://64.22.103.45/packages/ubuntu/gutsy/libgpod/ the following packages:

   libgpod-dev_0.5.3+actually0.6.0-0.1_i386.deb
   libgpod2_0.5.3+actually0.6.0-0.1_i386.deb

2. Install them in that order (double click their icons)
3. Plug in the new iPod with the supplied USB docking cable
4. Open up a shell/terminal
5. Enter the command df (press enter) and look for the line that has /media/IPOD/ at the end at the very start of the line should be something that reads /dev/sdb1 or similar. Make a note of this.
6. Enter as root user with: sudo bash and enter your password. (Ubuntu)
7. Run the following:

   /usr/bin/ipod-read-sysinfo-extended [/dev/xxxx] /media/IPOD

   Where [dev/xxxx] is the /dev path you made note of in step 5. E.g. my iPod registered on /dev/sdb1 so I would enter:

   /usr/bin/ipod-read-sysinfo-extended /dev/sdb1 /media/IPOD

8. Eject the iPod (right click on the iPod icon on the desktop and select Eject), close the terminal.
9. Plug in the iPod again, Rhythmbox should automatically run and now you should be able to manage your new iPod through Rhythmbox again.

Why and Final Words
You have to do this as Apple added a layer of encryption to lock you into using iTunes which I personally think is wrong. What is wrong Apple with me using a player that I like? Two faced-ness abounds from Apple on such matters considering their rhetoric on Microsoft and the Windows empire.

But the good thing is that both Windows and Linux users now have an alternative to iTunes and also for Linux a way of actually being able to use their new iPod.

Plus you don’t absolutely have to run Windows XP or Vista on the Windows side. I appreciate XP and Vista account for about ~85% of the Windows marketplace these days but Windows 2000 still takes a sizable 8% of that according to web statistics I collect, which is more than the Mac accounts for, so Windows 2000 isn’t too insignificant to ignore yet!

Whew what a productive day.

I’ve written a script to easily switch between LCD, VGA, LCD+VGA Mirror, LCD+VGA Extended Desktop (Dual Screen) on a ThinkPad and other Radeon based laptops; for all systems using Xrandr 1.2 and Xorg 7.3; such as Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon.

It works well and can be bound to the Fn + F7 key combination. It’s not perfect, it’s basic but it does what I need it to do, does it well and it’s minimal. I will develop it further in time with a GUI and complete reconfigurability.

At its simplest, this is the easiest way to make the most of your external VGA screen, easiest way to mirror and the easiest way to to create dual screen setups on a ThinkPad on Ubuntu and Linux. Probably. Well once it’s installed it just sits there and works Read on to find out more…

The inevitable bug reports as comments on this post would be good. As would your feedback. Please be nice

Download: OutputSwitcher.zip

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Before I went on holiday I made some discoveries.

Firstly Ubuntu’s new configuration tool for screens and displays only sets up multi screen situations using Xinerama. The new ATI (ati) and Radeon (radeon) open source drivers do not support Xinerama any more. Therefore that’s why the options are disabled.

Tapping xrandr into a terminal yields everything correctly now; and it’s a doddle to mirror, extend, change resolution and rotate any connected device which it detects via hot plugging and it works a bloody treat on my ThinkPad T40.

Ubuntu Gutsy seems a lot more inviting now. Also a GUI has been developed using PyGTK, find out more here: http://albertomilone.com/wordpress/