Recently in FreeBSD Category

Since a while I am offering Linux Virtual Servers (Xen DomU) and FreeBSD Jails at buetow.org. Until now I was only capable of offering Debian VServers and FreeBSD Jails. From now on I also support VServers running Gentoo.

#!/bin/csh
# (c) 2009 by Paul C. Buetow

set RC_DIR=rc.d

foreach user ( `cut -d : -f 1 /etc/passwd | grep -v '#'` )
  if ( -e ~$user/$RC_DIR ) then
    cd ~$user
    foreach rc ( ./$RC_DIR/*.sh )
      if ( -x $rc) then
        # Double Fork (Security reasons)
        (su -l $user ./"$rc" $1 >& "$rc.out" &) &
        chmod 660 "$rc.out"
        chown ${user}:wheel "$rc.out"
      endif
    end
  endif
end

the server migration is almost complete! my good old host.0.buetow.org server (freebsd 6.x, 1gb of ram, 180gb of hdd space, amd opteron 146, hosted at strato) will be taken out of order :(. this server has served without any major problems over the last 4 years! the contract has been canceled. somehow this makes me sad ;) lets see if the new servers (hosted by hetzner) will last at least as long! ;)

1&1 Internet AG, Germany, Datacenter (one server room of my regular full time job)

Yesterday I ordered myself a Lenovo IdeaPad S10e in black with SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) preloaded.

Well, some people will critizise me buying HW from a chinese manufacturer. I am not a politician and I buy the HW which I like the most. Point.

I am not sure yet if I will keep SLED on it or if I want to install Debian on it. I will not install a FreeBSD (my favourite OS) on it. Lots of people don't like a SUSE Linux. Even I've had some problems in administrating SUSE. However, maybe I will not replace SLED for the following reasons:

1. SLED is preinstalled and the IdeaPad is certified running it.
2. All drivers are included already (even closed source WiFi drivers) and work out of the box.
3. It is a Netbook and not a development Notebook. I do not care how the system feels under the hood. I will use the IdeaPad for reading PDFs, surfing and e-mailing.
4. Installing Debian is possible, but I could do more important stuff instead.
5. Why not to use several Distros and Operating Systems on all the Notebooks, Netbooks, Desktops and Servers? My fulltime job is Systemadministrator and it does not hurt to try something else once a while. :)

Well, now I hope that my IdeaPad will arrive ASAP! This year I also want to buy a replacement for my old IBM ThinkPad T42. Maybe it will be a Lenovo ThinkPad T400 or a Lenovo ThinkPad X300 :). I am not sure yet.

Today I finally retired my 15 years old serial mouse. Now I am using my 2 years old USB mouse which still has been in its original package since i bought it.

Why did I switch? Because I replaced my FreeBSD with Debian on my home Workstation and it does not auto recognize serial mouses anymore and since I am too lazy (I've a full time job and additional to it a part time job) to configure my desktop I just plugged in my USB mouse which works out of the box now :) I must say, I like the feel of the new (optical) mouse. It is much more comfortable than the old serial mouse. It even has a wheel.

FreeBSD still remains on my private main Laptop, my private Webserver and my Workstation at work. While Debian will stay at my Workstation at home and my Gateway at home. And at work there is Linux all around. A Windows XP Prof. is installed in parallel to FreeBSD on my laptop. At work I can also access a Windows via rdesktop. So it's a pretty good mix now :)

The FreeBSD upgrade of host.0.buetow.org from 6.3 to 6.4 went flawlessly :)

+ uname -a
FreeBSD host.0.buetow.org 6.4-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE #0: Mon Dec 1 18:45:28 CET 2008 root@host.0.buetow.org:/usr/obj/usr/srcs/freebsd.src6/src/sys/HOST0 amd64

Here is one of my earlier (bad) solutions of watching Youtube videos on FreeBSD. With clive it is possible to watch Youtube w/o having any browser flash plugin installed.

A colleague of mine at work mentioned, that it should be now possible to use the linux flashplugin in some version of FreeBSD 7.1-PRERELEASE due linprocfs fixes. I'll test it after 7.1-RELEASE is out.

Recently I upgraded my laptop (ThinkPad T42) to FreeBSD 7.1-PRERELEASE:

chuck% uname -a
FreeBSD chuck.lan.buetow.org 7.1-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 7.1-PRERELEASE #4: Mon Oct 13 19:47:52 UTC 2008 root@chuck.lan.buetow.org:/usr/obj/mnt/srcs/freebsd.src7/src/sys/JOGHURT7 i386
chuck% which dtrace
/usr/sbin/dtrace

:-)

Soon I'll test dtrace on Fype. Fype 0.1 still has some issues (garbage collector bugs) and those have to get fixed before the first release!

It has always been a pain to get a recent version of Adobe Flash running on a FreeBSD desktop system. I am a fanatic FreeBSD user, and I use FreeBSD not only for servers but also on my Desktop as well as on my Laptop!

First, Adobe does not offer a native version of Flash for the FreeBSD operating system. However, FreeBSD has the capability to run Linux binaries natively. Therefore there are Linux Flash binaries in the FreeBSD Ports Tree available, which are www/linux-flashplugin7 and www/linux-flashplugin9. I was able to get Linux Flash 7 working on FreeBSD, however the Flash 9 version never worked well for me. Doesn't matter which browser I use. I don't want to list all errors and trails here I faced already. Lot's of websites however already require Flash 9. I found a suboptimal, but at least working, solution for having Flash 9 on FreeBSD. It's called using Windows Firefox on Wine. It works flawlessly :)

First install Wine 1.0 or higher (may ll work with an older version too). Afterwards download Firefox 3 for Windows XP. Run the installer with wine. The installation will work out without any complications.

After installation you can start Firefox with wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Mozilla\ Firefox/firefox.exe.

Now browse to the Adobe website and download the Flash Player for Windows. Afterwards close Firefox and run the Flash installer via Wine using wine install_flash_player.exe.

Now start Firefox again. As you can see, the Flash Player works flawlessly :-)

I hope some day I'll be able to run a more native version of Flash on my FreeBSD. A working Linux Flash 9 would be fine. Even better would be a 100% native version like Gnash, which is an open source implementation of Flash. However, Gnash is still to unstable and lacks features. Maybe next year?

Well, as you may know, people tend to watch the european soccer championship. Recently I compared an internet TV stream to its analog cable TV counterpart. The watch in the upper right corner of each transmission represents a countdown until the match starts. As you can see, the analog cable TV (to the left) is 16 seconds ahead of the "live" internet stream (to the right). I like my old fashioned Hauppauge WinTV (with BrookTree chip) card. Oh, and here is the screenshot:

BTW: The SS shows FVWM on FreeBSD.

Here is a mega screenshot of my new configured Xinerama (TwinView) desktop using a total screen resolution of 3520x1200 (1600x1200 CRT + 1920x1200 TFT). The X Window System is running the FVWM2-devel as its window manager. I am using xcompmgr for transparent windows and window shadows. The GVim editor is using a C function browser plugin, as well as code omni completion, tabbing, split screening, code navigation etc.! And it is running on FreeBSD 7.0-RC2 :) Btw.: This is how it looks like if I program on Fype!

Update: Embedded screenshot perview into this post