OpenSolaris 2009.06

OpenSolaris 2009.06 screenshot

I like to try out different Operating Systems from time to time, experimenting, finding out how people find mays to solve the same common problem: “How can I make this computer do what I want the way I want it?”.

Sun, which already is known for it commercial operating system called Solaris, started their OpenSolaris project in 2005.

According to their website, OpenSolaris is geared for students, web 2.0 developers and deployment.

In other words, OpenSolaris is what Fedora is to Red Hat.

The main reason for  me to try out OpenSolaris is because of many people talking about it’s supposedly superb ZFS filesystem, DTrace for refined tracing of executable’s and kernel debugging information, and Crossbow.

Now, OpenSolaris isn’t Linux. It’s uses Sun’s Solaris kernel, but with some open source components you would immediately recognize as being part of many Linux distributions like Gnome.

My first impressions upon trying out the latest Live CD, that OpenSolaris didn’t look any different from other Linux distro’s. But when you start digging  more and  more into the system, you realise that a lot of the command-line tools are different.

OpenSolaris came with the old Gnome 2.24 desktop environment which was a bit awkward to me seeing as it’s considered relatively old these days, but you could see that a lot of effort has been put into customizing the look and feel of the theme.

Navigating through the menu’s, I found your basic gnome utils, and some OpenSolaris newbies like a snapshot tool to use ZFS’s snapshooting capabilities.

I didn’t find any special tool to try out the advanced networking capabilities thorugh Crossbow. I guess it’s probably commandline driven, or maybe it isn’t really accessible during the usage of the live cd session.

Because OpenSolaris is relatively young, and isn’t Linux, it doesn’t have a vast amount of driver support like Linux does, but it does come with a fair amount of drivers to be able to work with it. I noticed that they ship with the Nvidia driver and configuration tool.

When I wanted to install it as a dualboot, I was a little afraid of the partitioning manager. Being a long time Linux user, partitioning drives isn’t new to me, let alone me being afraid.

But the partitioning manager of OpenSolaris seems to be lacking the knowledge of many other filesystems, there for, it was only able to recognize some kind of generic linux partition (mine being ext4), and vaguely recognize an extended partition. However, it then didn’t see the other partitions within the extended one.

Partitioning

So because I knew I would surely jeopardise my system by letting it have it’s own way, I changed my partitioning, removing the extended partition and making it look easy for OpenSolaris to understand so that there couldn’t be any doubt about how it would go and partition itself.

I was a bit frustrated by the fact that I could only use a user’s name smaller than 8 characters. I always use my name on a system, and that’s 10 characters long! So I had to shorten my name.

The installation itself took a little while, and the first time I tried, the installer got stuck at 99%.

Now I know that when you are at 99%  the wait is the longest…. but this was getting ridiculous.

So I tried a second time, and this time it when thorough the installation flawlessly.

It seems like OpenSolaris installs a special version of Grub instead of the regular one because of the special options they need to boot a ZFS partition.

This is where I unfortunately encountered a mayor problem with OpenSolaris. The bootmanager wasn’t able to find it’s  menu.lst  file, needed for all the information to properly boot the system.

So there I was with a system that wasn’t even able to install and start itself properly.

When I wanted to reconfigure Grub to restore the configurations for my main OS, I realized how different the version of Grub that OpenSolaris was using. It wasn’t able to find the partition containing the Stage2 file.

So I figured I needed to reinstall a normal version of Grub, I booted a regular Linux Live Cd. And as root issued the normal commands to reinstall Grub.

root@lithium-flower:~#  grub

grub> find /boot/grub/stage2

find /boot/grub/stage2
(hd0,0)

grub> root (hd0,0)

grub> setup (hd0)

grub> quit

That always does the trick for me to restore my bootloader.

I think OpenSolaris is interesting to keep an eye on. They are working on some pretty interesting projects, however I think they still need to work on some quirks, before being a good option for students as they would like to associated with. Linux is still far ahead, with the countless amount of drivers, and friendliness.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, of the iPhone

The Good:   supports L2TP, PPTP and Cisco IPSec VPN

The Bad:   doesn’t support open standards like Openvpn

The Ugly:  doesn’t support

• Pure IPSec
• IPSec Machine Certificates
• PPP User Certificates or SmartCard (EAP-TLS)
• L2TP/IPSec Kerberos Authentication Token
• RSA-SecureID (EAP-RSA) Authentication Token

In the mean time I was able to setup a pptp server on my Ubuntu box. It works and my Ipod Touch can connect to it (but for some reason the pptpd daemon randomly dies after some usage…).

However I’ve been struggling with routing the ppp0 interface (the connection of my Ipod through the VPN) to my eth0 interface (where my Internet traffic comes and goes). I’ve asked some random irc geniouses, all with their own iptable configuration ideas, but in the end, none of that worked and I was left with a messed up iptable configuration.

So it’s a good thing to keep in mind:  If your iptables are screwed up, enter:

sudo iptables -flush

this will restore your routes to default.

Anyway I’m planning to move away from pptp since I found some articles saying that it isn’t really as secure.

So now I’m installing Openswan, an IPSec implementation. The configurations isn’t really as easy as I hoped, but I’ll be very happy if I even can connect to it with my Ipod.

***UPDATE***

I let go of Openswan because people suggested me that IPSec was too much overkill for just my Ipod.

So I finally figured out what my problem was with PPTP. My Ipod was able to connect to the internet after all.

A quick   ping 64.233.187.99   did the trick, but  ping google.com   didn’t work at all.

This means that my Ipod had no way to contact the DNS server.

After taking another look at the configuration files of ppp, I soon noticed the unmarked ms-dns settings.

Uncommented that and added the ip address of my router and VOILA! My Ipod could now successfully connect to the internet through my VPN!

Moral of the story:  Always check the options in your configurations files.

No Openvpn for the Iphone

After playing around with my Ipod Touch and some wireless hacking tools, I quickly realised how much fun it would be for others to capture my credentials should I be tempted to connect to an open wireless access point.

The solution to all my paranoia would ofcourse be…. VPN!

And what better solution to use on my Ubuntu server than OpenVpn!?

But then there’s a catch…. Apple only included support for L2TP, PPTP and Cisco’s IPSec.

So the growing use of Openvpn doesn’t really capture the eyes of Apple (which adds up to many people’s theory that Apple steals from opensource and never give back, kinda like a reverced Robin Hood, or maybe the Sherif of Nottingham would better fit the description).

Now I’m forced to look at another solution… and the second thing that comes in mind in the Openswan project, which I guess and hope uses a compatible IPsec implementation from which I can connect to from my Ipod Touch.

Hope that this time it’ll work. Thanks a lot Apple, of enabeling people to buy themselfs an expensive golden cage!

My akademy experience

Akademy 2008 was my second Linux conference experience. I have never seen such gathering of fine and great people together, united by the passion of programming for a project which everyone likes using, but also working for. Even if didn’t knew anyone, I could feel a sence of belonging there. It wasn’t long before I started making new friends. The thing I’ve found really cool is how approchable people were, specially really cool individuals you’d only know from their blogs distributed on the various Gnome and KDE planets. Unfortunatly I couldn’t stay longer for the various BoFs since I lack programming abilities but hope to change all that in the upcoming 3 years. I took the liberty to ask them what the requirements were to start programming in KDE, and it seems that C++ should be known a good as your mothers maiden name. Overall, a great experience, and since Riddlle baptized me as “future elite developer” I feel the obligation to not let him down. I’ll probably won’t make it to akademy 2009 which takes place in Gran Canaria, but when it’ll take place in Europe again I’m sure I’ll be there.

Attending KDE Akademy 2008 Belgium

 

Akademy 2008

Going to attend the KDE Conference in Belgium.

It’ll be a 1h and 18min trip from where I live by train. Already registered and bought my train tickets, so I’m ready to leave!

Mockup for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex

While looking on Digg.com for the latest news items, I’ve stumbled upon these wonderful clean mock-ups of the upcoming version of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, due in October.

These pics are from willwill100 on deviantart.

If you too are an Ubuntu affectionado, then what are you waiting for? Contact the Ubuntu Art team to suggest the idea!

Going to buy an iPhone 3G

Although I consider Apple products to give a sensation of beeing locked up inside a golden cage if you’re used to freedom, one does have to admit that Apple’s stuff usually works great for what it’s supposed to do.

There are many comments, both bashing and praising the iPhone. I too have some arguments against it, but seeing my needs and interests, and seeing how it fills does needs, I can’t wait to buy one next month when all the hassel has passed and hopefully the firmware update will be released correcting all the major problems and shortages of the 2.0 release.

As a geek I really love my gadgets to be highly functional. The Gps unit and the fact that I need a new phone anyway are the main attractive points for the aquisition.

Even though I’d prefer the OpenMoko phone, I feel kinda dissapointed about its extreemly slow progress. I’d really like to see it gain huge success, however big phone companies like Motorola, Rim and others are already struggling with the sales of the iPhone. How can the OpenMoko project ever compete with them?

My guess is that it will just be another gadget that only hobbiest and Linux fans will want to buy.

For now I’ll have to give in and let myself be tempted.

Changing the use of this blog

It’s been a while since my last post here.
This started out as a useful news blog conserning Linux. But still being a student, I had my obligations to my studies, not to mention that I was foolishly competing with huge news sites who have vaster resorces and much more interest than myself.
So that’s why I have decided to change some stuff on my blog, making it more personal, serving as a medium to publish my comments and ideas.
Instead of removing some interesting posts, I’ve removed only the posts that are irrelevant or seriously outdated.
Time to start with a new layer.

In the mean time, have a happy holiday!

Which Linux is best for me?

Here is a simple test that helps newcomers to choose a Linux distribution among several listed (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva,..).  The site list of distributions includes a really good, major Linux distributions.

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