Episode: 849
Title: HPR0849: Sunday Morning Linux Review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0849/hpr0849.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:31:28

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Welcome to the Sunday Morning Linux Review with Tony Beamus from Beamus Hosting
and Matt Anders with Charter School ITTX.
Alright Matt, so what's going on with the kernel that we're doing this week?
Alright, this is what's going on with the kernel.
In the release status, the 3-1 kernel is out.
Linus released the 3-1 kernel on 1024.
Some of the big features in this slightly delayed release are an improved zen memory
management enhancements to process tracing.
That's the P-trace underscore C's command enhancements also to L-seq,
which is going to aid in finding holes in files.
Then the open risk architecture is also now supported, I guess.
Not exactly.
Linus is a little unclear there.
It says, and open risk architecture support.
And then as of 1026, around 4400 patches have been pulled into the mainline kernel tree
for the 3.2 release.
The trees pulled in so far include the networking tree,
USB, staging, and security.
We'll have a full merge window summary next week.
Stable updates.
Kernel 3.0.8 was released on 1025 with usual load of important fixes.
There were 37 files changed, 413 file insertions, and 194 files deleted.
And here's what Linus has to say.
What worries me more than the kernel summit is just that the 3.1 release cycle
has dragged out longer than usual.
So I'm a bit afraid that the 3.2 merge window will just be more chaotic than usual,
just because there might be more stuff there to be merged.
But that's independent of any KS issues.
And I also suspect that the added time for development has been largely nullified
by the productivity lost due to the Korg mass.
Yeah, 4400 patches, that's 10.
Well, yeah, but it's because they merged in those whole trees.
Oh, yeah.
So the distro news?
Distro news, that's on you, buddy.
All right.
For the distros this week, actually last week at the end of the week,
we had 7OS 2.0 Neptune was released,
and Phoenix 10.3 or 103.
Not sure.
I don't know much about those two other than Phoenix's Debian-based live CD system for administrators.
And 7 is, what does it say?
It's Debian-based also.
KDE and LXDE desktop.
They have also added a new forensic mode in Phoenix.
Because forensics is different than like you would do for a system recovery.
Forendics, forensics will do things for you like letting you examine files
and their date stamps without changing anything.
Because if you're doing, like, for criminal recovery,
working on someone's computer that's, like, been suspected of a crime,
they don't want to actually make any changes to it.
And one of the first things you do is just make an image of the entire drive
and then work on the image.
Don't work on the drive.
Cool.
And then for this week's releases,
it's Puppy Linux 5.3 Slacko
and salineOS 1.5.
You know, Slacko, it's because it's binary compliant,
or I'm sorry, binary compatible with Slackware Unix.
Oh, so Puppy hasn't always been based on Slackware, have they?
Are they switching to Slackware-based?
I'm not sure if that, if it's that, or if it's just for this release.
I don't think it would make any changes.
I wouldn't switch for one release.
I don't know.
I don't know much about Puppy.
But coming up in the next, why are you free BSDs going to be coming out
with a new release?
And Suci.
Free BSDs coming out with a new one?
They just had a free BSD just had a release.
I think it was a development release.
Oh, but 9-0 is coming out.
The development RC1 just was released.
For 9-0, I didn't know.
For 9-0?
Yeah.
And then Suci, development RC1.
Oh, you mean PCBSD, not free BSD, right?
Both.
Free BSD, PCBSD.
If you go to distrawatch.com.
I'm there.
Yeah, on 1023.
Free BSD 9.0 RC1.
Oh.
Can't know if this is-
I hadn't scrolled down the page for it.
I hadn't scrolled down the page for it.
Can't know if this is-
Now it's the availability of delayed release candidate.
And then for this week's distros of the week,
as a hit counts on their websites.
We have number one.
Mint.
All right.
Oops, I changed it to year 2007.
2007 instead of 7 days. That was pretty bad information.
Yeah. And then you bunned too. But now, surprise that you bunned, you got kicked off
the number one. It's about time people started realizing the real distribution.
Well Mint has knew it was just released too, right? You know, we talked about that, that
there's always a uptick and hits when their new release is out.
And then open Sussi, the number three.
Wouldn't that with Fedora and Debian coming up in four and five respectively?
Debian is down. Debian is what I like to install on servers just straight up Debian.
Right.
It Debian now, Fedora is down, Sussi's up. And the puppy's coming up in number six down there.
Well, they just had a release.
But I don't think Mint just had a release, you know, because I'm running Mint Debian.
So that's a rolling release. So I don't really, I don't really follow when they actually have the releases on the other stuff.
Sure.
I know that's about it. Would I have for distrails and anything you want to talk about?
Do you have a rethink a little bit on my position on Secure Boot?
We're doing some more reading and some more thinking.
So we're going to have an update on my rant on Secure Boot from last week.
So this is going to be rant modified or rant light, I guess, because I've changed my position a little bit.
The Secure Boot feature that will appear in PC firmware shortly,
doing large parts to a mandate for Microsoft has caused many reactions.
On one side, there's a free software foundation asking for signatures to stand up for your freedom
to install free software. Then you have Stooges like Eggbot, Edbot,
accusing Linux fanatics of wanting to make Windows 8 less secure.
The problem started earlier this year when the Unified Extensible firmware interface,
UEFI specification, has an optional Secure Boot feature.
This has the potential to be a useful feature since it could prevent malware from infecting signed components.
However, it is also a threat to open source operating systems like Linux
and making it impossible to boot these on secured systems.
In June, the concern was that a fair amount of pressure would be applied by Microsoft
to enable this feature. This came to fruition when Microsoft said
in order to get a Windows 8 logo, Secure Boot will be required.
Most OEMs will want to qualify for this and the subsequent marketing funds
that will most likely come with the program.
If so, facto Microsoft requiring Secure Boot makes it mandatory for OEMs.
The obvious problem with Secure Boot is that it could only allow Microsoft's operating systems to boot.
As Matthew Garrett wrote, a system that ships with Microsoft signing keys
and no others will be unable to perform Secure Boot of any operating system other than Microsoft.
No other vendor has the same position of power over the hardware vendors.
In October, Garrett wrote a follow-up to his earlier post on Secure Boot
where he says the real problem is whether the end user will be able to manage the keys on their machines.
Even then, only enterprise Linux vendors will have their own keys,
what happens to all the Libra distros or hobbyists running from scratch.
Matthew Garrett says the workaround is to turn off Secure Boot.
However, it does not do anyone any good for Linux installation
to require disabling illegitimate security feature.
Then, the on-off switch won't be in a standard location causing a support nightmare.
The right fix according to Garrett is instead of requiring Secure Boot to be disabled,
we need to work on a way for the feature to be supported in Linux installations.
And again, feature in air quotes.
The solution according to Garrett is a proposal put forward to the UEFI forum
that lets users install their own keys from movable media.
This avoids problems with booting untrusted binaries, requiring movable media,
say that seven times real fast, requiring removable media
prevents malware from installing as it won't be able to install the key.
Then, Secure Boot would just fall back into system recovery.
It is most probable that malware will infect USB keys or other removable media.
However, allowing users to control is also allowing for some risk.
In my opinion, the worst case scenario, a flood of restricted boot machines
incapable of booting Linux or anything other than signed Windows 8
seems unlikely.
We are also far from Garrett's proposal.
Users who want complete control, there actually is a period in there.
I kind of read that wrong.
It says, we are also far from Garrett's proposal, period.
Users who want complete control of their machines need to stay abreast of this process
to ensure that OEMs know that being able to disable Secure Boot is not enough.
To really control our machines, we need to have the ability to install our own trusted keys.
So, what do you think?
Have you done any reading at all this week on the Secure Boot Crap?
I have not.
But, I think the making sure you can install your own keys is a big thing.
And that the large Linux distros are going to have their own keys.
Well, you know, again, the enterprise that you'd be like, sure.
Not open, Susa, but Susa will.
And Red Hat will, not Fedora, but Red Hat will.
Right.
But I think even Fedora, you bind to...
But then what happens to CentOS?
CentOS doesn't have a key.
CentOS gets their own key.
How are they going to afford their own key?
I'm assuming there's going to be some type of a fee or...
You're not going to be able to get keys.
Because if you are, Joe Schmo virus writer over in Wujibujiistan,
would be able to get his own key and then you're just AF, right?
Well, maybe you can do something long lines, you know, kind of like how secure
CA, you know, certs for websites are going.
You know, because they're...
But then you'd have to access the internet for the boot process to work.
No.
Because the secure era, a key, has a time stamp on it.
And when it expires.
So you can, for the hardware ones, just don't have an expiration date on there.
But, you know, what I mean?
I mean, it's going to be distributed in that sort of sense.
So if you need it, you can get it.
But, you know, it just won't be in the same mechanism how...
What website certifications or certs, SSL certs run right now.
I don't know.
So hopefully far enough away that they'll work something out.
Yeah.
That's my hope.
I really don't think we're going to get a ton of machines flooding the market
that are going to be restricted boot to Microsoft Windows 8.0.
Yeah.
And then I think there's still going to be, you know, the other machines that you can build yourself...
It's the BIOS though.
I mean, our BIOS manufacturer is going to make multiple BIOS's.
Well, there's...
Most OEMs have their own custom boards built,
and they have custom BIOS's on those.
So, safe.
Even though Dell's have an ASUS board in them,
you're going to go buy an ASUS board off the shelf.
It's not going to have the same BIOS.
So in that BIOS...
So your solution to the secure boot feature is...
Is everybody needs to build their own machines?
I wouldn't say that's a solution, that's an option.
Yeah, so you can build your own app.
You can build your own or like ASUS.
You know, they sell machines that don't have the Windows logo on them, right?
I don't know.
I don't know either.
I mean, but there's some of them out there that do...
Well, yeah.
I mean, you can buy from custom builders like System76.
Right.
But then, yeah, it gets expensive.
A little bit.
Yeah.
So, I've got a little bit of news going on this week so far.
Amazon is introducing a new eBook format.
The new...
You're fringing on my rant a little bit here.
Oh, yeah.
We'll get to that.
Go ahead.
All right.
No, this is just about their eBook.
The fire, the Kindle Fire?
Oh, well, no.
I'm not talking about the hardware.
I'll be talking about something else having to do with Kindle.
All right.
Well, see, their new format is...
They call it the Kindle F...
Or it's a KF-8 or the Kindle Format-8.
Right.
And it's based on HTML5.
And with that, Amazon aims to bring some flexibility and power to HTML...
That HTML5 offers to the world of eBooks.
HTML5 features such as CSS3 formatting, nested tables, SVG graphics,
embedded fonts, and borders.
And borders all...
What?
Anyway.
The new format includes a much richer layout options, including fixed layouts that are central
for accurate reproduction for many children's books, and panel-based layouts for comic books.
Books can include sightbars and callouts, text overlays on background images, boxes, drop caps, and more.
So it's really...
What are they going to turn it into a little web browser that all the books can run in a HTML5 web browser?
That's kind of interesting.
Yeah.
And I can see it being really good because...
It kind of goes into my bit here because...
The...
My problem was yesterday.
Okay.
Pretty late at night.
Between 11 o'clock and midnight.
Eastern Standard Time.
Or Daylight Time, I guess.
But anyway.
The...
I really wanted to get this book on PF Sense.
Okay.
But I wanted it right now.
Sure.
You know how we have that.
Most of us computer geeks have that instant gratification kind of thing where...
I don't want to wait a week and a half for this thing to ship to me.
So...
But I also don't own a Kindle.
And I also don't have a Mac or a Windows machine I run Linux.
So all of those Kindle readers that are free aren't for Linux.
You can't run Linux on any of them.
You can't run any of them on Linux.
Even though they haven't for the Android platform so it sounds a little hunky to me.
But anyway.
I could have gotten it for my Blackberry.
But have you ever tried to read a book on a Blackberry?
Yeah.
Not a pleasant.
Not a pleasant bit.
So I discovered Amazon has this new thing called the Cloud Reader.
Okay.
So basically what it is is all your content stored online and you have to read it in your browser.
But it requires a browser plugin.
Okay.
One of the browsers that it's compatible with is Chrome.
Which I run.
I install the Chrome...
I install the Google repositories and install straight Chrome.
None of that Chromium crap.
Yeah.
So I got and installed the plugin.
And then I went to the Cloud Reader and I recognized that I had the plugin.
And it gave me the Cloud Reader interface.
And then I clicked on the shop, the buy a book now button.
And then it took me right to the Kindle store.
And I was able to select PF cents.
And then when I clicked buy it, it said, you do not have a registered Kindle device.
You cannot buy this.
What?
You cannot buy a Kindle book without a Kindle device being registered.
What are you trying to do?
And it just kind of like freaked out seven weeks from Sunday.
I spent like two hours trying to buy this freaking book last night.
And it couldn't do it.
So I finally just gave up.
And today I was very busy all day.
I didn't even have a chance to stop and do anything until we sat down here to do this recording today.
So we were talking a little bit before we got started and right before we got started,
I went to the Cloud Reader and tried to buy this PF cents book and it worked today.
So my rant was all for nothing because I guess I just had to give it a day.
I don't understand why I had to give it a day, but I had to give it a day.
All right.
Yeah, that's really annoying because you want to do something and then it's stopping you.
It is.
And I was pretty irritated last night because I was tired.
It was late at night and I wanted the book now.
That's right.
Okay.
But even though you probably want to read that.
But it ultimately is a beautiful thing.
Because now I can get Kindle books and read them on my Linux machines.
This Cloud Reader is hopefully going to be a beautiful thing.
I actually tried to read the book from it yet, but it tells me that I have it in my Cloud library.
Awesome.
All right.
Yeah, that's good.
And then so what is the Cloud Reader or Cloud libraries available on any HTML5?
Well, no, you have to.
It requires a plug-in.
And it requires only for certain browsers.
Chrome's one of the browsers.
Safari's one of the browsers.
And there was another one, but I don't remember what it was.
Not Firefox.
I don't believe it was Firefox.
And it definitely was not IE.
Awesome.
So yeah.
All right.
Yeah, that's good.
So.
Because I'm not opposed to DRM.
I mean, if the book publisher wants to make money, that's fine.
If the author wants to make money, that's fine.
I don't care.
So product I want to, you know, use and enjoy.
Then it's a product I'm going to pay for and use and enjoy.
I mean, I really don't think everything needs to be open source.
Who come and get me a rich installment?
Yeah.
Well, I think that's exciting with being able to read on your laptops.
And then bring in HTML5 to the readers.
Because you can get a real rich format.
It's not just the...
Well, and I'm assuming that this HTML5 format that they're talking about for this Kindle player,
that has something to do with this cloud reader too.
I'm sure it is.
Because most of the candles are, if not all of them now, have it where you can...
It's all stored on the cloud.
And then whenever you want it or if you go to another machine,
you just connect to the internet and you can download it.
Yeah.
So there's no more worrying about whether you're backing up your own PC,
whether you're going to lose your books.
It's nice.
Have you ever heard of scale?
Scale. It's familiar.
I'm not exactly sure what the acronym is, but I've definitely heard of it.
I tried looking it up too, and I couldn't find it.
But anybody out there knows, let them know.
But they released that they're going to have an event on January 2020,
through the 22nd Los Angeles.
It's going to be open source for kids.
And one of the people...
I'm going to be there talking is the people behind OLPC
and talking about their new stuff.
So that's kind of exciting.
And I think it's good bringing kids into open source and, you know,
it'll help with...
Yeah, that goes into something I was reading another article on LWN today about...
Let me get to it.
It was about the aging colonel hackers.
And let's see.
Here we are.
Where was it?
I can't find that, but it was anyway.
It was about how...
When Linux was first came about, all the colonel hackers were these really young guys.
And it was the cutting edge.
It was the young, cool thing to be this Linux colonel like another older.
It was making a joke of how they're all in bed by 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock latest.
Yeah, and it was kind of funny.
And they were saying that it's just the...
That's what you're seeing at the conference because they're the maintainers.
So the maintainers are older, but there's a lot of young blood that are coming in
and still being active in the colonels.
Yeah, that's exciting.
I just found what scale means.
It's a Southern California Linux expo.
So it makes sense that they would have something open source.
But it's good bringing kids in.
Like I said, it's the new blood.
It's got to keep it running.
Yes.
Here it is, aging hackers.
After noting that many of the colonel summit participants were in bed by 9 or 10,
pottering asked whether the colonel community is getting too old
or as he put it, whether it has become an old man's club,
Cox said that he saw a lot of fresh blood in the community
more than enough to sustain it.
So that though that the average age at the summit has risen by one year every year,
it's not quite that bad.
He said, but he also believes that the colonel summit attendees are not an accurate reflection of the community as a whole.
It tends to be maintainers that attend the summit,
while many of the younger developers have not yet become maintainers.
Part of the problem is one of perception, according to Torvalds,
the Linux kernel crowds used to be notably young
the older people ignored what those crazy Linux folks were doing, as he said.
The kernel hackers had a reputation of being ridiculously young,
but many of those same people aren't still around and are just over now.
Cox noted that the kernel is now a stable project,
and then it may be that some younger folks are gravitating to other projects that are more exciting.
Those projects will eventually suffer the same fate, he said.
See, so.
Yeah, it's all getting old, man.
Sure.
Talking about wrap-up or more information about previous talks,
the ICANN is taking over the Olsen time zone database.
Yes.
Well, the Astrolabe company, they came out and said,
oh, we actually weren't looking for money.
We just wanted to make a point about infringement.
Yeah, right.
Because ICANN got involved,
which has got much bigger boot heels than Astrolabe does.
I knew that would happen as soon as I read that and put that out a couple of weeks ago.
It makes sense that things stop now,
because if that was the true intent at the beginning,
they wouldn't send a cease and desist to begin with.
Anyway, I think it's a good thing that somebody powerful is still taking care of it.
That way, if Olsen himself, some happens to him,
then there's still somebody running it.
And I'm sure he had some kind of backup running for that.
Well, it was two guys, and it was running on NIH's servers,
and NIH isn't going anywhere.
Right, yeah, okay.
So, talking about Patton things,
the Apple, they're threatening a small family-run cafe over a trademark.
This new company that's, what is it here?
Let me start reading from my notes.
Apple is threatening to sue a small family-run cafe in Bonn,
because they are the opinion that they're logo and fringes on Apple's trademark.
The owner of the cafe, Applekind,
Christian Romer, has registered her logo as a trademark for the service and fashion industry in June and Munich.
Now, Apple is claiming in a cease and desist letter
that there could be a confusion between the small cafe and Braun and their global company.
Because you know how easily confused everyone is that a small cafe in Bonn
might actually be Apple Corporation,
and they'll try and go in there and buy an iMac.
Yeah, really.
Really, in this little company,
the Applekind is German for Apple Child.
And if you look at their logo, if you click on the notes in their show notes,
it's a picture of an Apple that looks nothing like the Macatosh Apple logo.
And it has a little kid's head in the middle of the Apple.
Really, there's no confusion there.
So it's crazy.
They're just going, they're just going over that.
Makes me hate him more.
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Apple.
Did you know that they were the first, Apple was the first GPL infringer
that was like sued?
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I forget what it was over.
It was over some software obviously way back when,
but yeah, they were the first one that they actually had to go and say,
hey, it's GPL.
Yeah.
You gotta, you can't be doing,
because they were just like including it in their software without any notification,
no attribution, nothing.
Wow.
Yeah, it sounds like something that they do.
That pissed jobs off so bad that he was, he's so anti-open source that they've,
finally, the only thing that they were still including that was open source was some,
but just they had, because they had to use it because they needed to interoper,
operate with Windows machines.
Yeah.
And the SIS protocol, that's just, that's just two times you can't reproduce that kind of stuff.
But I, from what I understand, they, they, they had,
and they were actually getting rid of Sombe and their newest release.
Really?
Yeah.
Or they, they were working on like a replacement for the SMB protocol,
or that they're going to,
No, they're going to just write their own stuff to, to do it, I guess.
Huh.
Jeez.
You know another thing about Apple, that I didn't, you know,
it's in front of me, but all these interviews about, or with jobs is coming out that,
because now it's been one, a week or two since his death,
and people are okay about talking bad about them again.
Apparently, he said that he was going to rage nuclear war against Android,
because at first they were okay with somebody, you know,
oh, they're just a little open source project.
Well, now that Android has taken over,
and is, what would we say, a couple weeks ago, 70% of the market?
Yeah, it's huge, huge number.
Yeah.
Well, now he's, he's just living over it.
Well, obviously not.
And it goes back to the same reason that everybody runs Windows instead of Apple Software.
The reason everybody runs Windows Software instead of Apple Software is why, why?
Because it's more available.
But why?
You know, back in the day when they both first started,
with Windows and the PC-based software,
they didn't lock up the architecture.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, so you could, anybody could make the architecture and make an IBM clone,
and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and it was off to the races.
Everybody in their uncle got in the game, right?
Yeah, that's right.
Whereas what Apple did was they tied it to the hardware,
and locked up that hardware as proprietary also.
You couldn't really have clones.
Right.
Well, it's the same with software too.
Then they, it has to be a Mac approved software to run on a Mac.
Right.
Because they're so locked down.
That's all I don't understand when you go to like all these Linux things,
and you see all these people with these Apple laptops,
just because at its core, it may be running something open source.
You know, the mock kernels down there hidden way, way underneath.
But it's not.
It's so locked down.
I mean, they're more locked down than Microsoft.
It's just horrible.
And I just don't understand the open source community's fascination with Apple.
Right.
You know what is for software?
I don't like it.
You know, I'm not into it.
But their hardware is really good,
even though they've switched Intel hardware.
I mean, because now they're just running it.
It's still they have their own processor that they're running,
even though it's an Intel base or X86 processor.
Or maybe it's further for the iPads and iPads.
They have something like a thousand people working for just working on the processor.
When they have maybe a thousand people on everything else.
So I mean, they do put a lot into their hardware to make it harder.
I think that's got to just be for like the iPad and stuff like that and the iPhone.
Yeah.
Because.
And after the desktop.
Yeah.
So that's all stock Intel stuff.
Yeah.
Because it's so much easier now to do a hack and Tosh.
Right.
Because yeah, one of my daughter's teachers actually runs a hack and Tosh.
Do you know that's illegal?
I suppose.
Do it.
I didn't give his name up.
I didn't give his name.
And what else?
I saw an article today that was interesting was a malware on Linux.
So are we really there yet?
Is it coming out?
And, but if you think about it, it's not, I mean, malware.
It's not something that you normally think about, but it's, you know, just untrusted sources can have.
So that's why they've come out with all the, you know, the signatures for the sources that you use.
And if it doesn't have a signature, then you don't know if it actually is good packages on there.
And some people won't think about it.
They'll just go ahead and install it anyways.
And also, it's things that we've seen in the past, but nobody really thinks about it.
But, you know, like bots, root kits, and unknown commands, you know, just copy and paste something off the internet.
And then all of a sudden it works your machine.
Well, that's malware.
It just comes in a different form from what Windows users see.
Yeah.
And with browsers too, browsers are so much often now becoming the platform.
Like so much stuff that you do on the internet is actually just running in the browser.
So, I mean, I think that's the next tactic that actually are malware browser plugin kind of stuff.
Drive by browser plugin installation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Linux is definitely susceptible to that, you know, because as a regular standard user, you can install plugins in the browser.
You don't have to be rude to do that.
Yeah.
That's the all the news I have.
You have anything else you want to talk about?
No, I went off on my Amazon cloud reader rant already.
I don't really have anything else.
Very.
What do I have for time?
Any other projects?
We're at 35 minutes.
Any other projects here?
No, just that PF sense that I've been working on for a while.
I'm trying to just get my head around it.
That's why I got the book.
So, cool.
We'll see.
So, you got the base install running.
I do. And I've actually got a test network up and running.
And so that I've got two laptops on it.
It's passing packets great.
It just didn't.
It took hardly any configuration at all.
It's sweet.
It's where it works fantastic.
So, I'm sure I'm not using any of the features because I didn't turn them on.
But yeah, it looks like it's working.
So, the problem was I accidentally polluted my entire home network.
When I first did it because I did it.
I hooked it in wrong.
I wired the switch into my home network and then took a feed from the switch to the PF sense firewall machine.
And then plugged in my test laptops to the switch and everything.
And the whole network was going wonky.
Oh, yeah.
You had a routing loop going on.
Yeah, it was not good enough.
But that's my TV and everything in my house.
Yeah, I heard some screams coming from upstairs and stuff.
What's going on?
What's going on?
I just kept my mouse shut and unplugged the wire.
I had a customer one time.
I went out to work on their stuff.
And they're like, everything just stopped.
You got to get out here.
So, I drive out.
And it's like 45 minute drive.
I get out there and I'm looking at everything.
Everything is just in a stop.
You can't get to the internet or one person can, the other person can't.
Like, what's going on?
I look over that they're switched.
And it's like four computers.
And there's five things plugged in.
Or, no, there was three computers.
And there was five things plugged in because one's not linked.
And I'm like, why is this extra thing plugged in?
I started tracing them all.
They plugged the same cable into two jacks.
So that was screwing everything up.
I had the same thing happen to the customers.
One of my clients actually, we do these recordings at Gaudier Academy.
And I had the same thing happen here, one year.
Because the teachers are responsible for setting all the stuff in their own classroom up.
The switch is and the wires.
Yeah.
If they want to, if they want to take the money out of their classroom budget
to have me come in and do it, then I'll come in and do it.
But nobody ever does that.
Everybody always sets all their own stuff up in the classroom.
So then I got a call about a day before school was going to start.
Did all of a sudden the entire network was down.
Nothing was responding.
Nobody could do anything.
Oh, no.
So I came and I'm like, they're right.
Nothing's responding.
It's all going wonky.
So I just unplugged everything in the server room.
And then I just started plugging loops in.
Okay.
Plug in all the servers.
They're okay.
Everything's still good.
Everything's working.
So everything in the server room's good.
And then I started plugging classrooms in.
Dude, dude.
When I got to this one classroom, as soon as I plugged that classroom in,
boom.
The whole network went down.
Oh.
Something down there was messed up.
So I unplugged that classroom, went down there.
Looked that there's which same thing.
Supposed before PC's plugged in and there were six things plugged in there.
Yeah.
They had all the PCs hooked up.
They had their uplink hooked up.
And then they had an extra wire plugged into two ports.
Jeez.
So I unplugged everything and said,
your problem was in this classroom.
Yeah.
So did they change your policy after that?
No.
No.
I guess they run the risk.
So if anybody ever does it again, then I get another emergency call out.
Yeah.
So I'm not too, too, too mad.
I mean, because then I get to fill them.
Right.
Right.
So something I'm working on is X, B, and C.
And it's a media center-based software.
And you can run it on any desktop.
And you can run it full screen.
And then just watch any local content or online.
Even it has a plug-in for a TV.
Myth TV.
So you can do recording running as a TPR for regular TV that you're running.
And Myth TV works with HD home runs.
So you can still get HD content coming in with Myth TV.
I'm not using that part.
But I went through it on their website.
They have an XBMC Ubuntu setup.
It's not an official like Ubuntu thing.
But their instructions are you take a minimal Ubuntu disk.
And you load just the OS plus SSH on there.
And then you reboot.
And then you install just their minimal packages.
So there's no...
And yet they have just their X program or their XR.
And then their program running on top of that.
There's no like display manager or desktop or anything like that.
So it's real lightweight.
It boots fast.
And it comes to the point where I just treat it as another of my...
One of my media devices up there on my shelf where my DVD player...
I shut it off when I'm done with it.
My Blu-ray player takes longer to boot than this thing does now.
So I just hit the button.
I weighed about 30 seconds and I'm ready to watch online videos.
So there's Ted.com has a plug-in for that.
And watch videos off there.
About Hulu.
Yeah Hulu does.
Although I tried using it.
And I think you have to have the Hulu Plus account to run it.
That doesn't run with the Hulu base.
I'm sure there's probably a configuration I haven't gotten into yet.
I've only been doing this for about three or four days now.
But it's a ton of plug-ins available.
It's awesome.
I would definitely...
I'm going to get it for my desktop.
And then when I'm out, I want to watch some stuff.
I can just bring that up.
Because it's like an aggregator.
It just brings everything together.
You don't have to go to each one of the websites.
That's cool.
Yeah.
There's even one.
I'm not sure how legal it is.
Because what was that other one you were running?
MCE?
Linux MCE.
Linux MCE.
Yeah.
That's nice.
But that's like a whole server client base.
And your machines don't have to be dedicated to that.
But it works best of it is.
So you can't run your desktop and then run Linux MCE on top of it.
And switch between easily.
You have to do a reboot.
It has to be dual booted to be able to get that to work.
So now what do you...
You're just running this thing.
It's basically a really lightweight thing on the box.
That's hooked up to the TV.
And all the media is what's still stored on your desktop?
Or a file server somewhere?
I bet.
I put this file server together.
Yeah.
I have two 500 and gay card drives and two 250 drives that I have a bunch of media on.
And so I set that up.
It just says, I did a Ubuntu server install.
And then I did like LAMP and Samba.
And then what's your favorite thing for servers?
The management.
Web management.
Oh, Webman, Webman.
Yeah.
Through Webman on there.
And it's something that I used a lot for a lot.
It was fun about Webman though.
Yeah.
Is...
I really like it for some things.
But then for other things, I just don't...
Oh.
And as an example, DHCP.
I use Webman, right?
And so I go into the Webman interface and I go to DHCP server.
And then whenever I want to make a change, you know what I do?
I click the button that says edit config file.
And I edit the config file by hand.
So it's just because that's what I'm used to doing with DHCPD.
Sure.
And when you have to do that with one of your machines on groups, too, didn't we?
We had to go into the config file because there's too many groups to be displayed or something.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we had to search and then we couldn't...
And then Webman didn't like my search parameters or something.
So yes, we had to go in and look at like Etsy groups or something.
Yeah.
Webman's nice to be able to do something easy, but at the same time, you need to...
Yeah, you need to know what you're doing.
Exactly.
Webman is a beautiful tool to aid a system administrator who already knows how to edit the config files.
Yeah.
And that's another thing I love about it is it works with your standard config files.
It writes a config file that you can then read and edit.
That's nice.
It doesn't totally fm up.
Like, have you ever used Sousa's...
Oh, what's the...
Yes.
Have you ever used Sousa's yes?
No.
Oh, forget about it.
You can't ever edit a config file again.
Oh.
And if you do edit a config file, yes stomps on it as soon as you reboot the machine.
It's just...
Yes, it's a horrible, horrible thing.
It's not a horrible thing.
It's a good thing it makes systems administration easy.
But if there's something that you want to tweak that's not there on that graphical interface,
you're pretty much f20 comes to you asked, whereas with Webman,
you can still go in and edit that config file.
And Webman's going to completely honor any changes you made to the files.
That's awesome.
Cool.
Well, I think that's about it.
That's all I have, Tony.
All right.
All right.
Well, thank you for Linux.
They're...
All right.
What's this timing?
Here it is.
All right.
Thank you for listening to the Sunday Morning Linux review with Tony Beamus and Beamus.
And that is?
Oh, now I stepped on you.
Now you're going to have to write another time.
Now to fix this one.
No, I think this is fun.
Okay.
Anyway, he's Tony Beamus with Beamus hosting.
And I'm Matt Anders with Charter School IT Tech.
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