So, once more I'm in the Amazon, but this time not for any fancy jungle trip, but instead for the great Bossa Conference! The conference has been really great, with a focus a bit different that other conferences as the focus is on socializing, getting to know people, and actually getting stuff done.

The web is flooded with examples of how to use the popular MRTG software for plotting more exotic SNMP OIDs than just network traffic.

One of the more popular variables to graph seems to be the load average of a given system, but all of the examples I have stumpled upon online compromise when it comes to plotting the load average as a floating point value.

It is, however, possible to post-process the gathered statistics before plotting the graph and the legend using the YTicsFactor and Factor keywords as shown in the example below:

Options[load]: gauge, nopercent, noo
Target[load]: 1.3.6.1.4.1.2021.10.1.5.2&PseudoZero:public@localhost
MaxBytes[load]: 100
Title[load]: 5 Minute Load Average
PageTop[load]: <h1>5 Minute Load Average</h1>
YLegend[load]: Load Average
ShortLegend[load]: &nbsp;
Legend1[load]: 5 Minute Load Average
Legend3[load]: Maximum Observed Load Average
LegendI[load]: &nbsp;Load Average:
YTicsFactor[load]: 0.01
Factor[load]: 0.01

The above example will gather the 5 minute load average as an integer value (average load x 100) of localhost and use a scaling factor of 0.01 before actually plotting the graph.

Judging from the examples I have found online, the noo option and the PseudoZero pseudo OID used in the example are other, often overlooked features of MRTG. The noo option specifies that no “Output” graph shall be plotted while the PseudoZero pseudo OID always returns 0 (whereas noi disables the “Input” graph and PseudoOne always returns 1).

Her godt en måned før udgivelsen af den næste langtidsunderstøttede Ubuntu udgave, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, tegnes konturene af noget, som jeg godt tør kalde:

Den bedste Ubuntu udgivelse til dato!

Sådan ser den i hvert fald ud på papiret, hvor der ikke bare er mange ændringer med, men også mange store ændringer, som alt i alt ser ud til at give brugere en meget bedre helhedsoplevelse af Ubuntu.

I denne artikel kigger jeg nærmere på nogle af de ændringer, som Ubuntu 10.04 bringer med sig:

Ubuntu’s nye identitet
Ubuntu One nu også til Windows
Ubuntu One Music Store
MeMenu og integreret Twitter og Facebook
iPhone og iPod Touch support
Ubuntu Single Sign On
Nye funktioner i Ubuntu Software Center
Bedre performance
Ud med billeder – ind med video
Yahoo udskifter Google

Ubuntu’s nye identitet

Det helt store samtaleemne i Ubuntu community’et er ikke en ny fed funktion, eller en meget brugt funktion, som pludselig fjernes.

Nej, den ændring som er på alles læber, er Ubuntus nye udseende. Ja, faktisk er det mere end bare nyt udseende, det formuleres faktisk som Ubuntus nye identitet.

Det kommer til udtryk på en lang række fronter. Eksempelvis får Ubuntu et nyt logo. Det gamle logo, ‘Circle of Friends, som det kaldes bevares, men uden de mangfoldige farver, som vi kender:

Ubuntu går også fra et orange/brunligt farveskema til et oragnge/aubergine farveskema. En aubergine er som bekendt mørk, næsten sort, og Ubuntu får et farveskema som passer til dette.

Fra og med Ubuntu 10.04 vil Ubuntu komme i to tema-varianter: En mørk og en lys.

Begge er med lilla baggrund, og lilla spiller i det hele taget en stor rolle i det nye tema. Det lyse tema er standardtema, og her eksperimenteres der med at have luk/minimér/maksimér knapperne oppe i venstre hjørne i stedet for det højre hjørne, som vi også kender det fra Mac-PC’ere.

Derudover er der i det hele taget gjort rigtigt meget ud af, at design og look skal føles meget bedre. Hele interfacet har fået et facelift, og oplevelsen bliver rigtig godt.

Ubuntu One nu også til Windows

Ubuntu One er en fantastisk ting, som kommer med Ubuntu som standard: Man kan lave backup af sine filer, synkronisere filer mellem flere computere, dele filer med andre brugere og meget andet. Og man får hele 2 GB online plads med uden beregning, og får 50 GB for kun 10$ om måneden.

Men Ubuntu One har lidt af en alvorlig mangel: En Windows klient.

Det er der rådet bod på, og med Ubuntu 10.04 kan man nu synkronisere filer mellem ikke kun Ubuntu-computere, men også Ubuntu/Windows-computere. En seriøs konkurrent til Dropbox er opstået, og en lækker mulighed for privatpersoner såvel som virksomhed at synkronisere filer mellem computere og styresystemer.

Ubuntu One Music Store

Canonical har haft travlt med at udvikle et plugin til Rythmbox, som giver Ubuntu-brugere sin hel egen iTunes-konkurrent indbygget i Ubuntu.

Ubuntu One Music Store er indbygget i Rythmbox, og her kan du købe DRM-fri musik direkte fra Ubuntu. Det er musikbutikken 7Digital, som leverer musikken, og et hurtigt check viser, at de faktisk har et ganske fint udvalg af dansk musik også.

Rythmbox har i forvejen to musikbutikker indbygget: Jamendo og Magnatune, men dette er “kun” Creative Commons licenseret musik (musik med mindre strenge copyright-regler tilknyttet), hvilket betyder at de store pladeselskaber ikke udgiver musik her.

Det bliver rigtigt spændende med Ubuntu One Music Store, og jeg håber ikke, at KODA på en eller anden måde spænder for det i Danmark, som de har for vane at gøre med andre spændende online musikinitiativer (*host* Spotify *host*).

iPhone og iPod Touch support

Langt om længe vil mange sige. Men nu er det her. Plug ‘n play iPhone support samt support til iPod touch.

Er du ikke en af de uheldige, som er kommet til at købe en iPhone, så skynd dig at køb en Android-baseret telefon i stedet.

MeMenu og integreret Twitter og Facebook

I øverste højre hjørne, der hvor dit brugernavn står, og der hvor du lukker din computer ned, kommer en ny menu.

Menuen kaldes ‘MeMenu’ altså ‘MigMenu’. Den kommer til at fungere som mere, end bare der hvor du lukker computeren ned, eller skifter bruger. Me-menuen bliver din genvej til dine sociale netværk som eksempelvis Twitter eller Facebook.

Klik på MeMenuen, vælg dit netværk, og skriv en opdatering…

Ubuntu 10.04 bliver med andre ord en social platform, og du kommer med Ubuntu 10.04 tættere på venner og bekendte. Hvis du vælger det

Ubuntu Single Sign On

Er man bruger af Ubuntu One, er man også bekendt med Launchpad. For det er her, man skal registrere sig for at få en konto. Launchpad er også stedet, hvor alle lønnede som ulønnede, bidrager til selve Ubuntu, og indsender og retter fejl m.m.

Launchpad har fungeret som det login, der har virket i alle Ubuntu-sammenhænge.

Men det ændres nu. Ubuntu får et specialiseret Ubuntu Single Sign On, så brugere blot skal registrere sig et sted, og så har man en konto i alle Ubuntu-sammenhænge.

Jeg mangler fortsat at se nogle detaljer på dette, men det introduceres allerede i Ubuntu 10.04, selvmom det helt klar kun er i startfasen. Launchpad-kontoen vil dog også i lang tid endnu kunne fungere som Single Sign On.

Nye funktioner i Ubuntu Software Center

Ubuntu 9.10 introducerede Ubuntu Software Center som erstatning for nogle af de andre metoder til at installere ting i Ubuntu. Men det var en meget bar application, som ikke imponerede på nogen måder.

I den nye Ubuntu kommer der en række nye funktioner til. Blandt andet kan du nu se anmeldelser og stjerner for de enkelte programmer, hvilket gør det nemmere for dig at vurdere, om et givent program er noget for dig. Med Ubuntu Single Sign On kan du også selv logge ind, og afgive din bedømmelse og anmeldelse af programmer.

Derudover kommer der bedre og mere understøttelse af tredjepartsarkiver (repositories) og kommercielt software. Om der ligefrem introduceres mulighed for at købe kommercielt software i Ubuntu Software Center i Ubuntu 10.04 tvivler jeg på, at de når at få med, men der gøres i hvert fald klar til det. Det forsøgte Ubuntu sig også med for godt 3 år siden, men det blev aldrig en stor succes. Markedet er dog markant anderledes i dag, og med al sandsynlighed klar til det.

Bedre performance

Et meget vigtigt mål med Ubuntu 10.04 LTS har været forbedring af performance, og herunder i særlig grad forbedring af boot-tiden. Målet var 10 sekunder fra Tænd til Login, og selvom det ikke menes på din gamle PC derhjemme, så når de næppe målet.

Men at performance i Ubuntu bliver markant forbedret, er der her godt en måned inden udgivelse ingen tvivl om. Udviklingsversionerne, som ligger tilgængelig til download og installation, viser meget lovende takter.

Det bliver som en genfødsel for folk, som skifter deres Windows XP eller Windows 7 computer ud med en Ubuntu 10.04.

Ud med billeder – ind med video

En relativ stor ændring som ikke affødte så store kontroverser, som først antaget, er at billedbehandlingsprogrammet GIMP ryger ud af standardinstallationen.

Man kan selvfølgelig fortsat downloade og installere GIMP, men på alle nye friske Ubuntu-installationer, vil GIMP ikke komme med i den automatiske installation. Baggrunden for beslutningen er, at GIMP ikke er for ‘almindelige’ brugere, det er ganske enkelt for teknisk, og at det desuden fylder for meget på CD’en med Ubuntu.

Til dagligdags billedbehandling, som at fjerne røde øjne, beskære billede og så videre, er der kommet nye funktioner i billedeorganiseringsprogrammet F-Spot. Det bliver med andre F-Spot, som åbnes, når man vil redigere billeder.

Men et andet program er til gengæld blevet inkluderet i Ubuntu 10.04 standardinstallationen: PiTiVi.

PiTiVi er et lille videoredigeringsprogram, som ikke kan en masse fancy ting, men som kan cirka det samme som Windows Moviemaker kan på Windows. PiTiVi er et forholdsvist nyt program, og der er derfor et par enkelte centrale funktioner, som mangler. Men de kommer inden længe – der arbejdes på højtryk for at få dem lavet, og mon ikke vi ser dem allerede til oktober, når den næste Ubuntu udgave kommer.

Yahoo udskifter Google

Når du starter Firefox i en frisk Ubuntu 10.04, vil du opdage, at den ikke ser ud som den plejer. Google er nemlig blevet skiftet ud med Yahoo, så både søgemaskinen midt på startsiden samt i øvre højre søgefelt søger via Yahoo og ikke Google.

Baggrunden for dette valg er slet ikke teknisk. Ubuntu/Canonical får ganske enkelt en slant penge af Yahoo for søgninger foretaget i Yahoo, og det betaler så lidt af udgifterne til udvikling af Ubuntu.

Vil man støtte Ubuntu økonomisk, kan man fortsætte med at bruge Yahoo, og ellers er det meget let at ændre søgemaskine fra Yahoo til Google i Firefox’s indstillinger.

Jeg tror, jeg er nået omkring de vigtiste nye ændringer i Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx. Der er mange ændringer i denne Ubuntu version, som tegner sig til at blive den bedste og største indtil videre, så mangler du noget på listen, så skriv en lille kommentar til artiklen.

Du kan desuden forvente en artikel om kommende ændringer og features i den nye Ubuntu 10.04 server, som bliver understøttet i 5 år.

Related posts

• Ubuntu Software Center: Stjernerne kommer (1)
• Ubuntu One kommer til Windows (0)
• Kom til høring om Open Office (0)
• Lenovos marketingsmareridt (2)
• Chrome OS som Open Source (1)

Ubuntu-dk-podcasten har desværre ligget lidt stille siden jul. Men nu burde podcast-møllen være godt i gang igen. Allerede nu ligger vores tur til Open Source Days på klar på vores side, og afsnit 4 er godt på vej.

En af de ting vi har arbejdet på er at få sat en VoiceMail op. Den kan bruges til kommentarer på vores eskapader, men også bare hilsner eller måske endda til længere indlæg. Rent teknisk er den sat op på en asterisk-server (pt på hardware med al for få ressourcer). Efter at have knækket nøden var det relativt simpelt at få til at spille. Du ringer til nummeret (89 93 93 63) og lægger en besked. Den bliver så sendt til alle værterne via e-mail i en gsm-encodet wav-fil - nemmere kan det ikke blive.

Fik jeg nævnt at nummeret var 89 93 93 63?

I have become a social media addict. Both in my private and professional life, I have become more and more dependent on if not staying ahead of the curve then at least on surfing the social media wave. I need to update my status on Facebook and to read all my friends tweets and look on the Flickr (sorry, 23) photos not to feel socially isolated. I need the same social media to  make clients and potential clients as well as journalist and the public at large constantly and continuously aware of my legal and other business skills in order to secure a steady stream of billable hours from which wonderful invoices can be generated.

But this is becoming harder and harder. Even though all the tools are mine for the taking right there on my laptop, right there through my browser, so many new things are happening everyday, so many new services, so many plugins, som much fine-tunning, RSS feeds syndication, SEO, adwords and so on.

I need someone to help me maintain my online persona, to amplify my status updates, blogposts and tweets. I am not looking for a ghost writer. I know what I want to communicate and I am perfectly capable of authoring my own content, thank you.

BUT I NEED A SOCIAL MEDIA ASSISTANT

Ideally, you would be an university student probably working your way through the first years of one of those new fancy communication, media or information technology programmes that were not around when I was young.

You should help me about 5-10 hours a month with optimizing my use of social media, in particular:

• keeping house at my blog media “family”: vonhaller.dk, openlife.dk and lexlinux.dk
• getting blogposts syndicated by trackbacks, RSS feeds, blogrolls, twitter, facebook and so on,
• monitoring traffic at Google analytics,
• updating widgets and plugins,
• organising other content (slides and presentation, calender, photos and video)
• editing and tagging podcasts and videocasts
• basic SEO and adwords
• setting up affiliate deals (t-shirts, books and rapports)
• some general proofreading and editing of blogcontent
• and much more.

I will pay on a hourly basis in accordance with rates normally paid to a student.

If you are there, please show yourself.

Hvis man laver en literatursøgning på multiprogrameringens barndom, spinger navnet Brinch-Hansen hurtigt frem på skærmen og ikke et ondt ord om det. Kigger man nøjere efter, står der også næsten altid…

The least they could have done is indicate WHICH versions on WHICH hardware. The explanation below reads like the extended version of Excuse Of The Day.

*cough*

From: Customer Services 
Date: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: xxxxxxxxx

Re: xxxxxxxxxxxxx Datacentre affected by heavy storm

Dear Valued Customer,

Further to the storm on the XXth of XXXX, we investigated on what  
happened. The Inergen release in XXX has been investigated by  
internal and external experts, and no failures or unexpected  
parameters or tracks have been found. The investigation has covered  
areas such as pressure, temperature, dust, gas, air speed,  
vibrations and turbulence.

Inergen is the industry preferred solution to extinguishing fire in  
data center. However, failed hard drives in connection with the use  
of Inergen in different rooms have been investigated by the  
manufacturer, and their conclusion are:

A sudden temperature change of up to 2-3 degrees within 1 second,  
which some servers have experienced (normal recommendations are max  
5 degrees within 1 hour) have caused some raid controllers, SCSI  
disks and HD to be unstable.

The combination of this instability and a low firmware/driver  
version has caused some of these controllers/disks to fail after a  
period of time (not all failures are recorded at the same time).

The investigation also shows that not all affected disks had  
failures, but the failure in the SCSI/raid has caused the disks to  
fail.

Therefore the conclusion to the failures is that low firmware/driver  
versions are not sufficiently resilient for any Inergen generated  
shift of temperature and an upgrade of firmware/drivers can be  
needed in order to eliminate the chance of failure in the future.

Thus xxxxxxxxxx recommends that all customers ensure that the newest  
supported/tested available version of firmware and drivers are  
installed.

Furthermore, based on the incident, xxxxxxxxxx will continue to  
investigate if change in infrastructure or parameters can reduce the  
impact on the installed hardware in case of any Inergen release.

All related fire extinguishing systems will be back in normal mode  
at end this week.

An incident report has been finalized.

If you have any questions regarding this communication, please  
contact xxxxxxxxxxxx or send an e-mail to customer.services@xxxxxxxxxx.com 

. Please reference above ticket number when you call.

Respectfully,

xxxxxxxxxx European Customer Service Center

A couple of weeks ago, I helped my mom, who lives in Paris, to setup her new ADSL connection. Nothing unusual there, most of you reading this have to live with the occasional burden of being the first line of PC support for your family and friend. Those who won't take "... but I don't work with PCs!" for an answer.

I'd decided to migrate her away from her current TV/Internet cable provider which had been getting more expensive with nothing of value to offer for the price hike. We're talking 60 EUR / month (ca. 450 DKK, for the Euro-challenged), which by French Internet market standards is pretty expensive. For this, she was getting 40-or-so channels, IP telephony, and 4/1 Mbps Internet (100/4 Mbps if we renewed the contract, which we didn't).

So I made her subscribe to Free, the second largest DSL provider in France (after France Telecom/Orange, the legacy national operator).

I guided my mom through the installation over the phone, since I live in Copenhagen; and while my mom is no technical guru (she still calls me when she receives popups from Software Update on the Mac, asking me if it's safe to say "Accept"), we got things up and running in under a couple of hours.

Free likes to do things differently. Take for instance the way they price their access. With Free, you don't pay more if you want a higher speed service. Free provisions your DSL at the highest speed the loop will allow, which in the case of the copper at my mom's place, is 18 Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s up. Not too bad. Had the DSLAM been closer, it would have been 24 Mbit/s.

And of course she gets IP telephony. Flatrate to all landlines in Europe, and North America.

Then you get the 150 channels in the base package. There's 300 to choose from, and you can pick individual channels. Want CNN ? That's 0,7 EUR / month on top (5 DKK).

And it's much cheaper... 30 EUR / month (225 DKK).

Like I mentioned earlier, Free likes to do things differently. Both the founder (Xavier Niel) and technical director (Rani Assaf) have a reputation for being mavericks. For example, Free was one, if not the first ISP to develop in-house combination DSL modem and set-top-box/video recorder, the Freebox. This gave them a huge advantage over the competition when it came to providing extra services, a long time before anyone else.

Features like VideoLan client (VLC) support, allowing you to watch any of the subscribed channels, or a pre-recorded program, from any computer in the home. Or do the reverse: the VLC client in the set-top-box will let you watch films stored on your computer, provided you can serve them over HTTP. Or SIP service so you can use your VoIP line from anywhere in the world. Did I mention the fact that the set-top-box is HD, has a built-in hard disk recorder, and communicates with the DSL modem using PLC ? If for some reason that doesn't work, no problem they'll just switch to WiFi.

I almost forgot the reason I was writing this in the first place.

IPv6.

You know, the protocol that according to various Danish ISPs, "... only Vista implements ...", or "... hasn't been deployed yet ..."

Did I mention that Free doesn't like to do things like anyone else ?

Actually, Free isn't the only French ISP to deploy IPv6. In fact, Nerim was the first to offer native IPv6, already in March 2003, mostly targeted to their semi-professional customers.

But the way it happened in Free's case, was that Rani Assaf got tired of the loud handful of geeks on the Free support newgroups inquiring as to when IPv6 would be available. As a response, he wrote in the same support forum:

- Find 10.000 people who are interested by this gadget, and we'll do it for 1 EUR / month

- Find 100.000 people, and we'll do it for free.

They got 24.000 signatures (they do have 3.5 million subscribers...), and they ended up delivering IPv6 at no additional cost. Some will argue it's not native IPv6 (they tunnel IPv6 back to their core using a variation of 6to4 called 6to4rd, where it's pure IPv6 once again), but hey, ping6 tells me it works.

Since then, other businesses are catching up, and competition is fierce.

OVH, a large hosting company established in France and a few other European countries, offers colocated servers to rent (the Kimsufi) from basic virtual server with 9 GB of space at 40 DKK / month, to dedicated machines for 150 DKK / month. And this includes unlimited bandwidth... and native IPv6. Free has an equivalent, albeit at a slightly higher price.

In the case of my mom's DSL, it was very easy to enable IPv6. By default the Freebox functions as a bridge (probably not a wise choice security wise), but it took only a couple of clicks on the Free's user portal to change the operation mode to router, enabling DHCP, firewall and NAT services on the Freebox, as well as IP6 router advertisement.

All that was left was to enable IPv6 autoconfiguration on my mom's Mac, and once that was done, IPv6 was active.

So what does my mom get out of all this ? Well, she doesn't know or care what IPv6 is. She's 66, and she's a painter. In her most recent mail, she was waiting for one of her friends to pass by and show her how to record stuff on the Freebox. Just before that she'd called me to make sure it was still all right to say OK to the Software Update dialog.

But without knowing it, she's already using IPv6. Nameservers, a few websites, Google if you setup your caching nameservers correctly.

And I know that if I told her to point her browser to www.kame.net the turtle on the screen would move...

(thank you Itojun)

References

• http://www.kame.net/ - the KAME IPv6 project
• http://rosie.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-57/presentations/uploads/Thursday/Plenary%2014:00/upl/Colitti-Global_IPv6_statistics_-_Measuring_the_current_state_of_IPv6_for_ordinary_users_.7gzD.pdf - IPv6 for ordinary user
• http://www.free.fr/adsl/ - Free.fr
• http://ipv6pourtous.free.fr/rani/ - Free IPv6 petition
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_(ISP) - Information about Free on Wikipedia
• http://iliad.fr/en/presse/2007/CP_IPv6_121207_eng.pdf - Press release about IPv6 availability
• http://www.nerim.fr/ipv6 - Nerim, first ISP to offer native IPv6 to DSL subscribers.
• http://francois04.free.fr/estimation.php - Free DSL customers estimates
• http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-despres-6rd-02.txt - 6to4rd
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication - communication over power lines
• http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/ / http://www.kimsufi.com/ - Kimsufi hosting
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_loop_unbundling - LLU - Local loop unbundling
• http://www.bbwo.org.uk/broadband-3044 - 2005 DSL report for western europe
• http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/ - Google over IPv6

HELLO MY NAME IS STEIN BAGGERS AND I AM A 41 YEAR OLD BUSINESS MAN AND
CEO OF THE COMPANY IT FACTORY. I HAVE 170 MILLION US DOLLARS THAT I NEED
TO RETRIEVE, FROM A BANK ACCOUNT IN DENMARK.

I AM CURRENTLY LIVING IN THE BAHAMAS, BUT I AM NOT ABLE TO GET THIS HARD
EARNED MONEY TRANSFERRED TO ME, AND THIS IS WHY I NEED YOUR HELP.

I HAVE AN EQUIVALENT 170 MILLION US DOLLARS STUCK IN A BANK IN DENMARK,
BUT THEY ARE IN DANISH KRONER. FOR SOME REASON THEY DON'T LIKE DENMARK
IN DUBAI AND THE REST OF THE MIDDLE EAST, AND IN THE BAHAMAS THEY HAVE
NEVER HEARD OF KRONER, AND KEEP SAYING "EURO! EURO!". I CAN'T BELIEVE I
DIDN'T THINK ABOUT THIS PROBLEM BEFORE I LEFT.

I AGREE TO REWARD YOU WITH PART OF THE MONEY FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE,
KINDNESS AND PARTICIPATION IN THIS CHARITABLE PROJECT. THIS MAIL MIGHT
COME TO YOU AS A SURPRISE AND THE TEMPTATION TO IGNORE IT AS UNSERIOUS
COULD COME INTO YOUR MIND BUT PLEASE CONSIDER IT A HELP TO A POOR FELLOW
WHO HAS TO BUY A NEW MERCEDES AND PORSCHE.

YOU ARE AT LIBERTY TO USE YOUR DISCRETION TO DISTRIBUTE 10% OF THE MONEY
AND FEEL FREE AS WELL TO REIMBURSE YOURSELF WHEN YOU HAVE THE MONEY FOR
ANY EXPENSES YOU INCUR IN THE COURSE OF COLLECTING THE MONEY.

KINDLY EXPEDITE ACTION AND CONTACT ME VIA E-MAIL:
ITFACTORY4EVER@YAHOO.COM IF THIS PROPOSAL IS ACCEPTABLE TO YOU.

BEST REGARDS, MR STEIN BAGGER

and there's no slowing down

I remember messing around with IPv6 for the first time almost 10 years ago, while setting up a training installation at the INET 1998 workshops in Geneva. It was straightfoward to get the the Windows NT (MSRIPv6), BSDi, FreeBSD and Linux hosts to autoconfigure themselves on the local subnet and communicate using IPv6. The general enthusiasm reflected one idea: "We're going to migrate to IPv6". At no point do I remember thinking "gee, and how will they communicate with IPv4 ?". I don't remember anyone talking about the transition itself, or the protocols involved.

As a followup to the recent announcement that the IETF's IPv6 Working Group had effectively been dissolved, some individuals on the NANOG list have been pointing out the apparent fact that, while a lot of time and effort was spent on designing "IPNG", as IPv6 was originally called, including all the bells and whistles that IPv4 lacked, like QoS, IPsec, autoconfiguration, prefix hierarchisation, (effectively a Second System Effect), not a lot of thinking has gone into the effective migration away from IPv4 to IPv6, and more importantly, how IPv6 and IPv4 users are supposed to talk together -- at least not on the massive scale of today's Internet.

Today this issue is very much present in the minds of network operators around the globe. A few are very aware of the wall that's looming ahread, and are trying to spread the message. After the Year 2000 hype (at least, as it was perceived by the general public), it's difficult to get worked up about impending doom scenarios, especially those the date of which keep changing.

The fact is, IPv6 and IPv4 are not compatible on the wire. This means that IPv4 and IPv6 are different protocols, and that an IPv4 host cannot talk to an IPv6 host and vice versa, unless at least one of the hosts is dual stacked (running both protocols), or some sort of translation mechanisms exists (NAT or application level gateway) to allow the hosts to talk to each other. Indirectly this could mean that many more IPv4 addresses than we have left today might be required, to allow for a transition where every IPv6 host could talk to every IPv4 node, and vice-versa.

RFC2766, which defines NAT-PT (NAT Protocol Translation) nails the problem description square on the head:

"There is expected to be a long transition period during which it will be necessary for IPv4 and IPv6 nodes to coexist and communicate. A strong, flexible set of IPv4-to-IPv6 transition and coexistence mechanisms will be required during this transition period."

(emphasis mine)

Today, 7 years after NAT-PT was introduced, a new RFC recommends that NAT-PT be deprecated.

The original draft of this RFC stated, in September 2004:

"Description of an alternative protocol translation mechanism is out of scope for this document."

But today, 3 years later, and the Draft made standard, "There are no simple, useful, scalable translation or transition mechanisms" (cf. prev.cit.).

Even here in Denmark, which has a reputation for early adoption of new technologies, and where Internet penetration is among the highest in the world , most larger organizations I talk to are absolutely ignorant or unconcerned about the deployment of IPv6 -- not that they have no idea what IPv6 is, but they have no plans to deploy it, or do not seem to be aware of the issues regarding IPv4 depletion: they have no strategy, or at least intended strategy, with regards to IPv6.

As someone I know who is very knowledgeable with IPv6 wrote a half year ago,

"Still not much going on in Denmark with regards to IPv6. Nobody cares, nobody wants it, nobody works to implement it."

Time to smell the coffee

Learning IPv6 is one more burden for the average network administrator. Administrating IPv6 and IPv4 in parallel even more so. Dual routing tables, dual filtering paths, dual routing protocols, twice the security hassle. Even more reasons to start now. Not while it's early (that was 5 years ago), but while there's still time.

In hindsight, considering that many of the more revolutionary aspects of IPv6 have been dropped, it might have been smarter to just make IPv6 on-the-wire compatible with IPv4, and to use the lower 32 bits of the IPv6 addressing space to map the IPv4 space into it, enabling a simple compatibility mode for IPv6 to communicate with IPv4-only hosts, without the need for extra translation. [a few readers pointed out to me that this is contradictory with the idea of having a 128-bit address space: there can be no compatibility on the wire. Any sort of "compatibility" where an IPv6 host emits IPv4 packets is in fact simpley a dual stack system].

Unfortunately, this is not the case, and we have to deal with an installed base of tens of millions of IPv4-only NAT gateways and CPE (customer premises equipment) that only support IPv4, and will likely never support IPv6. It's in this environment that IPv6 will need to be deployed. The transition will most likely not be "from the core to edge" in one smooth wave. IPv6 is going to pop-up everywhere it makes sense, and for it to function it will have to use all the dirty tricks that IPv4 used to survive, including tunneling, protocol translation, and application level gateways.

Phil R.

---

Updates

• A fractal map illustrating the rate of exhaustion:

  http://www.tndh.net/~tony/ietf/IPv4%20Address%20Fractal%20Map.pdf

• A new presentation by Geoff Huston at RIPE 55 -- a very good overview of the IPv4 exhaustion problem:

  http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-55/presentations/huston-ipv4.pdf

• Factsheet from ICANN about IPv6 -- most useful for management and decision makers:

  http://www.icann.org/announcements/factsheet-ipv6-26oct07.pdf

References

A number of announcement of publications were made recently, underlining the problem at hand:

• An Informational draft RFC was published, outlining an IPv4 to IPv6 transition plan, with goals of being "ready" by 2011-01-01:
  http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-jcurran-v6transitionplan-00.txt
• LACNIC (the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry) announced that it wants all the region's networks to be adapted to IPv6 by January 1st, 2011

Compare this to a very informative presentation from Randy Bush regarding the reality of such a transition (and, in some cases, why it's plain impossible, since IPv6 is not "backwards compatible" with IPv4):

[IPv6 Transition & Operational Reality]

(the part regarding the emergence of a market for IPv4 addresses, and the transition from allocation to entitlement is worth it by itself).

Some background data and interesting comments from Geoff Huston, who maintains a page which is updated daily with an estimate of when IANA and RIRs will run out of unallocated IPv4 space (and the trading -- whether it's legitimate or not -- will begin):

• http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html
• http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2007-07/v4end.html
• http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2007-08/dualstack.html

To get a feel of the context, a very informative read is the transcript of the APNIC Plenary, New Delhi, Sept. 2007.

Some good starting points on IPv6

• ARIN IPv6 Wiki
• Educating_Yourself_about_IPv6

There are some very interesting reports of the operational experiences of deploying IPv6.

The Danish Ubuntu LoCo team had a community booth at the 2010 Open Source Days in Copenhagen last weekend.

The picture shows us (and the Exherbo guys next to us) setting up early Friday morning. Later in the day a Zebrapig banner joined the Ubuntu banner. All the community booths were located on the first floor, upstairs from the firms and organisations who had a paid booth. I didn’t take that many pictures, and the ones I did take didn’t turn out that great, but Flickr seems to have a nice collection if you are curious.

The new theme for Ubuntu Lucid had just been released the day before, so Friday, when we weren’t talking to people about Ubuntu, we spend a bit of time arguing for and against the new colour scheme.
We managed to hand out all our remaining Ubuntu 9.10 CD’s and Jesper gave a talk about ubuntu-dk.

As always, it was nice to meet up with the other people from the LoCo team. Although we do a lot of work together, it is often via e-mail or irc chat. Putting names to faces is always a pleasure. The beers both Friday and Saturday night were also a pleasure – beer and good company seldom lets you down.

We even managed to do some planning for the coming Ubuntu Global Jam.

Anders is set on doing an entire day of translating Sunday 28 at his place. And the plan is to do some more general bugwork on Friday and Saturday. Location is still to be decided, but properly Jesper or I will open our homes to the masses of Ubuntu volunteers. Stay tuned for more info about the Global Jam in Copenhagen / Denmark.

Related posts:

• Open Source Days – I got my ticket!
• Pictures from Open Source Days 2008
• Open Source Software conference
• Late Global Jam in Copenhagen

Husk det nu. I aften, tirsdag den 9. marts, kl 19-21 mødes vi atter på hovedbiblioteket i Århus til endnu en omgang Ubuntu-nørderi.

Der er et par spændende ting på programmet, og vi skal bl.a. finde ud af, hvad vi gør til Ubuntu Global Jam i weekenden 26-28. marts, hvor Ubuntu-bidragsydere over hele verden mødes og arbejder med de mange bugs.

Udover det spændende med at arbejde med Ubuntu, er det også generelt bare en weekend, hvor folk med fælles interesse hygger og lærer hinanden at kende. Det bliver en super-weekend – og så SKAL vi jo helst være flere som mødes i Århus til Global Jam, end som mødes i København samme weekend, ikke?

Så kom med i aften til UCD Århus på hovedbiblioteket kl. 19. Det er på 1.sal og første dør på højre hånd (lige om hjørnet).

Læs mere her: http://ubuntudanmark.dk/ucd

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Jeg har tidligere skrevet om FAIR Danmark, en organisation som indsamler brugt dansk IT-udstyr, som virksomheder ikke længere kan/vil benytte. FAIR Danmark sørger for at slette alt data på maskinerne, udstyrer dem (som oftest) med Ubuntu, og sender dem efterfølgende til uddannelsescentre i Afrika.

Version 2 har besøgt FAIR Danmark på Dortheavej i København, og har lavet en lille video om FAIR Danmark og genbrug af IT-udstyr.

Se artiklen og videoen her.

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Blandt meget andet manglende tankegods i socket-API'et, er en måde at finde ud af om data faktisk er sendt ud på nettet og hvis relevant for protokollen, ACK'et af den anden ende. Der findes…

Jah, jeg ved det. Det er alt for længe siden, jeg sidst har lavet noget rigtigt aktivt her på bloggen. Det vil ændre sig nu

Mit podcast afsnit #3 handler mest af alt om, at jeg ikke har lavet noget på bloggen i 3-4 uger. Jeg fortæller lidt om, at der er sket meget, og at der kommer til at ske rigtigt meget de kommende måneder.

De links jeg nævner er:

Mit Ubuntu firma, O-Biz

O-Biz’s nyhedsbrev

Open Source Days hjemmeside

Husk at smid en kommentar med feedback, og kom gerne med ønsker til indhold for næste podcast!

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Jah, jeg ved det. Det er alt for laelig;nge siden, jeg sidst har lavet noget rigtigt aktivt her paring; bloggen. Det vil aelig;ndre sig nu :-) Mit podcast afsnit #3 handler mest af alt om, at jeg ikke har lavet noget paring; bloggen i 3-4 uger. Jeg fortaelig;ller lidt om, at der er sket meget, og at der kommer til at ske rigtigt meget de kommende maring;neder. De links jeg naelig;vner er: Mit Ubuntu firma, O-Biz O-Biz's nyhedsbrev Open Source Days hjemmeside Husk at smid en kommentar med feedback, og kom gerne med oslash;nsker til indhold for naelig;ste podcast! :-)

Efter to fantastiske dage med fremgang for antal udstillere og antal solgte billetter til Open Source Days konferencen kan coord-holdet været meget tilfredse - og trætte Det er et halvt års fritids-…

Det er altid en underlig tom fornemmelse at vågne søndag morgen efter Open Source Days. Flere måneders målrettet indsats er kulmineret. Og festen er nu vel overstået. Pludselig er der ikke en mulliard opgaver der skal huskes, og en zillion ting der skal koordineres med ‘de andre’[1]. Morgenen (dvs. formiddagen/middagen) er foregået halvt i zombie tilstand. Det lokale brunch sted havde lukket, så jeg har holdt den gående på bagerbrød og Red Bull. Jeg er...

Det tager unægteligt noget længere at komme ud af fjerene, dagen efter Open Source Days, men som alle de andre år var det turen værd. Derfor skal der allerførst lyde en stor tak til det legendariske C…

The ports tree is now tagged and partially thawed. Until 7.3 is released, sweeping commits still need explicit approval from portmgr to assure that tags can be slipped for potential security issues. For more information what constitutes a sweeping change, see the portmgr web pages.

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This picture explains why Microsoft doesn't have to be Apple cool to everyone, it just has to be cool to the rank and file developer. Seriously, kudos; a company that can get its advertising on its clients' license plates is a force to be reckoned with.

Dengang jeg startede i skolen var "Erlang" der hvor man fandt sin(x) værdier, senere lærte jeg, at Agner Krarup Erlang var verdensberømt for sit arbejde indenfor statistisk modelering af kø-…

På Open Source Days i morgen og overmorgen kommer der en masse sjov hardware med. Linuxshoppen kommer bla. med sheevaplug, som jeg kommer til at skrive om i næste uge. Det er en ultra-grøn computer -…

... det er bare så fedt at komme til Open Source Days - dvs. på ITU - her dagen før. Gamle venner myldrer rundt som er i gang med at bygge udstillerområde op - stemningen er god. FEDT! Sidste minuts …

Arbejder du med Open Source, eller er bare interesseret heri, kan det ikke have gået forbi din næse, at der fredag-lørdag afholdes nordens største Open Source konference: Open Source Days.

Jeg skal selvfølgelig også med, og selvom jeg beklageligvis ikke præsenterer min Ubuntu virksomhed O-Biz med en stand eller foredrag (det må blive næste år), så vil jeg dog være personligt til stedet og lytte til en masse gode og spændende foredrag, samt tale med de mange interessante mennesker fra branchen, som vil være der.

Fredag på Open Source Days

Fredag er forretnings-dagen, og her er der et særligt fokus på OpenOffice, hvilket jeg ser meget frem til. Jeg har hørt en del af OpenOffice foredragsholderne før, men det interessante for dette område er blandt andet, at der næsten altid kan findes nye vinkler, nye perspektiver og nye erfaringer, når man hører folk tale om det.

OpenOffice er selvfølgelig ikke det eneste interessante fredag, og jeg glæder mig bl.a. også til at høre Devoteams foredrag om “Why Open Source”.

Lørdag på Open Source Days

Lørdag er generelt mere teknisk og meget mere community-rettet. Her er også de særlige lightning talks, hvor taleren får 15 minutter til at præsentere et projekt, en teknologi eller en anden ting, som han synes tilhørerene skal høre om.

Det bliver et større problem at vælge foredrag til/fra denne dag, da der er rigtig meget spændende på programmet. Jeg ser blandt andet frem til foredrag om communities, noget jeg har været optaget af i mange år, der er noget open source jura og selvfølgelig skal jeg høre Dan Klein som den sidste taler.

Ikke mindst bliver det bare et par rigtig rigtig hyggelige dage, hvor der skal snakkes med en masse mennesker, hvoraf nogle kender man kun fra nettet og omsider får mødt, lytte til spændende foredrag om emner der interesser en, og selvfølgelig hygge med et par øl, når dagen er omme

Vi ses til Open Source Days!

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Da jeg var i USA, opdagede jeg ret hurtigt, at uanset hvem eller hvad man talte med på telefon, banken, udlejeren, Hertz, osv, brugte de "Mothers Maiden Name" som authentifikation. Det forek…

The danish open source conference, Open Source Days, will run this friday and saturday. Exherbo will be present both days with quite a few developers in attendance.

I'm sure there will be a (little) hacking on Exherbo and related projects like Genesis but it's also a very good, if somewhat rare, opportunity to meet some of the leading Exherbo developers and talk to them about the current status of Exherbo and what's in the future.

Personally I'm hoping to have some good discussions about the kind of problems people currently face when they use Linux in various business settings and ways that those problems might be solved. I'm also hoping that you can learn something from the way the Exherbo project is managed and get an idea how the project manages to move at such a fast pace.

And finally I'm looking forward to meeting lots of people and having a good time :)

Billedet herunder viser IT-universitetet i forårssolen. Det er her Open Source Days 2010 løber af stabelen fredag og lørdag. Open Source Days[1] er for mig en af de vigtige events, der bebuder forårets komme. Og arbejdet med at få konferencen op at stå, har altid hjulpet med at få de kedelige og triste vintermåneder til at gå hurtigere. Nu er der kun de sidste hektiske 1½ dage tilbage til festen begynder. Kommer du? [1] inklusive...

-!- You’re now known as svuorela

DR2 Udland havde forleden et interview med Henrik Molkte fra Socialsquare om det åbne internet. Helt klar værd at høre (ca 6 min).

Program-ændringer: små justeringer i det udmeldte - checkPerl-program: Perl-track annonceret om lørdagen og i program - checkT-shirts: Sponsor på plads og bestilt - checkPresse: Facebook-post/Twit/blo…

Jeg har tidligere været ude med riven efter datalogers evner til at programmere og et af de argumenter der kom tilbage var, at det var analyse dataloger var gode til. Fint: Bevis det. Over på ing.dk k…

Before I implemented comment captchas on this blog I was flodded with comment spam. Captchas helped a lot! Like removing 95+% of all comment spam, however some still gets through. Deleting a spam comment now and then have irritated me greatly, but until earlier this week I haven't really done much about it.

After just a bit of research I decided that my first move was to automatically pull the B2evolution antispam list. I also considered Akismet but one step at a time.

Here is the simple script called from cron I use to pull the updates:

 #!/bin/sh

site=http://example.com/admin.php
name=username
pass=password
cookies=`mktemp`

wget -O /dev/null --post-data="login=$name&pwd=$pass" \
        "${site}?ctrl=antispam&action=poll"

It's not perfect since at least one comment spam went through already.

I'd like to hear what other people to prevent comment spam (other than disabling comments :-) )?

I've been asked a few times by different people whether they should push simple patches to genesis. The answer is a resounding 'Yes, please go ahead' but it seems like stating my policy towards other peoples contributions might not go entirely amiss.

My current policy (which will stay until genesis starts stabilising a lot more) is:

• Any contribution is welcome so you just need to find somebody with push access (the usual Exherbo devs will do)
• Large patches / feature contributions are also extremely welcome but you might want to contact me first and make sure I won't undo you hard work.

I'm not in any case going to complain about contributions (large or small) so don't hold back. And remember that I have a pressing need for people to play around with genesis scripts and tell me what you need from genesis. git://git.exherbo.org/genesis-scripts.git was created yesterday for this purpose.

And for those of you who don't have direct push access you can just cue your patches using the hacchi patch bot in #exherbo on irc://chat.freenode.net and I'm sure one of the friendly exherbo developers will help you :)

Jeg har over de sidste par måneder hygget mig med at bruge Nokia N900 som mobil computer. Jeg er som det nok er bekendt ansat hos Nokia, hvor jeg dog laver algoritme-design. dvs. er langt fra Maemo-ud…

Jeg roder med noget USB host kode for en kunde og når jeg så alligevel var igang, var det faktisk nemmest at programmere en microcontroller så jeg havde noget at debugge med i den fjerne ende. Og når …

I finally got some time to start working on a new homepage for linuxpusher.com and choose to use Drupal and Ubercart (among two shop-modules for drupal) for this job.

I need to be able to sell items without VAT to none-EU citizens, and the builtin taxes support didn't handle this, and the uc_vat module that improves upon the built-in support, didn't do the job either.

I have just fixed the code, with some tips from the author of uc_vat (longwave) so we were sure as how it should be done, so I hope he'll accept my code as an improvement for uc_vat.

read more

One of the big problems with Genesis was that you'd get its coldplugging events in that the events wasn't necessarily delivered in a sane order. I briefly considered different ways of controlling the order of the events but quickly came to the conclusion that was madness.

The solution I decided upon instead is generating an internal event after coldplugging is finished and send that event to all event modules. This way we can simply trigger on the 'genesis-started' event and start mounting filesystems and whatever else is needed for bootup.

So how can you help? What I need right now from you is just playing around with some homegrown scripts, trying to catch some events and telling me about all the things that are absolutely impossible to do without. Testing Genesis is quite simple and can easily be done without interfering with the rest of your system.

How to test Genesis:
1. Clone the git://git.exherbo.org/genesis.git repository
2. Run ./autogen.sh in the genesis repository
3. Run ./configure
4. Run make

[genesis]
# Currently supported log destinations are file and console
logging = console
logfile = /var/log/genesis.log

[modules]
command = yes
netlink-uevent = yes
netlink-route = yes

[netlink-uevent]
coldplug = yes
coldplug_mounts_sysfs = no
log_matched_events = yes
log_unmatched_events = yes

Ignore all the options except the coldplug_* options. The other options might be necessary due to the rather haphazard way configuration is implemented currently but don't expect them to work right now. The coldplug option enables/disables coldplug events and the coldplyg_mounts_sysfs option controls whether the coldplugging part tries to mount and umount /sys. You want to keep this option disabled unless you're doing actual boot testing.

Stick one or more bash scripts in /usr/local/etc/genesis/netlink-uevent/ or /usr/local/etc/genesis/netlink-route/ and try running: sudo /usr/local/sbin/genesis

The test scripts I'm using currently looks like (from /usr/local/etc/genesis/netlink-uevent/foo.sh):

SUBSCRIPTIONS_add=vcs10

add()
{
    echo "netlink-uevent::add" >> /var/tmp/genesis.log
}

You can add any number of event subscriptions you like in a single script or spread subscriptions over several scripts. Each subscription is defined as SUBSCRIPTION_function=trigger

Trigger is simply a regex that matches the metadata from events in an internally serialized string format. Function denotes the function in the script called when matching that event. So all the above script does is triggering the add() function on all events matching the string 'vcs10'. Since I have coldplugging enabled I'm guaranteed to see that event.

And that's all there is to it.. One of the things high on my TODO list is to replace the regex matching with a udev like language where I can match on subsystem, MAC address or whatever other metadata events generate. I'd very much appreciate comments on what you think is needed in a simple language like that.

If not you might want to read this old exherbo-dev post to refresh your mind.

Genesis started out as me being rather frustrated with current init systems and their huge failures. My basic idea was that all the different init systems fail badly at solving any real problems for system administrators and that it was about time fixing that situation.

So as I started really thinking about the problems that init systems should solve I decided that writing a new init system from scratch was the approach..

A short while later I discussed most of my ideas in a talk at FOSS Aalborg and had a fair bit of positive feedback. It's worth noting that I haven't started writing any code at this point and consequently my problems hadn't started yet.

When I did start writing code I quickly got even more ideas for Genesis and it became an even more ambitious project. And then it changed radically.. again and again.

Due to all the changes and lack of direction I didn't want to publish the code and it was often compared to Duke Nukem Forever (for good reasons I might add). But now that I finally seem to be reasonably sure about the direction I've finally released the code for everybody to peruse and contribute to.

The current status of the code is quite messy and it's not yet usable as an init system at all. You can glean the basic ideas of it however and there's a TODO list that you're most welcome to take a swing at. A few people have already contributed some minor patches for the build system for which I am grateful. I'd get around to fixing those things myself but for now I'd rather focus more on Genesis design/architecture and make sure that development progresses quickly.

As for progress I'm trying to make sure I do at least one Genesis commit every day and tracking that on http://calendaraboutnothing.com/~kloeri. Some days might only see very small commits but I'm shooting for larger, daily updates.

My primary goals right now is getting Genesis to a state where it can boot a system as well as making the code more hacker friendly so more people can contribute.

As for booting I expect to set up a separate git repository for genesis scripts as soon as Genesis is ready for that. It's my hope that most scripts will be contributed by other Exherbo contributors and that I can keep my focus on Genesis itself.

In a year or so the Danish center-right government is facing an election. But I am pretty much apolitical and I find the choice between on the one side a new center-left government lead by spineless, opportunistic leftist career politicians backed by revamped old communists and on the other hand a tired, lethargic, sitting government with an apparent lack of intellectual substance who relies on a social-national party for its parliamentary majority as a choice between the plague and the cholera.

With such a pessimistic and cynical outlook it was a real pleasant surprise to hear this morning that as part of cabinet reshuffling a friend of mine, Charlotte Sahl-Madsen, was elected as the new Danish Minister of Science, which post has as its unofficial title: Minister of IT. This is good news for science, information technology and more generally speaking, innovative thinking in the Danish society.

The Danish media has been speculating since the announcement about who is the new minister. To her great credit, Charlotte Sahl-Madsen has not spent much of her time trying to make a name of herself within Danish mainstream media. She has held leading positions in the strategic departments of both Lego and Danfoss, two pillars of Danish exporting industry. Lately, she has worked as leader of Danfoss Universe, a wonderful science park in the south Denmark that I have visited several times with my kids.

What can Charlotte Sahl-Madsen achieve as new minister of science (and IT). Probably not wonders. But that is due to the unfortunate low status of that particular ministry within the hierarchy of Danish ministries. But I think that she more than any other minister of science before her can set the agenda for innovation within the ministry and its resort. I expect her to be much more genuinely interested in open innovation, open government, open data and all other good things than any of her predecessors that were all more or less clueless in this field.

Charlotte Sahl-Madsen has IMHO the potential to be the best minister of Science that Denmark have had so far.

Full disclosure: Charlotte and I are both members of VL67 – a network for Danish leaders with business and culture.

En af de ting, som altid glæder mig når vi laver konference er vores hjælpere. Der er folk, jeg er meget glade for at kende. De møder glade op, vi spiser morgenmad sammen og så har de en fire-timers v…

While driving with my friend Anders, we passed this truck. Luckily the highway was busy, and i could make him slow down a little, and get in behind it for pictures. My apoligies for the shaky picture. It is the best of the 30 odd pictures I took. I blame Anders car and his driving skills :-) The text is “www.@it-rental.dk”. According to whois, the it-rental.dk domain does not exist anymore. I wonder why …...

A lot of water has passed beneath the bridge since I wrote my last entry about Apples Terminal.app vs. iTerm. Apple has released Snow Leopard with, among other things, a much improved version of Terminal.app, which has gotten me to ditch iTerm again.

So, I bring to you a version of the script for opening a new terminal window on the currently active desktop space – the Terminal.app way:

tell application "System Events"
	set TerminalCount to (count (every process whose name is "Terminal"))
end tell

if (TerminalCount is not 0) then
	tell application "Terminal"
		do script
		activate
	end tell
else
	tell application "Terminal"
		activate
	end tell
end if

As usual: Save the script to a .scpt file, open it with Script Editor, save as an Application and place a shortcut in your Dock.

Så er sagen om modeljernbanesoftwaren lukket og slukket og Open Source vandt stort: Selvom vi giver vores software væk gratis, lider vi et tab når folk overtræder licensen og tabet kan forfølges ved d…

Since some of the new Danish digital TV channels (on MUX2) are using the HE-AAC audio codec which is not widely supported (ie. on my Pop Corn Hour) I had to transcode the recordings before being able to watch it on my frontend.

I'm using VLC for the transcoding, since ffmpeg couldn't quite grok it yet.

For this I use the following simple script:

#!/bin/bash
vcodec="mp4v"
acodec="a52"
bitrate="VIDEO_BITRATE"
arate="128"
ext="aac"
mux="mp4"
vlc="/usr/bin/vlc"
input=$1
output=$2

#http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=83&topicid=55394
$vlc -v -I dummy "$input" --sout "#transcode{acodec=$acodec,ab=$arate,channels=2,samplerate=48000}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=ts,dst=\"$output\"}" vlc://quit
exit $?

Note: You have to enable VLC stream support for the --sout to work (USE="stream").

With MythTV I wrap it in the following script for it to work as a normal MythTV UserJob:

#!/bin/bash                                         
VIDEODIR=$1                                         
FILENAME=$2                                         
JOBID=$3                                            
NEWFILENAME=`echo $FILENAME | sed -e "s/\....$//"`.mp4

# Sanity checking, to make sure everything is in order.
if [ -z "$VIDEODIR" -o -z "$FILENAME" ]; then          
        echo "Usage: $0 <VideoDirectory> <FileName>"   
        exit 5                                         
fi                                                     
if [ ! -f "$VIDEODIR/$FILENAME" ]; then                
        echo "File does not exist: $VIDEODIR/$FILENAME"
        exit 6                                         
fi                                                     

cat << EOF | mysql -h mysqlserver -u mythtv -ppassword mythconverg
UPDATE jobqueue SET comment = "Starting transcoding using vlc." WHERE id = $JOBID;
EOF

# Remove previous mp4 if any
if [ -f $VIDEODIR/$NEWFILENAME  ]; then
        rm $VIDEODIR/$NEWFILENAME
fi

/home/mythtv/bin/transcodelatm.sh $VIDEODIR/$FILENAME $VIDEODIR/$NEWFILENAME

ERROR=$?
if [ $ERROR -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "vlc failed for ${FILENAME}.tmp with error $ERROR"
        exit $ERROR
fi

#Update MySQL

cat << EOF | mysql -h mysqlserver -u mythtv -ppassword mythconverg
UPDATE recorded SET basename = "$NEWFILENAME", filesize = $(ls -l $VIDEODIR/$NEWFILENAME | awk '{print $5}') WHERE basename = "$FILENAME";
EOF

#Remove previous version
rm $VIDEODIR/$FILENAME

exit 0

I don't update the jobqueue table once the job is finished, since MythTV immediately overwrites my update. The wiki shows how to use a bit of trickery to update the jobqueue table after the job completes, but the above solution is fine for me.

Der bliver snakket rigtig meget om nye gTLD’er, hvertfald, internationalt set.

Vi mangler endnu at se et dansk gTLD, men i mellemtiden er vi tilsyneladende blevet slået af vores Norske broderfolk, som har åbnet øjene og set hvad der sker ude i verden:

http://www.domainnews.com/en/norway-considers-new-gtlds-such-as-.oslo.html

Med en nedsættelse af en arbejdsgruppe der feks skal vurdere om et .OSLO eller et .TRONDELAG kunne være til nytte for Norge, eller som branding af den Norske hovedstad og andre områder, så tager Norge hermed klart føringen på den internationalle hest indenfor domæner i norden.. Man kan jo så sige, det er så heller ikke så svært..

Programmet for Tivoli Fredagsrock 2010 er nu tilgængeligt. Det er jo altid rart i den kolde vintertid, at blive mindet om, at det nok skal blive sæson for sommer, sol og udendørs koncerter på et tidspunkt igen – selvom man mildest talt ikke kan mærke det i øjeblikket.

Jeg forstår ikke hvorfor, men Tivoli har ikke publiceeret programmet i et format, som er let at importere i elektroniske kalendere – det der kommer tættest på er deres events på Facebook.
Men hvis du syntes det er rart at have Fredagsrock programmet importeret i kalenderen på din computer, mobil eller hvor du nu har en elektronisk kalender, så er muligheden her:

Direkte link til: html, iCal, xml.

Disclaimer:
Hvis der kommer ændringer i programmet er det selvfølgelig Tivolis Fredagsrock side der gælder og ikke denne kalender.

Related posts:

• Fredagsrock i Tivoli
• Tivoli fredagsrock
• Fredagsrock kalender
• Fredags Rock i Tivoli