IncentivesPro make a product I recently used for a Virtual Desktop Thin Client Implementation. That is USB Redirection for Remote Desktop. It uses a proprietary client/server and so I used Windows XP embedded thin clients to redirect specialised USB Thermal Laser Printers to the Vista Virtual Machines. The website looks a bit underwhelming but the product is flawless and it’s priced much better than their competitors. If you have more time than I did, it’s likely you can get the Linux client working with Thinstation

For the other desktops, I used 2x’s Thin Client Server that use PXE (or USB / CDRom) to boot the original desktops over the network, essentially converting the original desktops into diskless thin clients. It’s a shame you can’t build your own images or add your own software to 2x’s desktop as I really didn’t like having to implement the Windows XP embedded thin clients.

As it’s a small environment, we are using VMWare Vsphere 4.0 free version. I was aiming to use Xenserver 5.5 but it doesn’t natively support Tape Drive passthrough to the client and I wanted to easily accomplish this without kernel rebuilds, as it is possible to achieve this with Xen by recompiling the kernel with ISCSI support and making the Tape Drive an ISCSI target.

Some other useful software was SplitView, allowing the accountant to use Dual Monitors. RDP  5.2 only allows to use the mstsc.exe /span option which spans the monitor across two screens. Splitview allows you to manage those windows as individual desktops. The only issue I had was with Adobe Reader 9.2, I had to add it to the exceptions list in Splitview otherwise it would crash.

Technorati Tags: vmware, vdi, virtual desktop, remote desktop, rdp, thin client

My list of different time tracking / logging applications:

Preferably looking for a desktop application (multi-platform) like Rescuetime that reports application usage to our own centralised server. Desktop client would have prompting and automated features like CaptureWorks and Allnetic to minimise discrepancies and increase workflow.

Any comments, please leave them below. Would love to hear of others.

I know myself that FROM A USER’S PERSPECTIVE, very high disk i/o can kill a HP DL-585 with 5 x 15K SAS drives, meanwhile the same task running on a lower end HP9000 running HP-UX11a will manage just fine. Go and run bonnie++ or gzip 2 x 4GB archives and also try and USE Linux, you will notice a a severe almost unusable system.

Now, I am one of those people who get caught reading comments of articles. I find some of my nicest little gems there, other suggestions etc. I came across Haiku and Syllable OS, two open source Operating Systems that AREN’T linux. Most people familiar with Linux will be aware that it’s roots are in Unix and so too are the BSD’s but Haiku and Syllable OS do not have Unix roots. Haiku has it’s roots in BeOS and Syllable is a fork of “written-from-scratch” OS called AtheOS.

Now, these aren’t the main two Operating Systems of interest to me. The really interesting ones for me are Nexenta OS and ReactOS. Why these two?

When I was looking to move from PCLinuxOS (and decided upon Ubuntu) I was taking a very strong look at running OpenSolaris for my desktop but I was seeing myself spending too much time trying to build from source or trying to get a decent desktop running as I wanted it. What drew me to Solaris? Three things:

• Zones & Containers
• ZFS File System
• Dtrace

ZFS was the main thing. It provides true snapshotting capabilities, among other things and I really wish something like OpenFiler offered ZFS as it’s main file system rather than LVM on Ext3. I would also like to do some Solaris Certification, so I want to get down and dirty with Solaris – when you work in IT with Financial Services, everything is very conservative – for godsakes, it’s a major problem trying to get approval to get bash and vim installed grrr. anyways..

Anyway, Nexenta OS is essentially Ubuntu on a Solaris kernel, as I understand it.. so I can have my pie and eat it too.. the best of both worlds – I expect it will probably end up replacing Suse 10.2 as my virtual machine fairly soon.

Next on the list, I mentioned ReactOS, why? It’s a windows clone ie: it’s designed to be an open source clone of windows. ie: it’s aim is to be 100% compatible with windows programs, drivers etc. Why is that necessary, why is that powerful? Because it can give to the windows world what we have in the Linux world. ie: distributing mini-virtual machines that are preconfigured with specific sets of services, databases etc. I know of quite a bit of software written for Windows that has no need for 90% of the windows ‘features’. The web hosting industry is a perfect example. Most of those running Windows are only doing so for asp, VB.net and C#.net and MSSQL of course. Now, the dotNet land has been mostly filled by the fruition of Migueld e Izaca’s dreams in mono. Ok, now we can compile and run .Net programs in Linux but there’s many who still need to run win32 applications that haven’t been (and won’t for a while) be compiled in Mono.

Many people dual boot their Linux PC into Windows just to play games – they are still tied to Bill and his crew. That’s where the power of a project like ReactOS shines. It starts to break those ties. It’s an alternative.

I’d still love to take Syllable and Haiku for a test-drive.. but I have too much on my plate at the moment. Maybe one day.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, solaris, haiku, syllable, nexenta, reactos, haiku, open source operating systems

First we need to export the certificate from IIS into a pfx file. To do that:
Click Start->Run->type: mmc [enter]
Click ->’Console’ -> ‘Add/Remove Snap-in’.
Click -> ‘Add’ -> ‘certificates’ snap-in and click on ‘Add’.
Select -> ‘Computer Account’ -> click ‘Next’.
Select ‘Local Computer’ and then click ‘OK’.
Click ‘Close’ and then click ‘OK’.

In the menu for ‘Certificates’ and click on the ‘Personal’ folder.

Choose your certificate to export and select ‘All tasks’ -> ‘Export’.
In the wizard, check the box to include the private key, continue until you have a .PFX file.

Move the Certificate to the machine Running Apache:

Now, we are going to use openssl to extract the private key, and the cert file.

# Export the private key from the pfx file
openssl pkcs12 -in iis.pfx -nocerts -out apache.key.pem
# Export the certificate file from the pfx file
openssl pkcs12 -in iis.pfx -clcerts -nokeys -out apache.cert.pem
# ****This removes the passphrase from the private key so Apache won’t
# ****prompt you for your passphase when it starts
openssl rsa -in apache.key.pem -out apache.key

Technorati Tags: apache, ssl, iis, certificate,

]]> http://www.opensourcetutor.com/2007/08/08/convert-iis-ssl-certificate-to-use-in-apache/feed/ 2 http://www.opensourcetutor.com/2007/08/01/lifehack-has-some-good-launchy-tips/ http://www.opensourcetutor.com/2007/08/01/lifehack-has-some-good-launchy-tips/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:29:51 +0000 salubrium http://www.opensourcetutor.com/2007/08/01/lifehack-has-some-good-launchy-tips/ A good article from Lifehacker came through today about extending Launchy.

It details using the Curl library and some batch scripts – it’s given me a few ideas on how to extend launchy

Go and read it here

Technorati Tags: launchy, lifehacker, curl, batch scripts

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But I forgot one thing – Windows doesn’t have a package manager. Here’s what I have installed so far.

In the GNU/GPL/LGPL etc front I have installed:

1. 7zip (zip / rar / tgz etc)
2. Filezilla (ftp client)
3. Winmerge (diff tool)
4. Pidgin (msn / yahoo / jabber client)
5. OpenOffice (office suite)
6. Mindquarry client (for Mindquarry Server)
7. Firefox (browser)
8. Putty (ssh client)
9. Winscp (scp client)
10. NXClient (nomachine X client)
11. PDFCreator (pdf printer)
12. Python2.5 (language)
13. WXPython (widgets for python)
14. BWgBurn (burning program)
15. Notepad++ (notepad on steroids)
16. Gvim (Graphical vi text editor)
17. Launchy (free’s me from the Start menu)
18. Keepass Password Safe (stores passwords – synch’s with mindquarry server and accessible from all my machines)
19. tortoisesvn (Subversion client)
20. Miro (ex-Democracy player ie: download free (non-pirated) movie content)

On the non-GPL but Free front:

1. Skype
2. Opera
3. JRE 1.5
4. Picasa
5. Foxit Reader (win32 pdf reader without the bloat)
6. Copernic Desktop Search (google desktop doesn’t play nice on Terminal Servers)
7. .NET 2.0

Now that’s a lot of :

1. Google
2. Download -> wait -> Choose Version -> Save As
3. Run -> click, click, click, click, finish

Those packages are just what I could think up off the top of my head – I am sure there’s a bunch more to come. What would be REALLY, really nice is if we had a package manager like synaptic so that I could just point it to a text file backup of my package selection and it goes away and downloads and installs it all for me. As you can see above, I think there’s enough quality open source packages that could justify such a cause.

The cygwin project is a prime example (although finding the packages you want could be nicer ie: searching) on how a package manager could work.

There are two projects in the works trying to achieve this but both are quite immature with a limited choice of programs to choose from:

The aptly named Windows Package Manager can install putty for you which is kind of harder than just ‘installing’ putty yourself but it’s a start and WinLibre, which I only discovered after installing all of the above programs already and it doesn’t have half of the programs I use anyway.

Maybe when I get through “Dive into Python” book I might take the project on – but then, the book’s author Mark Pilgrim has the same gripe about MacOSX in this post so I might just stick with my Ubuntu and plug any efforts I make in that area.

UPDATE: As chance would have it, Lifehacker wrote an article on a apt-get like tool for windows called win-get

I gave it a bit of a try but it kept failing at the point of running the installer ie:

C:\scripts\wx>win-get install vlc_playerChecking for mirrors…Searching For Best Mirror:Searching For Best Mirror…Pinging: ftp.snt.utwente.nl … No Reponse.–13:26:14–  http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/videolan/vlc/0.8.4a/win32/vlc-0.8.4a-win32.exe           => `vlc-0.8.4a-win32.exe’Resolving ftp.snt.utwente.nl… 130.89.175.1Connecting to ftp.snt.utwente.nl|130.89.175.1|:80… connected.HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OKLength: 9,692,886 (9.2M) [application/octet-stream]100%[========================================================================================>] 9,692,886    187.52K/s    ETA 00:0013:27:12 (164.42 KB/s) – `vlc-0.8.4a-win32.exe’ saved [9692886/9692886]File Retrieved Successfully..Launching Installer…Unable to run installer.

Technorati Tags: windows package manager, winlibre, win32, open source, windows upgrade

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I’m a cross-platform guy spending 50% of my time between different *nixes and Windows (albeit Vista).

That said, there’s some very cool Windows OSS that sometimes exceeds it’s Linux counterpart.

KeePass Password Safe is a very good example where it’s the parent of the Linux version KeePassX. Both are password database safes that use AES or Twofish encryption algorithms for managing passwords but KeepassX search functionality doesn’t work.

Putty , a SSH client is another example where it came before it’s Linux equivalent but take a look at the Linux version, even though I am certain they use GTK, it looks like an ancient TKinter program on Linux. Ugly as hell.. but it does it’s job well though.

I have been a long time admirer of the Windows diff program WinMerge and only came across a decent Gnome equivalent the other day called Meld, which just happens to be written in Python. The KDE equivalent of this would be Kdiff – which I had used for sometime previously. Still though, neither seem quite as nice or easy to use as WinMerge.

In FTP land, we have Filezilla and we have, of course the Linux equivalent GFTP but there’s a few things about GFTP that just don’t work as nice as Filezilla. For example, in Filezilla you can drag a bunch of files and folders into a subfolder, or up a directory level. This isn’t possible in GFTP. Additionally, try and rearrange your bookmarks in GFTP.. go on, try it.. it sucks.

WinSCP is a great little SCP / SFTP program for Windows. It builds on Putty and provides a gui and connection manager in an Explorer or Norton Commander style interface. There’s no straight up and down, standalone Linux equivalent for this program though. What we have in Linux is the fish:// protocol in Konqueror or the sftp:// protocol in Nautilus. Their syntax is straight out standard scp syntax ie:

For Konqueror: fish://user@host/home/folder/
For Nautlius: sftp://user@host/home/folder/

From memory, fish:// uploads a perl script to the server to assist the connection, whereas Nautilus just seems to leverage the standard sftp protocol. Both are great and can just be added as Bookmarks. Actually, I think the linux way here is much nicer than needing an add-on program. It’s almost the Linux equivalent of SMB albeit secure.

Technorati Tags: kde, gnome, windows, oss

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I became a fulltime Linux DESKTOP convert approx 8 months ago even though I have been administering, using, toying and playing with it for years. There were two programs holding me back from the changeover:

1. Dreamweaver
2. Fireworks

I finally made that changeover by keeping both programs available on my Wife’s windows PC that I can connect to via Remote Desktop. Not long after the changeover, I decided to give Wine another try. It was basically a matter of:

1. Install Wine via Synaptic (Wine 0.9.23)
2. Copy all my “Program Files\Macromedia\” files across to /home/username/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Macromedia/
3. Export the registry from Windows and import it into Wine’s registry
4. Add some nifty magic
4. Voila (*nifty magic is not difficult but required and is relatively easy)

Now the issue has always been that the colour scheme was like Windows 98.. ugly as hell and today I was sick of my beautiful system tray colours with a Wine icon sticking out like dog’s balls. So I came across some people doing some color schemes in an Ubuntu forum. I am currently running “Default KDE” theme and here is the wine equivalent.

Just save it to a text file, call it colours.reg, open regedit (wine regedit) and import the file. If you are running a different colour scheme. You can use “KColorchooser” to work out which colours are which by running a Wine program and a KDE program and updating the appropriate areas in the reg file. Now my Wine programs look pretty much like any other KDE program.. sweet.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Control Panel\\Colors]
"ActiveBorder"="239 239 239"
"ActiveTitle"="239 239 239"
"AppWorkSpace"="198 198 191"
"Background"="93 77 52"
"ButtonAlternativeFace"="200 0 0"
"ButtonDkShadow"="85 85 82"
"ButtonFace"="239 239 239"
"ButtonHilight"="255 255 255"
"ButtonLight"="255 255 255"
"ButtonShadow"="198 198 191"
"ButtonText"="0 0 0"
"GradientActiveTitle"="239 239 239"
"GradientInactiveTitle"="239 239 239"
"GrayText"="198 198 191"
"Hilight"="103 141 178"
"HilightText"="0 0 0"
"InactiveBorder"="239 239 239"
"InactiveTitle"="239 239 239"
"InactiveTitleText"="255 255 255"
"InfoText"="0 0 0"
"InfoWindow"="200 0 0"
"Menu"="239 239 239"
"MenuBar"="0 0 0"
"MenuHilight"="179 145 105"
"MenuText"="0 0 0"
"Scrollbar"="239 239 239"
"TitleText"="255 255 255"
"Window"="255 255 255"
"WindowFrame"="0 0 0"
"WindowText"="0 0 0"

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If you’re a software whore like me that has a Start Menu that fills an entire 19″ monitor or hate the nested menus that are so common in Linux Distributions, then you will fall in love with Launchy and Katapult.

What do they do? Allow fast access to your applications, bookmarks and other items by using a key combination (Ctrl+Space by default) to launch a transparent popup in the middle of the screen. They index your standard programs menu, which allows you to begin typing the application you want.

For example, if I want to Launch “OpenOffice Writer” and I have “OpenGL” as a menu item, I type the following:

[Ctrl]+[Space], op[spacebar]wr[enter] and my application launches; quick, easy and painless.

While neither are perfect (both are still young projects), they are both free and open source and are now based on a plugin architecture to allow you to index more things. Katapult has a very cool built in calculator, so I can type:

[Ctrl]+[Space], 45*12 and I will automatically see the result. It’s a very handy addition and I find myself using it often.

Both use Ctrl+Space to popup the desktop screen widget by Default. This can cause a conflict when I am using Rdesktop from Linux -> Windows or NoMachine’s NX from Windows to Linux, so I change the Launchy default to use Alt+Space instead and leave Katapult as the default.

I have never used Quicksilver, so I can’t give any real comparison to it. I am certain any Macintosh Geek will tell me it does 100 other cool things that we will never have but then I didn’t pay $3000 for my Dual Core PC, did I ;)

Both Launchy and Katapult are one of those “can’t live without” applications. Check them out.